Lunduke
News • Science & Tech
Wendin-DOS : The forgotten multi-tasking, multi-user DOS clone from the 1980s
Produced by a small team, and lost to the sands of time... until now.
August 18, 2023
post photo preview

Back in 1987, an MS-DOS compatible operating system debuted that — despite a truly impressive and fascinating feature set — has been all but lost to history: Wendin-DOS.

This wasn’t some simple DOS clone, either. Wendin-DOS was a multitasking, multi-user DOS with the ability to run individual applications in movable windows.

Yet, sadly, there is almost no information available on the history and development of this fascinating system.

Let’s remedy that.

I managed to track down the developer of Wendin-DOS, Steve Jones, to find out as much as I could about the history of the system.

The Wendin-DOS story begins, as so many stories do, with a young nerd… playing with computers in High School…

Steve Jones: “The moment I saw an ASR33 teletype, I knew what I wanted to do. In high school, I spent more time programming a Univac 70/7 (IBM 360 clone) than anything else. Studied the operating system, wrote a disassembler to reveal how it worked, and wrote a bunch of system-oriented software for it.

In college I got a job with the academic computer center and studied its operating system, as well as the up-and-coming VAX/VMS. I started learning about what Dave Cutler was doing and wished I could work with him.”

For those unaware: Dave Cutler is an absolute legend in the operating system world, having been one of the engineers responsible for VMS, and would later go on to lead the NT project at Microsoft.

Now that Steve was out of school, things started to get really interesting…

“After college, I started a software company in Spokane that operated in the same building as my parents' company, Jones Double-Reed Products. My brother Greg joined me, and together we cloned VAX/VMS (well, as well as we were able), added a PC API module (we called it "the Filter", which included INT 20h-2fh redirection and processing, as well as some other PC interrupts to achieve rerouting of BIOS calls.) We hired Scott, a local software engineer, to help us, and put him on the filter-- toughest job, since it was basically a compatibility layer for all the DOS stuff out there. I can't tell you how many times Word Perfect and Lotus 1-2-3 were causing him fits. Then we split it up, Greg took the VMS shell and utilities, and I took the kernel-- which was really just VAX/VMS, with 4 stacks per process, ASTs, QIO, RMS, the whole thing.”

Three engineers, in Spokane Washington, who built a VMS clone for x86 PCs.

Already quite cool… and then this little rag-tag team decided to do something even cooler… they built an “Operating System Toolbox”.

“We got the idea to just replace the shell and utilities to make other operating systems-- PCUNIX (later renamed to PCNX when AT&T sent us a letter), and finally, stripped them off to create Operating System Toolbox, which was just the source, in a toolkit that people could use to create their own shell and utilities around the kernel. We ended up selling about 400 copies of each of these things a month as I recall, in response to ads in Dr Dobbs, BYTE, Embedded Systems Programming and a few others.

An open source (before people really used the term regularly) kit for building a multitasking operating system. Plus a VMS clone and UNIX clone for IBM compatible PCs.

From the 1987 Wendin catalog

Think about that for a moment. It’s 1986. And there’s a UNIX clone, for IBM PCs, that (via the Operating System Toolbox) has some of the source code available for it. This was a full half decade before Linus Torvalds would start the Linux kernel project.

This is some mightily impressive stuff here.

PCUNIX advertisement. Dr. Dobbs Journal, July 1986.

This tiny little company now had two complete operating systems (plus the Operating System Toolbox). Which is where DOS enters the story…

“With so many people wanting an alternative to MS-DOS (one that was bootable from a disk, not runnable as a program from DOS)-- we did another round of development and created Wendin-DOS, 'the DOS of the future.'

 

We were able to demonstrate running real DOS apps in overlapping, character-oriented windows, as well as screen groups, ala the up-and-coming Microsoft OS/2.”

From the 1987 Wendin catalog

Wendin-DOS certainly seemed to generate a good amount of interest from the press back in 1987.

