Re: [Freedos-user] the msdos 4.0 sources has some multitasking code
That attitude toward the MS-DOS source code seems rather limiting and short-sighted. My recent device driver worked well enough on later versions of DOS (and FreeDOS) but I was having a devil of a time trying to figure out why DOS 2.x would not honor the device driver telling it that the media had been changed. Having the source code available allowed me to find a bug in DOS 2.x, and also cleared up several documentation questions (more like outright problems). Being compatible with all flavors of DOS should matter to anybody writing user code, device drivers, or even FreeDOS developers trying to improve the appeal of FreeDOS. MS has no need to placate the open source community, especially with old versions of DOS. This is somebody's passion project. I look forward to when the source code to DOS 3.3 or DOS 5.0 are released. ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Dial-up emulation?
You clearly don't use search engines too much ... Try "FreeDOS" and "Networking" as your two words for the search. On Tue, Apr 23, 2024 at 7:38 PM Brandon Taylor via Freedos-user < freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net> wrote: > Since FreeDOS doesn't support physical network hardware (even if it's > emulated in a program like PCem or 86Box), I figure there's no way FreeDOS > is gonna be able to connect to the Internet, right? Well... > > The developers of the 86Box project have recently implemented emulation of > a Hayes-compatible dial-up modem. So my question is... will FreeDOS support > the emulated modem? > > Brandon Taylor > ___ > Freedos-user mailing list > Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user > ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] "Upgrade" from MS-DOS 6.2.2 (fwd)
I'm just kind of amazed at what I read here at times. It is no secret that DOS is no longer a mainstream operating system. As a result, support for it on physical hardware is minimal, if it is supported at all. Modern machines are just not intended to be used with DOS as the primary, "bare metal" operating system. A lot of us are here because we like DOS but most of us don't try to force-fit into places where it doesn't work. When there is a better, supported solution for something it often makes more sense to use that instead of trying to make it work under DOS. There are many examples of things where DOS is great and even fun, but many more examples where DOS is not a suitable solution. This isn't controversial or hostile. It is reality. ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] shutdown and USB Stick ?
FAT is finicky but FAT is not the issue here. As long as the machine has sufficient time to complete its last writes and you don't have any programs running using the disk, it should always be safe to shut down - DOS doesn't buffer or delay writes unless you have some sort of disk caching program running and if your disk cache is doing something fancy it will have its own shutdown procedure. Hard drives also have write caches and often run with write caching enabled. The solution is the same - wait a few seconds for the last writes to be flushed to the media. And the same will apply to any other storage device, USB sticks included. Make sure the system is quiet for a few seconds so the device can commit it's writes. Then shut down. On Mon, Jan 29, 2024 at 10:22 AM Louis Santillan via Freedos-user < freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net> wrote: > FAT is always a finicky filesystem, especially if you're utilizing a > caching or BIOS emulation for USB HDDs. Are you using a caching program > like lbacache, cdrcache, smartdrv, etc? > > On Mon, Jan 29, 2024 at 7:11 AM Thomas Cornelius Desi via Freedos-user < > freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net> wrote: > >> I boot FD from a USB Stick. >> Can using »shutdown« command prevent that a bootable USB Stick with FD >> becomes unusable? (Happened last week.) >> >> add: is the shutdown command also working in the previous FD version? >> (Which I am normally using. I never used the »shutdown« command before. >> Just switch off the computer ) >> >> >> T. >> >> ___ >> Freedos-user mailing list >> Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net >> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user >> > ___ > Freedos-user mailing list > Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user > ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] SNMP agent for DOS?
I tend to be very pragmatic with my code. For example, instead of trying to port existing libraries (and dealing with all of their dependencies) I'll usually just write what I need from scratch and do the bare minimum. Where that is not possible (HTTPS on an 8088 class machine) I'd go with some sort of proxy that meets the spirit of the requirement. Anyway, I think the OP has been scared off so this is an academic discussion now. ;-0 On Wed, Jan 10, 2024 at 3:02 AM Frantisek Rysanek wrote: > On 8 Jan 2024 at 10:29, Michael Brutman via Freedos-user wrote: > ... > > > > Obviously something that does real-time operations should not be > > burdened with a TSR. But it should also not be burdened with running > > DOS on legacy hardware either. Nobody in their right mind is running > > something safety critical on old PC hardware running DOS, so assume > > there is some room for slop in the workload. > > > > I do meet people relying on a DOS app on old hardware every once in a > while. They end up having an ancient DOS box controlling a key piece > of machinery in the shop or something, sometimes not having a backup > of the OS boot drive, afraid to open the hood on the PC etc. > > As for SNMP, I have once tried to write a client, from scratch, to do > some simple queries. "Just a quick hack." There were comprehensive > libraries at the time, that did stuff like convert ASN.1 MIB source > code into C++ classes and then compile that... it dragged along a > heap of dependencies, which I did not want to port from UNIX to > Windows, so I started with a hardcoded minimal set of C++ objects to > manipulate ASN.1 BER to implement what I needed... I got it to a > stage where the queries principally worked, and then the skunkworks > project got shelved, I left the job, things shifted IRL etc. > > Frank > ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] SNMP agent for DOS?
That last post was impressive, but I think it makes things way too
complicated.
Obviously something that does real-time operations should not be burdened
with a TSR. But it should also not be burdened with running DOS on legacy
hardware either. Nobody in their right mind is running something safety
critical on old PC hardware running DOS, so assume there is some room for
slop in the workload.
An SNMP agent TSR can do the following:
- Respond when polled; that's an important function right there.
("Heartbeat")
- "Guesstimate" the CPU utilization
- Pick up and report from whatever location in memory you care about.
The TSR has to respond to interrupts from the network device. It also
needs to hook the timer interrupt for ARP processing. Since you have the
timer interrupt hooked already, you can look at the stack to see the
interrupted address and estimate whether the interrupted code is in DOS, in
an idle loop in the main program, or whatever. (For a normal DOS system
that spends its time at the command prompt that is easy. For a
continuously running program that program must have an event handling loop,
and there are a few ways to detect and deal with that.)
Anyway, back to the question ... it's possible. If you are just going to
check a box for compliance reasons, then it's probably not doing unless the
cost of non-compliance is high. (If an ISO certification is riding on
this, spend the money to do something.) If this is really supposed to be
part of your monitoring solution and you need it, well, you've done well on
borrowed time ...
-Mike
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] SNMP agent for DOS?
How much is it worth ($$$) to your supervisor? SNMP runs over UDP. It is possible to write an SNMP agent that runs in the background as a TSR, but such a thing doesn't exist today. If somebody is willing to invest it can be done. -Mike On Sun, Jan 7, 2024 at 12:30 PM Anton Gustafsson via Freedos-user < freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net> wrote: > Hi Roderick! I agree, in this case it is mostly to satisfy my > supervisor's need to follow protocol. All machines in the network are > supposed monitored (load, mem, swap etc) using a software called Zabbix > which has the ability to use either their own agent, ICMP or SNMP. > > It is possible to use Zabbix without an agent, and for example only > check availability over ICMP pings. It is a slight workaround, since the > actual frontend on Zabbix shows hosts as unavailable when not using an > agent, though they it is possible to configure the system not to send > "host_down"-emails. There seem to be disagreements within the Zabbix > developer community whether this is a bug or a feature. > > Anyway it feels a bit redundant since these machines are custom hardware > controllers and are integrated in the rest of the process system, and > the control room interacts with these machines continuously. > > We happen to have a OS/2 machine in production as well, and it did not > have supervision either. If you are interested in monitoring, I found > this the last week: "IBM SystemView Agent v1.4.3 for OS/2". It is > available free on the internet. It is running well, however I haven't > had the time read up on configuration, so it is only in "default" mode, > showing that host is up. > > Anton > > > > On 2024-01-06 23:51, Roderick Klein via Freedos-user wrote: > > On 6-01-24 18:24, Anton Gustafsson via Freedos-user wrote: > >> Hi! > >> > >> We have a few network connected FreeDOS machines, running on an isolated > >> network using MSClient. I have been instructed that all our machines on > >> the network should be monitored, by either SNMP or a Zabbix agent, and > >> not ICMP ping only. > >> > >> I havn't been able to find anything on the internet. I guess that DOS > >> wasn't designed to run in such a way that more advanced monitoring was > >> necessary? Have any of you guys heard of an SNMP agent for DOS? > > > > Never really heard of it But even if you have an SNMP agent what > > should the SNMP agent report on DOS ? > > > > I am not expert what so ever. However the SNMP protocol is pretty > > generic. It can be used to monitor a UPS for servers or monitor a > > printer. But can use SNMTP. > > > > So even if you have SNMP client what should it monitor on thr FreeDOS > > system ? Disc space ? DOS programs being started ? > > > > Myself I use ArcaOS (OS/2 clone) and it does not have an SNMP client > > build in (not that I am aware of at least). > > > > Roderick > > > > > > > > ___ > > Freedos-user mailing list > > Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net > > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user > > > ___ > Freedos-user mailing list > Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user > ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] roundcube, is freedos, or dos based mail clients?
It's difficult to follow all of the details of the discussion. Have you ever looked at getting a shell account on sdf.org? It still supports plain old Telnet I think it comes with an email address. They support POP3 and IMAP access to the email too. Links and Lynx are available there when using Telnet, but it doesn't look like either have Javascript enabled. ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Unicode and codepages in apps already bundled with FreeDOS?
I added some limited Unicode support to mTCP Telnet and mTCP IRCjr in the last release a few months ago. - I used a text file to store the mapping. That lets people add code points or make corrections if they don't like the choices I made. - The code uses the text file both ways; to figure out what Unicode code point to send for a local high-bit character and what character to display when a Unicode code point is detected. - The current mapping is pointed to by a text file. - I don't try to detect the current code page in use. The user is responsible for pointing at the correct text file. While simple, this is also flexible. - I used a hash table to make the mappings pretty fast. (I've seen some horrible code that did linear searches of a table, and that's painful to sit through.) A centralized mapping would be nice, but then you will run into the question of how strict you want the code to be. The conversion from the current code page to Unicode should always be strict as Unicode has far many more glyphs. But incoming Unicode can be mapped loosely or strictly, and in my case I went for loose because I wanted the output to be useful to humans and not full of "tofu" characters. A strict mapping can be shared but a loose mapping is probably best application specific. -Mike ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] A new mTCP (2023-03-31) is available
On Mon, Apr 10, 2023 at 1:00 PM Jim Hall wrote: > > Impressive for a PCjr. :-) > > One day we might even be able to boot FreeDOS on it ... (it has some challenges.) ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] A new mTCP (2023-03-31) is available
Just a small correction - please change the URLs to start with http://www.brutman.com/ as per the original announcement. You've got http://brutmanlabs.org/, which is a PCjr running at 4.77Mhz. It's doing fine under load, but eventually it will run out of log space and be moved back to something more fun. :) Perhaps an online version of Eliza to compete with ChatGPT. (The PCjr has been running and serving traffic for 10+ days now. I was redirecting from the usual home page to get some traffic for better testing. I'm going to see if I can get 1000 continuous hours on it, which for 39 year old hardware is no small feat.) -Mike On Fri, Apr 7, 2023 at 3:12 PM Jim Hall wrote: > Sounds good! I've mirrored this, but marked it as invisible (sort of > "pre-mirrored" it, if you will). I can mark it as "visible" at some > later time. > > News item posted on the website. I'll also share it on Mastodon. > > > Jim > > On Sat, Apr 1, 2023 at 11:38 AM Michael Brutman > wrote: > > > > http://www.brutman.com/mTCP/mTCP.html > > > > From the release notes: > > > > Unicode support for Telnet and IRCjr > > RLE graphics support in Telnet (fun as a demonstration, but not very > practical) > > The web server gets a built-in SNTP client for keeping the server time > correct across many days/weeks of runtime. > > A keyboard handling workaround for VirtualBox users. (OpenWatcom had a > run-time bug that interacts poorly with the incomplete BIOS keyboard > handling in VirtualBox.) > > Many small bug fixes and improvements, including in the base TCP/IP > library. > > > > > > Jim & Jerome - As before, please give me a few weeks before mirroring it > so that I can get a rough idea of how many people are downloading it. I > need some reason to justify all of this work. ;-0 > > > > On a side note, unless something huge happens this is going to be the > last update for a while. I suspect this code will last a few years. > > > > > > -Mike > > > > > > ___ > > Freedos-user mailing list > > Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net > > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user > > > ___ > Freedos-user mailing list > Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user > ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] A new mTCP (2023-03-31) is available
http://www.brutman.com/mTCP/mTCP.html >From the release notes: - Unicode support for Telnet and IRCjr - RLE graphics support in Telnet (fun as a demonstration, but not very practical) - The web server gets a built-in SNTP client for keeping the server time correct across many days/weeks of runtime. - A keyboard handling workaround for VirtualBox users. (OpenWatcom had a run-time bug that interacts poorly with the incomplete BIOS keyboard handling in VirtualBox.) - Many small bug fixes and improvements, including in the base TCP/IP library. Jim & Jerome - As before, please give me a few weeks before mirroring it so that I can get a rough idea of how many people are downloading it. I need some reason to justify all of this work. ;-0 On a side note, unless something huge happens this is going to be the last update for a while. I suspect this code will last a few years. -Mike ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] DOS and PDFs (Was Re: Update wiki info on installing ftp on a virualbox guest?
I think it is pretty safe to assume that everybody using FreeDOS in the last 10 to 20 years has access to another, more capable device that can read PDFs. Even low end cell phones have had this capability for the past 5 years. I started with pure TXT files, composed on the same DOS machine that I did my coding and testing on. But even in 2013 those files were adding up to more than 210K across 16 files. Just like I migrated from using a hardware 80386 to a cross compiler for the code in 2011, I migrated the documented for PDF in 2015. The PDF format lets me do far better formatting and screen shots, which are useful for clear documentation. As cool as it would be to have everything self contained and self hosted within DOS, that's not our reality. I think it's more important to use the appropriate tools for the job, PDF is very good for documentation - just not on DOS. Given that everybody probably has access to something that can read PDFs, there is not much of a reason to downgrade carefully written and formatted documentation. I am concerned about these kinds of things because I do put a lot of energy into ensuring my work is properly packaged. It's probably possible to export the PDF has HTML, but again I'd want to do that myself to ensure the formatting stays reasonable. (And even then, the generated HTML is not going to be usable on the 16 bit machines with CGA that I target.) -Mike ___ 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?
Jennifer replied offline and responded that she was installing FreeDOS 1.3 using the livecd. I tried it for myself and I installed the full FreeDOS without sources to a new virtual machine. Until the wiki gets fixed look in C:\FREEDOS for the mTCP configuration file. The mTCP sample config file is in C:\NET\MTCP\SAMPLES\SAMPLE.CFG. Both files have the expected contents so I don't know why yours are empty. The only questionable thing I noticed was somebody converted the user documentation to a 293KB text file. That strips the formatting, diagrams and screen shots that I have in the PDF. Can we not do that in the future? Nobody is going to want to wade through a 293KB text file. -Mike On Wed, Mar 15, 2023 at 5:59 PM Michael Brutman wrote: > What version of FreeDOS are you installing? > > If things are really borked then keep in mind that mTCP is a standalone > project and you can get all the original files at its website. See > http://www.brutman.com/mTCP/mTCP.html for the downloads and PDF > documentation. > > > Mike > > > On Wed, Mar 15, 2023, 15:50 Jennifer Brice via Freedos-user < > freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net> wrote: > >> I am trying to install ftp on a virtualbox guest and the wiki seems out >> of date. >> >> http://wiki.freedos.org/wiki/index.php/VirtualBox_-_Chapter_7 >> >> There is no fdos directory and also no sample.cfg in docs. >> >> I found an mtcp.cfg in the freedos directory and found samples cfg in >> c:\net\mtcp\sample.cfg but when I copied it as c:\freedos\mtcp.cfg, then >> edited it, the file was empty. I edited c:\net\mtcp\sample.cfg and it was >> empty too. What should I do? >> >> >> >> >> ___ >> Freedos-user mailing list >> Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net >> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user >> > ___ 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?
