Re: [Freedos-user] odd news
Hi, On Wed, May 8, 2024 at 5:30 PM Eric Auer via Freedos-user wrote: > > the changes to nasm do not seem to affect the dos version either? My announcement on BTTR (since at least ecm heavily uses NASM) said this: Most of the changes came from 2.16.02 (April 4), e.g. "Fix external references to segments in the obj (OMF) and possibly other output formats." ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] what cd rom drivers does freedos use?
Hi Karen, On Wed, Jan 24, 2024 at 10:18 PM Karen Lewellen via Freedos-user wrote: > > As many may recall I run msdos 7.1 instead of freedos for several personal > reasons. Do the volunteers (engineers?) who help you set up your systems forcibly demand MS-DOS 7.1 exactly? We've discussed this before, so I'm not really trying to change your mind on it, just curious. (Why specifically MS-DOS? Why not DR-DOS? Or Datalight ROM-DOS?) > I recently had a new machine built, just before Christmas, which also > included my installing an external dectalk card, I have an ISA slot, the > ling kind on this board. > While the synthesizer works well, using it to support my writing this > message, I have an odd problem. > The dectalk software has a conflict that seems to impact cdrom drives, or > the driver provided by Microsoft. Can't you just edit a CONFIG.SYS menu option to let you optionally boot without DecTalk when needing to access a physical CD-ROM? (BTW, dual boot with another OS is another possibility.) > It is more than addresses, dectalk provides a way to locate a free one, > user guides for both dectalk 4.1, what I am running, and 4.2 reference the > driver issue. > The suggested solution did not work..however I need a cd rom drive for > scores of reasons. I assume you mean a modern DVD drive (20x speed or whatever) or possibly DVD-RW or such. > leading to my question. > Often on list I have read that freedos is in many ways better than MS DOS, > with programs able to run under freedos. FreeDOS is strongly compatible and "Free" (libre), but not necessarily "better" in all ways, no. > I now have a chance to test that theory, swapping in the cd rom driver > freedos provides as a test? > my driver again is not specific to my cd rom..never has been. > Instead I use the basic driver supplied with ms dos 7.1, never having a > problem until now. MS-DOS 7.1 was never a standalone product (unlike MS-DOS 6.22). It was bundled as part of Win95 or Win98 or whatever variant. So I don't know what came with it: OAKCDROM.SYS? > What does Freedos provide with that kind of universal flexibility? I can only point you to the FreeDOS mirror on iBiblio: * https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/dos/cdrom/ But it's been years since I've bothered with physical CDs. (My 2022 Linux laptop has no optical drive, for instance.) ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] What DOS programs represent the 1980s and early 90s?
Hi, On Wed, Jan 3, 2024 at 4:30 AM Frantisek Rysanek via Freedos-user wrote: > > my first PC at home was a 386DX/40 in about 1991/1992 I'm American, but we're roughly the same age, and I started with a 486 SX/25 in 1994. > All the school had at the time was Pascal with objects I've become a big fan of Pascal in the past decade or so. Turbo Pascal was really well done, but there were others too. > I recall that two of the best students coded a software app in > Borland Pascal with Turbovision for creating daily/weekly teaching > schedules for the school. A pretty advanced piece of software, > considering use of objects / "dynamic data", the data model, and the > algorithmic manipulation / application of constraints etc. Impressive! Niklaus Wirth (RIP) did a lot of teaching, writing, and programming over the course of his career. His work (Pascal, Modula-2, Oberon, et al.) either directly helped or inspired a ton of people. Even if you ignore DOS and Turbo Pascal (or even Delphi), there's still plenty to learn from him and followers of such languages. ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] What DOS programs represent the 1980s and early 90s?
Hi, On Mon, Jan 1, 2024 at 6:04 PM Jim Hall via Freedos-user wrote: > > On Mon, Jan 1, 2024 at 5:39 PM andrew fabbro via Freedos-user > wrote: > > > > Whatever programs are most representative, they might have been > > distributed as shareware. There's still "trial software" today but > > not like going to a BBS and seeing hundreds of shareware packages, > > or getting a CD stuffed with them. > > I agree! I first used DOS when DOS was new (1981) but by the time I > moved to university (1990) shareware had definitely taken hold. And > shareware was just as powerful as the "commercial off the shelf" > software but a fraction of the price. And that was a huge deal for a > university student. Although I never had any professional use for higher maths (and have thus forgotten what little I learned in school), there was a cool shareware calculator UCALC by Daniel Corbier. * https://www.sac.sk/download/educult/ucalc32.zip ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] What DOS programs represent the 1980s and early 90s?
Hi, On Sun, Dec 24, 2023 at 10:34 PM Jim Hall via Freedos-user wrote: > > I'm thinking about doing a video that shows how to do real work on DOS. > I sometimes see comments on YouTube with people asking "could you really do > *work* with DOS?" > And the answer is of course you can, that happened every day. > > So I'm collecting a list of things you'd do in the 80s and 90s with DOS to do > work. > Sure, I'll put a game it two in there, but I'm focusing on getting work done. > > What programs or types of programs would you like to see? If you insist on a game, I suggest something ASCII-based like a roguelike, maybe UMoria? * http://ftp.lanet.lv/ftp/mirror/x2ftp/msdos/programming/gamesrc/mor55src.zip (Although Doom did just turn 30, and its source code release in late 1997 got a very quick DOS port with DJGPP.) While I'm the last person to suggest "UNIX is the answer to life, the universe, and everything!", they did have some useful tools that had DOS ports. Sed and AWK come to mind. * http://ftp.lip6.fr/pub/pc/garbo/pc/unix/sed15x.zip (HHsed, compiled by Turbo C, circa 1991) * http://cd.textfiles.com/simtel/stmsdos9709/disk2/DISC2/GNU/GNUISH/MAWK122X.ZIP (dual DOS + OS/2, circa 1996) Text editors were also good, e.g. DJGPP's GNU Emacs or RHIDE or (real mode) TDE: * http://cd.textfiles.com/simtel/simtel9703/disk1/DISC2/DJGPP/V2GNU/00_INDEX.TXT * http://cd.textfiles.com/simtel/simtel9703/disk1/DISC2/DJGPP/V2APPS/ * http://ftp.lip6.fr/pub/pc/garbo/pc/goldies/tde40.zip (circa 1994) Another cool hex editor / viewer / assembler that everyone loved was HIEW: * http://ftp.lanet.lv/ftp/mirror/x2ftp/msdos/programming/utils/hiew44.zip (but I only remember 6.x or such) Simtel also had NASM 0.97, which I used to write a really simple utility (public domain) and uploaded back in 1999. * http://cd.textfiles.com/simtel/simtel0101/simtel/asmutl/nasm097.zip (A86/D86 was also very good for shareware, last updated in 2000.) In summary: Simtel, Garbo, x2ftp, DJGPP ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Is networking unsupported on QEMU? Pilot error suspected.
Hi, On Wed, Dec 27, 2023 at 1:05 PM andrew fabbro via Freedos-user wrote: > > I'm a bit perplexed trying to get networking working for FreeDOS 1.3 on QEMU. > My physical host is an M1 Mac (Apple Silicon). Which version of QEMU? 8.2? > FreeDOS installs and boots fine, but I get this message: > > QEMU network detected. > Physical hardware networking is not supported at this time. > > Here is my QEMU invocation: > > qemu-system-i386 -boot order=cd -m 32M -k en-us -name FreeDOS1 -cdrom > FD13BNS.iso -drive FreeDOS1.img,format=raw,media=disk -net nic,model=pcnet > -net user > > I've also tried model=ne2k_pci, model=e1000, etc. Also tried similar setup > in UTM, which is a graphical front end for QEMU. > > But looking at FreeDOS's startup scripts, I'm thinking maybe QEMU networking > is not supported...? QEMU should work (but I haven't tried lately): * https://gitlab.com/FreeDOS/net/fdnet/-/blob/master/BIN/FDNET.BAT?ref_type=heads > So is networking under QEMU completely unsupported? > > Strangely, I found this forum post in which someone has it working just fine, > so I'm thinking that maybe I'm doing something wrong? It should work. Try MetaDOS! * https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-sleTc26Qi8drmn5OPIsp8_SegSz0hTd/view?usp=sharing * https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-lFX0Z--zXbMS03TqT01bWMOLZmsnmXN/view?usp=sharing ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] freedos, or dos based mail clients?
Hi, On Mon, Nov 20, 2023 at 4:17 PM Karen Lewellen via Freedos-user wrote: > > Google intends removing all access to basic HTML, and is forcing the issue > as of today. Did they state a reason? Maintenance burden? Or just better security? Because email was always plain text and pretty insecure. Realistically, I wonder if there are supported Chromebooks for sale with good accessibility options for basic tasks (emails, word processing, browsing the web). (In some ways, I feel they aren't tested well or aren't supported for long or just scattered in obscure locations with little promotion.) > A second option would be a command line browser tool that substituted > for the gmail interface, but that, if I could not use it directly from > DOS, could be set up in the Ubuntu shell I have with shellworld. I assume Ubuntu is much, much better supported. Surely somebody on Linux (or BSD) does email via terminal / commandline. > My question is this. > is there a DOS only based email client, in freedos, in djppp or something > that might meet this need? Text-based? Probably not. Though I always say it's not impossible ... but, in reality, there are so few DJGPP volunteers that a lot doesn't get done. Georg Potthast did a graphical (FLTK) FLmail a while back. I never tested it (and it's probably somewhat unstable), but I bet that mostly works. "FLMAIL91.zipFlMail email client version 0.91" "FLMAIL91.zip2014-11-145.2 MB" * https://sourceforge.net/projects/fltk-dos/files/Applications/Binary%20versions%20of%20FLTK%20applications/ ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] piping .BATs (input and output)
"%COMSPEC% /c work.bat >file.txt" will succeed. Everyone knows that. What I'm wondering is if the following (piping into a .BAT) is considered acceptable or "standard" for DOS. "prog1.exe | %COMSPEC% /c work.bat | %COMSPEC% /c fixups.bat >some.txt" Does that work like I'd expect? (Seems to ... barely.) Is it rare? Is it buggy? Is there a better way? I've explored several other ways in DOS, including other shells (4DOS, DJGPP's Bash) or just a simple wrapper .C (system) or .PAS (exec) program. Does anyone have experience or advice with this? (Timo Salmi's BAT FAQ didn't quite cover it, from a quick glance.) ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] MSdos 7.1 question
Hi, On Fri, Nov 3, 2023 at 12:31 PM Ralf Quint via Freedos-user wrote: > > In which way is "FreeDOS" limited to 2GB sized files? (Sorry, never > bothered wit such large files on DOS (any DOS)? The file size entry in > the FAT32 directory entry is a 4 byte integer. As a filesize can't be > negative, this should be a UINT_32/unsigned long and thus allow for > files up to 4GB. I'm not exactly sure, but I think 4 GB files were somewhat uncommon (in DOS programs). And I'm not entirely sure NT (Win XP etc.) ever supported such a thing atop FAT32 either (via DOS calls). DJGPP 2.04 "beta" (and 2.05 "current") apps *should* work, but I don't know for sure (ask Martin Stromberg). I do know that DJGPP's *nix file utilities like "df" and "du" only use the corresponding FAT32 calls if the DOS major version is reported as 7. > If the FAT32 enabled file functions of INT 21h do > handle this properly with a unsigned long, any program that does the > same and the programmer of an application didn't get lazy and just > assumes "signed long is big enough for everyone", then this should be a > problem of that application, not FreeDOS. I believe it's something weird like int 21h, 716Ch is needed to create the file. (Maybe ecm can chime in, I think we've had this conversation before.) > If the respective routines in > the FreeDOS kernel do in fact handle the FAT32 file size entry as a > signed long, than this is a bug that needs to be fixed IMHO... Yes, that's precisely the problem (according to Eric Auer, years ago). > > FAT32 is free, but IIRC there a patents problems with other newer formats > FAT32 itself was never patented, it was the long file name format and > handling that was covered by patents, which by now have expired. As of 2017, yes, supposedly the LFN patents are expired. The main problem with LFNs (besides the fact that you don't *need* them half the time) is that the DOS drivers (e.g. DOSLFN) are super slow. > exFAT is not really an extension like FAT12->FAT16->FAT32 where and doesn't > have such limitations, just doesn't have all that journal stuff that is > included in NTFS, which has become the standard file system ever since > Windows 2000 (and Microsoft intentionally limits the use/format of FAT32 > partitions larger than 32GB). Not sure I'd even want exFAT support in FreeDOS, personally. I'd prefer HPFS or ext2 instead. > Disk size limit should be 8TB, just like with any other FAT32 implementation. I still occasionally use a 128 GB USB jump drive with (only) FreeDOS (FAT32) installed on my old (2010) Dell laptop without any obvious problems. Granted, that's an older install (older 2041 kernel, older stable shell 0.84-pre2 XMS_Swap). In recent months I was writing a lot of Pascal code (ISO 7185 but 99% TP compatible so that a simple script will let it compile either way). But none of that needed large files at all. (I also typically test atop a 200 MB FAT16 RAM disk.) ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] MSdos 7.1 question
Hi, On Wed, Nov 1, 2023 at 2:55 PM Michał Dec via Freedos-user wrote: > > Do you know maybe where do these limits come from? > > I thought it should be 4GiB for both since this is the file size limit > for FAT32. IIRC, FAT16 in something like classic MS-DOS 6.22 supports max ~65000 files and 2 GB max file size and 2 GB max partition size. (But you can have four primary partitions.) FreeDOS supports FAT32 of much larger partition (2 TB?) and 2 GB max per file. ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] gminer.exe game needs an emulation friendly wait_vsync()
Hi,
I'm not very knowledgeable about systems programming or DPMI, but I
don't think you can (normally) access ports under ring 3 (e.g.
CWSDPMI). Try CWSDPR0.EXE (ring 0) or WDOSX (run "stubit") instead.
Who knows what this was tested under (Win9x? JEMM386?).
On Mon, Oct 2, 2023 at 7:14 PM Paul Dufresne via Freedos-user
wrote:
>
> I discovered that if I comment out the two while (in vga.c):
> void wait_vsync()
> {
> //while (inportb(0x3da) & 8);
> //while (!(inportb(0x3da) & 8));
> }
>
> Then the game under dosbox run just like under VirtualBox.
>
> I have tried all the available options for emulated graphics "card" under
> VirtualBox... no change.
>
> So... I guess what I/we need, is a more emulation friendly wait_vsync()
> function.
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Re: [Freedos-user] Planning the FreeDOS "2024" calendar
Hi, On Sun, Sep 24, 2023 at 1:13 PM Jim Hall via Freedos-user wrote: > > I'm making a FreeDOS "2024" calendar, and looking for suggestions of > what screenshots to include in it. Any ideas? > > Looking for suggestions of what screenshots you think would be great > to have in the calendar. RHIDE, based upon SETedit, still looks quite nice to me. Or GNU Emacs (DJGPP port). You were also always fond of Commander Keen, and I think BioMenace used one of the same engines. (I do have a screenshot of that game's menu screen running under DOSBox-X atop FreeDOS also showing the DOSBox-X menu.) I don't know, boring cmdline stuff isn't quite photogenic! But I'd rather it wasn't all just games either (although Paku Paku is pretty iconic, 160x100 CGA text mode, right?). Maybe a Links2 (graphical) screenshot of the FreeDOS website? > Also: Any important FreeDOS-related or DOS-related or "classic > PC"-related dates that you think should be marked on the calendar? June 29 for the start of FreeDOS? Or maybe Sep. 3 for the big FreeDOS 1.0 release? In terms of DOS history, I mainly think in years. E.g. Free Pascal 3.0.0 (now with cross compiler support for i8086-msdos) was released in 2015. So was DJGPP 2.05. ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] How do I change screen resolution?
Hi, On Mon, Aug 7, 2023 at 3:33 PM Eric Auer via Freedos-user wrote: > > Assuming that you just want to have MORE text on your screen, > without actually wanting to use graphics mode, you can select > quite a few modes with MODE CON or with various VESA tools. Here's an old thread about it: * https://freedos-user.narkive.com/iKOZ0sY6/vertical-lines-bands-in-lcd-display-but-ok-on-crt Some reference info: * https://help.fdos.org/en/hhstndrd/cnfigsys/screen.htm * https://www.computerhope.com/modehlp.htm Some utilities: * http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/util/user/setmxx.zip * http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/util/user/svgatextmode/ * http://web.archive.org/web/20110807104438/http://omniplex.om.funpic.de/dos/setlines.htm ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] How do I update certificates in FreeDOS?
Hi, On Sat, Aug 5, 2023 at 3:18 PM Louis Santillan via Freedos-user wrote: > > I daily drive Fedora Linux myself. But curling DOS software zip files on it > is not as useful as doing that directly on 386 Dell I have sitting 3 feet > away when I want to run a bit of new software on it. What version of Curl was the original user using again? IIRC, the official Curl website points to Michael Kostylev's (frequently-updated) builds. * https://curl.se/download.html (Curl 8.2.1) * http://mik.dyndns.pro/dos-stuff/ (DJGPP builds of Curl 8.1.2) So obviously they should try the latest build (for DOS). ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] the freedos 1.3 floppy install edition.
Hi, On Mon, Jul 24, 2023 at 4:48 AM Jerome Shidel via Freedos-user wrote: > > Finally, the primary installer currently uses grep (requires 386+) to parse > some of the package lists. DJGPP grep? Why not Xgrep? It's not as overpowered, but it works well and is 8086-friendly. (N.B. It can be rebuilt with JWasm.) * https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distributions/1.2/repos/pkg-html/xgrep.html ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] My curiosity
Hi, On Mon, Jul 24, 2023 at 3:47 PM Daniel Essin via Freedos-user wrote: > > What are others using freedos for: business, curiosity, running retro > games and apps for fun, to avoid total dependence on the evil empire, or > something else? Evil empire? "Which one??" ;-) What evil are we escaping or avoiding? My main curiosity with FreeDOS isn't what it can run but rather ... what can it build? "Ask not what your OS can do for you, but what you can do for your OS." DJGPP, OpenWatcom, FreePascal, FreeBASIC, NASM, FASM ... plenty of tools to get started. ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Accessing usb stick from freedos.
Hi, On Sat, Jul 22, 2023 at 2:44 AM John Vella via Freedos-user wrote: > > Thanks for the quick reply, Ralf. I have a work around, which did the trick. > I just created four partitions, each less than 32gb on the stick, and freedos > is happy with that. Assuming your FreeDOS kernel has FAT32 compiled in (which most do, omitting it only saves like 2 kb of file size of KERNEL.SYS), it should be fine. I still use my old Dell laptop from 2010 to boot FreeDOS on a (128 GB, FAT32) USB jump drive made by RUFUS. I don't need any third-party USB drivers because the BIOS treats it as a hard disk (but, of course, you can't swap USB sticks, you have to reboot if you want to use a different one). (... more comments below ...) > On Sat, 22 Jul 2023, 03:23 Ralf Quint via Freedos-user, > wrote: >> On 7/21/2023 2:01 PM, John Vella via Freedos-user wrote: >> > >> I had never had the need to use such large partitions with (any) DOS, >> and don't use it for anything else, as it is limited to 4GB file size too. The alleged 4 GB file size doesn't work on some OSes (FreeDOS, Windows NT?), only on old Win9x. So you're only guaranteed 2 GB individual file sizes, universally. You'd need DJGPP 2.04 or 2.05 just to (maybe) handle it. Even then, last I checked, they hardcoded a check for "version 7 DOS" before enabling FAT32 support (e.g. du or df). My old 4 GB FreeDOS partition filled up pretty quickly. I was using at least 1 GB for DJGPP stuff (mostly backup .ZIPs). I would not recommend using FAT16 for anything above (roughly) 510 MB. Use FAT32 instead (if possible, which is well-supported by most DOSes, not counting ancient MS-DOS 6.22 and DR-DOS 7.03). >> Theoretically, FAT32 could handle up to 2TB in partition size, while >> newer Windows (and some other OS) limit it to 32GB. I believe the Windows limitation was in "creating" FAT32 partitions larger than 32 GB because MS found that it was otherwise too slow under real-mode MS-DOS 7. Vista (and newer Windows) won't even boot from FAT anymore (too slow, security issues). FYI, Windows 11 is 64-bit host only nowadays and supposedly takes up 25 GB of space. ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Basic freedos question before I try this?
