Re: [Freedos-user] the msdos 4.0 sources has some multitasking code

[Michael Brutman via Freedos-user]

That attitude toward the MS-DOS source code seems rather limiting and
short-sighted.

My recent device driver worked well enough on later versions of DOS (and
FreeDOS) but I was having a devil of a time trying to figure out why DOS
2.x would not honor the device driver telling it that the media had been
changed.  Having the source code available allowed me to find a bug in DOS
2.x, and also cleared up several documentation questions (more like
outright problems).

Being compatible with all flavors of DOS should matter to anybody writing
user code, device drivers, or even FreeDOS developers trying to improve the
appeal of FreeDOS.

MS has no need to placate the open source community, especially with old
versions of DOS.  This is somebody's passion project. I look forward to
when the source code to DOS 3.3 or DOS 5.0 are released.
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Re: [Freedos-user] Dial-up emulation?

[Michael Brutman via Freedos-user]

You clearly don't use search engines too much ...

Try "FreeDOS" and "Networking" as your two words for the search.



On Tue, Apr 23, 2024 at 7:38 PM Brandon Taylor via Freedos-user <
freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net> wrote:

> Since FreeDOS doesn't support physical network hardware (even if it's
> emulated in a program like PCem or 86Box), I figure there's no way FreeDOS
> is gonna be able to connect to the Internet, right? Well...
>
> The developers of the 86Box project have recently implemented emulation of
> a Hayes-compatible dial-up modem. So my question is... will FreeDOS support
> the emulated modem?
>
> Brandon Taylor
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Re: [Freedos-user] "Upgrade" from MS-DOS 6.2.2 (fwd)

[Michael Brutman via Freedos-user]

I'm just kind of amazed at what I read here at times.

It is no secret that DOS is no longer a mainstream operating system.  As a
result, support for it on physical hardware is minimal, if it is supported
at all.  Modern machines are just not intended to be used with DOS as the
primary, "bare metal" operating system.

A lot of us are here because we like DOS but most of us don't try to
force-fit into places where it doesn't work.  When there is a better,
supported solution for something it often makes more sense to use that
instead of trying to make it work under DOS.  There are many examples of
things where DOS is great and even fun, but many more examples where DOS is
not a suitable solution.

This isn't controversial or hostile.  It is reality.
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Re: [Freedos-user] shutdown and USB Stick ?

[Michael Brutman via Freedos-user]

FAT is finicky but FAT is not the issue here.

As long as the machine has sufficient time to complete its last writes and
you don't have any programs running using the disk, it should always be
safe to shut down - DOS doesn't buffer or delay writes unless you have some
sort of disk caching program running and if your disk cache is doing
something fancy it will have its own shutdown procedure.

Hard drives also have write caches and often run with write caching
enabled.  The solution is the same - wait a few seconds for the last writes
to be flushed to the media.

And the same will apply to any other storage device, USB sticks included.
Make sure the system is quiet for a few seconds so the device can commit
it's writes.  Then shut down.



On Mon, Jan 29, 2024 at 10:22 AM Louis Santillan via Freedos-user <
freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net> wrote:

> FAT is always a finicky filesystem, especially if you're utilizing a
> caching or BIOS emulation for USB HDDs.  Are you using a caching program
> like lbacache, cdrcache, smartdrv, etc?
>
> On Mon, Jan 29, 2024 at 7:11 AM Thomas Cornelius Desi via Freedos-user <
> freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net> wrote:
>
>> I boot FD from a USB Stick.
>> Can using »shutdown« command prevent that a bootable USB Stick with FD
>> becomes unusable? (Happened last week.)
>>
>> add: is the shutdown command also working in the previous FD version?
>> (Which I am normally using. I never used the »shutdown«  command before.
>> Just switch off the computer )
>>
>>
>> T.
>>
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Re: [Freedos-user] SNMP agent for DOS?

[Michael Brutman via Freedos-user]

I tend to be very pragmatic with my code.  For example, instead of trying
to port existing libraries (and dealing with all of their dependencies)
I'll usually just write what I need from scratch and do the bare minimum.
Where that is not possible (HTTPS on an 8088 class machine) I'd go with
some sort of proxy that meets the spirit of the requirement.

Anyway, I think the OP has been scared off so this is an academic
discussion now. ;-0


On Wed, Jan 10, 2024 at 3:02 AM Frantisek Rysanek 
wrote:

> On 8 Jan 2024 at 10:29, Michael Brutman via Freedos-user wrote:
> ...
> >
> > Obviously something that does real-time operations should not be
> > burdened with a TSR.  But it should also not be burdened with running
> > DOS on legacy hardware either.  Nobody in their right mind is running
> > something safety critical on old PC hardware running DOS, so assume
> > there is some room for slop in the workload.
> >
>
> I do meet people relying on a DOS app on old hardware every once in a
> while. They end up having an ancient DOS box controlling a key piece
> of machinery in the shop or something, sometimes not having a backup
> of the OS boot drive, afraid to open the hood on the PC etc.
>
> As for SNMP, I have once tried to write a client, from scratch, to do
> some simple queries. "Just a quick hack." There were comprehensive
> libraries at the time, that did stuff like convert ASN.1 MIB source
> code into C++ classes and then compile that... it dragged along a
> heap of dependencies, which I did not want to port from UNIX to
> Windows, so I started with a hardcoded minimal set of C++ objects to
> manipulate ASN.1 BER to implement what I needed... I got it to a
> stage where the queries principally worked, and then the skunkworks
> project got shelved, I left the job, things shifted IRL etc.
>
> Frank
>
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Re: [Freedos-user] SNMP agent for DOS?

[Michael Brutman via Freedos-user]

That last post was impressive, but I think it makes things way too
complicated.

Obviously something that does real-time operations should not be burdened
with a TSR.  But it should also not be burdened with running DOS on legacy
hardware either.  Nobody in their right mind is running something safety
critical on old PC hardware running DOS, so assume there is some room for
slop in the workload.

An SNMP agent TSR can do the following:

   - Respond when polled; that's an important function right there.
   ("Heartbeat")
   - "Guesstimate" the CPU utilization
   - Pick up and report from whatever location in memory you care about.

The TSR has to respond to interrupts from the network device.  It also
needs to hook the timer interrupt for ARP processing.  Since you have the
timer interrupt hooked already, you can look at the stack to see the
interrupted address and estimate whether the interrupted code is in DOS, in
an idle loop in the main program, or whatever.  (For a normal DOS system
that spends its time at the command prompt that is easy.  For a
continuously running program that program must have an event handling loop,
and there are a few ways to detect and deal with that.)

Anyway, back to the question ...  it's possible.  If you are just going to
check a box for compliance reasons, then it's probably not doing unless the
cost of non-compliance is high.  (If an ISO certification is riding on
this, spend the money to do something.)  If this is really supposed to be
part of your monitoring solution and you need it, well, you've done well on
borrowed time ...


-Mike
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Re: [Freedos-user] SNMP agent for DOS?

[Michael Brutman via Freedos-user]

How much is it worth ($$$) to your supervisor?

SNMP runs over UDP.  It is possible to write an SNMP agent that runs in the
background as a TSR, but such a thing doesn't exist today.  If somebody is
willing to invest it can be done.


