Recent content by dfawcus

Plus some installed CP/M machines stayed around because of the cost of changing (i.e. process, time, effort, monetary costs) - the effect of the installed base. A place I worked at around '88 had just got recent 286 based diskless PCs, connected to Netware, using the monolithic NET3 client...

Assuming I'm correctly understanding your meaning (especially given the prior mention of MSDOS 2.0 API, and directories) then that has already been done by MSX-DOS. Version 1 was essentially MSDOS 1 (including FAT disks) for Z80 (hence very similar to CP/M 2.x) Then MSX-DOS version 2 added...

I was just checking some other references. While Tony Hoare described CSP in 1978, that was before he added channels. Whereas the Actor model dates from 1973. Given how the CLI works for internal commands (sending the CL tail to a queue named for the command), and TMP's sending lines to the...

... and apparently supported multi-threading within tasks, if I'm reading the documentation correctly. BDOS function 144 "Create Process". Creating another "process" within the existing process memory space. Whereas MPM-86 seems to remove that restriction, and makes it more obvious by...

An ASR is an 'Asynchronous Service Routine' part of the driver architecture. An ISR handles an interrupt, then schedules an ASR to perform work taking more time, the control structures for such are dynamically allocated. The repeated mention of being out suggests maybe a flapping interrupt...

If you have an appropriate machine, of a suitable speed, I can probably give you any necessary hints as to how to lay out the disk contents. You may also be able to avoid having to install the boot loader, if you first make the system a bootable DOS disk, then run the loadflex.exe program from...

I've been looking at these disks, and their contents, and believe they are partially mislabelled. Specifically this file: https://bitsavers.org/bits/DigitalResearch/FlexOS/FlexOS_386_1.4_beta.zip It consists of 4 directories, as below FlexOS_386_1.4_beta/PTK_198709/...

It had a lot of DOS like commands, plus a bunch of unix like commands. Programmatically for applications it felt a bit like a mix between the two, for drivers it gave me the impression of being VMS like. However chasing another reference from here, possibly it was inspired by DEC RSX-11 in its...

That "holy grail" code is now available to try and run, one can find it on bitsavers. I've been trying to get it working on simulated environments (86Box), but have been having to work on it in a debugger, as there are timing issues in some driver code. To date I've not got much beyond live...

Not that specific variant, but I used FlexOS 2.32 commercially between '92 and '97. That was the version direct from DR, and used in a POS and control system. A Petrol Station forecourt devices (pumps etc) controller, and attached POS. I did both applcation program and driver development...

That FlexOS 1.30 code is now present on bitsavers (https://bitsavers.org/bits/DigitalResearch/FlexOS/FlexOS_286_1.3_Dev_Kit.zip) if someone wishes to try and get it running on an actual E-step 286 machine.

As to the 286 version of "Concurrent", and the IBM 4680 / 4690 base, that was what was eventually named FlexOS. It was initially named Concurrent DOS-286, and the early versions (1.3, 1.42) can now be found on bitsavers, together with an '386 version of 1.40 & 1.42. A 68k port of an earlier...