Hi, On Tue, Jul 18, 2023 at 3:56 PM Karen Lewellen via Freedos-user wrote: > > My goal is supporting the built in Ethernet infrastructure on the > thinkpad. > My understanding, perhaps incorrect, is that freedos has networking > infrastructure in the system itself? No, FreeDOS isn't special, it just uses pre-existing packet drivers (usually for old hardware). ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] windows detects FD13BNS.iso as Trojan:Script/Wacatac.H!ml
Hi, On Fri, Apr 7, 2023 at 2:04 AM Jody Spurrell wrote: > > windows detects FD13BNS.iso as Trojan:Script/Wacatac.H!ml > downloaded FreeDOS 1.3 BonusCD file FD13-BonusCD.zip > > file downloaded from > https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distributions/1.3/official/FD13-BonusCD.zip > on 4/6/23 Antiviruses often run buggy heuristics to determine whether something is dangerous. It gives many false positives. Windows 11 is 64-bit only and thus doesn't even run DOS software anymore. So it's unlikely that there is a real threat. I checked VirusTotal and rescanned it there. Only 1 out of 88 scanners detected it as "malicious", and since I've never heard of that particular brand of antivirus (Sucuri), I'm not too impressed. Ignore it. Seriously, almost everything in FreeDOS should be "Open Source". It's unlikely that anything crept in without us knowing. ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Lure of the Temptress (again)
Hi, On Sun, Apr 2, 2023 at 11:34 AM Brandon Taylor wrote: > > Hello! It's me again. Over 6 years ago, I asked whether it was possible to > get "Lure of the Temptress" running in FreeDOS > (and yes, once again, I've played it in DOSBox). I eventually agreed to > concede that it wasn't. DOSBox-X can run in DOS. If all else fails, try that. But "not enough memory" for a 640 kb game (conventional memory only)? How much free do you have? What does "mem /c" say? Try unloading some non-essential drivers. Or maybe it's their bug? Would LOADFIX help?? ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Dosemu on its own - does it exist?
Hi, On Tue, Mar 28, 2023 at 8:47 AM Liam Proven wrote: > > DR DOS does have some source code available, and includes TaskMaster, > which can do full-screen multitasking of DOS sessions. This *does* > work on bare modern hardware in my testing. IIRC, DR-DOS 7.03 (circa 1999) had task swapping for 286s and preemptive multitasking for 386s (TASKMGR.EXE). But you had to use their DR EMM386.EXE (no HIMEM.SYS needed) with their built-in DPMI enabled. (It had a lot of bundled / hidden .VXDs or whatever.) It was limited to 64 MB per task (despite the false claim of XMS v3 support). And no FAT32 support. > Lineo/DeviceLogics president and CEO Bryan Sparks said all CP/M > derivatives are free to use, modify and distribute last year. DR DOS > is a derivative of CP/M-86 which is a derivative of CP/M. I think it > could be used. They stopped selling DR-DOS online back in 2018, right? But I'd be surprised if DR-DOS was still considered a true derivative of CP/M-86. Almost all of the CP/M support was probably stripped out. I'm overly skeptical about that. (The so-called "OpenDOS" was only kernel and shell for "non-commercial use", AFAIK, and wasn't even patched with the latest Novell fixes.) > It seems to me that if the sources of Multiuser DOS could be obtained, > and if it's covered by Mr Sparks' edict, then it would give a lot of > what people want from a DOS nowadays. Minix 2.0.4 (circa 2003) could run atop FAT16 (e.g. DOS). It wasn't perfect but still quite good. It could multitask its own binaries (a.out variant). I've been wanting to try to build 8086tiny (ecm's fork) under it. But even Minix choked on machines with lots of RAM. I don't think it booted atop FAT32 either. I personally wanted to try again under VirtualBox one of these days. Or just develop in standard C (or Modula-2) atop Minix [DOSMinix, booting atop FAT], with its multitasking for faster development, and later transfer your sources to DOS to compile natively. You could also run old Slackware 11 (ZipSlack) atop FAT (Linux 2.4 kernel, UMSDOS). IIRC, it had GCC 3.4.6. Maybe even an old DOSEMU would run there. > Multiuser DOS was the last and final descendant of CP/M. It's a native > 32-bit OS, multitasking but DOS compatible, with FAT32 support. It > supports up to 4GB of RAM and apps can get both EMS and XMS services. Memory is such a mess (and I don't mean 16-bit). So many things have corner cases or bugs. In case it wasn't obvious, I did buy DR-DOS (online in 2004), but I rarely used their multitasking. The main potential uses (to me) would be 1). finding files in the background (or grepping), 2). compiling some sources, or 3). file compression. But I rarely needed to care. (Most people would also prefer listening to music or downloading files.) As a workaround, locally in FreeDOS, I always (weakly) tried to simplify things (build processes), use speedy tools, better algorithms, etc. Running atop RAM disk and/or cache also helps a ton. DJGPP can be quite slow (and worse with LFNs enabled). You know, if everything is quick and efficient (and accurate), you don't need to multitask as much. (But I hate brittle makefiles that are easy to break. I'd rather just rebuild slowly from scratch via shell script.) > It has modest hardware support: CD, DVD, sound, mouse, a few other > things. It supports a few network cards, and can talk TCP/IP and SMB. There are some brilliant apps that use the mouse (e.g. JED), but I rarely relied on it. Sound is the weakest link in DOS (and probably not crucial to "real work" for most people). Network can be very useful but isn't well-supported (lack of packet drivers). That vaguely reminds me. I think I once suggested someone use FreeBSD and QEMU as a sort of way to multitask DOS. You don't even need X11 installed. The minimum (last I checked) for FreeBSD was 64 MB of RAM (486 DX or better), but of course probably much more required with a guest running. (They've had their own hypervisor, bhyve, since 2014 or so, using VT-X [EPT], but I don't specifically know if they ever bothered running DOS with it. I think they did have some shims for BIOS-based Windows. But stick with the QEMU package for now.) > It's not a true DOS, it can't run DOS device drivers, and has > functionality that's irrelevant today, such as serial terminal > support. But if someone could chase down a final version of the > source, it could have some obsolete stuff stripped out (NetBIOS and > IPX/SPX support, RS/232 terminals, etc.) and could be useful to > someone somewhere. > > I tried to contact 3 or 4 vendors of Multiuser DOS mentioned in my > article. Most didn't reply. Even Minix 3, formerly with lots of funding, still dried up in 2016. It's sad, but most people don't want a 32-bit only OS that doesn't have USB support (very complex). Well, except Intel for its Management Engine. ;-) I was always impressed by Minix and how much they accomplished, even in the 2.x days. I'm sure there are dozens of improvements we could make to
Re: [Freedos-user] TASM under an emulator?
Hi again, On Thu, Mar 23, 2023 at 12:53 PM Alvah Whealton wrote: > > Thanks for providing me with better direction. I'm already pursuing some of > your recommendations. Just to reiterate, the official recommendation of FreeDOS is to use OpenWatcom and NASM. (OW's whelp.exe is their documentation reader. For something like DJGPP it would be Texinfo, e.g. "info libc a printf" although other Info readers exist.) But a lot of other assemblers are incompatible, and old source code (e.g. 80xxx snippets) will mostly be in other dialects. YMMV, caveat emptor, etc. * http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/devel/asm/nasm/0.98.39/8086host/ * https://pushbx.org/ecm/doc/insref.htm * https://www.nasm.us/pub/nasm/releasebuilds/2.16.01/dos/ (latest 32-bit DJGPP build) * https://www.nasm.us/pub/nasm/releasebuilds/2.16.01/doc/html/ * https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distributions/1.2/repos/pkg-html/ambread.html (see OSDN's samples, e.g. 8086 reference) Just for completeness, although not directly DOS-related, I also want to tell you about Ray Seyfarth's x64 .PDF book, it's very cheap ($5), and I think it uses YASM. He has some helpful tools (e.g. his EBE IDE). * https://www.rayseyfarth.com/asm/ ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] TASM under an emulator?
Hi, On Wed, Mar 22, 2023 at 9:00 PM Alvah Whealton wrote: > > On Wed, Mar 22, 2023 at 7:40 PM Rugxulo wrote: >> >> On Wed, Mar 22, 2023 at 4:33 PM Alvah Whealton wrote: >> > >> > I'm looking at TASM 5.0 for DOS and Windows, with a date of 1989. >> > I guess what I'm asking is if Assembler requires any considerations on an >> > emulator that other software does not require. >> >> But TASM 5.0 was released in 1996 (since 1.0 was 1988). >> >> (quoting the Byte Pointer website I linked above): >> >> "TASM 5.0 was exclusively a 32-bit protected mode assembler >> (TASM32.EXE) for Windows >> The distribution did however include the previous DOS assemblers >> (TASM.EXE and TASMX.EXE) and linker (TLINK.EXE) from version 4.1." > > > As you can see, I'm less than a novice at this. I don't know what the $#%!# > I'm looking at, but here is where it came from: TASM is no longer sold nor offered for download as an individual product. Embarcadero may?? still include it in their modern C++ bundles, but it hasn't been (properly) updated since year 2000. So it's 16-bit and 32-bit OMF targets only (AFAIK, no COFF). * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3ATurbo_Assembler#Current_Development (That says MMX, but I suspect it also has SSE support. I'd have to double-check.) * https://docwiki.embarcadero.com/RADStudio/Sydney/en/C%2B%2B_Free_Compiler * https://docwiki.embarcadero.com/RADStudio/Sydney/en/C%2B%2B_(Shared_Options) That first page doesn't list it, but the other page seems to imply that RADStudio "Sydney" has TASM. In any case, the freeware LZASM (Ideal mode only) is basically a rebranded TASM that does support up through SSE4. * http://web.archive.org/web/20090104203629/http://lzasm.hotbox.ru/ But you still need a linker. * https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/devel/link/ > My confusion on dates stemmed from a Borland manual that came with the > download, > giving copyright dates of 1988 and 1996. Clearly, they did the smart thing > and in 1996 > upgraded the older 1988 manual. I did the un-smart thing and made an > assumption. Tom Swan's TASM book (2nd ed.) [used] is only $13.19, if you *really* want to learn. * https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/mastering-turbo-assembler_tom-swan/450402/item/3431410/#edition=3791690=5041542 >> Did you explicitly need TASM (Ideal) syntax support? Are you starting >> a new project or using legacy code? Normally around here we would >> recommend a different tool, e.g. NASM or FASM. (OpenWatcom's WASM >> -zcm=tasm does have partial support. For MASM v6 stuff, JWasm is a >> much better fit.) > > > In the past I have tinkered with C and with Pascal. I'm left with a desire to > tinker with Assembler "because it's there." Free Pascal supports inline assembly, even for (since 2015, ppcross8086) i8086-msdos cross-target. > I don't "need" anything. My only requirement is that it should work with > FreeDos > and that it should have some awfully good documentation available somewhere. You may also find FASM (or FASM g) interesting: plenty of docs, examples, forum posts, portable across many OSes, assembles itself!, doesn't need a linker (by default) ... but it lacks OMF support. (For that, you may prefer JWasm.) * http://flatassembler.net/docs.php * https://www.japheth.de/JWasm/Manual.html (old manual but just FYI) * https://github.com/Baron-von-Riedesel/JWasm/releases/tag/v2.16 (latest version) There's other good references, too (at least up to 486): * https://stanislavs.org/helppc/ * http://cd.textfiles.com/simtel/simtel20/MSDOS/INFO/HELPPC21.ZIP AFAIK, this one goes up through Pentium Pro (686): * http://www.o-love.net/asmedit/ae_down.html (IDE with help info) ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] TASM under an emulator?
Hi, On Wed, Mar 22, 2023 at 4:33 PM Alvah Whealton wrote: > > I'm looking at TASM 5.0 for DOS and Windows, with a date of 1989. > I guess what I'm asking is if Assembler requires any considerations on an > emulator that other software does not require. But TASM 5.0 was released in 1996 (since 1.0 was 1988). (quoting the Byte Pointer website I linked above): "TASM 5.0 was exclusively a 32-bit protected mode assembler (TASM32.EXE) for Windows and would be into the future, although it retained the DPMI stub continuing to allow it to run under DOS provided you have the Borland Runtime Manager (32RTM.EXE) and the 32-bit DPMI server (DPMI32VM.OVL) in your path. The distribution did however include the previous DOS assemblers (TASM.EXE and TASMX.EXE) and linker (TLINK.EXE) from version 4.1." Did you explicitly need TASM (Ideal) syntax support? Are you starting a new project or using legacy code? Normally around here we would recommend a different tool, e.g. NASM or FASM. (OpenWatcom's WASM -zcm=tasm does have partial support. For MASM v6 stuff, JWasm is a much better fit.) ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] TASM under an emulator?
Which version?? I assume so, yes, but it's been released for several OSes (not just DOS), e.g. OS/2 and Windows. (I usually run the Win32/PE 5.3 version in DOS, there are several ways.) * https://bytepointer.com/tasm/index.htm On Tue, Mar 21, 2023 at 5:33 PM Alvah Whealton wrote: > > Can Turbo Assembler be run on FreeDos, when FreeDos is being run on an > emulator? ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Concept behind RUFUS
Hi, On Sun, Mar 19, 2023 at 11:22 AM Liam Proven wrote: > > On Sat, 18 Mar 2023 at 18:12, Aitor Santamaría wrote: > > > > To those that have used/experience with RUFUS: what is the concept behind > > it? > > Simple answer: > > Rufus is a Windows tool for making bootable USB keys from ISO images. You can install DOS without any .ISO, though. Granted, that will be very minimal, so you'll need to copy files manually later. But, strictly speaking, it comes with a FreeDOS kernel and shell, so you can install FreeDOS without downloading the whole live .ISO. It can also (or used to, at least) use the "system disk" of MS-DOS from Windows' DISKCOPY.DLL. So again, no .ISO needed (assuming you still have a working BIOS that can actually run DOS). But yes, generally it's useful for putting Linux .ISOs on a USB bootable jump drive for live testing. ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Update wiki info on installing ftp on a virualbox guest?
Hi, On Thu, Mar 16, 2023 at 12:06 AM wrote: > > > On Mar 15, 2023, at 10:22 PM, Michael Brutman wrote: > > [..] > > 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. > > I don’t recall the origin of the text version. It is also regarding the > 2015-07-05 release and most likely contains outdated information. I will > delete it from the GitLab Archive and it won’t be in any future interim > builds or OS releases. > > I do recall that it was included because PDF documents are not easily viewed > under DOS. I don’t think we even provide a PDF viewer at present. We do > provide a couple web browsers. I hope you will consider providing an > additional version of the documentation in HTML format with future versions. Yes, that much is pretty obvious. DOS and "portable" document formats (PDF) do not mix well. Although we do have older Ghostscript builds (of varying quality, not all equal in features). RayeR never did publicly finalize his MuPDF (gfx) build. My cross-build of MuTool is old but kinda works (IIRC). Georg's 2014 FLTK build of MuPDF is still on SourceForge. I guess someone used the PDFTOTXT.EXE (?) found in FlWriter? Or was it XPDF? Maybe I'm thinking of PDFTOHTML.EXE? I honestly don't recall some of the details. Either way, a text file as a supplement to a complex PDF could still be useful. But I'm guessing it's sadly implied that most people also have fancier OSes to read PDFs from. (I haven't checked lately.) ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Question about xFDisk and a multiboot setup
Hi,
On Tue, Mar 14, 2023 at 3:54 PM Eric Auer wrote:
>
> > Hi Eric I have partition magic for dos this can create partition for
> > freedos?
>
> I guess it can, given that it is a partition editor :-)
>
> I do not know whether the DOS version can create LBA
> partitions or FAT32 partitions, so if this is an old
> DOS software, it may be better to use modern tools
> such as GPARTED for Linux or something similar for
> Windows or maybe even a tool shipping with FreeDOS?
Just FYI, there's also SPfdisk that may behave differently ("better"??):
* https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/dos/fdisk/spfdisk/
But I never used it much and don't remember the details. (I think it
had better access to SATA disks?? And at least a quick format
built-in. IIRC, sources were mostly in C.)
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Re: [Freedos-user] Anyone want to write an article about FreeDOS?
Hi again, On Wed, Feb 15, 2023 at 6:30 PM Rugxulo wrote: > > FreeBASIC started in 2004 written in VBDOS (I think??) until it was > able to compile itself. The whole PDS suite was mainly about > supporting both DOS and OS/2 (until IBM and MS parted ways). Visual > BASIC never had any further DOS releases and focused more on Windows > (and not OS/2 either). The famous "QBASIC" interpreter was originally > included in MS-DOS 5 (and supposedly others like OS/2 and NT). I don't > even know if modern Windows includes VBScript anymore. > > FreeBASIC does have support for "REM $lang qb", but it's incomplete. > Having said that, I did write a few scripts that intentionally work > (and were tested) under both. So that is okay, as long as it runs on > both. The advantage would be that deploying a script is easy if > everyone already has one or the other. I had thought "OPTION EXPLICIT" debuted in VBDOS, but I could be wrong. (The default improved FBC dialect makes everything explicit anyways.) * https://www.freebasic.net/wiki/KeyPgOptionexplicit Another feature I thought was first in VBDOS was "REDIM PRESERVE", but the FBC wiki says it debuted in PDS. * https://www.freebasic.net/wiki/KeyPgPreserve I would be curious to know definitively from someone with more experience (e.g. Ralf Q. or Steve N.). ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Greetings
Hi, On Wed, Mar 1, 2023 at 3:31 PM Rugxulo wrote: > > > So as soon as I get the items loaded this higher memory and 32 dos extender > > stuff remembered and djgpp or w/e up and running the better. > > I had an ancient GCC 2.95.3 archive (DJGPP 2.03p2), if you're curious. > It was a .7z file that fit on a 1.44 MB floppy (good for unpacking to small > RAM disk). * http://web.archive.org/web/20201013132718/https://sites.google.com/site/rugxulo/DJGPP203.7Z?attredirects=0 * http://web.archive.org/web/20201013132718/https://sites.google.com/site/rugxulo/DJGPP203.TXT?attredirects=0 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Greetings
Hi again, On Wed, Mar 1, 2023 at 1:03 PM usul wrote: > > Apparently I purged XP disks long ago. :( Laptop has Windows 10 is on it. > And it is awful LOL. Even though most of the minimalist linux live I have > tested also dogged a bit. UMSDOS wasn't maintained after the 2.4 kernel series. If it's too slow, you'll have to dual boot. > I might install suse with xcfe on it. That seemed to run the best. Though I > have never done any linux development. and the last time I really used it, > ZipSlack and Mandrake were still a thing. :) I also used to be partial to Minix 2.0.4, e.g. DOSMinix, but IIRC it only properly ran atop FAT16. It was a slim POSIX environment with a C compiler. * http://download.minix3.org/previous-versions/Intel-2.0.4/ > I did find a copy of "Undocumented Dos: A Programmer's Guide" > https://biblio.co.nz/9780201632873 and a bunch of my old C\C++ books. C++ has changed A LOT since the old days. I don't really grok it, but C++20 is the latest (modules!), and GCC (now written in C++) defaults to C++17 by default. So most (?) stuff should work with DJGPP's build of G++ 12.2. * https://isocpp.org/tour > So as soon as I get the items loaded this higher memory and 32 dos extender > stuff remembered and djgpp or w/e up and running the better. I had an ancient GCC 2.95.3 archive (DJGPP 2.03p2), if you're curious. (Apparently my Google Site was deleted, sigh.) It was a .7z file that fit on a 1.44 MB floppy (good for unpacking to small RAM disk). I can add it to my Google Drive later for you, if you want. ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Greetings
Hi, On Wed, Mar 1, 2023 at 11:57 AM usul wrote: > > So I was digging through my old "stuff" and found some of my old cds and my > Dell Latitude D520 laptop. And I got all nostalgic . I got my start with a > 486 DX 8 mgs of Ram. > I mostly did Visual Basic 3.0 programming to start after I finished college. > VBA/ MS Access then to Dot Net. I can read C / C++ but never really did > anything with it. FreeBASIC might be for you, then. It does have a DJGPP build. * https://freebasic.net/ * https://www.freebasic.net/wiki/DocToc > So I thought it would be cool to mess around with it again > > So I plan to multiboot on the laptop > Linux > Dos 6.22 / Windows 3.11 > and FreeDos > Is there an 'Order that this would need to be done in? Any Recommendations? You already mentioned ZipSlack (Slackware 11.0), and that was 2006-ish using UMSDOS running atop FAT. * https://mirrors.slackware.com/mirrorlist/ * https://mirrors.dotsrc.org/slackware/slackware-11.0/zipslack/ > I found on those old cds copies of > desQview/X 2.1 and XAppeal (and if they could port it I might be able to) > and DragonLinux which runs on UMSDOS so install on the same partition. > Borland C++ 3.0, so much other fun stuff. The Desqview/X SDK was DJGPP v1 (though I never used it), it's still on mirrors. * https://www.delorie.com/djgpp/getting.html * http://www.delorie.com/pub/djgpp/deleted/v1tk/00_index.txt > Anyway I am having some problems, and I really don't remember my > autoexec.bat/config.sys stuff anymore but I remember getting all the dos and > stuff loaded to high memory or something like that. I personally wouldn't bother with EMM386 (JEMM) just yet. Try sticking to XMS only (HIMEMX), for now. > The only options that seem to work are 4 & 5. . Where can I get all the info > to relearn all of that? Is there a website / documentation or an old dos > book I can buy that would still be relevant to FreeDos. It sees all of the > memory on the laptop 4gigs just * https://help.fdos.org/en/index.htm > I have not tried anything that needs 32 bit protected mode. but eventually > once I get it figured out I will need it to do stuff in djgpp. * https://delorie.com/pub/djgpp/current/v2/readme.1st * https://delorie.com/pub/djgpp/current/v2misc/csdpmi7b.zip There's also OpenWatcom: * http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/devel/c/openwatcom/1.9/ A lot of us also like HX / HDPMI32: * https://github.com/Baron-von-Riedesel/HX/releases/tag/v2.20 > I'm not really good with mailing lists, too much overload. LOL Do we have a > Discord server or something along those lines? Web based forum etc. If not, > I'll re-adapt. * http://www.bttr-software.de/forum/board.php ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Anyone want to write an article about FreeDOS?
