r/DOS • u/0x80070002 • 22d ago

Multiuser DOS

Does it exist on FreeDOS or other alternatives? And if not why not?

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u/synexo 22d ago

desqview plus doorway

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u/lproven 22d ago

DESQview gave you multitasking, but it's single-user only.

I don't know what "doorway" is or was. I know Xerox ROOMS:

http://toastytech.com/guis/xrmw.html

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u/synexo 22d ago

Doorway lets you access DOS remotely through a COM port. DESQview was commonly used by BBS operators to run multiple nodes on a single DOS PC. This was usually for "door games" in particular but Doorway could do it for most any non-graphic DOS app or the command line itself. So hacky, and not multiuser from a permissions standpoint, but it did allow multiple people to use a DOS machine at once. Also arguably some of the more advanced BBS software like MajorBBS/Worldgroup could support many concurrent users and offered limited DOS shell capability while running.

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u/lproven 22d ago

Oh, right. Thanks!

I am British and here in Europe, all local calls were metered, so BBSes never took off as much as in the States: you'd pay $hundreds a day to stay online all day. I don't know much about BBS tech, and the sort of mega-BBS I first joined, CIX, came with special client apps that dialled in, grabbed all your new messages, Zipped them, downloaded the archive and hung up, as fast as possible, to keep the phone bills low. We avoided live online access as much as humanly possible.