Re: [Freedos-user] (no subject)

[Gregg Eshelman via Freedos-user]

How can a .jar be run on Android or iOS? Android is built on some bastardized 
version of JAVA but AFAIK nobody has yet produced a fully functional JAVA 
Runtime Environment (JRE) for Android.
 As for iOS, Apple seems to hate JAVA with as much fury as they do Flash.

Apple sayeth "#%#@ Flash and JAVA. HTML 5.0 is the future!" and Adobe just 
about instantly discontinued development on Flash for Android and other mobile 
platforms.

Looks like they could uses something like this cross-platform system. Seems to 
embed an app specific JRE into the app, like a 'wrapper' to interface between 
the JAVA code and the OS's API.
Write iOS apps in Java along with Android – Mateusz Bartos – Medium



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Write iOS apps in Java along with Android – Mateusz Bartos – Medium

Mateusz Bartos

Worldwide, Android is installed on 66% of mobile devices, while iOS is used by 
24% of the global users. But in c...
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On Thursday, April 26, 2018, 2:31:57 PM MDT, Dale E Sterner 
 wrote:  
 
 Can I ask what country you live in.
I hope that doesn't happen in the US.
A lot of people don't have computers here.
Either they're too expensive or they just
don't like them.
I just can't imagine not having paper forms.

cheers
DS



On Thu, 26 Apr 18 17:47:05 + =?UTF-8?B?Sm9zZSBBbnRvbmlvIFNlbm5h?=
 writes:
> 
> Dale E Sterner  said:
> 
> > I use qpro to crunch the numbers
> > I still have to get it to print the completed form out.
> > Each year it grows a little bigger and better.
> > I still have to hand copy it into a 1040 form.
> 
>    Yes, and this is why I said you are lucky.
>    You can still use paper forms,  which do not care
>  about how you fill them. 
>    In 2010 or 2011 our government did away
>  completely with paper tax forms.  Everything is
>  now electronic and must be filled in a computer,
>  using one of the purpose-written programs freely
>  available from  the revenue service, then uploaded 
>  to their site. 
>    All those programs are written in Java, so the same 
>  .jar can be used with Windows, Linux or MacOS
>  (now also with  Android or IOs, if you dare to use 
>  an smartphone to fill tax forms).  
>    The programs have been updated since they 
>  appeared, and current tax forms cannot be used 
>  with the older versions.  This is why the JVM version
>  also had to be updated.
> 
>  JAS  --
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Re: [Freedos-user] Windows 3.1 in 386 mode

[Gregg Eshelman via Freedos-user]

What hardware? That of course needs an 80386 or newer CPU.
Another thing is any drivers loaded in config.sys and autoexec.bat have to be 
compatible with 386 enhanced mode. The OAK CD-ROM driver and later MS-DOS 
MSCDEX should be compatible. IIRC old sound card drivers were pretty bad about 
being 32bit incompatible. Some mouse drivers also had the problem.

Windows 3.11 (OEM release between 3.1 and WFWG 3.11) has either 32bit disk or 
32bit file access, I can never remember which. Either way it's useless because 
both are needed (which only WFWG 3.11 has) to do any speed improving. 32bit 
incompatible drivers in config.sys and autoexec.bat can prevent both using 386 
enhanced mode and 32bit disk and file access.

On Monday, February 19, 2018, 2:54:18 PM MST, jamie marchant 
 wrote:  
 Hi:

  I can't seem to get Windows 3.1 to run in 386 mode, is this a 
limitation for FreeDos?  --
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Re: [Freedos-user] Now it gets odd Re: FreeDOS workaround for hidden IDE controller?

[Gregg Eshelman via Freedos-user]

It was partitioned, with an MBR, accessible to Windows when connected to a USB 
to IDE adapter.
 
Currently it's bootable to a DOS prompt. I used the "China DOS Union" DOS 7.1 
boot floppy with a USB floppy drive to fdisk and format the DOM installed in 
the thin client. I could go ahead and put that on, but I want to make a 'guilt 
free' redistributable DOM image along with detailed instructions of exactly 
what works so others can easily put FreeDOS on any WYSE Sx0 thin client.

What I haven't yet been able to do is get a FreeDOS installer onto a USB stick 
that will see the DOM when it's booted to USB. Either won't boot or will boot 
but can't see the DOM.

If there's a way to setup a FreeDOS boot floppy with USB support, that will 
work with an IDE CD-ROM drive connected with a USB adapter, I'll try digging 
out a CD-ROM drive and connecting both it and my USB floppy.
I'm assuming that as long as nothing connected via USB grabs hold of C: (or the 
primary fixed drive designation by any name) then the BIOS will allow the DOM 
to be seen and written to by the OS that's booted from USB. The WYSE utility 
for making flash drives to install the regular WYSE approved systems has to 
work around this. I could make one of those again and image it or examine it to 
see what format structure it uses.

A 'super floppy' FreeDOS image that can be written to a USB stick might do the 
trick, if it boots as A:.
I have a USB Iomega Zip drive. How about a Zip 100 image? ;) Dunno if the thin 
client will boot off one of those, would probably assign it to C: and make the 
DOM inaccessible.

On Friday, January 12, 2018, 7:17:42 AM MST, Tom Ehlert 
 wrote:  
> I used CloneDisk to rip a RAW image of the booting DOM with
> FreeDOS. Mounted that with Qemu. Booted Qemu with the FreeDOS
> install image and installed FreeDOS to the image copied from the
> DOM. Then I used CloneDisk to write that image back to the DOM. "Missing 
> Operating System".

I just reread this post.


"Missing Operating System" is usually issued by the master boot
record, when no active partition is found.

is the DOM partitioned, or a raw ('superfloppy') medium?


Tom  --
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Re: [Freedos-user] Now it gets odd Re: FreeDOS workaround for hidden IDE controller?