What version of FreeDOS are you installing? If things are really borked then keep in mind that mTCP is a standalone project and you can get all the original files at its website. See http://www.brutman.com/mTCP/mTCP.html for the downloads and PDF documentation. Mike On Wed, Mar 15, 2023, 15:50 Jennifer Brice via Freedos-user < freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net> wrote: > I am trying to install ftp on a virtualbox guest and the wiki seems out of > date. > > http://wiki.freedos.org/wiki/index.php/VirtualBox_-_Chapter_7 > > There is no fdos directory and also no sample.cfg in docs. > > I found an mtcp.cfg in the freedos directory and found samples cfg in > c:\net\mtcp\sample.cfg but when I copied it as c:\freedos\mtcp.cfg, then > edited it, the file was empty. I edited c:\net\mtcp\sample.cfg and it was > empty too. What should I do? > > > > > ___ > Freedos-user mailing list > Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user > ___ 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?
I initially mis-read what Tom had written about programming on DOS being painful. He is not wrong. ;-0 I program "for" DOS for the challenge. But I don't program too much "on" DOS, because I'm not interested in challenging myself that much. I used to use Turbo C++ 3.0 for DOS on a DOS machine for DOS programming. 10+ years ago I moved to Open Watcom 1.8 on a Windows machine for my DOS programming. With Cygwin I have a Unix-like environment. I have multiple windows for editing, web browser windows for looking up strange interrupts, a PDF viewer, etc. The performance of the modern machine is great compared to ye old DOS machine. There are some exceptions. Turbo C++ 3.0 for DOS has a useful IDE, but I can't read PDF files or look up things online from a DOS machine running it. -Mike ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] mTCP: A Unicode enabled IRCjr is available for testing
I've added a Unicode enabled Telnet to the same file. Just set the environment variable to the mapping file and it will interpret Unicode sent via UTF-8. Sending Unicode also works but I have not implemented a "compose" sequence for arbitrary Unicode code points so you are limited to what your keyboard can produce. -Mike On Thu, Jan 26, 2023 at 8:36 PM Michael Brutman wrote: > I've never wanted to support Unicode and UTF-8 because of the potential > performance problems on slow machines and the problem of mapping Unicode to > code pages. I solved one problem, but not the other. ;-0 > > If you'd like to try it the instructions are at > https://groups.google.com/g/mtcp/c/Z0RhZK9hI8c. I've included a mapping > from Unicode to CP437. If you use another codepage you will need to create > a mapping for it. (It's not difficult, it's just a text file.) > > If this works well I'll update the Telnet client to be able to use Unicode > too. (It was easier to start with the IRC client.) > > > -Mike > > ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] mTCP: A Unicode enabled IRCjr is available for testing
I've never wanted to support Unicode and UTF-8 because of the potential performance problems on slow machines and the problem of mapping Unicode to code pages. I solved one problem, but not the other. ;-0 If you'd like to try it the instructions are at https://groups.google.com/g/mtcp/c/Z0RhZK9hI8c. I've included a mapping from Unicode to CP437. If you use another codepage you will need to create a mapping for it. (It's not difficult, it's just a text file.) If this works well I'll update the Telnet client to be able to use Unicode too. (It was easier to start with the IRC client.) -Mike ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS in proxmox
Read the documentation for whatever networking software you are using. mTCP in particular is not a "resident" program, so your FreeDOS machine will not respond to ping requests unless an mTCP program is actively running. WATTCP programs have the same behavior. ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] How to obtain LPR - or is there a way to use IPP?
I'm not going to be porting LPR to mTCP anytime soon; I think about 4 people would have a use for it. However, if a printer supports JetDirect printing on port 9100, then mTCP netcat can be used. Simply have your program print to a file, then use netcat to send the file to the JetDirect port on your printer. Most network printers can do this. The detailed instructions are in the mTCP PDF file. -Mike On Sat, Sep 17, 2022 at 12:57 AM Robert Riebisch wrote: > Hi Phil, > > > would certainly help. However, the other alternative in my case would > > be LPR. I have not found a package with LPR yet, and most links I have > > found around the web either include anything but a binary or are > > broken. I see mention of a source file for it as part of WATTCP but > > have no idea how to get it, nor how to build it once obtained. > > I never tried, but lpr.exe can be found in > < > https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/net/wattcp/wat2001b.zip > >. > Look in apps/apps.zip. > > Maybe Michael Brutman wishes to port it to his mTCP suite: > http://www.brutman.com/mTCP/ > > Cheers, > Robert > -- > BTTR Software https://www.bttr-software.de/ > DOS ain't dead https://www.bttr-software.de/forum/ > > > ___ > Freedos-user mailing list > Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user > ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] For what architectures is FreeDOS designed?
This is an 8 year old email thread and you are expecting working links from back then? Regardless, archive.org is your friend: https://web.archive.org/web/20130430233113/https://geek.com/chips/nasa-needs-8086-chips-549867/ Consider donating to them. On Sat, Jul 23, 2022 at 6:52 AM Aitor Santamaría wrote: > The "geek.com" link mentioned looked interesting but is no longer online > (404), anyone knows where it went? (google is not giving me obvious answers) > > Aitor > > On Tue, 25 Nov 2014 at 10:38, ht-lab wrote: > >> On 25/11/2014 00:57, Ralf Quint wrote: >> > On 11/24/2014 11:08 AM, Carl Spitzer wrote: >> >> Isn't the Z80 what the Space Shuttle and space Telescope used until >> >> the last decade. I seem to remember my old RS-4P was a Z80 chip. CWSIV >> > Nope, the Space Shuttle's main computer was from IBM, based on a >> > radiation-hardened version of a 32bit System/360 type CPU (just Google >> > "APA-101S") >> > And if you refer with "space telescope" to Hubble, that uses special >> > radiation hardened version of the Intel 80486... >> > >> > Ralf >> >> They used a whole range of processors including the 8086, >> >> http://www.geek.com/chips/nasa-needs-8086-chips-549867/ >> >> Hans >> www.ht-lab.com >> >> >> > >> > --- >> > This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. >> > http://www.avast.com >> > >> > >> > >> -- >> > Download BIRT iHub F-Type - The Free Enterprise-Grade BIRT Server >> > from Actuate! Instantly Supercharge Your Business Reports and Dashboards >> > with Interactivity, Sharing, Native Excel Exports, App Integration & >> more >> > Get technology previously reserved for billion-dollar corporations, FREE >> > >> http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=157005751=/4140/ostg.clktrk >> > ___ >> > Freedos-user mailing list >> > Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net >> > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user >> > >> >> >> >> -- >> Download BIRT iHub F-Type - The Free Enterprise-Grade BIRT Server >> from Actuate! Instantly Supercharge Your Business Reports and Dashboards >> with Interactivity, Sharing, Native Excel Exports, App Integration & more >> Get technology previously reserved for billion-dollar corporations, FREE >> >> http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=157005751=/4140/ostg.clktrk >> ___ >> Freedos-user mailing list >> Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net >> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user >> > ___ > Freedos-user mailing list > Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user > ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] New mTCP available
It would be swell, but it's never going to happen ... at least not from me. - Computationally, SSH is not feasible on the 16 bit machines that I target for this project. - Even with enough compute power, you need to find DOS equivalents of all of the libraries. Which includes the ciphers, key exchanges, etc. And then you need to port those, and what they depend on to DOS. Without introducing security holes. - SSH ciphers are a moving target. What is acceptable today will be deprecated in a few years. It is difficult to keep up. -Mike ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] New mTCP available
Just for a little bit ... :) Thanks! Mike On Fri, Jul 8, 2022, 4:59 PM Jim Hall wrote: > > > > On Fri, Jul 8, 2022 at 6:19 AM Eric Auer wrote: > >> > >> > >> Hi! Forwarding from BTTR: > >> > >> A new mTCP is available (2022-07-01) > >>[..] > > > On Fri, Jul 8, 2022 at 6:33 PM Michael Brutman > wrote: > > > > Hi - yes it is true, a new version is available. > > > > Please hold off on mirroring it at ibiblio for a little bit ... > > I'm trying to gauge how many users I have based on downloads, and that > > falls apart once people start to mirror it. > > > > > I've already mirrored it to Ibiblio earlier today, but I'll take that > down (hide it) and update the news item to not reference the mirror. > > > Jim > > > ___ > Freedos-user mailing list > Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user > ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] New mTCP available
Hi - yes it is true, a new version is available. Please hold off on mirroring it at ibiblio for a little bit ... I'm trying to gauge how many users I have based on downloads, and that falls apart once people start to mirror it. Cheers, Mike On Fri, Jul 8, 2022 at 6:19 AM Eric Auer wrote: > > Hi! Forwarding from BTTR: > > A new mTCP is available (2022-07-01) > > posted by mbbrutman, Washington, USA, 07.07.2022, 00:00 > > Download from: http://www.brutman.com/mTCP/mTCP.html > > Release notes: > http://www.brutman.com/mTCP/mTCP_2022-07-01_Release_Notes.html > > And here is the short version of what you can look forward to: > > - Support for a local HOSTS.TXT file. > - Some minor DHCP bug fixes. > - TCP/IP library improvements for flow control on bad/slow connections. > - HTTP server bug fixes and proper support for default index.html files. > - A slightly more accurate SNTP (simple network time protocol) client. > - Proper Dynamic DNS support for the FTP server > - Other scattered bug fixes and small features. > > As always, yell if you have problems ... > > For the future - I'm working on proper Unicode support for IRCjr and > Telnet. That will come along in a few months. > > > > ___ > Freedos-user mailing list > Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user > ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Difficulty with serial communications
This has all been terribly interesting, but I can't help but think: - This product should have been ported to a more capable operating system years ago. - The inner workings of how the product was made to run under DOS seems to have rotted away. - This really isn't relevant to FreeDOS. Mike ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Netgear LNE100TX
I have that exact same card in a Pentium 133 system. It's a good card. This sounds silly, but try removing and reseating the card in the slot. Really ... I've had cards that have been installed for ages where the electrical contact on the pins oxidizes and then the card becomes flakey, and this specific card has done that to me. If you have "tuner cleaner" or some other electronic contacts cleaner, use that on the card edge connector. The MAC address should not be FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF - that is a sign of a communication problem with the card or a hardware fault. You should check your BIOS settings for any sign of a conflict with another card, but PCI BIOSes are pretty good about that so that is probably not your problem. Mike On Mon, Jul 26, 2021 at 2:25 AM Richard Hoffman < richardhoffman2...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi, > > I have been having trouble setting up my ethernet card on my freedos > installation. I am currently attempting to set up this card with the > LNE100TX.com packet driver. > > I run the driver with LNE100TX 0x60 and I get the following > > Autonegotiation Not Complete > Packet Driver Interrupt Number 0X60 > IO Port 0xDC00 > Hardware Interrupt Number 11 > Media Type Is 100baseTX Full Duplex > My Ethernet Address Is FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF > Packet Driver is loaded at segment 3C2 > > I have my network wired from my DSL router to an 8 port 10/100 mbps > switch. From there it goes to my windows 10 pc and my freedos pc. > > I have tried about every switch option with the packet driver and I keep > getting the same result. Is this a hardware problem with the ethernet card > or is it a router issue? > > Also could this be an IRQ conflict? > > Thanks. > ___ > Freedos-user mailing list > Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user > ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] tunein.com and freedos? - Karen versus Liam
'Culture' at large really is knocking on the door of pravda+izvestia. That's my 'suffering' through this thread... On Fri, Jun 25, 2021 at 11:39 AM Eric Auer wrote: > > Karen, Jim, > > threatening legal actions against people who misunderstand > your suffering is not appropriate. At all. It makes me sad > that getting computers to cooperate with you is so hard, > and I am sorry for making bad or stupid suggestions in > that context, but none of us is engaging in "slander". > > Eric > > > Jim, > > This post will be edited to remove Liam's slander or I will investigate > > what may be done legally. > > The internet is increasingly a public place. > > I am a media and music professional, and I will not have my reputation > > tarnished by someone who thinks his personal use of machines makes him > > an expert on the lives of millions. > > Liam may claim he did not know, but felt he could slander me anyway. > > My body and my brain, and my choices to use computers as I can right > > now, with the issues I have is none of his business. > > Via his slander though he has made it necessary for me to talk of > > personal medical concerns on a public list. > > Something no human being should have to endure. > > What Liam illustrates perfectly is just why so much of Linux remains > > challenging for many. > > The attitude of those like him who believe their experience projects to > > everyone else, and that everyone sharing a label are interchangeable. > > I am profoundly thankful to the apple techs doctors, and scientists > > who believe I deserve technology that works for me, as I am, not as > > Liam dictionary dictates. > > best, > > > > Karen lewellen > > > ___ > Freedos-user mailing list > Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user > ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Print via network
I hate to even suggest this, but are you using the /B option on the file copy to indicate that a binary copy is needed? Otherwise, the first Ctrl-Z in the file will end the file copy prematurely. On Wed, Jun 16, 2021 at 3:37 PM Frantisek Rysanek wrote: > Dear gentlemen, > > on and off, with Bryan we've been playing with Ubuntu, Samba, CUPS > and the MS Network Client running in FreeDOS. And we're facing a dead > end - same symptoms observed by me and by Bryan: > > We can load the MS stack, to the point that we can "net use" network > disk volumes = map a local drive letter to an ARC path from the > server. And the disk is perfectly accessible. > > But, printing is giving us an interesting misbehavior. > We can ask for > net use LPT2: \\server\printqueue > That does succeed. But, whatever we copy to the redirected LPT2 > (we've also tried LPT1 for that matter), we only get a couple lines > printed. Like 4 to 6 lines, if we try to print plain text. > > I've observed the problem with Wireshark. The MS client connects a > TCP session to Samba, they negotiate the protocol version, the client > starts a print request, sends the first packet with an actual > payload, gets a TCP ACK, and the very next TCP packet from the client > to the server has a FIN flag - and the TCP session get gracefully > ended. Interestingly, the client produces one extra packet with an > ACK for the session, after the FIN / FIN+ACK coordinated handshake > has closed the session. Wireshark's TCP tracing marks that extra ACK > packet as a duplicate... > > I have no clue why this is happening. I've tried loading all the > drivers "low" (instead of "high" or UMB). No joy. > > I'm wondering, which of the bunch of drivers and executables (about 8 > of them) is specifically responsible for the printer port redirection > function. And, what could make it close the TCP session prematurely. > Does it perhaps expect a different "pattern of data writes" on the > hooked LPT port service? Which a plain "copy" command does not > satisfy? > > Any ideas are welcome :-) > > Frank > > > > > ___ > Freedos-user mailing list > Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user > ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Virtualbox Networking Issue
Kelley: That version of mTCP is nearly 8 years old ... Please get the current version and repeat the trace file steps. It might even just work without debugging ... I've made a lot of reliability improvements in the past 8 years. Also, please email me *directly* ... this is an mTCP question, not a FreeDOS question. Other people might be able to help, but I'm the best qualified and I check my email more often than I check this mailing list. In this trace: - The NAMESERVER_PREFERRED setting didn't exist back then. It is using your ISP as the nameserver. - Your machine received an ARP response, so that part is nice - you have connectivity to your gateway. - Try pinging your nameserver directly (67.168.138.6). If you can't get a response, then DNS won't ever work. Ralf: Traceroute is interesting, and it's on the todo list. This is more equivalent to a TCPDUMP trace. On Thu, May 27, 2021 at 10:14 AM Ralf Quint wrote: > On 5/26/2021 10:17 PM, Kelley McChesney wrote: > > Hi Michael, > I went through the instructions to enable debugging and pinged > www.brutman.com. I have attached my MTCP config file and the trace.txt > file for you. Thank you for looking at this. > > Just had a look at that log file and it seems the data gets stuck at > 67.158.138.6. That is not the IP address for the site pinged, so that is > where you're problem lies (your router?, the address range refers to > bentcom.net). > > In either case, this is a public IP address and already outside of your > (FreeDOS) box... > > Ralf > > > > > -- > [image: Avast logo] <https://www.avast.com/antivirus> > > This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. > www.avast.com <https://www.avast.com/antivirus> > > <#m_-8092473799975067297_DAB4FAD8-2DD7-40BB-A1B8-4E2AA1F9FDF2> > ___ > Freedos-user mailing list > Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user > ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Virtualbox Networking Issue
Hi - I'm the author of mTCP. mTCP is shipped with FreeDOS but it is an independent project. Please check the PDF, specifically the section on debugging. I'd like to see a trace from your system when you are using a bridged Ethernet connection. Use PING (the one that comes with mTCP), but specifying the hostname should be fine for determining what your DNS problem is. The short story is do this: - set debugging=255 - set logfile=trace.txt - ping www.brutman.com Take trace.txt and then email it to me. After I see it I can tell you what I think is going on and I can give you some hints on how to proceed. Sending me your mTCP configuration file would also be helpful. Mike ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Editing the wiki
Yes, it seems to be functioning normally now. The next time I see a 5xx type error I'll know not to try to debug it. ;-0 If the wiki is generally fast enough I wouldn't change anything. My opinion was formed last night after one long session with it when it was clearly struggling. If that is not the normal experience then consider doing nothing. If that is the normal experience, well, for a primary source of documentation that's not a great experience. Given that "wiki.freedos.org" is a subdomain of "freedos.org" you could create additional DNS records that point just the "wiki" part to a new host, without changing anything else. The steps would look more like: - Pick a new wiki provider (Dreamhost) - Configure and test *before* freezing or moving DNS records using an entry in your local hosts file. - Freeze and move content to the new host. - Update the DNS records to point at the new host. - Decommission the old wiki. That lets you keep the "wiki.freedos.org" name. Looking at the current DNS records: wiki.freedos.org: - CNAME is vhost.sourceforge.net - A record is 216.105.38.10 (Sourceforge.net) freedos.org: - A record is 173.236.175.214 (Dreamhost) So just changing the A record for wiki.freedos.org to point at a new host (when it is ready) should do the trick. Mike ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Editing the wiki
No good deed goes unpunished ... I made my edits. Then this happened: - http://wiki.freedos.org/wiki/index.php/Networking_FreeDOS_-_mTCP is broken and returns a 500 error from the server. - http://wiki.freedos.org/wiki/index.php?title=Networking_FreeDOS_-_mTCP works fine, but it's not a direct URL. (The name is in the parameter.) I made a mess of the revision history trying to isolate which edits might have broken it, but even going all the way back to Martin's last edit doesn't work now. And it's a server 500, which is not something user content should be able to cause. Jim - who is hosting this thing? Besides being broken, it's also pretty slow. I feel bad because it broke on me, but nothing I did should have broken it. (I suspect there is an admin page that I can't get to where error logs can be examined.) Mike On Thu, May 6, 2021 at 4:45 AM Jim Hall wrote: > Hi Mike! > > I can create an account for you. > > I'll create your account today and send it to you. > > > On Wed, May 5, 2021, 11:14 PM Michael Brutman > wrote: > >> I've noticed some inaccuracies on the FreeDOS networking wiki pages. How >> does one get an account so that edits can be made? >> >> >> -Mike >> >> ___ >> Freedos-user mailing list >> Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net >> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user >> > ___ > Freedos-user mailing list > Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user > ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] Editing the wiki
I've noticed some inaccuracies on the FreeDOS networking wiki pages. How does one get an account so that edits can be made? -Mike ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] Printing over the network
This is an old trick and I have it documented in the mTCP PDF documentation. Here is a quick overview. If you have a printer that is network enabled and it speaks Postscript, PCL, Epson ESC P2, or plain text then you can "print to a file" under DOS and then use Netcat to send the file to your printer. Most network printers listen on port 9100, and they'll interpret what they receive on that port in the same way they would interpret the data from a parallel or serial port. This is known as the "raw" port and HP introduced it back in the 90s. I've used this trick to print graphics from a PCjr to my modern Brother laser printer. The graphics were formatted for an IBM Graphics Printer, which uses a subset of Epson ESC P2. The printer can handle PostScript, PCL, Epson ESC P2, and plain text. The netcat command should look like this: nc -target 192.168.2.20 9100 -bin < testfile.prn Note that the -bin option is needed because your printer output might contain control codes. That's it. It is simple and it works. -Mike ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] DOS was dead...
