[Freedos-user] FreeDOS bootable CD image sought
This may be a FAQ. I have an old DOS program that I wrote and still want to run, but it uses VESA 3.0 SVGA graphics, which are not [fully] supported by later versions of Windoze.* To make matters worse, the program writes to disk during operation, and no modern computer has FAT16 partitions anymore. So I'm looking to package the program on a CD with FreeDOS, DOS 7.1 or something that can provide DOS functionality and write to a FAT32 partition. And preferably, the program should autorun upon bootup. The bootable CD images that I've been seeing for FreeDOS and DOS 7.1 are all *installation* disks that first fake a floppy drive and then load a bootable floppy disk image that cannot be edited. I don't want to actually install DOS and overwrite Windoze. I do want something that will boot directly to the command line, allow me to add my own files and directories and...preferably...allow me to put DOS commands in an AUTOEXEC file. Any thoughts and/or advice are appreciated. Bruce *In XP, I can hit F8, boot to safe mode, and get SVGA graphics with VBE that way. But it messes up my desktop and takes a long time to boot. -- Sent from my meager, humble desktop computer. -- Monitor your physical, virtual and cloud infrastructure from a single web console. Get in-depth insight into apps, servers, databases, vmware, SAP, cloud infrastructure, etc. Download 30-day Free Trial. Pricing starts from $795 for 25 servers or applications! http://p.sf.net/sfu/zoho_dev2dev_nov___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS bootable CD image sought
At 07:28 PM 11/24/2012, bruce.bowman tds.net wrote: This may be a FAQ. I have an old DOS program that I wrote and still want to run, but it uses VESA 3.0 SVGA graphics, which are not [fully] supported by later versions of Windoze.* To make matters worse, the program writes to disk during operation, and no modern computer has FAT16 partitions anymore. So I'm looking to package the program on a CD with FreeDOS, DOS 7.1 or something that can provide DOS functionality and write to a FAT32 partition. And preferably, the program should autorun upon bootup. Well, your main problem here is that in case of an machine running Windows XP, you are likely using a hard drive formatted with NTFS and not FAT32, which means you would be at the mercy of a working NTFS file system driver as well, and that is at least in terms of write access a bit of a gamble IMPE... Ralf -- Monitor your physical, virtual and cloud infrastructure from a single web console. Get in-depth insight into apps, servers, databases, vmware, SAP, cloud infrastructure, etc. Download 30-day Free Trial. Pricing starts from $795 for 25 servers or applications! http://p.sf.net/sfu/zoho_dev2dev_nov ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS bootable CD image sought
Thanks for your reply, Ralf. I have a FAT32 partition (D drive). At home, it might be simpler to just install FreeDOS as the OS on that partition and set up a dual-boot system (XP on C:, FreeDOS on D:). In fact I'm considering doing just that, and frankly wouldn't mind recommendations on how to bring that about, either. But it doesn't fix my problem of trying to find some way to distribute the program on CD media to my friends. Ultimately I may rewrite it to use DirectX with a native 32-bit compiler but I've also been saying that for the last 5 years. Bruce On Sat, Nov 24, 2012 at 11:47 PM, Ralf A. Quint free...@gmx.net wrote: At 07:28 PM 11/24/2012, bruce.bowman tds.net wrote: This may be a FAQ. I have an old DOS program that I wrote and still want to run, but it uses VESA 3.0 SVGA graphics, which are not [fully] supported by later versions of Windoze.