-Mike

On Sun, Jan 7, 2024 at 12:30 PM Anton Gustafsson via Freedos-user <
freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net> wrote:

> Hi Roderick! I agree, in this case it is mostly to satisfy my
> supervisor's need to follow protocol. All machines in the network are
> supposed monitored (load, mem, swap etc) using a software called Zabbix
> which has the ability to use either their own agent, ICMP or SNMP.
>
> It is possible to use Zabbix without an agent, and for example only
> check availability over ICMP pings. It is a slight workaround, since the
> actual frontend on Zabbix shows hosts as unavailable when not using an
> agent, though they it is possible to configure the system not to send
> "host_down"-emails. There seem to be disagreements within the Zabbix
> developer community whether this is a bug or a feature.
>
> Anyway it feels a bit redundant since these machines are custom hardware
> controllers and are integrated in the rest of the process system, and
> the control room interacts with these machines continuously.
>
> We happen to have a OS/2 machine in production as well, and it did not
> have supervision either. If you are interested in monitoring, I found
> this the last week: "IBM SystemView Agent v1.4.3 for OS/2". It is
> available free on the internet. It is running well, however I haven't
> had the time read up on configuration, so it is only in "default" mode,
> showing that host is up.
>
> Anton
>
>
>
> On 2024-01-06 23:51, Roderick Klein via Freedos-user wrote:
> > On 6-01-24 18:24, Anton Gustafsson via Freedos-user wrote:
> >> Hi!
> >>
> >> We have a few network connected FreeDOS machines, running on an isolated
> >> network using MSClient. I have been instructed that all our machines on
> >> the network should be monitored, by either SNMP or a Zabbix agent, and
> >> not ICMP ping only.
> >>
> >> I havn't been able to find anything on the internet. I guess that DOS
> >> wasn't designed to run in such a way that more advanced monitoring was
> >> necessary? Have any of you guys heard of an SNMP agent for DOS?
> >
> > Never really heard of it But even if you have an SNMP agent what
> > should the SNMP agent report on DOS ?
> >
> > I am not expert what so ever. However the SNMP protocol is pretty
> > generic. It can be used to monitor a UPS for servers or monitor a
> > printer. But can use SNMTP.
> >
> > So even if you have SNMP client what should it monitor on thr FreeDOS
> > system ? Disc space ? DOS programs being started ?
> >
> > Myself I use ArcaOS (OS/2 clone) and it does not have an SNMP client
> > build in (not that I am aware of at least).
> >
> > Roderick
> >
> >
> >
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Re: [Freedos-user] roundcube, is freedos, or dos based mail clients?

[Michael Brutman via Freedos-user]

It's difficult to follow all of the details of the discussion.

Have you ever looked at getting a shell account on sdf.org?  It still
supports plain old Telnet I think it comes with an email address.  They
support POP3 and IMAP access to the email too.

Links and Lynx are available there when using Telnet, but it doesn't look
like either have Javascript enabled.
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Re: [Freedos-user] Unicode and codepages in apps already bundled with FreeDOS?

[Michael Brutman via Freedos-user]

I added some limited Unicode support to mTCP Telnet and mTCP IRCjr in the
last release a few months ago.

   - I used a text file to store the mapping.  That lets people add code
   points or make corrections if they don't like the choices I made.
   - The code uses the text file both ways; to figure out what Unicode code
   point to send for a local high-bit character and what character to display
   when a Unicode code point is detected.
   - The current mapping is pointed to by a text file.
   - I don't try to detect the current code page in use.  The user is
   responsible for pointing at the correct text file.  While simple, this is
   also flexible.
   - I used a hash table to make the mappings pretty fast.  (I've seen some
   horrible code that did linear searches of a table, and that's painful to
   sit through.)

A centralized mapping would be nice, but then you will run into the
question of how strict you want the code to be.  The conversion from the
current code page to Unicode should always be strict as Unicode has far
many more glyphs.  But incoming Unicode can be mapped loosely or strictly,
and in my case I went for loose because I wanted the output to be useful to
humans and not full of "tofu" characters.  A strict mapping can be shared
but a loose mapping is probably best application specific.


-Mike
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Re: [Freedos-user] A new mTCP (2023-03-31) is available

[Michael Brutman]

On Mon, Apr 10, 2023 at 1:00 PM Jim Hall  wrote:

>
> Impressive for a PCjr. :-)
>
>
One day we might even be able to boot FreeDOS on it ...  (it has some
challenges.)
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Re: [Freedos-user] A new mTCP (2023-03-31) is available

[Michael Brutman]

Just a small correction - please change the URLs to start with
http://www.brutman.com/ as per the original announcement.  You've got
http://brutmanlabs.org/, which is a PCjr running at 4.77Mhz.  It's doing
fine under load, but eventually it will run out of log space and be moved
back to something more fun. :)  Perhaps an online version of Eliza to
compete with ChatGPT.

(The PCjr has been running and serving traffic for 10+ days now.  I was
redirecting from the usual home page to get some traffic for better
testing.  I'm going to see if I can get 1000 continuous hours on it, which
for 39 year old hardware is no small feat.)


-Mike

On Fri, Apr 7, 2023 at 3:12 PM Jim Hall  wrote:

> Sounds good! I've mirrored this, but marked it as invisible (sort of
> "pre-mirrored" it, if you will). I can mark it as "visible" at some
> later time.
>
> News item posted on the website. I'll also share it on Mastodon.
>
>
> Jim
>
> On Sat, Apr 1, 2023 at 11:38 AM Michael Brutman 
> wrote:
> >
> > http://www.brutman.com/mTCP/mTCP.html
> >
> > From the release notes:
> >
> > Unicode support for Telnet and IRCjr
> > RLE graphics support in Telnet (fun as a demonstration, but not very
> practical)
> > The web server gets a built-in SNTP client for keeping the server time
> correct across many days/weeks of runtime.
> > A keyboard handling workaround for VirtualBox users.  (OpenWatcom had a
> run-time bug that interacts poorly with the incomplete BIOS keyboard
> handling in VirtualBox.)
> > Many small bug fixes and improvements, including in the base TCP/IP
> library.
> >
> >
> > Jim & Jerome - As before, please give me a few weeks before mirroring it
> so that I can get a rough idea of how many people are downloading it.  I
> need some reason to justify all of this work. ;-0
> >
> > On a side note, unless something huge happens this is going to be the
> last update for a while.  I suspect this code will last a few years.
> >
> >
> > -Mike
> >
> >
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[Freedos-user] A new mTCP (2023-03-31) is available

[Michael Brutman]

http://www.brutman.com/mTCP/mTCP.html

>From the release notes:

   - Unicode support for Telnet and IRCjr
   - RLE graphics support in Telnet (fun as a demonstration, but not very
   practical)
   - The web server gets a built-in SNTP client for keeping the server time
   correct across many days/weeks of runtime.
   - A keyboard handling workaround for VirtualBox users.  (OpenWatcom had
   a run-time bug that interacts poorly with the incomplete BIOS keyboard
   handling in VirtualBox.)
   - Many small bug fixes and improvements, including in the base TCP/IP
   library.


Jim & Jerome - As before, please give me a few weeks before mirroring it so
that I can get a rough idea of how many people are downloading it.  I need
some reason to justify all of this work. ;-0

On a side note, unless something huge happens this is going to be the last
update for a while.  I suspect this code will last a few years.


-Mike
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[Freedos-user] DOS and PDFs (Was Re: Update wiki info on installing ftp on a virualbox guest?

[Michael Brutman]

I think it is pretty safe to assume that everybody using FreeDOS in the
last 10 to 20 years has access to another, more capable device that can
read PDFs.  Even low end cell phones have had this capability for the past
5 years.

I started with pure TXT files, composed on the same DOS machine that I did
my coding and testing on.  But even in 2013 those files were adding up to
more than 210K across 16 files.  Just like I migrated from using a hardware
80386 to a cross compiler for the code in 2011, I migrated the documented
for PDF in 2015.  The PDF format lets me do far better formatting and
screen shots, which are useful for clear documentation.

As cool as it would be to have everything self contained and self hosted
within DOS, that's not our reality.  I think it's more important to use the
appropriate tools for the job, PDF is very good for documentation - just
not on DOS.  Given that everybody probably has access to something that can
read PDFs, there is not much of a reason to downgrade carefully written and
formatted documentation.

I am concerned about these kinds of things because I do put a lot of energy
into ensuring my work is properly packaged.  It's probably possible to
export the PDF has HTML, but again I'd want to do that myself to ensure the
formatting stays reasonable.  (And even then, the generated HTML is not
going to be usable on the 16 bit machines with CGA that I target.)


-Mike
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Re: [Freedos-user] Update wiki info on installing ftp on a virualbox guest?

[Michael Brutman]

Jennifer replied offline and responded that she was installing FreeDOS 1.3
using the livecd.

I tried it for myself and I installed the full FreeDOS without sources to a
new virtual machine.  Until the wiki gets fixed look in C:\FREEDOS for the
mTCP configuration file.  The mTCP sample config file is in
C:\NET\MTCP\SAMPLES\SAMPLE.CFG.  Both files have the expected contents so I
don't know why yours are empty.

The only questionable thing I noticed was somebody converted the user
documentation to a 293KB text file.  That strips the formatting, diagrams
and screen shots that I have in the PDF.  Can we not do that in the
future?  Nobody is going to want to wade through a 293KB text file.


