The Second Life of Autoconf for MS-DOS

Before GNU Autoconf generated configure scripts, there was a DOS program called Autoconf. It let you keep one CONFIG.SYS and one AUTOEXEC.BAT, then choose among boot configurations by pressing a key. You did not have to wait for a menu. The PC BIOS kept early keystrokes in its keyboard queue, so you could press a configuration letter before AUTOCONF.SYS had even loaded. When the driver finally ran, it found the key and continued immediately. I did not write the original. I copied its x86 assembly source by hand from a French computer magazine. It was the first assembly program I had ever seen and the first piece of code I compiled. I spent the next three or four years extending it into my first commercial product. For a long time I could not remember who had written that first version. I had thrown away the magazine, forgotten the issue, and lost the trail before old print archives became easy to search. Only now, with AI helping sift through a large collection of scanned SVM issues…