🚀 go-pugleaf

etxlli@eos.ericsson.se (Lars Lindner) writes:


>Hi out there,

>       I'm thinking of buying a machine with preinstalled DRDOS 6.0 and
>       my question is:

>          * What is the difference between MSDOS and DRDOS?

DRDOS lets you configure the config.sys: ie, you can ask questions within
the config.sys and load or not load various drivers based on what the user
chooses.  That makes it easy to set up your system so can pick-and-choose
from the various drivers when you boot: you don't waste memory having
something loaded you rarely use, you don't mess around copying in special
config files, etc.  (If you have 8 different drivers, you could ask
8 questions in the config in DR-DOS, or you could set up 256 different
config files in MS-DOS.)  You also get to put comments in the config,
which to me is a requirement.  DRDOS also has the disk compression stuff,
which if you use it will roughly double what you can store on your disk.
Then DR-DOS also includes security features, so you can keep your
teenager (or yourself) from mistakenly deleting or changing critical files.
DR-DOS also comes with a command history (to let you re-edit previous
commands, etc.) and I don't think MS does.  (But then I use 4DOS all the
time, so I don't use either for that.)

>          * Is DRDOS fully compatible with MSDOS?

I've only found one program in two years of using it that didn't work,
and that was and older version of MS Word's spell checker.  No loss,
and the problem was probably MicroSoft's.  When MicroSoft came out
with Windows 3.1, it wouldn't run under DR-DOS.  MicroSoft, being nice
guys, did not let DR have a copy of Windows before release to fix this.
Some people suspect that MicroSoft deliberately wrote Windows so that
it wouldn't work.  Anyway, within a month, DR not only had fixed their
DOS so that it would run Windows 3.1, but they also mailed out the
new fixed version to their registered users for free, (you didn't
even have to phone and ask for it, they just sent it) and made the fix
available on their BBS a week or so earlier than that.

>          * Are there any advantages/disadvantage with DRDOS compared to MSDOS?

DRDOS has been out about a year longer than MSDOS: that might mean that
another better version is coming soon, although I don't know, but it is
likely that DR will have a new version before MS does.  What I do
know is that DR has in the past let people upgrade for cheap (I remember
something around $5-10) if you buy the old version within a few months
of the new one coming out.  
-- 
Flint Pellett, Global Information Systems Technology, Inc.
100 Trade Centre Drive, Suite 301, Champaign, IL  61820     (217) 352-1165
uunet!gistdev!flint or flint@gistdev.gist.com