I am fully aware that BIOS used to be updated in MS-DOS. I am 41 years old, older than some people who seem to be experts on this and probably older than Liam. Stefano, did you ever successfully update your bios? Reality is, Windows 95 dos and Windows 98SE DOS is not really dos per se and Windows ME DOS is definitely a weird hybrid that is way different from all previous versions of MS-DOS that Microsoft created. DELL probably recommends using a version of Windows to update the bios that is an NT based Windows. I agree that using Windows NT to update BIOS or even Firmware is foolishness. Windows NT is a very complex OS where all we are talking about when we are updating BIOS or Firmware is something that should not require graphics let alone the NT kernel. Sounds to me like Stefano's DELL is not solidly ancient and not adequately modern. It is close to being completely MS-DOS compatible and not quite modern either where you would want to run bloated Windows NT on it. By abandoning MS-DOS, Microsoft made updating your BIOS and later your firmware ridiculously painful. Microsoft could have open sourced MS-DOS 4.0, they never have. Nowadays, a lot of motherboard manufacturers want you to put the new image on a USB key formatted FAT32 and you go into the Firmware before boot and it does the update without introducing another OS. The reason for this, using Windows NT to update firmware or BIOS which is a software change that affects hardware doesn't make any sense. BIOS and Firmware updates are neither solidly software nor are they solidly hardware. What Stefano is trying to update blurs the line between what is software and what is hardware. Hardware is something you can kick, software is just software. Hardware when we are talking about modern computing obviously needs software to do anything useful. For my first 20 years, MS-DOS was definitely alive. DOS has technically been dead ever since Windows 95 A came out. Jim, you brought DOS back to life. However people, updating BIOS and Firmware in DOS has been impossible for over a decade in the eyes of most hardware manufacturers. The Raspberry Pi which is sadly a proprietary hardware platform, does nut support DOS. I thought it did by some miracle. It doesn't. Apparently, nobody has released a hypervisor for the Raspberry Pi 4 that will emulate an 80386 or earlier well enough to run FreeDOS or any DOS without issues. ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] FDNet package license problems
Jerome, In the grand scheme of things it is not a big deal and it has been wrong for years. Thanks for taking care of it. If it does remain then Rugxulo should consider updating the parts of mTCP (and anything else) that was repackaged for use in FDNet. Mike On Sat, Apr 10, 2021 at 3:52 PM Jerome Shidel wrote: > Hello Michael, > > On Apr 10, 2021, at 3:20 PM, Michael Brutman > wrote: > > Gents (Jerome and Rugxulo in particular) ... > > As per > https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distributions/1.2/repos/pkg-html/fdnet.html > FDNET is being distributed under GPL V2. However, it includes mTCP source > code which is licensed under GPL V3. As per > https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html that's not allowed ... > the two licenses are not compatible. You just can't relicense > something that I provided as GPL3. > > > Worse is that you are distributing a version of the code that is 7 years > out of date ... > > Please fix this. > > > The GPL v2 was only the license for the FDNET batch program itself and was > not meant to cover any other programs that were included in the package. > > It was not an attempt to re-license your software. As you can see, the GPL > v3 license was included with your program sources in the package. > > However, you are correct that the listing for FDNET on the software > repository should not have been GPL v2. > > Furthermore, you are correct that GPL v3 is not compatible with v2. > > I apologize for the mistake and any confusion it may have caused. > > I have taken the git repository for FDNET offline and pulled it’s packages > from the Software Repositories. > > The FDNET package will require further review. It may be updated to > resolve any conflicting license issue. > > However at this point, FDNET may just be discontinued. > > Thank you for bringing this issue to my attention. > > Once again, I am sorry for the misunderstanding. > > Jerome > ___ > Freedos-user mailing list > Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user > ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] FDNet package license problems
Gents (Jerome and Rugxulo in particular) ... As per https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distributions/1.2/repos/pkg-html/fdnet.html FDNET is being distributed under GPL V2. However, it includes mTCP source code which is licensed under GPL V3. As per https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html that's not allowed ... the two licenses are not compatible. You just can't relicense something that I provided as GPL3. Worse is that you are distributing a version of the code that is 7 years out of date ... Please fix this. Mike ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Using a USB stick and an optical drive
Eric: Some version of Windows is what Dell expects him to have to update his BIOS, that's where that came in. ReactOS didn't fully start for him when he burned it to a DVD and tried to boot that DVD, but that isn't surprising considering that ReactOS has not even reached beta status yet. If he switched to a USB flash drive instead of a DVD he potentially could get ReactOS to start up fully, but it would make more sense for him to put a Lite FreeDOS 1.2 on there, his BIOS image, and the bios programming executable. I'm surprised that he can't use DOSBOX directly on Kubuntu so he doesn't have to worry about creating any removable media at all. He has a laptop that has a true BIOS, so I would think that DOSBOX would allow him to run the BIOS update program and reprogram it trivially. It would be safer of course for him to have a usb flash drive set up and boot from it to do this. I hope he doesn't make any major mistakes struggling to update his BIOS, backups are key when you are trying to do this and having trouble. Would it be easier via DOSBOX to format a USB flash drive so it can boot freedos complete with the BIOS image and the BIOS programmer? I'm thinking, get poor Stephano away from needing to use dd and worry about isos and all that jazz... He should simply be able to do a: format /s a: ; copy bios.img a: ; cp programmer.exe a: Of course, bios.img and programmer.exe need to replaced with the actual file names. The complexity is hidden, you must set up DOSBOX correctly before it becomes this easy. -From: "Eric Auer" To: freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net Cc: Sent: Friday April 9 2021 10:06:50AM Subject: Re: [Freedos-user] Using a USB stick and an optical drive Hi! I do not understand where Windows and ReactOS are getting into the equation here. If you have Linux, you can search in your software center whether you find an app to install BIOS updates. If you have some DOS tool for that, you should run DOS for the tool, not Windows. As your update is more than what fits on a floppy, you can check whether the actual update is smaller. Your file could be some sort of archive. Some BIOS even are able to install updates from files on USB sticks etc. when you find the right menu item. Read the manual :-) http://freedos.org/download/ [1] explicitly offers DIFFERENT downloads for CD/DVD and for USB. Obviously it is easier to use the USB version if you want to run DOS from USB. The "Lite" FreeDOS 1.2 for USB contains an IMG file which you can simply "dd if=FD12LITE.img of=/dev/yourusbstick" (yourusbstick = the device name of the stick) which is unfortunately not explained in the README.md text file. According to the vmdk file in the download, the image has 62 x 16 x 63 DBB geometry at 512 byte per sector: 32 MB decimal or 30.5 MB in powers of 2, at 503 x 2 x 63 CHS. As the image starts with a partition table, you do not use it as partition image, but install it on the whole USB stick, overwriting any existing contents. The FAT16 partition on the stick (note that not all sticks can be booted at all!) has only 112 kB free. You may use gparted to resize it (but keep it FAT16, or it will not boot) or simply delete some files you do not need, for example /FDSETUP/PACKAGES/UTIL/4DOS.ZIP which frees up 4 MB for your BIOS update files and tools :-) You could also take the SOURCE/FREECOM/SOURCES.ZIP out of the COMMAND.ZIP in /FDSETUP/PACKAGES/BASE/ to save more than 4 MB again. *I think it would be better if the USB installer would* *use a much larger image padded with 96 MB empty space* It is very hard to find USB sticks smaller than 128 MB today and it makes life a lot easier if people can add things to the installer without having to resize it :-) ZIP download size will still be only 30 MB nevertheless. In any case, after you install the USB installer image to your USB stick of any size, it will initially look as if you have a 32 MB stick and you can delete 4DOS to make some space for your BIOS update tools and files. You do not need gparted for that and you do not need external floppy drives, CD drives or DVD drives either. Your 32/64 bit issue seems harmless: Your 64 bit Linux still supports 32 bit apps. You can use either style. Regards, Eric PS: Note that USB 1 is horribly slow, so you will need some patience. Even if you have USB 2 ports, your BIOS may use USB 1 access mode when you boot from USB stick. In that case, CD/DVD would be faster, but you need other tools to change the contents of ISO before burning them. ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user /> Links: -- [1] http://freedos.org/download/ ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
Re: [Freedos-user] Using a USB stick and an optical drive
I would definitely try booting the ReactOS Live image a flash drive instead of a DVD. Longer term, you may want to install vmware player, free by the way, and grab the vmware image for it from the ReactOS web site. You and I both Stefano are overly dependent on Virtualbox which is not very usable these days and hardly the best option if you are trying to run any DOS based system. Oracle officially dropped support a while back for Windows 98SE and Windows Millenium. If all you want to run is some kind of DOS and you don't need Windows at all, please study DOSBOX and maybe look into WINE as well. I am going to do some research into Kubuntu now to try and help you better if you still need help getting the BIOS updated ;-) -From: "Stephanos" To: freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net Cc: Sent: Friday April 9 2021 8:31:31AM Subject: Re: [Freedos-user] Using a USB stick and an optical drive Blimey you two, I have been bombarded with lots of info and questions. Here goes: Full spec of laptop here: https://www.comx-computers.co.za/laptop-specification-sheet.php?laptop=40065 /> I have used ReactOS in a virtual environment. So I have downloaded the live CD ISO burnt it to a DVD and booted from it. It got far into the process but is stuck at "Installing devices". This looked promising. If it had booted all the way to desktop I was going to insert the memory stick onto which I had copied the BIOS upgrade programme. But alas, alack it is not to be. As a best guess would putting ReactOS onto a memory stick overcome this problem? Before I progress to Liam's options is there any other option you can think of. Thanks and wait to hear Stephanos On 09/04/2021 13:39, Michael Christopher Robinson wrote: > Ditch the memory stick even if you can do this from inside DOSBOX > directly on top of Linux. It's worth a shot even if you have to swap in > MS-DOS 6.22 temporarily or Windows 98SE DOS prompt temporarily in > DOSBOX. If you can do this from within DOSBOX, you don't have to go get > any media you may not already have and you avoid burning a CD-R as well. > > Please ignore Liam, he obviously has an issue with me. If you need an > equivalent to Windows XP that is completely legal to use but not yet a > Beta, ReactOS is having memory management problems still, you may need a > ReactOS LiveCD ISO image and you probably do NOT need to burn the ISO to > a CD at all. You can use a USB flash drive or you can absolutely use a > CD-R, if you want to. The ReactOS web site has information on how to > put an image on either a CD-R or a Flash drive. > > You may need a program called Rufus for a Windows environment to put a > ReactOS live CD image on a flash drive. I also recommend > Deepburner1.exe if you need it, which is free as long as you don't use > the pro version. For that matter, use your favorite open source burning > program on the Linux system you have on that laptop and you definitely > want to use the burner in that laptop so that the CD reads in that laptop. > > http://www.reactos.org [1] > > You probably don't need anything other than a FreeDOS 1.0 boot disk > image to get your update done, that much is true. I wouldn't go that > old and I wouldn't rule out doing this from DOSBOX directly on top of > Linux either. This old DELL has a real BIOS, so I would highly suspect > that you can update it from inside DOSBOX runing on top of Linux. I > recommend that you try FreeDOS 1.1 or FreeDOS 1.2 first in DOSBOX. > > As far as can you emulate on this latop without dedicated emulation > hardware, you can use VMWARE workstation version 5 or earlier. You > might be able to use QEMU. Maybe Bochs will work. Note that you should > be able to grab a VMWARE image from ReactOS.org saving you from needing > to have a VMWARE workstation license for an ancient version of VMWARE > which costs money. I am overly dependent on VirtualBox myself. > > > ___ > Freedos-user mailing list > Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user /> > ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user /> Links: -- [1] http://www.reactos.org ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Using a USB stick and an optical drive
Got it, some end of the 32 bit era early 64 bit era laptop is what you have then. Interesting. Kubuntu 18.04, that is very current. It's okay if you don't have Zip or LS120 handy, I wouldn't go get one. So you have an external and internal CD burner that works, and I imagine you have some media as well. I would burn a FreeDOS 1.3 live image and add the bios image and the program to write it with as well to it if you can edit the iso prior to burning it. Possibly put the programmer and the bios image you want on a CD-R and not worry about that CD being bootable. Burn another CD-R with the FreeDOS 1.3 RC3 live image. You can obviously look at going older than 1.3 too. Even 1.0 will probably be sufficient. The advantage since you have CD-R's of not trying to use a flash drive is that FreeDOS doesn't support USB anything terribly well yet. You may be able to put the FreeDOS boot image on a flash drive trivially since you really don't care about access if the image and the programmer are on a CD where you have an internal one that FreeDOS hopefully supports. ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Using a USB stick and an optical drive
A couple of questions, what model DELL laptop are you trying to update the BIOS on? What level of Windows or even MSDOS for that matter was the laptop originally designed to run? Clearly, this laptop has some USB so I'm guessing those are probably two USB 1.1 ports and I'm thinking the laptop is some kind of Pentium I. Do you by chance have one of those ancient Zip100 drives and a readable Zip 50 or Zip 100 disk? You would need the USB and not the parallel port model most likely and I know for a fact that if you use the guest.exe program in any DOS environment including FreeDOS 1.3 that you can get what you need done using any external zip drive even if it's a USB one. If you have any external LS120 drive and at least one good 1.44MB floppy disk or LS120 disk that will write, you can use that as well and I'd say IMHO that LS120 drives are far better to have around than Zip drives because they can read and write 1.44MB high density floppies whereas Zip drives can't read any standard floppy and a Zip 750 cannot work with Zip 50, 100, or 250 disks except if you are lucky you might be able to read them. ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Using a USB stick and an optical drive
Ditch the memory stick even if you can do this from inside DOSBOX directly on top of Linux. It's worth a shot even if you have to swap in MS-DOS 6.22 temporarily or Windows 98SE DOS prompt temporarily in DOSBOX. If you can do this from within DOSBOX, you don't have to go get any media you may not already have and you avoid burning a CD-R as well. Please ignore Liam, he obviously has an issue with me. If you need an equivalent to Windows XP that is completely legal to use but not yet a Beta, ReactOS is having memory management problems still, you may need a ReactOS LiveCD ISO image and you probably do NOT need to burn the ISO to a CD at all. You can use a USB flash drive or you can absolutely use a CD-R, if you want to. The ReactOS web site has information on how to put an image on either a CD-R or a Flash drive. You may need a program called Rufus for a Windows environment to put a ReactOS live CD image on a flash drive. I also recommend Deepburner1.exe if you need it, which is free as long as you don't use the pro version. For that matter, use your favorite open source burning program on the Linux system you have on that laptop and you definitely want to use the burner in that laptop so that the CD reads in that laptop. http://www.reactos.org You probably don't need anything other than a FreeDOS 1.0 boot disk image to get your update done, that much is true. I wouldn't go that old and I wouldn't rule out doing this from DOSBOX directly on top of Linux either. This old DELL has a real BIOS, so I would highly suspect that you can update it from inside DOSBOX runing on top of Linux. I recommend that you try FreeDOS 1.1 or FreeDOS 1.2 first in DOSBOX. As far as can you emulate on this latop without dedicated emulation hardware, you can use VMWARE workstation version 5 or earlier. You might be able to use QEMU. Maybe Bochs will work. Note that you should be able to grab a VMWARE image from ReactOS.org saving you from needing to have a VMWARE workstation license for an ancient version of VMWARE which costs money. I am overly dependent on VirtualBox myself. ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Using a USB stick and an optical drive