Hi, On Tue, Feb 14, 2023 at 11:21 AM Jim Hall wrote: > > > In other words, you probably can't talk about "Turbo Pascal" proper, > > only the dialect as used in either GPC or FPC or p2c. They don't want > > you promoting or pointing people to proprietary software. > > Correct, you shouldn't write about proprietary software for > Opensource.com. One exception is if you're writing about "open source > alternatives to proprietary software." So writing a "(Free)DOS > programming with Pascal" article that uses FreePascal is great; a > Pascal article that uses TurboPascal would probably get rejected. >From a practical standpoint, the only "Turbo Pascal for DOS" that is readily available anymore is "old 5.5" (freeware, non-redistributable). So it's not even the full TP 7 dialect. So you do get actual improvements and newer features in other compilers with their "turbo" dialect (e.g. FPC). Even ignoring FPC (which is wonderful), the "de facto" Pascal standard long ago was "turbo" in lieu of either of the "official" standards (ISO 7185, 10206). Even Niklaus Wirth himself (whose birthday is today!) long ago jumped ship to other languages (e.g. Oberon-07). Heck, Delphi is 28 years old as of yesterday! (Quoting Marco Cantu): "As a commenter wrote, Delphi was VB done right. With the original native VB long abandoned by Microsoft, and VB.NET 'nearly frozen', Delphi has kept more steam and has remained a viable option over the years." [FPC supports a large subset of Delphi.] So why use old dialects at all? Part of it is just a challenge to see if it can be done. Part of it is just minimalism or reducing complexity or avoiding unnecessary modern features. It's also just for strict compatibility (rarely needed but still valid). A newer language or toolset doesn't necessarily share all the advantages of the older one. There are advantages and disadvantages to each. > > I don't think they are sympathetic to the history of QB, PDS, VBDOS. > > (Steve Nikolas is the resident BASIC expert around here.) > > "History of programming" articles can be okay, but I'd guess the > editors would look for the article to turn to open source options. > That's what I'd look for, if I read the article. For example, an > article about the history of BASIC might highlight a few variants like > AppleSoft BASIC, BASICA, GW-BASIC, QuickBASIC/QBASIC, and FreeBASIC. > Most of those are proprietary; GW-BASIC was made open source a few > years ago, and FreeBASIC is GNU GPL. As a suggestion: You might make > the focus into something like "[most] programs written for an earlier > BASIC should work fine on a later BASIC, and that's the cool thing > about BASIC backwards compatibility .. it's just BASIC." Or something > like that. I am not an editor on the site, but my guess is they would > like that. You can always email the editors to ask them. FreeBASIC started in 2004 written in VBDOS (I think??) until it was able to compile itself. The whole PDS suite was mainly about supporting both DOS and OS/2 (until IBM and MS parted ways). Visual BASIC never had any further DOS releases and focused more on Windows (and not OS/2 either). The famous "QBASIC" interpreter was originally included in MS-DOS 5 (and supposedly others like OS/2 and NT). I don't even know if modern Windows includes VBScript anymore. FreeBASIC does have support for "REM $lang qb", but it's incomplete. Having said that, I did write a few scripts that intentionally work (and were tested) under both. So that is okay, as long as it runs on both. The advantage would be that deploying a script is easy if everyone already has one or the other. Later versions of PC-DOS included REXX instead of QBASIC, also a cool language. I've written some scripts that were adjusted to run on various REXX interpreters too (not as easy as it sounds!). So, again, as long as it (also) runs on Regina, it's okay. This is the (hypothetical) advantage of "standards". But in reality it takes modularity, preprocessor, patches, and other fixes due to bugs or omissions or incompatible dialects. But non-portability can (mostly) be mitigated with a little extra work. (But never assume it works everywhere until you test it! Even AWK or Sed can have that problem.) ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Anyone want to write an article about FreeDOS?
Hi, On Mon, Feb 6, 2023 at 9:49 PM Ralf Quint wrote: > > On 2/6/2023 5:40 PM, Rugxulo wrote: > > Would you prefer an article on Pascal? I know you (also) are a fan of > > it. An article from your experience there might be useful. > No, kind of programming language agnostic, with examples in BASIC, Turbo > Pascal, C and assembler. As mentioned, it will be about programming in > DOS for DOS. Just a caveat: I think they want only "open source" tools. And, although they list OSI approved licenses, I would be surprised if they were sympathetic to OpenWatcom (Sybase v1). Jim says "Microsoft MASM is out", but while JWasm (MASM v6 clone) is OSI approved (and derived from OW's WASM), I don't think they care. NASM has various DOS builds, e.g. 0.98.39 (2005, LGPL) for 8086 host or 2.16.01 (2022, BSD) for 386 DJGPP (DPMI). Even TinyAsm (2020, BSD) can be built for 8086 with either DeSmet C (your favorite, Ralf) or IA16-GCC. (Maybe Oscar Toledo himself should write an article. He already wrote some books.) In other words, you probably can't talk about "Turbo Pascal" proper, only the dialect as used in either GPC or FPC or p2c. They don't want you promoting or pointing people to proprietary software. > > I built and tested P5 Pascal (ISO 7185) with GPC (and GNU Make) for > > DOS, Windows, and Linux. > > ISO 7185 is the worst thing that could happen to Pascal. Utterly useless > and outdated by the time it was released. It had some flaws (and workarounds), but I still like it a lot. I've built P5 for us (via GPC) and emailed Scott Franco many times. I could definitely write an article about that (and Modula-2, Oberon successor languages). I have at least four interesting (well, to me) example programs. > Same as the standards for "minimal" and "extended" BASIC. There is not > one mainstream BASIC implementation that is really sticking to either one.. At one time you were writing your own GW-BASIC clone, right? In recent years I have written a few QBASIC scripts (that work in actual QB and FreeBASIC's "$lang qb"). So I'm vaguely more familiar with that (structured, not line numbered). I found BWBASIC too buggy. I never played too much with other BASICs. P2c had its own Chipmunk BASIC. (Heck, even Scott wrote a BASIC in Pascal.) I don't think they are sympathetic to the history of QB, PDS, VBDOS. (Steve Nikolas is the resident BASIC expert around here.) ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Anyone want to write an article about FreeDOS?
Hi,
On Mon, Feb 6, 2023 at 4:35 PM Ralf Quint wrote:
>
> On 2/6/2023 2:03 PM, Rugxulo wrote:
> > Do you not understand that I see a lot of similarities between the two
> > OSes? Certainly they share enough for various ports of useful tools to
> > be made. It doesn't mean they have much in common, but I still see a
> > lot to learn from classic UNIX and the philosophy of some of the
> > authors and tools (as evidenced by my quotes from them). DOS is
> > "simple" (keep it simple!) but still useful (with the right tools and
> > the right ideas).
>
> No, there aren't really "a lot of similarities" between DOS and
> Unix/Linux.
DOS v1 was more like CP/M, but DOS v2 added file handles and
redirection. C compilers for DOS were abundant. C came from UNIX.
> Some *ix utilities MIGHT be useful for the use on DOS,
MKS Toolkit? GNUish? EMX? DJGPP? Heck, even Simtel and Garbo had a few.
> but that doesn't mean by any stretch that things like "The Art of Unix
> Programming" do make any sense on DOS. The main goal should still be to
> program for DOS, not for Unix...
The book is mostly historical and philosophical about the "UNIX
mindset", not so much about doing UNIX-specific coding. So their
overall philosophy (esp. "open source") still applies greatly to
FreeDOS (or others).
* http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/pr01s01.html
[partial intended audience, but others welcome too]
"You should read this book if you are a non-Unix programmer who has
figured out that the Unix tradition might have something to teach you.
We believe you're right, and that the Unix philosophy can be exported
to other operating systems. So we will pay more attention to non-Unix
environments (especially Microsoft operating systems) than is usual in
a Unix book; and when tools and case studies are portable, we say so."
"The Lessons of Unix Can Be Applied Elsewhere"
* http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/ch01s05.html#id2873180
> > Jim's topic list mentioned Awk, Bash, C, Curl, Emacs, GDB, Grep,
> > Python, Sed, SSH, Vim, wget. (We have versions of all of those.)
> >
> In case you missed it, this was the whole list of possible topics from
> the Open Source magazine, not a list of suggested topics in regards to
> FreeDOS, as that was what Jim was asking in the subject of this thread.
I have used most of these on FreeDOS host for FreeDOS target. That is
the advantage of "portable" or "standard". I'm not tied to "UNIX"
exclusively.
> And yes, an article, possibly a series of articles, about programming on
> DOS, for DOS, will be forthcoming...
Would you prefer an article on Pascal? I know you (also) are a fan of
it. An article from your experience there might be useful.
I built and tested P5 Pascal (ISO 7185) with GPC (and GNU Make) for
DOS, Windows, and Linux.
I built and tested P4 Pascal subset (via p2c) with GCC and OpenWatcom
for DOS, OS/2, Windows, and Linux.
p5c works with modern GCC (e.g. DJGPP) or Clang.
DJGPP still includes old GPC (ISO 7185, ISO 10206, BP 7).
FPC still supports Go32v2 host / target and i8086-msdos target (with
{$mode tp} or {$mode iso}, et al).
(For UNIX Pascals besides FPC, Berkeley, ACK, and GPC are all on Github.)
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Re: [Freedos-user] Anyone want to write an article about FreeDOS?
Hi, On Mon, Feb 6, 2023 at 3:18 PM Ralf Quint wrote: > > On 2/5/2023 12:06 AM, Rugxulo wrote: > > The Art of Unix Programming attempts to capture the engineering wisdom > > and philosophy of the Unix community as it's applied today — not > > merely as it has been written down in the past, but as a living > > "special transmission, outside the scriptures" passed from guru to > > guru. Accordingly, the book doesn't focus so much on "what" as on > > "why", showing the connection between Unix philosophy and practice > > through case studies in widely available open-source software. > > And how does this pertain to FreeDOS? :? Someone (Mart?) mentioned Sam, another successor to UNIX's Ed (after Vi). You well know that we have many DJGPP tools ported from UNIX (e.g. GCC or Make or Diff or Patch). Most of the Sed ports in DOS that I have used (hhsed, sedmod, csed, minised) were derived from code written by Eric Raymond. He co-founded the "Open Source Initiative" (OSI) and has written a lot about "open source", including the above book. Do you not understand that I see a lot of similarities between the two OSes? Certainly they share enough for various ports of useful tools to be made. It doesn't mean they have much in common, but I still see a lot to learn from classic UNIX and the philosophy of some of the authors and tools (as evidenced by my quotes from them). DOS is "simple" (keep it simple!) but still useful (with the right tools and the right ideas). Jim's topic list mentioned Awk, Bash, C, Curl, Emacs, GDB, Grep, Python, Sed, SSH, Vim, wget. (We have versions of all of those.) Where would you recommend I start (thinking or writing)? What topic would be most instructive? ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Anyone want to write an article about FreeDOS?
Hi, On Sun, Jan 29, 2023 at 4:29 PM Rugxulo wrote: > > On Sun, Jan 29, 2023 at 3:01 PM Mart Zirnask wrote: > > > > I'm definitely more of an end user, but I like the simplicity of both > > DOS and traditional Unix tools. > > * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy > * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimalism_(computing) Although I only skimmed it, I stumbled upon Eric Raymond's _The Art of UNIX Programming_ (2003). It has A LOT of good stuff in there! * http://catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/ The Art of Unix Programming attempts to capture the engineering wisdom and philosophy of the Unix community as it's applied today — not merely as it has been written down in the past, but as a living "special transmission, outside the scriptures" passed from guru to guru. Accordingly, the book doesn't focus so much on "what" as on "why", showing the connection between Unix philosophy and practice through case studies in widely available open-source software. ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Anyone want to write an article about FreeDOS?
Hi, On Sun, Jan 29, 2023 at 3:01 PM Mart Zirnask wrote: > > If I manage to build the command line mode of Rob Pike's sam editor > [1] for DOS, I could probably do a writeup on how to use it. Because > of the so-called structural regular expressions [2, 3], it is a really > interesting editor. Excellent for processing arbitrary strings that > spawn across multiple lines, since sam doesn't expect the input to be > full, terminated lines. I've heard of it but never used it. It's very interesting. Plan9's successor to Ed, right? (Grep and Sed both came from Ed. Even AWK took the regex code from Egrep, I think.) > I'm definitely more of an end user, but I like the simplicity of both > DOS and traditional Unix tools. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimalism_(computing) "modularity", "reusability" (e.g. tools), easy to use and combine with other programs (using plain text input and output) "do one thing (only) and do it well" "keep it simple", "you ain't gonna need it", "make everything a filter" But some people *hate* simple (e.g. text) interfaces. "UNIX is very simple, it just needs a genius to understand its simplicity." -- Dennis M. Ritchie "C is quirky, flawed, and an enormous success." -- Dennis M. Ritchie "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." -- Albert Einstein (also often quoted by Niklaus Wirth) (Replace "UNIX" and "C in the above quotes with "DOS". That's how I feel.) (In fairness, if a tool requires a genius, you've designed it wrong. Most people aren't geniuses. It should be easy to use, but that doesn't mean bloat and unnecessary complications and fancy interfaces.) "Everyone knows that debugging is twice as hard as writing a program in the first place. So if you're as clever as you can be when you write it, how will you ever debug it?" -- Brian Kernighan > An article about "Ultra minimal minimal minimal FreeDOS" (which is how > I sense SvarDOS) might be interesting to many curious (newbie-) > readers, I suppose. How to stripe FreeDOS only to the most essential > components. Yes, definitely, but (for instance) my MetaDOS never caught on and few ever used it. I greatly respect Mateusz's work, but I never found the time to try out SvarDOS. (I see he's responding below already.) ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Anyone want to write an article about FreeDOS?
Hi, On Sun, Jan 29, 2023 at 12:40 PM Jim Hall wrote: > > If anyone here is interested in writing articles about FreeDOS, > Opensource.com is interested in running FreeDOS articles. > > Here's the list they shared, in case this inspires anyone to write an article: > > - apt > - Chaos Engineering for K8s > - dnf > - GIMP > - Git > - GNOME > - GNU Screen > - Go Beginners > - Home Automation > - Inkscape > - SELinux > - systemd > - tmux I assume you meant we can (also) write open source articles about the above subjects, too. But, AFAIK, none of those directly relates or interacts with FreeDOS. > - Awk > - C Programming > - Curl > - Emacs > - find command > - GDB > - Grep > - Networking > - Sed > - Vim > - wget We do have: awk gcc curl emacs find gdb grep (networking, e.g. links2) sed vim wget So these would be the ideal topics for us, IMHO. Sed, in particular, I always say is my favorite tool. But I'm not sure what I would write about using it (adapting PSR Invaders?? I used that as a testbed to practice certain things). Or I could write about P5 (pcom / pint ... or even P4, its weaker predecessor). I used GNU Pascal and GNU Make to build and test that under FreeDOS. That too can translate PSR Invaders to NASM syntax (instead of proprietary TASM). But I'm not sure PSR Invaders is valid since it's "sources available" but not necessarily four freedoms "open source". (We never did get clarification from the original author, did we? The code is very old from 1995, so I have no idea how to contact him anyways. It's not included in FreeDOS 1.3 but was in previous releases.) I'm just saying, as useful as Sed is, I can't offhand think of any "big" success story I had with it. (I also used it a bit when rebuilding 16-bit NASM 0.98.39. But that was for TurboC. OpenWatcom [OSI] could just build it "as is".) I also wrote a Befunge-93 interpreter in ISO 7185 (e.g. P5) Pascal (but it also compiled under "Turbo" dialect). That is a toy that is not very useful. I never learned C++, but I did adapt paq8o8 (archiver) to use CPUID to select between upstream's NOASM, MMX, and SSE2 code. I used DJGPP and NASM (since the default older MinGW .EXE was "MMX only" and used a buggy tmpfile() that only worked when run as Admin on Vista). I also bundled (and beta-tested) CWSDPMI r7 for better speed, to auto-enable SSE, and to support swapping (virtual memory). That is GPLv2. Networking (e.g. mTCP's FTP), curl, wget were all used in MetaDOS (which is deprecated). It contained scripts to rebuild (almost always with DJGPP) VILE (based upon MicroEmacs!), Ctags, BIEW/BEYE, PicoC, xgrep [JWasm], NASM 0.98.39, AWK, JWasm. I never did translate Charles Dye's LOCATE (from A86 to NASM). Maybe I should do that? (I do rarely use GNU find, e.g. DJGPP, but not for anything heavy.) Feel free to ask E. C. Masloch to write an article on ldebug (instead of GDB, although we have ports of that, too). I think that would make more sense (vs. GDB). Well, that's all I can think of right now. ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Questions about link files
Hi, On Wed, Dec 28, 2022 at 10:25 AM Bret Johnson wrote: > > As a sidebar, a "normal" command line is limited to 126 characters total, but > some command shells > (notably 4DOS) extend that by using the CMDLINE environment variable. From > what I can tell, > the FreeDOS command shell doesn't support that. Allowing more than 126 > characters can give you > access to a HUGE number of parameters. I'm pretty sure FreeCOM does support it, but I've only seen it used with DJGPP apps. ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Writing date and time into log file
Hi, On Fri, Dec 23, 2022 at 11:44 AM Bret Johnson wrote: > > If you're interested in learning something that will help you more in the > "long term", you may > want to experiment with something like SED (or AWK or ...) as a way to > manipulate text files, > or "whipping up" a custom executable file in ASM or Basic or C or whatever. > > Those are useful learning experiences to have in your tool bag for "special" > situations > where an off-the-shelf solution isn't available. Sed * https://ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/util/unix/sed/ Awk * https://ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/devel/awk/ * https://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/manual/gawk.html#Time-Functions Rexx * https://sourceforge.net/projects/regina-rexx/files/regina-rexx/3.9.5/ * https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/devel/rexx/ * http://www.rexxinfo.org/info/index_info.html * http://web.archive.org/web/20120212231928/http://www.kilowattsoftware.com/tutorial/rexx/bidate.htm ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Writing date and time into log file
Hi, On Fri, Dec 23, 2022 at 12:18 PM E. Auer wrote: > > > Hi! If you use the FreeCOM version of command.com which > ships with FreeDOS, you could be able to use some magic > extensions such as that option for SET which stores the > output of a command in an environment variable Presumably something like this: "set /e MYTIME=time /t" or "set /e MYDATE=date /t" * https://help.fdos.org/en/hhstndrd/date.htm * https://help.fdos.org/en/hhstndrd/time.htm ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] How to unload a driver?
