On Sat, 03 Jan 2009 13:24:46 -0500, Warp wrote:

>  Yeah, MS-DOS had great support for managing memory, network connections
> and the like. In your dreams maybe.

INT2F redirection provided resources for redirection needed for network 
connections.  And it included memory management routines.  It didn't do 
memory protection well, but that's more a sign of the times than anything.

>   MS-DOS was nothing but an application launcher, which kept some
>   routines
> in memory for the application to call if it wanted. After the
> application launched, it had absolute control of the machine. Basically
> the application became the de-facto "operating system", if we can call
> it that.

Nonsense.  The kernel itself included a large amount of functionality in 
the ISRs used for accessing all aspects of the machine.  It wasn't a 
preemptive multitasking operating system, but the ability to multitask 
isn't something that defines an operating system - or didn't at the time.

One could argue that TSR programs actually gave the system the ability to 
multitask, but it was more like task switching than multitasking.  You 
could conceivably stretch (but it woudl be a stretch) to nonpreemptive 
multitasking, but I don't think I'd go that far.

The fact that I've got several books on DOS operating system programming, 
interrupts, and functionality would seem to counter your argument that 
DOS is just an "application launcher" or anything like GRUB.

Jim

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