InfoWorld, November 1987

Of course, being a small company and supporting three different operating systems has some significant challenges. Namely: testing the system with a wide variety of software. The Wendin crew did a little outside the box thinking on that…

“Once we had the basic software going, we realized if we were going to compete with Microsoft, we would need testers. Since we didn't have the money for our own, we created a debugging contest, and each person got an "I Debugged The DOS Of The Future" mug, plus a large prize for the winners. The bug reports flooded in, but the winner was astounding-- he submitted a ream (500 pg) of paper, with each page containing a bug report describing the nature of the problem, how to reproduce it, a diagnosis of the problem and suggested fix; this thing was just off the charts great. Turned out, he was institutionalized in some way and couldn't really go get a job, so he had time on his hands.”

According to the July 1987 issue of “80 Micro” (a Tandy oriented magazine) the Wendin crew even traveled to the famous West Coast Computer Faire to demonstrate Wendin-DOS.

Updates to Wendin-DOS were worked on for a while after the first release shipped…

InfoWorld, May 1988

But, not long after Wendin-DOS hit the market, Steve Jones (and his brother) left the company and headed off to work at Microsoft. At which point Wendin-DOS (along with the Operating System Toolbox, PC/VMS, and PCUNIX) all quickly faded into obscurity.

Wendin-DOS advertisement in Dr. Dobb's Journal, August 1987.

What could Wendin-DOS (along with PC/VMS and PCUNIX) have become had they had a few more years to mature with the original team? We’ll never know… but, considering the amazing accomplishments from that small team (in such a short period of time)… my guess? It would have knocked our socks off.

Epilogue

Steve Jones would go on to eventually become the CTO for BIOS maker Phoenix Technologies. Along the way — immediately after stopping work on Wendin-DOS — he spent some time over at Microsoft working working for the very engineer that inspired him back in High School.

“I got to work for Dave Cutler and really feel like I apprenticed with him-- it was a fantastic experience, working for the MAN.”

And Dave Cutler wasn’t the only computer pioneer that Steve ended up rubbing shoulders with…

Funny little story-- as I roamed the Microsoft hallways in building 2 on my first day, I ran into Larry Osterman's office with his bulletin board outside. On that bulletin board was posted our Wendin "love letter", which was something we sent out because we were delaying shipment of Wendin-DOS while we were processing all those bugs. On the form letter, Larry had written, "Guess writing a DOS is harder than you thought!" Not surprising, since Larry wrote DOS 4, the multitasking version of MS-DOS that never really went anywhere but was pretty ambitious at the time. We were largely solving the same problems, though he had full MS-DOS 3.31 source code (a great version of DOS) and we had our debugger to work with. Larry and I had a good laugh about it. Tim Paterson, the original 86-DOS implementer, had an office across the hall.”

Editors note: I had the good pleasure of interacting with Tim Paterson back in the 1990s, when we both worked at Microsoft. I was a young nerd, he was the software legend responsible for building the original “Quick and Dirty Operating System” that would go on to become “MS-DOS”. He was incredibly kind and gracious.

Many thanks to Steve for writing up some of this history and sharing his thoughts. It is so important that this amazing — and fascinating — part of computer history be properly documented. While there is still much to record about the work of this team, this is a good start.

Nowadays, Steve Jones runs NeuroSynthetica in Seattle, WA.

Can I run Wendin-DOS in 2022?

You can, indeed, run Wendin-DOS in emulation on modern machines. I was able to boot version 2.11 inside VirtualBox:

Wendin-DOS 2.11 booting off a floppy

Note: Wendin DOS 2.11 can be found in a few corners of the Internet. Due to uncertain legal status of the software, I can't link to it directly.

community logo
Join the Lunduke Community
To read more articles like this, sign up and join my community today
7
What else you may like…
Videos
Podcasts
Posts
Articles
Groupthink, Tech Journalism, & The Lunduke Journal

Why The Lunduke Journal uses the "10th Man Rule" to counter groupthink in the Tech Industry. (And why you'll definitely disagree with Lunduke sometimes.)

Stick it to Big Tech, 50% off everything at The Lunduke Journal:
https://lunduke.substack.com/p/stick-it-to-big-tech-50-off-everything

00:18:10
PSX Emu Dev Forbids Arch Linux Packages

DuckStation developer says, "Next step will be removing Linux support entirely, because I'm sick of the headaches and hacks." Specifically naming Wayland as a source of problems.

00:15:52
The Age of Non-Woke Open Source is Beginning

Non-Woke "Political Protest Forks" like XLibre & Redot are thriving. Non-DEl Linux Distributions like Open Mandriva are as well. But Woke projects? Not doing so well.

