Microsoft open sources DOS 1.00 on 45th anniversary

hhackthemack 2 days ago 19 commentsRead Article on opensource.microsoft.com

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hackthemack•2 days ago

I, perhaps, owe my career to DOS. As a kid, everyone relied on me to get their games, soundcard, and disk drives to work. Juggling IRQs HIMEM and CHKDSK. Soundblaster 16 forever!

d3Xt3r•2 days ago

Kinda the same, but for me, it was more of a gaming-driven motive. I learnt the basic DOS commands my observing my cousin, so I could run Prince of Persia, GORILLA.BAS, Dangerous Dave etc, even when he wasn't around (it was his 286).

Later on, when I got my own PC (a 486) I got into scripting by customising my AUTOEXEC.BAT to display a menu so I can jump into my favourite game immediately after the PC booted. Of course, I also learnt about TSRs, conventional memory, tuning CONFIG.SYS etc just so that I can run some tricky games like BioMenace and OMF2097.

I event learnt basic networking and made my own null-modem cable, because I wanted to play OMF2097 with my friends without sharing the same keyboard (we would always fight over who gets to use the right side of the keyboard, which was obviously the best side).

The first time I dealt with a virus was when I tried installing Prince of Persia 2 from a set of floppies I got from my friend. Dealing with the virus (it was one that "melted" the screen) unlocked a whole new world of malware research for me - and collecting malware became one of my hobbies. I also learnt hex editing and some assembly language because I wanted to cheat in Prince of Persia 2, and unlock shareware programs like Cheat Machine - and what I saw within the hex code of Cheat Machine blew me away, it opened another new world for me.

I built my first PC (a PIII 450, along with my first GPU - an nVidia RIVA TNT) - all parts carefully selected, so that I can play games with the best performance for the price.

In the Windows world, I was endlessly tuning my PC, diving into the registry, switching kernels (yes, there were thirdparty kernels you could install), even optimising file layout on the disk - all so that I could get the best gaming performance. I dived deep into scripting with AutoHotkey and Perl to make macros, bots and other random utilities for the games I played. After that I.. well, I could go on, but you get the picture.

So while DOS was my starting point (and a most fond memory), it was ultimately gaming that I owe my career to.

bluesign•2 days ago

I started with c64 but stuck there with basic ( extension port was broken unfortunately could not dive into assembly there )

Then I got from someone an old 286, ( hdd was not working ) spent most of my time on "debug" command. Then I got a book for x86 assembly and DOS (interrupts etc). ( Which was kind of hard on non-english speaking country ) I still somehow recall some pages from memory :)

Dived into cracking/cheats, made even money on password recovery. How long those x86 knowledge carried me was unbelievable when I look back.

sigseg1v•2 days ago

BioMenace and OMF worked out of the box for me but BioMenace took 8 minutes (!) to load. It would sit at the start screen (a load screen) hanging the entire time and then load really fast after the delay. Is this related to the configuration stuff you're mentioning?

This didn't occur on any other game for me, which I recall having over 50.

d3Xt3r•2 days ago

Yeah, my BioMenace used to hang at the loading screen as well, and as weird as it sounds, the fix was to move your mouse. I guess it was getting stuck waiting for a hardware interrupt or something. You could also start the game with your mouse unplugged of course.

As for OMF, it used to give me a "not enough memory" error until I got rid of all my TSRs (basically a "clean boot"), as it had a very high conventional memory requirement, almost close to 600k if memory serves me right. Actually even BioMenace had a high conventional memory requirement. It wasn't until few years later that I learnt that there was no need to get rid of all the TSRs, you could just tell DOS to load everything in the High/Upper memory areas by tweaking your CONGIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT. Not sure if this was something that was introduced in later versions of DOS or if it could do it all along. But it wasn't in any of the official manuals at the time, I found these tweaks in a game guide on some random BBS.

mixmastamyk•2 days ago

Yep, I once made a good living getting drivers into high memory and making those menus in config.sys. Installing network drivers and Netware client. People were quite happy to see me when I arrived.

For some reason I thought DOS had already been opened.

LeFantome•2 days ago

They have open sourced a few versions of DOS, including 4.0 I believe. This is just the latest.

For me, DOS 5.0 was the best. Would love to see that.

And of course we have both FreeDOS and SvarDOS now.

iancmceachern•2 days ago

Totally, my first revision control system was unwittingly developed by me as a kid to keep progressive backups of my simcity cities.

bonesss•2 days ago

“Everything I ever needed to know about IT, I learned installing Warcraft 2 on DOS”

Panzerschrek•2 days ago

It's surprise for me that there are still non-opensourced MS-DOS versions. Why keeping them closed?

And I see no reason not to opensource early Windows versions (up to 2000).

olivierestsage•2 days ago

If win2000 got updated by the community with improved driver support people might actually prefer it to current Windows, which would be humiliating.

rbanffy•2 days ago

ReactOS is a better Windows 2000 than Windows 11 will ever be.

rep_lodsb•2 days ago

Last I checked, it's still mostly unusable, especially on real hardware (both modern and Win2k-era). Not saying this because I have anything against it, that's just a fact.

Of course one could say that Windows 11 provides negative value, in which case running DOS 1.00 would also be better ;)

rbanffy•2 days ago

The main issue for open-sourcing old software is copyright. Not all companies buy the copyright of the tools and libraries they incorporate in their software, making it difficult, if not impossible, to open source them.

Also, getting the source code for external libraries was not common until open source became the norm. Making something open-source often requires rewriting parts of it.

ChrisArchitect•2 days ago

Earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47946813

klipklop•2 days ago

The world needs 6.22 open sourced.

tnelsond4•2 days ago

Now someone turn this into a new templeos distro.

hackerInnen•2 days ago

What do you mean by this? Have the DOS features inside of templeos?

I am thinking about how hard it'd be to port this to risc-v and then run it on an FPGA dev board as real computer. That could be fun

tnelsond4•about 20 hours ago

I mean that someone take the dos source code and develop it into a templeos like os with a repl and every component editable in real time.

But I find it kinda discouraging that even Terry Davis ran templeos in an emulator.