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off the wall MS-DOS versions

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tipc

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Most of us know what a pseudo-compatible is (pseudo means fake essentially). I affectionately refer to these machines as IBM Incompatibles, having acquired a number of them.

Each has it's own custom tailored version of MS-DOS, peculiar to it's particular differences in hardware (differing from the stock IBM 5150/vanilla clone motherboard, video, etc.). Now I doubt M$ ever turned over the source code to a company allowing them to tailor it to their machine's hardware, so I guess I'm answering my own question. If source code listings of any of these non-standard versions existed, they'd be in the hands of M$ . . . right? I would doubt M$ ever did or ever would discard their DOS source listings. Vanilla varieties anyway. Is it possible they still have the sources for the off the wall versions?

Was there ever a version of MS-DOS for Multibus boxen? I suppose there whatever manufacturer decided to offer an 80x86 board or board set had to procure a version of MS-DOS to run on that.

Remember MS-DOS was originally not a M$ product at all, but was purchased by them from Seattle Computer for the Gazelle. I know someone who has or at least used to have 1 of them (don't know if he ever had any s/w to run on it though). By the way he described it, it was essentially a single board computer w/a largish casing. Something to that effect. So MS-DOS was originally a home to an sbc.
 
Nope, having been on the vendor's end of the setup for both MSDOS 1.1 and 2.0, I can tell you.

Basically, Microsoft furnished a kit of MSDOS.SYS and the vendor furnished IO.SYS. Microsoft did not retain copies of the vendor code. This was nothing new--DRI did the same with CP/M--vendors furnished the CBIOS and any extra utilities and DRI furnished the BDOS and any standard utilities.

Multibus DOS? Probably--I don't see why not. After all, Multibus is just a bus. There were DOS versions for S100 and some peculiar proprietary buses.
 
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tipc said:
Now I doubt M$ ever turned over the source code to a company allowing them to tailor it to their machine's hardware, so I guess I'm answering my own question.
Click to expand...

Look up information about MS-DOS OEM Adaptation Kits.

For example:
http://www.os2museum.com/wp/ms-dos-oaks/
Microsoft shipped DOS to OEMs in the form of the MS-DOS OEM Adaptation Kit, or OAK. The OAK consisted of binary files, source files, object files, and electronic documentation required to “install” MS-DOS on (or port to) an OEM platform.
 
Archive.org has a MultiBus Buyers' Guide which includes reference to two different companies have multibus systems that run DOS in some form with one offering either DOS or CP/M-86 in ROM. Prime Computer's multibus systems ran Unix but they made a lot of press about including a modified MS-DOS within Unix. Might be others.
 
tipc said:
Remember MS-DOS was originally not a M$ product at all, but was purchased by them from Seattle Computer for the Gazelle.
Click to expand...

The original Seattle Computer DOS ran on the SCP-200B 8086 S-100 card, circa 1980
Documentation at http://bitsavers.org/pdf/seattleComputer

DOS 2.11 was probably the most common version to run on non-clone x86 machines.
I have a version of it that runs on a Colex 80186 VME board.
 
vendors did what they wanted with version numbering. The NEC APC III MS-DOS went up to 3.1 or 3.2. But someone on the Tandy 2000 yahoo list looked at it and said it looked like a 2.x version.

Many of these beasties had compatibility options/upgrades. The vendor had something wrong w/them if they didn't offer one, notably Tandy, but it just might be they decided to come out w/a full compatible (the 1000 series, let's not argue please). Wang had a compatibility board, NEC for the APC III (got that), TI had several, OEM and aftermarket. They even upgraded their portable and desktops to 286. Not sure if they became stock compatibles at that point (and I am *not* talking about the Business Pro. Even the Portable Professional had a 286 main board upgrade or perhaps just a drop in card. I passed up one bloody years ago on eBay. The guy told me that the sticker said "Texas 286 Portable". Perhaps he was abbreviating what it said).
 
If by "Wang" you mean the Wang Professional Computer (Wang PC) it's native OS was MS DOS. But they made good use of the OAK - custom IO.SYS, hardware utilities, partitioning manager and they even replaced COMMAND.COM with a menu driven system so users weren't forced to learn commands. Pretty bad ass. The compatibility board was just an enormous extension to the video board to allow IBM compatible graphics - still run DOS without it :)

Another was the Sanyo MBC series, and my Apricot XI doesn't like regular DOS either. Each machine offered something different and better than IBM, but nobody gave a rats a** apparently.**
I'm not sure I've actually ever heard of a 286 machine that wasn't "IBM compatible"? I wonder if there were any.


** I know that's for good reasons at the time, but it's sad barely anybody knows about them
 
Were there any non-IBM-PC-compatible computers that had ISA slots? I can't think of any, except if you count the Amiga 2000, 3000, and 4000 series, which had 16-bit ISA slots (shared with Amiga's own Zorro II / III slots), but couldn't run IBM software unless you added the PC Bridgeboard. And even with the Bridgeboard installed, I'm not sure if you could run any generic version of MS-DOS, or if you had to use a customized Amiga version.
 
The Sun 386i had ISA slots and diverged considerably from the IBM PC standard.

I lack familiarity with the other mid-80s systems with Intel processors that were intended to run with some form of Unix inspired OS. Some might fit into the interesting non-PC compatible roster.
 
Actually, thinking about it a little more it's possible to go *deep* into a rabbit hole if you start thinking about about non-PC Compatible/not-x86 computers that have ISA in some form. (Granted, it doesn't always involve physical slots.) For instance, *many* PowerPC machines have some traces of ISA in them, and there's even an Open Firmware method for autoconfiguring ISA devices. Again, I suppose that's somewhat beyond the scope of the question, but it is what it is.

(One of the things I find personally amusing is how even "NuBus" Apple PowerBooks have not only an "ISA Bus" of sorts but the extended equivalent of an EMS 4.0 mapper if they're equipped with a PCMCIA slot.)
 
Was there ever a standard test to gauge IBM PC software and/or hardware compatibility? Most the "tests" I ever saw basically revolved around running Microsoft Flight Simulator II and VisiCalc.
 
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