Speaking of just hunting for random stuff in DOS, my personal favorite “what’s this?” in DOS was Gorillas.bas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorillas_(video_game)?wprov=sfti1

[–] DosDude@retrolemmy.com 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I agree, but Windows 3.x was more a shell on top of MSDOS and had a more niche market, and windows 95 didn't get most popular OS until late 1998. So for a lot of people that was way before windows. Also tech went a lot faster back then. Updates to an old system isn't as important if it's not connected to the world of online hackers.

[–] i_am_not_a_robot@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Windows 95 was also a shell on top of MSDOS. Windows NT wasn't running on top of DOS, but it was primarily for business use until Windows XP.

[–] DavidGA@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is a common misconception, and it’s funny that people still believe it all these years later.

While it's true that Windows 95 relied on MS-DOS for bootstrapping and provided a DOS-like interface for running legacy applications, it wasn't "just a shell" on top of DOS. Windows 95 introduced a 32-bit multitasking environment, a completely new user interface, and a separate set of APIs for software development (Win32). It had its own kernel that provided services like memory management and hardware abstraction, separate from DOS.

The integration with DOS was mainly for backward compatibility, allowing users to run older software. But once you were in the Windows 95 environment, DOS was essentially sidelined, and Windows 95's own features and architecture took over.

[–] kalleboo@bitbang.social 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Exactly, here’s the canonical The Old New Thing post on the topic. https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20071224-00/?p=24063

tldr:
“MS-DOS served two purposes in Windows 95: It served as the boot loader. It acted as the 16-bit legacy device driver layer.”

“Among other things those drivers did was “suck the brains out of MS-DOS,” transfer all that state to the 32-bit file system manager, and then shut off MS-DOS.”

[–] duncesplayed@lemmy.one 6 points 1 year ago

It's a bit more complicated than that. Windows 95 used MSDOS to boot, but once it was booted, it completely removed any trace of MSDOS and replaced it with its own MSDOS subsystem. It's more like MSDOS was a shell on top of Win95, but MSDOS was required to get the kernel loaded.

[–] KyuubiNoKitsune@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 1 year ago

I'm pretty sure I still have Gorillas on my HDD, carried with me from my families 286.

[–] LucyLastic@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago

Yeah, Gorillas was awesome ... came with MSDos 6 IIRC