Re: [Freedos-user] Installation on a ThinkPad 340?

2016-12-17 Thread Mingcong Bai 
在 2016年12月17日 21:21, Rugxulo 写道:
> Hi,
>
> On Sat, Dec 17, 2016 at 2:55 PM, Mingcong Bai  wrote:
>> I happen to have a ThinkPad 340 kicking around:
>>
>> - Intel 486SLC2 25/50MHz
>> - 12MB RAM
>> - 3.5 inch 1.44MB Floppy Drive
>>
>> But FreeDOS seemed to have CD installation only... Is it possible to
>> install FreeDOS with a set of floppy disks still? If not, what are my
>> options?
> You mean that old bunch of like 88 floppy images for full FD 1.0?? Uh,
> no, that hasn't been attempted this time, probably overkill.
I must admit that I had no idea how complete a suite of FreeDOS is... 
That makes sense.
> FreeDOS is just a simple DOS, so bare minimum installation from floppy
> is easy (fdisk, fdapm warmboot, format, sys, xcopy). Of course that
> won't give you all third party software or even a full FD "BASE", but
> it will boot up (giving you at least a kernel, shell, and
> partition/MBR/boot sector). You can piecemeal add whatever you want.
> Truly, you don't always absolutely need all the extras (networking,
> games, archivers, development).
Okay... After the installation then would be a lot of playing with 
floppy disks.
> Do you have a working packet driver for networking for that machine?
> (My own MetaDOS floppy heavily relies on that, but it works fine under
> VBox or QEMU. So you can download there first and rawrite to physical
> disk later.) If so, that would make things a lot easier. IIRC, one way
> to halfway tell what card was "pcisleep q02" (or maybe NSSI or similar
> tool).
>
> http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distributions/unofficial/metados/
>
> Most other floppy image files are very old and abandoned. If you just
> need "whatever", I could point you to various ones, like I did on the
> bug tracker:
>
> * https://sourceforge.net/p/freedos/bugs/143/
> * https://sourceforge.net/p/freedos/bugs/129/
>
> But FD 1.2 RC2 has a bootable floppy installer (thanks to Jerome):
>
> http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distributions/1.2/previews/1.2-rc2/FD12FLOPPY.zip
>
> And Mateusz recently made his own Svarog86 floppy images:
>
> https://sourceforge.net/projects/svarog86/files/2015-05-29/
>
> Or if you could copy the .iso to the hard drive (via another
> computer), then you could then mount it via SHSUCDHD (I think).
>
> http://adoxa.altervista.org/shsucdx/index.html
> http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/dos/shsucdx/other/
Cool.
>> Oh also, I am a native Simplified Chinese user/speaker, there doesn't
>> seem to be any translation for CJKV (Chinese, Japanese, Korean,
>> Vietnamese) locales yet - is it not supported or just no one had gone in
>> and translate FreeDOS to these particular languages?
> Not sure exactly, you'd have to ask Henrique, the resident codepage
> expert (or maybe Wengier Wu on BTTR). Most of here don't grok such CJK
> languages, and IIRC there is no (fully working?) support for DBCS
> (unlike MS-DOS).
>
> IIRC, the typical DOS codepage doesn't hold many glyphs, so it's too
> small for most non-European (non-Roman alphabet) languages (but maybe
> some Cyrillic support). There are some minor workarounds (maybe), but
> most of us aren't qualified to test them.
>
> As far as Chinese (viewing only?), take a look here:
>
> https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/util/file/pg/libs/
>
> Or Foxtype (viewing only):
>
> http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distributions/1.2/repos/util/foxtype.zip
>
> We did have a (theoretical only, albeit with a few third-party links)
> discussion a few years ago about Japanese support (freedos-user, date:
> Nov. 8, 2013, subject: "FreeDOS/V"):
>
> https://sourceforge.net/p/freedos/mailman/freedos-user/thread/559d6bb6.6000...@gmail.com/
>
> In other words, such CJK languages probably need their own TSRs or
> tools in order to use graphics mode (instead of limited text mode).
> There is however no active support (AFAIK) in FreeDOS for any CJK.
That's exactly how it worked for MS-DOS, when I read about some 
information on the FreeDOS Wikipedia page regarding 
"internationalization" I thought FreeDOS already had Unicode display 
support. Oh well... I will try and get in touch with someone soon.
> You can still write Unicode stuff with various DOS ports, e.g. Mined
> or GNU Emacs or Blocek (gfx). It's not universal DOS system support by
> any means, but it's far better than nothing.
GNU Nano all the way!

