On Sat, Feb 7, 2015 at 12:20 AM, Rugxulo <rugx...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 6, 2015 at 8:18 PM, dmccunney <dennis.mccun...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> I allocated the 2GB slice for FreeDOS expecting to use FAT16, and
>> FAT32 support was a happy fringe benefit. Even with a full FreeDOS
>> installation including pretty much everything on the ISO, and an
>> assortment of other old DOS apps, I think I've used about a quarter of
>> the 2GB FreeDOS partition. I'm trying to think of what I might store
>> there using DOS that would *need* more space, and can't think of
>> anything. The advantage to FAT32 was more efficient use of existing
>> space, because a cluster could be a lot smaller.
>
> My Lenovo's FAT32 partition (4 GB) is almost full, mostly due to lots
> of DJGPP .ZIPs (backups). Granted, there's a lot of overlap there, and
> of course with networking (and free/libre tools) you can offload
> anything until the need is more pressing.
I wouldn't keep all of those backup zips on the partition. On the box
FreeDOS is on, Win2K and Linux can both read/write the FreeDOS
partition, and I could move backups to a different slice and/or
offload them to CD or DVD. I'd likely also use 7z (which I recall has
a FreeDOS DJGPP port of an older version) to create the archives. 7z
archivess are significantly smaller than Zip archives.
> I'm still trying to improve my (FreeDOS-based) MetaDOS floppy .img. So
> it's like me bragging that I don't need more than 400 kb! I've just
> offloaded everything to the network, where you can download it
> separately (to RAM disk or optional hard disk image), if truly
> desired. It doesn't mean there isn't more stuff (obviously), but it
> isn't 100% obvious what is literally 100% needed or not (for all
> audiences). There's just too many use cases, and I'm not fully
> comfortable even now because I know how much is out there (literally
> decades of software).
The minimum literally need is what you have to have for a working
FreeDOS installation. In practice, this means the DOS kernel,
COMMAND.COM, required drivers, and standard utilities. Everything
else is a user application, and every user will have a different mix.
Better package management and easier adding of desired apps once you
have a working FreeDOS installation is a goal.
> Niklaus Wirth ported his Oberon compiler and OS to a small 1 MB RAM,
> FPGA ("RISC") machine. Can you live with such a small amount?
> Partially, yes. Do most people want to do that? No. Can things be
> slimmed down? Definitely. Can we support every obscure legacy
> (hardware and software) in such minimal amounts? Not really.
<shrug> The earliest DOS machines had 256KB RAM, and Lotus 1,2,3
largely forced everyone to to get to a full 6640KB to be able to
create huge worksheets. Using memory *beyond* 640KB requires playing
games with things like EMS, So in the DOS world, sure, you can live
with 1MB RAM. People did for years. If you *can't*, chances are good
you should be using something other than DOS.
> You have to pick your poison: games, multimedia, text, programming,
> networking, math, utilities, system/low-level/drivers, emulation, etc.
You always did.
> P.S. Check your %windir%\fonts subdir, and tell me how big it is! ;-)
On the current Win7 desktop, 455MB. That's *down* from earlier
incarnations. (I'm a former designer, do the odd DTP project, and
collect fonts, so I have more than the standeard set.
______
Dennis
https://plus.google.com/u/0/105128793974319004519
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