Is your laptop SATA based internally or EIDE based? If you are EIDE based, you are actually in great shape. All is not lost either if you aren't EIDE based. Can you get away with something like a ReactOS 0.4.13 live CD to sort of give you Windows long enough to run the EXE and upgrade your BIOS? Barring that, you might be able to use a USB floppy drive, though probably this isn't recommended over just using a USB thumb drive or an external CF card adapter through a USB port. Burning a CD-R is probably your best option here where a Linux system should work just fine for that. Has DELL ever considered supporting through the BIOS directly a way to read an image and update it without even introducing an OS on this old laptop? Most modern motherboards support OS'less updating of the firmware, there isn't BIOS anymore, but it sounds like your old Dell is old enough that it doesn't. The lack of virtualization capability suggests you might be running a 32 bit processor and possibly not even a multi core one, which sounds really cool honestly! I totally sense that Jim and others are under evaluating the value of older hardware and I am concerned that there isn't enough emphasis on dual tracking FreeDOS so that you can deploy it equally well on an 8086, 286, or 386 processor as you can on an AMD Athlon FX Black 8350 8 core processor or an i5/i7/i9 processor for that matter. It's the motherboard and the lack of BIOS on it that gets people in trouble the most these days. That, and there isn't a solid open source hypervisor to make a modern PC look more ancient so that FreeDOS will trivially run on it. BIOS can be faked after all. Worst case scenario, it sounds like DELL is expecting you to be running Windows 2000 Professional at most where you can temporarily run that illegally without having to worry about activation. Just don't keep it around for very long and avoid networking it. I cannot provide a link to download Windows 2000 Professional here, but even Windows 98SE might work where you may just need a 98se boot disk which can be burned to a CD-R with your bios update program and the update added to it. Does the EXE file require Win16, Win32K, or something newer than that from Windows NT? If it requires MSDOS only, you don't need Windows at all where you should be able to illegally run MSDOS 6.22 long enough to get your laptop updates. I wonder if DOSBOX can be used to bypass the fact that you can't run FreeDOS natively on this laptop? Can BIOS updates be done from within DOSBOX running on top of Linux? -From: "Stephanos" To: freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net Cc: Sent: Friday April 9 2021 6:22:06AM Subject: [Freedos-user] Using a USB stick and an optical drive Dear All I have an unusual situation. My Dell laptop has Linux on it, I want to use VirtuaBox (a tool I have used many times before on other laptops and PCs) but the BIOS does not support Virtualisation. An upgrade to the BIOS might so I want to upgrade the BIOS. Dell supply the BIOS upgrade in the form of an .EXE file. If I had Windows on the laptop I could just execute the file and follow instructions, says Dell. The laptop does not have a floppy drive. It has two USB ports and an optical drive. Using my PC I am intending to do the following: 1) Download one of the ISO files 2) Make a CD bootable 3) Write my BIOS upgrade file to the memory stick Then insert the CD into the laptop and a) boot the laptop into DOS b) Insert the memory stick and navigate to the memory stick (by trying all the drive letters possible: A:, B: C: D: etc) c) Execute the BIOS upgrade file d) Pray I know how to use a burning programme to burn an ISO onto a disc and so make the disc bootable So, can it be done with one of those ISO files you have on your website, and if so, which one? Thanks and wait to hear Stephanos, London, UK ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user /> ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] GNU General Public License...
I'm sorry Ralf, when did I actively characterize Richard Stallman alone as God's gift to the problem of software monopolies and hardware monopolies etcetera? That doesn't seem to be a respectful thing to push concerning Richard Stallman and what about other people in the open source movement for that matter some of whom he works with? As far as stringing conspiracy theories together, which ones are you referring to as I find this to be a curious and interesting comment? I could be deeply offended, but if Covid 19 has taught me anything it has taught me that we need to be open minded and patient with one another. The lack of hope too many of us are fighting thanks to this stupid virus not being under control and we are not vaccinated against it yet creates a challenge to think about: patience, prayer, and openness to one another. Now is a good time to solve problems in concert with other people instead of creating more problems that won't get fixed :-) Furthermore concerning Stallman, I've never met him myself where I think we all need to take it easy when we are tempted to say things about someone we haven't met. Jim Hall of course has met Richard Stallman, but I see Jim that you are very conservative in what you say despite having some very reasonable concerns about the man. Concern is better than a lot of other things, concern can be positive and useful. I can be a part of a healthy conversation, otherwise I have to respectfully withdraw. -From: "Ralf Quint" To: freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net Cc: Sent: Thursday April 8 2021 10:52:15AM Subject: Re: [Freedos-user] GNU General Public License.. On 4/8/2021 4:40 AM, TK Chia wrote: > Hello Michael, > >> The license MUST be viral. Folks, anyone who complains about it being >> viral doesn't understand it at all. Google is a monopoly. Google > > Sorry, but the arguments you make do not even begin to make any sense at > all. > > You are basically just stringing a lot of baseless conspiracy theories > together, and saying that Mr. Stallman is the only way to defeat this > Vast Conspiracy(tm), because reasons. > > And I do not agree with that --- because none of that makes any sense. > > Good day. +1 -- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus /> ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user /> ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] GNU General Public License...
The license MUST be viral. Folks, anyone who complains about it being viral doesn't understand it at all. Google is a monopoly. Google doesn't like the GPL because Google wants to lock up Android and data mine everyone on the planet. How is your free gmail account after all? You have no privacy with google gmail etcetera because it makes money off of marketing primarily instead of software. Google I've heard has broken openssl in the past, because they want to mine data and what better way to mine data than to put a back door into the popular open source encryption library that ssh depends on? The bigest problem I see for ALL open source licenses is that there we have a monopoly called Microsoft and another one called Google. Google has long had the reputation of being the company to go to to learn about Linux. I wouldn't go to google anymore for that. How about Duck Duck Go? ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Richard Stallman concerns...
On Thu, Apr 1, 2021 at 2:54 AM Michael Christopher Robinson < michae...@charter.net> wrote: > First off, I think too much has been said and a lot of it is troubling. > Partially and undeniably because Richard Stallman is a hard person for many > folks to relate to. I've never met him, but I've known for a long time > that he has a really bad reputation as an anti social individual. I've > known about his bad reputation since before January 1, 2000. I am > concerned that nobody posting on this list should purposely insult anyone > else posting on this list or even someone off list as if that is an > acceptable thing to do. I must definitely ask, what if Richard Stallman > has been posting on this list and has been in these discussions? Should > anything you post on this list about Richard Stallman be anything you > wouldn't say to his face, especially if you have been unknowingly > indirectly communicating with him through this list? If everyone wants > Richard Stallman to be less anti social, then we all need to avoid directly > telling Richard Stallman in an unhelpful way that he is anti social. If he > is using an alias and posting to this list, he is in these discussions and > he is potentially reading them. Shouldn't everyone who is concerned about > Richard Stallman want him to become less anti social and shouldn't we all > be open to encouraging Richard Stallman to be less anti social? Instead of > supporting this idea that Stallman is a huge jerk etcetera by echoing it > myself, I don't want the group conversation anywhere on any mailing list or > beyond mailing lists even to be against any person let alone in a tone that > wouldn't help that person do better if they need to. The problem with > calling anyone a bully on an email list is that the "bully" might see that > and become more of a bully because of it. The goal of a group of concerned > people about another specific person should always be to encourage that > person to personally improve in the area of legitimate concern. The group > cannot force this person to change, especially if the group is wrong that > the person even should change this personal aspect of him/herself. Tyranny > of the majority is never a good thing, neither is Richard Stallman's > reputation as an anti social individual. This tyranny of the majority > problem by the way is why the President of the United States is supposed to > be elected by the electoral college and NOT democratically. The states > indeed only elect electors to the electoral college. Still matters how > legitimate the votes in that state are, but the POTUS is not elected by the > people directly and never has been. > Re: TYRANNY versus LIBERTY. For the republic, if we can keep it. Yes, in theory. That's only as good as the folks who are actually appointed to uphold said BoR, etc. As they say, " people is policy." Do we still have that republic? And I do not mean the 'R' after a politician's name. If we can keep it; which I'm afraid we've been poor stewards indeed at keeping anything resembling the republic. It's the reason why Trump, for instance, could claim "take the guns first then due process", or "involuntary confinement", or "gotta get their shots", and a whole litany of 170 betrayals of his campaign promises. Just another cog in the wheel that's turning over the republic today. But... I digress, sir. __ > Freedos-user mailing list > Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user > ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] Richard Stallman concerns...
First off, I think too much has been said and a lot of it is troubling. Partially and undeniably because Richard Stallman is a hard person for many folks to relate to. I've never met him, but I've known for a long time that he has a really bad reputation as an anti social individual. I've known about his bad reputation since before January 1, 2000. I am concerned that nobody posting on this list should purposely insult anyone else posting on this list or even someone off list as if that is an acceptable thing to do. I must definitely ask, what if Richard Stallman has been posting on this list and has been in these discussions? Should anything you post on this list about Richard Stallman be anything you wouldn't say to his face, especially if you have been unknowingly indirectly communicating with him through this list? If everyone wants Richard Stallman to be less anti social, then we all need to avoid directly telling Richard Stallman in an unhelpful way that he is anti social. If he is using an alias and posting to this list, he is in these discussions and he is potentially reading them. Shouldn't everyone who is concerned about Richard Stallman want him to become less anti social and shouldn't we all be open to encouraging Richard Stallman to be less anti social? Instead of supporting this idea that Stallman is a huge jerk etcetera by echoing it myself, I don't want the group conversation anywhere on any mailing list or beyond mailing lists even to be against any person let alone in a tone that wouldn't help that person do better if they need to. The problem with calling anyone a bully on an email list is that the "bully" might see that and become more of a bully because of it. The goal of a group of concerned people about another specific person should always be to encourage that person to personally improve in the area of legitimate concern. The group cannot force this person to change, especially if the group is wrong that the person even should change this personal aspect of him/herself. Tyranny of the majority is never a good thing, neither is Richard Stallman's reputation as an anti social individual. This tyranny of the majority problem by the way is why the President of the United States is supposed to be elected by the electoral college and NOT democratically. The states indeed only elect electors to the electoral college. Still matters how legitimate the votes in that state are, but the POTUS is not elected by the people directly and never has been. ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] FSF
Jim, Stallman is clearly a hard person to get along with. Part of the reason is that Microsoft has been a monopoly for so long that the GPL was the only way anyone could have a personal computer run something not MS-DOS and not Windows NT in a realistic sense that they don't have to buy a license for. Until Microsoft isn't a monopoly, Stallman almost has to be the way he is and can hardly change at all. Realize in the 90s that people who wanted a PC regardless of whether or not they wanted to run a Microsoft OS at all on it had to pay for a Windows 9x license. Even today, where is NT lite from Microsoft? Why can't any of us run 32 bit Windows XP without having to activate it today? Windows 2000 Professional doesn't have to be activated, but that isn't even open and should not be used without a license either where Microsoft won't let you buy one from them for it at any price. Microsoft Windows 10 Pro 64 bit is too expensive at ~$200 for a retail copy. I don't appreciate Microsoft doing away with keys on top of forcing activation and the OS potentially not working unless it can hook to the Microsoft Cloud and verify that you are still allowed to use it. This is terribly abusive along with requiring activation in the first place. When ReactOS is stable, anybody who needs Windows NT won't have to rent Windows from Microsoft anymore where that is obviously Microsoft's opinion of what you will have to do in the near future to have Windows NT on your computer period. All dos based Microsoft Windows versions and even Windows Millenium are available online for free where museums are taking the huge risk of being prosecuted by Microsoft for giving it away for free with all the keys. Your freedos is extremely valuable and extremely important and it is both needed and wanted. FSF should give a fork of Freedos 1.3 the proper label if that fork is made for the right reasons and given the proper limitations. A fork needs to be done and Freedos 1.3 needs to be fully released as planned. The fork of Freedos 1.3 needs to have IDE and floppy support removed completely from the kernel. This fork has to target modern PCs that do not have a BIOS and it cannot support any proprietary software, but there isn't any proprietary dos software that requires a modern computer without a bios to run anyways. For DOS to live any longer and have any relevance in 2021, we need to bring it to modern hardware. The simplest way to bring FreeDOS to modern hardware is to make a fork that will run syslinux as a superior alternative to grub2 on an EFI computer without a bios. Grub2 royally sucks IMO. Part of the reason grub sucks is that it started out as a bootloader for every imaginable PC OS including Windows NT that works with BIOS. Grub2 is nothing like Grub1 because Grub1 requires you to have a BIOS to work where Grub2 doesn't expect you to have a BIOS at all. EFI is extremely controversial for people who primarily want to run open source operating systems like Linux and who don't want or need to run any closed source software. Sadly, secure boot which is tightly tied to EFI is primarily a Microsoft thing. The open source software world needs to deal with secure boot adequately and permanently. There is a need to stop Microsoft from controlling what a personal computer is and what people can have on their personal computer. Microsoft still has too much control evidenced by the fact that Windows 9x is not open, not free, and there is no free version of Windows NT either from Microsoft despite Microsoft's promise that there would be before Windows XP debuted. Windows 10 is still Windows NT in a lot of ways. Microsoft won't allow anyone to legally use a closed source copy of Windows NT 32 bit without purchasing a license from them. Microsoft won't let you buy a license for 32 bit NT, not even Windows Vista. You should never have to buy 32 bit Windows NT period to use it legally with Microsoft hating it so much these days. Microsoft even hates Windows 7 64 bit already. Most people want to use 32 bit Windows NT when Linux won't cut it. Increasingly, that won't be a problem anymore because of ReactOS, but we aren't quite there yet. ReactOS by the way in VirtualBox on CentOS 8 is stable enough that you can play Warcraft II Battle.Net edition all the way through no problem. You will notice color issues and the map editor isn't usable yet, but the game is playable already. This is the first time I'm aware of that any Windows game that Freedos isn't good enough for can be played legally without having a valid Windows NT or Windows 9x license and you don't have to play it in Linux using WINE either. The ReactOS project was going to provide a free Windows 95, but they decided that that cannot be accomplished. When ReactOS stabilizes fully, maybe the Win32k subsystem can be ported to FreeDOS and we can have a true drop in replacement for Windows 98SE on top of FreeDOS. For that matter, there isn't even an open source drop in replacement for
Re: [Freedos-user] FSF
RMS stepped in it there, didn't he? Oops. On Mon, Mar 29, 2021 at 3:40 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 > > > > ___ > Freedos-user mailing list > Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user > ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Spaghetti
On Wed, Jan 27, 2021 at 12:59 PM Bryan Kilgallin wrote: > I have been editing the OpenGEM code. It's a dog's breakfast! First it > assumes that I didn't put the OpenGEM directory where I did. Then it > cross-references jumps between batch files in an opaque way. And the > writes to screen do not say where you are in this maze! > > Please would coders allow for future maintenance of their works. > I can sympathize, and relate. If it were not also a time honored tradition, it seems, throughout the industry [to produce dog food...]. -- > members.iinet.net.au/~kilgallin/ > > > ___ > Freedos-user mailing list > Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user > ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Modern add-ons for ancient PC
