water cooler :: Really interesting OS

Interesting. I'll have to give this one a try.

I'm currently wrestling with reviving an old 486SX PC. I've narrowed my OS choices down to an "SX" version of DSL 0.7.3 and Win NT 3.51 Workstation with Newshell 2, but I still have a few unresolved issues with both of these OSes.

Their user forum looks strangely similar to DSL's. A search there for "system requirements" revealed one flippant non-newbie-friendly response (Go RTFM!), but revealed that MenuetOS needs at least a 386 and 32MB RAM.

The RAM requirement may be a tad rich for my 486, but I've got to test out a GUI OS that fits on a floppy.

Hey, if it's written entirely in assembly code, a geek like me who's developed his own DOS device driver for bootable CD-ROMs Eltorito.sys - Hardware independent Dos CD-Rom device driver in assembly code with only Ralf Brown's interrupt list in one hand and the ISO 9660 and El Torito specs in the other should be able to understand it, right? :cool:

Quote (noclobber @ Dec. 26 2004,22:37)

Their user forum looks strangely similar to DSL's. A search there for "system requirements" revealed one flippant non-newbie-friendly response (Go RTFM!), but revealed that MenuetOS needs at least a 386 and 32MB RAM.

One of those threads actually pointed out the bare minimum to be 24MB of RAM, 32MB is recommended though. Don't know if your laptop fits now.

BTW, what does RTFM mean?

Reboot The Frickin' Machi-- oh, wait....it's Read The Frickin' Manual.

Hmm, downloaded and tried MenuetOS.

It worked fine with detecting my hardware, etc.

If you don't include loading the image into memeory off the floppy, it probably has about a 5 second startup time on a 200MMX - nice.

It does look very developer-ish though. Couldn't get their browser (HTTPC) to work - maybe because I'm going thru a firewall. Still I imagine could be a useful rescue disk if developed a bit more (and if floppies were more reliable).

I couldn't get the browser to work either. I read on their forum that someone is in the process of developing a new one, so I'm looking forward to that. Don't know what happens to yours, but when I type the URL and [enter] the browser freezes. But I did get the network setup correctly and was able to ping it from another computer. So far everything on it is still pretty basic, I just hope it doesn't go commercial like that SkyOS.

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