-Mike

On Wed, Mar 15, 2023 at 5:59 PM Michael Brutman 
wrote:

> What version of FreeDOS are you installing?
>
> If things are really borked then keep in mind that mTCP is a standalone
> project and you can get all the original files at its website.  See
> http://www.brutman.com/mTCP/mTCP.html for the downloads and PDF
> documentation.
>
>
> Mike
>
>
> On Wed, Mar 15, 2023, 15:50 Jennifer Brice via Freedos-user <
> freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net> wrote:
>
>> I am trying to install ftp on a virtualbox guest and the wiki seems out
>> of date.
>>
>> http://wiki.freedos.org/wiki/index.php/VirtualBox_-_Chapter_7
>>
>> There is no fdos directory and also no sample.cfg in docs.
>>
>> I found an mtcp.cfg in the freedos directory and found samples cfg  in
>> c:\net\mtcp\sample.cfg but when I copied it as c:\freedos\mtcp.cfg, then
>> edited it, the file was empty.  I edited c:\net\mtcp\sample.cfg and it was
>> empty too.  What should I do?
>>
>>
>>
>>
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Re: [Freedos-user] Update wiki info on installing ftp on a virualbox guest?

[Michael Brutman]

What version of FreeDOS are you installing?

If things are really borked then keep in mind that mTCP is a standalone
project and you can get all the original files at its website.  See
http://www.brutman.com/mTCP/mTCP.html for the downloads and PDF
documentation.


Mike


On Wed, Mar 15, 2023, 15:50 Jennifer Brice via Freedos-user <
freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net> wrote:

> I am trying to install ftp on a virtualbox guest and the wiki seems out of
> date.
>
> http://wiki.freedos.org/wiki/index.php/VirtualBox_-_Chapter_7
>
> There is no fdos directory and also no sample.cfg in docs.
>
> I found an mtcp.cfg in the freedos directory and found samples cfg  in
> c:\net\mtcp\sample.cfg but when I copied it as c:\freedos\mtcp.cfg, then
> edited it, the file was empty.  I edited c:\net\mtcp\sample.cfg and it was
> empty too.  What should I do?
>
>
>
>
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Re: [Freedos-user] Anyone want to write an article about FreeDOS?

[Michael Brutman]

I initially mis-read what Tom had written about programming on DOS being
painful.  He is not wrong. ;-0  I program "for" DOS for the challenge.  But
I don't program too much "on" DOS, because I'm not interested in
challenging myself that much.

I used to use Turbo C++ 3.0 for DOS on a DOS machine for DOS programming.
10+ years ago I moved to Open Watcom 1.8 on a Windows machine for my DOS
programming.  With Cygwin I have a Unix-like environment.  I have multiple
windows for editing, web browser windows for looking up strange interrupts,
a PDF viewer, etc.  The performance of the modern machine is great compared
to ye old DOS machine.

There are some exceptions.  Turbo C++ 3.0 for DOS has a useful IDE, but I
can't read PDF files or look up things online from a DOS machine running it.


-Mike
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Re: [Freedos-user] mTCP: A Unicode enabled IRCjr is available for testing

[Michael Brutman]

I've added a Unicode enabled Telnet to the same file. Just set the
environment variable to the mapping file and it will interpret Unicode sent
via UTF-8. Sending Unicode also works but I have not implemented a
"compose" sequence for arbitrary Unicode code points so you are limited to
what your keyboard can produce.

-Mike

On Thu, Jan 26, 2023 at 8:36 PM Michael Brutman 
wrote:

> I've never wanted to support Unicode and UTF-8 because of the potential
> performance problems on slow machines and the problem of mapping Unicode to
> code pages.  I solved one problem, but not the other. ;-0
>
> If you'd like to try it the instructions are at
> https://groups.google.com/g/mtcp/c/Z0RhZK9hI8c.  I've included a mapping
> from Unicode to CP437.  If you use another codepage you will need to create
> a mapping for it.  (It's not difficult, it's just a text file.)
>
> If this works well I'll update the Telnet client to be able to use Unicode
> too.  (It was easier to start with the IRC client.)
>
>
> -Mike
>
>
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[Freedos-user] mTCP: A Unicode enabled IRCjr is available for testing

[Michael Brutman]

I've never wanted to support Unicode and UTF-8 because of the potential
performance problems on slow machines and the problem of mapping Unicode to
code pages.  I solved one problem, but not the other. ;-0

If you'd like to try it the instructions are at
https://groups.google.com/g/mtcp/c/Z0RhZK9hI8c.  I've included a mapping
from Unicode to CP437.  If you use another codepage you will need to create
a mapping for it.  (It's not difficult, it's just a text file.)

If this works well I'll update the Telnet client to be able to use Unicode
too.  (It was easier to start with the IRC client.)


-Mike
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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS in proxmox

[Michael Brutman]

Read the documentation for whatever networking software you are using.

mTCP in particular is not a "resident" program, so your FreeDOS machine
will not respond to ping requests unless an mTCP program is actively
running.  WATTCP programs have the same behavior.
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Re: [Freedos-user] How to obtain LPR - or is there a way to use IPP?

[Michael Brutman]

I'm not going to be porting LPR to mTCP anytime soon; I think about 4
people would have a use for it.  However, if a printer supports JetDirect
printing on port 9100, then mTCP netcat can be used.  Simply have your
program print to a file, then use netcat to send the file to the JetDirect
port on your printer.  Most network printers can do this.

The detailed instructions are in the mTCP PDF file.


-Mike


On Sat, Sep 17, 2022 at 12:57 AM Robert Riebisch 
wrote:

> Hi Phil,
>
> > would certainly help. However, the other alternative in my case would
> > be LPR. I have not found a package with LPR yet, and most links I have
> > found around the web either include anything but a binary or are
> > broken. I see mention of a source file for it as part of WATTCP but
> > have no idea how to get it, nor how to build it once obtained.
>
> I never tried, but lpr.exe can be found in
> <
> https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/net/wattcp/wat2001b.zip
> >.
> Look in apps/apps.zip.
>
> Maybe Michael Brutman wishes to port it to his mTCP suite:
> http://www.brutman.com/mTCP/
>
> Cheers,
> Robert
> --
> BTTR Software   https://www.bttr-software.de/
> DOS ain't dead  https://www.bttr-software.de/forum/
>
>
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Re: [Freedos-user] For what architectures is FreeDOS designed?

[Michael Brutman]

This is an 8 year old email thread and you are expecting working links from
back then?

Regardless, archive.org is your friend:
https://web.archive.org/web/20130430233113/https://geek.com/chips/nasa-needs-8086-chips-549867/

Consider donating to them.


On Sat, Jul 23, 2022 at 6:52 AM Aitor Santamaría  wrote:

> The "geek.com" link mentioned looked interesting but is no longer online
> (404), anyone knows where it went? (google is not giving me obvious answers)
>
> Aitor
>
> On Tue, 25 Nov 2014 at 10:38, ht-lab  wrote:
>
>> On 25/11/2014 00:57, Ralf Quint wrote:
>> > On 11/24/2014 11:08 AM, Carl Spitzer wrote:
>> >> Isn't the Z80 what the Space Shuttle and space Telescope used until
>> >> the last decade. I seem to remember my old RS-4P was a Z80 chip. CWSIV
>> > Nope, the Space Shuttle's main computer was from IBM, based on a
>> > radiation-hardened version of a 32bit System/360 type CPU (just Google
>> > "APA-101S")
>> > And if you refer with "space telescope" to Hubble, that uses special
>> > radiation hardened version of the Intel 80486...
>> >
>> > Ralf
>>
>> They used a whole range of processors including the 8086,
>>
>> http://www.geek.com/chips/nasa-needs-8086-chips-549867/
>>
>> Hans
>> www.ht-lab.com
>>
>>
>> >
>> > ---
>> > This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
>> > http://www.avast.com
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> --
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Re: [Freedos-user] New mTCP available

[Michael Brutman]

It would be swell, but it's never going to happen ...  at least not from me.

   - Computationally, SSH is not feasible on the 16 bit machines that I
   target for this project.
   - Even with enough compute power, you need to find DOS equivalents of
   all of the libraries.  Which includes the ciphers, key exchanges, etc.  And
   then you need to port those, and what they depend on to DOS.  Without
   introducing security holes.
   - SSH ciphers are a moving target.  What is acceptable today will be
   deprecated in a few years.  It is difficult to keep up.