The Article:
https://lunduke.substack.com/p/open-source-political-protest-forks

00:21:04
November 22, 2023
The futility of Ad-Blockers

Ads are filling the entirety of the Web -- websites, podcasts, YouTube videos, etc. -- at an increasing rate. Prices for those ad placements are plummeting. Consumers are desperate to use ad-blockers to make the web palatable. Google (and others) are desperate to break and block ad-blockers. All of which results in... more ads and lower pay for creators.

It's a fascinatingly annoying cycle. And there's only one viable way out of it.

Looking for the Podcast RSS feed or other links? Check here:
https://lunduke.locals.com/post/4619051/lunduke-journal-link-central-tm

Give the gift of The Lunduke Journal:
https://lunduke.locals.com/post/4898317/give-the-gift-of-the-lunduke-journal

The futility of Ad-Blockers
November 21, 2023
openSUSE says "No Lunduke allowed!"

Those in power with openSUSE make it clear they will not allow me anywhere near anything related to the openSUSE project. Ever. For any reason.

Well, that settles that, then! Guess I won't be contributing to openSUSE! 🤣

Looking for the Podcast RSS feed or other links?
https://lunduke.locals.com/post/4619051/lunduke-journal-link-central-tm

Give the gift of The Lunduke Journal:
https://lunduke.locals.com/post/4898317/give-the-gift-of-the-lunduke-journal

openSUSE says "No Lunduke allowed!"
September 13, 2023
"Andreas Kling creator of Serenity OS & Ladybird Web Browser" - Lunduke’s Big Tech Show - September 13th, 2023 - Ep 044

This episode is free for all to enjoy and share.

Be sure to subscribe here at Lunduke.Locals.com to get all shows & articles (including interviews with other amazing nerds).

"Andreas Kling creator of Serenity OS & Ladybird Web Browser" - Lunduke’s Big Tech Show - September 13th, 2023 - Ep 044
Lunduke Journal 50% off (including Lifetime) ends tonight!

Ay, caramba! These Lunduke Journal discounts end tonight (Friday) at midnight!

  • 50% off Monthly — Now $3 / Month (normally $6 / Month)
  • 50% off Yearly — Now $27 / Year (normally $54 / Year)
  • 50% off Yearly MP4 Downloads — Now $27 / Year (normally $54 / Year)
  • 50% off Lifetime Subscriptions — Now $100 (normally $200)

Grab one. Support The Lunduke Journal. Save some moolah.

Here’s all the details on how to snag a discount:

https://lunduke.substack.com/p/stick-it-to-big-tech-50-off-everything

  • Lunduk
15 hours ago

What Good Am I in the Age of GenAI Coding?

I am not an AI skeptic. On the contrary, I welcome the new overlords. (I’m kidding with the last part.) I know some are asking: “If AI is doing the coding, will human coders go the way of typesetters?”

I’d say we coders are going the way of buggy builders who became automobile builders. My metaphor needs work — but I’m trying to say: there will be more work for us, not less.

This week, my employer is training 250k of us on Vibe Coding. I’m ahead of the game, as I’ve been exploring GenAI extensively ever since ChatGPT rocked the world. Let me give a bit of a testimony about my Vibe Coding project — to build an accelerator: “just drop in your data” and have a prebuilt, industry-best-practice dashboard.

Step 1:
I’m not a telecom expert, so I had 4 different AIs do deep research on the topic. Then I had ChatGPT consolidate their findings into a “best of.” Now I have 50 telecom industry KPIs and their definitions to work from.

In a real project, I’d ...

Can I get an "Amen"?!

post photo preview
post photo preview
LibreOffice Developer’s Hotmail Account Locked After LibreOffice Criticizes Microsoft
“Wow that looks bad,” says Microsoft employee.

Mike Kaginski, a LibreOffice developer (who works for Collabora), has had his Microsoft-hosted email account, which he uses for open source development, locked for “activity that violates our Microsoft Services Agreement”.

 

Kaginski discovered this when attempting to send an email to the LibreOffice development mailing list (hosted by FreeDesktop). It remains unclear if that specific email (which he sent via another address and was rather bland and technical) was the reason for the ban… or if attempting to send the email was simply the first time the ban was noticed by him.