Hi, On Fri, Nov 4, 2022 at 2:48 PM dmccunney wrote: > > I did have utilities back when that I could use to optimize the > loading of TSRs. Most took memory when loading and initializing, but > that memory cuold be freed and only a small portion thaat was the > actual TSR needed to remain resident, so I got to play games h the > ortder in which TSRs loaded to leave space for the loading an > initialization of subsequent TSRs. That technique was not applicable > to drivers. For some TSRs, you can use these (mark / release) from TurboPower Software (Kim Kokkonen): * https://www.sac.sk/download/utilmisc/tsrcom35.zip * https://www.bttr-software.de/freesoft/system.htm#tsrcom ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Semware has released TSE as Freeware
Hi, On Thu, Oct 20, 2022 at 6:01 PM Jim Hall wrote: > > On Thu, Oct 20, 2022 at 5:48 PM wrote: > > > > If any of you remember Qedit, or its big brother TSE (the Semware Editor), > > you may be interested to know that TSE if released as freeware. > > > > Note that, this is the version from 1997, and it hasn’t been updated > > in a while. > > Very cool! It's not open source, so we can't include it in FreeDOS. > But it's still great to see classic DOS software released as freeware. I've never used TSE, but I immediately thought of GNU Emacs. Checking the DJGPP website under /deleted/v2gnu/ shows versions (e.g. 19.34) going back to 1997. Then I checked /current/v2gnu/ and apparently a new version was silently updated last month! * http://www.delorie.com/pub/djgpp/current/v2gnu/emacs28.README Just FYI. ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] TeX (emTex et al.)
(Disclaimer: I've never personally used TeX but am still aware of it.) Jim recently posted a News item mentioning classic EmTeX: * https://ctan.org/tex-archive/systems/msdos/emtex There's also an older DJGPP port here: * https://www.delorie.com/pub/djgpp/current/v2apps/tex/ In particular, these two text files may shed some light: * https://www.delorie.com/pub/djgpp/current/v2apps/tex/00_index.txt * https://www.delorie.com/pub/djgpp/current/v2apps/tex/TeX.README ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Mail and news for FreeDOS
Hi, On Tue, Sep 20, 2022 at 2:16 PM Ralf Wissing wrote: > > Thank you everyone for your suggestions (especially Pegasus Mail for > DOS)! I am currently experimenting a bit to get it running. > > I have also got a tip (and an binary) from an former coworker of me, > FlMail by Georg Potthast. It seems fairly modern from the look of it > and supposedly also supports TLS mail. I so far am still trying to get > it to run, but as far as my former coworker told me it is as modern a > mailer as one could want to get on DOS. > > So far i have not found an download link for it, if nothing surfaces i > will put it on my FTP (after i have looked into the licence). I think this is where you want to look: * https://sourceforge.net/projects/fltk-dos/files/Applications/Binary%20versions%20of%20FLTK%20applications/FLMAIL91.zip/download * https://sourceforge.net/projects/fltk-dos/files/Applications/Binary%20versions%20of%20FLTK%20applications/ * https://sourceforge.net/projects/fltk-dos/ "FLMAIL91.zip FlMail email client version 0.91" (5.2 MB, seemingly dated 2014-11-14) ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] DOS music creation software?
Hi again, On Wed, Aug 31, 2022 at 7:46 PM Rugxulo wrote: > > What about a so-called "tracker"? > > * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_tracker > > Here's a few links that I found (off the top of my head): I forgot about Dr. Track: * http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/util/sound/drtrack/ ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] DOS music creation software?
Hi, On Tue, Aug 30, 2022 at 11:45 AM Karen Lewellen wrote: > > I use dos, google has removed access to YouTube for low graphics browsers. > If you have an answer, care to share? The YouTube link just shows "Sound Blaster Pro Intelligent Organ" (Creative Technology, 1991). What about a so-called "tracker"? * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_tracker Here's a few links that I found (off the top of my head): * https://hornet.org/music/programs/trackers/scrmt321.zip * https://hornet.org/music/contests/mc6/files/it214p3.zip * https://github.com/herrnst/impulsetracker * https://github.com/MobyGamer/MONOTONE/releases/tag/0.3.9 > On Tue, 30 Aug 2022, Björn Morell wrote: > > > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAt1rWF-kqE > > > > Den 2022-08-30 kl. 12:02, skrev Karen Lewellen: > >> with all of the vintage gaming hinted at here, was wondering if anyone > >> knows of a simple pure DOS program that in theory allows one to treat > >> their computer keyboard like a music one? > >> Need not tap dance as it were, just allow for some basic work. > >> Ideas? > >> Karen ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] dosbox-x update available
Hi, On Thu, Aug 4, 2022 at 9:38 AM Gabriele Barbone wrote: > > Hi dosbox-x can run on Windows XP SP3? I have a old pc Not sure, I think?? they still provide XP-compatible versions alongside newer Windows versions. BUT! It does run atop FreeDOS with the included HX files. ;-) (quoting the website): "If you need Windows XP support, you can use either the 32-bit Visual Studio builds or the 32-bit MinGW low-end builds (but not the standard MinGW builds). You may also want to use one of the MinGW builds if you encounter specific problem(s) with the Visual Studio builds (such as floating point precision issues)." "Yes, DOSBox-X can officially run on DOS systems as well ... The HX-DOS package allows you to run DOSBox-X in a real DOS system (MS-DOS 5.0+ or compatible) with the help of the freely-available HX DOS Extender, which is already included in the recent DOS release packages." ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Creating a minimal freeDOS bootable image that runs a simple text editor
Hi, On Wed, Jul 13, 2022 at 10:20 PM Jerome Shidel wrote: > > > On Jul 13, 2022, at 2:29 PM, Rugxulo wrote: > > > >> FDAUTO.BAT > >> —— > >> set DOSDRV=C: > > > > If you're using FreeCOM and already in the root directory from bootup, try > > this: > > > > REM ... should be "C:\" ... > > set DOSDRV=%_CWD% > > Actually, if you are going to set an env for the drive (like in the small > example), you probably just want the drive portion (C:) and not a path (c:\). > > This allows dropping small batch files somewhere in the path with cluttering > the PATH setting. For example, you can put a MYGAME.BAT in the DOSDIR. > Something like… > > @echo off > %DOSDRV% > cd GAMES\GAME42 > QLUE.COM Don't forget that FreeCOM also supports "cdd" (IIRC, this will also work for fully-qualified filenames!): * https://help.fdos.org/en/hhstndrd/cdd.htm ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Creating a minimal freeDOS bootable image that runs a simple text editor
Hi, On Mon, Jul 11, 2022 at 6:09 AM Jerome Shidel wrote: > > FDCONFIG.SYS > > !LASTDRIVE=Z You probably don't actually need that many drives, I'd suggest "G" or "P" instead (to save RAM). > FDAUTO.BAT > —— > set DOSDRV=C: If you're using FreeCOM and already in the root directory from bootup, try this: REM ... should be "C:\" ... set DOSDRV=%_CWD% ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Assembly Language and BASIC
Hi, On Mon, Jul 11, 2022 at 9:25 PM Ralf Quint wrote: > > And that version, just when the switch to Go32 was being made, should be > a good starting point for a 16bit compiler, generating 16bit Borland > Pascal compatible code. Not sure if there is enough info still around to > make it even TPU compatible. It would be different from the goal set > back then, and not sure if Florian would still have that source code > (that was well before SourceForge and Github). You could always use FST Modula-2, it's 16-bit (host and target): * https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/devel/modula2/fst/ I've been playing with it (again), it's not bad. It also has a smartlinker. (But no sources available.) ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Assembly Language and BASIC
Hi, On Mon, Jul 11, 2022 at 1:04 PM Ralf Quint wrote: > > GNU's GPC was just a crutch, a unwanted step-child, that didn't even get > a fraction of the attention that it should have gotten early on. GPC was written in C ... unlike FPC. This was way before GCC 4.8 (2013), when everything switched to C++. I think they had trouble with various backends or maybe also just lack of time for continued maintenance required by GCC upstream. "For the purposes of making releases, however, we will consider primarily C and C++, as those are the languages used by the vast majority of users." (That doesn't mean they're unsympathetic to everything else, just that they clearly focus on C and C++ first.) > That's what resulted in Florian Klämpfl's early Open Source implementation of > FPK (Florian's Pascal Kompiler), which started as a (pretty well made) > i386 generating Turbo Pascal compatible compiler, before following the > path set by Borland/Inprise/Codegear/Embarcadero with their Delphi > implementation of Object Pascal. Unfortunately, there seems to be very > little interest in doing a backport of FreePascal into a 16bit , Turbo > Pascal compatible compiler for DOS. I still sometimes use Oberon/M 1.2 (circa 1991) for DOS. It's somewhat weak (and needs a linker) but works fairly well and supports 8086 (host and target). * http://www.vectorbd.com/bfd/hll/ * http://www.vectorbd.com/bfd/hll/obernm12.zip > The 8086 target version of FPC is still a cross-compiler with demanding > resources which prevent it from > running on (Free)DOS itself. It can run under FreeDOS with Japheth's HX (yes, I've tried 3.2.2). > Which makes me wonder if it would be > possible to do such a "back port" from the sources of one of the earlier > versions of FPK,at least those that started to be self-compiling, before > the more widespread adaptations of Delphi'isms :? I highly doubt it. Free Pascal started by using so-called "Go32v1" [sic], aka bits from DJGPP, to be a 32-bit "Turbo" Pascal compiler for DOS. The first public releases were 1995 or so. After 1998 (and 0.99.5), they stopped being "Turbo Pascal only" and started adding in Delphi stuff. The big cleanup and rewrite was 2.0.0 in 2005. I don't think it even worked on DOS again until 2008 (2.2.2, the oldest one still on iBiblio). We're lucky to have it! There's also p2c, and we have an old DJGPP port (circa 1999). Luckily, the output code is (mostly?) 16-bit clean and seems to work well with OpenWatcom. (Technically, you can build p2c itself with OpenWatcom. I whipped up a simple makefile for that: it works!) ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Assembly Language and BASIC
Hi, On Mon, Jul 11, 2022 at 7:04 AM Liam Proven wrote: > > On Fri, 8 Jul 2022 at 21:35, Rugxulo wrote: > > > > Everybody and their brother made Pascal derivatives: Ada, Modula-2, > > Modula-3, etc. While Dr. Wirth was not directly involved, there was > > also a newer "Extended" Pascal standard in 1988 (ISO 10206) that also > > had modules. But even Wirth kept going and started developing Oberon > > in 1986. "Standard" Modula-2 (N.B. GNU GM2) came in 1996 (ISO 10514). > > (So it was too many competing languages, honestly.) > > I think this is a misrepresentation and unfair. > > Pascal was just one point in a continuous series of work by Prof. > Wirth and his associates. > > As it happens, the computer industry seized on some of these, made > multiple 3rd party compilers, many with proprietary extensions. So you > say "Dr Wirth was not involved" as a global statement which is not > true. Sorry, I meant specifically that he wasn't involved in either Extended Pascal or Modula-3 (although he attended one of their meetings). He wasn't directly involved in any standardization, AFAIK. His personal compilers that he wrote were for original Pascal, PIM Modula-2, and Oberon (original, -07). > Prof. Wirth's work goes: > > (Prehistory of Pascal: he was involved in the committee to modernise > ALGOL-60. His proposals were rejected, in favour of more complex ones > from Adriaan van Wijngaarden, whose revised language became ALGOL-68 > and which more or less sank ALGOL as a language.) Yes, Algol W. There's a third-party Linux transpiler for it. (He also wrote Euler and PL/360.) > Wirth took his proposals and made his own language, which he renamed Pascal. > > That got widely used and adopted. They literally gave away P4 (subset) sources to help propagate the Pascal language. > Wirth refined and worked on the language further and created Modula. > > (So in a way, Modula was Pascal 2.0.) > > Modula was not a success. He quickly moved on and made Modula-2. That > did quite well for a while. It was significant on DOS PCs in the early > days; JPS Topspeed Modula-2 was the fastest native-code compiler on > the PC and did well for a while. Acorn attempted to build the OS for > its new CPU, the ARM, in Modula-2. Yes, Modula-2 was a true successor to Pascal (with minor differences and many refinements). JPI was a spinoff of Borland. > So, Modula-2 can be seen as Pascal 3.0. > > Then others took Modula-2 and extended it, to make Modula-3, but that > was nothing to do with Wirth. Modula-3 was actually the cleaned-up successor to Modula-2+ [sic]. It was mostly developed at DEC. > Next Wirth built Oberon (1987). > > Oberon is sort of Pascal 4. > > Oberon is still around and still in use so it's arguably proved to be > a survivor. Oberon-07 is Wirth's latest dialect. There are several third-party compilers for it. > Then it gets really complicated. > > One line goes Oberon -> Object Oberon -> Oberon 2 -> Oberon/L -> > (renamed to) Component Pascal I'm not aware of any "Object Oberon" implementations. (Or did that inspire "Active Oberon"?) > Another line of development was: > Oberon -> Oberon-07 > > Another line of development was: > > Oberon -> Active Oberon -> Zonnon > > Wirth was involved with several of these, as he refined and > reconsidered his ideas. I believe Zonnon was mostly Jurg Gutknecht's work. > You also said: > > (So it was too many competing languages, honestly.) > > Also not really fair. 1982 was "standard" Pascal. 1984 was Byte's big issue on Modula-2. And then Oberon was created in 1986. That's a lot of overlap and confusing (especially in light of Ada, C, and others). > I mean, arguably, yes, but there are also dozens of variants of C. > > There's original C, K C, Plan 9 C, ANSI C, C 99, C11, C17 and soon C23. C17 is just minor fixes and clarifications to C11. Plan 9's differences are minor, IIRC. > All are C. All are different. Code from one may not work in others. > > And of course there is Limbo, Go, C++, C#, D, and myriad variants. > > All are forms of C with extensions and occasionally removals or > refinements or deprecations. GCC does have a D frontend nowadays, but I wouldn't call that "C with extensions". In fact, Walter had a sort of in-between from C to D called "betterC". > Some of them are hugely popular and widely-used, e.g. C++, but are > nothing to do with C's original designers. C++ is meant to be as compatible as possible with C. So it is possible to compile code with both. As you know, originally it was a transpiler into C code. > Some are directly from C's designers but are obscure, such as Plan 9 C > and Limbo. >
Re: [Freedos-user] Assembly Language and BASIC
Hi, On Fri, Jul 8, 2022 at 7:44 PM Ralf Quint wrote: > > On 7/8/2022 4:26 PM, Rugxulo wrote: > > > > Turbo Pascal debuted in 1983 with support for CP/M and DOS via .COM > > files (max. 64k size). When they dropped CP/M and .COM support in TP 4 > > (1987), then they were able to use separate "units" and DOS .EXEs for > > larger code. (But TP 3 could still address 1 MB with the heap.) There > > were other complications, too. > Not quite sure what you are trying to say here. I think (?) I was mostly trying to say that Turbo Pascal's CP/M support and 64k .COM output (even in 1986) didn't really help DOS achieve its full potential. The Commodore C128 came out in 1985 and could run CP/M. I've seen at least one YouTube video of it running Turbo Pascal. > Never used Prospero Pascal I'm not sure of the details, but AFAIK they were the main vendor pushing "Extended" Pascal (ISO 10206), even for DOS. Instead of just "level 0" and "level 1", their compiler also had "level 2" (exceptions?) and "level 3" (classes?). * http://www.edm2.com/index.php/Prospero_Pascal GNU Pascal's main claim to fame (besides "Borland Pascal 7" support) was also supporting both ISO standards (7185, 10206). There are DJGPP builds available. But GNU Pascal hasn't been maintained in many years. Still, it works! * https://www.gnu-pascal.de/gpc/h-index.html ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Assembly Language and BASIC
Hi, On Fri, Jul 8, 2022 at 6:30 PM Ralf Quint wrote: > > With C(++), it's more like "let's throw everything in one big pot and > then lets see what we actually need in our program". A huge advantage of > Turbo/Borland Pascal, Delphi and FreePascal is that they are all capable > of "smart-linking". The compiler/linker is doing a lot of the work that > in the other languages is part of the responsibility of the programmer. > And more and more of them don't care, that's why we have to deal with so > much software bloat... Everything after C89 got much bigger, e.g. printf(). That's why things like IA16-ELF have "-mnewlib-nano-stdio" flags. I modified a very simple program of mine to avoid printf() entirely, and it was noticeably smaller. You really shouldn't have to link everything in just to print out chars, strings, and integers. (Pascal's write() is much simpler and safer to use but less dynamic at runtime.) To be fair, GNU ld does support -ffunction-sections -fdata-sections -Wl,--gc-sections ... it even seems to (barely) work for DJGPP (COFF)! UPX helps a ton, too. But nothing's perfect. ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Assembly Language and BASIC
Hi,
On Fri, Jul 8, 2022 at 11:37 AM Ralf Quint wrote:
>
> For Pascal, this is +95% wrong. The first widespread version of Pascal,
> UCSD Pascal, also sold for example under names like "Apple Pascal" (on
> Apple II/III) did introduce the concept of "units", which allowed not
> only for modular development, but also for code reuse, as well as basic
> data and code encapsulation, which are all part of the core
> functionality of object oriented programming (before that term and its
> use was totally perverted to today's levels). That was also introduced
> starting with Turbo Pascal 4.0 and is a staple of later Turbo/Borland
> Pascal versions as well Object Pascal implementations like Delphi and
> FreePascal.
> The exception was kind of only the very early versions of Turbo Pascal
> (up to 3.0), which by the overall design of the compiler used "one big
> file" (though you could "include" many different source files). A lot of
> pther compilers, like Digital Research Pascal MT+ 86 or Microsoft Pascal
> allowed for development, compilation and linking of separate modules. As
> far as the various Microsoft compilers of the DOS days are concerned,
> ,while observing a handful of rules, it was even possible to link for
> example FORTRAN, C, Pascal and assembler modules together to one program
> executable. Beside that a lot of compilers allowed for modular
> development and use of such modules via the use of overlays.
The IBM PC debuted in 1981 with PC-DOS and the 1979-era 8088 [sic], a
16-bit cpu addressing 20 bits of RAM (a maximum of 1 MB), but most
computers had much less (for various reasons), e.g. 128 kb. Later,
OS/2 1.x was meant to be a "better DOS" and debuted in 1987 (despite a
RAM shortage). That was still 16-bit (286 pmode, max. 16 MB of RAM)
and mostly Microsoft's work. (32-bit OS/2 2.x came later from IBM in
1992 without MS.) The 386 didn't debut until 1986 or so, and it took a
long time for software to catch up. Actually, the 386 was Compaq (and
Intel) "exclusive" for a while. For example, DJGPP debuted in 1989.
Turbo Pascal debuted in 1983 with support for CP/M and DOS via .COM
files (max. 64k size). When they dropped CP/M and .COM support in TP 4
(1987), then they were able to use separate "units" and DOS .EXEs for
larger code. (But TP 3 could still address 1 MB with the heap.) There
were other complications, too.
Byte magazine (issue Dec. 1986) has a comparison of four Pascal
compilers. Modula-2 (with modules) was no stranger as their Aug. 1984
issue covered it extensively. But of those four Pascal compilers (MS,
UCSD, Prospero, MetaWare, with sidenote for TP 3):
64K-byte code/data limit? no, no, no, no, yes
Chaining? no, yes, yes, no, yes
Export abstract data types? no, no, no, yes, no
Modules? yes, no, no, yes, no
External routines? yes, yes, yes, yes, yes
Include files? yes, yes, yes, yes, yes
Overlays? yes, no, yes, yes, yes
Segmentation? no, yes, yes, yes, no
unit libraries? yes, yes, no, no, no
Keep in mind the obvious fact that TP compiles/links in about 2
seconds that which takes about a minute (60 secs.) on most other
compilers. Plus, TP was $70 (while most others, besides $100 UCSD,
were roughly $300, $400, or $600).
There's a different article (same Dec. 1986 issue) about something
else entirely ("approximating integrals") that has unstructured BASIC
(GWBASIC??) code as an example. It's weird seeing so many competing
languages. There's even an ad for MS QuickBASIC compiler 2.0 bragging
about speed, EGA support, structured constructs (no GOTO required),
and "reusable modules" for $100.
My point is that everything "new" was getting obsoleted by everything
"newer" and then some. Things moved too fast, but progress was
definitely happening.
