PC DOS Resurrection

In my head, I keep a roadmap of what needs to be done for PC DOS/RE, a list of milestones that I believe must be reached before the project is "ready for primetime".  Many of these milestones represent features in mainline MS-DOS (or occasionally PC DOS) which are not currently available. Kernel milestones: Break out the Version Fake Table, currently in src/dos/msinit.asm , into a loadable driver ( setver.exe ). (5.0) Ability to load drivers, TSRs and DOS itself high. (5.0) MEMMAKER support in the above high-loading capability. (6.0) Ability to ignore CONFIG.SYS and (by sending the /D switch to command.com ) AUTOEXEC.BAT, or to step through them line by line. (6.0, 6.2) MultiConfig. (6.0) FAT32. (7.1) Command interpreter milestones: Rewrite dir to support the many enhancements added since 4.0. (5.0) Ability to load TSRs high, including MEMMAKER support. (5.0, 6.0) Add /K switch to run a command and remain active (by analogue with /C which runs a command but exits). (6.0) ...

So why is this project called "PC DOS/RE" ?  It's based on MS-DOS 4, right? The answer in a word: Trademarks. PC DOS was not actually officially called "PC DOS" until version 6 (though it was unofficially called that all the way back to the beginning, and version 3.3 has the string "PC-DOS" stored in the files).  And outside the anglosphere, it still said "IBM DOS", the same as it does on 4.0 and later.  And there is never a ™ or ® anywhere to be seen on the name "PC DOS" or its logo. I suspect part of this reason may have to do with clones of PC DOS that used variants of "PC DOS" or "PC-DOS" in their names, like Digital Research's "Concurrent PC DOS" or The Software Link's "PC-MOS". So the name "PC DOS" was, technically fair game... but I still wanted to differentiate between IBM's PC DOS and my PC DOS, since obviously being forked from an earlier point (PC DOS split fro...

About a month ago, Microsoft and IBM opened up the source to MS-DOS/PC DOS 4 (the code drop contained the unique utilities from both).  Lacking were HIMEM.SYS , DOSSHELL and GWBASIC .  Otherwise it was complete and with only limited effort on my part I quickly had a working build. I have started to work toward trying to get this - it's just close enough to DOS 5 and 6 to drive me up a wall - closer to what I had already been trying to do for years with a project called DOSLITE (and before that, the failed experiment I called RMF-DOS).  But now - we've not only got actual source code to DOS (Microsoft released 2.11 a few years back), but it's not that far behind what we need.  (Not a lot of changes made to the utilities present in 4, between then and the release of 6.22 about five years later.  It was mostly the kernel, shell and new utilities that didn't exist in 4.) So this is my goal - and I know I'm in over my head, because even 25 years of experience in C,...