Ariel Millennium Thornton @arielmt@computerfairi.es

A lot of Microsoft Knowledge Base articles linked to Hotfix programs downloadable from the Microsoft Download Center. The MSKB was culled, & the MSDC is gone. MSKB article archives exist, but they have only dead links, no files.

Does anyone have an archive of MSDC files?

And on SourceForge, which is newer?? FreeDOS edlin: https://sourceforge.net/projects/freedos-edlin/

I also forgot FreeDOS wrote their own EDLIN port: https://github.com/FDOS/edlin

@lopta I wonder if FreeDOS edlin compiles in 64-bit. I've been meaning to try, but building anything on Windows is a long and painful experience for me.

FreeDOS edlin: https://github.com/FDOS/edlin

@cyberspice MS-DOS edlin was inherited from QDOS edlin, which was a clone of CP/M ed, not a clone of Unix ed. CP/M ed was heavily inspired by Unix ed, yes, but CP/M ed had a different user interface making for a very different user experience.

@balglaas The last time I wanted edlin was in 1999, when my only PC was a Windows laptop. When I upgraded to XP in '04, I became frustrated because edlin only works in qwerty, even when Windows CMD uses another keyboard layout.

In the Unix & Linux worlds, I've made ed my main editor, with vi and nano as fallbacks. It's the only editor I use where I don't have to worry about incompatible terminals or terminal oddities, & where the only feature I might miss is syntax highlighting.

I've just been corrected by dosnostalgic on birdsite: DOS 6 and Windows 9x didn't have EDLIN, either. Oops.

@KitRedgrave The robot writers and human editor are both being exploited by a not-open AI corporation founded by the same human capitalist teaching robot cars to kill their occupants & pedestrians.

It's only 64-bit versions of (x86) Windows that don't come with EDLIN installed.

Also, in Vista, 7, 8, 8.1, & 10, you need to install NTVDM separately in order to run EDLIN. Typing the command for the first time brings up a Windows Troubleshooter Wizard to do just that for you.

Every version of MS-DOS came with EDLIN.

Every 16-bit version of Windows let you run EDLIN via the underlying MS-DOS.

Every 32-bit version of Windows from the first RTM of Windows 95 right through to the current version of Windows 10 came with EDLIN.