[Gregg Eshelman via Freedos-user]

I'm going to try using RMPrepUSB to put the FreeDOS USB install image onto a 
USB stick. Why? Because it's supposed to be able to be selected to emulate an 
A: floppy drive (or as C: or D:) instead of presenting itself as C: like the 
FreeDOS image does. Recall that the FreeDOS installer initially says there's no 
fixed disk, then shows D: as unpartitioned, but cannot make any writes to it - 
yet *does not return an error* when attempting to partition the already 
partitioned DOM in a WYSE Sx0 thin client.

I'd think that selectable boot drive/device emulation should be part of the 
FreeDOS setup, for systems that expect their hard drive (or other fixed 
storage) to be the only fixed storage, aside from perhaps a CD-ROM.
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Re: [Freedos-user] Running FreeDOS floppy from a BIOS chip

[Gregg Eshelman via Freedos-user]

If a way could be found to replace ThinOS on various models of WYSE thin 
clients, they'd be ideal platforms for an embedded DOS. ThinOS usually shares 
space in an extra large BIOS chip.
Installing it might involve a bit of hacking to make the OS installer creator 
utility setup a USB flash drive with the DOS image instead of a ThinOS one. 
Then there's the issue of OS 'locking' where only the thin clients that 
originally shipped with ThinOS are supposed to be eligible for updates to new 
ThinOS releases.
Versions of each model that shipped with Windows CE, Linux, or Windows embedded 
versions may not have the extra large BIOS chip.
Other brands of thin clients have also had such proprietary operating systems. 
I suspect they haven't been too popular because of the need to have apps 
written specifically for the OS, along with a server to run them from due to 
lack of onboard storage in most of those clients.--
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Re: [Freedos-user] Now it gets odd Re: FreeDOS workaround for hidden IDE controller?

[Gregg Eshelman via Freedos-user]

I used CloneDisk to rip a RAW image of the booting DOM with FreeDOS. Mounted 
that with Qemu. Booted Qemu with the FreeDOS install image and installed 
FreeDOS to the image copied from the DOM. Then I used CloneDisk to write that 
image back to the DOM. "Missing Operating System".
 

On Friday, January 5, 2018, 8:05:18 PM MST, Rugxulo  
wrote: 

Or why don't you install FreeDOS under VM to raw disk image, and then
dd it to the physical hard drive while under Linux. Then it should
boot correctly, right?  --
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[Freedos-user] Now it gets odd Re: FreeDOS workaround for hidden IDE controller?

[Gregg Eshelman via Freedos-user]

I found an "MS-DOS 7.1" boot floppy image and *this one* had no problems 
booting the S30 with a USB floppy drive, wiping the DOM and creating a fresh 
partition with FDISK, then rebooting and using format c: /s
NOW it's booted to a DOS prompt from the DOM.
So I'll try FreeDOS again..
Nope. Same as before. Screen full of No Fixed disks present, followed by a 
prompt to repartition D:, but it cannot touch it.
Does the Lite USB install make a log file to diagnose why it's not working?
--
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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS workaround for hidden IDE controller?

[Gregg Eshelman via Freedos-user]

It's apparently blocking the FreeDOS USB booted setup from making any writes to 
IDE, after initially blocking it from detecting there's a drive there at all.
 
What would be nice is if I could get one of these thin clients in the hands of 
someone who can check it out in depth to figure out what it's doing to prevent 
working with an OS not supplied by WYSE.
One thing I have found out is that with the official operating systems, they're 
blocked from cross-updating to a different OS but that's easy to bypass by 
copying and pasting some text from a configuration file, for example I put WYSE 
Linux for an S50 onto an S30 by copying the ID info for the S30 in place of the 
same on a USB drive with the Linux installer. WYSE used to sell an XP Embedded 
upgrade kit for any of the Sx0 series to make them an S90. It had a 256 (or 512 
meg) SODIMM and a larger DOM, along with a CD-ROM. Unlike the normal 
downloadable utility and XPe image, that one would have to be configured to not 
care about the OS the client was locked to. But just try finding one of those 
CD-ROMs now.
There's two versions of the Sx0. The early model has soldered RAM and a 
proprietary DOM, was not available with XPe. This version seems to be pretty 
rare, none of my three are this model.
Then they switched to the 2.5" IDE connector and a removable SODIMM. There's a 
few minor revisions but they're only slight things that have no effect on 
software.

On Thursday, January 4, 2018, 6:51:48 PM MST, Rugxulo <rugx...@gmail.com> 
wrote:  
 Hi,

On Thu, Jan 4, 2018 at 6:36 PM, Gregg Eshelman via Freedos-user
<freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net> wrote:
>
> The workaround at the bottom of this page will have to be implemented in
> FreeDOS in order to install it from USB.

Writing to MSRs? Do you really think that's what Quentin did? I
somehow doubt it. He seems to have used stock (unmodified) FD kernel
2040 here.

Quick workaround: can't you install from floppy? (Perhaps USB floppy
drive?) Just to get the raw basics, then xcopy over extra stuff, if
needed.

Actually, you don't need full FreeDOS, just update the kernel (and
other utils, if needed). But even then I doubt too much changed
between kernel 2040 and now.

Or are you saying it won't write any files? You can't modify anything?  --
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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS workaround for hidden IDE controller?

[Gregg Eshelman via Freedos-user]

I just tried installing FreeDOS 1.2 Lite from a 512 meg USB drive onto a WYSE 
S30. Result? Failure.
It boots and launches the setup. First is says there's no fixed disk, then is 
says drive D: is not partitioned. So I have it partition and reboot.
Repeats this exactly the same. The BIOS *does* prevent some critical access to 
the IDE when booted from USB or when attempting to boot an OS from the IDE, 
except when using an OS and BIOS updater from USB or an OS from the IDE that 
came from WYSE.
The workaround at the bottom of this page will have to be implemented in 
FreeDOS in order to install it from USB. 
http://www.parkytowers.me.uk/thin/wyse/s10/Linux.shtml
--
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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS workaround for hidden IDE controller?