One important note - buyer beware. Most of these are open source projects. And in a lot of cases people are taking the designs and not providing credit to the original designers, or making design changes that the original designers have quality concerns about. Monotech was one of those. ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Modern add-ons for ancient PC
The retrocomputing crowd has a lot of these projects now, and they generally work. Most are based on open source designs so the quality will vary from vendor to vendor. The 8 bit IDE cards for example are based on a project called XT-IDE that I was part of back in 2008/2009. (See the genesis of the project at http://www.vcfed.org/forum/showthread.php?12359-8-Bit-IDE-Controller . The original version of the card had the traces optimized on my work laptop while it was idling.) If I were buying an XT-IDE I would be getting it from https://www.glitchwrks.com/xt-ide. I haven't purchased any of the recent variants; all mine are gen 1 from the first production run. And I've not tried out memory boards but they are generally known to work; they are not particularly complicated. Mike On Thu, Oct 1, 2020 at 4:34 AM Eric Auer wrote: > > Hi! Mentioned in a video mentioned by Rugxulo on BTTR, > I noticed that there is a shop where you can get some > circuit boards to do-it-yourself 8-bit ISA extension > cards for your ancient computers for features such as > more RAM, IDE or Compact Flash interfaces or even USB > interfaces which are bootable. Interesting technical > detail: They use EEPROMS which you can program without > using a programmer, just with magic write sequences. > > Has anybody tried any of those products? Are they okay > for the task at hand? Note that the shop usually has > only the PCB, not the pre-built devices, so you have > to get the components elsewhere and solder yourself in > most cases. They also have a few ready to use products. > > https://www.lo-tech.co.uk/product-category/retro-ibm-pc/ > > Cheers, Eric > > > > ___ > Freedos-user mailing list > Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user > ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Some networking present
Thanks for the dictionary definition, but I think you missed the point here. mTCP != WATTCP, and I have no interest in WATTCP. WATTCP is a library and a set of programs from many contributors while mTCP is all my work. Being compatible with something that I originally had no knowledge of an no interest in is not a reasonable expectation. Except for the 32 bit version I generally find the WATTCP based apps to be horribly out of date and wildy varying in quality, which is why I keep writing my own versions. Others have provided small utilities to let WATTCP apps use the mTCP DHCP program. I think that is a reasonable solution given the history. On a more positive note (which I think we all need) reinventing the wheel is fun. Competition is part of a healthy ecosystem. We're all scratching some sort of itch by continuing to use DOS and do retro programming. Next up for mTCP - IPv6, a lighter/smaller web server, and a Telnet BBS. The Telnet BBS was the actual origins of the whole project; I wrote my Netcat, Telnet client and FTP client as proofs of concept that got a bit out of hand. One day I'm going to get back to the BBS, which exists but needs to be rewritten - I've learned a lot in the last 10 years. I'm also thinking about a network drive for DOS. EtherFlop is intriguing but I really want to go with something over UDP so that it is routable on a network and can be hosted on the server side by a Windows or a Linux machine. While my x86 assembly language is reasonable in small doses I'm still working my way up to TSRs, which are a lot harder to debug than the C programs I've been writing. (And I might not go the TSR route. A shell would be fine except for the extra memory consumption.) -Mike ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Some networking present
"Exotic" is a strange word ... WATTCP uses its own configuration file, mTCP uses its own configuration file. I knew about Trumpet when I started mTCP but not WATTCP. After WATTCP came to my attentioned I looked at it and determined that I would continue to do my own thing. You did write picoSNTP even though SNTP clients already exist, right? Isn't this another example of a wheel being reinvented? On Sun, Sep 6, 2020 at 9:44 AM Mateusz Viste wrote: > On 06/09/2020 17:03, ZB wrote: > > Gopherus works (although still it wants to configure network, that > already > > has been configured using mTCP's DHCP; so it seems Gopherus doesn't do > any > > detection "do I already have network acccessibler?" at all), > > mTCP is kind of an exotic piece of software - its networking > configuration works only with the tools that are supplied with the mTCP > package. > > Back in the day, the usual way to interact with IP/Ethernet networking > was to rely on the Wattcp library (later forked as Watt-32). Watt-32 > uses its own configuration file, so you'd have to set it up first for > being able to use Wattcp/Watt-32 based tools (or rely on DHCP, which is > the default fallback if no config file is found). I can only wonder why > Michael didn't make his software compatible with the Wattcp > configuration file instead of reinventing the wheel. > > > So both programs seem to dislike Trumpet TCP (different API?) > > Trumpet is a networking TSR, while Wattcp, Watt-32 and mTCP are > libraries embedded into the executable. Completely different approaches. > > Mateusz > > > ___ > Freedos-user mailing list > Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user > ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Save the date!
Sounds really cool, but I'm doing a conference with the Linux Foundation starting the 29th... Shucks! -- Michael C. Robinson http://lily.robinson-west.com/michael June 17, 2020 6:54 PM, "Jim Hall" mailto:jh...@freedos.org?to=%22Jim%20Hall%22%20)> wrote: The FreeDOS 26th anniversary is coming up on June 29. I'd like to do something to recognize the date, and it occurs to me that I've only met a few of you in person. So let's do a virtual get-together to celebrate FreeDOS! Keep your calendar open for Monday, June 29 at 9am US/Central. Keep an eye on the FreeDOS website front page (you may need to refresh) and I'll post a link at that time to a video meeting for the hour. My video meeting service (BlueJeans) has a capacity of 75 so join as soon as you can. :-) It will be great to finally meet you face to face! (I'm doing a similar thing for Patreon the day before. But I wanted to get together with everyone.) ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] SATA...
June 1, 2020 10:59 AM, "Eric Auer" wrote: > Michael, > >> Booted the Freedos 1.3 RC3 live cd and the SATA I works!!! > > Glad to hear that but... > >> Windows XP is the only supported system > > Officially yes, but as long as it works, it works. > Even when you illegally run Linux or FreeDOS :-)) > >> I cannot run XP because of HAL and special hardware connected with QSoft > > Then you can run XP, but not QSoft, correct? > >> QSoft directly tries to reach the special hardware, a shared >> ram card, which HAL will not allow. > > I remember similar problems with dongles. Unless > QSoft provides drivers... > >> Only Windows on top of a DOS kernel can allow direct access > > You know that Windows 98 does not run in FreeDOS, > you would have to use FreeDOS with HX RT, Wine, > ReactOS, Linux or similar if QSoft needs Windows. > > Does QSoft need Windows? Exactly. You can run it in a so called offline mode in Windows XP, but Windows 98SE is required. >> The system this board would go into is a Win9x/MSDOS >> system made up of two computers. > > But you claim neither Win9x nor MS DOS runs on the Evoc? Officially, they don't. Unofficially, if you stay away from the SATA and not having a real floppy controller is not an issue you can run these operating systems. >> SATA I where there are two connecters on the SBC simply >> does not work in MS-DOS or WIN9x period. > > This has zero relevance for FreeDOS, why do you insist > on mentioning what certain Microsoft products can or > can not do? Until I can replace them with Freedos, seems relevant to me. It's called I want a freedos that can do X. I just verified that Windows 98SE will not boot with the SATA I controller enabled... It's possible that an open source driver could be made for Windows 98SE to support SATA. In the meantime, I may want to adapt the SATA DVD drive and plug it into one of the PATA controllers. >> If freedos works with this SATA I controller, > > As long as the controller is not locked to AHCI mode, > it works. As you have already found out today :-)) > >> that makes supporting a SATA DVD burner much easier > > Do you want to BURN DVD or just READ them? Is it okay > to use only ISO9660 or do you also need UDF format? I just want to support CD's and honestly being able to boot from CD is a work around for not having a real floppy controller. > Burning DVD and using UDF are more complicated, but > some DOS enthousiasts do take the effort to do that. I just need to burn to CD an image of the QSoft install disk for a DOS environment. QSoft runs in Windows 98se and MSDOS 6.22, the dos side being a real time system. In theory, I can replace MSDOS with FREEDOS as long as I realize there is an expanded memory manager built into QSOFT and am careful to not conflict with it. In practice, I've never tried installing QSOFT to Freedos. >> I want to try is substituting MSDOS 6.22 with Freedos 1.3 > If you are confident that you know how to configure > DOS and have backups of your data, you can always try > FreeDOS and MS DOS in parallel. You could even take > the effort to make a dual boot configuration. There > is no need to wait for FreeDOS 1.3 there. > >> Windows 98 SE is not Freedos, but it is the last version >> of Windows that runs on top of a DOS kernel which allows >> booting to a DOS prompt. > > Windows 98 SE runs only on MS DOS 7.10 which is included > when you install Windows 98 SE. You cannot simply tell it > to use another DOS kernel. True. > You CAN use UDVD2 with FreeDOS or with MS DOS 6.22 or 7.10, > but that will only make the DVD drive work for your DOS and > NOT for Windows 98 SE. Because Windows versions newer than > 3.xx rarely use DOS drivers. They need real Windows drivers. > > Regards, Eric Understood. If UDVD2 could be ported to Windows 98SE, that would be very much appreciated by a lot of folks on MSFN. Ideally, I would find a way to run QSoft in a Windows 98SE VM where modern hardware is no issue or I would find a way to make this software work directly in gnome on a Linux box using WINE. I would need a modern passive backplane, one without ISA slots, to support a modern SBC. Unfortunately, the shared ram card is ISA. I could possibly make a PCIe to ISA adapter card... but that's a lot of work. I have little to no experience with KVM where I would have to map the PCIe hardware to a virtual machine in order to use it. MSDOS and Windows 98se think the card (the same card in both systems) is at IRQ 11 and I/O address D 32k reserved. Because of HAL, the GUI head cannot be NT based. With Microsoft dropping support for DOS and Windows 9x and computers changing so dramatically, there are a
Re: [Freedos-user] SATA works!!!
Booted the Freedos 1.3 RC3 live cd and the SATA I works!!! ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] SATA...
Windows XP is the only supported system on the Evoc 1714VNA SBC I'm experimenting with, but I cannot run XP because of HAL and special hardware connected with QSoft... QSoft directly tries to reach the special hardware, a shared ram card, which HAL will not allow. Only Windows on top of a DOS kernel can allow direct access to hardware. The system this board would go into is a Win9x/MSDOS system made up of two computers. As far as I can tell, the SATA I where there are two connecters on the SBC simply does not work in MS-DOS or WIN9x period. If freedos works with this SATA I controller, that makes supporting a SATA DVD burner much easier at least in a dos environment. For the DOS machine that would be a definite plus. One thing I want to try is substituting MSDOS 6.22 with Freedos 1.3 when it's finalized. No guarantee that the former will be close enough to the latter, but getting into a supported system that is tracking modern hardware is a plus. The software to run the Quad QSP2 is still proprietary, but if it runs on an open system that works on modern equipment this will address one issue of keeping these old pick and place machines running. It is getting harder and harder to get Windows 9x era industrial computers let alone ones that have real floppy controllers. Never mind how hard it is to get all the drivers sometimes for a 90s era SBC. Windows 98 SE is not Freedos, but it is the last version of Windows that runs on top of a DOS kernel which allows booting to a DOS prompt. June 1, 2020 10:14 AM, "Eric Auer" wrote: > Hi! FreeDOS is neither Win98 nor WinXP. Just use UDVD2 with > your available settings and tell us which work and which do > not, in the latter case please mention the exact messages. > > Thanks! Eric > >> I have an 865GV ICH5 chipset. There is SATA enhanced mode yes/no and >> that's it in the bios. You can map SATA to primary or secondary IDE, >> but that's all you can do. >> >> I tried saying YES to SATA Enhanced mode and primary for IDE mapping >> SATA to Secondary, didn't work in 98se. I could see about getting a >> PATA DVD RAM drive or even a PATA CD drive or I suppose I could >> trying plugging in a USB drive. > > ___ > Freedos-user mailing list > Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] SATA...
I have an 865GV ICH5 chipset. There is SATA ehanced mode yes/no and that's it in the bios. You can map SATA to primary or secondary IDE, but that's all you can do. I tried saying YES to SATA Enhanced mode and primary for IDE mapping SATA to Secondary, didn't work in 98se. I could see about getting a PATA DVD RAM drive or even a PATA CD drive or I suppose I could trying plugging in a USB drive. June 1, 2020 9:41 AM, "tom ehlert" wrote: >> Or if that fails, disable AHCI in the SATA controller. DOS is fine with >> drives talking in IDE mode. > > for disk drives, your disk should be supported by the BIOS. it usually > is, otherwise it could not boot from it. > > it doesn't matter at all if it's SATA, PATA/IDE, RAID, SCSI, SAS, MFM, RLL > or whatever happened the last 40 years, your disk is supported by the > BIOS, and anyDOS doesn't even care. it's handled by the BIOS in a > transpüarent way. and that's one of the few advantages anyDOS still has today. > > on the other hand, FreeDOS CD/DVD drivers don't handle AHCI mode. > if you plan to boot from disk, then access the CD, disable AHCI. > > Tom > > ___ > Freedos-user mailing list > Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] SATA...
I have an EVOC 1714vna single board computer, Pentium 4 with hyper threading turned off. It has two PATA 100 channels and two SATA I connectors. My DVD RAM drive is SATA I. I run Windows 98SE on this hardware and only when I switch to XP am I able to use the DVD RAM drive. Will Freedos support SATA I in the future? Is there a way to access the SATA I in 98se? If the answer is no, I can use an adapter to convert my SATA ATAPI drive to PATA and connect it to the PATA 100. The ACPI has to be turned off to run 98se sadly, the SATA I also has to be disabled. -- Michael C. Robinson ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS 1.3-RC3
What is the goal for Freedos 1.3 Final? When possibly will the final release come out? May 31, 2020 5:45 PM, "Jerome Shidel" mailto:jer...@shidel.net?to=%22Jerome%20Shidel%22%20)> wrote: FreeDOS 1.3-RC3 is now available for download and testing. https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distributions/1.3/previews/1.3-rc3/ (https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distributions/1.3/previews/1.3-rc3/) Please note, this also includes a slight update to the Floppy Edition that was previewed last week. ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] IDE vs. SATA
Freedos in general is an IDE only system, but why not support SATA I/II/III? No MS-DOS, DR-DOS, etcetera don't support SATA, but why not support it anyways? What are the implications of adding SATA support to the kernel or through a TSR? The obvious workaround is to get a SATA to PATA converter. That's kinda kludgy though. ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Installation Problem Hdd
If GPT is the issue, should a Linux based tool be used to get around that? I'm thinking something like boot nuke or something similar. April 23, 2020 8:16 AM, "Eric Auer" wrote: > Hi! Which tools in which versions did you use? > > For example which FORMAT, FDISK...? Let me start by > saying the choice for MBR was good: GPT partitions > are not visible for DOS. Not sure what the purpose > of that EFI partition is, but it is easily possible > that Windows had a boot loader on the first disk > to boot from the second, affecting both boots. > > You can tell FDISK to install a fresh MBR boot > code, see the command line help of FDISK :-) > Of course you also want to mark the partition as > bootable and for big disks, you probably want to > use FAT32 LBA partitions for FreeDOS. > > Regards, Eric > > ___ > Freedos-user mailing list > Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Installation Problem Hdd
What kind of hard drive did you take out? Was it a serial ATA hard drive or an IDE hard drive? Have you considered trying Freedos 1.3 RC2? Make sure you aren't in AHCI mode? April 23, 2020 7:03 AM, "Ludovico Giorio" mailto:ludovico8...@hotmail.it?to=%22Ludovico%20Giorio%22%20)> wrote: Hello everyone, I'm having a problem installing Freedos 1.1/1.2 on my laptop. The laptop came shipped with a custom Freedos version from Hp, I installed Win10 on a second drive, had some problems and need to return the laptop. I took out the second drive, and the win bootloader was still there. I accessed the Efi partition and erased the windows bootloader, but doing this I must have made some mistake, and now the laptop wont boot in Hp dos too. So, I downloaded Freedos 1.1/1.2, created a bootable usb with it, restarted on usb and accessed the installation prompt. Problem is, installation is stuck in a partitioning loop: after partitioning, the installer starts again anew. I checked, and the installer can only see my usb, not the hdd inside the laptop. Message is:"SETUP wasn't able to locate any disks to install FreeDOS 1.1 from." What am I doing wrong? I enabled legacy support in Bios. I formatted my hdd in Fat. I think that the installer can't see the hd, and don't know why. Is it because of the hdd format (I made it MBR)? Are there some hdd requirement I m not aware of? If someone can help me about this, it would be greatly appreciated. Thank you and good luck for the emergency. ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] fdnpkg and a local mirror...
