Hi, I read the thread at: http://news.grc.com/news.exe?cmd=xover&group=grc.spinrite.dev&utag=
... some summary points: SpinRite wants to reduce support costs by switching to a more compatible OS, but MS-DOS is not an option. So they could get PTS-DOS 32 (est. 6000 bucks/year in SpinRite case) or a DR-DOS buy-out (20000 bucks, full sources and infinite copies). Another option would be something called RxDOS - Steve likes assembly, so he could improve it himself. One recent problem was with the dd1000dd driver (ASPI, I seem to remember - I would recommend trying to license ASPIDISK from Adaptec: http://fd-doc.sourceforge.net/faq/cgi-bin/viewfaq.cgi?faq=incoming/219 ...), alledgedly related to EMM386 or kernel (not clearly mentioned in the discussion at GRC.com). Steve also thought about paying some FreeDOS people to fix bugs, but was concerned that that might disturb the community, kind of. My opinion: Linux distributors like SuSE and Mandrake spend many paid man-hours in improving Linux. Even though most of the result is open source code, this still pays back for them! They get a better running distro, more happy customers and less support calls. I see no reason why SpinRite should not invest some time or even money into fixing FreeDOS bugs. Basically SpinRite only needs some DOS which can boot everywhere, supports SYS drivers and the usual boot scripts and memory management. Something which DR DOS would probably sell as "bootable DOS" (well, there is OpenDOS, but I think there would be license problems for SpinRite - some people who are working on an "improved DR DOS 7.03+" think otherwise, even though they can only spread binary patches because the then-released 7.03 sources must not be modified "in the public", it seems...). Another bug report was SpinRite 6 (currently in testing cycle, it seems) would either freeze at drive detection or after a while (in this example, 28% of 10 GB disk), maybe related to the storage driver problem mentioned ago. I would RECOMMEND excluding areas from UMB usage, or using the EMM386 "conservative UMB detection" mode to fix some of the instabilities. Even MS EMM386 needs explicit X=... sometimes. One poster said that he would be surprised that no FreeDOS people jumped the opportunity to help SpinRite, either for increased popularity and fame of FreeDOS itself or to get something back from GRC personally. Simple answer: GRC never asked the FreeDOS community, so there was no reply! Other problematic hardware seem to be SCSI / RAID controllers like the Promise Fasttrak one. Finally, I would like to add that I generally agree with what Tom posted: http://news.grc.com/news.exe?utag=&group=grc.spinrite.dev&xrelated=11360&cmd_last=+Prev+ He also writes about having fixed the di1000dd problem - which patch was that, by the way? Nice to know :-). People do spend time and money for FreeDOS - simply because it can SAVE them time and money. One example for this is Tom. If you just ask people to do things for you (it is open source anyway...) then you may get unwanted results, like Award with their "crash free BIOS" which is a not-so-well done FreeDOS "distro" by them - apparently because they only wanted to CONSUME but not to SPEND time to adjust things for their needs. It would be nice if somebody could forward this to the newsgroup, but please omit my email address. You can mention my name and ICQ if you want, though: 92721381. Cheers, Eric. PS: To get bugs - like the di1000dd one - fixed, please do report them, and do not simply expect us to smell the bug, or even worse, assume that FreeDOS has the bug and will never fix it and is therefore worthless. ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email sponsored by Black Hat Briefings & Training. Attend Black Hat Briefings & Training, Las Vegas July 24-29 - digital self defense, top technical experts, no vendor pitches, unmatched networking opportunities. Visit www.blackhat.com _______________________________________________ Freedos-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