[Gregg Eshelman via Freedos-user]

The CNC control software has to have EMS. Without it, it can't use any more 
than low memory. It's *old* software, capable of running on a 1981 vintage 5150 
IBM PC. So I would assume it knows nothing of newer EMS types with their fancy 
features. If only Light Machines, then Intelitek, had bothered to write newer 
software for the PLM2000 like they did for the PLM1000.

On Thursday, January 4, 2018, 3:05:06 PM MST, E. Auer  
wrote:  
Some thoughts...

> The storage is an IDE Flash Disk, AKA Disk On Module. It has a 44 pin
> female header connector, same electrical interface as a 2.5" IDE hard
> drive. They're available dirt cheap in sizes from 64 megabytes to 2
> gigabytes, not so cheap in 4 and 8 gigabytes...

You can also use a compact flash (CF) card with a purely mechanical
adapter (CF can speak IDE interface language). They are cheap but I
think DOM can do more I/O transactions per second.

Another idea: Instead of EMS, you could use good old XMS to make a big
ramdisk and then copy everything there on boot. Assuming that you do
not plan to modify files on the machine - modifications would be lost
each time when you shut down or reboot without copying data back from
the ramdisk to the flash disk. The ramdisk would be as fast as the EMS
library of G files in your old software, but would not need EMS. In my
opinion, XMS drivers are more "tame" to use compared to EMS drivers.

If your old software supports EMS 4.0, then you would not need a 64k
page window. This is what the NOEMS option of EMS drivers does: It
skips the creation of the window. Software which understands version
4.0 of EMS can still use EMS without needing a large fixed window.

With DOS in HMA and drivers (if safe and not too fragmented) in UMB,
you will have a lot of low memory available. So depending on how large
those G-Code files are, things should be okay. Note that you can use
UMBPCI to have raw UMB without the hassles of configuring EMS right.
Also, UMBPCI is still maintained for support of many mainboard types.
  --
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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS workaround for hidden IDE controller?

[Gregg Eshelman via Freedos-user]

Here's the FreeDOS image. Volume label is FREEDOS2012. Will mount in Quemu as a 
RAW image. Can't relocate the site I downloaded it 
from.https://anonfile.com/J8sau4d4bc/FreeDOS.rar

The storage is an IDE Flash Disk, AKA Disk On Module. It has a 44 pin female 
header connector, same electrical interface as a 2.5" IDE hard drive. They're 
available dirt cheap in sizes from 64 megabytes to 2 gigabytes, not so cheap in 
4 and 8 gigabytes. They were (possibly still are) made by around a dozen 
different companies, or that many put their logos on them. They come in three 
form factors. Bare PCB with right angle connector. Bare PCB with connector edge 
mounted. Plastic enclosed with connector on one edge. The latter two are easy 
to use as laptop hard drive replacements with a male/male pin adapter. 
*However*, the chips used on many of these DOM's are not too durable. They may 
not withstand the heavy write use of virtual memory or swap files. They're 
meant for embedded systems with an OS that does little or no writing to the 
storage.
  
I'd install an actual hard drive if there was enough room inside the thin 
client. 

 DOS or FreeDOS, I just want to get the thing to boot off the IDE flash module 
and run with as much EMS memory as it can. The software I need to run is made 
to run on anything with DOS, and EMS, and a serial port, all the way back to 
the 5150 IBM PC. Don't need any XMS, it loads the G-Code files into EMS, if 
available. Otherwise it uses whatever low memory is available and files too 
large to fit must be cut up with the spliiter/linker utility.
 Hopefully the WYSE Sx0 series thin client's memory map isn't all fragmented up 
like circa 1995 and newer laptops. They don't have a large enough contiguous 
RAM space to put the 64K EMS paging window. What would be very nice is to be 
able to hack the BIOS to either totally remove its tricks with the IDE port, or 
add an option to switch it between original and normal operation.

If this can be made to work I'll write up a how-to so other PLM2000 CNC mill 
owners can setup a tiny controller box and ditch the big PC. The control 
computer does zero computing of things like curves. It just sends G-Code to the 
mill and monitors return communications for encoder counts, limit switch 
activation and stop messages from exceeding torque limits. The servo controller 
in the mill does the heavy lifting.

On Thursday, January 4, 2018, 12:26:17 PM MST, Robert Riebisch 
 wrote:  
 
 Hi Gregg,

> Boot from USB and it's there. I have a FreeDOS image for a 64 megabyte
> module, which someone French setup for these thin clients. It will boot
> just fine, but in French. Somehow it works around or ignores it hiding
> or disabling the IDE controller.

1) Where did you get the FreeDOS image?
2) Can you make it available to us (Dropbox link?), so we can have a look?
3) What do you mean by saying "module"? Is it a CF card connected to the
IDE connector?

> Looks like I may have to use FreeDOS if there's no way to get past that
> with some MS-DOS version. But if there's some special extra
> configuration required for getting FreeDOS to work, I've no idea what it is.

1) Why are you keen on MS-DOS?
2) What's wrong with FreeDOS?

Robert Riebisch  --
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[Freedos-user] FreeDOS workaround for hidden IDE controller?

[Gregg Eshelman via Freedos-user]

I'm attempting to get some DOS onto a WYSE Sx0 thin client. The problem is 
right after the OS starts to load from the IDE flash module, the BIOS steps in 
and hides the IDE controller. So it comes up missing operating system.
Boot from USB and it's there. I have a FreeDOS image for a 64 megabyte module, 
which someone French setup for these thin clients. It will boot just fine, but 
in French. Somehow it works around or ignores it hiding or disabling the IDE 
controller.
The problem and fix for Linux is at the bottom of this page 
http://www.parkytowers.me.uk/thin/wyse/s10/Linux.shtml
Looks like I may have to use FreeDOS if there's no way to get past that with 
some MS-DOS version. But if there's some special extra configuration required 
for getting FreeDOS to work, I've no idea what it is.
I don't need anything complicated for DOS, just configuring the 128 meg RAM for 
as much EMS as possible because the old software I want to run uses EMS not 
XMS, and USB support for reading files from flash drives. Getting the Realtek 
AC97 sound and Realtek LAN working would be nice, but not required.
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Re: [Freedos-user] challenging dos question.

