lane@dalcs.UUCP (02/24/87)
I am looking for some info on the differences between the various
versions of MS-DOS: 2.00, 2.10, 2.11, 2.15(?), 3.0, 3.1, 3.2, ...?
Relative advantages/dis-advantages, recommendations, etc.
I am working in an environment where thare are many systems of various
brands and configurations. In particular, many XTs with two 360K floppies,
some XTs with one floppy plus a hard drive, and a few ATs with 1.2M floppies
and >30Meg hard drives. There has been discussion of standardizing to one
version of the operating system. I am vaguely aware that ver 3.x offers
significant advantages for hard-disk and 1.2Meg floppy users. But, I have
noticed that it's *much* bigger that 2.11 and this might cause some hassels
for the floppy disk only systems. What advantages would there be in using
ver 3.x on a 2-floppy system? What problems might we have in continuing to
use 2.11 on some systems and 3.x on others?
I have heard of an MSDOS or PCDOS ver 5 or something like that (not yet
released?). What's the story on that?
I am aware that the major diffs between PC-DOS for IBM-PC's etc. and MS-DOS
from Microsoft is in the names of the 2 hidden system files and the implemen-
tation of the BASIC. Also, as a recent discussion here pointed out, that
MS/PC-DOS of the same version can differ widely on different models and brands.
Most of this difference being in the hardware & interface interupts below 20h.
I notice that they generally write something slightly different in the boot
sector. Is there ever anything substantially different here?
I wouldn't be surprised if this has been asked and all hashed out before and
I just wasn't reading that week or month (it happens!). In that case, perhaps
someone could just send me a digest of that. In any case, could someone send
me the past articles listing the various patchs for various DOS versions.
I believe INFO-IBMPC #44 had summary article for 3.1 patchs.
Many thanks as always.
--
John Wright ////////////////// Phone: 902-424-3805 or 902-424-6527
Post: c/o Dr Pat Lane, Biology Dept, Dalhousie U, Halifax N.S., CANADA B3H-4H8
Ean/Bitnet: lane@cs.dal.cdn Arpa: lane%cs.dal.cdb%ubc.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa
Uucp:{seismo,watmath,utai,garfield}!dalcs!lane Csnet:lane%cs.dal.cdn@ubc.csnetrassilon@mit-eddie.UUCP (02/25/87)
In article <2415@dalcs.UUCP> lane@dalcs.UUCP (John Wright/Dr. Pat Lane) writes: > I am looking for some info on the differences between the various > versions of MS-DOS: 2.00, 2.10, 2.11, 2.15(?), 3.0, 3.1, 3.2, ...? > > Relative advantages/dis-advantages, recommendations, etc. The major difference between the 3.# series and anything prior is in the way clusters are allocated on non-floppy storage (hard drives, RAM disks, etc.) The older versions of MS-DOS allocated to much space, thus causing files to be written in (for example) 8K chunks on a 20 meg hard drive. This means that even though your file may only be 500 bytes it takes 8192 on disk. The newer versions (3.0 and later) have fixed this so that on a 20 meg hard drive the cluster size is only 2K. This is a considerable savings in space. Note that the cluster size for floppies is still 1K (though it need only be 256K) to preserve compatibility and maintain some reasonable speed. (The smaller the cluster size, the longer it takes to read a file. (I think.)) 3.1 corrects some bugs in 3.0, and 3.2 corrects some bugs from 3.1, adds some new ones, and is necessary if you want to run a ring network. > I have heard of an MSDOS or PCDOS ver 5 or something like that (not > yet released?). What's the story on that? I've heard rumors from various sources that MS-DOS 4.0 was scrapped due to too many problems. Version 5 will (supposedly) be multi-tasking. Does anyone else have any information on this? > Many thanks as always. Your welcome, -- Rassilon (rassilon@eddie.mit.edu)