Hello everyone,
I recently tried Svardos, and I was really pleased to see a DOS operating system come back to life.
However, this is just another clone of DOS version 7.1, which already existed during the Windows 98 era and introduced FAT32 support compared to DOS 6.22.
These DOS versions are practically all the same,
although Freedos and Svardos are slightly more optimized for modern hardware,
the operating system itself remains the same as it was nearly 30 years ago.
I’m a technician, and I use DOS with utilities like Seatools for DOS, MHDD, SpinRite, HDAT2, HDD Regenerator, and Victoria,
because these programs allow me to repair clients’ hard drives with minor issues without needing to replace the drive and restore their systems to working order.
The problem is that when I run these programs on motherboards that do not support IDE emulation, they fail to detect the drive,
because DOS does not support AHCI.
On Windows, such software cannot repair anything, as Windows does not provide direct hardware access like DOS does.
DOS is mainly used for retrocomputing,
but why don’t we create a DOS that can both preserve old software and hardware and work with new technologies?
My dream would be a DOS that:
1. Natively supports AHCI at the kernel level
2. Natively supports USB at the kernel level
3. Natively supports NTFS and exFAT at the kernel level
Finally, we are maintaining a 16-bit operating system to ensure compatibility with old programs,
but why don’t we also create a 32-bit version?
This would remove the prehistoric memory limitations we’ve been stuck with for 40 years.
The 32-bit version wouldn’t need to replace the 16-bit one but would simply be an additional option,
laying the groundwork for a future where DOS still exists.
Of course, it wouldn’t compete with Windows or Linux,
but it could be an excellent operating system for programs requiring direct hardware access, embedded solutions,
or extremely lightweight systems capable of running even on a household toaster.
well, would be a great idea, but do you have 20 or more programmers that do this in their free time? Even the reactos project reduced their speed enormously.