[Gregg Eshelman via Freedos-user]

No problem if you know the full path and file name. If you have ATTRIB you can 
hit it with -H to make it visible.
https://www.computerhope.com/attribhl.htm

On Saturday, December 2, 2017, 11:56:07 AM MST, Karen Lewellen 
 wrote:  
 
 Hi folks,
its complicated.  However, is there a way to copy over a file that is 
technically hidden?
having
  a bit of a computer crisis.

thanks,
Kare  --
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Re: [Freedos-user] Some driver updates

[Gregg Eshelman via Freedos-user]

What do these "Jack's Drivers" actually do?
 

On Friday, November 17, 2017, 1:59:11 AM MST, Eric Auer 
 wrote:  
 
 Hi Rugxulo,

you are not going to make Jack any more kind by publicly
sharing all private email details of your private fight...

Jack does update drivers because he is a perfectionist,
but he is also known for not liking the FreeDOS community
(including in particular you) so it is no surprise that
he fails to make nice announcements, share sources, etc.
... which is why almost everybody here stopped to care.

I, too found it a bit silly that there even was a license,
and for a while even code, for preventing FreeDOS use of
the drivers. The "hack" problem was for one of the closed
source releases: Somebody used a debugger to deobfuscate
that driver to remove machine code which had deliberately
made the driver unusable on FreeDOS. You cannot STEAL free
software indeed but you can upset authors by spoiling their
ability to upset users :-p So yes, you can call it a HACK.
Note that this was many years ago, long forgotten by many.

So what should I say? We already know everything about the
situation. There is no point in reiterating again and again
that fights between humans keep machines from enjoying nice
drivers here, as this is not going to change that anyway.  --
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Re: [Freedos-user] Some driver updates

[Gregg Eshelman via Freedos-user]

512 meg? Luxury! My first hard drive was FIVE megabytes. A full height 5.25" 
MFM made by Tandon. I installed MS-DOS (3.1 IIRC) and all the software I had, 
mostly games. It was *half full*! Then I backed it up, onto 360K floppies. By 
the time I put the last disk on the stack, I was thinking "Never again.". Disks 
cost too much to tie up like that.
 

On Saturday, November 4, 2017, 3:02:12 PM MDT,  
wrote:  
The HDD actually isn't that small: it's a 512 MB Transcend 40-pin IDE 
flash module.  --
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[Freedos-user] PCMCIA sound cards

[Gregg Eshelman]

I had a look and found there were a lot of different ones.
http://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=30840--
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Re: [Freedos-user] Disabling Internal Speaker

[Gregg Eshelman]

Does that laptop by chance happen to have a CardBus slot? Some companies were 
still equipping laptops with CardBus in 2008 instead of switching to 
ExpressCard, or using both, like Lenovo.
If you have a CardBus slot, then it may be possible to use a PCMCIA soundcard 
from the 90's for DOS games.
DOS PCMCIA support was complex. First, it required a PCMCIA controller driver. 
On top of that, there could be class drivers, which worked for any 
manufacturers' devices - mostly RAM cards and IIRC some modems and network 
cards. Devices that did special things which couldn't fit into a generic class 
driver required their own separate one, called a point driver.
So the question is, is there a DOS PCMCIA controller driver that works with 
early 21st century laptops? 

This could quickly become a RAM hog if you needed more than a couple of class 
drivers and point drivers.

If the only device you were using was a soundcard then you only needed the 
controller driver and the card's point driver. If you were running Windows 3.x 
then it needed its own driver for the soundcard.
Windows 95 brought order to the mess by not requiring any DOS drivers for 
PCMCIA or CardBus and more class drivers with broader device support were 
available.
USB went through a similar development process where before Windows Me nearly 
all USB devices required their own separate drivers. Got to be a huge mess 
installing different drivers for every thumb drive. The Maximus Decim port of 
WinMe's USB Mass Storage class driver to 98SE was very helpful.
What would be nice is a generic universal PCMCIA controller driver for DOS, 
like that OAK CDROM driver.
That became the only DOS CDROM driver I used once I first encountered it. 
Hallelujah! I could finally do installs of two different brands of drives and 
use only one driver. Even when installing two of the same make and model drive, 
some of them required loading two copies of their driver. The OAK driver could 
run any number from one copy.
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Re: [Freedos-user] OT: What gives?

[Gregg Eshelman]

Several hundred messages from this list, I just deleted the whole lot.

On Sunday, May 7, 2017, 3:00:48 AM MDT, Robert Riebisch  
wrote:Hi Rugxulo,

>> I just opened my inbox and found a pile of list emails from 2016-09-11 right 
>> up
>> to 2017-04-8.
>>
>> Has it happened to anybody else?
>>
>> Thanks
>>
>> Wesley Parish
> 
> Yes, it happened to me, too. (BTW, nice way to clarify about a bunch
> of spam, email the list!!!)    :-P--
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Re: [Freedos-user] Corel dos ebay thing

[Gregg Eshelman]

From: Gregg Eshelman <g_ala...@yahoo.com>

--===2748568669217627302==
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boundary="=_Part_3497302_1237270095.1493073627563"
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Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Any plan to share this find? :)


On Monday, April 24, 2017, 9:07:19 AM MDT, Dale E Sterner <sunbeam...@juno.com>
wrote:It is pure dos abandoned when corel went to windows.
Sounded like it came out of the trash can type.
It is somewhat unfinished - a few nasty bugs but nothing
to make it unusable. There was no documentation
with it. Just a corel factory made cd.
Its a pity they quit on it.

