In news:cqpa35d4p3fbuc0gmgoaihntchqh8r230k@4ax.com,
AJL typed on Sun, 14 Jun 2009 14:31:02 -0700:
> "BillW50" <BillW50@aol.kom> wrote:
>> P J typed
>>> "John Doue" wrote:
>
>>>> I would settle for 6.2 ...
>
>>> Hear, hear! Believe it or not, I am still running DOS 6.2 in a dual
>>> boot partition because of an old home automation app I could not
>>> find a decent Windows version for.
>
>> Dual boot? Windows runs DOS applications too. Is the other partition
>> Windows?
>
> Years ago I wrote a Quickbasic program for Keyboarding Morse code. I
> wrote one for receiving as well. I built an external interface for the
> keyboard and receiver that used the serial port. It worked great under
> DOS (5) but failed under later copies of Windows. For some reason
> Windows wouldn't allow my program access to the hardware through the
> serial port. I would guess that a home automation program written for
> DOS might fail for the same reason depending on how the author
> accessed the hardware.

Directly? Yes Windows (nor does any multitasking OS really) doesn't like
any program trying to take direct hardware control. As it makes it
virtually impossible to multitask such a program for one. Especially if
the OS needs to use the same hardware too. And second, it can totally
lockup the OS if the program hangs. That is why multitasking OS rather
would like to handle the hardware by itself and normally disallows
programs from doing so.

--
Bill
Windows 2000 SP4
Asus EEE PC 701G4 ~ 2GB RAM ~ 16GB-SDHC