-Mike
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Re: [Freedos-user] New mTCP available

[Michael Brutman]

Just for a little bit ... :)

Thanks!


Mike

On Fri, Jul 8, 2022, 4:59 PM Jim Hall  wrote:

> >
> > On Fri, Jul 8, 2022 at 6:19 AM Eric Auer  wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >> Hi! Forwarding from BTTR:
> >>
> >> A new mTCP is available (2022-07-01)
> >>[..]
>
>
> On Fri, Jul 8, 2022 at 6:33 PM Michael Brutman 
> wrote:
> >
> > Hi - yes it is true, a new version is available.
> >
> > Please hold off on mirroring it at ibiblio for a little bit ...
> > I'm trying to gauge how many users I have based on downloads, and that
> > falls apart once people start to mirror it.
> >
>
>
> I've already mirrored it to Ibiblio earlier today, but I'll take that
> down (hide it) and update the news item to not reference the mirror.
>
>
> Jim
>
>
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Re: [Freedos-user] New mTCP available

[Michael Brutman]

Hi - yes it is true, a new version is available.

Please hold off on mirroring it at ibiblio for a little bit ...  I'm trying
to gauge how many users I have based on downloads, and that falls apart
once people start to mirror it.


Cheers,
Mike


On Fri, Jul 8, 2022 at 6:19 AM Eric Auer  wrote:

>
> Hi! Forwarding from BTTR:
>
> A new mTCP is available (2022-07-01)
>
> posted by mbbrutman, Washington, USA, 07.07.2022, 00:00
>
> Download from: http://www.brutman.com/mTCP/mTCP.html
>
> Release notes:
> http://www.brutman.com/mTCP/mTCP_2022-07-01_Release_Notes.html
>
> And here is the short version of what you can look forward to:
>
> - Support for a local HOSTS.TXT file.
> - Some minor DHCP bug fixes.
> - TCP/IP library improvements for flow control on bad/slow connections.
> - HTTP server bug fixes and proper support for default index.html files.
> - A slightly more accurate SNTP (simple network time protocol) client.
> - Proper Dynamic DNS support for the FTP server
> - Other scattered bug fixes and small features.
>
> As always, yell if you have problems ...
>
> For the future - I'm working on proper Unicode support for IRCjr and
> Telnet. That will come along in a few months.
>
>
>
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Re: [Freedos-user] Difficulty with serial communications

[Michael Brutman]

This has all been terribly interesting, but I can't help but think:

   - This product should have been ported to a more capable operating
   system years ago.
   - The inner workings of how the product was made to run under DOS seems
   to have rotted away.
   - This really isn't relevant to FreeDOS.


Mike
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Re: [Freedos-user] Netgear LNE100TX

[Michael Brutman]

I have that exact same card in a Pentium 133 system.  It's a good card.

This sounds silly, but try removing and reseating the card in the slot.
Really ...  I've had cards that have been installed for ages where the
electrical contact on the pins oxidizes and then the card becomes flakey,
and this specific card has done that to me.  If you have "tuner cleaner" or
some other electronic contacts cleaner, use that on the card edge connector.

The MAC address should not be FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF - that is a sign of a
communication problem with the card or a hardware fault.  You should check
your BIOS settings for any sign of a conflict with another card, but PCI
BIOSes are pretty good about that so that is probably not your problem.


Mike

On Mon, Jul 26, 2021 at 2:25 AM Richard Hoffman <
richardhoffman2...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I have been having trouble setting up my ethernet card on my freedos
> installation.   I am currently attempting to set up this card with the
> LNE100TX.com packet driver.
>
> I run the driver with LNE100TX 0x60  and I get the following
>
> Autonegotiation Not Complete
> Packet Driver Interrupt Number 0X60
> IO Port 0xDC00
> Hardware Interrupt Number 11
> Media Type Is 100baseTX Full Duplex
> My Ethernet Address Is FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF
> Packet Driver is loaded at segment 3C2
>
> I have my network wired from my DSL router to an 8 port 10/100 mbps
> switch.   From there it goes to my windows 10 pc and my freedos pc.
>
> I have tried about every switch option with the packet driver and I keep
> getting the same result.  Is this a hardware problem with the ethernet card
> or is it a router issue?
>
> Also could this be an IRQ conflict?
>
> Thanks.
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Re: [Freedos-user] Print via network

[Michael Brutman]

I hate to even suggest this, but are you using the /B option on the file
copy to indicate that a binary copy is needed?  Otherwise, the first Ctrl-Z
in the file will end the file copy prematurely.



On Wed, Jun 16, 2021 at 3:37 PM Frantisek Rysanek 
wrote:

> Dear gentlemen,
>
> on and off, with Bryan we've been playing with Ubuntu, Samba, CUPS
> and the MS Network Client running in FreeDOS. And we're facing a dead
> end - same symptoms observed by me and by Bryan:
>
> We can load the MS stack, to the point that we can "net use" network
> disk volumes = map a local drive letter to an ARC path from the
> server. And the disk is perfectly accessible.
>
> But, printing is giving us an interesting misbehavior.
> We can ask for
> net use LPT2: \\server\printqueue
> That does succeed. But, whatever we copy to the redirected LPT2
> (we've also tried LPT1 for that matter), we only get a couple lines
> printed. Like 4 to 6 lines, if we try to print plain text.
>
> I've observed the problem with Wireshark. The MS client connects a
> TCP session to Samba, they negotiate the protocol version, the client
> starts a print request, sends the first packet with an actual
> payload, gets a TCP ACK, and the very next TCP packet from the client
> to the server has a FIN flag - and the TCP session get gracefully
> ended. Interestingly, the client produces one extra packet with an
> ACK for the session, after the FIN / FIN+ACK coordinated handshake
> has closed the session. Wireshark's TCP tracing marks that extra ACK
> packet as a duplicate...
>
> I have no clue why this is happening. I've tried loading all the
> drivers "low" (instead of "high" or UMB). No joy.
>
> I'm wondering, which of the bunch of drivers and executables (about 8
> of them) is specifically responsible for the printer port redirection
> function. And, what could make it close the TCP session prematurely.
> Does it perhaps expect a different "pattern of data writes" on the
> hooked LPT port service? Which a plain "copy" command does not
> satisfy?
>
> Any ideas are welcome :-)
>
> Frank
>
>
>
>
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Re: [Freedos-user] Virtualbox Networking Issue

[Michael Brutman]

Kelley: That version of mTCP is nearly 8 years old ...  Please get the
current version and repeat the trace file steps.  It might even just work
without debugging ...  I've made a lot of reliability improvements in the
past 8 years.  Also, please email me *directly* ...  this is an mTCP
question, not a FreeDOS question.  Other people might be able to help, but
I'm the best qualified and I check my email more often than I check this
mailing list.

In this trace:

   - The NAMESERVER_PREFERRED setting didn't exist back then.  It is using
   your ISP as the nameserver.
   - Your machine received an ARP response, so that part is nice - you have
   connectivity to your gateway.
   - Try pinging your nameserver directly (67.168.138.6).  If you can't get
   a response, then DNS won't ever work.


Ralf: Traceroute is interesting, and it's on the todo list.  This is more
equivalent to a TCPDUMP trace.



On Thu, May 27, 2021 at 10:14 AM Ralf Quint  wrote:

> On 5/26/2021 10:17 PM, Kelley McChesney wrote:
>
> Hi Michael,
> I went through the instructions to enable debugging and pinged
> www.brutman.com. I have attached my MTCP config file and the trace.txt
> file for you. Thank you for looking at this.
>
> Just had a look at that log file and it seems the data gets stuck at
> 67.158.138.6. That is not the IP address for the site pinged, so that is
> where you're problem lies (your router?, the address range refers to
> bentcom.net).
>
> In either case, this is a public IP address and already outside of your
> (FreeDOS) box...
>
> Ralf
>
>
>
>
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>
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Re: [Freedos-user] Virtualbox Networking Issue

[Michael Brutman]

Hi - I'm the author of mTCP. mTCP is shipped with FreeDOS but it is an
independent project.

Please check the PDF, specifically the section on debugging.  I'd like to
see a trace from your system when you are using a bridged Ethernet
connection.  Use PING (the one that comes with mTCP), but specifying the
hostname should be fine for determining what your DNS problem is.

