computer science

Pat Villani

Pat Villani is a computer science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Pat Villani rather than just read about it. In short: Pasquale "Pat" J. Villani (18 April 1954 – 27 August 2011) was an American computer programmer, author, and advocate of free software, best known for his creation of DOS-C, a DOS emulator written in the C language and subsequently adapted as the kernel of the FreeDOS operating system and a number of other projects including DOSEMU for Linux.

Key takeaways

Pat Villani belongs to computer science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Pat Villani to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Pat Villani from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Pasquale "Pat" J. Villani (18 April 1954 – 27 August 2011) was an American computer programmer, author, and advocate of free software, best known for his creation of DOS-C, a DOS emulator written in the C language and subsequently adapted as the kernel of the FreeDOS operating system and a number of other projects including DOSEMU for Linux. He used to sign his edits with siglum "patv".

FreeDOS involvement Villani had already been working on a DOS-like operating system for use in embedded systems for some while before the advent of FreeDOS. His efforts started when he developed an MS-DOS 3.1-compatible interface emulator to write device drivers in the C high-level language instead of in assembly language, as was the usual approach at that time. This interface emulator grew into a minimal operating system named XDOS around 1988. He added an IPL to set up a boot environment before loading the actual operating system and developed an MS-DOS-compatible frontend API to applications. In contrast to MS-DOS, which is not designed to be reentrant, the system calls of his operating system were, which is often a requirement for multitasking and real-time applications in embedded systems. This system was named NSS-DOS and also offered commercially. When one potential contractor sought to use the OS in a system equipped with Motorola 680x0 processors instead of Intel x86 processors, for which the system was designed originally and which utilize different instruction sets and memory models, Villani was able to redesign his system to become portable across a range of different compilers and target environments. This move to a completely different target platform, while losing binary compatibility with existing applications, would have required a complete rewrite from scratch had his system not been written in a high-level language such as C, which allowed him to reuse large parts. His new DOS/NT used a microkernel architecture with logical separation of file system, memory and task manager.

Villani joined the FreeDOS project in 1994 after reading Jim Hall's announcement of a "PD-DOS" on comp.os.msdos.misc.apps. In response to Hall's announcement, Villani devised a derivative of DOS/NT named DOS-C with a monolithic kernel and an architecture more similar to the non-multitasking MS-DOS, and in 1995 he made it available for dual-use under a GPL open-source license to become the kernel component of the new "Free-DOS" operating system, as "PD-DOS" was called at this time. In 1996, Villani wrote the book FreeDOS Kernel, which describes the design of the DOS-C / FreeDOS kernel and the original FreeDOS COMMAND.COM command line interpreter. The name of the operating system was subsequently officially changed to FreeDOS to reflect the spelling used in the book. Internally, the FreeDOS kernel was still significantly different from MS-DOS, which, while no problem for embedded applications specifically written for FreeDOS, caused various compatibility issues in conjunction with misbehaving DOS applications. Villani and other contributors analyzed and addressed many of these issues over the years for FreeDOS to become much more MS-DOS compatible. With some breaks Villani remained active with the FreeDOS project, including preparations for the release of FreeDOS 1.1. Since 2009 he had also held the role of the project coordinator, but he had to step down in April 2011 for health reasons. The FreeDOS 1.1 release, published on 2 January 2012, is dedicated to him.

Biography Villani was born in Nocera Inferiore near Naples, Italy, grew up in Brooklyn, New York, USA, and moved to Freehold Township, New Jersey in 1990. In 1976, he received his BSEE degree from Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn and in 1981 an MSEE degree in electrical engineering from Polytechnic Institute of New York. In 2008, he also received a master's certificate in Project Management from George Washington University and he was an adjunct professor at Brookdale Community College beginning in 2010. He previously worked for Stratus Computers, Inc. on their Continuum fault-tolerant product line and also as a consultant for AT&T Bell Laboratories. At Digital Equipment Corporation / Compaq he worked as a principal software engineer on the OSF/1 / Digital UNIX / Tru64 UNIX operating system beginning in 1995, and since 2006 had been Acting Director of Communications Infrastructure and Software Architect for Vonage. He was a member of MARS, ARRL, and IEEE.

Bibliography Villani, Pat (1996). FreeDOS Kernel - An MS-DOS Emulator for Platform Independence & Embedded System Development - Master OS Development. Lawrence, USA: R&D Books. ISBN 978-0-87930-436-2. ISBN 0-87930-436-7. Villani, Pat (2001). Programming Win32 Under The API. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-1-57820-067-2. US patent application number: 12/779,489, publication number: US 2010/0290455 A1, filing date: 2010-05-13, Method and apparatus for communication termination routing, ([1]). US patent application number: 12/897,405, publication number: US 2011/0081009 A1, filing date: 2010-10-04, Method and apparatus for providing an identifier for a Caller ID function in a telecommunication system, ([2]).

References

External links Pat Villani's homepage at the Wayback Machine (archived 2012-03-26) Original DOS-C GPLed release on SourceForge DOS-C page at the Wayback Machine (archived 2012-01-16) The FreeDOS project

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Pat Villani

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Pat Villani claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In computer science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Pat Villani before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Pat Villani ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Pat Villani

In research: Pat Villani appears in computer science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Pat Villani in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Pat Villani is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1954 births, 2011 deaths, American computer programmers, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Pat Villani outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

Affiliate

Preply — study more efficiently by working with a personal tutor. 50% off.

How to study Pat Villani in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Pat Villani means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Pat Villani out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Pat Villani in simple terms?

Why does Pat Villani matter?

Because it connects several computer science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Pat Villani?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Pat Villani.