View source for Research Stream: DOS 2.x

[[Category:Projects]][[Category:Streams]][[Category:OS/2]]
Recap of OS/2 1.0 Research Stream

{{Infobox
| title = Research Stream
| header1 = DOS 2.x/MT-DOS 4 Initial Exploration
| title2 = VoD Link
| value2 = [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPwyWu3QYXU RESEARCH STREAM: The First Version of OS/2 ...]
| title3 = Streamed On
| value3 = June 7th, 2025
| title4 = Streamed by
| value4 = [[User:NCommander|NCommander]]
| title5 = Stream type
| value5 = Emulated on 86Box
|}}

== Description ==
So, in this stream, we establish a baseline by the common ancestor between the single user versions of DOS, and what would go on to become OS/2 1.x.

== Things Done ==
=== DOS 2.x ===
* Configured IBM XT CGA card with green monoscreen display
* Had some trouble getting stuff going but eventually got things started
* Formatted and installed DOS 2 with FDISK and copy
* Tried out WordStar for a bit
* Decided to rebuild DOS 2 on DOS 2
** Seemed like a good benchmark to see how things did/didn’t change
** Had a false start due to forgetting exe2bin from disk 2
** Looked at DOS 2.0 source code while at it
** Took about 70 minutes to builds
** Turns out this source distro is not complete, doesn’t build IO.SYS which meansa  bootable system isn’t possible
** There was another DOS 2 src distro from OS2Museum, but it needs DOS 4 to build …
** Two versions of DOS
*** IBM features/standard features
*** Essentially customizations made to DOS to suit IBMs needs
*** Most notably, the default prompt, being A> vs A:\>
** 6:13PM started building 
=== Multitasking DOS 4 (1985) ===
* Multiple versions, none of them appear to be final
* Microsoft released a beta version with MS-DOS 4’s source code
* There was also a later build known as Build 6.7
* Very broken
* Multitasking MS-DOS 4.00 internal work 2.06
** Used a full screen SM command, which could map commands back and forth
** Then use a keybind to switch to a session back and forth
** Very awkward UI, and the disk didn’t have tools like format and such
** SM was a command line utility that was loaded and then used to switch between sessions
* Build 6.7
** Somewhat better, uses double tapping Alt to switch sessions back and forth
** However, had weird behavior, and format crashed