Relevant links:
* https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1984-08/
* https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1986-12/
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Re: [Freedos-user] Question about error message
Hi, On Fri, Jul 8, 2022 at 3:11 PM Eric Stein wrote: > > So I get this message when I exit from a certain program: Error reading > from device AUX: write fault. > > Aside from the strangeness of getting a write fault by reading > something, does DOS even still have an AUX device? I think this is a > generic device name like PRN that can be redirected to something else, > but the MODE command doesn't seem to know what it is. AUX is just COM1 (serial), PRN is just LPT1 (parallel). * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOS#Reserved_device_names * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Device_file#PC_DOS,_TOS,_OS/2,_and_Windows ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Assembly Language and BASIC
Hi, On Fri, Jul 8, 2022 at 11:37 AM Ralf Quint wrote: > > For Pascal, this is +95% wrong. The first widespread version of Pascal, > UCSD Pascal, also sold for example under names like "Apple Pascal" (on > Apple II/III) did introduce the concept of "units", which allowed not > only for modular development, but also for code reuse, as well as basic > data and code encapsulation, which are all part of the core > functionality of object oriented programming (before that term and its > use was totally perverted to today's levels). That was also introduced > starting with Turbo Pascal 4.0 and is a staple of later Turbo/Borland > Pascal versions as well Object Pascal implementations like Delphi and > FreePascal. The original Pascal was stabilized and "sent off" to standardization in 1977. They didn't add any major features, so it's almost the same as de facto J The standard (ISO 7185) was published in 1982. "Classic" Pascal had no modularity, everything was a single file. (I presume that many people used homegrown preprocessors [e.g. Doug Comer's MAP] like BWK also did in _Software Tools in Pascal_.) Everybody and their brother made Pascal derivatives: Ada, Modula-2, Modula-3, etc. While Dr. Wirth was not directly involved, there was also a newer "Extended" Pascal standard in 1988 (ISO 10206) that also had modules. But even Wirth kept going and started developing Oberon in 1986. "Standard" Modula-2 (N.B. GNU GM2) came in 1996 (ISO 10514). (So it was too many competing languages, honestly.) * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modular_programming I forget the details, but there's a difference between "separate compilation" and "independent compilation". One is including files (like C) while the other is properly-checked modules. * https://courses.cs.vt.edu/~cs3304/Spring00/notes/Chapter-8/tsld033.htm "Independent compilation is compilation of some of the units of a program separately from the rest of the program, without the benefit of interface information. Separate compilation is compilation of some of the units of a program separately from the rest of the program, using interface information to check the correctness of the interface between the two parts." N.B. It's much slower having to reparse header files over and over again (but many compilers already support precompiled headers). Actually, C++20 added modules! GNU's G++ is close to being fully C++20 compliant (but by default 12.1 is only "gnu++17" by default, I think.) * https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/language/modules * https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc-11.1.0/gcc/C_002b_002b-Modules.html * https://clang.llvm.org/docs/Modules.html * https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/cpp/modules-cpp?view=msvc-170 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Assembly Language and BASIC
Hi,
On Thu, Jul 7, 2022 at 7:29 PM Daniel wrote:
>
> A little info for those who uses FreeBasic (or even Power Basic 3.5) in
> FreeDOS. In case noone knows this, it is possible to mix both Basic and
> Assembly language in the same source code using both PB and FB using the
> ‘ASM’ command. This is something I have been doing in PowerBasic for some
> time. Not sure if anyone else has done this, but it is quite a nice feature
> to have.
>
> I am unfamiliar woththe C languages, but does it also allow one to mix both
> assembly in with the C source code? Are there any other languages that
> allows mixing of assembly in with the language code?
Free Pascal's i8086-msdos cross-compiler (and even the normal
i386-go32v2) supports inline asm (similar to TP 6):
{d2x.pas}
{$mode tp}
program d2x;
var n:byte; err:integer;
procedure hexbyte(b: byte); assembler;
asm
int3
mov al,b
mov dx,ax
mov cl,4
shr al,cl
cmp al,10
sbb al,105
das
int 29h
mov ax,dx
and al,15
cmp al,10
sbb al,105
das
int 29h
end;
begin if paramcount=0 then halt;
val(paramstr(1),n,err); hexbyte(n); writeln('=',hexstr(n,2))
end.
FST Modula-2 (found on iBiblio) also supports inline asm:
* https://www.verhoeven272.nl/fruttenboel/modula-2/lowlevel.html
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Re: [Freedos-user] DOS ASM resources
Hi, On Thu, Jul 7, 2022 at 5:53 PM Aitor Santamaría wrote: > > On Fri, 8 Jul 2022 at 00:00, Rugxulo wrote: >> >> I can send you my local copy (or show you how to get it) of the 3.2.2 >> cross-compiler (i8086-msdos) that works under latest HX pre-releases. >> It has a built-in assembler and linker. It supports all memory models. > > THe links seem to work, why did you mention to send it? couldn't I download > from that link? > And what do you mean that works under HX? I don't mind to compile under > Windows11 or Linux if neccessary :) The Windows installer isn't DOS friendly. Besides, four target cpus with six memory models each is VERY bloated (especially because of six copies of huge "generics.ppu"). My local .7z of "8086 target only" is thus much, much smaller. But yes, it's meant to be a cross-compiler atop modern OSes. (Hey, since it still works under HX, I'll gladly use that.) > But I want it to run in 16-bit (Free)DOS. 16-bit host? No luck there. ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] DOS ASM resources
Hi, On Thu, Jul 7, 2022 at 12:50 PM Aitor Santamaría wrote: > > I haven't been following much of what happens with the different assemblers > these days, but my idea is > that the same thing as with C or Pascal happens: as much as TASM or MASM are > nice products, there > are hardly open source actively maintained products that are compatible with > them, and hence > NASM can be an alternative. > > I may be wrong but leaving aside smaller pet problems and trying to go for > broader products most widely > used even by the FreeDOS community: > > - Assembler - there is NASM, not compatible with MASM/WASM. I guess there is > still (J)WASM as > alternative, as I assume that MASM/TASM haven't been neither open sourced nor > actively maintained. Strictly speaking, OpenWatcom is "Open Source" (OSI) but not "Free software". Its WASM (and WASMR [real mode]) do have "partial" Ideal mode support via "-zcm=tasm". I believe this is mostly for the extended struct syntax (which I'm not familiar with). > - C: the only option seems to be OWC for 16-bit and with a good amount of > libraries. Apparently there's > a community maintained what is called OWC 2.0 as the original project seems > to be gone. If they close, > I don't know of an alternative 16-bit active open source C compiler. DeSmet C and IA16-ELF (GCC) both work fairly well (but not necessarily every memory model). * http://desmet-c.com/ * https://github.com/tkchia/build-ia16/releases > - Pascal: I admit I haven't tried FPC/16-bit yet, and see if I can happen to > compile KEYB. I am afraid it'll be hard > because the resident part of KEYB has a lot of assembler. TP/BP are now > unmaintained (and not open sourced). > Similarly, if they close, we don't have an alternative 16-bit active open > source Pascal compiler. * https://wiki.freepascal.org/DOS * https://sourceforge.net/projects/freepascal/files/msdos/3.2.2/ I can send you my local copy (or show you how to get it) of the 3.2.2 cross-compiler (i8086-msdos) that works under latest HX pre-releases. It has a built-in assembler and linker. It supports all memory models. > What a sad panorama :) Honestly, if DJGPP (32-bit DPMI) isn't good enough for some projects, it's unlikely that they'll bother supporting 16-bit either. (We did finally get builds for GCC 12. Anyone learn C++17 [default] yet??) ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] DOS ASM resources
Hi, On Tue, Jul 5, 2022 at 12:59 PM Carlos Teixeira wrote: > > What i don't like about A86 is that allows you to do stuff that is actually > "forbidden". I believe A86 intends to be "mostly" compatible with old MASM v5, but it does have some shortcuts and enhancements. > For instance, from what i remember, A86 allows you to do something like: > > MOV ES, B800h > > This is absolutely not supported by the CPU, and you need to use a general > purpose register to move a value > onto a segment register. So the actual A86 assembled code looks like this: > > PUSH AX > MOV AX, B800h > MOV ES, AX > POP AX Of course, just do this (requires 186): PUSH 0B800h POP ES By default, I think A86 targets whatever your host cpu supports, but you can lower it (e.g. +P0 cmdline for 8086) or let it "emulate" (186 vs. 8086 output via +P64 from same source). The manual is very clear on matters like this. But most code isn't written for (or compatible) with A86, sadly. There used to be AFIX for various PC Magazine sources, but those aren't available anymore. You can probably still search for ASNIP40[abc].ZIP and 80xxx_9[56].zip snippets, but A86 support is rare. (Honestly, it bugs me how unportable code is between assemblers.) > I believe that it is very important for a begginer to understand how the ISA > works otherwise this will just lead to confusion later. Assuming they care about segmentation (CS, DS, ES, SS) and 8086 vs. 186 (push immediate) at all. > What i like about FASM is that it is very strict so you learn to do things > properly from the get go. > Its raw and gritty so it might be a little more frustrating at start but > you'll really learn things. FASM from the beginning was "flat", i.e. 386 host, and it doesn't support 16-bit OMF/OBJ output at all. A86 is in a different field entirely, but both are good for what they're meant for. (FASM assembles itself and has a nice DOS IDE. You can link COFF output with DJGPP.) For AMD64 / x64, there's modern books (for Linux, OS X, Windows) and supporting tools like Ray Seyfarth's (N.B. PDF version): * http://rayseyfarth.com/asm/ ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] DOS ASM resources
Hi, On Sun, Jul 3, 2022 at 9:39 AM Bret Johnson wrote: > > > Interestingly enough, I also bought a86/D86, and have found it to be > > the best assembler/disassembler I've ever found for dos. I ran > > across it after (mostly) trying to use debug for things, so it was a > > welcome relief. > > I still like A86/A386 also, but like I said my programs are getting so > complicated these days that they no longer work > because of the limited memory. Specifically, I have so many symbols > (structure elements and equates and labels) > that the symbol table overflows when using A86/A386. That's why I've had to > switch to something more capable > (specifically, NASM). I think it can only use about 400k conventional RAM. That should be enough! You need better modularity. ;-) Nah, I get it, it's not perfect (I own it), but it's good for what it does. > The problem I have with NASM, and most other assemblers, is that they don't > come with a useful debugger. > > To me, the real "gems" of A86/A386 are the D86/D386 debuggers. I still use > them all the time when I'm debugging > the programs I'm writing. There are two things I really like about D86/D386. > One is that you can put the screen in > a 50-line mode and have the debugger "window" on the top half of the screen > and watch the program output on the > bottom half of the screen. That's a very nice setup. I tend to just wimp out most times and use the "printf" method (i.e. simple console output of certain values). > The other thing is that if you create a .SYM (Symbol) file in the D86/D386 > format you can refer to the symbol names > instead of memory addresses as you are debugging, another VERY useful > feature. Unfortunately, the .SYM file > format is proprietary and can only be generated by an A86 or A386 assembler. > But I have a method automated where > I can take the .MAP output file generated by NASM and create the .SYM file (I > only convert the subroutine labels > and not the equates or structure elements) so I can use the symbolic > capabilities of the D386 debugger with > NASM-generated programs. This makes debugging much easier. The obvious alternative here is OpenWatcom's WASM "-d3" and WD debugger. You can also use David Lindauer's GRDB (with his MKSYM or VALX linker) for symbolic debugging. Doesn't NASM have rudimentary support for Borland's Turbo Debugger? (The Win32 version used to be freeware, but I never used it.) Exuberant Ctags and compatible editor (e.g. VILE) is also very helpful for "asm" projects. ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] DOS Fonts
Hi, On Wed, Jun 15, 2022 at 12:32 PM Daniel wrote: > > Is anyone familiar with how DOS fonts work? > > There are some .com files that will change the original font with another and > ya can create your own. I created a TI-99/4aA font to use. > > So how does it work? Is the hardware font cached and the cache is changed? > Some programs will revert back to the original font when exiting back to DOS. > > Is there a location where one can read/write the font information? Take a look here (and see Terminus as a good example): * https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/util/system/fonts/ ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] dev86
Hi, On Mon, May 30, 2022 at 3:59 PM ZB wrote: > > On Mon, May 30, 2022 at 03:32:17PM -0500, Jim Hall wrote: > > > Yes, and it's included as part of FreeDOS 1.3. You'll find the install > > package on the BonusCD. Here's the report .. scroll down to > > "Development" and you'll find the "bcc" package that Tom and I linked > > to: > > > > https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distributions/1.3/official/report.html > > > > > > You can also get to this report from www.freedos.org -> Download -> > > What's included. > > Thanks. It wasn't included in my installation, because I'm all the time > using 1.0... ;) The aforementioned version is 16-bit DOS hosted but kinda old (0.16.10). There are "newer" (32-bit DPMI) DJGPP-hosted versions on iBiblio (0.16.19) elsewhere: * http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/devel/c/bcc/ Jim's link to Github is the "latest" fork of it (0.16.21 from 2014), but there are no known DOS compiles, AFAIK. ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Watcom compiler on FreeDOS 1.3 RC5
Hi, On Wed, Jan 26, 2022 at 2:33 AM Fabian Boucsein wrote: > > After installing the Watcom from the IBIBLIO FreeDOS archive what > do i need to configure the compiler so that i can use it? set WATCOM=%RAMDRIVE%:\watcom19 set INCLUDE=%WATCOM%\H set EDPATH=%WATCOM%\EDDAT set WIPFC=%WATCOM%\WIPFC path %WATCOM%\BINW;%PATH% REM ... optional ... REM if "%DOS4G%"=="" set DOS4G=quiet REM ren dos4gw.exe *.ex REM copy /b cwstub.exe dos4gw.* This may also help: * http://www.freedos.org/books/get-started/june25-c-programming.html ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Recent articles about FreeDOS and programming
Hi, On Fri, Jan 7, 2022 at 6:04 PM Jim Hall wrote: > > I write a lot about FreeDOS and programming for several tech websites, > such as Opensource.com. Here are a few "year in review" articles I > recently wrote for Opensource.com that may interest you: > > "5 tips for learning a new programming language in 2022" > https://opensource.com/article/22/1/learn-programming > > - Anyone can get started in programming. We all started somewhere, and > you don't need to have a computer science background to learn to code. > This "best of" article links to several popular articles from 2021. I > recommend "How different programming languages do the same thing" aand > "How different programming languages read and write data." FreeDOS also has AWK, which is very practical for text manipulation but also easy to use: * http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/util/unix/awk/ * Learn awk by coding a "guess the number" game * https://opensource.com/article/21/1/learn-awk That article also leads to the free e-book: * A practical guide to learning GNU Awk Having read both just now, it reconfirmed my opinion that AWK is incredibly useful (even for non-*nixers) in FreeDOS. Kudos! ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] DOSHEXED - memory bug
Hi, On Wed, Jan 12, 2022 at 7:59 AM Michał Dec wrote: > > Is there any other hex editor for FreeDOS, which works a lot better? Try this: * https://www.sac.sk/download/utilprog/hiew650.zip This is the well-known "freeware" Hacker's View (HIEW) hex editor. IIRC, its built-in disassembler can handle up through Pentium III. There are others like BIEW/BEYE and QVIEW, both with sources, that try to mimic the same interface and features. * https://sourceforge.net/projects/beye/files/biew/6.1.0/ * https://sourceforge.net/p/beye/bugs/38/ * https://www.sac.sk/download/utilprog/biew562.arj * https://www.sac.sk/download/utilprog/qv291src.zip I still use HIEW a lot, it's pretty rock solid. I have used the others occasionally, but I can't say they're quite bug-free. Your mileage may vary. (If you want automated hex editing for batch files, I have other tools in MetaDOS. I also added recompiling BIEW as one of my tests.) Just FYI. ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] BM cannot boot FD 1.2
Hi, On Sun, Jan 9, 2022 at 3:25 PM Ray Davison wrote: > > I now have a coincidence. The 1.2 kernel has been renamed and moved, > and The boot manager cannot boot the partition. Is there actually a > cause involved here? > > I have pointed the BM to both Kernlxx.sys, command.com, and fdconfig.sys. > > I get "Can't load operating system. Press to reboot..." > > Ideas? Presumably just rename the kernel to "KERNEL.SYS" first. But you may have to update the boot sector name, too (use SYS or maybe WDE). ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS and LFN
Hi, On Mon, Dec 20, 2021 at 7:32 PM Bryan Kilgallin wrote: > > > FreeDOS command has support for LFN dir since ~15 years. > > > > use > > > > DIR /LFN > > > > for this, or > > > >set DIRCMD=/LFN > > > > I had no idea about this. Doesn’t seem to be in the help, but, it does > > work. > > Please would someone document this feature. There's also LFNFOR, which used to be documented already: * http://www.bootablecd.de/fdhelp-internet/en/hhstndrd/command/lfnfor.htm ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] FYI: Social media URLs updated
Hi, On Sun, Jan 2, 2022 at 10:35 AM Jim Hall wrote: > > Alternatively, packages are just zip files. So you can just unzip every DJGPP > package from the Bonus CD to C:\ > and that will do the same thing. > > On Sun, Jan 2, 2022, 10:05 AM Bruce Axtens wrote: >> >> Please can someone point me at the docs wherein in describes how to >> install DJGPP from the Bonus ISO. We never updated the .ZIPs to newer versions. I halfway wanted to help but chickened out when I saw how big it would be with full sources (100+ MB). IIRC, it's only ancient DJGPP 2.03p2 and not latest 2.05 (2015). The DJGPP "readme.1st" is what tells how to manually install: = http://djgpp.mirror.garr.it/current/v2/readme.1st * unzip c:\tmp\*.zip -d c:\dj (to a subdir on your hard disk, avoiding C:\DEV which is treated specially) * set DJGPP=c:\dj\djgpp.env * path c:\dj\bin;%PATH% * gcc -v Make sure you have CWSDPMI r7 in your path somewhere (if not using a different one, e.g. HDPMI32). I would at minimum recommend GCC, BinUtils, DJDEV, Make for simple .C programs. You can add other libraries (e.g. pdcurses) later, if needed. OH! If you want LFN support, only unzip with LFNs enabled (doslfn e). You can probably still unzip twice if desiring both LFN and SFN functionality. That will create some redundant files, but at least they will be found correctly. I don't recommend LFNs if they can be avoided because they slow everything down a lot. But DJGPP v2 does support Win95-era LFNs (if enabled via third-party TSR) by default. Just FYI. ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Unix-like utilities question - NRO
Hi, On Mon, Dec 20, 2021 at 8:23 PM erpicht wrote: > > As a refresher, NRO is the FreeDOS version of the Unix troff program. My > question: does anyone know of any NRO macro sets? > Most interesting to me would be ones that could generate a table of contents > or place footnotes. > Additionally, if anyone has ever implemented anything similar to the eqn, > tbl, or grap preprocessing options, even partially, > I would be curious to see it. No, never used it, but the obvious answer would be to compare with GNU Groff 1.22.3 (DJGPP): * http://djgpp.mirror.garr.it/current/v2gnu/gro1223b.zip * http://djgpp.mirror.garr.it/current/v2gnu/gro1223s.zip ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] How to redirect STDOUT and STDERR to file
Hi, On Sun, Nov 28, 2021 at 6:53 AM saito yutaka wrote: > > How to redirect STDOUT and STDERR to file. > I want to redirect to file as follow. > > --- > c:\>dir aaa > out.txt > c:\> type out.txt > Volume in drive C is FREEDOS2021 > Volume Serial Number is 3668-1A1E > File not found. > --- > > But it works as follow. > It couldn't redirect "File not found" string. > > --- > c:\>dir aaa > out.txt > File not found. > c:\> type out.txt > Volume in drive C is FREEDOS2021 > Volume Serial Number is 3668-1A1E > --- As mentioned, some things won't work by default. For most things, if you just want to silence output (usually in a .BAT file), try this: REM ... shut up almost all output ... ctty nul echo (do whatever) ctty con REM ... make sure to re-enable "ctty con" at the end!! ... To redirect STDERR to file, you need a third-party util (or a better shell like 4DOS, as already mentioned): * http://cd.textfiles.com/simtel/simtel0101/simtel/asmutl/stderrf1.zip There's also DJGPP's REDIR.EXE (386 DPMI) from DJDEV205.ZIP : * http://www.delorie.com/pub/djgpp/current/v2/djdev205.zip ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Announcements seen on BTTR: Lynx web browser, NDN file manager, DOSBOX emulator
Hi,
On Wed, Nov 24, 2021 at 8:06 PM dmccunney wrote:
>
> On Wed, Nov 24, 2021 at 7:20 PM Rugxulo wrote:
> > On Wed, Nov 24, 2021 at 4:36 PM dmccunney wrote:
> > > On Wed, Nov 24, 2021 at 4:19 PM Eric Auer wrote:
> > >
> > > > Bocke adds this: (I think FTP is just broken in the major browsers now,
> > > > alas!)
> > >
> > > It is broken and will *not* be fixed.
> >
> > I assume this is moreso due to unneeded extra maintenance rather than
> > just dislike for it.
>
> No, it's because it is no longer *necessary*. You can do the same
> thing in other ways. If you can, why bother with FTP?
In case you haven't noticed, FTP is much simpler to implement than
Curl or Wget. Those are incredibly complex, especially for DOS.
However, it's unavoidable these days, things are too complicated
elsewhere to rely on "simple" FTP exclusively (or if at all).
