Double DOS:: Multitasking on Your Workstation

Abstract

A multitasking program lets you do two things at once on your micro, for example, print spine labels while you edit the gift book list. At WILS, we use Double DOS, a S50 multitasking program, on our bulletin board computer. Double DOS divides the memory of the computer in two, letting us run one program in each section. We see only one section at a time; a simple combination of keys switches from one to the other. While the bulletin board program answers calls in the background, we use the other section of memory for word processing and printing requests. We have a command in our AUTOEXEC.BAT file that automatically starts Double DOS when we turn on the computer; a configuration file tells the program how to divide the memory. (You control how the memory is divided and can give one section priority, so that the program loaded there will run faster.) We give priority to the section that runs the bulletin board so online sessions won't slow down too much when we're using the free section of memory.

Citation

Moore, C. (1986), "Double DOS:: Multitasking on Your Workstation", OCLC Micro, Vol. 2 No. 6, pp. 15-18. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb055813