For a long time I figured that was just the right way to do multitasking. Hook the interrupt and pass control to the next task when you are done. I also figured most of what I wanted was popup TSRs anyway - how can a human possibly pay attention to more than one program at a time? Makes me wonder how much my brain has changed over the years by being exposed to a multitasking and multiple windows on a large screen.
There was a Concurrent DOS, and there were quite a few others: topview, taskview, doubledos, vm/386, to name a few. I remember reading this article (p. 22) sparking my imagination as a kid: http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/magazines/Microsystems_Jo...
It was a long time since I messed with things, but "net drives" something didn't work in FreeDOS a long time ago. This was useful, because it meant you could from within a PC emulator access your host file system. It's entirely possible that works on FreeDOS now.
This is almost completely unrelated to your comment, but it sparked a fun memory. At one point I had a system set up that would boot dos via ipxe with iscsi drives. I thought it was almost magical how dos had no clue it was using a network drive. I still don't know exactly how it worked. but I suspect ipxe was patching the bios.
I feel like FreeDOS could already run just about everything for 20 years or longer. If your goal is to run DOS software your use case was probably already adequately covered with free software.
An interesting thing about DOS is the OS wasn't very involved. Programs did a lot of things we now think of as the realm of an OS, like talking directly to I/O addresses or installing interrupt handlers. I feel like a DOS implementation doesn't even need to do a lot of things, maybe part of why DOS4 is "good enough".
Mostly, you are absolutely right, yes. MS-DOS 5.0 was the peak, and then it started to acquire bloat as MS bundled stuff to compete with DR-DOS 6 and DR-DOS 7.
But the thing is that by modern standards, the bloat is tiny. :-)
I gave MS Office 97 a bad review at the time because it was several times bigger than Office 95, had virtually no new functionality, but introduced a pointless new file format just to get people to upgrade so they could read the files sent to them by companies with the newer version.
But for a decade now, Word 97 is my go-to version. With all the service releases installed, it works great, it's tiny by modern standards -- I think a full install of Word with all the optional filters and things totals 14MB -- and it's lightning fast on 21st century hardware.
Word 95 is even smaller and quicker, but it can't read or write the file format that everyone else, from Pages to Wordpad, uses. So it's crippled: everything has to go through LibreOffice first, to convert it to a .DOC format anything else can view, import, edit, or print.
Bloat is partially the eye of the beholder, and 6.22 wasn't terribly large by any means, but the things it added were not incredibly stable and it showed.
It's also amazing how long things like DOC to DOCX took to really "take hold" in the industry at large. I still get DOC files now and then.
No, still files called `.DOC` but with a different internal format.
There have been at least 3 successive MS Word file formats:
Word for DOS, WinWord 1/2/6/95: old .DOC format
(I think this also applies to Classic MacOS Word 1-5.)
Word 97, 2000, XP, 2003: new .DOC format
(Classic MacOS Word 98, X and 2001 were based on a port of the Windows codebase. Mac OS X Word 2004 and later are OS X-only, but are still based on the Windows codebase and use the same file formats.)
The whole opendos thing is pretty questionable, too. CPM is open source as is its' derivatives. Cool so far. But is DR-DOS a derivative of it? Or is it bound by the 'non commercial' license of the 90's which a) was revoked b)isn't exactly open source (limits distribution) in the first place.
Microsofts' releases have the benefit of being unambiguous.
OpenDOS isn't open-source, its source-available. The license reads more like trial software:
"Caldera grants you a non-exclusive license to use the Software in source or binary form free of charge if your use of the Software is for the purpose of evaluating whether to purchase an ongoing license to the Software. The evaluation period for use by or on behalf of a commercial entity is limited to 90 days; evaluation use by others is not subject to this 90 day limit but is still limited to a reasonable period"
DOS 3.3 couldn't understand large partitions -except for Compaq dos 3.31. But regular dos 3.3 couldn't. I don't think dos 3.2 could even understand extended partitions/logical drives -much less large disks.
“DOS 3.3 couldn't understand large partitions -except for Compaq dos 3.31.”
This is not accurate. Several OEMs added proprietary variations of FAT which supported larger partitions. For instance I run Zenith MS-DOS 3.30+ which has this ability on a Zenith Z-161 XT compatible luggable.
Compaq’s 3.31 added FAT16B support which allowed larger partitions and was the standard for larger partition support going forward in standard MS-DOS.
The source released is for the IBM-started version of DOS 4.0, but most of the talk here is about the Multitasking DOS 4 files (a binary copy of the first beta)
DR-DOS hasn't been open sourced. Caldera did release the source for the kernel and a few other bits, but the license only allowed free use for evaluation purposes. After 90 days (for a company) or "a reasonable period" for non-commercial entities you were required to buy a license.
Bryan Sparks did open-source CP/M a little while back, but AFAIK he hasn't said anything about DR-DOS so far.
Thats the DR-DOS/OpenDOS Enhancement Project. Its a set of patches for the Caldera OpenDOS 7.01 kernel.
The license file inside the original Caldera OpenDOS 7.01 source archive says:
"Caldera grants you a non-exclusive license to use the Software in
source or binary form free of charge if (a) you are a student,
faculty member or staff member of an educational institution
(K-12, junior college, college or library), a staff member of
a religious organization, or an employee of an organization which
meets Caldera's criteria for a charitable non-profit organization;
or (b) your use of the Software is for the purpose of evaluating
whether to purchase an ongoing license to the Software. The evaluation
period for use by or on behalf of a commercial entity is limited
to 90 days; evaluation use by others is not subject to this 90 day
limit but is still limited to a reasonable period."
So that website is incorrect when it says OpenDOS was released under an open-source license. Not surprising though - most websites discussing OpenDOS make this error. Possibly because at the time I believe Caldera did actually talk about open-sourcing DR-DOS, they just failed to to actually follow through.
If he still has the source code, whats needed is for Bryan Sparks to release it under some regular open-source license like Microsoft have done here.
I'd like to see NTVDM open sourced... It's been leaked and there are unofficial builds to get support into 64-bit Windows through the emulation code. Could be a huge boost for general support.
Not sure how much work it would take for Linux or even just wine. But might displace DOSbox.
While hole punchers and opaque tape worked for notching and denotching, there were also floppy notchers. It turns out these bits of accessories are rarely found on secondary markets or go for something like $80 USD. There are still quite a few 5.25" drive cleaning kits still for sale.
I don't miss floppies because they were slow, fragile, and prone to developing unrecoverable errors. I did discover through experimentation that 3.5" floppies were fairly resistant to crude direct magenetic attack. I had to open the window and touch the media surface to a small speaker's magnet to induce errors. Praise be to the greaseweazle and the Copy II PC Deluxe Option Board 2.0 (the 1.0 doesn't support 3.5" 1.44 MB).
2.88 MB drives are worth a small fortune because they are still used for industrial purposes. Also, SCSI floppy drives exist.
Enclosed you will find Microsoft's first beta release
of Multi-tasking MS-DOS. This version is based upon MS-DOS
Version 2 sources, we will be reimplementing the multi-tasking enhancements on top of Version 3 sources shortly.
Tim Paterson (born 1 June 1956) is an American computer programmer, best known for creating 86-DOS, an operating system for the Intel 8086. This system emulated the application programming interface (API) of CP/M, which was created by Gary Kildall. 86-DOS later formed the basis of MS-DOS, the most widely used personal computer operating system in the 1980s.
If this release is for historical research purposes, the release should be pristine including the unsavory bits. Whitewashing of history should never be accepted.
>The MS-DOS v1.25 and v2.0 files were originally shared at the Computer History Museum on March 25th, 2014 and are being (re)published in this repo to make them easier to find, reference-to in external writing and works, and to allow exploration and experimentation for those interested in early PC Operating Systems.
