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DR-DOS in ROM

The Philips :YES was supposed to have DOS Plus (the predecessor to DRDOS) in ROM. I've never seen a ROM dump of it, though, so I don't know how it was implemented.
 
BTW, for those that don't know, OpenDOS IS DR-DOS. The chronology goes DR-DOS -> Novell DOS -> OpenDOS.

g.
 
I worked extensively with Caldera & Novell back in 1996/97 to get the sources released. The "kernel" sources and command.com were released, but they put the brakes on the project shortly after that. I've still got the full source code distribution around here somewhere. Includes all the original compilers & assemblers needed. One batch file kicks off the whole build. The last time I ran a build (nearly 20 years) it took 45 minutes to compile everything.

g.
 
geneb said:
I worked extensively with Caldera & Novell back in 1996/97 to get the sources released. The "kernel" sources and command.com were released, but they put the brakes on the project shortly after that. I've still got the full source code distribution around here somewhere. Includes all the original compilers & assemblers needed. One batch file kicks off the whole build. The last time I ran a build (nearly 20 years) it took 45 minutes to compile everything.

g.
Click to expand...

Any ideas on how to get it into ROM?
 
A ROM programmer to place the .BIN files into the ROM chips and also a modified BIOS ROM to look for the OS in ROM. I think Phoenix used to provide a set of suggestions on how to adjust the BIOS to include a ROM DOS as an option. I can't quickly find an online reference to it though. HP had a fairly detailed article on customizing DOS in ROM back in their Technical Journal during the 80s. Datalight has a FAQ which explains some elements of their implementation (ROMDOS) but full details require buying the $10,000 SDK.
 
krebizfan said:
A ROM programmer to place the .BIN files into the ROM chips and also a modified BIOS ROM to look for the OS in ROM. I think Phoenix used to provide a set of suggestions on how to adjust the BIOS to include a ROM DOS as an option. I can't quickly find an online reference to it though. HP had a fairly detailed article on customizing DOS in ROM back in their Technical Journal during the 80s. Datalight has a FAQ which explains some elements of their implementation (ROMDOS) but full details require buying the $10,000 SDK.
Click to expand...

Wow, and only 10K. I don't want to reinvent the wheel. I'm thinking that there some people lurking out there that have already done this. Heck, even Tandy took a shot at it with DeskMate. I wouldn't mind investing in a PROM blower, but at my age (75 on the 21st) I really don't need more stuff, if you know what I mean. Thanks for the reply.
 
I seem to recall from what Lightspeed info I could gather, that much of the effort was dedicated toward treating a ROM as a disk device.

All of this is past being important today, as flash devices are very common. Many thin clients, for example, use flash DOMs that plug directly into an hard disk (e.g. ATA) interface.
 
Chuck(G) said:
I seem to recall from what Lightspeed info I could gather, that much of the effort was dedicated toward treating a ROM as a disk device.

All of this is past being important today, as flash devices are very common. Many thin clients, for example, use flash DOMs that plug directly into an hard disk (e.g. ATA) interface.
Click to expand...

I get your drift on that. I was thinking in terms of the 8088/8086 and possibly the 80286/80386. Something simple that you plug into a socket, much like the the RTC piggybacking on my/your 1000SX BIOS chip. I suppose there are more negatives than positives on the subject else there would have been a market for it. However, I still think it's a cool idea if you could do it without throwing a lot of money at it and just using a little elbow grease and some know how .
 
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