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

[Eric Auer]

Hi Userbeitrag,

> The only solution for /modern DOS/ would be to write an emulation for a 
> well supported sound card for older programs and games. That would be, 
> say, a SB16 emulation driver for AC97 and HD-Audio on-board sound cards. 
> So every DOS program/game would see the well supported SB16 and -- if 
> supported by this very program or game -- would be able to use it 
> through the emulation. I think this is how DOSBox does support sound.

Yes and no... Dosbox and Dosemu use protected mode to simulate
PC specific hardware, but they are not drivers. They are whole
virtual simulation environments. On the other hand, "SB PCI"
and "SB Live" did indeed use protected mode "drivers" where at
least some of the differences between actual hardware (mostly
AC97 PCI chips) and what games expected (usually SoundBlaster
in ISA variants) were compensated by simulation: The protected
mode "driver" intercepted attempts of the games to manipulate
the ISA hardware, made the games see what they had to see and
sent the sound data to the actual PCI hardware. There are very
few open source drivers in that style: I am only aware of the
"VSB" Virtual Sound Blaster package which is limited to very
minimal SoundBlaster variants (1.0? 2.0? 8 bit?) and does not
support DOS extenders as far as I remember. So only real mode
games which accept vm86 mode limitations did work, I think...

I have mirrored an old version at www.auersoft.eu/soft/by-others/

Regards, Eric



--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most 
engaging tech sites, SlashDot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

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

[Louis Santillan]

I think someone on Bttr has such an emulation sound driver for Intel hda or
ac97.

On Sun, Dec 18, 2016 at 4:11 PM  wrote:

> Hi Tom!
>
>
>
> As I understand it you cannot really make any use of initialized sound
>
> hardware in DOS except for a few -- very few -- programs that are aware
>
> of this very specific sound hardware.
>
>
>
> You may have noticed that /back in the old days/ every program/game had
>
> to be configured for the specific sound card in order to use it. Even
>
> within a family of sound cards there were incompatibilities. For
>
> example, games that ware written for Sound Blaster 1.0 (aka Game
>
> Blaster) und Sound Blaster 2.0 were not able to produce SoundBlaster
>
> sound on a more modern Sound Blaster Pro or Sound Blaster 16.
>
>
>
> The reason for this is very simple: there is no standardized sound API
>
> on DOS. So every sound card and driver created its own API and every
>
> application has to be written to support this very sound card (series).
>
>
>
> The only solution for /modern DOS/ would be to write an emulation for a
>
> well supported sound card for older programs and games. That would be,
>
> say, a SB16 emulation driver for AC97 and HD-Audio on-board sound cards.
>
> So every DOS program/game would see the well supported SB16 and -- if
>
> supported by this very program or game -- would be able to use it
>
> through the emulation. I think this is how DOSBox does support sound.
>
>
>
> If you do find a practical solution though -- I would be interested too!
>
>
>
> Cheers,
>
> userbeitrag
>
>
>
>
>
> On 2016-12-18 23:58, Thomas Mueller wrote:
>
> > Do such programs to init the sound hardware work with all sound hardware?
>
> > I have on-motherboard Intel high-definition audio and remember reading
> on this emailing list that it was not supported in any DOS.
>
> >
>
> > I get sound in FreeBSD and NetBSD.
>
> >
>
> > Tom
>
>
>
>
> --
>
> Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
>
> engaging tech sites, SlashDot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
>
> ___
>
> Freedos-user mailing list
>
> Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
>
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
>
>
--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most 
engaging tech sites, SlashDot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

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

[userbeitrag]

Hi Tom!

As I understand it you cannot really make any use of initialized sound 
hardware in DOS except for a few -- very few -- programs that are aware 
of this very specific sound hardware.

You may have noticed that /back in the old days/ every program/game had 
to be configured for the specific sound card in order to use it. Even 
within a family of sound cards there were incompatibilities. For 
example, games that ware written for Sound Blaster 1.0 (aka Game 
Blaster) und Sound Blaster 2.0 were not able to produce SoundBlaster 
sound on a more modern Sound Blaster Pro or Sound Blaster 16.

The reason for this is very simple: there is no standardized sound API 
on DOS. So every sound card and driver created its own API and every 
application has to be written to support this very sound card (series).

The only solution for /modern DOS/ would be to write an emulation for a 
well supported sound card for older programs and games. That would be, 
say, a SB16 emulation driver for AC97 and HD-Audio on-board sound cards. 
So every DOS program/game would see the well supported SB16 and -- if 
supported by this very program or game -- would be able to use it 
through the emulation. I think this is how DOSBox does support sound.

If you do find a practical solution though -- I would be interested too!

Cheers,
userbeitrag


On 2016-12-18 23:58, Thomas Mueller wrote:
> Do such programs to init the sound hardware work with all sound hardware?
> I have on-motherboard Intel high-definition audio and remember reading on 
> this emailing list that it was not supported in any DOS.
>
> I get sound in FreeBSD and NetBSD.
>
> Tom

--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most 
engaging tech sites, SlashDot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

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

[Thomas Mueller]

from Eric Auer:

> > - 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...

