[aprssig] RE: dos on a winxp machine

[Mark Fellhauer]

At 08:35 PM 1/8/2007, Scott Miller wrote:

>There's a command shell, but keep in mind that it's not DOS.  Windows 
>hasn't had DOS under the hood in a long time, and the NT/2000/XP operating 
>systems are vastly different inside, closer to something like VMS (to 
>which it's at least distantly related) than any single-user, real-mode 
>OS.  They at least make an attempt at DOS compatibility, but you have to 
>remember that there are many layers of abstraction between the DOS 
>environment and the hardware now.  DOS programs used to have direct access 
>to pretty much everything in the machine, but that's not possible in a 
>modern OS.
>


There's a lot of FUD and utter nonsense floating around the tech world 
regarding Windows (XP) and DOS.   XP has full DOS support and in fact works 
better than Win95, Win98, Win2K, or WinME ever did with DOS programs in my 
experience.

DOS PIF's are easy to set up.  Why do you think autoexec.nt and config.nt 
are for anyway?   Use the Mode command to access com and printer ports (I 
have yet to find a serial/printer port solution that doesn't work).  Newer 
sound cards/solutions may not support DOS, but that's no the fault of 
Microsoft...(try VDMSound).

The last computer "expert" who told me "XP doesn't do DOS" had to eat his 
words when I loaded Trunker on an XP machine, made a simple DOS PIF, set 
the com ports, and started decoding Trunked Public Safety and controlling a 
2nd scanner to RX the transmissions.

It doesn't matter if you're loading DOS or emulating DOS.  It works.


73,

Mark