--=_Part_3497302_1237270095.1493073627563
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Any
plan to share this find? 
:)On Monday, April 24, 2017, 9:07:19 AM MDT, Dale E 
Sterner sunbeam...@juno.com wrote:It is pure 
dos abandoned when corel went to windows.Sounded like 
it came out of the trash can type.It is somewhat 
unfinished - a few nasty bugs but nothingto make it 
unusable. There was no documentation with it. Just a 
corel factory made cd.Its a pity they quit on 
it.
--=_Part_3497302_1237270095.1493073627563--


--===2748568669217627302==
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
MIME-Version: 1.0
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Re: [Freedos-user] WIFI on DOS (was: bsum - compute BSD checksums of yo

[Gregg Eshelman]

From: Gregg Eshelman <g_ala...@yahoo.com>

--===9114683600329317498==
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
boundary="=_Part_4041716_965213120.1492638692923"
Content-Length: 7789

--=_Part_4041716_965213120.1492638692923
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

Microsoft has done such things deliberately. I had a Compaq server with dual
slot Xeon CPUs. XP (with a 1-2 CPU license) could be installed but no matter
what, was only going to be allowed to use ONE CPU. Manually forcing the multi
CPU HAL to install during setup (or after) would make it crash.
Microsoft apparently told Compaq to fix their server BIOSes so that only Server
versions of Windows would be allowed to access the full hardware capabilities.
So I put 2000 Server on it and got rid of it.
One thing I've been liking about 10 is that just about any Core 2 Duo or dual
core AMD AM2 and later can run it pretty well, even with only 2 gig RAM. A
socket 939 AMD, even dual core? Not so much. 10 is the first release of Windows
to have lower minimum hardware requirements than its predecessor. Just got done
putting it on a 2.4Ghz Thinkpad T61 with 4gig (and a BIOS modded to remove
hardware whitelist and de-hobble SATA from being limited to version 1 speed),
which I'd seriously be thinking about keeping if it had the 1920x1200 instead
of 1680x1050 display. Need USB 3 and/or eSATA? Pop in an ExpressCard.

I doubt any previous version of Windows would run well, if at all, on hardware
originally released 8~9 years prior.

Put Classic Shell on, turn off all the stuff that phones home, set the window
titlebars to a color instead of white (which Firefox ignores) and it's good to
go.
If you've ever done anything with Windows 1.0 you should notice some
similarities between it and the "Modern" UI. They both have non-overlapping
tiles with active content, and there's this black bar across the bottom. Square
corners everywhere (excepting the round ended buttons Apple sued MS over,
square cornered buttons were made to satisfy Apple). Flat, saturated colors
with a heavy emphasis on white, magenta, cyan and black. "3D" effects? Not
there, just like Windows was through 3.0.

Someone at MS has a bad case of nostalgia for Windows 1.0 running on a CGA
monitor.

On Wednesday, April 19, 2017, 3:09:07 PM MDT, dmccunney
<dennis.mccun...@gmail.com> wrote:On Wed, Apr 19, 2017 at 4:17 PM, Dale E
Sterner <sunbeam...@juno.com> wrote:
> With windows if your PC dies and you want to move
> to a dupicate and keep running - your out of luck.

(One annoying quirk was that it was a quad-core machine but
Win10 only saw two cores.-a The Xeon CPU is used wasn't on the
"supported by Win10 list Intel maintains.-a The i5-2400 in the new box
is, and Win10 sees and uses all four cores.)

Something like that happened in the Win Vista days.-a MS wanted
everyone on Vista, but some of the hardware in the pipeline wasn't
really up to running it.-a (Mostly, inadequate video.)-a MS created a
new level of certification - Vista Capable - so hardware vendors could
put it on the box.-a Jim Allchin, who was SVP in charge of Windows
development at the time, was livid.-a He felt, correctly, that the
hardware would not provide a good experience for users and that MS
would get yet another black eye in the marketplace.-a MS really should
have waited 6 months for a new generation of hardware that would
properly support Vista, but wanted to make XP go away.
--=_Part_4041716_965213120.1492638692923
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

Microsoft has done such things
deliberately. I had a Compaq server with dual slot Xeon CPUs. XP (with a 1-2
CPU license) could be installed but no matter what, was only going to be
allowed to use ONE CPU. Manually forcing the multi CPU HAL to install during
setup (or after) would make it crash.Microsoft apparently
told Compaq to fix their server BIOSes so that only Server versions of Windows
would be allowed to access the full hardware capabilities. So I put 2000 Server
on it and got rid of it.One thing I've been liking
about 10 is that just about any Core 2 Duo or dual core AMD AM2 and later can
run it pretty well, even with only 2 gig RAM. A socket 939 AMD, even dual core?
Not so much. 10 is the first release of Windows to have lower minimum hardware
requirements than its predecessor. Just got done putting it on a 2.4Ghz
Thinkpad T61 with 4gig (and a BIOS modded to remove hardware whitelist and
de-hobble SATA from being limited to version 1 speed), which I'd seriously be
thinking about keeping if it had the 1920x1200 instead of 1680x1050 display.
Need USB 3 and/or eSATA? Pop in an ExpressCard.I
doubt any previous version of Windows would run well, if at all, on hardware
originally released 8~9 years prior.Put Classic
Shell on, turn off all the stuff that phones home, set the window titlebars to
a c

Re: [Freedos-user] boot floppy disk image too big for a disk

[Gregg Eshelman]

From: Gregg Eshelman <g_ala...@yahoo.com>

--===5062282711183416658==
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
boundary="=_Part_1937484_1016577170.1490330874749"
Content-Length: 7708

--=_Part_1937484_1016577170.1490330874749
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

It is possible to format a floppy a bit over size. Most drives will accommodate
2 to 4 extra tracks. Depending on the drive and the controller it's possible to
alter the number of sectors per track, but all tracks must have the same number
of sectors. Typically, altering the number of sectors renders the format
non-bootable.

