> Orchid Win7 v1 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>>>>> I remember win95, a good user interface with DOS - where is DOS now?
>>>>
>>>> Hidden in the command prompt box: cmd.exe
>>>
>>> Yes, I know, but this DOS is not a real DOS, try to launh a program like
>>> Fractint, it can't run.
>>
>> That's because DOS is a monotasking real-mode OS; applications run under
>> it have complete access to the physical hardware. The command prompt in
>> Windows is merely a DOS-compatible command interpreter. Windows itself
>> is a multitasking protected-mode OS. So a program like FractInt which
>> performs direct hardware access can never work under Windows.
>>
>> You can, however, run it in a virtual machine if you so desire...
>
> Yes, but I remember that MS has developed a multi-task version of DOS. Why MS
> has not implemented this version?
>
Because it was a joint venture with IBM and at one point they came at 
odds with IBM, and IBM took its ball and went home and continued to 
develop OS/2 on their own and MS had to start from scratch.

Also, direct hardware access, like what Fractint does would not be 
allowed under OS/2 either because if you have more than one process 
running, you need to make sure that two processes are not trying to 
access the same resource.

By the way, there's a Windows port of Fractint around.

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