A Modula-2 supervisor for multitasking with MS-DOS

Abstract

One of the disadvantages of Microsoft's disk operating system MS-DOS TM is its restriction to only one process running at a time. Consequently the integration of standard application programs to more complex application systems is rather limited. This paper shows how to use Modula-2 for integrating several standard MS-DOS applications. To perform this task, a Modula supervisor program implements a shell between application, MS-DOS operating system and BIOS (basic input output system). This shell provides all services needed for loading and executing programs as concurrent processes as well as a communication environment for these processes.