* To make matters worse, the program writes to disk during operation, and no modern computer has FAT16 partitions anymore. So I'm looking to package the program on a CD with FreeDOS, DOS 7.1 or something that can provide DOS functionality and write to a FAT32 partition. And preferably, the program should autorun upon bootup. Well, your main problem here is that in case of an machine running Windows XP, you are likely using a hard drive formatted with NTFS and not FAT32, which means you would be at the mercy of a working NTFS file system driver as well, and that is at least in terms of write access a bit of a gamble IMPE... Ralf -- Monitor your physical, virtual and cloud infrastructure from a single web console. Get in-depth insight into apps, servers, databases, vmware, SAP, cloud infrastructure, etc. Download 30-day Free Trial. Pricing starts from $795 for 25 servers or applications! http://p.sf.net/sfu/zoho_dev2dev_nov ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user -- Sent from my meager, humble desktop computer. -- Monitor your physical, virtual and cloud infrastructure from a single web console. Get in-depth insight into apps, servers, databases, vmware, SAP, cloud infrastructure, etc. Download 30-day Free Trial. Pricing starts from $795 for 25 servers or applications! http://p.sf.net/sfu/zoho_dev2dev_nov___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS bootable CD image sought
On Sat, 2012-11-24 at 20:47 -0800, Ralf A. Quint wrote: At 07:28 PM 11/24/2012, bruce.bowman tds.net wrote: This may be a FAQ. I have an old DOS program that I wrote and still want to run, but it uses VESA 3.0 SVGA graphics, which are not [fully] supported by later versions of Windoze.* To make matters worse, the program writes to disk during operation, and no modern computer has FAT16 partitions anymore. So I'm looking to package the program on a CD with FreeDOS, DOS 7.1 or something that can provide DOS functionality and write to a FAT32 partition. And preferably, the program should autorun upon bootup. Well, your main problem here is that in case of an machine running Windows XP, you are likely using a hard drive formatted with NTFS and not FAT32, which means you would be at the mercy of a working NTFS file system driver as well, and that is at least in terms of write access a bit of a gamble IMPE... Ralf Can you perhaps create a freedos boot disk? Should be an option if you have an install CD. What is the size of this program that needs a fat16 file system specifically? I think you can have up to a 504 meg partition and still use FAT16. Any chance you can shrink that NTFS partition by 500 megs and install Freedos to a second primary partition using ntfsresize or partition magic? Another approach is to use Linux via a live CD to back up Windows XP to an external hard drive. Set that back up aside, make the NTFS partition the first primary partition making freedos install on a second primary partition. Any decent live Linux CD can resize NTFS partitions to open up 500 megs of space. An easier approach is to add another hard drive and install freedos onto that. How old is your computer? Good luck. -- Monitor your physical, virtual and cloud infrastructure from a single web console. Get in-depth insight into apps, servers, databases, vmware, SAP, cloud infrastructure, etc. Download 30-day Free Trial. Pricing starts from $795 for 25 servers or applications! http://p.sf.net/sfu/zoho_dev2dev_nov ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS bootable CD image sought
Michael -- Thanks much for your reply. Perhaps my reply to Ralf answers many of your questions. The program itself is not particularly large and would probably run in 300-400k of RAM. But when running it sequentially loads a lot of PCX images off disk. The program could be run from a ramdrive to overcome some of the i/o issues. I have an old Knoppix CD and have occasionally booted to that for troubleshooting purposes (lost passwords, etc). Back in the 90s I had a dual-boot Linux/W95 system. All the FreeDOS boot ISOs that I've seen are just for OS installation and do not appear to have LiveCD capability. If someone can point me to one that does I'd definitely appreciate that...I have MagicISO on my computer and that has proven somewhat helpful in this context. I don't own a floppy drive anymore and generally speaking do not plan to buy any new hardware. Regards, Bruce On Sun, Nov 25, 2012 at 12:11 AM, Michael Robinson plu...