Thanks for all your answers though, just a couple more questions...

- I have just managed to find a Disney Sound Source on eBay, how 
compatible is FreeDOS with MS-DOS drivers? I hope it would work on 
FreeDOS...
- How does "version upgrade" work for FreeDOS? Do I have to overwrite my 
installation every time, or is there update/upgrade mechanism built it?

Best Regards,
Mingcong Bai

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Re: [Freedos-user] Installation on a ThinkPad 340?

2016-12-17 Thread Rugxulo 
Hi,

On Sat, Dec 17, 2016 at 3:04 PM, Mingcong Bai  wrote:
>
> Oh also... If I have a Panasonic PCMCIA CD-ROM Drive, would I be able to
> use it with FreeDOS (then I suppose that I could burn the ISO image and
> boot it from the boot floppy...? If the driver works...).

I'm not a hardware guy, so I've never tested most of this low-level
stuff. There's too many options. But I can give a few links:

* http://btmgr.sourceforge.net/about.html
* http://www.freedos.org/software/?prog=smbtmgr

"
Smart BootManager supports booting from almost all kinds of IDE ATAPI
CD-ROMs, including PCMCIA CD-ROMs. You can let the BIOS boot from C:
only and assign a password for it, then you can boot from CD-ROM with
Smart BootManager. If you have a laptop with a special PCMCIA CD-ROM
which has no support for booting in the BIOS, Smart BootManager can
help you boot from it.
"

There's also this potential method:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Torito_%28CD-ROM_standard%29
* 
http://www.syslinux.org/wiki/index.php?title=MEMDISK#MEMDISK_and_generic_El_Torito_CD-ROM_driver_for_DOS
* http://wiki.osdev.org/El-Torito

Normally DOS requires a separate (device-specific) driver for CD
access, which can be hard to find for old devices (or even new ones).
We don't officially have a lot, and the last one we had was (more or
less) "abandoned" (closed source) some two years ago:

http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/dos/ellis/

Some people (also) recommend VIDE-CDD (or OAKCDROM), but I'm unsure of
the exact legality of using those (obviously depending on licensing
and your country's local laws).

Regarding PCMCIA hard disks, I think Deskwork.de (defunct?) had once
made public some partial DOS support (TP "unit") that was
semi-archived by one FreeDOS enthusiast:

http://ericauer.cosmodata.virtuaserver.com.br/soft/by-others/

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Re: [Freedos-user] Installation on a ThinkPad 340?

2016-12-17 Thread Rugxulo 
Hi,

On Sat, Dec 17, 2016 at 2:55 PM, Mingcong Bai  wrote:
>
> I happen to have a ThinkPad 340 kicking around:
>
> - Intel 486SLC2 25/50MHz
> - 12MB RAM
> - 3.5 inch 1.44MB Floppy Drive
>
> But FreeDOS seemed to have CD installation only... Is it possible to
> install FreeDOS with a set of floppy disks still? If not, what are my
> options?

You mean that old bunch of like 88 floppy images for full FD 1.0?? Uh,
no, that hasn't been attempted this time, probably overkill.

FreeDOS is just a simple DOS, so bare minimum installation from floppy
is easy (fdisk, fdapm warmboot, format, sys, xcopy). Of course that
won't give you all third party software or even a full FD "BASE", but
it will boot up (giving you at least a kernel, shell, and
partition/MBR/boot sector). You can piecemeal add whatever you want.
Truly, you don't always absolutely need all the extras (networking,
games, archivers, development).