>For historical reference
>The source files in this repo are for historical reference and will be kept static, so please don’t send Pull Requests suggesting any modifications to the source files, but feel free to fork this repo and experiment.
Thx for clearing the rights and for releasing, Scott. And of course thanks to Microsoft and IBM.
It would be fun at some point down the road to get some of the older code building and running again - particularly '84/'85-vintage Windows & Notes builds. Quite a lot of work, though, not just because of hardware but also likely because of toolchain gaps.
Why is that, no matter how much you check and proofread your work before you push/publish, you'll always find something obvious you missed 5 minutes after it's gone up?
To change a public branch, or not to change a public branch, that is the question.
Edit: Muphry's law strikes again - s/or to not/or not to/
Up to Windows 3.11 it was a GUI on top of DOS. Windows 95, 98, Me used DOS to boot and it was still possible to stop the booting process at a DOS prompt (although in Me this was no longer official). Finally Windows 2000 had nothing to do with it as it is NT based.
Windows 2000 was part of the professional NT line, though, and was the companion of Me for the millennium releases. As far as I know, 2000 wasn't marketed to home users. I think what the comment you replied to is saying is the the transition away from DOS wasn't completed for both professional and home markets until XP, which unified everything under NT for all markets.
Can confirm. I upgraded my 98 box to 2000 and never did get some of my hardware working. When I told people I was using 2000 everybody assumed I had stolen it from work. I didn't. My friend stole it from work and shared it with me ;-)
Around the year 2000, I was studying computer science at a university. Most of their PC's ran on Windows 3.1. I was using it at home. But one day, Microsoft sent me an offer: I could purchase the student release of Windows 2000 workstation for a mere $25.00. I went for it, and found it better than the Windows NT nap-sayers at school said. I don't know why I was contacted. Probbably because of other Microsoft programs I'd bought at the student bookstore.
Windows 2000 was a pretty great OS. Used to enjoy using a Litestep shell instead of explorer. While it wasn't great for a lot of games, many did run fine. I liked it a lot better than OS/2 that I ran previously.
I generally ran 2-4x the amount of RAM as most did. Still do. Pretty sure this made a lot of the difference.
I rain it until it wouln't run sensible anymore in Windoes 10. I then ditched Windows for Linux soon after - I can recommend KDE Plasma if you want to have something thats sorta configureable enough like Litestep was.
windowblinds is a window decoration customizer - LiteStep does nothing of the sort :)
LiteStep completely replaces explorer.exe as the shell host and you can then customize what functions you want to have in your UI. The windows themself would stay looking the same.
Windows 2000 Pro was what I used at home for a long time and it was great. NT 3 and 4 were absolutely terrible which might explain your NT naysayers at school. I never once had to reapply a service pack in Win2k
Still remember the first time I touched Windows NT 4. Half an hour into work experience: Opened up a printer dialogue set a setting that hard crashed the PC; then slowly every other PC in the building as soon as they tried to print (i.e. just as they had _finished_ whatever they were working on; but often just before they _saved_ it).
Kind of for a very long while. You then had a descendant SFU from some SP of NT4 to XP / Server 2003, then a further one SUA until Windows 8 / Server 2012. With some code flowing between various companies. I think SFU still used the Posix NT subsystem core. Probably also SUA, although I'm less sure. Not really the case WSL1, though (although probably the core NT kernel was more ready to support it, thanks to its history).
Even ancient Windows includes many 3rd party libraries. I would not expect any Win 9x or NT 3.51+ version of Windows to be open sourced in it's entirety. I hope I'm wrong.
I doubt Microsoft would ever open-source any NT Windows versions because the current ones are based on the same code, just with added touchscreen nonsense, adware, and overt contempt for the user.
We may see Windows 9x open-sourced. But then again, it's a stretch because Win32 API is still in wide use today. Releasing the sources for 32-bit Windows versions even this old may have an adverse effect on Microsoft's market domination.
But maybe ReactOS will reach beta by 2038. Does this count as an open-source version of Windows XP? :D
If you really wish to look at XP sources and don't care much about the legal aspect of it, you can do so right now. They were leaked.
All open-source projects that deal with reimplementing parts of Windows, particularly Wine and ReactOS, consider those leaked sources radioactive and would not accept any patches if there's even a slightest suspicion that the patch author gleaned anything from those sources. Those same sources officially released under an open-source license would change that.
I wouldn’t assume Microsoft execs view increased capabilities to run windows programs in Linux as a bad thing, when they think about the matter at all. They would certainly prefer that such a capability be developed by someone else, so they don’t have to support it.
> I doubt Microsoft would ever open-source any NT Windows versions because the current ones are based on the same code, just with added touchscreen nonsense, adware, and overt contempt for the user.
Initiatives like MinWin and OneCore, secure kernel, device guard,... caused lots of rewrites and moving code around.
MSDOS 4 was reportedly an overall bad release and was not in wide circulation, in all my days I think I only came across it once. This is why DOS 3.3 and 5.0 were much more common to find in circulation together.
I'm sure the source for 4 will make for some interesting bug hunting. Anyone remember the MUF list? "Microsofts Undocumented Features".
This is "multitasking dos 4" though, which isn't the same as the much-reviled ms-dos 4. As I understand it, it's a lot closer to dos 3 than it is to dos 4 in terms of functionality.
I wouldn't expect this to understand extended partitions, much less large partitions (that dos 4 uses)
>I wouldn't expect this to understand extended partitions, much less large partitions (that dos 4 uses)
Most of the source code (everything outside of -ozzie) is for regular DOS 4.0 and supports 32-bit sector numbers. They planned to add it in the multitasking version as well [1], but from reading IBMDSK.ASM it isn't there yet.
Also that driver talks directly to the hard disk controller instead of going through the ROM BIOS, and will only support XT drives, not IDE/ATA. Apparently the goal was to be able to do background I/O on an XT, where there is no BIOS support for that.
As someone who recently asked our QA team to change the name of one of our test suites from "sanity test" to "quick test", maybe I can provide some perspective.
Many software developers like me have faced challenges to our mental health.
Indeed, there has been a time or two when I questioned my own sanity. And perhaps the sanity of some of my colleagues!
It's not so much that there is something inherently wrong with the term "sanity check". We all know what it means. It's just that there are more descriptive and neutral terms available to us, so why not use them?
Walter, you and I have known each other for a long time. Not in person; we've never met. But through our interactions here on HN.
I have a lot of respect for you and for everything you have accomplished.
So I have to ask you directly: Is being "boring" or not the way we should decide how to express ourselves?
Regarding a "quick test" vs. a "sanity test". Instead of judging this on what is "boring", why can't we make a choice on which is more respectful to our peers and colleagues?
We should make choices based on communication, first and foremost. Words that do not communicate are not useful.
A "quick test" implies almost nothing, other than it is faster than some other, unnamed test out there. Is a quick test good or is it bad? No way to tell. This term, quick test, it does not inform.
On the other hand, a sanity test, well, it is more evocative. You definitely want to pass a sanity test.
If you reach back to your psychology classes, they talked about a four-part test that is useful for determine if a behavior is sane or not.
1) Is it abnormal? Unusual? Out of the ordinary? for the situation.
2) Is it unjustifiable, unreasonable given the circumstances?
3) Is it counter-productive? Which is to say, does the behavior serve the individual, or does it in fact make things worse? Or simply do nothing?
4) (and this is where my memory is fuzzy) I think it involves personal distress. For the life of me I can't find it via Google and it annoys me.
Now, interestingly, a sanity test matches the first three! (The fourth, well, there is no "I" in the program to be distressed) In programming, a sanity test looks for something abnormal, not reasonable for the program, and represents a state that won't get us the desired output. In short, it's highly congruent to the other context for sanity.
This term, it communicates, and in a way "quick test" does not.
