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Nope. The closed source IBMBIO.COM is a component of PC DOS and, AFAIK, is not redistributable.bzt wrote:On your site you write that MS-DOS 2.0 is closed-source, this is not true.
Strictly speaking IBMBIO.COM / IO.SYS is not part of the OS, as it provides and abstraction layer and interface to the firmware (BIOS). In theory you could run DOS on a non-IBM-PC compatible if you provide an IO.SYS for that machine (never happened as far as I know). All the rest is Open Source (including MSDOS.SYS and FORMAT etc.), so I think MS-DOS 2.0 is indeed Open Source. Regardless your IO.SYS implementation is cool, it is good we have an Open Source alternative for that too!pdurlej wrote:Nope. The closed source IBMBIO.COM is a component of PC DOS and, AFAIK, is not redistributable.
Additionally, AFAIK, there was not any opensource (or even redistributable) counterpart of IBMBIO.COM (IO.SYS in MS-DOS naming convention).
It happened a few times before IBM-compatible hardware completely took over. Perhaps the biggest example is the NEC PC-98 series, which wasn't discontinued until 2003. You can find a copy of MS-DOS 6.2 for PC-98 pretty easily.bzt wrote:In theory you could run DOS on a non-IBM-PC compatible if you provide an IO.SYS for that machine (never happened as far as I know).
It has happened. Some (if not all) Apricot computers were not fully compatible and so required a special version of DOS (basically of those files). I have (somewhere) an Apricot Portable to which this applied. I even had to patch Turbo Pascal to get it to function correctly.bzt wrote:In theory you could run DOS on a non-IBM-PC compatible if you provide an IO.SYS for that machine (never happened as far as I know).