@robinson-west.com wrote: On Sat, 2012-11-24 at 20:47 -0800, Ralf A. Quint wrote: At 07:28 PM 11/24/2012, bruce.bowman tds.net wrote: This may be a FAQ. I have an old DOS program that I wrote and still want to run, but it uses VESA 3.0 SVGA graphics, which are not [fully] supported by later versions of Windoze.* To make matters worse, the program writes to disk during operation, and no modern computer has FAT16 partitions anymore. So I'm looking to package the program on a CD with FreeDOS, DOS 7.1 or something that can provide DOS functionality and write to a FAT32 partition. And preferably, the program should autorun upon bootup. Well, your main problem here is that in case of an machine running Windows XP, you are likely using a hard drive formatted with NTFS and not FAT32, which means you would be at the mercy of a working NTFS file system driver as well, and that is at least in terms of write access a bit of a gamble IMPE... Ralf Can you perhaps create a freedos boot disk? Should be an option if you have an install CD. What is the size of this program that needs a fat16 file system specifically? I think you can have up to a 504 meg partition and still use FAT16. Any chance you can shrink that NTFS partition by 500 megs and install Freedos to a second primary partition using ntfsresize or partition magic? Another approach is to use Linux via a live CD to back up Windows XP to an external hard drive. Set that back up aside, make the NTFS partition the first primary partition making freedos install on a second primary partition. Any decent live Linux CD can resize NTFS partitions to open up 500 megs of space. An easier approach is to add another hard drive and install freedos onto that. How old is your computer? Good luck. -- Monitor your physical, virtual and cloud infrastructure from a single web console. Get in-depth insight into apps, servers, databases, vmware, SAP, cloud infrastructure, etc. Download 30-day Free Trial. Pricing starts from $795 for 25 servers or applications! http://p.sf.net/sfu/zoho_dev2dev_nov ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user -- Sent from my meager, humble desktop computer. -- Monitor your physical, virtual and cloud infrastructure from a single web console. Get in-depth insight into apps, servers, databases, vmware, SAP, cloud infrastructure, etc. Download 30-day Free Trial. Pricing starts from $795 for 25 servers or applications! http://p.sf.net/sfu/zoho_dev2dev_nov___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS bootable CD image sought
Hi, have a couple ideas for you below... On Sat, 24 Nov 2012 22:28:39 -0500, bruce.bowman tds.net bruce.bow...@tds.net wrote: This may be a FAQ. I have an old DOS program that I wrote and still want to run, but it uses VESA 3.0 SVGA graphics, which are not [fully] supported by later versions of Windoze.* There are a couple fixes out there to make VESA modes work for DOS programs running within Windows (though I haven`t tried them myself). Search for winxpfix.zip or videoprt.zip The bootable CD images that I've been seeing for FreeDOS and DOS 7.1 are all *installation* disks that first fake a floppy drive and then load a bootable floppy disk image that cannot be edited. If your program can run from a floppy, perhaps you could add it to the bootable image. Use a program like winimage, or write the image to a diskette, copy your program to it, then create a new image from there. -- Monitor your physical, virtual and cloud infrastructure from a single web console. Get in-depth insight into apps, servers, databases, vmware, SAP, cloud infrastructure, etc. Download 30-day Free Trial. Pricing starts from $795 for 25 servers or applications! http://p.sf.net/sfu/zoho_dev2dev_nov ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] Try gparted on a live CD.