In general, one of the main critiques of political correctness which few really notice is that the new term is less specific and less useful, that it fails at communicating. Consider when "Oriental" fell off of the euphemism treadmill for "Asian." We all knew that the first term referred to a particular part of the world, from the Latin for "east." (Ex lux orient and so on) "Asian," however, could refer to people in Russia or people in India, but nobody in the US does (I note in the UK India does get the "Asian" pass). So here the new term is less specific and less useful, and is confusing to boot because we deliberately ignore parts of Asia when using the term "Asian."
If you want something to supplant "sanity test," you gotta work harder for it than "quick test."
We have literally no idea what the 'sanity test' involved actually did, and the common use in computing has little connection to any such use in psychology.
"A sanity check or sanity test is a basic test to quickly evaluate whether a claim or the result of a calculation can possibly be true." ...
"In computer science, a sanity test is a very brief run-through of the functionality of a computer program, system, calculation, or other analysis, to assure that part of the system or methodology works roughly as expected. This is often prior to a more exhaustive round of testing. " ...
"In software development, a sanity test (a form of software testing which offers "quick, broad, and shallow testing"[1]) evaluates the result of a subset of application functionality to determine whether it is possible and reasonable to proceed with further testing of the entire application."
and further comments that "sanity test" for some people is interchangeable with "smoke test".
It also adds:
"The Association for Computing Machinery,[8] and software projects such as Android,[9] MediaWiki[10] and Twitter,[11] discourage use of the phrase sanity check in favour of other terms such as confidence test, coherence check, or simply test, as part of a wider attempt to avoid ableist language and increase inclusivity. "
I could not find a definition for "sanity test" in psychology. I know about the cognitive test that Trump made famous with ‘Person, woman, man, camera, TV‘.
I cannot cop to "smoke test" being interchangeable with "sanity test," in any way. Smoke tests are obvious crashes, often before any real input. I had a friend on the build team of Windows NT 5.0 (until it was called Windows 2000) and their version of smoke test was "can it boot up to the login screen," and that's similar to working in electronics, where powering up your machine or circuit is all you do and you hope it doesn't release the magic smoke, before you actually do anything with it.
On that alone, I am very doubtful on that article.
This is also distinguished from what I have taken to calling a "pre-flight checklist" at the start of large programs, making sure databases are connected, requisite tables are present with the correct columns and datatypes, that specific files or directories exist, that files may be of a certain "freshness," and so on.
I'll stand by it: sanity test is a lot more descriptive and useful than "quick test." Those footnotes are only kicking the can down the road of justifiability. But let's examine them according to the aforementioned The PC Replacement is Less Useful criterion.
Recommending just "test" is ... well, double-plus ungood, in the sense that we now have no idea of the qualities of this test and how it could be distinguished from some other test. Hard pass.
"Confidence test" only implies a statistical likeliness, like a confidence interval. It does not imply the This Ought Not to Happen of a sanity test.
"Coherence test" is interesting but ... coherent against what?
If someone wants to sell me on a replacement, they are free to try, but the replacement must be at least as good at communicating what it does as the term sanity test. If this fails, then it will be scoffed at, and should be.
We do not know if what was described as a "sanity test" actually meets your definition of a sanity test, or was used for some other purpose like a smoke test.
A quick look using Google Scholar finds people using "sanity test" for smoke testing, like
"Typical behavior is to allocate any special resource requirements it needs, map the device into virtual address space, initialize the device and perform a brief “sanity test” to ensure that the device appears to be working correctly" at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/%28SICI%2910...
"Sanity test cases which checks basic functionality and are run for pre-system acceptance and when product goes thru major change. These test cases deliver a
very high project value to both engineering dept and to customers." https://ijaer.com/admin/upload/06%20Apr_2012_Sheo%20Kumar.pd...
as well this example which distinguishes between shallow-and-wide smoke tests with deep-and-narrow sanity tests.
"a smoke test generally consists of a collection of tests that can be applied to a newly created or repaired computer program. This is a “shallow and wide” approach to the application." while "Sanity testing will be performed whenever cursory testing is sufficient to prove that the system is functioning according to specifications. A sanity test is a narrow regression test that focuses on one or a few areas of functionality. Sanity testing is usually narrow and deep. It will normally include a set of core tests of basic GUI functionality to demonstrate connectivity to the database, application servers, printers, etc." - http://archives.christuniversity.in/disk0/00/00/48/68/01/the...
Going with PC Replacement question, since we don't know the actual goal of what was called "sanity test", we can't ourselves come up with a better name.
Which is why we should go with the OP's assessment that "quick" is an appropriate term for what they are doing. Since you don't know what that is, it doesn't matter if you buy a new term or not.
>as well this example which distinguishes between shallow-and-wide smoke tests with deep-and-narrow sanity tests.
I think this even is contradictory for what a lot of people think a "sanity test" means. A "test" may check that something is correct, where a sanity test would be a lower fidelity test that simply checks that something is not obviously wrong.
Oh, I agree. I included it as an example of an outlier. My overall point is that "sanity test" has a range of meanings, so without knowing what the original goal of the now-named "fast" tests, it's hard to really know if "fast" is indeed a poor substitute name.
>Recommending just "test" is ... well, double-plus ungood, in the sense that we now have no idea of the qualities of this test and how it could be distinguished from some other test. Hard pass.
Describe the difference between a test and a "sanity test?"
Can we get rid of the "failing" terminology? I think we should call it something more meaningful, such as "it shows there's scope for improvement", or "it highlights areas for more focus".
I like to play with language. English has a million words in it. Why not use it? And why stop there, I insert words from other languages, play with the spelling, use bad puns, allusions to movie dialog, whatever crosses my mind.
I hope the readers/listeners would find it fun, too.
If they mine what I write for an insult, that's on them. I'm not interested in people looking for an insult, or people who get offended on behalf of others. I don't enjoy being around people where I have to walk on eggshells.
For example, I'm bald. I'm not a person experiencing hair loss. I'm bald. I've got a chrome dome. I have to wear a hat when I drive in order to not blind oncoming drivers with the glare from it.
Is changing the words going to change anything? Nope. I'm still just as bald, no matter what words are used.
I think it was Paul Graham that recently tweeted that people should not use the word "delve" into rather than "dig" into, because the former is pretentious and the latter is simpler. I'm a delver, spelunker, archaeologist, excavator, explorer, etc. Take that, Paul!
If you're writing for the pleasure of writing, that's fine. I think such an approach is great for fiction books and poetry in particular.
If you're writing in a professional context, expect your words to be read by non-native English speakers or just people that are extremely tired and want to get their work done quickly.
I think using uncommon and domain-specific words is fine when nothing else is precise enough, but there's no reason to say "touch base" when "get in contact" works.
People should also be aware of cultural context, if you're being overly sensitive and using flowery corpo-speak, people from other cultures may miss your point entirely. A sentence like "John is doing great work, but I can see some areas for future improvement" reads very differently depending on the culture. "John isn't up to standards and needs to improve if he wants to stay with the company" is much clearer. "John fucking sucks and needs to do better" is overdoing it and using the excuse of being direct to be a jerk.
1. Other terms are neither more descriptive nor more neutral.
2. If someone has a problem with the term "sanity check", they are overly sensitive and they need to adjust to the realities of life. It is unreasonable to expect everyone to coddle them.
> It's just that there are more descriptive and neutral terms available to us, so why not use them?
"quick test" does not convey what is usually intended with "sanity test". The intention of the latter is to verify that a base set of assumptions hold true whereas "quick test" can be just about anything.
I've struggled with mental illness all my life and have made several attempts to catch the bus. I'm diagnosed with several mental issues. Somehow I'm still not offended with the phrase "sanity check". What am I doing wrong? Is it possible to learn to get offended by this sort of thing? Will it make me happy?
