Anatoly Shashkin💾I miss the days when a brand new OS would just let you reboot into a legacy OS. Happy 28th birthday to Windows 95! 🎉🎂🎈🍾🥂
Count Regal Inkwell@dosnostalgic let's be fair: Windows wasn't letting you "boot into the legacy OS", it was just letting you quit out of the shell, because at the time, it was literally just a fancy GUI shell for DOS, and remained so (for home users, enterprise users got NT in the early 90s) until Windows XP
@vinesnfluff No. Windows 9x was not "just a fancy GUI shell for DOS". In fact it was sort of the other way around. It was a full on standalone OS that had legacy DOS support fully integrated in its kernel. But if you wanted an actual MS-DOS you had to reboot. There was nothing to quit to, as DOS 7 that was used as a bootloader was completely gone by the time Win9x was running.
Kristian@dosnostalgic @vinesnfluff when the black screen told you in orange letters that it was safe to shut the computer off, you literally had a shell, you just had to run the commands to clear the screen. Not saying win95 was just a fancy gui for dos, nor do I remember how functional that shell was given that I was in primary school when I messed around with it, but it was at the very least somewhat functional.
@kly @dosnostalgic aaaand now you got me wanting to set up win9x on 86box just to try that
@vinesnfluff @kly Try it. On a clean install it should do no such thing.
@dosnostalgic @kly Well paint me purple and call me "Twilight", it actually works.
The process goes:
Load Windows -> Exit to DOS mode -> Load windows again -> Shut down -> When in the screen just do "cls"-enter and this happens
@dosnostalgic @kly PS this was a clean install. Or, cleanish. I did install the drivers needed to get sound/graphics properly out of 86box, cuz if I was setting this up, I might as well have it ready to screw around with some gaems.
@dosnostalgic @kly Bonus: If you type 'win' instead of 'cls' it goes back to windows.
@vinesnfluff @kly Yeah, so I've done some testing. When you "Restart in MS-DOS mode" 95 runs its command.com. You can see it still sitting in memory when you do MEM after booting Win from it. That's what you're quitting into when you're on the shutdown screen. It's a 16 bit program that 95 kept running, since it was there before Windows was loaded. But that's not the case when it starts normally.
@dosnostalgic @kly Fascinating, actually.
Lil' oversight, doesn't actually change the OS's experience. But still cool to learn about.
@vinesnfluff @kly Oh, and if you properly exit DOS 7 using EXIT, then it actually quits, 95 loads, and once again you can do nothing on the shutdown screen.
sj_zeroAlthough MS-DOS remains resident, my understanding at least is that Windows 9x is still an operating system and not just a shell because doesn't use the dos calls for what it does. For example, it implements 32-bit disc algorithms, unique video algorithms, it manages the keyboard on its own, it basically does everything and it just happens to do it on top of MS-DOS as a bootloader.
I believe there was an equivalent under linux called loadlin that would let you bootstrap Linux from dos, and it even let you use some ms-dos drivers to provide functions for unsupported devices like cd-roms, just as windows can gain functions from media device drivers despite ideally running pure windows drivers instead.
I believe there was an equivalent under linux called loadlin that would let you bootstrap Linux from dos, and it even let you use some ms-dos drivers to provide functions for unsupported devices like cd-roms, just as windows can gain functions from media device drivers despite ideally running pure windows drivers instead.
@sj_zero @vinesnfluff @kly You're agreeing with me. MS-DOS only remains resident if a 16 bit program happens to be running before DOS 7 bootloader is started. That happens for compatibility reasons. Normally 9x doesn't need DOS, and it unloads everything after the bootloader had done its job. Then if a DOS program has been started, it's handled by the Windows kernel.
Yes I am. I started the research for my next book a little while ago, and that's what I found. I was surprised that despite living on top of DOS 7, win 9x was a fully fledged OS and not just a shell on top of ms-dos.
@sj_zero @vinesnfluff @kly I edited my post to more obviously assert that Win 9x does not, in fact, live on top of DOS 7. Once it's running it kicks DOS 7 out. However, Win9x also does everything DOS does, so it doesn't need it in the first place.
@vinesnfluff @kly Now bonus:
When you start 95 normally, go and rename Command.com in WINDOWS directory to something else. That's it. No more restarting in MS-DOS, no more command prompt in 95, no more Command Prompt Only from the boot menu. But 95 will still load, and besides the prompt you're able to run any DOS program, and minimize them, and try to put them in windowed mode, etc.
Everything works as intended.
When you start 95 normally, go and rename Command.com in WINDOWS directory to something else. That's it. No more restarting in MS-DOS, no more command prompt in 95, no more Command Prompt Only from the boot menu. But 95 will still load, and besides the prompt you're able to run any DOS program, and minimize them, and try to put them in windowed mode, etc.
Everything works as intended.
