My initial attempt to post this got bounced by topica.com for some reason. Here's a second attempt.
In response to Eric Auer's comments re DR-DOS:
- We originally got DR-DOS 5.0 bundled with embedded PC/104 8088 equivalent CPUs from Ampro. When we upgraded to an 80386-equivalent CPU, DR-DOS was no longer bundled, so we tried to buy it from Lineo. They did not offer DR-DOS 5, only DR-DOS 7. It was a little cheaper than MS-DOS 6.11, but not much. We had problems with it. The installer program was too smart and wanted to configure the OS in ways that we did not want. I forget the exact details, but it was easier to just go to MS-DOS 6.11.
- We recently had a bad experience with Lineo. They were distributing an embedded 80386 cross-development package called Beacon Tools or Beacon Suite (formerely SSI). We bought a licence in September 2001 with a year of support. Almost immediately they laid off the people on their staff who were knowledgable about Beacon Tools. They took our money and did not honour the support agreement. Our requests for a refund of the support fee were ignored. The lack of support caused us a lot of trouble and expense. Beacon is now being distributed directly by its owner, Beacon Technology. (See http://www.beaconsuite.com.) This is still a good tool set, though its future is unclear. Our complaint is with Lineo, the distributer, not with Beacon Technology. We would not want to do business with Lineo again.
--
Jack Dodds
R & D Manager
Phoenix Geophysics Limited
Unit #3
3781 Victoria Park Avenue
Scarborough, Ontario, Canada
M1W 3K5
Voice 416-491-7340
Fax 416-491-7378
email "Jack Dodds" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Eric Auer wrote:
Hi, to answer several questions of this discussion in a single reply mail: - you can have disks up to 2 GB size (4 GB experimental) per partition with FAT16, but FreeDOS even supports the FAT32 filesystem, which uses space more efficiently and allows even bigger partitions. Long filenames are not supported, but you can install a third-party driver (Like doslfn or lfndos, both GPL software) to provide long file name services to long file name aware programs (e.g. programs compiled with DJGPP - take care, such programs run in 32bit protected mode, so you need a 386 CPU and must not use the FreeDOS EMS driver). The FreeCOM command.com shell does not see long file names, though.- You can still buy licenses for DR-DOS (it became free for noncommercial use, and single licenses can no longer be bought). It should run basically all software that was written for MS DOS. - Most software that was written for MS DOS runs in FreeDOS, too. Windows 3.x is a well-known exception. The memory management is limited, though: If you need UMBs (for devicehigh=... and for loadhigh), you need either the third- party freeware driver UMBPCI (and a supported motherboard chipset) or some EMM386: The FreeDOS one is not compatible with protected mode DOS software, the DR-DOS one is only free for noncommercial use, the MS-DOS one is neither free nor available separately (I asked somebody about that), but both the MS-DOS and the Quarterdeck one could be considered abandonware: You can no longer buy them, so you SHOULD be allowed to copy them. However, they are not officially re-released as freeware by MS or Quarterdeck! - SCANDISK is not that important, as only more recent MS DOS versions have it. However, we should have CHKDSK (difference: Scandisk has a nice user inter- face...). This is currently being worked on, as we know :-). - It is cool that the kernel is FAT32 capable, and making FDISK FAT32 capable should be easy. I think FORMAT already is FAT32 capable. Having a FAT32 capable CHKDSK would be nice (being worked on) but not extremely important. As FAT32 is a bonus compared to MS DOS, I think not all disk tools need to support it. By the way, we don't have a working DEFRAG either, but this is being worked on, you can use the open source freeware DEFRAGR (only FAT16), and it is, as SCANDISK, not that important to have. - If we cannot offer UMB and DPMI (protected mode stuff: we do have cwsDPMI, but the problem is that our only FreeDOS UMB driver, emm386, is incompatible with it (see above) - I prefer to say "UMB and protected mode access"), we still offer what OLDER versions of MS-DOS could offer (DOS 4.01, I guess). As said, with a suitable chipset, you can use UMBPCI freeware to solve the problem. Otherwise, you need to use one of the third-party EMM386 drivers discussed above. - Suggestion: Make an ALIAS for DIR in autoexec.bat, which points to a BATCH file that "translates" the /On (etc.) arguments to DRL syntax and calls DRL. DRL output differs from DIR output. Hm. Sigh. Depends on why and for what you need DIR /O.. and DIR /A..! I recommend that FreeCOM should get the /A soon and that somebody should take DRL and make a spin-off version that uses the same arguments and output format as DIR (so: remove color from DRL and make /O always on, forcing DRL to write to standard output) of MS DOS. - I agree with the others on the license: Of course you can use FreeDOS, but you must offer your customers a way to get the FreeDOS sources. However, if you sell some embedded system which is in fact like a PC, I do not think using FreeDOS as operating system conflicts in any way with running non-GNU software on the PC. This is a bit tricky, but you can compare it with Linux distributions: The sources of the GNU programs in the distribution have to be accessible for people that buy the distribution, but the distribution may include commercial non-open-source software as well (Debian Linux tries to avoid this, however). - Concerning the BETA status: We wanted to offer MS DOS 5.0 functionality in general, and we still lack some parts of it. FreeDOS is very stable and can do many things that MS DOS 5.0 could not do, but in some aspects, it is the other way round. We should be self-confident enough to DIFFER from MS DOS, so for example we do not have to clone its command line syntax. For example, if DRL became official part of FreeDOS, I consider the DIR /O problem to be solved for my part. DRL can produce the listing you want in the format you want (short format) or at least a format you can read just as well (verbose format), it can sort in all needed ways and you can redirect its output. However, we should at least wait for an EMM386 with VCPI (what makes it DPMI compatible: Then we have UMB, EMS and DPMI all at the same time) and better versions of CHKDSK (and have some bugs like the FDISK/FAT32 one fixed) etc. before we leave BETA status. By the way, do we need a BASIC to leave beta status? Our BASIC is a very limited version, I wonder if anybody still buys MS DOS because of QBASIC ??? If yes, we cannot really offer QBASIC. But we could take efforts to have a "no line numbers needed" clone of GWBASIC. Most people use QBASIC that way, only few use the other (many) advanced features of QBASIC. Have a nice DOS :-). Eric. ---------- list options/archives/etc.: http://www.topica.com/lists/fd-dev unsubscribe: send blank email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
-- Jack Dodds R & D Manager Phoenix Geophysics Limited Unit #3 3781 Victoria Park Avenue Scarborough, Ontario, Canada M1W 3K5 Voice 416-491-7340 Fax 416-491-7378 email "Jack Dodds" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ---------- list options/archives/etc.: http://www.topica.com/lists/fd-dev unsubscribe: send blank email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ==^================================================================ This email was sent to: [email protected] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?bz8Rv5.bbRv4l.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================
