From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: dfawcus+lists-tuhs@employees.org (Derek Fawcus) Date: Sun, 3 Jul 2016 23:07:53 +0100 Subject: [TUHS] MS-DOS In-Reply-To: <7C35A731-84A0-4B9F-AEE6-8D9D1A06B315@cheswick.com> References: <0f57f9d8248db61cba34372814d2f45e.squirrel@webmail.yaccman.com> <2c674075-db86-827b-fd97-30921757e9ae@aueb.gr> <7C35A731-84A0-4B9F-AEE6-8D9D1A06B315@cheswick.com> Message-ID: <20160703220753.GA82243@cowbell.employees.org> On Fri, Jul 01, 2016 at 08:47:01AM -0400, William Cheswick wrote: > > Actually, MS-DOS was a runtime system, not an operating system, despite the last two letters of its name. > This is a term of art lost to antiquity. > Run time systems offered a minimum of features: a loader, a file system, a crappy, built-in shell, > I/O for keyboards, tape, screens, crude memory management, etc. No multiuser, no network stacks, no separate processes (mostly). DEC had several (RT11, RSTS, RSX) and the line is perhaps a little fuzzy: they were getting operating-ish. I seem to recall a whole bunch of DOS's for different systems in the early 80's, where the term seemed to be used in the sense of a System for Operating a Disk. DF