Software engineering is a field full of neurodiverse people. Trying to police each other's language around mental health in a field where, at least historically, the majority of practitioners are going through some sort of mental health struggle, is borderline rude IMHO.
> Many software developers like me have faced challenges to our mental health.
It's a stressful industry at times, probably almost everyone has had crap times at one point or another. And then there's Covid, which affected everyone.
Doesn't mean every mention of the word "sanity" needs to be expunged from our language though. :( :( :(
Or maybe you, having faced those challenges, next time your fingers hover over the keys to type "sanity" simply pick another, perhaps more descriptive word.
Words have multiple meanings. In that context, “sanity” means something like “reasonable and rational behavior” (look it up in a dictionary!). It’s counterproductive to forbid the use of words just because someone is somehow unable to differentiate between the multiple meanings words have. That would be insane — as in “highly unreasonable”, obviously.
without knowing what the test did, quick test in no way conveys the same information. Honestly, did you really need to ask them to do that? please dont be that guy on the team (sorry, meant please dont be "that working set of hands on the team" (hope this illustrates the point somewhat))
And please don't use 'brain dead', which is a mortuist expression. Using 'brain dead' in a negative way may be insensitive to zombies. Also avoid the expression 'zombie process' or the word 'expired'.
You don't want to step on the toes of a zombie do you? (It's probably gross.)
Oh, you had to worry about legal. But since lawyers are concerned with risk, if the source is all proprietary and internal, the risk was lower.
When Mozilla went open source back in the 1990s, Netscape's lawyers required the source first be bowdlerized. (Search for "censorzilla" for some examples.)
Looking at this code is a nice reminder that I have virtually no real understanding of how computers work, and every part I work with is a nice polished abstraction that hides 99% of the complexity involved in actually creating value with a computer.
As Scott mentioned in the blog post, we were able to get this running on one of my original IBM XTs with an original IBM monochrome display adapter and display. It was very cool to be able to switch between a running version of a small game, Turbo Pascal, and a DOS prompt with a single key press.
It is always great to have period software on period hardware!
If not for space considerations, I would be right there with you.
I still have hardware and software to get me back to NT 4.0 or Windows 95 (OSR 2, please, it wasn't tolerable before that). I haven't needed to in a while, but in a previous job, we'd run across old disks in some author's archive and I'd go home to dig around, find a 5.25" drive and rig something up, reach back in time.
I could maybe do Windows for Workgroups 3.11.
If shipping weren't so brutal, I would love to send off my old stuff to someone who would use it. I still have working SCSI equipment! I bet somewhere there is someone stymied on trying to liberate some ancient works but for the necessary hardware/software setup.
SCSI drives almost never go bad. Compared to IDE/SATA, they were significantly better built and had lower failure rates. I still have a few 15k RPM Cheetahs that still work, last I checked :).
In general, it is surprising how many old hard drives still work. I have a good number of old SCSI drives (even Seagate!) that still work 40 years on. The ST225 in one of my XTs still works great as well. I actually have a ST238R still new in box, and I'll be curious to see if it can spin up some day. I suspect the bearings might be a stuck after all of these years!
Indeed - Space is a key for being able to collect and restore this kind of stuff. I have most of my working machine lined up along a wall in one of my garage/lab areas (https://youtu.be/XHvdqB6LSg0). My wife has pretty much no idea what those computers are for, and my daughter just wants to play Oregon Trail on them.
They are fun to collect and restore. It is also helpful to be good at replacing capacitors. ;). Those surface mount ones on the Mac mainboards are almost always bad!
Oh, you mean like it's some period saying? I'm using it normally. But then again, it's not like I'm keeping my finger on the pulse of the current trends...
"He was the designer of the MS-DOS executable file format, and the headers of that file format start with his initials: the ASCII characters 'MZ' (0x4D, 0x5A)"
Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Zbikowski
> In 2006, he was honored for 25 years of service with the company, the third employee to reach this milestone, after Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer. He retired the same year from Microsoft
Considering he "only" joined MS in 1981 (which was found in 1975?), I'm surprised no more people between him and Bill stayed at MS.
Also shouldn't Paul Allen still count (from Wikipedia, "Allen resigned from his position on the Microsoft board of directors on November 9, 2000, but he remained as a senior strategy advisor to the company's executives.")?
I can't recall where exactly but there's something similar in systemd, some files have LPKS... in them, which are most probably poettering, sievers and others early devs initials.
I appreciate the work in getting this open sourced but I find it telling that this had to be done through an outside motivator. There seems to be no internal "ticking clock" to get some of these things out in to the open. That's fine no one is owed the source code for this stuff or anything, but it would be nice if there was more interest on the side of the companies to get some of their formative history out so people can learn from it.
DOS 5 was when I really got into computers. I spent hours pouring through the included manual learning all the shell commands and learning how to write .BAT files. Then I discovered QBasic and it changed everything.
This is fantastic work, thanks. Hmm, what else... let's see... Xenix also really, really wants to be free! What a magnificent piece of forgotten computer history it is. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenix
It's fantastic work you've done. As someone who works at a older software company (founded early 80s), I'm sad that there isn't a push internally for us to make our old software source available, or even just the binaries available!
What sort of tactics did you use to convince them? Maybe I can apply them to where I work too...
For some insight, look how people are combing for curse words/ devs making jokes about people being brain damaged etc. There is no upside for the company, and all that has to happen is some unsavory politically incorrect joke to get missed from sanitization and the are on the cancelled chopping block.
The "cancel" stuff only comes from a tiny minority of vocal extremists. Everyone else is entirely unfazed.
Of all the things people here probably hate about the current "modern" Microsoft and its products, political incorrectness in decades-old code is far down the list or not even a consideration.
It is about 'risk'. These companies are deeply afraid of being outed that way. They do not want to end up in court over something silly. Just remember a bottle of windex has the words 'do not drink' on it. 99.99% of people out there would not have done it but there is that small cadre of people who will do it and sue. Either for the power of it or for money. Do not underestimate the depths that fools will goto.
Yeah… if folks are offended by some of the comments in the source code here they really aught to have a look at some of the other popular media from the era to contextualize what was considered acceptable at the time.
Those niche people are the developers they want to use their software. When that niche is the target audience for whole product line of yours pleasing them is a good idea.
The historical value is invaluable for our species, especially in the far future. There is a moral imperative for this kind of thing to be made available for posterity that, in my opinion, completely overshadows any commercial, copyright or political correctness concerns.
Frankly, there should be regulations guaranteeing source code release after a few decades, and that all code, including third party code, is released from copyright protection. In return, companies should be granted legal protection from any potential legal consequences. It was over 30 years ago. The idea that somebody should be able to sue Microsoft for copying code or a third party can sue them for releasing it or that they should in any way be punished for unsavory language used THIRTY years ago is clearly utter insanity.
It's certainly about a feeling, and I think superiority has more to do with it than 'empathy'. This much is clear with the aggression, bullying and moral grandstanding that's usually behind the language police.
I empathise with myself first, and will use what ever word feels right in the situation. I'd rather speak my mind than please everyone. That's sanity for me and for many others.
Empathising with others and yourself isn't mutually exclusive. What's hard to grasp with that?
> I empathise with myself first and will use what ever word feels right in the situation
And you're doing the same right now. Isn't your use of the word 'selfish' in the thread 'hurtful', and therefore not empathetic to me? By chiding me aren't you empathising with yourself more, and wishing that I would defer to your feelings instead of my own?
The difference between you and I is I don't claim that a virtue is supreme and then immediately enact its opposite, which is really what makes this drive for 'inclusive language' and 'empathy' so repugnant to me.
After I've patiently explained it to you, you really think that you aren't exhibiting the same behaviour? In a much more worse way because it comes in seemly guise?
