Lyrical Nanoha wrote: > On Sat, 30 Sep 2006, Joris van Rantwijk wrote: >>For me, a FreeDOS that does not properly run on a real PC is utterly >>useless.
> DR-DOS still works on an 8086. ROM-DOS works on an 80186 (but not an > 8086). I think even RxDOS will run on an 8086, but its compatibility > leaves much to be desired. MS-DOS 3.20 also runs fine on my 8088, but that is not the point. I do appreciate your helpful suggestions, but at the same time you seem to suggest that 8086 compatibility should not be a priority for FreeDOS. I strongly disagree with that view. The status of FreeDOS as a drop-in replacement for MS-DOS is at stake. If FreeDOS moves to 32-bit, people with old hardware have to go back to their illegal copies of MS-DOS. > If FreeDOS were to go 386-only... then someone > might fork it to keep it 8086-compatible. Only with a lot of extra effort. Besides, I think there is little to be gained from moving to 32-bit: - If the currently used C compilers are bad, we simply need to find a better 16-bit compiler. (The compiler would not necessarily have to run on 16-bit, just provide it as a target.) Some work has been done on a 16-bit target for GCC; LCC may also be an option. I am willing to look into this and report on the options. - If the currently used libraries are bad (no LFN support or something), we simply need to fix that. - If people are determined to write a 32-bit OS just for the sake of it, fine but why are you calling it DOS? Note that I do not oppose specific extensions for modern hardware (HIMEM.SYS), or even a compile time option to optimize for 32-bit, as long as the main part of the OS remains backwards compatible. Joris. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT & business topics through brief surveys -- and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.php&p=sourceforge&CID=DEVDEV _______________________________________________ Freedos-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
