- Flowstate branding drivers#
- Flowstate branding code#
- Flowstate branding Pc#
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The NM-186 is one example of a non-PC-compatible OEM system with DOS and Windows, up to 3.0 but I’m not sure it would have been feasible (or at least, cost-effective) for a computer manufacturer to get enhanced-mode Windows running on a non-PC-compatible system.
However it would have been difficult for a computer manufacturer to produce a non-PC-compatible system capable of running OEM MS-DOS and OEM Windows, which was important by the time MS-DOS 5.0 became common.
Flowstate branding Pc#
Ironically, this is a reminder that all PC compatibles aren’t fully PC-compatible, since they don’t include ROM BASIC…)
Flowstate branding code#
IBM produced their own version of MS-DOS 5.0, PC DOS 5.0, based on the same source code the first releases of PC DOS 5.0 included a version of QBASIC which relied on ROM BASIC, so PC DOS 5.0’s EDIT.COM on a non-IBM PC locks up! (This was fixed in PC DOS 5.00.1. This is all theoretical, since as far as I know, no OEM ever implemented a version of MS-DOS 5.0 or later for a non-PC-compatible system.
Likewise, the various memory management tools in MS-DOS 5.0 and later might not have needed equivalents on another x86 system with a better memory layout. It wasn’t unheard of for OEMs to provide their own text editors, better than EDLIN, so the editor wouldn’t have been much of a concern. Starting with version 5.0, an OEM version of MS-DOS on a non-PC-compatible platform may well have ended up being quite different from MS-DOS on PCs as you mention, EDIT.COM might not have worked, and the various licensed tools included with MS-DOS 5.0 and later could run into problems too (as could any program using direct hardware access or anything other than DOS APIs). I’m not sure off-hand whether there were actual OEM versions of MS-DOS 6.22 (beyond re-branding the floppy disks), but in theory it would have been possible to produce a version of MS-DOS 6.22 capable of running on an x86 system that wasn’t fully PC-compatible.
Flowstate branding drivers#
MS-DOS up to version 6.22 included still had the IO.SYS/ MSDOS.SYS split which was necessary to allow MS-DOS to run on not-fully-PC-compatible platforms: MSDOS.SYS is the DOS kernel itself, common to all implementations (with minor tweaks for localisation), IO.SYS provides the hardware drivers and platform-specific code, and was intended to be modified by OEMs. Some manufacturers continued providing their own implementations of some of the tools even after Microsoft started providing “default” versions, even on PC-compatible systems. The fact that Microsoft included all the “expected” utilities with MS-DOS 3.2 (and later) didn’t preclude computer manufacturers from using the OAK to produce their own OEM version of MS-DOS, and this practice continued up until at least version 6.0 obviously these OEM versions contained ever fewer OEM-specific tools, and by version 5.0 much of the OEM adaptations were branding and the addition of computer-specific tools such as setup tools or power management tools in laptops (see Toshiba MS-DOS for example). With version 3.2, Microsoft also made available a ready-made version of DOS for resale by computer manufacturers this included tools such as FDISK (which were also added to the OAK).
Flowstate branding license#
Microsoft started selling complete versions of MS-DOS with version 3.2 prior to that, companies selling computers with MS-DOS had to license an “ OEM Adaptation Kit” and provide a number of tools of their own to produce a complete version of DOS. As far as I’m aware, no, at least not for standalone versions of MS-DOS ( i.e.
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