> And please note, I said it was deprecated and would not be fixed *in
> the browsers*. This does not mean it won't live on in other places.
I still assume this is more of "we don't need it, we don't have time"
rather than "we don't like it" reasoning.
> FreeDOS (and any other form of DOS) is increasingly locked out of
> access to the wider world, because it does not and *cannot* support
> the methods now used.
I get it, FreeDOS will never rule the world and will never support
100% of everything. Even if it IS possible (as most things are),
there's not enough skilled workers to do it. Those with the skills
lack motivation and/or time. So it won't get done. However, it's not
true that FreeDOS can do "nothing". The fact that we don't have
Javascript in a web browser is less of an impossibility and more of a
simple lack of effort. DOS can at least crunch numbers, edit text,
compile stuff, and run some games, even multimedia (within reason).
It's just not "do everything like Linux or Windows". And that's okay.
> I suppose it's significant that you *could* get DOSBox X to run on top
> of FreeDOS using HX, but why would you *do* that? What do you get
> from doing it?.
>
> I am honestly curious about what use case you might have beyond "Let's
> see whether I *can*... '
For me, I've only tested it a few times for fun. I had no pressing need for it.
Having said that, I imagine that the adjustable speed or various cpu
configs can help identify bottlenecks, cpu incompatibilities, and
certainly being able to take screenshots is always a plus. (If, for
some bizarre reason, HX supported your sound card, you could then say
it's able to emulate other sound cards successfully, which would also
be very nice.)
But there are other ways of doing similar tasks (usually TSRs): SNARF,
SLOWDOWN, etc.
> > BIOS and CSM are basically dead, so it's probably under emulator (e.g.
> > QEMU). So what? Better than nothing (especially since most new
> > computers "supposedly" have VT-X! Great!)
>
> If you *can* run DOS under emulsion, splendid. DOSBox exists to let
> folks who want to play DOS games do so on things that *aren't* PCs.
> (I got a few DOS apps up under DOSBox on an ARM based Android tablet,
> using an ARM port of DOSBox.)
DOSBox is meant to be portable, so there's no emphasis on VT-X or any
other x86-specific cpu extensions. It's also "only for games" (at
least upstream, forks are free to expand upon that).
> Folks trying to run DOS on bare metal on old hardware that still has a
> BIOS will have challenges.
I still use my old Dell laptop (with a BIOS) for FreeDOS (and bootable
jump drives). It actually came with a Diagnostics partition and tools
that were running atop DRMK ("Dell Real Mode Kernel", aka modified
DR-DOS)!
The whole point of my minimal MetaDOS distro was to facilitate using
FreeDOS under VMs like QEMU or VirtualBox. But I half-relied on FTP
quite heavily (mTCP), only using Wget (or Curl) when forced. In part,
this was because of iBiblio.org mirroring FreeDOS files. The other
reason was because mTCP supported 8086 while Wget or Curl would need
386 DPMI. But I guess FTP is almost a lost cause. So MetaDOS was never
anything less than 386+, even if I tried to keep as many pieces as
possible to the lowest common denominator. Long story short: if I ever
make an update (unlikely), I'll probably include CURLLITE.EXE (386
DPMI) by default.
> > I wish I knew how to run FreeDOS on a generic Chromebook like this
> > one. (I've tried Linux cmdline support [beta] before, it wasn't bad,
> > but it needs 10 GB of space, yikes!)
>
> I fail to understand why it needs 10GB of space, unless you are trying
> to run Linux *instead* of ChromeOS. But 10GB is not a significant
> amount of space these days.
It's trying to run Linux (Debian? cmdline only) under KVM (QEMU via
VT-X). And 10 GB is a
Re: [Freedos-user] Announcements seen on BTTR: Lynx web browser, NDN file manager, DOSBOX emulator
Hi, On Wed, Nov 24, 2021 at 4:36 PM dmccunney wrote: > > On Wed, Nov 24, 2021 at 4:19 PM Eric Auer wrote: > > > Bocke adds this: (I think FTP is just broken in the major browsers now, > > alas!) > > It is broken and will *not* be fixed. I assume this is moreso due to unneeded extra maintenance rather than just dislike for it. > FTP is deprecated and is going away. It is ancient, ill maintained, > and a yawning mass of security holes. But not everything needs to be "secure". You mentioned below "games", and as long as they run in a sandbox (DOSBox) where they can't delete or format anything, who cares? Email is (usually) plain text, too! Are you going to deprecate everything old? UNIX is 50! (It had some good ideas, to say the least.) Simple things don't need to be secure. A simple AWK script or a (textual) "diff" to build, say, NASM in DOS is not worthy of ten layers of encryption. > HTTP is going away in favor of HTTPS, which adds encryption to the > connection. SFTP never caught on. SCP is the protocol of choice in > locked down corporate environments. > > Essentially, *all* communications must now be encrypted *both* ways, > which requires current encryption protocols baked in. Bare minimum, I > believe this would require an SSH library for DOS. You missed the bit about the recent update of the DJGPP port of Lynx, where it said this: "* with OPENSSL support (requires WATT-32, which requires a DOS packet driver)" The full (non-lite) DJGPP port of Links2 [sic] also supports HTTPS/SSL, last I checked. > If you are using a DOS emulator like DOSbiox X, you can rely on the > host to imp[lement such things. DOSBox-X also runs atop FreeDOS, thanks to HX (yes, I tried it). So does that mean DOS is now magically secure? > If you are running DOS on the bare metal, you will have problems. You > may still be able to set up an FTP server on a host that your pure DOS > machine can connect to, but it will *not* be part of a browser. BIOS and CSM are basically dead, so it's probably under emulator (e.g. QEMU). So what? Better than nothing (especially since most new computers "supposedly" have VT-X! Great!) I wish I knew how to run FreeDOS on a generic Chromebook like this one. (I've tried Linux cmdline support [beta] before, it wasn't bad, but it needs 10 GB of space, yikes!) > (Most interest I see in DOS these days is in running old DOS *games*, > where communication with the outside world is not a factor. Those > folks won't care about FTP, and may have never used it.). I hope Jim (and Eric and Tom and Jerome and Bart and Jeremy and Robert and ...) all realize how much I adore FreeDOS and have appreciated it over the years. My only complaint is that I couldn't contribute more. FreeDOS is great! (Now if only the rest of the world knew that.) ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] ISO repack reduces size by 10%
Hi, On Thu, Nov 11, 2021 at 5:05 AM Jerome Shidel wrote: > > On Nov 11, 2021, at 12:12 AM, Darik Horn wrote: > > The UnRAR in FreeDOS is 32,086 bytes and already implements all of the things > that you want for SCLICER, which is currently 28,188 bytes. > (Compression, installation scripting, media spanning, and 160K compatibility.) > > > I’m not sure what version of UnRAR you are using. But downloading the current > version that we have (there maybe and probably is a newer one somewhere) > from > https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/repositories/latest/pkg-html/unrar.html > , it is 173,588 bytes. It is also listed as "Freeware, see license." I never really used RAR. The resident expert around here would be Laaca (Blocek). Although my brother registered WinRAR many years ago, so I could maybe (barely) ask him for advice. It's a cool archiver, but I've mostly only used ZIP and 7-Zip in recent years. (Newer versions of RAR archives [v5?] won't unpack in DOS anymore.) That old (DJGPP 2.04) build of UnRAR 3.93 was from me, so of course it's bigger. I think he means even older RAR v2 (1999?), which did have 16-bit DOS support. Unlike newer versions, that old decompression code (unrarlib v2) has been GPL'd. * https://www.sac.sk/download/pack/rar250.exe * https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/util/file/unrar/v2/ AFAIK, last official DOS shareware release of RAR was RARX (EMX, 32-bit) from 2010: * https://www.sac.sk/download/pack/rarx393.exe ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] How to build FreeDOS kernel on FreeDOS
Hi, On Sun, Oct 24, 2021 at 4:44 AM saito yutaka wrote: > > I want to build FreeDOS kernel on FreeDOS. > > But I don't have any idea that what tools I need. > And what steps should I need. > > For example which should I use compiler to build source? > And what library should I need? I built a FreeDOS kernel (2041, patched) in my MetaDOS image (last updated March 2019). It should work "out of the box" (or close enough): "tests ke2041" (batch files). Yes, it used OpenWatcom, NASM, and UPX. * https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distributions/unofficial/metados/ ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Test email (1pm US/Central on June 6)
Directions unclear: message stuck in ceiling fan. (It's fine.) On Sun, Jun 6, 2021 at 8:29 PM Jim Hall wrote: > > The SourceForge email list server seems to be down. Sending a test message to > see if this works. ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] AWK, SED, REXX (alternate .EXE builds)
Hi, I've not had a lot of energy or motivation to work on FreeDOS lately. So even these are a few months old. But hopefully somebody will still find these useful. (Note that these are not proper FD "packages", only random .ZIPs of a few local rebuilds.) So I was messing around with AWK, SED, and REXX (as already mentioned in older emails). I ended up rebuilding some interpreters for these languages, so here's my alternate builds (with vanilla sources since I didn't change any code). * https://sites.google.com/site/rugxulo/MAWK-TC.ZIP?attredirects=0=1 (308 kb) * https://sites.google.com/site/rugxulo/HHSEDGCC.ZIP?attredirects=0=1 (86 kb) * https://sites.google.com/site/rugxulo/REG393DJ.ZIP?attredirects=0=1 (3007 kb) Since I no longer have iBiblio access, they would normally be mirrored by me here: * http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/util/unix/awk/ * http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/util/unix/sed/ * http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/devel/rexx/ Long story short: 1). MAWK was rebuilt with Turbo C++ 1.01. So it's smaller and is compressed with UPX now. It also uses less memory but is a bit slower. 2). HHSED was the only SED interpreter I could get to build with IA16-GCC. (Warning: it outputs *nix LF-only files.) 3). REGINA 3.9.3 (DJGPP 2.05) is much newer than my ancient DJGPP build of 3.7 from 2012. But I saw no need to include Watt-32 support. Archive List and Date Stamp 0.94.4 beta by Joe Forster/STA Listing archive: c:\tmp\MAWK-TC.ZIP Original Packed Ratio Date TimeAttr Name - - - -- 59208 58638 99% 11-03-20 22:17:12 -A--- awk.exe 0 0 100% 04-20-21 21:18:54 D old\ 0 0 100% 04-20-21 21:20:24 D old\mawk122s\ 244632233401 95% 02-04-96 13:26:50 -A--- old\mawk122s\mawk122s.zip 0 0 100% 04-20-21 21:19:16 D old\mawk122x\ 17982 6817 37% 07-03-93 13:58:06 -A--R old\mawk122x\copying 44580 14145 31% 06-10-95 13:20:18 -A--- old\mawk122x\mawk.doc 2304 1186 51% 12-17-95 16:12:24 -A--- old\mawk122x\readme 333 240 72% 02-04-96 12:15:44 -A--- old\mawk122x\readme.1st 619 338 54% 11-03-20 22:17:12 -A--- readme.new - - - -- 369658314765 85% 04-20-21 21:20:24 7 files and 3 directories Listing archive: c:\tmp\HHSEDGCC.ZIP Original Packed Ratio Date TimeAttr Name - - - -- 739 457 61% 11-23-20 12:13:00 -A--- hhsed.bat 16901 16803 99% 11-23-20 11:27:28 -A--- sed.exe 0 0 100% 04-20-21 21:29:32 D old\ 0 0 100% 04-20-21 21:29:58 D old\sed15\ 4788 2364 49% 10-01-91 16:06:40 -A--- old\sed15\readme 20140 6878 34% 09-27-91 15:51:32 -A--- old\sed15\sedexec.c 27511 9883 35% 09-28-91 10:01:36 -A--- old\sed15\sedcomp.c 4612 1523 33% 09-30-91 12:49:26 -A--- old\sed15\sed.h 950 837 88% 05-04-86 13:08:38 -A--- old\sed15\test.zip 633 547 86% 09-20-91 14:43:02 -A--- old\sed15\tc20.zip 23344 22987 98% 10-01-91 16:03:00 -A--- old\sed15\history.zip 16252 16161 99% 09-22-91 11:28:36 -A--- old\sed15\docs.zip 0 0 100% 04-20-21 21:30:44 D old\sed15x\ 743 466 62% 09-24-91 11:56:26 -A--- old\sed15x\readme.15x 24949 7478 29% 09-22-91 11:28:36 -A--- old\sed15x\sed.lst - - - -- 141562 86384 61% 04-20-21 21:30:44 12 files and 3 directories Listing archive: c:\tmp\REG393DJ.ZIP Original Packed Ratio Date TimeAttr Name - - - -- 2907065 2856891 98% 10-06-19 01:19:42 -A--- reg393s.zip 223276221880 99% 11-17-20 14:53:16 -A--- regina.exe 125 120 96% 11-17-20 14:53:16 -A--- readme.new - - - -- 3130466 3078891 98% 11-17-20 14:53:16 3 files Hopefully somebody tests these further (or mirrors them)! Obviously I'm not an expert and don't claim to maintain them, but they should fully work as expected. ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Latex / long filenames
Hi, (wow, sorry, I'm horribly late in replying) On Sat, Mar 20, 2021 at 12:27 PM Tomas By wrote: > > Am trying to use Latex (from DJGPP) in Freedos, and get errors > seemingly having to do with long file names. My memory isn't flawless, so corrections welcome, but Most DJGPP .ZIPs halfway try to support SFNs and LFNs, but you may have to unzip them twice: once with an LFN driver installed, and once without! Try "unzip32 -n" (to not overwrite) the second time. (Don't forget to use a DJGPP unzipper!) Yes, this wastes space and duplicates files, but it should work. At least, it did for the DJGPP compiler tools themselves (a few years ago) for me. > The "dir" command only shows 8+3, and when I manually rename using > "move", the name gets truncated (rather than getting the tilde plus > number). FreeDOS "move" is not LFN aware. Most old 16-bit tools (and libraries and compilers) aren't. So you should stick to DJGPP v2 (etc.) tools like CoreUtils (ls, cp, mv, rm). For DJGPP, that would be FileUtils + TextUtils + ShellUtils (fil41*b.zip, txt20*b.zip, shl2011*b.zip ... something like that). Sorry, I don't remember exactly the ultra-latest filenames or what is in which .ZIP. * http://www.delorie.com/djgpp/getting.html * http://djgpp.mirror.garr.it/current/v2gnu/fil41br3.zip * http://djgpp.mirror.garr.it/current/v2gnu/txt20br3.zip * http://djgpp.mirror.garr.it/current/v2gnu/shl2011br3.zip FreeCOM is not perfect nor bug-free, but it should (ultimately) work with LFNs. (You could also try the shell from EDR-DOS or 4DOS.) I'd have to recheck MetaDOS, but I think by default I used "set DIRCMD=/lfn" and "lfnfor on" and "lfnfor complete on" with (2006) 0.84-pre2 XMS_Swap FreeCOM. (I have not heavily tested newer releases as much.) * http://help.fdos.org/en/index.htm (may be missing some info) * https://github.com/FDOS/freecom/releases > "doslfn" is loaded. If a tool wasn't built using int 21h, 71xxh (Win95) APIs, it won't support LFNs, even with a driver loaded. * http://www.delorie.com/djgpp/doc/rbinter/id/07/32.html * https://fd.lod.bz/rbil/interrup/dos_kernel/2171.html#3235 > Any known work-arounds? I don't think renaming all the files to eight > chars would be practical. Don't use "move" but instead DJGPP's (CoreUtils) "mv" if you need LFN support (move / rename). Most likely, there is no perfect answer for every .ZIP package. But I would personally try re-downloading and re-installing Latex from DJGPP mirrors and unzipping either with LFNs or without (or both!), if needed. Sorry if this isn't a perfect answer (I don't use Latex), but it should give you some rough idea of what to do. ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] FSF?!
Hi, On Thu, Apr 1, 2021 at 2:06 PM Joao Silva wrote: > > I do dare to ask a dumb question, after reading several post about FSF. > > Can anyone explain what is FSF, i'm just a simple tech guy! Free Software Foundation, aka the ones who fund the GNU organization (GPL, GCC, BinUtils [as, ld], Hurd, etc). Actually, Red Hat might do most of the work on BinUtils nowadays, but it's still copyright-owned by GNU. * https://www.fsf.org/ * https://gcc.gnu.org/ To be "Free" (libre), you must have the essential "four freedoms": * https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html " * The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0). * The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this. * The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help others (freedom 2). * The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this. " (Corrections or clarifications welcome.) ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] FSF
Hi,
On Thu, Apr 1, 2021 at 2:41 AM Eric Auer wrote:
>
> > Richard Stallman has not been convicted by a court. He is not in
> > prison. Let's not burn his house down over pathetic words.
>
> That is not the point.
To treat his behavior as a crime that mandatorily deserves punishment
implies that he is indeed guilty.
This is not the same as just saying, "He's dumb, and we don't like
him." This is far more aggressive.
> > He's not perfect. He doesn't have to be.
>
> To be in a leading position in an organisation which tries
> to be a good example in the world, one should contribute to
> a good atmosphere. Having a mattress with shirtless people
> in your office for example does not contribute to that:
Was that not during his college years? And even that could be misconstrued.
> https://selamjie.medium.com/remove-richard-stallman-appendix-a-a7e41e784f88
Not the worst article, but it's still flimsy. A lot of it is about her
own emotional baggage.
Just to be clear, it seems she's not blaming RMS for literally
everything over 30 years. (At least, I don't see how that's possible.)
But she is indeed implying there have been long-standing problems.
Most of the outrage is just his moral opinions (highly irrelevant).
Some of the rest sounds like vague suspicions, not actual proof.
RMS is a very technical and eccentric person. His words and intentions
may be easily misunderstood. He's not talking in normal human terms.
He's being very precise in what he thinks. I would not treat him as
thinking "normal". But I don't mean that negatively either. He's just
different. People may think him cold or indifferent, but I think he's
just wired differently, very specific and technical. I don't see any
bad intentions. There's no reason to assume the worst with him at all.
> Just because MIT failed to have sexual harassment policies
> which explicitly outlawed bullying people into dating you
> does not mean that FSF can welcome a leader who tried that.
We still don't know his intentions or full circumstances from that
incident. But yeah, poor choice of words, that behavior should always
be ignored.
> > His public or private opinion is irrelevant.
> > Nobody is following his example.
>
> He is not just anybody. Having his fame, there is a risk
> that people do follow his example.
Then whose example did he follow to get here? And now that there are
so many virtuous people around, why isn't he following them?
> Having him work at a high-ranking position sends a signal that he has a fine
> character and his example should be followed.
He has technical expertise, so he's useful. But he's not actually
Saint I-GNU-tius.
(Do you think that persona of his bullied anyone into religion? Did
anyone follow that "witness"?)
> As said, FSF could simply hire him as expert consultant instead.
Yes, probably, but what's the practical difference? You know some
people will still complain until he's gone completely. They don't need
facts, just emotions. But that's not a good way to live, giving in to
empty and angry emotions. (Ask our little friend who got banned a few
years ago. Lots of emotions, zero practical reasons. Anger is
irrational, temporary insanity.)
"I am ready, now, to join others in calling for burning everything to
the ground."
"Remove everyone, if we must, and let something much better be built
from the ashes."
(She basically says nobody is so deserving of praise that they should
have their comments be "allowed to slide", aka be ignored, especially
"excusing [permitting] rape, assault, and child sex trafficking". I'm
not sure that's quite what RMS had in mind, but she is indeed implying
that his "comments" are a crime that shouldn't go unanswered, i.e. he
must be rebuked or punished.)
(Her addendum later worries about her own reputation and "insulting
someone well respected who I had never met". "This was not, actually,
all that much about Richard Stallman. Stallman was just the last
straw." So this is more of a war, and he is alleged to be only a
fraction of the overall problem.)
N.B Marvin Minsky was apparently co-founder of the A.I. Lab at M.I.T.
So if RMS is defending him (everyone deserves a just defense),
wouldn't that imply that RMS knew him or at least met him or contacted
him before? In other words, RMS was probably a friend or colleague of
his and felt the need to defend someone who cannot defend himself
anymore. ("Minsky received a $100,000 research grant from Jeffrey
Epstein in 2002." Most of the controversy seems to stem from that.
Minsky also won the Turing Award in 1969.)
> For comparison, think about the years when there was a
> man at a very high-ranking position who got away with
> "grabbing women by the pussy", firing everybody who did
> not agree with him and intimidating yet others to never
> hold him accountable. He actually acquired a lot of fans
> who hoped to become successful by being more like him,
> even in the years before as rich boss guy in a TV show.