The short story is do this:

   - set debugging=255
   - set logfile=trace.txt
   - ping www.brutman.com

Take trace.txt and then email it to me.  After I see it I can tell you what
I think is going on and I can give you some hints on how to proceed.
Sending me your mTCP configuration file would also be helpful.


Mike
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Re: [Freedos-user] Editing the wiki

[Michael Brutman]

Yes, it seems to be functioning normally now.  The next time I see a 5xx
type error I'll know not to try to debug it. ;-0

If the wiki is generally fast enough I wouldn't change anything.  My
opinion was formed last night after one long session with it when it was
clearly struggling.  If that is not the normal experience then consider
doing nothing.

If that is the normal experience, well, for a primary source of
documentation that's not a great experience.  Given that "wiki.freedos.org"
is a subdomain of "freedos.org" you could create additional DNS records
that point just the "wiki" part to a new host, without changing anything
else.  The steps would look more like:

   - Pick a new wiki provider (Dreamhost)
   - Configure and test *before* freezing or moving DNS records using an
   entry in your local hosts file.
   - Freeze and move content to the new host.
   - Update the DNS records to point at the new host.
   - Decommission the old wiki.

That lets you keep the "wiki.freedos.org" name.

Looking at the current DNS records:

wiki.freedos.org:

   - CNAME is vhost.sourceforge.net
   - A record is 216.105.38.10 (Sourceforge.net)

freedos.org:

   - A record is 173.236.175.214 (Dreamhost)


So just changing the A record for wiki.freedos.org to point at a new host
(when it is ready) should do the trick.


Mike
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Re: [Freedos-user] Editing the wiki

[Michael Brutman]

No good deed goes unpunished ...

I made my edits.  Then this happened:

   - http://wiki.freedos.org/wiki/index.php/Networking_FreeDOS_-_mTCP is
   broken and returns a 500 error from the server.
   - http://wiki.freedos.org/wiki/index.php?title=Networking_FreeDOS_-_mTCP
   works fine, but it's not a direct URL.  (The name is in the parameter.)

I made a mess of the revision history trying to isolate which edits might
have broken it, but even going all the way back to Martin's last edit
doesn't work now.  And it's a server 500, which is not something user
content should be able to cause.

Jim - who is hosting this thing?  Besides being broken, it's also pretty
slow.  I feel bad because it broke on me, but nothing I did should have
broken it.  (I suspect there is an admin page that I can't get to where
error logs can be examined.)


Mike



On Thu, May 6, 2021 at 4:45 AM Jim Hall  wrote:

> Hi Mike!
>
> I can create an account for you.
>
> I'll create your account today and send it to you.
>
>
> On Wed, May 5, 2021, 11:14 PM Michael Brutman 
> wrote:
>
>> I've noticed some inaccuracies on the FreeDOS networking wiki pages.  How
>> does one get an account so that edits can be made?
>>
>>
>> -Mike
>>
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[Freedos-user] Editing the wiki

[Michael Brutman]

I've noticed some inaccuracies on the FreeDOS networking wiki pages.  How
does one get an account so that edits can be made?


-Mike
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[Freedos-user] Printing over the network

[Michael Brutman]

This is an old trick and I have it documented in the mTCP PDF
documentation.  Here is a quick overview.

If you have a printer that is network enabled and it speaks Postscript,
PCL, Epson ESC P2, or plain text then you can "print to a file" under DOS
and then use Netcat to send the file to your printer.  Most network
printers listen on port 9100, and they'll interpret what they receive on
that port in the same way they would interpret the data from a parallel or
serial port.  This is known as the "raw" port and HP introduced it back in
the 90s.

I've used this trick to print graphics from a PCjr to my modern Brother
laser printer.  The graphics were formatted for an IBM Graphics Printer,
which uses a subset of Epson ESC P2.  The printer can handle PostScript,
PCL, Epson ESC P2, and plain text.  The netcat command should look like
this:

nc -target 192.168.2.20 9100 -bin < testfile.prn

Note that the -bin option is needed because your printer output might
contain control codes.

That's it.  It is simple and it works.


-Mike
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Re: [Freedos-user] FDNet package license problems

[Michael Brutman]

Jerome,

In the grand scheme of things it is not a big deal and it has been wrong
for years.

Thanks for taking care of it.  If it does remain then Rugxulo should
consider updating the parts of mTCP (and anything else) that was repackaged
for use in FDNet.


Mike

On Sat, Apr 10, 2021 at 3:52 PM Jerome Shidel  wrote:

> Hello Michael,
>
> On Apr 10, 2021, at 3:20 PM, Michael Brutman 
> wrote:
>
> Gents (Jerome and Rugxulo in particular) ...
>
> As per
> https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distributions/1.2/repos/pkg-html/fdnet.html
> FDNET is being distributed under GPL V2.  However, it includes mTCP source
> code which is licensed under GPL V3.  As per
> https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html that's not allowed ...
> the two licenses are not compatible.  You just can't relicense
> something that I provided as GPL3.
>
>
> Worse is that you are distributing a version of the code that is 7 years
> out of date ...
>
> Please fix this.
>
>
> The GPL v2 was only the license for the FDNET batch program itself and was
> not meant to cover any other programs that were included in the package.
>
> It was not an attempt to re-license your software. As you can see, the GPL
> v3 license was included with your program sources in the package.
>
> However, you are correct that the listing for FDNET on the software
> repository should not have been GPL v2.
>
> Furthermore, you are correct that GPL v3 is not compatible with v2.
>
> I apologize for the mistake and any confusion it may have caused.
>
> I have taken the git repository for FDNET offline and pulled it’s packages
> from the Software Repositories.
>
> The FDNET package will require further review. It may be updated to
> resolve any conflicting license issue.
>
> However at this point, FDNET may just be discontinued.
>
> Thank you for bringing this issue to my attention.
>
> Once again, I am sorry for the misunderstanding.
>
> Jerome
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[Freedos-user] FDNet package license problems

[Michael Brutman]

Gents (Jerome and Rugxulo in particular) ...

As per
https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distributions/1.2/repos/pkg-html/fdnet.html
FDNET is being distributed under GPL V2.  However, it includes mTCP source
code which is licensed under GPL V3.  As per
https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html that's not allowed ...
the two licenses are not compatible.  You just can't relicense
something that I provided as GPL3.

Worse is that you are distributing a version of the code that is 7 years
out of date ...

Please fix this.


Mike
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Re: [Freedos-user] Modern add-ons for ancient PC

[Michael Brutman]

One important note - buyer beware.

Most of these are open source projects.  And in a lot of cases people are
taking the designs and not providing credit to the original designers, or
making design changes that the original designers have quality concerns
about.  Monotech was one of those.
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Re: [Freedos-user] Modern add-ons for ancient PC

[Michael Brutman]

The retrocomputing crowd has a lot of these projects now, and they
generally work.  Most are based on open source designs so the quality will
vary from vendor to vendor.

The 8 bit IDE cards for example are based on a project called XT-IDE that I
was part of back in 2008/2009. (See the genesis of the project at
http://www.vcfed.org/forum/showthread.php?12359-8-Bit-IDE-Controller .  The
original version of the card had the traces optimized on my work laptop
while it was idling.)

If I were buying an XT-IDE I would be getting it from
https://www.glitchwrks.com/xt-ide.  I haven't purchased any of the recent
variants; all mine are gen 1 from the first production run.  And I've not
tried out memory boards but they are generally known to work; they are not
particularly complicated.


Mike


On Thu, Oct 1, 2020 at 4:34 AM Eric Auer  wrote:

>
> Hi! Mentioned in a video mentioned by Rugxulo on BTTR,
> I noticed that there is a shop where you can get some
> circuit boards to do-it-yourself 8-bit ISA extension
> cards for your ancient computers for features such as
> more RAM, IDE or Compact Flash interfaces or even USB
> interfaces which are bootable. Interesting technical
> detail: They use EEPROMS which you can program without
> using a programmer, just with magic write sequences.
>
> Has anybody tried any of those products? Are they okay
> for the task at hand? Note that the shop usually has
> only the PCB, not the pre-built devices, so you have
> to get the components elsewhere and solder yourself in
> most cases. They also have a few ready to use products.
>
> https://www.lo-tech.co.uk/product-category/retro-ibm-pc/
>
> Cheers, Eric
>
>
>
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Re: [Freedos-user] Some networking present

[Michael Brutman]

Thanks for the dictionary definition, but I think you missed the point
here.  mTCP != WATTCP, and I have no interest in WATTCP.  WATTCP is a
library and a set of programs from many contributors while mTCP is all my
work.  Being compatible with something that I originally had no knowledge
of an no interest in is not a reasonable expectation.  Except for the 32
bit version I generally find the WATTCP based apps to be horribly out of
date and wildy varying in quality, which is why I keep writing my own
versions.