I have a Linux based gateway, Debian Buster based. It occurs to me that I could run an ftp or http server to serve out freedos locally. How would I point fdnpkg to the local repository? How would I mirror ibiblio without putting too much load on it? ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] WinWorldPC disk images...
I'm on a CentOS 7 system. I downloaded a rar archive of Wordperfect 6.0 dos that is an archive of floppy images. I do not at this time have real floppy support... but I do have zip disks. Is there a way I can mount these images and create one larger image? ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] Overwrite files option...
I'm using fdnpkg to install to a zip disk. I am finding that I have to delete a lot of files because I copied another installation of freedos 1.3 minus the packages and appinfo and source directories... Would be nice if fdnpkg would clobber when it encounters a file it is trying to install. - Michael C. Robinson ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] DOSBOX isn't for everyone...
Just a thought, some of us have old computers that we want to run freedos on. Running Linux on a Pentium 4 and trying to run Dosbox on top of that is going to be pretty have for that machine. Some people aren't grabbing a multi core modern computer when they use freedos. Some of us want to use old computers, 386 anyone? Linux won't run on a 286 or XT by the way. Modern Linux distributions, don't expect them to work with less than a 1 Ghz processor with at least 1 gig of ram. Even the popular arm processors that run Linux, Raspberry Pi 3 and Pi 4, run at over 1 ghz. Freedos is an OS that works on any ancient PC including dinosaurs like the veritable 8086. Just saying ;-) -- Michael C. Robinson ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] Freedos cost...
How are the repositories on ibiblio paid for? Freedos is free, and much of the programming work is done on a voluntary basis. Freedos is predominantly open source if not completely so. ReactOS is supported by a company that pays for the infrastructure to host the source code, a web site, some of the programming, etcetera. ReactOS is free to download and under the GPL 100% I believe. Could something similar be done for freedos? Could a person be trained and paid a modest salary to work on memory management for example, in the US $15/hour is modest for programming. I am willing to work on freedos for a low salary and have my code released under the GPL. If I were wealthy, I'd do the work for free. Freedos for a hobbyist project is in incredibly good shape. I would like to see this become an excellent dos, better than MSDOS, and sought after by industry for systems that currently require msdos. Everyone who has worked to make freedos what it is, pat yourselves on the back for a job well done. I want freedos to go further in terms of quality and become the most stable dos on the planet that is the most compatible dos with everything dos that is worth being compatible with. -- Michael C. Robinson ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] fdnpkg.exe - how does it know where to install the packages to?
I think I missed a command.com line in fdauto.bat where it still said C:... and that this is why fdnpkg.exe installed to the C drive. If I'm wrong, why does fdnpkg.exe install to C: when I'm running on a Zip disk mapped to A: by the bios? I'm test installing freedoom to see where it lands... ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS wishlist and feature requests
> I expect the GUI part and the machine part to communicate > over a network, so I hope the GUI is much less hardware > specific. Yet you say ReactOS is no option even there? > You seem to be closely watching the ReactOS progress. > Eric > The Tyco QSP-2 does not use a network like one would typically expect between the real time head and the gui head. It uses a proprietary ISA memory card that exists in both heads and sadly there are ribbon cables that run from the back of one case to the back of the other. A Cat5 network cable between two network cards would be much better, but that's not how Tyco engineered their system. 50 wire ribbon cables. This wasn't the right way to do this even twenty years ago. Even a low voltage differential scsi cable would be better than two proprietary 50 wire cables... There is a tied reset button between the two heads as well, don't ask. I find the tied reset buttons to be especially obnoxious and wrong headed, but that's how the system was designed and fighting it is both time consuming and pointless. Yes, ReactOS will eventually (sooner than later I hope) be a realistic option on an NT based PPM QSP-2. ReactOS will not work on a Tyco QSP-2 because of HAL. Q-Soft written by Tyco goes to an ISA shared memory card directly without going through a driver. In Windows 9x, you can do this. In Windows XP, HAL does not allow this kind of access. XP is more secure than Windows 98se and HAL is a good thing, but without source code to Tyco's Q-Soft it will be hard to impossible to rework Q-Soft so that it will function fully in an NT environment. PPM owns the Tyco QSP-2 and the proprietary software it uses where I doubt that PPM is willing to release the source code to the original Q-Soft for a reasonable price if any. You are correct that the heavily ISA hardware side of a Tyco QSP-2 is getting harder to repair and/or replace these days. The Tyco machine my brother has is currently working, he actually has hardware that works without having to resort to total and crazy re-engineering. If he needs a second machine though or if it becomes impractical to keep the Tyco going because a part that fails is say too expensive to repair or replace... you get the idea. Even if he gets a PPM QSP-2 in the future, he would be well served to replace Windows 7 with something that is open and that will not reach end of life or become unlicensed because Microsoft is convinced that everyone can replace their OS and their computer for that matter every three years. If a computer runs a piece of equipment that is say $3k, buy the comparable piece of equipment with the new OS that is close to the same price. However, if your piece of equipment is worth $30k-$100k or more and comparable machines cost all of that, and replacing the computer alone involves expensive and difficult re-engineering, you can't just replace at that point. If you can for a reasonable cost repair the machine, you do. If you can't repair and replacements aren't available, that's not good for business and getting stuff done. A business can fail because a company cannot repair/replace their capital equipment. Obviously, I don't want my brother's business to fail. Fixing this 20 year old machine till it works has been a painfully long and painfully expensive process, his focus now is understandably getting a circuit into production so he can recoup the repair costs and then some. When he is solidly in the black, he can buy a second machine or replace the unit he has depending on what he needs and what the condition of this machine is in the future. I hope and pray that nothing breaks between now and say 2-3 years from now. > ___ > Freedos-user mailing list > Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] Freedos 1.3 on a zip disk...
I set up a bootable image of Freedos 1.3 on a zip 750mb disk! I did so by copying the FDOS directory without copying the packages directory. Interestingly, I have fdnpkg.exe on the zip disk. Of course fdnpkg.exe checkupdates doesn't work right if there is no packages directory. It would be nice to be able to identify installed programs that were not installed by package and install the package over them. If there's no package for a program that is installed, it would be nice to be able to identify it for removal. This is sort of the reverse of package management. Tell me what's on the system that was not put there by package management, find out if there's a package for it, install the package over it, and flag anything that's left in any directory except perhaps for stuff under directory foo. In my case foo is a directory called XP_PIECES. A poor name choice as there is stuff for Windows 98 and Freedos as well in there. This reverse package management doesn't really really exist in Linux either :-( For anyone who has installed a program to Linux using a tarball instead of an rpm or deb (not Slackware ;-)), you understand what I"m talking about. -- Michael C. Robinson ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS wishlist and feature requests
Q-Soft originally created by Tyco is a real time system targeted at MS-DOS and a GUI system targeted at Windows 98SE/Windows Millenium. PPM owns Q-Soft now and has a Windows 7 replacement and a completely reworked pick and place machine. If you know what surface mount electronics are you are well on your way to understanding what the Quad QSP-2 is. The Tyco machine is 20 year old technology, but the system is worth $30k+. Why are there two computers? Windows 98 is not a real time system and the Tyco real time head uses a ton of ISA cards. Getting SBCs, industrial single board computers, that are 20 years old and in good working condition is neither easy nor cheap these days. Supporting Windows 98se which is abandonware is not easy, and no you can't get the source for 98se nor can you use it without a key. MSDOS 6.22 is closed source, not supported, and you are supposed to use a licensed copy even though you cannot buy one anymore. Microsoft could come after you for using MS-DOS that you didn't purchase from them, same for Windows 98SE. If you have a broken down Tyco QSP-2 and you are rich, go ahead and buy PPM's QSP-2. Thing is, I'm not that impressed with PPM's system and I'm not happy with Windows 7. It's a decent system, but I'd rather run ReactOS when it stabilizes. ReactOS by the way is of no value if you are trying to fix a Tyco QSP-2 and it is stalled in development at the moment. They have 16 or more major blockers to the next release where the next release isn't even a beta. They are hurting in the area of programming a new memory manager. Their memory manager must be completely rewritten and replaced. Few programmers can do this and even fewer of the ones who can if any are working on ReactOS. ReactOS 0.4.13 is heavily delayed, and it's not even going to be a beta that is suitable for everyday use, let alone a pounded out gold release. Freedos could replace MS-DOS for the real time side of a Tyco QSP-2 but without hacking, an NT style Windows will never replace the GUI side of a Tyco QSP-2. ReactOS was Freewin95 at first, but when Microsoft abandoned dos based Windows, the ReactOS project did as well. There are probably more systems than just the Tyco QSP-2 that rely on Windows 9x and MSDOS that are not cheap systems where you cannot simply drop in NT without heavily re-engineering the system. Michael Robinson ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS wishlist and feature requests
Hello: I seem to recall that long filename support could use some work and out of the box Freedos doesn't support them. As far as memory management, any improvements in that area are highly welcome as that is probably the most important foundational improvement that could be made. FAT32 support puts freedos above MS-DOS 6.22. There could be some improvement though. Long filename support needs to be stable, but this isn't what I would call a highest priority issue. There is a lot of work making FAT32 more stable and making sure everything from checkdisk to defrag works with Fat32 volumes. A scandisk clone would be nice. Highest priority is memory management followed by FAT32 support improvements and then improvements to out of the box tools for everything from filesystem tools to something like what MSD provided. And yes, I'm meaning to check out hwinfo. Anti virus is very important, maybe some improvements to clamav are in order. A stretch goal is to make Freedos Windows compatible, at least 3.1 and 3.11. To a certain degree 3.1 works now, but does enhanced mode work and could 3.1/3.11 be replaced by an open source alternative on top of Freedos? I really like FLTK for example and seem to be remember a freedos spin that used FLTK to provide a gui. The system was roughly comparable to Windows 3.1. Given I have the time and the necessary info, I'll port Tyco's Q-Soft to Freedos for the real time system and Linux for the gui ;-) Maybe I can run the program in Linux using WINE, worth a try at least. It would be awesome if open source modern video support existed so you can do higher resolution in say FLTK or Windows 3.x. Start with PCI and then move on to PCI express. A revival of the open source implementation of the IPX protocol would be awesome. It would make a lot of old dos games work and an IPX/IP gateway could be a Linux server where the Linux server could handle security (anti virus squid proxy anyone). -- Michael C. Robinson March 23, 2020 1:33 PM, "Eric Auer" wrote: > Hi Mercury, > >> "Creating packages for FreeDOS software that are not packaged yet." >> >> ... any "top requests" as it were? > > If you ask me: UHDD (only UIDE and UDVD2 listed yet?) and the > new HIMEMX version by Japheth, as discussed here recently :-) > > HIMEMX should get some tests in particular by users of either > ancient or very modern computers and that would get easier if > a package would be available :-) Background: Japheth has added > his own advanced parsing for int 15.e820 results (different > from the old Pemberton fork) and uses a special sequence of > "mov cr0,eax; jz $ + 2", maybe for CPU compatibility reasons. > > Japheth drops int 15.8a calls: Very few old computers worked > better with those calls, but the Pemberton fork failed to do > sufficient checks whether the call actually is supported, so > that forked version was worse for various modern computers. > > Thank you :-) Eric > > ___ > Freedos-user mailing list > Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] Freedos 1.3 RC2...
I found a free packet driver and I'm testing both gopherus and Dillo. Very nice programs. Would be nice to be able to raise the resolution for Dillo. I think I'm limited to 640x480 vga. Dillo doesn't seem to work with my rainloop server ;-( I can report that fdnpkg works though! I don't think long file names are supported out of the box, which would be nice to have since many Fat32 volumes are created under Windows and other systems and they have long filenames. Recall that the support is spotty at best historically. If all the filesystem tools work with Fat32, that would be a massive improvement. My graphics card on the EVOC is an Intel Extreme and is capable of driving my screen to 1920x1080 resolution. This resolution isn't a dos era resolution for certain, but it would be nice to be able to run at the higher resolution. I want to test Freedos as a replacement for MSDOS 6.22 in an embedded system. For two reasons I want to do this: 1) Freedos is not encumbered by licensing restrictions like MS-DOS is. 2) Freedos is actively supported and works better on modern hardware than MS-DOS. One request, MS-DOS 6.22 has a tool called MSD. I like that the tool shows resources and memory and other useful debugging information. If someone can clone that clone that tool I'd be very appreciative. ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] e100pkt.com is nice!
I found it on ibiblio, archive though I think if the loading in low memory problem can be fixed that it should be included as an optional packet driver for other people who have an Intel PRO100VE network card. ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] USB to 34 pin floppy adapter...
The bios supports a USB floppy drive and purportedly it will work in MS-DOS... I've got an adapter coming Monday and will give it a shot under Freedos and XP. I can theoretically if XP will remap the Atapi Zip as A: replace floppies with a zip disk. Can I create an image file in XP and map that as A:? I'm not talking an emulated environment like VirtualBox, just a software floppy so to speak where the image file is on the SSD/hard drive? Then I should be able to rawrite it to a zip disk perhaps. It will be overkill on space, but 100 mb zip disks are cheap and 50mb zip disks are impossible to find. ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] EVOC 1714VNA does not support a real floppy controller...
I appreciate the response. I'm waiting on a usb to floppy adapter and I'll leave my real floppy controller disabled for the time being. Purportedly, USB floppy works in MS-DOS and possibly Freedos as well. It's Windows 98SE that is questionable because if I'm not mistaken Microsoft screwed up the driver. March 21, 2020 1:57 PM, "Ralf Quint" mailto:freedos...@gmail.com?to=%22Ralf%20Quint%22%20)> wrote: On 3/20/2020 6:55 PM, mich...@robinson-west.com (mailto:mich...@robinson-west.com) wrote: As this is an industrial single board computer that's 20 years old, I'm wondering if I can get the source code to the bios?I guess you would have to check with the manufacturer for this. I know, dealing with a company in Shenzen can be a bit tedious, but I also encountered some folks over there who are quite eager to help... Windows XP picks up the floppy controller, it just gets an unrecognized error when I try to format a disk. Freedos 1.3 tries to use the floppy drive, but I cannot format a disk there either getting a DMA overrun error. When you say XP "picks up the floppy controller", what are the resource values shown in the device manager? It could be that the addon card (that's the one that provides the floppy interface, right?, I only got a one page "datasheet" for a EVOC FSC-1714VNA board, which lists only 2 IDE interfaces) is not using the default floppy controller ports, though at least through the IBM-AT and PS/2 models, the IBM BIOS (and probably all Phoenix/Award version of that time) allowed for 4 floppy drives). I also remember to have had problems using a 4 floppy drive setup in a newer (back in the mid '90s) PC because the BIOS dropped the support for the 3rd and 4th drive and we needed to use a special driver, that was intercepting the default BIOS interrupt calls to the floppy drives to deal with those additional floppys on the addon controller board due to the use of a different (set of) I/O port(s)... Ralf (https://www.avast.com/sig-email?utm_medium=email_source=link_campaign=sig-email_content=emailclient_term=icon) Virus-free. www.avast.com (https://www.avast.com/sig-email?utm_medium=email_source=link_campaign=sig-email_content=emailclient_term=link) ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] EVOC 1714VNA does not support a real floppy controller...