This happened just days after LibreOffice officially accused Microsoft of engaging in a “Lock-in” strategy by creating “artificially complex”, XML-based office documents.

Are the two events related? Hard to say with any certainty.

To make matters worse, Kaginski has had no success in getting Microsoft to lift his locked email account — with the company making him jump through numerous, impossible hoops (such as requiring him to sign in to submit an appeal for his account being locked… but not allowing him to sign in… because his account is locked).

You got that? Sign in to fix the account you can’t sign in with.

Gotta love a good Catch-22.

Good job, Microsoft.

The Lunduke Journal reached out to a contact, within Microsoft, who made it clear that their group was not aware of the LibreOffice Developer’s locked account, but they were aware of the LibreOffice complaint article regarding “artificially complex” XML lock-in. Adding, “wow that looks bad”.

The Lunduke Journal’s Analysis

The odds of locking a LibreOffice developer’s email account being an official Microsoft corporate decision seems highly unlikely.

Microsoft, as a company, makes a lot of bad decisions — but this would just be too stupid for words. A massive PR blunder.

But could a single employee, feeling grumpy, have done it on an impulse? As some sort of revenge for LibreOffice’s “harsh” words about Microsoft? Sure. That seems entirely plausible?

Though, it’s also entirely plausible that some poorly designed AI-driven “naughty activity” detection bot flagged his account. Or, perhaps, the developer was reported by some random Open Source hooligan who likes to cause chaos (there’s a lot of those).

Either way, the fact that Microsoft requires people to log in — on accounts which cannot log in — in order to file an “appeal” is incredibly amusing. And is very, very typical Microsoft.

Read full Article
post photo preview
Open Source “Political Protest Forks” Thriving
Many called XLibre & Redot nothing more than “political protests” that would quickly die and be forgotten. Boy were those naysayers wrong.

Over the last year, we’ve seen a couple of high profile forks, of large Open Source projects, which were inspired — in part — by a desire to move away from the political discrimination and Leftist Extremism within the original projects.

At the time, when each of these forked projects were started, many predicted that they would go nowhere. That they were nothing more than “political protest forks” — and they would die out quickly.

Let’s check in on both of those project to see if that has happened.

XLibre - The Xorg Fork

Since officially launching, at the end of June (last month), the XLibre project has published a handful of official releases (now up to version 25.0.0.5)… with a significant number of changes and fixes.

 

In fact, considering the significant new features (such as XNamespace Extensions), the first release of XLibre is larger (in every way I can think to measure) than any Xorg release in the last decade. With the number of contributors growing.

How about Operating System support? Many predicted that XLibre would be ignored by every Linux distribution on the planet. That it would go nowhere and nobody would use it.

According to the “Are we XLibre yet?” wiki, a number of systems have already (officially) adopted XLibre. Including: Devuan, Artix, GhostBSD, and (my personal favorite) OpenMandriva.

 

This is important to note: All of that support has occurred even though XLibre has only existed for one month. Several systems already officially supporting it is nothing short of “crazy impressive”. Borderline unprecedented.

In addition, a number of systems have 3rd party repositories which allow users to install and use XLibre. Including: Arch, FreeBSD, Gentoo, NixOS, Slackware, and (seriously) macOS.

 

In short: Growing group of developers. Rapidly growing platform support. New releases which put the original project (Xorg) to shame.

Redot - The Godot Game Engine Fork

The Redot project — which forked off of Godot back in October of 2024 — had a stable release (4.3.1) back in June, and just had a new test release (4.4 Alpha 2). Both with both new features and fixes.

 

In fact, Redot has had 13 releases since the project started late last year.

With an absolutely massive number of commits since then.

 

In short: Steady, new releases. New features and bug fixes. Both stable and testing releases.

These Projects are Thriving

It’s hard to look at either of these projects and come to any conclusion other than they are absolutely thriving.

At this point, it’s looking like those who predicted rapid failure for these “Political Forks” were not only wrong… but wildly, obscenely wrong.

There’s a lesson in there.

Read full Article
post photo preview
Groupthink & Tech Journalism
Why The Lunduke Journal uses the “10th Man Rule” to counter groupthink in the Tech Industry.

If my audience always agrees with me — 100% of the time — I’m probably doing something wrong.

That’s core to the ethos of The Lunduke Journal.