Legal also may be concerned that having source makes it easier to detect patent infringement and code copying. Even if you deem the risk zero that that actually happened, why run the risk of somebody claiming you did?
For the company there are as good as zero downsides to not doing anything, and a few small upsides and a few low risk, but potentially very costly (in dollars or reputation) if they happen downsides.
That makes not doing anything the default choice for the company.
For (former) employees who worked on this, the upsides are higher; they’ll get some of their work published for the first time. That’s why we see individuals push for this every now and then.
Part of me thinks that its not cancellation but more not wanting to personally insult people, by name, in a medium that you never thought anybody but a handful of people might see (and certainly never expected to be published verbatim for the entire world to see) from 35 years ago (maybe people who wrote those comments were a bit less mature)
It might not be a problem for DOS 4, but often the source code of software that was only ever meant to be published as closed source contains source code that was licensed from 3rd parties. This license may not allow publishing the source code.
Doing an investigation of what licensed software was used and possibly trying to get permission from the relevant rights holders (if you can even figure out who owns the rights so many years later) can be a big and expensive task, unfortunately. I understand why companies might not want to take that on (even though it sucks).
For DOS, I believe the core was only ever Microsoft or IBM. Some DOS versions bundled add-ons by third parties, but they are hardly essential for operation - e.g. MS-DOS 6 included DEFRAG and MSBACKUP (both licensed from Symantec) and MSAV (licensed from Central Point Software)
Similarly, with Windows, the third-party components are generally inessentials such as certain device drivers, games, some optional system components like the ZIP file support in Windows Explorer-you would still have a usable OS with these bits ripped out. Parts of NTVDM are third-party licensed, although I believe that’s mainly the software CPU emulator used on RISC platforms, I think x86 was mostly Microsoft’s own code
DOS is relatively speaking tiny and actually pretty modular. You can delete a handful of files, mostly binaries and some help files, and that's it, code gone.
From the source it's a little different but there's little integration between the bits.
From MS-DOS 6, remove the defrag, backup and antivirus programs, and DoubleSpace/DriveSpace, and that should I think cover all external code.
If I remember correctly, it didn't include CD-ROM drivers, just MSCDEX to run on top of one... and the network stack was an optional extra. I'm not even 100% sure it includes a mouse driver as standard.
IBM PC DOS 6.3, 7.0 and 7.1 include some additional IBM code: Rexx in place of QBASIC, the IBM E editor, but not much else.
Isn't the zip support in explorer the stuff written by Dave Plummer? I would imagine MS has the rights to that already, and if they don't, I'd imagine Dave would, and I'm sure he'd be fine with it being released.
He has lots of YouTube videos about the zip stuff.
It also sounds like the code didn't come from inside the house... I wonder how many versions of the raw code for these early OSes actually exist? Start ups are more concerned with survival and not archiving their code. Like how many people at their current company are putting in real effort to maintaining early versions of their existing code bases?
The binaries for the multi-tasking bits did come from an external source; however, the source code is from our corp source code archives team. Even that was a bit less formal back then...
Most startups today probably preserve the vast majority of their code, due to how prolific git is. Companies that don't use monorepos may have a bit of a problem, if your stack is a mess of microservices, some of which you eventually retire, it's easy for that old code to get lost.
Before the popularization of source control, things were different. A lot of people would just edit code Villy-nilly, only keeping very recent backups and the source for major versions, if that. There were no commits and hence no tags, so reproducing the code used to build a specific, minor version might be completely impossible. There were no branches, so ports and patches were often made by copying the code tree, doing some changes, compiling and then forgetting about the whole thing. It was entirely possible for a game studio to give their code over to another team or company, have them do a port and never actually care much for the ported code themselves.
Then there's the problem of external components, most of which were licensed, third-party software, not open source libraries. Even now, they may technically still fall under copyright and be impossible to release.
It's more useful from a historical context. For the retro community who plays games and creates/uses tools for the hardware of this era, many appreciate having real period correct DOS over FreeDOS, even though the latter is more featureful. IMO FreeDOS is better for a DOS-like OS for modern systems and less useful for retro hardware.
I believe MS has now officially released the sources to MS-DOS 1.x, 2.x, and 4; but most of 3.x and 6.x were leaked many years ago, so I wonder if that's the reason they skipped 3.
381 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 257 ms ] threadPeople who just wanted mutitasking DOS had DesqView and ... "concurrent"? was it? i forget.
I wrote TSR's that snatched cycles off the timer interrupt and rode 21h for opportunity to flush buffers to/from disk.
We've all been there. How else could you get anything interesting done back in the day?
I don't understand if this source can be usefully integrated into modern DOS preservation projects.
The problems came from limitations of the BIOS interface (especially size)
Only for drives, but still...
An interesting thing about DOS is the OS wasn't very involved. Programs did a lot of things we now think of as the realm of an OS, like talking directly to I/O addresses or installing interrupt handlers. I feel like a DOS implementation doesn't even need to do a lot of things, maybe part of why DOS4 is "good enough".
DoubleSpace/DriveSpace?
Mostly, you are absolutely right, yes. MS-DOS 5.0 was the peak, and then it started to acquire bloat as MS bundled stuff to compete with DR-DOS 6 and DR-DOS 7.
But the thing is that by modern standards, the bloat is tiny. :-)
I gave MS Office 97 a bad review at the time because it was several times bigger than Office 95, had virtually no new functionality, but introduced a pointless new file format just to get people to upgrade so they could read the files sent to them by companies with the newer version.
But for a decade now, Word 97 is my go-to version. With all the service releases installed, it works great, it's tiny by modern standards -- I think a full install of Word with all the optional filters and things totals 14MB -- and it's lightning fast on 21st century hardware.
Word 95 is even smaller and quicker, but it can't read or write the file format that everyone else, from Pages to Wordpad, uses. So it's crippled: everything has to go through LibreOffice first, to convert it to a .DOC format anything else can view, import, edit, or print.
Time changes the meaning of bloat somewhat.
It's also amazing how long things like DOC to DOCX took to really "take hold" in the industry at large. I still get DOC files now and then.
The latter one is more capable and compatible with modern things. Open Word and see how it calls DOC "Word 97-2004"
There have been at least 3 successive MS Word file formats:
Word for DOS, WinWord 1/2/6/95: old .DOC format
(I think this also applies to Classic MacOS Word 1-5.)
Word 97, 2000, XP, 2003: new .DOC format
(Classic MacOS Word 98, X and 2001 were based on a port of the Windows codebase. Mac OS X Word 2004 and later are OS X-only, but are still based on the Windows codebase and use the same file formats.)
Word 2007-365: new Zipped XML format, .DOCX
Those are very different operating systems, this is DOS 3.2 + later abandoned very crude multitasking features. Roughly.
And this matters because DOS 3.3 was a milestone.
4.01 comes from 4.00 which has nothing to do with 4.0 (yay for versions).
Microsofts' releases have the benefit of being unambiguous.
"Caldera grants you a non-exclusive license to use the Software in source or binary form free of charge if your use of the Software is for the purpose of evaluating whether to purchase an ongoing license to the Software. The evaluation period for use by or on behalf of a commercial entity is limited to 90 days; evaluation use by others is not subject to this 90 day limit but is still limited to a reasonable period"
DOS 3.3 couldn't understand large partitions -except for Compaq dos 3.31. But regular dos 3.3 couldn't. I don't think dos 3.2 could even understand extended partitions/logical drives -much less large disks.
Still -pretty neat!
This is not accurate. Several OEMs added proprietary variations of FAT which supported larger partitions. For instance I run Zenith MS-DOS 3.30+ which has this ability on a Zenith Z-161 XT compatible luggable.
Compaq’s 3.31 added FAT16B support which allowed larger partitions and was the standard for larger partition support going forward in standard MS-DOS.