Others have provided small utilities to let WATTCP apps use the mTCP DHCP
program.  I think that is a reasonable solution given the history.

On a more positive note (which I think we all need) reinventing the wheel
is fun.  Competition is part of a healthy ecosystem.  We're all scratching
some sort of itch by continuing to use DOS and do retro programming.

Next up for mTCP - IPv6, a lighter/smaller web server, and a Telnet BBS.
The Telnet BBS was the actual origins of the whole project; I wrote my
Netcat, Telnet client and FTP client as proofs of concept that got a bit
out of hand.  One day I'm going to get back to the BBS, which exists but
needs to be rewritten - I've learned a lot in the last 10 years.

I'm also thinking about a network drive for DOS.  EtherFlop is intriguing
but I really want to go with something over UDP so that it is routable on a
network and can be hosted on the server side by a Windows or a Linux
machine.  While my x86 assembly language is reasonable in small doses I'm
still working my way up to TSRs, which are a lot harder to debug than the C
programs I've been writing.  (And I might not go the TSR route.  A shell
would be fine except for the extra memory consumption.)


-Mike
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Re: [Freedos-user] Some networking present

[Michael Brutman]

"Exotic" is a strange word ...  WATTCP uses its own configuration file,
mTCP uses its own configuration file.  I knew about Trumpet when I started
mTCP but not WATTCP.  After WATTCP came to my attentioned I looked at it
and determined that I would continue to do my own thing.

You did write picoSNTP even though SNTP clients already exist, right?
Isn't this another example of a wheel being reinvented?




On Sun, Sep 6, 2020 at 9:44 AM Mateusz Viste  wrote:

> On 06/09/2020 17:03, ZB wrote:
> > Gopherus works (although still it wants to configure network, that
> already
> > has been configured using mTCP's DHCP; so it seems Gopherus doesn't do
> any
> > detection "do I already have network acccessibler?" at all),
>
> mTCP is kind of an exotic piece of software - its networking
> configuration works only with the tools that are supplied with the mTCP
> package.
>
> Back in the day, the usual way to interact with IP/Ethernet networking
> was to rely on the Wattcp library (later forked as Watt-32). Watt-32
> uses its own configuration file, so you'd have to set it up first for
> being able to use Wattcp/Watt-32 based tools (or rely on DHCP, which is
> the default fallback if no config file is found). I can only wonder why
> Michael didn't make his software compatible with the Wattcp
> configuration file instead of reinventing the wheel.
>
> > So both programs seem to dislike Trumpet TCP (different API?)
>
> Trumpet is a networking TSR, while Wattcp, Watt-32 and mTCP are
> libraries embedded into the executable. Completely different approaches.
>
> Mateusz
>
>
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Re: [Freedos-user] metados networked freedos distro by rugxulo available

[Michael Brutman]

I have a real simple solution ... Test more or repackage things without
altering them so that more testing is not needed.

My UPXed binaries are almost the same size and don't have that horrible
side effect.  That's because I recognize the value of testing on a variety
of targets and I accept responsibility for what I put out there.
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Re: [Freedos-user] metados networked freedos distro by rugxulo available

[Michael Brutman]

Rugxulo,

Your thickness amazes me at times.

I provided a UPXed version of all of the mTCP programs back in 2013.  It
works just fine, even on the slowest 4.77 8088 machine that I own.  I'm
objecting to your blindly re UPXing it in such a way that the executable
takes 21x longer to load on the same machine.

I have a good reason to object; if that particular executable were to be
posted somewhere and more widely used, I'd be the one fielding the
questions about why I advertise that it works great on an 8088 but it takes
nearly two minutes to load.

The rest of your verbose text about your emulator environment, how you
test, etc. is irrelevant.  You took something that worked and made it
worse.  Be more careful.  I think I have a right to complain about the
dismemberment of my executables for no good reason.
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Re: [Freedos-user] metados networked freedos distro by rugxulo available

[Michael Brutman]

Disclaimer: I understand that once I release something into the wild, there
is not much I can do about it.


I see two problems with the two included mTCP programs:

1. I took great care to write user documentation for my programs and the
DHCP.TXT and FTP.TXT files should be included with the executables.  The
README.TXT file is kind of important too - it gives the requirements,
features, and where to go for help.  Distributing executables that were
originally part of an ensemble without the general README.TXT or the
program specific instructions is king of wrong.


2 - The file sizes for DHCP.EXE and FTP.EXE are different than the versions
that I compiled and distributed.  I am guessing that you ran them through
some sort of image compressor.  I can't tell though; did you include the
batch files or a makefile that you used  to process the original
executables?

Your version of FTP.EXE takes 1 minute and 46 seconds to load and print out
the title line.

My standard version takes 2 seconds.  That's 53x faster.

My UPX compressed version takes 5 seconds.  That's 21x faster.

Your version is 55906 bytes and my UPX compressed version is 58395 bytes.
So my original compressed executable is a little bigger, but yours is
worthless on an 8088 class machine.  Given that I wrote mTCP explicitly to
support 8088 class machines, I find this kind of reprehensible.

I suspect DHCP has the same problem; it is taking longer to run in DOSBox.
I hope the other programs are not compressed in the same way.

Please fix this - distribute the appropriate TXT files and fix whatever
compression program you are using, or better yet, use the originally
distributed UPXed binaries.  My name is still on the programs and I don't
want other people to think that I am responsible for a nearly 2 minute
startup time.



Mike
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Re: [Freedos-user] FDNPKG v0.99

[Michael Brutman]

A 16 bit database engine is a little bit of a stretch, is it not?  I don't
think that keeping some data in memory and indexing to records on disk
qualifies as a database engine.  I agree that it is more work, or in this
case rework.  And I agree that when time is limited, projects like this
become optional.  But this is not a "monster project."  I really do object
to the "small machines can't use this or don't need this" misconception.

mTCP has all of the traction that it needs ...  it runs on 16 bit machines,
32 bit machines, emulators, and pretty much every flavor of DOS created.
The most recent version (2015-07-05) has been downloaded 600 times already;
the previous version has over 4000 downloads.  I'm sure it's much more
widespread given how many places it was mirrored at.

I can't see ever going 32 bits when the 16 bit code works well on both 16
and 32 bit machines.  I think that the solution for requiring more memory
is to start using EMS/XMS memory via interrupts.  That allows the same
basic code to run on both sets of platforms and use more memory when it is
available without the pain of fully going to a 32 bit address space.

Starting with a 32 bit address space is certainly easier and there is more
library support available.  But for the use case of just simply needing
more memory it is overkill.  I'm willing to leave that space to WATT-32
which handles it nicely.

We need to include the 16 bit machines wherever possible.  Note that I'll
never ask for something like a 16 bit version of Dillo ...  it's just not
feasible.  But a package manager really should be able to run on a 16 bit
machine.  I've managed to create functional (and fast) FTP and HTTP servers
for 16 bit machines - they are very capable.