You mean the 2005 video that
Re: [Freedos-user] FSF
Hi, On Wed, Mar 31, 2021 at 12:04 AM dmccunney wrote: > > Meanwhile, I'm beyond caring about Stallman or the state of the FSF. > Both deserve whatever happens to them. It might be more honest (only guessing here) to admit that "He stresses me out, I can't deal with him, I don't understand him, and I have no need to interact with him." But the way you describe it here (although I admit you have some indirect?? experience) sounds not only indifferent but rather like a grudge or vendetta. I don't believe in the death penalty. And we certainly don't burn down prisons with everyone inside them just because we don't like the crimes that were committed by them. That would be inhumane and unjust. Richard Stallman has not been convicted by a court. He is not in prison. Let's not burn his house down over pathetic words. It's very easy to take things the wrong way unintentionally. We shouldn't all have to walk on eggshells and be "literally" perfect just because angry people always want to punish somebody, anybody, who gets in their way. He's not perfect. He doesn't have to be. If we can't deal with him rationally and justly, that's our problem, not his. (But judging people we've never met without any direct evidence other than fragments of sentences online over several decades isn't actually enough to convict anyone. It's not true justice.) I don't mean you specifically (obviously?). You're allowed to vent and have emotions. You can make your own decisions. You don't need my help. But overall it's not fair to hate someone based upon so little information. Let's not overreact. Let's forget it entirely. It's truly not our domain to judge him. ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] FSF
Hi, On Tue, Mar 30, 2021 at 2:12 PM Ralf Quint wrote: > > Someone who as a public person makes comments like this is just one of the most despicable persons. There are no two ways about it. > And if someone doesn't understand this issue at hand is part of the problem... His public or private opinion is irrelevant. Nobody is following his example. It also doesn't change any laws. Sure, he could be more tactful, but that doesn't mean he should be heavily punished. Just because someone doesn't agree with him, even if he speaks egregious words, doesn't mean he should be destroyed. I reject that kind of irrational anger (especially over someone I've never met that hasn't been convicted of any actual crime). Don't expect everyone to blindly agree with you or go on an angry rampage over every minor tweet that you disagree with. His personal opinion doesn't practically matter. ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] FSF
Hi, On Tue, Mar 30, 2021 at 9:06 AM TK Chia wrote: > > > Honestly, he's been known as "very eccentric" for many years. I don't > > think anybody is surprised. He has opinions and voices them (whether > > unpopular or not). You know what they say about opinions, right? > > Everyone has one. > > Well, I happen to lurk around on the GCC mailing list. The impression I > am getting is that the issue might be much larger than just "someone > having unpopular opinions": e.g. > https://gcc.gnu.org/pipermail/gcc/2021-March/235161.html . Myself, I am > not sure what to think of it all. Harassment is not to be tolerated. But there's a difference between enforcing that and blacklisting an entire organization. That message implies sexist and racist comments, but it also says some of it was "'90s hacker humor". And some of the complainers quit in 2004 and 2010, so it's not all recent. I'm not indifferent to actual problems, i.e. real harassment, but most times things are blown out of proportion. But I'm not personally involved (and shouldn't be). I just don't want anyone to overreact without full facts. Let them have their day in court, so to speak, let's not punish them ourselves. ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] FSF
Hi, On Mon, Mar 29, 2021 at 2:40 PM tom ehlert wrote: > > https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/03/red-hat-withdraws-from-the-stallman-led-free-software-foundation/ > > maybe it's time to show the FSF the middle finger, too? > > Tom Why do you bring this drama here?? How does quasi-political outrage affect FreeDOS? There is little to link FreeDOS to FSF other than the GPL, but (as you know) the GPLv2 is very, very popular overall in the software world. Honestly, he's been known as "very eccentric" for many years. I don't think anybody is surprised. He has opinions and voices them (whether unpopular or not). You know what they say about opinions, right? Everyone has one. Let's not crucify anyone, and let's not cancel any technical plans because of irrational anger. You don't have to like or support him, but keep in mind that it's very inconvenient having to walk on eggshells just because various other people can't get along for trivial reasons. (Yes, hypothetical opinions are trivial. If someone can't handle their own emotions upon every outrageous statement, nobody else wants to deal with that. It's reasons like this that I don't use Twitter.) Please don't fan the flames here. It's not important. If you want to start a crusade, you're going to lose. (Jim, I'm not condoning his opinions, but it's tiring always reading about drama like this.) ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Is there such a thing as an add-on SATA host controller that works with DOS?
Hi, On Sat, Oct 24, 2020 at 3:43 AM Deposite Pirate wrote: > > I have a bunch of SATA mechanical hard drives with perfect health that I've > swapped out for SSDs in various laptops. > I installed a 160Gb one with a Silicon Image 3512a SATALink host controller > in my IBM Aptiva E30-2137 > (ALi M1531 Aladdin IV chipset). So far it seems to works great with Windows > NT 4. No limitation problems. > I use this machine with CF cards to run various OSes (among which FreeDOS, > DR-DOS). > I thought to myself it would be awesome to format the drive as FAT32 and > share it with FreeDOS and DR-DOS. > Unfortunately this SiI 3512a only has Windows drivers and it doesn't look > like the firmware of this card does any BIOS > magic to make it available to DOS. Considering how late FAT32 support came to > the DOS family of OSes I would > understand why no manufacturer of SATA add-on host controller bothered with > DOS support. So I am wondering if > there is actually such a thing as an add-on SATA host controller that can be > used from DOS OSes. This advice may be redundant (and is secondary): Be careful to know which OS you want to use actually has support for FAT32. You probably already knew that, but just to reiterate, many older OSes do not! It might be better to have both FAT16 and FAT32 partitions, for maximum compatibility. (Although I find FAT16 greater than 500 MB wasteful in slack space. Caveat emptor.) NT 4 didn't support FAT32, that came later with Windows 2000 (2k). Similarly, DR-DOS 7.03 had no LBA nor FAT32 support. (There may be some support in unofficial OEM releases, e.g. 7.06 or 7.08 or whatever they were called, but those were very incomplete and not "full" installs, by any stretch. Or maybe you meant EDR-DOS? 2005 stable or 2011 unstable probably mostly support it.) MS-DOS proper didn't get it until, what, Win95 OSR2 ?? Of course, FreeDOS supports FAT32 just fine, assuming you didn't get a botched kernel build somewhere. (The FAT16-only kernel only saves about 2 kb, IIRC, so not really worth it.) FreeDOS doesn't support the weird "4 GB file" kludge of later Windows (98??) using int 21h, 716Ch or whatever. (DJGPP 2.04 or newer should "probably" have that support. Heck, DJGPP also has some hardcoded "version 7" routines, hence CoreUtils "df -h ." won't support FAT32 if detecting "version 6" or similar.) This is fairly rare and not worth missing (much, if at all, IMHO). Just FYI. Corrections welcome, and sorry if this is obvious or not a direct answer. (FreeDOS is great!) ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Bexome Endorsed By The FSF! Opportunity
Hi again,
On Sun, Aug 23, 2020 at 5:01 PM Rugxulo wrote:
>
> On Sat, Aug 22, 2020 at 5:56 PM Jim Hall wrote:
> >
> > Thanks for the suggestion. I've had conversations with the FSF about
> > getting FreeDOS listed on their Free Non-GNU Distributions page. It's not
> > going to happen.
> >
> > The last time I discussed this with the FSF, the FSF Licensing rep
> > responded to say (paraphrasing) "But FreeDOS exists to prop up proprietary
> > DOS applications."
> >
> > I replied that there's no point in being a "Free DOS" if FreeDOS can't run
> > DOS programs. But the FSF's view seems to be that if FreeDOS aims to run
> > proprietary DOS programs, then FreeDOS is basically supporting/endorsing
> > proprietary software. They stopped responding to emails after that.
> >
> > Unfortunately, this is not the first time that's happened, so I've given up
> > trying to get FreeDOS listed on the FSF's page.
Despite those emails, their attitude may be too cynical. In fact, I
can prove it is.
Trisquel just released 9.0, and I'm temporarily booting a USB jump
drive with it right now (32-bit, MATE) on my wired Lenovo desktop. I'm
in ABrowser (Firefox 81.0.2 rebranded). AFAIK, it's based upon latest
Ubuntu LTS, but while they do prune their repositories to remove
non-free stuff, you can at least grab DOSBox [GPL]. No DOSEMU nor
DOSEMU2 found, but at least that exists. (It works with PSR Invaders,
but I didn't test beyond that.)
* https://trisquel.info/
Trisquel is 100% approved by FSF and sold on refurbished laptops
("Respects Your Freedom"). So, unless you think it's a mistake or that
Trisquel doesn't care (unlikely, their 7z [sic] lacks non-free RAR v3
support), they aren't THAT picky about "some" DOS support (compatible
OS software interrupts, EXE file formats, etc), even if you have to
supply your own "games" (which??). EDIT: Engrampa [GUI archiver] seems
to unpack Blocek's RAR just fine, no idea if that was a mistake or
not. (There was one rare, "open source" MacOS app that had UnRAR v3
support, but I thought it was Objective-C. Not sure on where this
support came from.)
* http://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.html
(Long story short: my mother uses an ancient laptop booting from USB
with Lubuntu 18.04.4 32-bit that I installed for her via RUFUS. I
swapped around and tested a few other distros, including this one
[wireless didn't work], but for now, she seems happy with Lubuntu.
Unfortunately, 32-bit has been deprecated and won't be supported in
another year. Only that older major version works. Her cpu is 64-bit
capable, but others I tried, even latest Ubuntu LTS, were too sluggish
for her ["only" 2 GB RAM, single core]. She's also very stubborn, so
it's hard to get her to buy or use other machines. I myself had good
success, even on my problematic old Dell laptop [Broadcom firmware,
ugh], with antiX Linux 32-bit (and Xenial Puppy 64-bit). antiX comes
with DOSBox installed by default, last I checked, but I haven't tried
19.3 yet.)
> They take issue with "promoting" non-Free software. That includes
> website links and documentation. And yes, FreeDOS is very spartan
> without "legacy" (which usually means proprietary). It doesn't mean
> you couldn't fork it, call it something else, and rebuild literally
> everything you need from scratch. You could remove legacy support and
> create some new interfaces and file formats instead, but overall it's
> pointless. The main point is just to rebuild literally everything you
> actively use from scratch with Free tools. (GNU does actually like
> "standards" that are widely known.)
Being compatible in itself can't be an absolute problem since they
support "standards" like C or C++. Even informal "de facto" standards
like Python or Perl are included by default (probably prerequisites
for many things). Like I said, you could redesign "DOS" to use other
system calls (int 40h?) or .EXE formats (ELF?) while still keeping
8086 cpu and BIOS, but it wouldn't gain you much. Being incompatible
just to be incompatible is pointless. (If there was a practical
reason, maybe. Otherwise, no.)
> I mean, DOS is still a fun hobby, and it's not wrong to target legacy
> APIs or file formats with new software. The main advantage is that
> it's well-documented and widely used already. The real disadvantage is
> that nobody cares enough to "clean it up". You could bundle the Doom
> engine (GPL) and Freedoom data (BSD), for instance, and rebuild all of
> that with Free tools (DJGPP + Allegro).
Like I said, the main appeal may just be to be able to write new games
entirely from scratch with Free/libre tools. Certainly there are
"some" (few) DOS games and whatnot that would fit the
Re: [Freedos-user] Floppy fetish search
Hi again, On Tue, Oct 6, 2020 at 3:43 AM Rugxulo wrote: > > On Mon, Oct 5, 2020 at 3:56 PM E. Auer wrote: > > > > Also, if anybody can help me to extract the > > data from those CP/M floppies, I would be happy, too! > > I never used CP/M, so I know little about it (beyond its obvious > pre-DOS status), but would this help?? > > * http://www.seasip.info/Unix/LibDsk/ It also seems John Elliott has a dedicated CP/M page with tons of info: * http://www.seasip.info/Cpm/index.html ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Floppy fetish search
Hi, On Mon, Oct 5, 2020 at 3:56 PM E. Auer wrote: > > In addition, I have found a small number of floppy > disks in CP/M format, which are very likely readable > using some of the drives here, but I do not know HOW > to read them, software wise. I cannot even use dd to > make a diskimage, probably different sector sizes? > > Also, if anybody can help me to extract the > data from those CP/M floppies, I would be happy, too! I never used CP/M, so I know little about it (beyond its obvious pre-DOS status), but would this help?? * http://www.seasip.info/Unix/LibDsk/ " LIBDSK is a library for accessing discs and disc image files. It is intended for use in: * Emulator tools - converting between real floppy discs and disc images, as CPCTRANS / PCWTRANS do under DOS. * Filesystem utilities - CPMTOOLS is configurable to use LIBDSK, thus allowing the use of CPMTOOLS on emulator .DSK images. To do this, install LIBDSK and then build CPMTOOLS, using "./configure --with-libdsk". For CPMTOOLS 1.9 or 2.0, you will also need to apply this patch. * Emulators - it is possible to use LIBDSK as part of an emulator's floppy controller emulation, thus giving the emulator transparent access to .DSK files or real discs. " Or this?? "YAZE-AG - Yet Another Z80 Emulator by AG (V 2.40.5 / V 2.30.3)" * http://www.mathematik.uni-ulm.de/users/ag/yaze-ag/ > Cheers, Eric (Germany) Happy German-American Day. ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Bexome Endorsed By The FSF! Opportunity
Hi, sorry for late reply, On Sun, Aug 23, 2020 at 1:45 PM dmccunney wrote: > > Trying to get listed by the FSF is an exercise in futility. I don't know if it's truly impossible, I never asked them. My silly floppy disk image (with minimal networking) is probably not worth much to them (nor others), but I did try. Maybe it's too generic? But I included various tests and lots of download links. Maybe it's too specific? Certainly it could be heavily expanded (as DOS often was). If it is truly impossible or considered not worth doing or using, then I still feel we should do our best with what we have. (Heck, even just emulating under QEMU is better than nothing!) But look at the hurdles Minix 3.x went through (not related to FSF), it seems impossible for alternative OSes to barely make a dent these days. But Android or ChromeOS might be larger (more practical and useful?) targets than DOS these days, especially with the impending death of BIOS/CSM. The big advantage of "anybody with a BIOS can run it!" has almost disappeared. (Same with the increasing popularity of ARM, thus IA-32 isn't as common as it used to be, and x64 is mostly hostile to 16-bit.) > The FSF has long ago ceased being about technology. It's a religion, > and Richard Stallman is its prophet. (I've met him, and know people > who've known him for decades. He's an odd person. In Stallman's world, > all software is FOSS, issued under the GPL. No surprise various Linux > distros don't pass his compatibility tests.) It's rather about ethics, he's against hoarding and limiting user freedom in any way. It's also very legalistic and pro-business use (as well as pro-hobbyist). Of course, this only truly matters to (would-be) developers. But most people don't seem interested in fiddling with makefiles and boring minutiae. (Most things should be MUCH easier to rebuild.) It's a very difficult struggle since there are so many "traps" (proprietary formats, DRM, trade secrets, patents, hardware variations). Admittedly, compatibility with familiar DOS APIs / interfaces may not be useful to them. > And open source has fragmented. My irony meter pegs off scale when > one open source product cannot incorporate code from another because > they are issued under incompatible licenses. (And Gnu is a Worst > Offender - my understanding is that GPLv3 is incompatible with GPLv2. > That's just hopelessly stupid.) GNU admits that license proliferation is bad: developers need to take a serious step back and be less controlling, but such is life. > FreeDOS began as an effort to produce an open source OS compatible with DOS. > It mostly succeeded. The kernel and shell are GPL, so it's impossible to say we're not sympathetic. But I think GNU has little patience for those who rest on their laurels. There's too much old legacy code still using proprietary tools (e.g. TASM) that should've been converted to something Free (e.g. NASM) long ago. Admittedly, it's VERY hard for a newcomer to do that, and often the original author / maintainer is long gone. So it never gets done. That's a truly tedious and thankless job, but it's still important for future improvements. (It's MUCH harder to fix bugs or add features if you can't easily rebuild.) > But people buy computers to do work or play, and the OS sits between > the user,. the program they run, and the hardware. A *lot* of > programs people want to run *aren't* open source, and won't be. Irrelevant! To Free Software users/developers, it's more about what you can do than what you can't. But the main problem is uniqueness. Is FreeDOS unique enough? 8086 is very limiting and unpopular these days. No one makes 8086 hardware anymore, and its memory model(s) are inconvenient to 386 "flat mode" users. But we also have DJGPP (for 386), which should greatly ease that struggle. Yet even that has been mostly ignored for many years (but was very popular "back in the day"). Is 8086 a worthy target? Is even 386 (or 686) obsolete? (Also bad that DJGPP is COFF and not ELF.) It's not that we don't have GPL'd 16-bit compilers (e.g. GCC IA-16 ELF or FPC cross-compiler for i8086-msdos), but who would use it? (Obviously I would, but I'm no genius.) GNU recommends the following utilities for Makefiles, at minimum (e.g. awk, sed, grep, diff): * https://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/html_node/Utilities-in-Makefiles.html IIRC, they also recommend C (or even C++ nowadays) for building most things. Or Scheme (Guile?) or Emacs Lisp. (DJGPP has a recent-ish GNU Emacs build.) I don't think they directly care about cpu architecture, but they do care about the surrounding ecosystem. One of the biggest limitations with DOS is its FAT file system. Most developers just don't care enough to work around its limitations (even with optional, partial LFN support). For whatever reason, that often trips people up. (DJGPP relies way too much on VFAT under XP's NTVDM or similar to rebuild most things. Most stuff never bothered to bootstrap
Re: [Freedos-user] Bexome Endorsed By The FSF! Opportunity
Hi, On Sat, Aug 22, 2020 at 5:56 PM Jim Hall wrote: > > Thanks for the suggestion. I've had conversations with the FSF about getting > FreeDOS listed on their Free Non-GNU Distributions page. It's not going to > happen. > > The last time I discussed this with the FSF, the FSF Licensing rep responded > to say (paraphrasing) "But FreeDOS exists to prop up proprietary DOS > applications." > > I replied that there's no point in being a "Free DOS" if FreeDOS can't run > DOS programs. But the FSF's view seems to be that if FreeDOS aims to run > proprietary DOS programs, then FreeDOS is basically supporting/endorsing > proprietary software. They stopped responding to emails after that. > > Unfortunately, this is not the first time that's happened, so I've given up > trying to get FreeDOS listed on the FSF's page. Despite lack of time currently, I've already emailed Jim about exactly this thing several years ago. They take issue with "promoting" non-Free software. That includes website links and documentation. And yes, FreeDOS is very spartan without "legacy" (which usually means proprietary). It doesn't mean you couldn't fork it, call it something else, and rebuild literally everything you need from scratch. You could remove legacy support and create some new interfaces and file formats instead, but overall it's pointless. The main point is just to rebuild literally everything you actively use from scratch with Free tools. (GNU does actually like "standards" that are widely known.) In theory, at least to me, that would mean something minimal like my MetaDOS mini-distro. I've never asked FSF, but it would still have to be improved. Still, IMHO, it's "close enough" to give anyone at FSF a glimpse of what is possible (if they're sympathetic at all). Overall, I don't think the DOS ecosystem is as important to them as a totally 100% Free/libre GNU/Linux. They probably have bigger fish to fry, and with things like ChromeOS (or even GNU/Hurd), it's probably not an optimal target. Unless somebody comes up with some cheap, widely-available x86 clone hardware for legacy (486-ish) gaming plus FreeDOS, using Free compilers (DJGPP or IA-16 ELF or Free Pascal or FreeBASIC or NASM or FASM). You'd need a Free BIOS, too. Bootstrapping is very hard work, and few are interested in it, see here: * https://www.gnu.org/software/mes/ I mean, DOS is still a fun hobby, and it's not wrong to target legacy APIs or file formats with new software. The main advantage is that it's well-documented and widely used already. The real disadvantage is that nobody cares enough to "clean it up". You could bundle the Doom engine (GPL) and Freedoom data (BSD), for instance, and rebuild all of that with Free tools (DJGPP + Allegro). Not to mention Links2 + suitable packet driver. But then you have to bootstrap the compilers themselves, which is harder than it sounds. Still, it would be fun to try to get something working. I just don't have the skills or energy to do it all myself, sadly. But perhaps FSF doesn't really want it anyways. "What's the point?" may be a self-defeating attitude for them. FreeDOS is great! > On Sat, Aug 22, 2020 at 5:19 PM haytam.fr--- via Freedos-user > wrote: >> >> I want to inform you about something kind of interesting , >> http://www.gnu.org/distros/free-non-gnu-distros.html visit this website , >> make sure the operating system FreeDOS does pass the guidelines , and send >> the email , Jim Hall the owner of the OS Should send the email there , ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Microsoft Open-Sources GW-BASIC
Hi,
On Sun, Jun 7, 2020 at 10:54 AM dmccunney wrote:
>
> On Sat, Jun 6, 2020 at 9:37 PM Rugxulo wrote:
> >
> > Make is a fairly useful util and a great idea, but it's also a
> > portability nightmare (isn't everything?). So it's hard to do anything
> > perfectly.