Do you have a working packet driver for networking for that machine?
(My own MetaDOS floppy heavily relies on that, but it works fine under
VBox or QEMU. So you can download there first and rawrite to physical
disk later.) If so, that would make things a lot easier. IIRC, one way
to halfway tell what card was "pcisleep q02" (or maybe NSSI or similar
tool).

http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distributions/unofficial/metados/

Most other floppy image files are very old and abandoned. If you just
need "whatever", I could point you to various ones, like I did on the
bug tracker:

* https://sourceforge.net/p/freedos/bugs/143/
* https://sourceforge.net/p/freedos/bugs/129/

But FD 1.2 RC2 has a bootable floppy installer (thanks to Jerome):

http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distributions/1.2/previews/1.2-rc2/FD12FLOPPY.zip

And Mateusz recently made his own Svarog86 floppy images:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/svarog86/files/2015-05-29/

Or if you could copy the .iso to the hard drive (via another
computer), then you could then mount it via SHSUCDHD (I think).

http://adoxa.altervista.org/shsucdx/index.html
http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/dos/shsucdx/other/

> Oh also, I am a native Simplified Chinese user/speaker, there doesn't
> seem to be any translation for CJKV (Chinese, Japanese, Korean,
> Vietnamese) locales yet - is it not supported or just no one had gone in
> and translate FreeDOS to these particular languages?

Not sure exactly, you'd have to ask Henrique, the resident codepage
expert (or maybe Wengier Wu on BTTR). Most of here don't grok such CJK
languages, and IIRC there is no (fully working?) support for DBCS
(unlike MS-DOS).

IIRC, the typical DOS codepage doesn't hold many glyphs, so it's too
small for most non-European (non-Roman alphabet) languages (but maybe
some Cyrillic support). There are some minor workarounds (maybe), but
most of us aren't qualified to test them.

As far as Chinese (viewing only?), take a look here:

https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/util/file/pg/libs/

Or Foxtype (viewing only):

http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distributions/1.2/repos/util/foxtype.zip

We did have a (theoretical only, albeit with a few third-party links)
discussion a few years ago about Japanese support (freedos-user, date:
Nov. 8, 2013, subject: "FreeDOS/V"):

https://sourceforge.net/p/freedos/mailman/freedos-user/thread/559d6bb6.6000...@gmail.com/

In other words, such CJK languages probably need their own TSRs or
tools in order to use graphics mode (instead of limited text mode).
There is however no active support (AFAIK) in FreeDOS for any CJK.

You can still write Unicode stuff with various DOS ports, e.g. Mined
or GNU Emacs or Blocek (gfx). It's not universal DOS system support by
any means, but it's far better than nothing.

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Re: [Freedos-user] "FreeDOS B" Name

2016-12-17 Thread Steve Andy De George 
He should just call it BDos []  then it's close to what he wanted.



From: Jim Hall 
Sent: Monday, December 12, 2016 4:39 AM
To: Discussion and general questions about FreeDOS.
Subject: Re: [Freedos-user] "FreeDOS B" Name

FYI: I replied to him off-list and asked that he use a different name than 
"FreeDOS" for his alternative distribution.

On Dec 12, 2016 4:21 AM, "Ercan Ersoy" 
> wrote:

Hello.


My project is "FreeDOS B". This is live cd of FreeDOS and include open source 
DOS software. I'm obsessed by my project's name. May I use this name?


Best regards and thanks for replying.

Ercan

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Re: [Freedos-user] Installation on a ThinkPad 340?

2016-12-17 Thread Mingcong Bai 
Oh also... If I have a Panasonic PCMCIA CD-ROM Drive, would I be able to 
use it with FreeDOS (then I suppose that I could burn the ISO image and 
boot it from the boot floppy...? If the driver works...).


在 2016年12月17日 14:55, Mingcong Bai 写道:
> Hi all,
>
>
> I happen to have a ThinkPad 340 kicking around:
>
>
> - Intel 486SLC2 25/50MHz
>
> - 12MB RAM
>
> - ...
>
> - 3.5 inch 1.44MB Floppy Drive
>
>
> But FreeDOS seemed to have CD installation only... Is it possible to 
> install FreeDOS with a set of floppy disks still? If not, what are my 
> options?
>
>
> Oh also, I am a native Simplified Chinese user/speaker, there doesn't 
> seem to be any translation for CJKV (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, 
> Vietnamese) locales yet - is it not supported or just no one had gone 
> in and translate FreeDOS to these particular languages?
>
>
> Best Regards,
>
> Mingcong Bai
>


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