> There are no real DOS sound DRIVERS on most systems:
> 
> Just programs to init the sound hardware and driver
> libraries IN games to output sound. Those should work
> equally well with ALL variants of DOS :-) Note that
> PCI soundcards sometimes have protected mode virtual
> drivers which simulate SoundBlaster from the point
> of view of your game, while the real hardware uses
> for example AC97. Those will need special settings
> for our EMM386 style drivers (read docs) and they
> will also only work with games with no or at least
> only with "tame" compatible DOS extenders.

Do such programs to init the sound hardware work with all sound hardware?

I have on-motherboard Intel high-definition audio and remember reading on this 
emailing list that it was not supported in any DOS.

I get sound in FreeBSD and NetBSD.

Tom


--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most 
engaging tech sites, SlashDot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

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

[Rugxulo]

Hi,

On Sun, Dec 18, 2016 at 12:23 AM, Mingcong Bai  wrote:
> 在 2016年12月17日 21:21, Rugxulo 写道:
>>
>> On Sat, Dec 17, 2016 at 2:55 PM, Mingcong Bai  wrote:
>>>
>>> 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.

Most of that bloat wasn't FreeDOS proper, just third-party games and
tools. Most of that is still mirrored on iBiblio.org under
/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/ (if you still want it later).

>> 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.

Unavoidable if you don't have other ways of getting the files. But
it's not as bad as it sounds. Certainly you can grab some useful stuff
in well under ten floppies.

>> 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.

No explicit Unicode or CJK support, no, sorry. The tools I mentioned
(and good old-fashioned codepages for non-CJK) are all we've got for
the foreseeable future.

> 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...

Sound is the weakest link in DOS, esp. since (as Eric said) it's
usually bundled with the games themselves. So there is some partial
support in some few third-party commercial games for such a card, but
it's far from universal "DOS support".

DOS does sometimes have system drivers (.SYS), and most of those
should work with FreeDOS unchanged, if you need it, but overall sound
support is just not a strong suit. There is no intentional
incompatibility here, but a few bugs may still linger in some dark
corners.

> - How does "version upgrade" work for FreeDOS? Do I have to overwrite my
> installation every time, or is there update/upgrade mechanism built it?

Jerome's installer does some work behind the scenes, but overall there
is no good way to auto-upgrade DOS itself. You'll normally still have
to copy things manually (and delete / reinstall other pieces, if
desired). There is no intention to literally automate everything.
You're still expected to be willing to heavily fiddle with it
yourself.

Mateusz's package manager was already mentioned, but there's not a lot
of work done (yet) to build such updated packages, so you don't have
much to upgrade yet anyways.

Overall, FreeDOS is fairly stable and not undergoing drastic changes,
so while a lot of little things have indeed changed over the years,
the major infrastructure hasn't been incompatibly broken or rewritten.
Dreams for a 64-bit SMP multitasking Unicode version are not
realistic.

--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most 
engaging tech sites, SlashDot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

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

[Eric Auer]

Hi Rugxulo,

> 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/

Note that the Cosmodata mirror should only be used when there
are technical problems with the main site, to avoid wasting
bandwidth in Brazil. So please use the following link instead:

https://www.auersoft.eu/soft/by-others/

You probably mean the "DeskWork PCMCIA Unit" source code. This
is a source-only donation of code: FreeDOS experts are invited
to use it when building PCMCIA drivers, but the sources are no
complete driver themselves.

Deskwork was a graphical user interface for DOS and Windows in
style of Star Trek consoles. It also included native apps and
some drivers, so it was more than just a GUI. There are a few
YouTube videos of the software in action, for example in QEMU:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaSgLKptnrk

(that user apparently did everything by keyboard - DOS fan :-))

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_VoM8An6v8

(old interview: main developer, more graphical demo of the GUI)

Cheers, Eric



--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most 
engaging tech sites, SlashDot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

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

[Eric Auer]

Hi!

FreeDOS with only those components which mimick parts
of MS DOS will easily fit on 1, 2 or 3 diskettes of
1.44 MB each, depending on whether you want to have
full documentation and translations included. FreeDOS
on CD also includes lots of other free software :-)

> - 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...

There are no real DOS sound DRIVERS on most systems:

Just programs to init the sound hardware and driver
libraries IN games to output sound. Those should work
equally well with ALL variants of DOS :-) Note that
PCI soundcards sometimes have protected mode virtual
drivers which simulate SoundBlaster from the point
of view of your game, while the real hardware uses
for example AC97. Those will need special settings
for our EMM386 style drivers (read docs) and they
will also only work with games with no or at least
only with "tame" compatible DOS extenders.

> - How does "version upgrade" work for FreeDOS? Do I have to overwrite my 
> installation every time, or is there update/upgrade mechanism built it?

We have package managers, so you can replace programs
by newer versions of the programs smoothly, I think.

Cheers, Eric



--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most 
engaging tech sites, SlashDot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

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

[Ercan Ersoy]

I changed my project's name to "DOS B".


My project's link: https://dos-b.github.io/


Best regards,

Ercan





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
--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most 
engaging tech sites, SlashDot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user