On Tue, Sep 1, 2015 at 10:02 AM, Mateusz Viste <mate...@viste.fr> wrote:

> Hi Michael, nice to hear from you!
>
> Of course disk-based structures are easy to implement - FDNPKG already
> uses them extensively for storage. The key word here is speed - keeping
> packages metadata in RAM is fast. Parsing and searching through on-disk
> data structures is at least a magnitude slower.
>
> Now, of course I could implement some indexing mechanisms on top of
> that, and end up designing a specialized 16 bit database engine that
> would fit in the 640K limit of memory... Unfortunately I don't have
> enough free time for this kind of "monster projects", although this
> might positively change in a decade or two. Until then, I'll let others
> do such work.
>
> BTW, any plans on publishing a DJGPP-compatible version of mTCP? I'd be
> happy to switch from Watt32. I fear mTCP will get no traction if it
> ignores the more interesting 32-bit projects. ;)
>
> cheers,
> Mateusz
>
>
>
>
> On 01/09/2015 17:45, Michael Brutman wrote:
> > The current memory requirement is a function of your design, which I
> > think could be improved.  Disk based data structures are not that
> > difficult to implement.
> >
> > I have a PCjr with a 20GB Maxtor drive on it, of which 600MB is in use.
> > There are lots of 8086 and 80286 class machines with larger than
> > original hard drives on them; drive overlay software made that possible
> > 20 years ago.  Recent IDE controller projects have expanded the number
> > of old machines that are hard drive capable.  You are incorrect in you
> > belief that old machines can not benefit from a package manager.
> >
> > FreeDOS will get no traction among the sizeable retro-computing
> > community of these kinds of design decisions continue to ignore the more
> > interesting, older machines.
> >
> > On Aug 31, 2015 11:50 PM, "Mateusz Viste" <mate...@viste.fr
> > <mailto:mate...@viste.fr>> wrote:
> >
> > Hi Sparky,
> >
> > On 31/08/2015 19:38, sparky4 wrote:
> >  > I want to make a 16 bit version of this program... 
> >
> > You are most certainly welcome to do so - that's what open-source is
> all
> > about.
> >
> > I can't help but wonder though - is there any practical need behind
> such
> > work? I don't really see what this would improve. Sure, it would make
> > FDNPKG potentially run on 80286 CPUs - but I am not convinced anyone
> > would want to run a package manager on a 286. Disk space is usually
> > scarce on these machines (if there is a hard disk in the first
> place),
> > so I'd rather think people will turn to good old manual 'copying
> what I
> > need' on such hardware. It's worth noting that 8086 and 80186 are
> out of
> > scope anyway due to memory constraints, sinc

Re: [Freedos-user] FDNPKG v0.99

[Michael Brutman]

The current memory requirement is a function of your design, which I think
could be improved.  Disk based data structures are not that difficult to
implement.

I have a PCjr with a 20GB Maxtor drive on it, of which 600MB is in use.
There are lots of 8086 and 80286 class machines with larger than original
hard drives on them; drive overlay software made that possible 20 years
ago.  Recent IDE controller projects have expanded the number of old
machines that are hard drive capable.  You are incorrect in you belief that
old machines can not benefit from a package manager.

FreeDOS will get no traction among the sizeable retro-computing community
of these kinds of design decisions continue to ignore the more interesting,
older machines.
On Aug 31, 2015 11:50 PM, "Mateusz Viste"  wrote:

> Hi Sparky,
>
> On 31/08/2015 19:38, sparky4 wrote:
> > I want to make a 16 bit version of this program... 
>
> You are most certainly welcome to do so - that's what open-source is all
> about.
>
> I can't help but wonder though - is there any practical need behind such
> work? I don't really see what this would improve. Sure, it would make
> FDNPKG potentially run on 80286 CPUs - but I am not convinced anyone
> would want to run a package manager on a 286. Disk space is usually
> scarce on these machines (if there is a hard disk in the first place),
> so I'd rather think people will turn to good old manual 'copying what I
> need' on such hardware. It's worth noting that 8086 and 80186 are out of
> scope anyway due to memory constraints, since FDNPKG definitely requires
> more than 640K of RAM to work.
>
> Mateusz
>
>
>
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Re: [Freedos-user] mTCP - A better solution for moving files on the LAN

[Michael Brutman]

Rugxulo - I'm pretty sure that John was using the FTP server on his
machine, not the FTP client.  The FTP server has no shell to dos
capability - that is only really needed/useful in the client.

For the most part it is safe to do; just don't take too long.  In general
FTP servers are not sending unsolicited messages so if the client is
dormant because it is in the DOS shell, then the server doesn't know any
better.
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[Freedos-user] DOS (network) Printing

[Michael Brutman]

There is Netcat for DOS ...  http://www.freedos.org/wiki/index.php/Netcat


And it can easily be used for printers that listen for raw connections on
port 9100.
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[Freedos-user] Cancelled: Kickstarter project for FreeDOS 2.0

[Michael Brutman]

From the comments page:

Unfortunately the FreeDOS community wants nothing to do with this project
as the goals cannot not be mutually met i will be removing the project and
exiting the development. sorry.


As far as I can tell, the Kickstarter project was launched without any
consultation from the FreeDOS community.  A little bit of discussion up
front about what he wanted the project to achieve would have gone a long
way to getting more buy-in.  There was no participation in the roadmap
discussion either, once the discussion started.  So it's hard to read that
comment and not shake one's head.

If somebody is in contact with Chelson or the backers of the project they
should encourage them to join the mailing lists here.
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Re: [Freedos-user] HTML5/Javascript/Flash (was: Re: Quickview ver 2.60)

[Michael Brutman]

The conversation is getting silly.​

Sony got hacked.  Like many large corporations, they are very concerned
about threats from outside.  But once an intruder is inside, every door in
the building was basically found to be unlocked.  Good security is layered
security - getting in the front door does not give you access to everything.

And the issue of broadband vs. dial-up really for ease of hacking is not
relevant.  Broadband does make it slightly easier, not because of the
speed, but because the connection is always on and in the same place all of
the time.  It's much easier to test the security of an entity when they
keep showing up at the same place (IP address) all of the time.

And even in ye olde days, if hacking over the network was not feasible then
the hacking would have been done from inside.  Data would be carried out
using floppies, tapes, Zip drives, CD-R, etc.  Physical security at many
corporations is often pretty weak too.

Getting back on topic ...

Browsing under DOS is a lost cause.  The world has moved on.  We do not
have enough library or developer support to keep modern applications
running under DOS.  It's just not worth the effort.  Modern hardware is
cheap enough were this should not even be a concern.

DOS and its variants are a niche.  They are not good for running Java,
Javascript, etc.  Use and enjoy DOS for what it was good at, and
occasionally be unreasonable and do something cool that people are not
expecting.  But don't expect to keep parity with Linux, Windows, MacOS and
ChromeOS - that is just not feasible.
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Re: [Freedos-user] resending my question is using freedos to network with a laptop.

[Michael Brutman]

That approach is faking it but it works and it sidesteps the questions
about wireless drivers, encryption, etc.
On Oct 6, 2014 9:52 AM, Matej Horvat matej.hor...@guest.arnes.si wrote:

 This might be a good solution for wireless networking in DOS:

 http://brutman.com/Wireless_for_Classics/Wireless_for_Classics.html


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Re: [Freedos-user] VirtualBox and FTP

[Michael Brutman]

I don't want to brag too much, but M2WAT shows the absolute brilliance 
of separating the DHCP process from the programs.  ;-0 The mTCP programs 
do not know or care about DHCP; they behave the same whether they have a 
static IP address or a DHCP obtained one.  M2WAT helps the WATTCP 
programs behave the same way; they can run as though they are on a fixed 
address and only M2WAT knows the difference.

If David does not mind I would provide a link to M2WAT or even host a 
self-contained ZIP of the source code and executable on my mTCP home 
page.  But I don't think I am going to put it in with the other mTCP 
programs; those are pretty much 100% my authorship and I don't want to 
mix things in.

For FreeDOS the installer can place M2WAT wherever it makes the most sense.


Mike

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Re: [Freedos-user] VirtualBox and FTP

[Michael Brutman]

The expiring lease problem is irritating.  My answer to that is have 
people choose reasonable lease times and to run DHCP before doing 
something that might run a while.  Reasonable generally means at least 
8 hours ...

If 8 hours is too long a nice work around is to configure the DHCP 
server to assign the same address each time to a given MAC address.  
This allows the DOS machine to use DHCP while having the benefits of a 
fixed address.  It is also possible to just configure things statically 
and avoid the problem entirely.

For the very long running programs (the web server or the FTP server) 
I've thought about including the DHCP and SNTP code in them; that would 
allow them to refresh their lease and keep the system time accurate for 
extended periods of time.  (Days or weeks ...)  The DHCP portion would 
not be necessary if using one of the two work-arounds above.