Schenk & Horn CopyStar is one such program. It's old, originally from 1994, but
it's known to work on Windows 2000, Server 2003 and older. I've not tried it on
XP and later. Probably not compatible with 64 bit Windows.
http://www.programfiles.com/Default.asp?LinkId=13681

Microsoft used an over-capacity format they called DMF. For programs (like
Windows 95) where the first disk had to be bootable it was standard 1.44M.
IBM used a different over-capacity format for OS/2's install disks, but nothing
included with OS/2 could write data to the disks, despite the inclusion of a
utility to create blank disks with that format. (The largest all floppy install
I ever did was OS/2 Warp 3.0, followed by a couple of large updates.)

If only the entire OEM computer industry had wholeheartedly adopted the 2.88M
floppy, instead of only IBM and Compaq sorta halfway supporting it. "Hey look!
We're making 2.88M floppy drives standard on ALL our computers! How about YOU,
Hewlett Packard, Packard Bell, Gateway 2000... *Apple*? You wanna fall behind
us? Keep using that obsolete 1.44M!"

  From: Felix Miata <mrma...@earthlink.net>
 To: freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
 Sent: Thursday, March 23, 2017 9:57 PM
 Subject: Re: [Freedos-user] boot floppy disk image too big for a disk

I just looked inside http://www.freedos.org/download/download/FD12FLOPPY.zip
"boot floppy", and a 3.5" 1.44M floppy. My floppy has 1457664 total bytes, 2847

512 byte sectors. The image downloaded is 1474560 bytes, so the downloaded
image
would not fit here either.
-- "The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant
words are persuasive." Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation)

-a Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks!

Felix Miata-a ***-a http://fm.no-ip.com/


--=_Part_1937484_1016577170.1490330874749
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

It
is possible to format a floppy a bit over size. Most drives will accommodate 2
to 4 extra tracks. Depending on the drive and the controller it's possible to
alter the number of sectors per track, but all tracks must have the same number
of sectors. Typically, altering the number of sectors renders the format
non-bootable.Schenk  Horn CopyStar is one 
such program. It's old, originally from 1994, but it's known to work on Windows 
2000, Server 2003 and older. I've not tried it on XP and later. Probably not 
compatible with 64 bit Windows. http://www.programfiles.com/Default.asp?LinkId=13681; 
id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1490315626629_169281" 
class="">http://www.programfiles.com/Default.asp?LinkId=13681Microsoft used an 
over-capacity format they called DMF. For programs (like Windows 95) where the 
first disk had to be bootable it was standard 1.44M.IBM used a different over-capacity 
format for OS/2's install disks, but nothing included with OS/2 could write 
data to the disks, despite the inclusion of a utility to create blank disks 
with that format. (The largest all floppy install I ever did was OS/2 Warp 3.0, 
followed by a couple of large updates.)If only the entire OEM computer 
industry had wholeheartedly adopted the 2.88M floppy, instead of only IBM and 
Compaq sorta halfway supporting it. "Hey look! We're making 2.88M floppy drives 
standard on ALL our computers! How about YOU, Hewlett Packard, Packard Bell, 
Gateway 2000... *Apple*? You wanna fall behind us? Keep using that obsolete 
1.44M!"   From: Felix Miata 
mrma...@earthlink.net To: 
freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net  Sent: Thursday, March 
23, 2017 9:57 PM Subject: Re: 
[Freedos-user] boot floppy disk image too big for a disk   
I just looked inside http://www.freedos.org/download/download/FD12FLOPPY.zip; 
target="_blank" 
id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1490315626629_169218">http://www.freedos.org/download/download/FD12FLOPPY.zip
 "boot floppy", and a 3.5" 1.44M floppy. My floppy has 
1457664 total bytes, 2847 512 byte sectors. The image 
downloaded is 1474560 bytes, so the downloaded image would not 
fit here either.-- "The wise are known for their 
understanding, and pleasantwords are persuasive." Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation)  Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User

[Freedos-user] Small install onto 64 meg flash disk?

[Gregg Eshelman]

From: Gregg Eshelman <g_ala...@yahoo.com>

--===7653387230394697072==
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
boundary="=_Part_743004_2004408320.1487567764703"
Content-Length: 11078

--=_Part_743004_2004408320.1487567764703
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

I want to install FreeDOS onto a 64 megabyte Apacer IDE flash disk for use in a
Wyse Sx0 thin client. It has to be done outside the box because when booted off
USB the thin client tells the booting OS that the IDE controller is disabled.
It's not actually disabled. The flash updaters for WinCE, Linux and XP Embedded
ignore that and various compact Linux distros have been configured to ignore
the IDE controller being "disabled". How it's done for TinyCore
http://www.parkytowers.me.uk/thin/wyse/s10/tc_kernel.shtml

Is there a way to install FreeDOS to a drive from Windows?

Hardware specsCPU = AMD Geode GX 366 Mhz. Does not have PAE.Chipset = AMD Ceode
Companion CS5536 (The original Sx0 used a CS5535)Audio = Realtek ALC655 AC97
codec
Ethernet = Realtek RTL8100 (Not the RTL8139)RAM = One slot for PC2700 CL 2.5
SODIMM up to 512 megabytes.Storage = One 44 pin header for 2.5" IDE devices,
supports some level of UDMA.Ports = Four USB 2.0, one DE-9 RS232C, one VGA, one
3.5mm stereo audio, one 3.5mm microphone, one 10/100 Ethernet, one 12V 2.5A
power input.
What I want to do with this is use it for a tiny PC to run DOS control software
for an early-mid 1990's benchtop CNC milling machine. 366Mhz is *plenty* enough
power since the GCODE processing is actually done by the Animatics servo
controller in the mill. These machines could be run off an 8mhz IBM 5150PC with
EMS. The mill only needs a single RS232C connection to its control computer,
making an Sx0 ideal, if it can be setup right.

