Re: What are the really unusual or weird computers?

--- Jason McBrien <jbmcb1gmail.com> wrote:
 
> I have a beastly 80386 based Banyan VNS100 server
> that, I'm pretty sure,
> only runs VINES. I haven't fired it up yet, but
> seeing as how it only does
> serial terminal connections for direct I/O, I'm
> pretty sure it won't want to
> run DOS.

 Well I guess it's a far gone conclusion that if the
box doesn't have an IBM 5150 style BIOS, it's not
going to run DOS. 



       
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On 28 Jun 2007 at 17:32, Chris M wrote:

>  Well I guess it's a far gone conclusion that if the
> box doesn't have an IBM 5150 style BIOS, it's not
> going to run DOS. 

I've got a fax-capture box that hooks between a PC printer
port and a 
printer.  It uses an 80c188, has 256K of DRAM and a
37C65-driven 
1.44M floppy and, when I last looked, a PC-style BIOS.  I
haven't 
looked to see where the INT 10H and INT 16H vectors go, but
if I 
could figure out how to do simple I/O via the parallel port,
I 
suspect that I could make it run MS-DOS of some flavor.  It
uses 
FAT12-formatted diskettes.

Runs from a 9VAC wall wart.

Cheers,
Chuck

  >....far gone conclusion that if the box doesn't have
an
  >IBM 5150 style BIOS, it's not going to run DOS. 

You don't need an IBM compatible BIOS to run MS-DOS....


  TTFN - Pete.

>  Well I guess it's a far gone conclusion that if the
> box doesn't have an IBM 5150 style BIOS, it's not
> going to run DOS. 

The HP110 and HP150 don't have an IBM style BIOS -- the
techncial manuals 
make the point that they are not bios-function cmpatible
with the PC. But 
they run (a customised version of) MS-DOS. There was even a
Microsoft 
Windows 1.x for the HP150.

-tony