Any Brand X Tech Journalist can publish articles and shows filled with ideas, and facts, which their audience is known to already approve of. It’s easy to play it safe. To tell people — and corporations — what they want to hear. To pander.

We have enough Tech Journalists who do exactly that. Heck, we’re lousy with ‘em.

Put another way: The Lunduke Journal is not here to make friends. Not here to win some “Tech Reporter Popularity Contest”(tm).

Why The Lunduke Journal Exists

The Lunduke Journal exists to tell the truth about the Tech Industry (and world of Computing) — as I see it — no matter what. To tell the stories the other Tech Journalists are terrified of touching, for fear of losing that afore mentioned popularity contest.

The Lunduke Journal publishes leaks from major corporations — royally ticking off all of Big Tech in the process.

The Lunduke Journal shines a light on the discriminatory, DEI, & woke practices of Tech — causing nearly every Tech Industry person, with a Left-leaning political stance, to label me enemy number one (often attacking me, with wildly vulgar statements, in a desperate attempt to discredit me).

The Lunduke Journal investigates the shady business practices of Open Source Foundations and organizations — resulting in nearly every leader within the Free and Open Source world to either fear or despise me (often both).

In fact, The Lunduke Journal publishes stories — ranging from investigative pieces to pure opinion and analysis — which will, undoubtedly, infuriate (or at least annoy) every single nerd on this green Earth of ours.

Prefer Linux, Windows, or Mac? Left, Center, or Right politically? Pro or Anti-Government control over Tech? Star Wars or Star Trek?

Never fear. There will surely be a Lunduke Journal story which you will strongly disagree with. Just give it a little time.

Let me tell you why.

The Tenth Man Principle

Groupthink can be a very dangerous thing. Especially when you already agree with the consensus of the group.

There is a concept where, if 9 men all agree on something — an idea, a fact, a strategy — it is the duty of the 10th man to take a different approach. To pursue a contrary idea or strategy.

In some ways this is a variation on “Playing Devil’s Advocate”, but I prefer the “10th Man Principle” — it is more focused on challenging an entrenched consensus.

Which is where The Lunduke Journal comes in.

When I sit down and read Tech News — and listen to Tech Podcasts or Videos — and 90% of the coverage is all repeating the same position… whenever an extreme consensus has been reached… a red flag is raised. The 10th Man Principle is triggered.

My job is then to take whatever that topic is — a piece of breaking Tech news, a historical fact, an opinion on how Tech should be governed, etc. — and spin it around. Look at it from a completely different angle — and pursue that new line of thinking.

This isn’t about simply being contrarian for the sake of being contrarian.

I must investigate that topic rigorously. Focus on known, verifiable facts. Challenge any assumptions made (by myself or others) in whatever that consensus is. Dig deep. Dig where others have not. See where that investigation leads.

Sometimes that investigation leads to nothing overly interesting or worth publishing. Other times… the results are illuminating and profoundly valuable.

If you’ve followed The Lunduke Journal for any length of time, you’ve seen the results of this ethos. Over and over again.

And I Love It

There are, obviously, some challenges with this approach. To put it mildly.

Corporate sponsorship is — for reasons I clearly do not need to explain — impossible.

Luckily, The Lunduke Journal has an amazing (and generous) audience which keeps the lights on, making corporate sponsorship completely unnecessary. So Big Tech can kiss my tuchus.

On that note, getting employees of any Corporation or Foundation to talk “on the record” is simply not going to happen. In fact, many organizations have firm (and, often, stated) policies of “Don’t talk to Lunduke… ever”.

But, you know what? The brave whistleblowers within those companies have proven far more enlightening than any official statement from an executive could hope to be.

Oh, and that “Tech Journalism Popularity Contest”(tm)? Pshht. Forget about it. Not a chance. Not as long as I continue with the “10th Man Principle”.

If I’m doing my job right, the list of people who consider me an enemy of whatever entrenched, consensus position they hold… will continue to grow.

While, at the same time, the rag-tag group of Lunduke Journal supporters — those amazing nerds who see the need for this work (even though, on occasion, I publish something which challenges one of their deeply held convictions… or, perhaps, because of it) — will also continue to grow.

You know what? I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Read full Article
See More
Available on mobile and TV devices
google store google store app store app store
google store google store app tv store app tv store amazon store amazon store roku store roku store
Powered by Locals