http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php Based on Debian I believe, there is a download link you'll need to click to get the iso image. Deepburner is a free CD/DVD burning tool that works in Windows XP/2000. There is a way to create a virtual floppy disk under Linux and burn that to CD. I think mtools is what you want. -- Monitor your physical, virtual and cloud infrastructure from a single web console. Get in-depth insight into apps, servers, databases, vmware, SAP, cloud infrastructure, etc. Download 30-day Free Trial. Pricing starts from $795 for 25 servers or applications! http://p.sf.net/sfu/zoho_dev2dev_nov ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS bootable CD image sought
winxpfix.zip and videoprt.zip have both been tried and neither of them work. They might provide VESA 1.2 or 2.0 capability but not 3.0. Between my wife and I, we own six computers. None of them have a floppy drive. Thanks, Bruce On Sun, Nov 25, 2012 at 12:47 AM, TJ Edmister damag...@hyakushiki.netwrote: Hi, have a couple ideas for you below... On Sat, 24 Nov 2012 22:28:39 -0500, bruce.bowman tds.net bruce.bow...@tds.net wrote: This may be a FAQ. I have an old DOS program that I wrote and still want to run, but it uses VESA 3.0 SVGA graphics, which are not [fully] supported by later versions of Windoze.* There are a couple fixes out there to make VESA modes work for DOS programs running within Windows (though I haven`t tried them myself). Search for winxpfix.zip or videoprt.zip The bootable CD images that I've been seeing for FreeDOS and DOS 7.1 are all *installation* disks that first fake a floppy drive and then load a bootable floppy disk image that cannot be edited. If your program can run from a floppy, perhaps you could add it to the bootable image. Use a program like winimage, or write the image to a diskette, copy your program to it, then create a new image from there. -- Sent from my meager, humble desktop computer. -- Monitor your physical, virtual and cloud infrastructure from a single web console. Get in-depth insight into apps, servers, databases, vmware, SAP, cloud infrastructure, etc. Download 30-day Free Trial. Pricing starts from $795 for 25 servers or applications! http://p.sf.net/sfu/zoho_dev2dev_nov___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS bootable CD image sought
Amazon.com has USB powered floppy drives for 13$
Maybe put together a freedos boot floppy with said program on it
And run it from there
On Saturday, November 24, 2012, bruce.bowman tds.net wrote:
winxpfix.zip and videoprt.zip have both been tried and neither of them
work. They might provide VESA 1.2 or 2.0 capability but not 3.0.
Between my wife and I, we own six computers. None of them have a floppy
drive.
Thanks,
Bruce
On Sun, Nov 25, 2012 at 12:47 AM, TJ Edmister
damag...@hyakushiki.netjavascript:_e({}, 'cvml',
'damag...@hyakushiki.net');
wrote:
Hi, have a couple ideas for you below...
On Sat, 24 Nov 2012 22:28:39 -0500, bruce.bowman tds.net
bruce.bow...@tds.net javascript:_e({}, 'cvml',
'bruce.bow...@tds.net'); wrote:
This may be a FAQ.
I have an old DOS program that I wrote and still want to run, but it
uses
VESA 3.0 SVGA graphics, which are not [fully] supported by later
versions
of Windoze.*
There are a couple fixes out there to make VESA modes work for DOS
programs running within Windows (though I haven`t tried them myself).
Search for winxpfix.zip or videoprt.zip
The bootable CD images that I've been seeing for FreeDOS and DOS 7.1 are
all *installation* disks that first fake a floppy drive and then load a
bootable floppy disk image that cannot be edited.
If your program can run from a floppy, perhaps you could add it to the
bootable image. Use a program like winimage, or write the image to a
diskette, copy your program to it, then create a new image from there.
--
Sent from my meager, humble desktop computer.
--
Monitor your physical, virtual and cloud infrastructure from a single
web console. Get in-depth insight into apps, servers, databases, vmware,
SAP, cloud infrastructure, etc. Download 30-day Free Trial.
Pricing starts from $795 for 25 servers or applications!
http://p.sf.net/sfu/zoho_dev2dev_nov___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS bootable CD image sought
On 2012-11-25 01:24 (GMT-0500) bruce.bowman tds.net composed: Between my wife and I, we own six computers. None of them have a floppy drive. No drive doesn't necessarily mean neither floppy controller nor place to put a floppy drive. A new floppy drive is easily found on the internet for under $10 if you can't find a free one locally, and floppy cables from old puters abound. Have you tried or considered DOSEMU under Linux? Have you considered putting DOS on a bootable USB stick? An example to try: http://www.dfsee.com/dfsee/cdrom.php Where there's enough will there's usually a way. -- The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant words are persuasive. Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation) Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks! Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ -- Monitor your physical, virtual and cloud infrastructure from a single web console. Get in-depth insight into apps, servers, databases, vmware, SAP, cloud infrastructure, etc. Download 30-day Free Trial. Pricing starts from $795 for 25 servers or applications! http://p.sf.net/sfu/zoho_dev2dev_nov ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
