On Sun, 1 Oct 2006, Joris van Rantwijk wrote: > 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.
You read the opposite of what I intended to mean (see below). > 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. Again, see below. >> If FreeDOS were to go 386-only... then someone >> might fork it to keep it 8086-compatible. By this I meant, if FreeDOS doesn't stick with 8086 compatibility, someone will need to take the last 8086 version, and fork it, so that it continues to be developed. > Only with a lot of extra effort. Besides, I think there is little to be > gained from moving to 32-bit: I agree. > - 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. I haven't had any problems with Turbo C, as long as I kept its limitations in mind, which aren't many. So it can't build bash. Big deal. I have built some UNIX apps with it, and in fact my name is on the GNUish project for contributing the cpio.exe :) > - If the currently used libraries are bad (no LFN support or something), > we simply need to fix that. That's the big lack - no lfn in the libc. > 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. This is also my perspective. -uso. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
