🚀 go-pugleaf

On Tue, 23 Sep 1997, Jeff Hubbach <hubbach@esus.cs.montana.edu> wrote:
>That's just fine and dandy that you can start up without autoexec and
>config.sys, but have you tried deleting your config.dos or command .dos or
>autoexec.dos files? In my opinion (and since the filename extension is
>dos) these are strictly dos files and if win95 didn't run on top of dos
>then it wouldn't need them, correct?

Wrong.  It would need them to run DOS, DOS is needed to *LOAD* Windows 95,
and after Windows 95 is loaded, DOS is no longer used.

>Call me stupid, but I just tried it
>and my computer just sat there with a blinking cursor.

You are not stupid.  You are ignorant (being called ignorant is not an
insult, everybody is ignorant, nobody knows everything).  Using DOS as
a boot loader does not mean that DOS is always and forever more running
on your system.

In fact, that is an old Linux joke: [DOS.  It makes a great boot loader for
a *REAL* OS!]

>I'm sorry for your
>delusion, but windows 95 DOES run on top of dos. 

You do realize, don't you, that running *ON* DOS is not the same as using
DOS as a boot strap loader?

>I'm not saying this because I hate windows, I'm saying it because it's the
>truth,

You believe it to be the truth.  You believe it because you have made a number
of mistaken analysis.

>I tried it and it doesn't work.

Of course not.  Try deleting the information stored in the boot record for
NT, see how well it boots then! ;->

>Now, if you people who are saying
>that it doesn't run on top of dos have the guts to actually do it, and it
>works (with no .dos files on the hard drive at all), then I might start
>believing you.

Why would I need to do this to prove that 95 does not run on DOS?

>ALL of my friends down here in Montana (we are all in
>Computer Science) and ALL of the professors I've talked to, and ALL of the
>programmers I worked with this summer (all on win95 and NT) said that
>win95 DOES run on top of dos.

So, what does esus stand for?  Is that a state college, or a private college?

>Where did you get your information? I'm not talking from phony inaccurate
>information, I'm talking from 5 years of computer experience on PC's, 9
>years on Macs, and the last 3 years in Computer Science at college, so I
>think I'm pretty informed.

Did one of your courses include the theory of operating systems, or operating
systems design?  If so, please re-read the relevant tutorial information re:
booting/loading/bootstrapping/startup.

A very short summary:

In theory, booting any OS is impossible without having hardware that
automatically, on reset or power up, places the CPU into a know state
and starts executing whatever code it finds at a fixed, preset location.

(I am simplifying greatly, and assuming a standard architechture. . .)

Known state, grossly simplified, means setting the instruction counter,
status bits register (flags), segment registers  and stack pointer(s)
to those fixed, preset locations, and letting the clock(s) start
clocking. . .

Since most systems (not all, but the vast majority) store the execution
copy of their programs in a non-persistent store (exceptions include
ROM based systems and Magnetic Bubble Memory Systems), this poses the
problem: where do you get the program that your newly started system is
going to automatically try to run?

The economically viable solution turned out to be: make all systems, at
least in the first stage of "booting", be ROM based systems.  Which is
what the BIOS (Basic Input Output System) ROM on your PC mother board
really is: it is the operating system that boots the higher level
OS (DOS/Unix/Windows, what have you).

It is theoretically possible, on the old IBM 5150's (those machines that
booted into a ROM'med BASIC) to have a machine with no magnetic storage
media what so ever.  Simply replace the BASIC ROM with one that contains
the OS you wish to run (and be prepared to loose all of the data stored
in RAM when the power is turned off again).

Your earlier statment, that Windows 95 runs on DOS, is no more valid than
saying that Windows NT runs on the BIOS OS (heck, maybe even less valid,
because it may be true that NT still looks to the bios to get some of
its hardware configuration data).

Feel free to email any questions you might have.  I can point you
to a number of good sources for OS theory, the most pertinent one being
that part of the Linux source that boots linux.

John S.