I have downloaded the Panasonic universal USB Mass Storage drivers for DOS and
VIA's DOS AC97 drivers. Don't know if Realtek's AC97 implementation matches up
with VIA's. I've read that the VIA drivers do work with some other brands but
found no mention of Realtek. I also have the Realtek 81xx Ethernet drivers for
DOS.
Sound and networking aren't essential to operating the mill, but I'd like to
get them to work since I have three of these WYSE boxes. One would make an
ideal DOOM machine, probably would even run DN3D and some other old DOS games.
I got a 1 gig Apacer flash module off eBay and one of the three had a 128 meg,
I also bought a couple of 512 meg SODIMMs. All three originally had 128 meg
RAM. The hardware supports up to 1 gig in two banks, but the Sx0 has only one
slot. Unless it can take a dual bank / double sided 1 gig and read it as though
it's in two slots, 512 meg is the upper limit.

The operating environment I'd like to setup for the CNC needs to have USB mass
storage support for loading GCODE files from USB flash drives. It needs as much
of the low 640K free as possible and as much EMS as possible. XMS is not
needed. There's an environment variable to set for allocating the number of 16K
EMS blocks
SET LMCEMS=number of blocks or use All, A or -1 to allocate all available EMS.
The software first uses all available conventional memory for GCODE, then moves
to EMS. If available memory is too small, the GCODE file can be chunked with a
split utility that adds a command to end of each chunk to load the next
sequentially named chunk. Having to split a code file can be a problem because
branching and looping routines cannot go outside of a single chunk.

With 512 meg RAM I'd like to setup part of it as a RAM disk to copy the CNC
software to as part of the startup process. Total size, after removing the
example GCODE files, install.exe and setup.exe is around 550K so there should
be plenty of room.
What I don't know is the memory map of the thin client, how fragmented it may
be. I've run the mill from an old laptop but its memory space is so chunked up
with ROM code from all the peripherals that it's impossible to come up with the
64K window to run EMS through.
I did find an old French website where someone installed an older version of
FreeDOS onto an Sx0 with 64 meg flash and provided an image of the drive. I
copied the image over and it boots up, in French. I also found out that AOMEI
Standard Edition 6.1 instantly destroys the formatting on the Apacer flash
module when it's launched. (Bug report filed, AOMEI is *not* supposed to be
writing *anything* to storage devices unless the user clicks Apply.)

--=_Part_743004_2004408320.1487567764703
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

I
want to install FreeDOS onto a 64 megabyte Apacer IDE flash disk for use in a
Wyse Sx0 thin client. It has to be done outside the box because when booted off
USB the thin client tells the booting OS that the IDE controller is
disabled.It's not actually disabled.
The flash updaters for WinCE, Linux and XP Embedded ignore that and various
compact Lin

[Freedos-user] OS/2 Re: Quattro Pro releases

[Gregg Eshelman]

Have you ever installed OS/2 Warp 3 Upgrade from floppies? I did, on a Packard 
Bell 486 SX system with a 63 Mhz Pentium Overdrive. For some reason once it got 
to the GUI stage and I was feeding it disk after disk, I'd have to keep the 
mouse in constant motion while it was reading a disk or it'd freeze.
What was the upgrade from? OS/2 2.something, also on floppies. I picked up both 
really cheap somewhere, and after going through the process of installing 2.x 
then the Warp 3 upgrade I found out why it was cheap. ;)
I also found out that tinkering with its massive config.sys file in any way was 
an easy way to cause big problems.

On Tuesday, April 25, 2017, 12:59:04 AM MDT, Thomas Mueller 
 wrote:> Thomas Mueller composed on 2017-04-25 02:07 (UTC):

> > I ran Quattro Pro through 5 in OS/2 Warp 3 and 4 until that final OS/2 crash
> > in the single-digit days of April 2001.

> > OS/2 froze, did not dismount cleanly.  On reboot, CHKDSK, run automatically,
> > ran amok and trashed my hard-disk data.--
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Re: [Freedos-user] Corel dos ebay thing

[Gregg Eshelman]

The original WordStar for CP/M was written in Z-80 assembly language by Rob 
Barnaby, in about a month. He was the principle coder on it until the last 
release prior to 4.0. When he left the company is when thing started to go 
downhill for MicroPro. WordStar for DOS used slow DOS system functions for the 
keyboard and display and lagged way behind on supporting subdirectories. 
WordPerfect for DOS was written in 8088 assembly.

Corel was a poor steward of WordPerfect. They dropped the Macintosh version at 
3.5e. The last Windows version released by Corel was horrible. I tried doing an 
HTML document once. I had things all laid out and saved it. The document opened 
OK in a web browser. I reloaded it into WP, made some changes and saved it. 
Checked it again in a browser and it was all screwed up. Reloaded into WP and 
it was bad there too. If you could do 100% of everything in HTML in one go with 
that version of WP for Windows, it was fine, but it couldn't re-open and 
re-save HTML that it was used to create.
Microsoft had Word for Mac before they came out with a Windows version, so were 
ahead of the competition when it came to a GUI word processor.

On Monday, April 24, 2017, 9:29:48 AM MDT, dmccunney 
 wrote:On Mon, Apr 24, 2017 at 11:14 AM, Dale E 
Sterner  wrote:
> I think there must have been a 5.5 otherwise you wouldn't
> have a 5.6.

