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From: "Johan van Zyl" <>
Subject: Re: READING STAIRS DISKS
Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2000 08:52:35 +1100


Gerold wrote :

| It's you who is misinformed!
|
| DOS version 6x (this is before Windows 95) came out with a utility called
| DOSSHELL which was a "visual alternative to the MS DOS command prompt" to
| quote from the DOS 6 manual. It could display: drives, directories, files
&
| applications on one screen.

Hi Gerold,

Nope I'm not misinformed, Christo described DOSSHELL as:

"Apparently it was Microsoft's first
experiment with a windows-type operating system"

DOSSHELL was never an operating system, or a word editor,
just another file manager based on the then Norton Commander,
exactly the same functions as Windows 95/98 Explorer.

The reason for it causing havoc with other programs as Gerda
mentioned was due to Billie's famous words "No computer user
will ever need more than 640 k of memory." and DOSSHELL
was quite a memory hungry little program.

By this time Microsoft had to implement things like Himem, Memory
Manager etc.to ensure proper operation of apps.

As a programmer, we talk about shelling to DOS, UNIX, NT, whatever
when you change form one OS to another on one machine.

As a matter of interest, Windows 95/98 is also a SHELL, and it
is still a DOS based OS, you can even load the Win3.1 SHELL in
Win95/98. (if you realy want to)

Regards

Johan
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