🚀 go-pugleaf

In <Jim_Johnson.0600@abcd.Houghton.MI.US> Jim_Johnson@abcd.Houghton.MI.US
(Jim Johnson) writes: 
>I have installed MSDOS 5.0 on several machines and DRDOS 6.0 on one (mine).
>I can't give you an all inclusive - "choose this one" type of response. 
>Both are significantly better than their predecessors.  I would like to
>make a point though - both versions of DOS are aimmed at 386/486 machines. 
>They both give you much more conventional memory if you can stuff code into
>all the nooks and crannies available to remappable memory (386/486).  On a
>286 machine or an 8086 with expanded memory, I think DRDOS 6.0 has a bit
>more flexibility for memory useage than MSDOS 5.

I'll just comment that my personal opinion is the opposite -- for most 286s,
DRDOS is not as "good" -- you can only use UMBs if you have LEAP or NEAT
chipsets, and you can't load that super disk cache high without EMS.

>I've heard that MSDOS 5.0 is a bit faster, but I haven't installed both
>DOSes on the same machine running the same applications, so I really can't
>say whether or not this is true.

For some reason, the DRDOS update seems to boot a _lot_ faster than the
fiels it replaces.

>DRDOS 6.0 comes with a much better set of utilities (I removed many of the
>little PD .COM files from my hard drive that I've have used for years), but
>keep in mind that BASIC in whatever form is useful for a lot of quick and
>dirty tasks and MSDOS 5.0 comes with QBasic and DRDOS has no included
>programming language.  From what little I have used DRDOS's graphical
>shell, it appears to be a stripped down version of GEM - which was quite
>popular.

Re. the shell -- Mr. Johnson probably didn't try to do anything with it (
8-) ), 'cause you more or less can't.  He's probably got a real shell.  So
if a bundled shell matters, IMHO, that's a strike versus DRDOS.  But the
task switcher is quite nice -- _very_ stable!  It has a nice feature set,
too.  And it uses XMS (the DOS task swapper doesn't). I think the task
switcher is the best bonus, and hardly anybody mentions it.  I do feel the
lack of a BASIC from time to time, though.

>-- Via DLG Pro v0.995

>Jim Johnson-
>*** Remember, they're only tools - Not a way of life! ***
-- 
Eric Scoles			: <<insert witty, pithy comment 
scls_ss@uhura.cc.rochester.edu  :    here >>
University of Rochester --------:
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