>
> I have unfond memories of trying to build stuff with make, and
> discovering that the make I was using required *tabs* as separators in
> some areas, and would fail if spaces were used instead. (Editors I use
> tend to convert tabs to spaces.)
That depends on your text editor: some are more obvious than others
(e.g. Mined or TDE).
You can also preprocess your makefiles before using them (e.g. JED).
> I don't recall that particular requirement being *documented* anywhere,
> and since tabs are non-printing chars you have to jump through various hoops
> to
> explicitly display, looking at the makefile was no help, because you
> would see blank spaces and not realize they were generated by tabs
> instead of space chars.
Most "modern" Makes can avoid tabs entirely: GNU Make (since 3.82),
Dmake, Wmake, TC++ Make, etc.
It's only confusing due to naivete or lack of documentation or
examples. It's easy to get lost in a sea of features and
incompatibilities (among other problems).
> But make can be considered a language, and folks have done stuff in
> make that has nothing to do with building code.
You mean like all the GNU Make extensions? I wouldn't quite call it a
"language" proper, but it does have many extras. It's somewhat useful
but also still problematic.
There are no easy solutions to many problems, or at least "good"
solutions aren't obvious for the first thousand revisions. Thankfully,
some tools help more than they hurt.
Some programming languages don't need outside build tools at all (or
only rarely). But even that varies with implementation. Free Pascal
(like Turbo) does use Makefiles sometimes, but normally it
automatically finds all unit dependencies ("-m" only makes what's
needed else "-b" to rebuild entirely from scratch).
> > GNU only recommends these utilities:
> >
> > *
> > https://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/html_node/Utilities-in-Makefiles.html
>
> And for good reason. Make may be portable. The code you build using
> it may not be, and architectural differences in the targets can bite.
> "Make relies on the following tools. Make sure versions of them are
> available on the system where you are building" is sound advice. So
> is advice like "Don't create symlinks in make, because they may not be
> available on the target of your build."
That is advised but not mandated. Mostly, you don't want to cut off
contributors just because their host OS is different than yours.
However, time is scarce, motivation is low, so most projects aren't
that portable, even when they could be. "Linux or Windows" seems bare
minimum, and even that is spotty or sometimes avoided.
> C++ has come a *long* way. Bjarne Sjoustroup created it while at
> AT AT Unix's first C++ compiler was cfront. Cfront was a front
> end that parsed your c++ code and converted it to standard C, which
> could be compiled by cc to asm, assembled by as, and linked by ld to
> create an executable. I asked about that at a talk Sjoustroup gave at
> a Unix users group meeting.
C++ had to abandon that approach for exceptions, IIRC. (Many good
ideas from C++ were later incorporated into "standard" C.)
> He said that people had been wishing for years for a truly portable
> assembly language, and they finally realized that's essentially what C
> was. C was designed to be portable, and efficient enough that you
> didn't have to write in assembler to get performance. Unix was
> originally written in the MACRO-11 assembly language provided by DEC
> in the system used to originally develop Unix. When C became mature
> enough, most of Unix was rewritten in it. If memory serves, perhaps
> 10% of the really low level code that talked to the hardware remained
> in assembler.
Fortran predates C and was intended to be easier to read/write while
also being as efficient as (non-portable) assembly. Even Algol (etc.)
was meant to be a readable but portable HLL (international algorithmic
language).
But portability is hard, and C has many problems (by default),
especially to those who are inexperienced. It's not that it's
impossible or totally broken, just confusing and not obvious. It's
*very* easy to write code that doesn't work on other cpu architectures
or even compiler-specific (won't work with others). Not that other
languages aren't horribly bad about it, too (TP7 DOS 16-bit specific
code, ugh).
> AT implemented the original C++ as a parser converting to standard C
> because the hardware to support a nat
Re: [Freedos-user] Microsoft Open-Sources GW-BASIC
Hi,
On Tue, Jun 2, 2020 at 2:08 PM dmccunney wrote:
>
> On Mon, Jun 1, 2020 at 5:30 PM Rugxulo wrote:
> >
> > I don't think this particular BASIC is a compiler, only an
> > interpreter. (The very first BASIC was a compiler.)
>
> Doesn't matter. You can create an entire application in an
> interpreted language, and people did. And BASIC being interpreted on
> early machines was likely a matter of hardware available. Kemeny and
> Kurtz were working on larger multi-user systems. Consider the
> Commodore 64, which had MS BASIC v2 embedded. When you booted it, you
> were in the interpreter, talking to BASIC. BASIC on that machine was
> embedded in a 8KB ROM.
Except for graphics and sound (which are apparently missing here), aka
machine specific, I still think AWK is probably "better" than
non-structured GW-BASIC.
Of course, QBASIC (non-standard, well ... "de facto" standard, circa
1988/1991) fixed and added a lot. So, lots of people did cool things
with that. Since it was installed by default in MS-DOS 5 (and others??
OS/2? NT?), it might make more sense to target that than other tools,
if you needed a quick script to do something. But since FreeBASIC's
"lang qb" is imperfect (not that I really tested QB64 either), maybe
relying on "POSIX" AWK is good enough. (N.B. FreeBASIC [since 2004]
compiles itself using auxiliary DJGPP tools.)
> Awk and REXX are script languages, and were generally interpreted.
Not to split hairs, but many of these "interpreters" are byte-code interpreters.
> Awk is used in things like pipelines, where you call awk to query and
> process a text file and pass the results to something else. REXX was
> the next generation of script language on IBM mainframes, intended to
> provide more power than CLISTs.
REXX was meant to be simple to learn and use, even for
non-programmers. It was, roughly speaking, an easier version of PL/I.
It was meant as both a scripting language and a macro language. No
reserved keywords, no pointer manipulation, automatic garbage
collection (no memory leaks), easy to use stems (associative arrays)
with various built-in functions (BIFs). Or something like that.
> REXX subsequently got brought up under other architectures. (I have a
> version that works under Palm OS.)
Yes, Howard Fosdick wrote a nice book on it (that I haven't fully read
yet), also available as an e-book. Not sure when OS/2 first got REXX
(1.3?), but it was very popular there. Even PC-DOS (2000?) dropped
QBASIC for REXX. (The ANSI REXX standard was in '96, but most people
seemingly prefer non-standard ooREXX for Smalltalk-ish OOP. Regina
doesn't support that. So TRL2 is version 4 while ANSI is 5 and OOP is
6. You can check at runtime which standard "version" you're running.)
> > (untested by me, but just FYI)
> > * http://awka.sourceforge.net/index.html
>
> Convert awk to C, then compile to an executable. I recall hearing
> back when that AT was working on an awk compiler. I have no idea if
> this bears any relation to that effort.
Maybe BWK wrote a C++ transpiler for it?? Dunno. Anyways, this one is
apparently based upon MAWK, which is a byte-code interpreter
("faster").
I never used classic Visual BASIC, but something like v4 was bytecode,
v5 was 32-bit, v6 was translated to C and compiled behind the scenes.
Something like that, I forget the details. That classic version was
last updated in '98, and then came the .NET versions. (Even VB.NET is
somewhat falling behind these days, allegedly.)
Lots of languages compile to C, and FreeBASIC can optionally do so too
(since it's not very optimizing).
> > I'm actually a bigger fan of Sed, but that's much more limited
> > (intentionally?).
>
> Intentionally. It has a different use case than awk. SED is a stream
> editor, explicitly intended to be called in a pipeline to perform
> *scripted* edits on what is fed to it.
Most small Sed interpreters are based upon your friend ESR's work
(e.g. minised). Sed is a very well-designed tool and works great, but
still there are several "dark corners" regarding portability. It's
almost unavoidable in the "real world", but it still works fairly
well. GNU Sed is still built for DJGPP by some volunteers and also
works pretty well.
I honestly wouldn't want to prefer QBASIC to that, but in DOS circles,
if Edlin didn't cut it, QBASIC probably made more sense (rather than
rolling a more limited homegrown tool in C or assembly, although even
that isn't a horrible idea sometimes).
> One bit often missed by DOS folks back in the day was that *EDLIN*
> could be used that way. Advanced batch programmers in environments
> like corporate installations where they weren't allowed to install
> third party code used EDLIN where they might otherwise have installed
> SED.
Yes, and while I
Re: [Freedos-user] Microsoft Open-Sources GW-BASIC
Hi, On Tue, Jun 2, 2020 at 12:26 PM dmccunney wrote: > > > DJGPP make is mainly just a port of GNU make, is it not? > > Well, as part of a port of the entire Gnu/Linux toolchain, including > GCC. Things like Scons are displacing make in some contexts, but make > isn't going away. Make is a fairly useful util and a great idea, but it's also a portability nightmare (isn't everything?). So it's hard to do anything perfectly. Scons relies on Python, as do many things. POSIX Make seems somewhat rare, so many projects just use GNU Make as the "portable" alternative. CMake is popular, so is Meson (with NInja). But I'm not directly familiar with most of them. GNU only recommends these utilities: * https://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/html_node/Utilities-in-Makefiles.html I know nothing about C++, but the latest '20 standard has modules, which will probably speed up and simplify makefiles in the future (hopefully). But I don't think major compilers are quite there yet (but fairly close). * https://gcc.gnu.org/projects/cxx-status.html This is a big change and important to do correctly. So I don't blame them for taking their time (not to mention that C++17 wasn't that long ago and is generally fully supported). (I did buy a DOS-based, pre-standard C++ book [1995] in 1998 with a floppy containing Turbo C++ Lite. How quaint. I half read it but didn't stick with it. There are better modern C++ books nowadays, obviously.) > > As for the AWK portion, I have tested my script for munging the > > GW-BASIC source files with both GNU awk (gawk) and mawk. > > Were any changes required to your original script to get it to work as > expected in gawk *and* mawk? There's always "dark corners" (as GAWK would call it), but mostly it should work okay. Just be sure to rigorously test everything before publishing (or at least mention exactly what version and OS you tested on somewhere). Yes, I found some avoidable quirks by testing various AWK interpreters on some simple scripts. Standards are good, but actual testing of existing implementations is more crucial than theoretical success. (Don't be a purist! Make it work with what you have available.) ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Microsoft Open-Sources GW-BASIC
Hi, On Sun, May 31, 2020 at 11:26 PM dmccunney wrote: > > On Sun, May 31, 2020 at 10:35 PM Rugxulo wrote: > > > So no, I haven't tried rebuilding this (yet?), and I'm no *nix fiend, > > but I do think AWK is a cool tool, maybe cooler than GW-BASIC (don't > > kill me!). > > AWK is a cool tool. But it's not a full programming language for > building stand alone apps. GWBASIC is. I don't think this particular BASIC is a compiler, only an interpreter. (The very first BASIC was a compiler.) * https://time.com/69316/basic/ (fifty years of BASIC) But there actually are compilers for AWK out there, even REXX! But most implementations don't do that. (Why bother? Interpreted is often fast enough.) (untested by me, but just FYI) * http://awka.sourceforge.net/index.html > AWK (the initials of Alfred Aho, Thomas Weinberger, and Brian > Kernighan, the authors) was a tool intended for querying and > modifying the contents of text files. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AWK I'm actually a bigger fan of Sed, but that's much more limited (intentionally?). Also, AWK vaguely reminds me of REXX in functionality (although that, too, I only lightly dabbled in). Obviously, REXX was more known on IBM mainframes and OS/2. In recent years, BWK wrote a book on Go. That language has come a long way and done a lot. A lot of people from Plan 9 still work on that. Oh, one guy did write a compatible implementation of AWK in Go! * https://golang.org/ * https://github.com/benhoyt/goawk > It was initially written to perform "one liners", where you invoked awk > on a command line with the commands to execute and the data to examine. I don't think UNIX originally came with a C compiler (except maybe add-on?), so all you had was Sh and AWK. > I attended a talk given by Weinberger decades ago where he described his > shock on first > seeing a multi-line awk script. Yeah, here's a good interview with Alfred V. Aho. * http://web.archive.org/web/20101119053641/http://www.techworld.com.au/article/216844/a-z_programming_languages_awk/ > Awk is still useful on *nix - various things like build recipes may > use it in scripts - but for most purposes, perl has replaced it. (I > consider that a pity. I respect Larry Wall and Perl but never learned it. Honestly, I dislike the various versions and non-standard incompatibilities. It's a bit too brittle to rely upon (isn't everything? even "standards" have many holes, buggy implementations; so, that's not really a Perl problem, per se, just "life"). > Awk is smaller and faster, and perl may be overkill for a lot of what you > might need to do. Sed is much lighter than AWK, so yes, even AWK can be overkill. Maybe even Sed is overkill for some things. (Sed came from Ed, so I guess Edlin would be loosely comparable in DOS circles.) > Former Busybox maintainer Rob Landley griped elsewhere about sending patches > to > remove the dependency on Perl from Linux kernel builds, since awk did > all that was needed, only to find it reappear again.) I once told you that he should just use (BSD-licensed) AWK from old Minix 2.x for ToyBox. Not sure if that's truly practical advice, though. Yes, Perl is overkill. You know, I rebuilt old NASM 0.98.39 [2005] recently for 8086. (Pre-existing 16-bit DOS binaries were 186 only, ugh, heheh.) Actually, I rebuilt it several times and (sometimes) used Sed. Regenerating the instruction source files (for instance, to fit into Large memory model with Turbo C++ 1.01) required omitting some unnecessary things (e.g. MMX, SSE ... not commonly used in DOS). In ancient NASM 0.97, there was a quick kludge to use QBASIC to regenerate those source files, but it was later dropped (broken? unmaintained?). 0.98.39 used Perl, which works but is bloated (and our only DOS build still is DJGPP's old 5.8.8 from 2007). So I finagled it a bit just to use Sed (only), which is much smaller and simpler (thus, no Perl required). Oh, I also used AWK behind the scenes a bit to help. (I never properly learned Perl but do have a book on it.) Yeah, it's just a mess. Big projects are harder to maintain, and unfortunately DOS is not "top tier" for most actively-developed projects. Just to show how random it all is, we have three AWKs: MAWK (DOS+OS/2 dual bound family .EXE) from 1996, BWK AWK from 2010 (OW build), and GAWK (DJGPP) from 2019. This also is why our Python (DJGPP) is from 2008 (2.4.2 or whatever). Similarly, Regina REXX (3.9.1) doesn't directly compile with DJGPP anymore, and I was too lazy to investigate further (stuck at 3.7). Ruby 1.8.4 had DJGPP binaries, but after 1.8.7, it dropped source support for a lot of OSes (although there was later an ISO standard for that). Even the Lua (DJGPP) build is still stuck at 5.2.2 (2013). Oh, one guy did apparently make LoveDOS (Lua, DJGPP) in 2017 for simple 2D games. It's not that dire. Anybody inter
Re: [Freedos-user] Microsoft Open-Sources GW-BASIC
Hi, TK, On Sun, May 31, 2020 at 9:37 AM TK Chia wrote: > > Thank you for the information. Building on Spinellis's work, I managed > to get the source files to build under JWasm and JWlink, Thank you. I never understand when people prefer ancient MASM over modern JWasm. > after some source code munging (https://github.com/tkchia/GW-BASIC). > Many of the needed OEM-specific routines are (still) simply missing from the > sources > though, and must be filled in somehow. What exactly does "semi-working" mean? It seems like graphics commands aren't supported? That's no biggie (IMHO) as long as it can do simple file I/O. I'll admit, I'm no BASIC guru (I prefer Pascal), so my skills are limited. But I'm still sympathetic (mostly to QBASIC and FreeBASIC). Well, your build of this is the only interesting thing so far! On a side note, you're using GNU Make and AWK (to cross-build?). I do wonder if DJGPP Make (or even other AWK implementations) would work for us here. * https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/awk.html * https://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/manual/ * http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/util/unix/awk/ So no, I haven't tried rebuilding this (yet?), and I'm no *nix fiend, but I do think AWK is a cool tool, maybe cooler than GW-BASIC (don't kill me!). ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS 1.3-RC3 News / 8086 compatibility
Hi, On Mon, May 25, 2020 at 11:04 AM Jerome Shidel wrote: > > > On May 25, 2020, at 10:12 AM, Eric Auer wrote: > > > > I guess you could save some disk space by merging some of the > > tools into fewer, more versatile tools, due to cluster sizes? > > Sure, I “could do that”. But, I’m not going to. For two main reasons. > > FIrst, loading and unloading everything for each and every call > will really slow things down even more. > > Second, they are designed to cooperate with each other. But, be > completely independent from each other. So, lets say you have a boot > floppy and all you need is to test if it a 286 or 386. All you need is to > stick the 2.8k vinfo program on there and not drag the rest of the stuff > along for the ride. I've mentioned ARK.EXE before (for combining small .COM files), IIRC it's GPLv2: * https://www.sac.sk/download/pack/ark101.zip However, it's probably not that big of a deal. > Not an issue, The main USB/CD installer requires a 386 (do to the use of some > external utilities, like grep). Find me a consumer 386 that did not ship with > EGA compatibility. Requiring a 386 is not really a problem either. USB was not > around and our CD drivers require a 386 as well. Xgrep is 8086 asm code, and it works well. But it has quite different (less?) features than the bloated (useful!) DJGPP GNU grep. > Maybe zip has a reason to want a 286. But, IDK. Unlikely, but I haven't checked. I presume you mean 186 here. It might be a compiler (PEBKAC) error of whoever built it (same as with old NASM 0.98.39 16-bit, built for 186). I don't recall any 286 pmode builds of Info-Zip at all. There was at least one, maybe two, 16-bit Zip builds (Small model?), but they ran out of memory quickly. Better than nothing but not perfect. Most people just use the DJGPP (386+) build (LFNs!). > As for unzip. I can’t see a good reason for requiring a 386. > Mateusz’s FDINST unzip’s packages just fine and is supposed > to be 8086 compatible. Don't know which exact binary (or version) of Unzip you're referring to here. P.S. Thanks for your efforts. Keep up the good work. ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS 1.3-RC3 News!
Hi, On Mon, May 25, 2020 at 6:26 AM Jerome Shidel wrote: > > > On May 24, 2020, at 1:39 AM, Eric Auer wrote: > > > The extremely limited number of > machines out there that can run FreeDOS and don’t have EGA or > better graphics makes this a very low priority. Didn't Mateusz lightly patch and rebuild FreeCOM for his CGA machine? I think he made a floppy image, too. Wasn't that Svarog86? * http://svarog86.sourceforge.net/ But let's not wear ourselves out too badly on theoretical compatibility. Jerome, you're already doing more than good enough. > Why does Zip support 286, but Unzip needs a 386? The 16-bit Unzip runs out of memory faster and doesn't support LFNs. (DJGPP, FTW!) Other than that, I dunno. > Why keyb need a 286, it’s a keyboard mapper? AT BIOS compatibility needed? > Why does ctmouse need a 286? 286 or 186? Dunno, presumably 186, not pmode stuff. Probably not direly needed. > It was required for most CGA and up games on our old 8086 clone. > It really is a critical driver. I wouldn't call games critical, but I see your point. > Why does FDAPM have no support at all for < 286. Are there any APM BIOSes on older machines? I was surprised that my 2011 Lenovo desktop machine supported it! (RIP CSM.) > Why does dosfsck need a 386? Couldn’t 8088,8086,80186 and 80286 disk have > issues as well? Large FAT32 drives would take a lot of memory. IIRC, it was compiled by DJGPP (386+) and tweaked quite a bit by Eric to be memory efficient. CHKDSK is the older 16-bit tool. (Also, older cpus probably had smaller drives, so less difficult to manually repair or copy, presumably.) > You can’t tell me it needs 32-bit code. I just spent half a day writing > 16-bit 8086 assembler code > to do some manipulation, math and display 64-bit integers. Doing 32-bit arithmetic in 16-bit is easy enough, but doing 64-bit is much harder. There is "some" partial support in some HLL compilers, but overall most people don't even bother. (Obviously ADD/ADC and SUB/SBB are easy.) There's also other outstanding problems, usually, so people often give up. (OpenWatcom has some support, but it also doesn't fully support C99. FreePascal has some int64 support, but few FreeDOS programs use that.) BCD and FPU are yet another ball of wax, ugh. ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
