As far as I remember, MS-DOS 4.0 was specifically made for the European/German Siemens corporation. Was some weird mix of DOS and the later DosShell? (itself almost like the Windows 3.0 standard mode kernel). It provided Unix-like foreground and background processes, and so somehow resembled a multitasking environment.
RalfBrownsInterruptList has in-deep informations about this.
Just wondering, because someone said on TheTwelveSimpleSecretsOfMicrosoftManagement, that it was a big flop.
Yes, I was wondering about the flop part too. In Sweden we all had MS-DOS 4.01 (4.0 had some extremely stupid bug, going to look up what that was) until MS-DOS 5 came out. The DosShell? was really cool. Used it quite often on computers lacking NortonCommander, when I wanted a file manager and didn't have the patience (or available lowmem...) to start Windows. Some installations even booted into DosShell?, using it as a menu program. I seem to remember playing with some config files for that. --ClaesWallin