March 21, 2020 10:08 AM, mich...@robinson-west.com wrote: > Confirmed that the BIOS has to be set to disable onboard floppy controller, > that is for USB floppy > only. > The floppy drive seeks, but I get: > > Critical error during INT 13 disk access > INT 13 status (hex): 08 > Bits: DMA troubles > Description: DMA overrun > Program terminated. > >> I'm currently setting drive a to high density 1.44m in the bios but >> disabling onboard floppy, since the bios is expecting a usb floppy. >> >> I will try the /D flag and get back to you... > > I will try setting the floppy type to disable in the bios, maybe that will > help... > > -- Michael C. Robinson > > ___ > Freedos-user mailing list > Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user I tried disabling legacy usb support, no difference. The floppy type has to be set in the bios to get anything to happen. I notice that the bios does not allow me to reserve DMA 2 and IRQ 6 for the floppy controller... Yet, one of the USB 2.0 channels tries to take IRQ 6 and presumably DMA 2 for USB floppy. If I could get an updated bios that I could tweak... I could probably fix this. I'm about ready to say that this board isn't freedos or even ms-dos compatible if you need to support booting from 1.44meg floppies. This is only a Pentium 4, one doesn't want to get into heavy emulation just to work around no floppy on such a low spec machine. I understand for Windows 9x that Microsoft screwed up USB floppy support, but there should be a patch. USB floppy may work in XP, but if you can't use the floppy in a dos environment to set up the RTC (Real Time Computer), there's no point. A problem with XP is that HAL masks the ISA bus and there is no driver for the ISA shared memory card. It is known that the memory base is D and that it uses 32k and IRQ 11, but HAL blocks Q-Soft from accessing the card. In theory a driver could be written, but Q-Soft may have to be rewritten to utilize it... which isn't a realistic proposition for a proprietary Windows 9x program. Fixing the floppy support issue isn't an easy problem to solve either. Q-Soft will run in XP, it just will have to be run in offline mode. The utility of running Q-Soft in offline mode is questionable at best. I had as a goal work around the floppy issue, but I'm hitting a wall here. I have a Zip 750 Atapi drive, way overkill when you need to support 1.44m floppies. I don't think 98se or XP though can map a zip atapi as the A: drive where Q-Soft is hard coded to go to A:. My brother has SBCs with real floppy controllers. Maybe we get rid of these EVOC boards. ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] EVOC 1714VNA does not support a real floppy controller...
Confirmed that the BIOS has to be set to disable onboard floppy controller, that is for USB floppy only. The floppy drive seeks, but I get: Critical error during INT 13 disk access INT 13 status (hex): 08 Bits: DMA troubles Description: DMA overrun Program terminated. > I'm currently setting drive a to high density 1.44m in the bios but > disabling onboard floppy, since the bios is expecting a usb floppy. > > I will try the /D flag and get back to you... I will try setting the floppy type to disable in the bios, maybe that will help... -- Michael C. Robinson ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] EVOC 1714VNA does not support a real floppy controller...
March 21, 2020 5:19 AM, "Eric Auer" wrote: > Hi Michael, > > as you say WinXP sees the controller but can not format, > can it at least read existing floppies? Will the drive > spin up when XP tries to access it? Seems to spin up alright, don't think I have any formatted disks though... > About your project to connect either an ISA floppy controller > or directly a classic floppy drive without a controller (I am > not sure which method you imply) to a generic digital I/O card > the BIOSes of various virtual machines etc. are written in C, > so you could look in that direction and patch the port I/O to > the controller into suitable I/O card accesses to write some > custom "BIOS" which you can load as TSR in DOS on hardware :-) > > I suggest to start without DMA and just use PIO with classic > string I/O Assembly operations or even pure C language I/O to > keep things simple while developing. > Or maybe I have misunderstood you and the "digital research > multi I/O card" is what the BIOS of your old computer WANTS > to use for floppy access? Then I wonder why it does not work? Digital Research is a brand of card that happens to be an ISA card with I/O ports, an optional IDE controller, and an optional 34 pin floppy controller. As far as I can tell, the ports which include a game port, 16550C serial ports, and an ECP parallel port work. Not having things to plug into them though I cannot test them... > To debug DMA overrun while formatting, you could actually do > the suitable calls by hand in debug and make sure that none > of the buffers crosses a multiple of 64k linear address wise > but remember that FORMAT already is supposed to make sure to > do that automatically since May 2003. Which version do you > use and which errorlevel and exact error message does it get > with the /D option for debugging? Do other /f:size values work? > > Regards, Eric Thank you, I am using format from the freedos 1.3 live image rc2. I'm currently setting drive a to high density 1.44m in the bios but disabling onboard floppy, since the bios is expecting a usb floppy. I will try the /D flag and get back to you... ___ > Freedos-user mailing list > Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] EVOC 1714VNA does not support a real floppy controller...
I'm talking about the ISA variety via a digital research multi I/O card It does however support USB floppy drives, but I doubt that they work in freedos. I think the problem is the bios, it has to show the correct geometry, etcetera. As this is an industrial single board computer that's 20 years old, I'm wondering if I can get the source code to the bios? Windows XP picks up the floppy controller, it just gets an unrecognized error when I try to format a disk. Freedos 1.3 tries to use the floppy drive, but I cannot format a disk there either getting a DMA overrun error. -- Michael Robinson ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] Zip 750 Atapi and freedos...
Doesn't work in Windows XP without Iomegaware... how about freedos? As freedos is not designed to support USB, USB floppy will not work. Short of getting the source code to the AMI Bios on my EVOC SBC, I'm not going to make a real floppy controller work... What are the implications of creating a TSR to implement USB 1.1 on compatability? Will the old guest program work with the Atapi Zip drive? Pretty clear on old hardware that it is getting hard to get media for disk drives. Most 1.44m floppies are new old stock. If you can't use a modern pc, because it's too different, you cannot use the flash drives that have replaced floppies. I propose an optional USB driver in Freedos. Start with 1.1, move to 2.0, add 3.0, and then add 3.1. With full usb support, any old computer that has USB will work with flash drives obviating the need for floppies on real hardware. Floppies have gone away for the most part. Zip 750 was too little too late. Another thing, I don't know how reliable old zip drives are including the last ones made. I don't know how long there will be support for zip drives, even the end of life higher capacity units. ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] USB floppy saga...
>> I bet Freedos could be in place of MS-DOS if you only use HIMEMX. Q-Soft for the Tyco QSP-2 installs to MS-DOS 5.22 and is a real time system on the DOS side. It installs via actual floppy disk. If you are running the GUI computer (Windows 9x) on say QEMU and emulating the floppy... but that would involve reengineering the system. The real time system for example uses ISA heavily. There are PCI variants of many of the cards where four ISA cards are replaced by say one PCI card, but that would involve reengineering of a 20 year old system. > Which reasons do you have to use MS DOS instead of FreeDOS? > Reasons to use FreeDOS could be to have more free RAM and > the FAT32 support. You can use most FreeDOS drivers together > with MS DOS if you like, too. Q-Soft is available as an executable designed to run on MS-DOS 6.22. May work just fine in Freedos, may not, have not been able to try it because of floppy disk issue. > Floppy drives do not break easily and most have the same > geometry and interface, so finding one might be easier > than finding any supply of still working disks for them. Understood, but I'm pretty sure my Teac USB floppy drive has failed. I fished a disk cover that came off out of it and there could be a smaller part loose still inside the drive. The drive simply does not work now. I doubt that disks that are generally new are suddently all bad let alone that sector 0 is magically unwritable on all of my disks. > Regarding your security concerns, you are right that flash > chips make it hard to securely wipe data due to built-in > distribution of writes to load-balance. You could avoid > the problem by having only encrypted files on the portable > drive. Then destroying the key effectively zaps the data. > DOS versions of infozip at least support some encryption > and you can use other tools such as 7zip for DOS as well. If I run Linux and KVM I can emulate the floppy on a flash drive. Sadly, that won't work well on an old Pentium 4 where it would work much better on say a modern i7. Going from PICMG 1.0 though to PICMG 1.3, forget about the ISA shared memory card. The real time system which is ISA only would have to be completely reconsidered. A Tyco QSP-2 is a 20 year old system now that depends on MS-DOS and Windows 98SE or Windows ME. You don't just replace the two computer heads with one without a lot of reengineering. PPM owns the system now and has reengineered it around Windows 7 and possibly Windows 10... different system with different bugs. Considering that this is a $30k plus piece of equipment for placing small electronic components on a circuit board, surface mount packaging, fixing the old system makes more sense than switching to the newer variant. You can't just upgrade the heads either as computers have changed so much in twenty years. Most people don't even know what a floppy drive is anymore. For the color computer 3 there is a floppy replacement that uses a 2GB flash memory card and stores 360k images on it. That device could be adapted I bet to work with an SBC that has a floppy controller. No emulation needed, direct hardware replacement. As far as DOS is concerned, that is a floppy disk in a floppy drive. In reality, it's flash memory holding multiple disks. > Eric > > ___ > Freedos-user mailing list > Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user Oh, the EVOC board lacks a floppy header. It has 3 USB 2.0 channels and of course it expects you to plug in a USB floppy drive if you need one. Sadly, I don't think Freedos 1.3 RC2 can use a USB floppy drive even on an EVOC supported through some weird AMI BIOS. I tried an ISA multi I/O plus floppy card, but without BIOS support for it I don't think that will work either. I currently have the disable jumper set for the floppy controller. If only I could get the source code for the AMI BIOS on this thing and add support for the ISA floppy controller... ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Can't install FreeDOS
Is the problem not having floppy capability on real hardware? Maybe you have USB but not ATAPI cdrom? Freedos as far as I know does not support USB let alone USB floppy drives. If you don't have IDE or you have an external USB drive such as a DVD burner... that doesn't help you get it installed. Floppy drives are gradually being abandoned and unless you are a pro at fixing them when they break and you have a manufacturer making new floppy disks, not old stock sitting in a warehouse somewhere... What implications does modifying Freedos to support USB floppy drives have? How about using a Zip Atapi or USB drive as a floppy drive? I think BIOS support of floppy alternatives is spotty at best. DOS environments typically expect BIOS to provide floppy support. If you intend to replace floppies with what you have, say a USB floppy drive, you need a software driver for Freedos, MS-DOS, DR-Dos, PC-DOS... ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] USB floppy saga...
I'm working with an EVOC brand SBC on a PICMG 1.0 backplane. I have not been able to get floppy disk support in Freedos 1.3, period. I know USB 1.1 isn't part of the DOS specification that freedos is targeting, but a USB floppy driver is needed since that is what this particular SBC offers. I'm wondering if freedos could be reasonably modified to support a USB floppy drive as A drive? Another thought, if building a USB device with a 34 pin floppy output for legacy 1.44 m floppy drives... Why not emulate a floppy drive if desired as well? I'm thinking a CF to usb adapter with a 34 pin floppy connector. Another option, MicroSD card like the ones used on the Raspberry Pi. DOS if I'm not mistaken expects the floppy support to be in the BIOS. It also expects IRQ 6, DMA 2, I/O address something... The advantage of floppies is they are easily destroyed. Try destroying a USB flash key, they are more resilient than floppies and much higher capacity, but they are NOT easily destroyed. What I'm asking is with Linux and Microsoft moving away from floppies, should Freedos support emulated floppies? If say you are connecting via USB 1.1, 2.0, 3.0, or 3.1 that is different than what traditional DOS expects. Modern PCs lack the traditional floppy controller. Can freedos be tweaked to work around the no floppy controller issue in a compatible fashion? I'm thinking ATAPI devices such as Zip drives can be a floppy replacement, but can they be pointed to as the A: drive? I have a Zip 750 Atapi drive coming tomorrow and 3 sealed 750 meg zip disks. Atapi zip drives work in Windows XP and Windows 9x, but they don't work in MS-DOS and they don't work in Freedos unless I'm mistaken. I may be stuck with MS-DOS 6.2 for the real time system that the Tyco QSP-2 uses. I bet Freedos could be in place of MS-DOS if you only use HIMEMX. Haven't had a chance to test the real time system on freedos because I don't have floppy support unless the SBC in question that I'm testing with has a real floppy controller and a real 1.44M floppy drive in working condition is available. I'm not an EE, but I know someone who is and I would like to contribute an open hardware and driver specification for a floppy replacement that is compatible with MSDOS, Freedos, Linux, Windows... Magnetic media is easily disposed of, but it less than reliable in many cases and the capacities tend to be low. Something modern that is higher capacity and that can replace what came before is needed. Something that is easily destroyed like floppies but readily available and higher capacity. CD-R media is great, but it isn't as rewriteable as floppies. I'll be testing my Zip750 disks to see how destructible and how reliable they are and I'll be looking to see if I can replace A: with them. As far as using a USB floppy drive, I think I broke mine. Even so, I don't think freedos is able to use USB devices let alone floppy replacements. ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] floppy drive won't format disk...
The BIOS option is for a USB floppy drive. I'm actually running a real floppy controller as mentioned. I don't think this will work period because the BIOS on the Evoc isn't designed for a real floppy controller. As far as USB floppy, that may or may not work in Windows XP and higher. They definitely don't work in Windows 10. March 12, 2020 7:14 AM, "Eric Auer" wrote: > Hi Michael, > >> Research suggests that ACPI breaks ISA floppy in Windows XP > > Unlikely, if you ask me? > >> Under Advanced -> SuperIO Configuration >> >> OnBoard Floppy Controller Disabled >> Floppy Drive Swap Disabled > > You should probably enable your floppy controller again ;-) > > Eric > > ___ > Freedos-user mailing list > Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] floppy drive won't format disk...
Research suggests that ACPI breaks ISA floppy in Windows XP... I wonder if ACPI is breaking Freedos 1.3 as well? BIOS SETUP UTILITY v02.58 (C)Copyright 1985-2004, American Megatrends, Inc. AMIBIOS Version : 08.00.12 Build Date: 05/26/07 ID: J8472006 Under Advanced -> Floppy Configuration Floppy A 1.44 MB 3 1/2" Floppy B Disabled Under Advanced -> SuoperIO Configuration OnBoard Floppy Controller Disabled Floppy Drive Swap Disabled Serial Port1 Address 3F8/IRQ4 Serial Port2 Address 2F8/IRQ3 Serial Port2 Mode Normal Parallel Port Address 378 Parallel Port Mode ECP ECP Mode DMA Channel DMA0 Parallel Port IRQ IRQ7 Onboard Game Port Enabled OnBoard MIDI Port 330 MIDI IRQ Select IRQ10 March 11, 2020 7:27 PM, mich...@robinson-west.com (mailto:mich...@robinson-west.com) wrote: I'm running Freedos 1.3 RC2 installed from the live CD base system with sources. C:>format a: Insert new diskette for drive A: Press ENTER when the right disk is in drive... # Boot sector unreadable, disk not yet formatted Using drive default: 1440k (Cyl=80 Head=2 Sec=18) Cannot find existing format - forcing full format Please enter volume label (max. 11 chars): FREEDOS2019 Full Formatting (wiping all data) Format_Floppy_Cylinder( head=0 cylinder=0 ) sectors=18 [int 13.5] Critical error during INT 13 disk access INT 13 satus (hex): 08 Bits: DMA troubles Description: DMA overrun Program terminated. [Error 136] C:> I'm using a Digital Research Technologies ISA card with floppy controller. The box says Super ISA Multi-I/O Controller. A possible problem is that I am on an EVOC single board Pentium 4 computer that is designed for USB floppy drives. INT 13 sounds like a BIOS thing where the EVOC undoubtedly does NOT have the traditional BIOS. The EVOC is the FSC-1714VNA model. My passive ISA/PCI PICMG 1.0 backplane is undocumented. It is an HPP 14S. There are two jumpers on the backplane. One has been changed which is near the ATX connector on the backplane, the other appears to have something to do with the PCI bus. The only format I have achieved is with a Teac USB floppy drive in Windows Millenium, the ISA card not installed at all. Can someone shed light some light on Error 136 and DMA troubles? ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] floppy drive won't format disk...