For the actual hardware or PCem, FreeDOS exists and is alive. DR-DOS has also been open sourced.
Bryan Sparks did open-source CP/M a little while back, but AFAIK he hasn't said anything about DR-DOS so far.
Fortunately for the commons, what's done is done.
0. https://archiveos.org/drdos/
The license file inside the original Caldera OpenDOS 7.01 source archive says:
"Caldera grants you a non-exclusive license to use the Software in source or binary form free of charge if (a) you are a student, faculty member or staff member of an educational institution (K-12, junior college, college or library), a staff member of a religious organization, or an employee of an organization which meets Caldera's criteria for a charitable non-profit organization; or (b) your use of the Software is for the purpose of evaluating whether to purchase an ongoing license to the Software. The evaluation period for use by or on behalf of a commercial entity is limited to 90 days; evaluation use by others is not subject to this 90 day limit but is still limited to a reasonable period."
So that website is incorrect when it says OpenDOS was released under an open-source license. Not surprising though - most websites discussing OpenDOS make this error. Possibly because at the time I believe Caldera did actually talk about open-sourcing DR-DOS, they just failed to to actually follow through.
If he still has the source code, whats needed is for Bryan Sparks to release it under some regular open-source license like Microsoft have done here.
To the point I might have dreamed it. Odd.
I wonder if we will see MS-DOS 5 or 6 soon?
FreeDOS, an open source DOS clone, has been around for a while:
https://freedos.org/
https://github.com/FDOS
Not sure how much work it would take for Linux or even just wine. But might displace DOSbox.
I assume this refers to the spreadsheet application.
[0] https://github.com/microsoft/MS-DOS/blob/main/v4.0/src/DOS/D...
EDT:
That one policy hadn't quite gone into effect yet ;-) [1]
[1] https://github.com/microsoft/MS-DOS/blob/main/v4.0/src/CMD/C...
For posterity...
> RESEARCH:
> invoke path_search ; find the mother (result in execpath) > or AX, AX ; did we find anything?
> je badcomj45 ; null means no (sob)
> cmp AX, 04H ; 04H and 08H are .exe and .com
> jl rsrch_br1 ; fuckin' sixteen-bit machine ought
> jmp execute ; to be able to handle a SIXTEEN-BIT
Company open-sources old product? Search for curse words...!
While hole punchers and opaque tape worked for notching and denotching, there were also floppy notchers. It turns out these bits of accessories are rarely found on secondary markets or go for something like $80 USD. There are still quite a few 5.25" drive cleaning kits still for sale.
I don't miss floppies because they were slow, fragile, and prone to developing unrecoverable errors. I did discover through experimentation that 3.5" floppies were fairly resistant to crude direct magenetic attack. I had to open the window and touch the media surface to a small speaker's magnet to induce errors. Praise be to the greaseweazle and the Copy II PC Deluxe Option Board 2.0 (the 1.0 doesn't support 3.5" 1.44 MB).
2.88 MB drives are worth a small fortune because they are still used for industrial purposes. Also, SCSI floppy drives exist.
* https://github.com/microsoft/MS-DOS/tree/main/v4.0/bin
* https://github.com/microsoft/MS-DOS/tree/main/v4.0/bin/DISK1
* https://github.com/microsoft/MS-DOS/tree/main/v4.0/pdf
But they disappeared as I browsed the repo. I guess they didn't want that part public?
Edit: I knew I wasn't seeing things! Somebody forked it along with those files: https://github.com/OwnedByWuigi/DOS/tree/main/v4.0
Beta Test Release 1.00
Release Notes
Enclosed you will find Microsoft's first beta release of Multi-tasking MS-DOS. This version is based upon MS-DOS Version 2 sources, we will be reimplementing the multi-tasking enhancements on top of Version 3 sources shortly.
I had the repo cloned before the force push and when I went to pull it, this file was the only one that contained a conflict.
; Brain-damaged Tim Patterson ignored ^F in case his BIOS did not flush the
to [1]:
; Brain-damaged TP ignored ^F in case his BIOS did not flush the
[0] https://github.com/OwnedByWuigi/DOS/blob/ffd70f8b4fb77e2e6af...
[1] https://github.com/microsoft/MS-DOS/blob/main/v4.0/src/DOS/S...
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Tim Paterson (born 1 June 1956) is an American computer programmer, best known for creating 86-DOS, an operating system for the Intel 8086. This system emulated the application programming interface (API) of CP/M, which was created by Gary Kildall. 86-DOS later formed the basis of MS-DOS, the most widely used personal computer operating system in the 1980s.
>The MS-DOS v1.25 and v2.0 files were originally shared at the Computer History Museum on March 25th, 2014 and are being (re)published in this repo to make them easier to find, reference-to in external writing and works, and to allow exploration and experimentation for those interested in early PC Operating Systems.
>For historical reference
>The source files in this repo are for historical reference and will be kept static, so please don’t send Pull Requests suggesting any modifications to the source files, but feel free to fork this repo and experiment.
It would be fun at some point down the road to get some of the older code building and running again - particularly '84/'85-vintage Windows & Notes builds. Quite a lot of work, though, not just because of hardware but also likely because of toolchain gaps.
To change a public branch, or not to change a public branch, that is the question.
Edit: Muphry's law strikes again - s/or to not/or not to/
That means Windows XP should be open sourced by ... 2038. Not as far away as it seems. I'll add it to my calendar.
Up to Windows 3.11 it was a GUI on top of DOS. Windows 95, 98, Me used DOS to boot and it was still possible to stop the booting process at a DOS prompt (although in Me this was no longer official). Finally Windows 2000 had nothing to do with it as it is NT based.
I generally ran 2-4x the amount of RAM as most did. Still do. Pretty sure this made a lot of the difference.
I rain it until it wouln't run sensible anymore in Windoes 10. I then ditched Windows for Linux soon after - I can recommend KDE Plasma if you want to have something thats sorta configureable enough like Litestep was.
Also NT4, NT3.51, NT3.5, NT3.1...
NT seems to have been far more studied, and of course there were the infamous leaks of those along the way.
We may see Windows 9x open-sourced. But then again, it's a stretch because Win32 API is still in wide use today. Releasing the sources for 32-bit Windows versions even this old may have an adverse effect on Microsoft's market domination.
But maybe ReactOS will reach beta by 2038. Does this count as an open-source version of Windows XP? :D
If you really wish to look at XP sources and don't care much about the legal aspect of it, you can do so right now. They were leaked.
Initiatives like MinWin and OneCore, secure kernel, device guard,... caused lots of rewrites and moving code around.
I disagree that releasing Windows 9x source code would have any impact on MS market domination.
> I doubt Microsoft would ever open-source any NT Windows versions because the current ones are based on the same code
Nowadays releasing something NT like XP may seem crazy. But in 15 years it will be so far away from future Windows, that it won't be that crazy.
It's not like the NT kernel will be going away from current Microsoft products anytime soon.
I'm sure the source for 4 will make for some interesting bug hunting. Anyone remember the MUF list? "Microsofts Undocumented Features".
I wouldn't expect this to understand extended partitions, much less large partitions (that dos 4 uses)
Most of the source code (everything outside of -ozzie) is for regular DOS 4.0 and supports 32-bit sector numbers. They planned to add it in the multitasking version as well [1], but from reading IBMDSK.ASM it isn't there yet.
Also that driver talks directly to the hard disk controller instead of going through the ROM BIOS, and will only support XT drives, not IDE/ATA. Apparently the goal was to be able to do background I/O on an XT, where there is no BIOS support for that.
[1] see driver docs at https://raw.githubusercontent.com/microsoft/MS-DOS/main/v4.0...