The problem for both products was failure to keep up with the market.
Micropro took its eye off the WordStar ball and attempted to
diversify.  WordPerfect ate them for lunch.  Word Perfect waited too
long to develop a Windows version.  By the time they did, MS Word
owned the word processing market.--
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Re: [Freedos-user] Corel dos ebay thing

[Gregg Eshelman]

Any plan to share this find? :)


On Monday, April 24, 2017, 9:07:19 AM MDT, Dale E Sterner  
wrote:It is pure dos abandoned when corel went to windows.
Sounded like it came out of the trash can type.
It is somewhat unfinished - a few nasty bugs but nothing
to make it unusable. There was no documentation 
with it. Just a corel factory made cd.
Its a pity they quit on it.
--
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Re: [Freedos-user] WIFI on DOS (was: bsum - compute BSD checksums of your files)

[Gregg Eshelman]

Microsoft has done such things deliberately. I had a Compaq server with dual 
slot Xeon CPUs. XP (with a 1-2 CPU license) could be installed but no matter 
what, was only going to be allowed to use ONE CPU. Manually forcing the multi 
CPU HAL to install during setup (or after) would make it crash.
Microsoft apparently told Compaq to fix their server BIOSes so that only Server 
versions of Windows would be allowed to access the full hardware capabilities. 
So I put 2000 Server on it and got rid of it.
One thing I've been liking about 10 is that just about any Core 2 Duo or dual 
core AMD AM2 and later can run it pretty well, even with only 2 gig RAM. A 
socket 939 AMD, even dual core? Not so much. 10 is the first release of Windows 
to have lower minimum hardware requirements than its predecessor. Just got done 
putting it on a 2.4Ghz Thinkpad T61 with 4gig (and a BIOS modded to remove 
hardware whitelist and de-hobble SATA from being limited to version 1 speed), 
which I'd seriously be thinking about keeping if it had the 1920x1200 instead 
of 1680x1050 display. Need USB 3 and/or eSATA? Pop in an ExpressCard.

I doubt any previous version of Windows would run well, if at all, on hardware 
originally released 8~9 years prior.

Put Classic Shell on, turn off all the stuff that phones home, set the window 
titlebars to a color instead of white (which Firefox ignores) and it's good to 
go.
If you've ever done anything with Windows 1.0 you should notice some 
similarities between it and the "Modern" UI. They both have non-overlapping 
tiles with active content, and there's this black bar across the bottom. Square 
corners everywhere (excepting the round ended buttons Apple sued MS over, 
square cornered buttons were made to satisfy Apple). Flat, saturated colors 
with a heavy emphasis on white, magenta, cyan and black. "3D" effects? Not 
there, just like Windows was through 3.0.

Someone at MS has a bad case of nostalgia for Windows 1.0 running on a CGA 
monitor.

On Wednesday, April 19, 2017, 3:09:07 PM MDT, dmccunney 
 wrote:On Wed, Apr 19, 2017 at 4:17 PM, Dale E 
Sterner  wrote:
> With windows if your PC dies and you want to move
> to a dupicate and keep running - your out of luck.

(One annoying quirk was that it was a quad-core machine but
Win10 only saw two cores.  The Xeon CPU is used wasn't on the
"supported by Win10 list Intel maintains.  The i5-2400 in the new box
is, and Win10 sees and uses all four cores.)

Something like that happened in the Win Vista days.  MS wanted
everyone on Vista, but some of the hardware in the pipeline wasn't
really up to running it.  (Mostly, inadequate video.)  MS created a
new level of certification - Vista Capable - so hardware vendors could
put it on the box.  Jim Allchin, who was SVP in charge of Windows
development at the time, was livid.  He felt, correctly, that the
hardware would not provide a good experience for users and that MS
would get yet another black eye in the marketplace.  MS really should
have waited 6 months for a new generation of hardware that would
properly support Vista, but wanted to make XP go away.--
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Re: [Freedos-user] Booting HP & Lenovo

[Gregg Eshelman]

I have a couple of Lenovo T61 laptops that seem to be very picky about what 
they'll boot off a disc. The latest Hiren's, FalconFour, MS DaRT 5, ERD 
Commander - they are all based on Windows XP PE and they start to load and just 
stop. I also tried Ubuntu and Lubuntu. They get to a certain point and the 
laptops reset. Odd thing about that is the older one of the two came with XP. 
The newer one had Vista.

They will boot the BIOS update CD (but I need good batteries to actually flash 
the updates) and I installed Windows 10 on one.
Haven't tried booting a FreeDOS CD yet. I should try that just to see if they 
reject that OS too.
--
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Re: [Freedos-user] boot floppy disk image too big for a disk

[Gregg Eshelman]

It is possible to format a floppy a bit over size. Most drives will accommodate 
2 to 4 extra tracks. Depending on the drive and the controller it's possible to 
alter the number of sectors per track, but all tracks must have the same number 
of sectors. Typically, altering the number of sectors renders the format 
non-bootable.

Schenk & Horn CopyStar is one such program. It's old, originally from 1994, but 
it's known to work on Windows 2000, Server 2003 and older. I've not tried it on 
XP and later. Probably not compatible with 64 bit Windows. 
http://www.programfiles.com/Default.asp?LinkId=13681

Microsoft used an over-capacity format they called DMF. For programs (like 
Windows 95) where the first disk had to be bootable it was standard 1.44M.
IBM used a different over-capacity format for OS/2's install disks, but nothing 
included with OS/2 could write data to the disks, despite the inclusion of a 
utility to create blank disks with that format. (The largest all floppy install 
I ever did was OS/2 Warp 3.0, followed by a couple of large updates.)

If only the entire OEM computer industry had wholeheartedly adopted the 2.88M 
floppy, instead of only IBM and Compaq sorta halfway supporting it. "Hey look! 
We're making 2.88M floppy drives standard on ALL our computers! How about YOU, 
Hewlett Packard, Packard Bell, Gateway 2000... *Apple*? You wanna fall behind 
us? Keep using that obsolete 1.44M!"

  From: Felix Miata 
 To: freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net 
 Sent: Thursday, March 23, 2017 9:57 PM
 Subject: Re: [Freedos-user] boot floppy disk image too big for a disk
   
I just looked inside http://www.freedos.org/download/download/FD12FLOPPY.zip 
"boot floppy", and a 3.5" 1.44M floppy. My floppy has 1457664 total bytes, 2847 
512 byte sectors. The image downloaded is 1474560 bytes, so the downloaded 
image 
would not fit here either.
-- "The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant
words are persuasive." Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation)

  Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks!

Felix Miata  ***  http://fm.no-ip.com/

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