alt Hacker NewsA lot of folks never used it, but MS DOS 5.0 came with DOSSHELL which actually had support for task switching - not quite concurrency, but it worked on a 286.
From what I've learned since, when you switched away from a program using Ctrl + Esc, DOSSHELL suspended it and dumped its conventional memory to a swap file on disk.
Used this to great effect so I could swap back and forth between QBASIC and other utilities.
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aa-jv • today at 8:49 AM
I used that DOSSHELL method for a while until I got Quarterdeck Desqview set up - and from that point on, to me DOS was nothing more than a terminal interface to my pizzabox.
Sure would've been nice if the Desqview engineers and the GEM guys could've merged their efforts...
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Yeah I saw that when going down my rabbit hole. Definitely a cool and useful thing for what it is.
I just think that Concurrent DOS is cool because it is proper multitasking; proper time slicing and everything! And you could have multiple users logging into the same computer with terminals, à la Unix, all in the mid 80s!
I have been trying to track down whoever the hell owns the license to Concurrent/Multiuser DOS to try and make a case for them to release the source code, but I have had a heck of a time getting ahold of anyone that might be able to point me in the right direction. I suspect the rights for it now reside with OpenText or something and they don’t even realize it.