> ; REV 2.15 7/13/83 ARR BECAUSE IBM IS FUNDAMENTALY BRAIN DAMAGED, AND
Someone was angry that day. Wonder if any IBM dev ever stumbled upon this when MS and IBM worked together.
Many software developers like me have faced challenges to our mental health.
Indeed, there has been a time or two when I questioned my own sanity. And perhaps the sanity of some of my colleagues!
It's not so much that there is something inherently wrong with the term "sanity check". We all know what it means. It's just that there are more descriptive and neutral terms available to us, so why not use them?
Because it's boring.
I have a lot of respect for you and for everything you have accomplished.
So I have to ask you directly: Is being "boring" or not the way we should decide how to express ourselves?
Regarding a "quick test" vs. a "sanity test". Instead of judging this on what is "boring", why can't we make a choice on which is more respectful to our peers and colleagues?
A "quick test" implies almost nothing, other than it is faster than some other, unnamed test out there. Is a quick test good or is it bad? No way to tell. This term, quick test, it does not inform.
On the other hand, a sanity test, well, it is more evocative. You definitely want to pass a sanity test.
If you reach back to your psychology classes, they talked about a four-part test that is useful for determine if a behavior is sane or not.
1) Is it abnormal? Unusual? Out of the ordinary? for the situation.
2) Is it unjustifiable, unreasonable given the circumstances?
3) Is it counter-productive? Which is to say, does the behavior serve the individual, or does it in fact make things worse? Or simply do nothing?
4) (and this is where my memory is fuzzy) I think it involves personal distress. For the life of me I can't find it via Google and it annoys me.
Now, interestingly, a sanity test matches the first three! (The fourth, well, there is no "I" in the program to be distressed) In programming, a sanity test looks for something abnormal, not reasonable for the program, and represents a state that won't get us the desired output. In short, it's highly congruent to the other context for sanity.
This term, it communicates, and in a way "quick test" does not.
In general, one of the main critiques of political correctness which few really notice is that the new term is less specific and less useful, that it fails at communicating. Consider when "Oriental" fell off of the euphemism treadmill for "Asian." We all knew that the first term referred to a particular part of the world, from the Latin for "east." (Ex lux orient and so on) "Asian," however, could refer to people in Russia or people in India, but nobody in the US does (I note in the UK India does get the "Asian" pass). So here the new term is less specific and less useful, and is confusing to boot because we deliberately ignore parts of Asia when using the term "Asian."
If you want something to supplant "sanity test," you gotta work harder for it than "quick test."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanity_check informs me:
"A sanity check or sanity test is a basic test to quickly evaluate whether a claim or the result of a calculation can possibly be true." ...
"In computer science, a sanity test is a very brief run-through of the functionality of a computer program, system, calculation, or other analysis, to assure that part of the system or methodology works roughly as expected. This is often prior to a more exhaustive round of testing. " ...
"In software development, a sanity test (a form of software testing which offers "quick, broad, and shallow testing"[1]) evaluates the result of a subset of application functionality to determine whether it is possible and reasonable to proceed with further testing of the entire application."
and further comments that "sanity test" for some people is interchangeable with "smoke test".
It also adds:
"The Association for Computing Machinery,[8] and software projects such as Android,[9] MediaWiki[10] and Twitter,[11] discourage use of the phrase sanity check in favour of other terms such as confidence test, coherence check, or simply test, as part of a wider attempt to avoid ableist language and increase inclusivity. "
I could not find a definition for "sanity test" in psychology. I know about the cognitive test that Trump made famous with ‘Person, woman, man, camera, TV‘.
On that alone, I am very doubtful on that article.
This is also distinguished from what I have taken to calling a "pre-flight checklist" at the start of large programs, making sure databases are connected, requisite tables are present with the correct columns and datatypes, that specific files or directories exist, that files may be of a certain "freshness," and so on.
I'll stand by it: sanity test is a lot more descriptive and useful than "quick test." Those footnotes are only kicking the can down the road of justifiability. But let's examine them according to the aforementioned The PC Replacement is Less Useful criterion.
Recommending just "test" is ... well, double-plus ungood, in the sense that we now have no idea of the qualities of this test and how it could be distinguished from some other test. Hard pass.
"Confidence test" only implies a statistical likeliness, like a confidence interval. It does not imply the This Ought Not to Happen of a sanity test.
"Coherence test" is interesting but ... coherent against what?
If someone wants to sell me on a replacement, they are free to try, but the replacement must be at least as good at communicating what it does as the term sanity test. If this fails, then it will be scoffed at, and should be.
A quick look using Google Scholar finds people using "sanity test" for smoke testing, like
"Typical behavior is to allocate any special resource requirements it needs, map the device into virtual address space, initialize the device and perform a brief “sanity test” to ensure that the device appears to be working correctly" at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/%28SICI%2910...
or
"The minimum essential test cases that need to be executed to evaluate the essential functionality are known as Sanity Test Cases" https://uksim.info/icaiet2014/CD/data/7910a048.pdf
or
"Sanity test is a brief run-through of the functionality of the software system to assure that the system works as expected." https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=6006830
But it's also used for full testing, including human intervention, like
"There will always be a role for manual testing. For one, it is the only real way to sanity-test your automation itself." - https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&d...
and
"Sanity test cases which checks basic functionality and are run for pre-system acceptance and when product goes thru major change. These test cases deliver a very high project value to both engineering dept and to customers." https://ijaer.com/admin/upload/06%20Apr_2012_Sheo%20Kumar.pd...
as well this example which distinguishes between shallow-and-wide smoke tests with deep-and-narrow sanity tests.
"a smoke test generally consists of a collection of tests that can be applied to a newly created or repaired computer program. This is a “shallow and wide” approach to the application." while "Sanity testing will be performed whenever cursory testing is sufficient to prove that the system is functioning according to specifications. A sanity test is a narrow regression test that focuses on one or a few areas of functionality. Sanity testing is usually narrow and deep. It will normally include a set of core tests of basic GUI functionality to demonstrate connectivity to the database, application servers, printers, etc." - http://archives.christuniversity.in/disk0/00/00/48/68/01/the...
Going with PC Replacement question, since we don't know the actual goal of what was called "sanity test", we can't ourselves come up with a better name.
Which is why we should go with the OP's assessment that "quick" is an appropriate term for what they are doing. Since you don't know what that is, it doesn't matter if you buy a new term or not.
I think this even is contradictory for what a lot of people think a "sanity test" means. A "test" may check that something is correct, where a sanity test would be a lower fidelity test that simply checks that something is not obviously wrong.
Describe the difference between a test and a "sanity test?"
So now you have quick tests. That's disrespectful towards me because I got called slow once.
This can go on forever.
I hope the readers/listeners would find it fun, too.
If they mine what I write for an insult, that's on them. I'm not interested in people looking for an insult, or people who get offended on behalf of others. I don't enjoy being around people where I have to walk on eggshells.
For example, I'm bald. I'm not a person experiencing hair loss. I'm bald. I've got a chrome dome. I have to wear a hat when I drive in order to not blind oncoming drivers with the glare from it.
Is changing the words going to change anything? Nope. I'm still just as bald, no matter what words are used.
I think it was Paul Graham that recently tweeted that people should not use the word "delve" into rather than "dig" into, because the former is pretentious and the latter is simpler. I'm a delver, spelunker, archaeologist, excavator, explorer, etc. Take that, Paul!
add trigger warnings!!!! (im joking)
If you're writing in a professional context, expect your words to be read by non-native English speakers or just people that are extremely tired and want to get their work done quickly.
I think using uncommon and domain-specific words is fine when nothing else is precise enough, but there's no reason to say "touch base" when "get in contact" works.
