Hi Paul,

> Hi. About 30 years ago, someone made a comment
> on a group saying "until DOS is made 32-bit, DOS
> extenders are just a kludge". 

Actually fd32 tries to be better than DOS + extender
by having a protected mode kernel, but it has been
a while since there was news from them and benefits
in speed and memory seem to be not that impressive?

> Microsoft abandoned the MSDOS API, but what
> would a 32-bit version of the MSDOS API look
> like if they hadn't abandoned it?

OS/2 was a very sensible evolution of the MS DOS
API spirit. So that could be part of the answer.
And there are probably free open OS/2 clones :-)

> Since 1994, off and on, I have been working on
> PDOS/386, which is designed to be a 32-bit
> version of MSDOS / Freedos.

Interesting :-)

> I have recently just completed relocation of OS
> and app so that they can both run in a flat address
> space, meaning that applications can directly
> manipulate the hardware, e.g. by going
> *(char *)0xb8000 = 'X';
> With that change now in place, it is working to
> my satisfaction technically.

Then you may want to have a look at the OS/2 API
and wonder whether you want to support some of it.

Or have a look at HX RT / HXDOS which supports a
subset of the Windows API in DOS :-)

> PDOS/386 is explicit public domain (no license)
> and written mostly in C, with a bit of assembler.

Makes sense!

Regards, Eric


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