Mike

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Re: [Freedos-user] VirtualBox and FTP

[Michael Brutman]

On 9/1/2014 12:30 PM, Tom Ehlert wrote:
 any good reason mTCP and DHCP can't update/use WATTCP.directly ?

 imho there should be a *single* network configuration file, used by
 *all* network stuff on the machine.

 changing mTCP to understand WATTCP.CFG is trivial. (WATTCP.CFG has
 been around for ages, and mTCP is under active development, so mTCP
 should learn to understand WATTCP.CFG)

I took a look at the WATTCP configuration file once and I found some 
extra things in there that could complicate things, so I moved along.  
If somebody else wants to pick up the mTCP DHCP source code and change 
it they are welcome to do so.  I've contributed quite a bit the last few 
years.

I wrote mTCP from scratch before I was aware of WATTCP.  I can count on 
my fingers the number of times I've used WATTCP apps since I've become 
aware of it.  While I am happy that people are using my code, I code for 
my own enjoyment.  And WATTCP is not on the RADAR at the moment.

Another option would be to just fix the WATTCP code so that it handles 
DHCP better.  Has anybody looked into that?


Mike

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Re: [Freedos-user] VirtualBox and FTP

[Michael Brutman]

On 8/31/2014 1:36 PM, Rugxulo wrote:
 Hi,

 On Sat, Aug 30, 2014 at 10:10 PM, Michael Brutman mbbrut...@brutman.com 
 wrote:
 It pains me to see this much effort going into what should be a small
 utility that takes the relevant mTCP obtained network parameters and
 writes them into the WATTCP file.  There are 15 invocations of the
 mt.exe program in that script.
 I agree it could maybe be more optimal, but as long as it works, it's
 no deal breaker. Just calling it 15 times isn't really a direct
 problem, nor necessarily slow either.

Sure.  My 4.77Mhz floppy based systems are going to do well with this.

Let's not speculate.  There are lots of different use cases out there.  
Loading and executing a program 15 times to do some simple string 
manipulation is slow and painful on a low end system.  You would do 
faster to type it in by hand using edlin.  Even on a fast system it is 
still much slower than it should be.

Cordata's program seems reasonable.  I would get rid of the multiple 
printfs at the end and just use a large block quote.  Somebody who uses 
WATTCP might want to step up, test it, and see if there are any bugs.


Mike



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Re: [Freedos-user] VirtualBox and FTP

[Michael Brutman]

It pains me to see this much effort going into what should be a small 
utility that takes the relevant mTCP obtained network parameters and 
writes them into the WATTCP file.  There are 15 invocations of the 
mt.exe program in that script.

I suggest that somebody write a small program that takes the current 
configuration parameters from the mTCP configuration file and updates a 
WATTCP configuration file.  It should not be a terribly complicated 
program - you just have to do some light string processing.  Then one 
would be able to run the mTCP DHCP program, run the utility, and have 
both mTCP and WATTCP apps configured and ready to go.

As an alternative you can contact David Dunfield and see if he would 
license his code in a way that FreeDOS could use it.  Or just simply use 
it, but don't distribute it with FreeDOS.  (A readme file or the wiki 
can point to it as a useful utility no matter what the license is, or if 
source is not even available.)


Mike

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Re: [Freedos-user] VirtualBox and FTP

[Michael Brutman]

David Dunfield has a utility called DHCP that will work with both mTCP 
and WATTCP.  I've not tried it, but David is well known in 
vintage-computer circles and his software is supposed to be pretty good.

http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/dos/index.htm


Mike


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Re: [Freedos-user] FTP Server testing needed

[Michael Brutman]

I'll have to install those clients and try them.  But it is most likely to be 
something specific about them.

Anonymous users can't delete what they (or anybody else) upload.  So that was 
expected behavior.

Mike

escape esc...@front.ru wrote:

Works with Filezilla/Linux, lukemftp, ncftp, but fails to retrieve
directory listing in Midnight Commander, Krusader and Dolphin - upon
connection shows empty filelist. Also I was unable to delete file
TEST.TXT uploaded to /INCOMING, despite its rwxrwxrwx permissions, but I
suspect this could be some restriction in server config:

Command:   DELE TEST.TXT
Response:  550 permission denied


On 29.09.11 16:37, Michael B. Brutman wrote:
 
 I have made a large round of improvements to the FTP server in mTCP and 
 I am looking for a little testing help with it.  If you have a few spare 
 moments over the next day or two just try to connect to it and browse 
 the file structure.  Using a few different clients will help me shake 
 out any new bugs.  Upload some relevant files if you are adventurous.
 
 It can be reached at ftp://96.42.66.188:2021/ - if you are using a 
 browser that URL should work as-is.  For command line clients just take 
 note of the non-standard port number.  The FTP server is running on the 
 slowest machine that I have, which is a PCjr; it if runs well on that, 
 it will run well on anything you probably have.  (If you want to see the 
 actual machine it is running on look at THISPCJR.JPG in the root directory.)
 
 Changes for this version include:
 
 - scanning for valid drive letters at startup to avoid errors when 
 touching floppy drives
 - a major rework of directory handling if you are not an anonymous 
 user.  Drive letters now look like part of a normal Unix path so that 
 the smarter FTP clients don't get confused by the drive letters and path 
 delimiters.
 - The flow control problem with FileZilla is now understood and fixed
 - The wrong file date problem with FileZilla is fixed
 - There is a new message of the day feature for putting up special 
 notices at login time
 - The local user interface is redesigned and little more friendly
 - Better error checking on the password file
 
 All if this will be part of the next mTCP release, which I'm targeting 
 for the next week.  Getting some testing time on it is a good thing ...
 
 
 Thanks in advance,
 Mike
 
 
 
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Re: [Freedos-user] FTP Server testing needed

[Michael Brutman]

It's DOS so the filename was in error, but it should have aborted the data 
transfer fully.  I'll look into that after work - for now stick to 8.3 style 
filenames.

Single Stage to Orbit alex.bu...@munted.org.uk wrote:

On Thu, 2011-09-29 at 08:37 -0500, Michael B. Brutman wrote:
 I have made a large round of improvements to the FTP server in mTCP and 
 I am looking for a little testing help with it.  If you have a few spare 
 moments over the next day or two just try to connect to it and browse 
 the file structure.  Using a few different clients will help me shake 
 out any new bugs.  Upload some relevant files if you are adventurous.

Uploads to incoming doesn't quite work for me. Here's the transcript of
my session:

$ ftp -n -p 96.42.66.188 2021
Connected to 96.42.66.188 (96.42.66.188).
220 mTCP FTP Server
ftp user anonymous
331 Anonymous ok, send your email addr as the password
Password: 
230-Welcome to Mike's PCjr running the mTCP FTP server!  This machine
230-was released by IBM in 1983 and features a 4.77Mhz Nec V20 CPU (an
230-upgrade from the standard 8088), an XT-IDE modified for the PCjr, a
230-Western Digital 8003 Ethernet card, and a 20GB Maxtor hard drive.
230-It is running DOS 3.3 so most of the hard drive is not being used.
230-Please poke around, test things out, report any problems you might
230-have, and enjoy!  Incoming files may be deposited at /incoming, and
230-you can create subdirectories there if needed. -Mike
230 User logged in
ftp put alex_was_here
local: alex_was_here remote: alex_was_here
227 Entering Passive Mode (96,42,66,188,11,76)
550 You need to be in the /INCOMING directory to upload
ftp cd incoming
250 CWD command successful
ftp put alex_was_here
local: alex_was_here remote: alex_was_here
227 Entering Passive Mode (96,42,66,188,8,221)
550 Bad path
ftp dir
425 Transfer already in progress
Passive mode refused.
ftp ls
425 Transfer already in progress
Passive mode refused.
ftp bye
221 Server closing connection

Hope this helps
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Re: [Freedos-user] [Freedos-devel] Heads up: DOS ain't dead forum is closing

[Michael Brutman]

Crisis averted.  :-)

-Mike

Robert Riebisch r...@bttr-software.de wrote:

Dear all,

You have probably noticed, that I have received a lot of public feedback
(plus a few private mails) on my announcement to close this forum.
Thanks for that! I didn't know, that this forum is such an important
part of the DOS community.

Today I have also received a //large// donation via PayPal from an
unknown US guy to keep the forum alive.
Well, folks, I'm not trying to get rich now, but:
**DOS ain't dead will stay online after 2011-09-19!**

A special thanks to these people for their interest in hosting this
forum: Glenn McCorkle, RayeR, Japheth, Michael B. Brutman, Jim Hall,
Markus Maussner, and Michal H. Tyc. -- Maybe next time ... ;-)

Robert Riebisch
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