People should also be aware of cultural context, if you're being overly sensitive and using flowery corpo-speak, people from other cultures may miss your point entirely. A sentence like "John is doing great work, but I can see some areas for future improvement" reads very differently depending on the culture. "John isn't up to standards and needs to improve if he wants to stay with the company" is much clearer. "John fucking sucks and needs to do better" is overdoing it and using the excuse of being direct to be a jerk.
What makes "quick" more respectful? Use "quick" and you'll be triggering everyone in standups every day :-)
Let's change it to cancelled()
How about goodbye()?
Make it idontevenknowanymore()
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zombie_process
"quick test" does not convey what is usually intended with "sanity test". The intention of the latter is to verify that a base set of assumptions hold true whereas "quick test" can be just about anything.
Let's keep "sanity test".
It's a stressful industry at times, probably almost everyone has had crap times at one point or another. And then there's Covid, which affected everyone.
Doesn't mean every mention of the word "sanity" needs to be expunged from our language though. :( :( :(
That way lies er... madness. (!) ;)
Not really interested in discussing this and not saying I agree (or disagree!) with that. Just answering the question.
AFAIK "sanity check" doesnt even have a history like "retarded" (which actually became an offensive slur).
maybe some folks just feel left out if they cant rage about and feel offended by something these days.
::eyeroll::
You don't want to step on the toes of a zombie do you? (It's probably gross.)
When Mozilla went open source back in the 1990s, Netscape's lawyers required the source first be bowdlerized. (Search for "censorzilla" for some examples.)
It is always great to have period software on period hardware!
(added: Short video of it running - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPPNbaQaumk)
Really is. This is why I keep a load of old hardware around. Stuff like Mac OS 9 should be run on real hardware and same for old MS-DOS.
I still have hardware and software to get me back to NT 4.0 or Windows 95 (OSR 2, please, it wasn't tolerable before that). I haven't needed to in a while, but in a previous job, we'd run across old disks in some author's archive and I'd go home to dig around, find a 5.25" drive and rig something up, reach back in time.
I could maybe do Windows for Workgroups 3.11.
If shipping weren't so brutal, I would love to send off my old stuff to someone who would use it. I still have working SCSI equipment! I bet somewhere there is someone stymied on trying to liberate some ancient works but for the necessary hardware/software setup.
They are fun to collect and restore. It is also helpful to be good at replacing capacitors. ;). Those surface mount ones on the Mac mainboards are almost always bad!
CPY.BAT
MAKEFILE
RUNME.BAT
SETENV.BAT
2024-04-25 19:35 ~/sort/dl/MS-DOS % grep -nri 'brain[ -]damage' .
./v4.0/src/DOS/STRIN.ASM:70:; Brain-damaged TP ignored ^F in case his BIOS did not flush the
./v4.0/src/DOS/PATH.ASM:24:; MZ 19 Jan 1983 Brain damaged applications rely on success
./v4.0/src/DOS/FCBIO.ASM:28:; MZ 15 Dec 1983 Brain damaged programs close FCBs multiple
./v4.0/src/DOS/FCBIO2.ASM:28:; MZ 15 Dec 1983 Brain damaged programs close FCBs multiple
./v4.0/src/BIOS/MSBIO1.ASM:82:; REV 2.15 7/13/83 ARR BECAUSE IBM IS FUNDAMENTALY BRAIN DAMAGED, AND
./v4.0/src/CMD/PRINT/PRINT_R.ASM:1772: ; See if brain damaged user entered
Does this mean if you happen to be talking to BillG you could talk about brain damaged programs and he'd nod appreciatively?
EDIT: Upon doing a web search, actually it looks like it was "brain dead".
Bill Cosby's "Brain Damage" bit, from the album "Himself": 1982
DOS 4.0: 1988
Those comments also could have also sat in the tree for a few years.
See also http://catb.org/jargon/html/B/brain-damaged.html
Considering he "only" joined MS in 1981 (which was found in 1975?), I'm surprised no more people between him and Bill stayed at MS.
Also shouldn't Paul Allen still count (from Wikipedia, "Allen resigned from his position on the Microsoft board of directors on November 9, 2000, but he remained as a senior strategy advisor to the company's executives.")?
Edit: wow, never knew he worked at Valve, too.
https://github.com/microsoft/MS-DOS/commit/2d04cacc5322951f1... https://github.com/mzbik
Another is "PK" as found in the header of ordinary .zip files, after its creator Phil Katz (RIP).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Katz
Hardly surprising. If you grep the leaked NT3.5 sources for the f-word, you will find similar comments directed towards IBM.
If you’re taking requests I’d love to see MS-DOS 5.0 or at least QBasic next.
But this is really great.
What sort of tactics did you use to convince them? Maybe I can apply them to where I work too...
Of all the things people here probably hate about the current "modern" Microsoft and its products, political incorrectness in decades-old code is far down the list or not even a consideration.
Frankly, there should be regulations guaranteeing source code release after a few decades, and that all code, including third party code, is released from copyright protection. In return, companies should be granted legal protection from any potential legal consequences. It was over 30 years ago. The idea that somebody should be able to sue Microsoft for copying code or a third party can sue them for releasing it or that they should in any way be punished for unsavory language used THIRTY years ago is clearly utter insanity.
I am close to writing a browser extension that does a find and replace to reverse change these imposed, humourless, coddled changes.
I will be your first paying customer
I empathise with myself first, and will use what ever word feels right in the situation. I'd rather speak my mind than please everyone. That's sanity for me and for many others.
> I empathise with myself first and will use what ever word feels right in the situation
And you're doing the same right now. Isn't your use of the word 'selfish' in the thread 'hurtful', and therefore not empathetic to me? By chiding me aren't you empathising with yourself more, and wishing that I would defer to your feelings instead of my own?
The difference between you and I is I don't claim that a virtue is supreme and then immediately enact its opposite, which is really what makes this drive for 'inclusive language' and 'empathy' so repugnant to me.
For the company there are as good as zero downsides to not doing anything, and a few small upsides and a few low risk, but potentially very costly (in dollars or reputation) if they happen downsides.
That makes not doing anything the default choice for the company.
For (former) employees who worked on this, the upsides are higher; they’ll get some of their work published for the first time. That’s why we see individuals push for this every now and then.
Doing an investigation of what licensed software was used and possibly trying to get permission from the relevant rights holders (if you can even figure out who owns the rights so many years later) can be a big and expensive task, unfortunately. I understand why companies might not want to take that on (even though it sucks).
Similarly, with Windows, the third-party components are generally inessentials such as certain device drivers, games, some optional system components like the ZIP file support in Windows Explorer-you would still have a usable OS with these bits ripped out. Parts of NTVDM are third-party licensed, although I believe that’s mainly the software CPU emulator used on RISC platforms, I think x86 was mostly Microsoft’s own code
From the source it's a little different but there's little integration between the bits.
From MS-DOS 6, remove the defrag, backup and antivirus programs, and DoubleSpace/DriveSpace, and that should I think cover all external code.
If I remember correctly, it didn't include CD-ROM drivers, just MSCDEX to run on top of one... and the network stack was an optional extra. I'm not even 100% sure it includes a mouse driver as standard.
IBM PC DOS 6.3, 7.0 and 7.1 include some additional IBM code: Rexx in place of QBASIC, the IBM E editor, but not much else.
He has lots of YouTube videos about the zip stuff.
Before the popularization of source control, things were different. A lot of people would just edit code Villy-nilly, only keeping very recent backups and the source for major versions, if that. There were no commits and hence no tags, so reproducing the code used to build a specific, minor version might be completely impossible. There were no branches, so ports and patches were often made by copying the code tree, doing some changes, compiling and then forgetting about the whole thing. It was entirely possible for a game studio to give their code over to another team or company, have them do a port and never actually care much for the ported code themselves.
Then there's the problem of external components, most of which were licensed, third-party software, not open source libraries. Even now, they may technically still fall under copyright and be impossible to release.