XPost: comp.os.linux.advocacy, comp.os.linux.misc   
   From: lars@beagle-ears.com   
      
   On 2024-09-20 10:41, The Natural Philosopher wrote:   
   >>> DOS is still used in a lot of industrial kit ...When all you want is   
   >>> to load a single tasked application that talks to custom hardware...   
      
   On 25/09/2024 08:57, Carlos E.R. wrote:   
   >> Makes sense. I worked in that sector in the 90's. The only problem   
   >> with MsDOS was the small memory available. We had to use overlays in   
   >> the software, or load/download programs with a stub.   
   >> Well you could in theory kick the processor into 'large' mode and use a   
   >> lot more memory   
      
   In the mid 1980s, my group was building a small communications   
   appliance. We built a single-board PC and used a DOS clone as our   
   bootloader. But booting from floppy was slow as molasses, until I wrote   
   a small TSR (terminate-and-stay-resident) extension that hooked the BIOS   
   read call and buffered a track at a time. Simple and efficient.   
      
   Later, we built at larger, modular system. We found it more economical   
   to buy a Taiwanese PC motherboard than to roll our own system package.   
   We put a DOS Extender to good use (80386 in 80286 protected mode). The   
   multitasking part of KA9Q was in there somewhere.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)