I'm running Freedos 1.3 RC2 installed from the live CD base system with sources. C:>format a: Insert new diskette for drive A: Press ENTER when the right disk is in drive... # Boot sector unreadable, disk not yet formatted Using drive default: 1440k (Cyl=80 Head=2 Sec=18) Cannot find existing format - forcing full format Please enter volume label (max. 11 chars): FREEDOS2019 Full Formatting (wiping all data) Format_Floppy_Cylinder( head=0 cylinder=0 ) sectors=18 [int 13.5] Critical error during INT 13 disk access INT 13 satus (hex): 08 Bits: DMA troubles Description: DMA overrun Program terminated. [Error 136] C:> I'm using a Digital Research Technologies ISA card with floppy controller. The box says Super ISA Multi-I/O Controller. A possible problem is that I am on an EVOC single board Pentium 4 computer that is designed for USB floppy drives. INT 13 sounds like a BIOS thing where the EVOC undoubtedly does NOT have the traditional BIOS. The EVOC is the FSC-1714VNA model. My passive ISA/PCI PICMG 1.0 backplane is undocumented. It is an HPP 14S. There are two jumpers on the backplane. One has been changed which is near the ATX connector on the backplane, the other appears to have something to do with the PCI bus. The only format I have achieved is with a Teac USB floppy drive in Windows Millenium, the ISA card not installed at all. Can someone shed light some light on Error 136 and DMA troubles? ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] DMA error trying to format floppy...
The Teac USB floppy drive I have seems to work in Windows ME, uge! I took the ISA multi I/O card out. Freedos could really use USB floppy and USB cdrom support. USB hard drive support would also be very nice. DOS without floppy drives just isn't DOS. Anymore, you cannot get floppy drives. They have been replaced by zip drives, cdrom drives, dvd drives, Blu Ray drives, LS120 drives etcetera. Modern PC's don't even typically support or even have floppy drives as usb flash drives have replaced them. Unfortunately, 20 years ago floppy drives were ubiquitous and software was designed around them including especially industrial computers. Because programs like QSoft which depend on a DOS based real time system require floppy support to set the dos side up... and the source code is proprietary... Computers like the EVOC that can only use USB floppy drives may not work. Freedos doesn't like the USB floppy drive complaining that it reports 0 sectors/track and when I try to format a floppy I get Critical error duing int 13 disk access... Seek failed. Highly likely as the EVOC does not have a traditional floppy controller that it does not provide the typical BIOS interface. Assuming the floppy emulation is standard, there should be the possibility of a TSR or a new kernel that can detect and use USB floppy drives and CDROM/hard drives. I have a USB 128 gig M disc drive that is also a 3D blu ray drive that I can boot freedos from, but I cannot run the live system fully. Freedos expects an IDE ATAPI or possibly a SATA ATAPI drive, not a USB ATAPI drive. If someone could increase freedos's support for USB storage devices, that would be ideal. Clearly, USB floppy drives are not something freedos handles well. Might be a buggy AMI bios in this Chinese sourced EVOC, but Teac USB floppy drives are common. March 8, 2020 7:06 PM, mich...@robinson-west.com (mailto:mich...@robinson-west.com) wrote: Trying to use the Freedos 1.3 live cd to get a dos prompt and test formatting floppies. My hardware is special. I'm using a PICMG 1.0 passive backplane or more specifically the HPP 14S backplane. I'm using an EVOC FSC-1740VNA single board computer. This SBC does not have an onboard floppy controller. I'm using an ISA multi I/O card with a floppy controller, but note that the EVOC is designed for a USB floppy. The reason I'm trying to use a real floppy controller is that the usb floppy support in Windows 9x is reportedly broken and needs some patch. If anyone knows of this patch, please tell me. I'm getting some sort of DMA overrun trying to format a floppy in freedos... -- Michael Robinson ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] DMA error trying to format floppy...
Trying to use the Freedos 1.3 live cd to get a dos prompt and test formatting floppies. My hardware is special. I'm using a PICMG 1.0 passive backplane or more specifically the HPP 14S backplane. I'm using an EVOC FSC-1740VNA single board computer. This SBC does not have an onboard floppy controller. I'm using an ISA multi I/O card with a floppy controller, but note that the EVOC is designed for a USB floppy. The reason I'm trying to use a real floppy controller is that the usb floppy support in Windows 9x is reportedly broken and needs some patch. If anyone knows of this patch, please tell me. I'm getting some sort of DMA overrun trying to format a floppy in freedos... -- Michael Robinson ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] Bolitare black screen on exit...
Note that I am running it in VirtualBox on an AMD FX 8350 processor with 8 cores. Might have something to do with CentOS 7 x86_64 as the host system. Maybe I'm giving freedos too much ram? Can anyone else reproduce the Bolitare black screens on exit issue? -- Michael Robinson ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] Freedos 1.3 and Windows 9x...
MS DOS 6.x was not the end of MS-DOS. Windows 9x releases added a strange protected mode, but unlike NT, these versions of Windows still ran on top of MS-DOS. There is no support for DOS based Windows any longer and the ReactOS project essentially abandoned it. However, there are embedded systems that depend on Windows 9x. It would be great if Windows 9x era software could be supported by something open and more stable. Why not replace the graphical system with FLTK and the WIN32API with a special library or something similar? Where Windows 9x comes to mind is on systems that use specialty ISA hardware which never got ported to NT. One system in particular used two servers, Windows 9x on one and MS DOS 6.22 on the other. Given time, I would love to substitute Freedos and see what happens. PPM bought out the Tyco system, but the new system is designed around different hardware with different problems and isn't necessarily better. I don't buy the notion that NT is better than DOS based Windows. A port of Q-Soft to a combination of FLTK and Freedos is very interesting to me. Theoretically, one can reverse engineer to drive the shared memory card in Freedos. Q-Soft is a Windows 32 program, but that could be abstracted out and a different system could be developed that runs in protected mode on top of Freedos. I think Q-Soft has a vxd internal to it, which is crazy IMHO. There should be a driver in device manager for the ISA shared memory card. The idea of a graphical hardware tree is something that would be nice to have in an open source gui that runs on top of Freedos. Even an unofficial service pack for 98se that lets you use more memory and modern hardware would be welcome. Just some thoughts is all. -- Michael C. Robinson ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Bolitare doesn't exit...
January 1, 2020 2:14 PM, "Jim Hall" wrote: > On Sun, Dec 29, 2019 at 9:12 AM wrote: > >> I love Bolitare, but when I'm done playing it would be nice to be able to >> return to freedos. > > That's weird. Bolitare exits for me. Did you click the Games menu, > then click Exit? > > Without the mouse, use Alt-G, then X > > ___ > Freedos-user mailing list > Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user I'm running under VirtualBox and with emm386... either of those may be why it exits to a black screen... ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] Bolitare doesn't exit...
I love Bolitare, but when I'm done playing it would be nice to be able to return to freedos. -- Michael C. Robinson ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS and Samba
October 13, 2019 9:23 AM, "Jon Brase" mailto:jon.br...@gmail.com?to=%22Jon%20Brase%22%20)> wrote: SMB1 has known vulnerabilities, so Windows has had the option to disable SMB 1 entirely for a while and on the Linux side, upstream SAMBA recently changed to disabling it by default. It is possible that various distros may already have disabled it in their default SAMBA configurations. Original message From: David Griffith mailto:d...@661.org)> Date: 10/13/2019 08:23 (GMT-06:00) To: freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net (mailto:freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net) Subject: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS and Samba What am I doing wrong with FreeDOS and mounting a Samba file share? I have a Virtualbox image I found at https://www.lazybrowndog.net/freedos/virtualbox/?page_id=33 (https://www.lazybrowndog.net/freedos/virtualbox/?page_id=33) which seems to have everything ready for networking. I have Samba installed on the host Linux machine. From the host I can mount the share, but not entirely on FreeDOS. The best I can manage is read-only access if the "valid users" parameter (below) is removed. I managed to get this to work a few years ago and recall that the solution has something to do with using SMB protocol 1. None of the guides I find now for mounting a share from FreeDOS mention this and Samba now seems unwilling to admit it knows anything about SMB1. Here's what I have for the share in /etc/smb.conf: [Dave] comment = Dave's stuff path = /home/dave/foobar read only = no guest ok = yes browsable = yes writable = yes valid users = dave -- David Griffith d...@661.org (mailto:d...@661.org) A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail? ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net (mailto:Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net) https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user (https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user) Known vulnerabilities or not, SMB1 is used by OPL for loading PS1/PS2 games over network from a SMB1 server. I'd like to know how to support SMB1 protocol or at least how to substitute SMB2 or later whether the environment be Dos or OPL. -- Michael C. Robinson ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Source code to Windows 9x and ME...
The comment that a pick and place machine designed around MS-DOS 6.22 and Windows 9x/ME is a funny machine is a little disingenuous. Freedos didn't exist in a useable form back then and Windows 9x/ME in it's day was dominant. I'm hopeful that we could use freedos on the real time system, we can at least try. Trouble may crop up with respect to the shared memory card which is ISA based. Depends on what interfaces in MS-DOS 6.22 are important and which ones aren't. The advantage if Freedos works is that it is supported currently. Potentially, usb support and fat32 support could come in handy. Does Microsoft Scandisk for Windows 98se work on freedos? We could use more modern SBC's with Freedos potentially than what we can use with MS-DOS. Software doesn't rot, but hardware does. I'm hopeful too that we can use at least Windows 2000 on the gui. There is no direct replacement for Windows 98/ME. These systems are very resource hungry and only moderately stable. If we can get away with Windows 2000, we may be able to replace that in the future with a stable ReactOS. At that point, we are open source and supported across both heads. -- Michael C. Robinson ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Source code to Windows 9x and ME...
Quoting Ralf Quint : On 9/26/2019 6:35 AM, Michael C Robinson wrote: Is it possible to get the source code to Windows 9x and ME since Microsoft isn't supporting it anymore? No. One would want to get the source code and then open source it of course. Even Windows 3.1 and Windows 3.11 is closed source. Surely, Microsoft could release pre 9x Windows? It wouldn't hurt Microsoft at all since Windows is squarely NT based now where many modern systems won't even support DOS let alone DOS based Windows. I realize it would probably be very expensive to get Microsoft to cough up the source code, but has anyone even looked into this? Sounds rather idealistic and void of any facts. Microsoft has not interest to open source ANY part of ANY windows. Even Windows 1.x and 2.x, which are on GitHub now, are still copyrighted. So it all comes down to "you can look but you can't touch", which as far as FreeDOS is concerned (for which any Windows source code be irrelevant to begin with) would be of no interest... Ralf Freedos should be capable of supporting Windows 3.1, at least in standard mode. Wouldn't it be great if freedos could support that better and 3.11 as well along with a lot of programs from that era? Maybe source code won't help, but the interfaces and other engineering information could be quite useful for someone trying to support programs designed for Windows 16 bit. That said, Win32 based programs are of interest to anyone who needs to run them in a dos based environment. There is a lot of industrial software that depends on a combination of MS-DOS 6.22 and Windows 98 SE. You say who cares, but let's look at this a little closer for a moment. One of freedos's selling points is running old dos based systems. If you can run these systems on an open source supported OS, that is better than running on MS-DOS from an a bandonware site. There is also the potential that freedos can run this old software on newer hardware that isn't 20+ years old. The biggest problem with 98se/ME is that there aren't drivers for hardware that is newer than the Pentium II pretty much. Windows ME is pretty much the same story. Getting an industrial PII on a single board for a PICMG 1.3 backplane or an ISA backplane, that is probably the best bet for the pick and place machine we want to get up and running. The machine is worth $20k-$30k. Yes we could pull the two heads and try a set of heads based on Windows 7, but that is nearing EOL already. Worse than that, the cost of Windows 7 heads is nearly half of what the machine is worth. I'd say that my brother's machine is worth at least $15k right now. ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Source code to Windows 9x and ME...
I don't have a few million, but a group able to cobble together a few million is more realistic to put together. Question is, how much would membership cost in a group whose goal is to GPL Windows 16 and 32 bit be? Say such a group came into existence and a million people joined for $20/month. The first target, Windows 16 bit land. Then, the 32 bit version of Windows including 9x and ME. Eventually, the group would be able to open source the MS-DOS based versions of Windows completely and membership fees could be reduced or even dropped. Maybe the source code isn't needed, maybe just the interfaces and the design are needed. Quoting Jon Brase : If you can cut a check for a few million, Microsoft might sell you the rights (to the components that they created themselves, of course, not anything they licensed from others), give you whatever source code they still have archived, and let you license it to the public as you choose. If you can't cut a check, but ask nicely, they have been open sourcing things that nobody ever thought they'd open source, so maybe they will eventually open-source Win9x. Frankly, though, I'd rather concentrate on getting them to just release all their old Win16 code (Win3, the Win16 components of Win9x, and NTVDM): that's the part of the PC ecosystem where vintage applications are in most danger of being lost because nobody has an environment to run them on anymore: DOS is fairly well covered by DOSBox, FreeDOS, etc, and Win32 is still an environment that Microsoft maintains, that people actively write applications for, and that the Wine project is putting a fair bit of effort into implementing well. Win16, on the other hand, is somewhat neglected by both MS and Wine, and it would be good if the old MS source code could be released, or, failing that, the binaries could at least be put under an open-source license that explicitly allowed reverse engineering. Original message From: Michael C Robinson Date: 9/26/2019 08:35 (GMT-06:00) To: p...@lists.pdxlinux.org Cc: freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: [Freedos-user] Source code to Windows 9x and ME... Is it possible to get the source code to Windows 9x and ME since Microsoft isn't supporting it anymore? One would want to get the source code and then open source it of course. Even Windows 3.1 and Windows 3.11 is closed source. Surely, Microsoft could release pre 9x Windows? It wouldn't hurt Microsoft at all since Windows is squarely NT based now where many modern systems won't even support DOS let alone DOS based Windows. I realize it would probably be very expensive to get Microsoft to cough up the source code, but has anyone even looked into this? ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Source code to Windows 9x and ME...
Quoting andrew fabbro : On Thu, Sep 26, 2019 at 6:36 AM Michael C Robinson < mich...@robinson-west.com> wrote: Is it possible to get the source code to Windows 9x and ME since Microsoft isn't supporting it anymore? One would want to get the source code and then open source it of course. Even Windows 3.1 and Windows 3.11 is closed source. Surely, Microsoft could release pre 9x Windows? It wouldn't hurt Microsoft at all since Windows is squarely NT based now where many modern systems won't even support DOS let alone DOS based Windows. I realize it would probably be very expensive to get Microsoft to cough up the source code, but has anyone even looked into this? "It wouldn't hurt Microsoft" is not exactly a true statement. Major reasons MSFT won't be releasing source code like that: (1) Some components are still in use. Microsoft does not rewrite their OS from scratch with each new version and while Windows 10 is very different than Windows Me, it's still an x86 OS. (2) There may be pieces they licensed or are under others' copyrights. Sorting that out is non-trivial. This is true especially of things like drivers. (3) Source code often reveals the inner workings of companies and products. It's not unusual to see things like "we put this in because our other product has a bug and we have to compensate" and comments like that. Not to mention profanity :-) (4) Many times old source code hides other embarrassing (or semi-embarrassing) secrets. There was a leak of Windows 2000 many years ago and I read that it had comments such as "(some app) breaks here so we put in this workaround to maintain compatibility with previous versions". This would inevitably lead to all kinds of press about favoring different vendors, etc. (5) And the big one...where's the money in releasing old source code? It takes lawyers, tech people, etc. and likely would cost a fair amount of money just to package it up. BTW, Microsoft has (or at least at one time had) various programs where universities had access to the source code, but that was under NDA. -- andrew fabbro and...@fabbro.org ReactOS won't replace Windows 9x/ME because it is not dos based. Originally the target was 9x, but they gave up on that :-( For stuff that isn't supported anymore but should be, surely all the players could come together and release source code. Frankly, I think it should be the law that you have to release source code if you stop supporting a popular OS. Aren't some of the licenses pushing 20 years now? ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
