I live in the USA, so don't have a need for any alternative language settings in my everyday life. But, I have messed around with a lot of keyboard layouts and code pages to test some of my keyboard related programs over the years, so I'll let you know what I've discovered. Nearly all of my experience is with MS-DOS, not FreeDOS, so take it with a grain of salt.
> COUNTRY.SYS isn't needed for DISPLAY-only stuff, e.g. codepages on > screen, nor for KEYB either. It's only other stuff (collate tables, > y/n), I think. I think I agree here. The main things I think people care about are Code Pages (which I've always manipulated with MODE CON CODEPAGE PREPARE and MODE CON CODEPAGE SELECT) and keyboard layouts (KEYB). Most of the other stuff (NLSFUNC, COUNTRY, etc.) are mostly for sorting/collation and currency/number/time display. But, even this is limited to DOS itself, or programs that call DOS services to provide this functionality. I'm not sure how many programs would call DOS services to do this kind of thing for them, anyway -- a "serious" program would likely do all of this internally and not depend on the user to enter the appropriate settings in CONFIG.SYS or AUTOEXEC.BAT. Again, because I live in the USA, this has never been a concern for me, so I can't say for certain. > Also, FreeDOS may not (much, if at all) support PRINTER.SYS. > Otherwise, it shouldn't matter (much). IIRC, PRINTER.SYS only supported a few different kinds of printers anyway, and was relatively useless even back in the day (at least for me). >> !LASTDRIVE=Z > > Too many unless you're really using them all (or relying on hardcoded > drive values). I'd suggest "P" as a compromise. I personally always use LASTDRIVE=Z. This makes it much easier to manipulate things the way I want to "on the fly" when messing with USB drives or using SUBST or ASSIGN to create "temporary" drive letters. If you don't make LASTDRIVE big enough, you can end up needing to edit CONFIG.SYS and reboot -- really annoying. >> 1?DEVICE=C:\FDOS\BIN\JEMMEX.EXE NOEMS X=TEST > > Should probably have an "ultra-safe" choice somewhere in here: > > JEMMEX NORAM NOEMS X=TEST I=TEST If you are trying to make a "universal" disk that will work on any machine, you need to be careful about using JEMMEX. It doesn't work on every machine. I have a Sony laptop that JEMM refuses to install on, no matter which configuration options are chosen. MS HIMEM.SYS+EMM386.EXE installs just fine on the same computer. >> alias reboot=fdapm warmboot >> alias halt=fdapm poweroff > > I always put all aliases in a single file, e.g. MYALIAS.BAT. > Then, in autoexec, I could say "if exist MYALIAS.BAT call > MYALIAS.BAT". And of course "alias myalias=edit myalias.bat" for > easy tweaking. On the same machine (Sony laptop), FDAPM doesn't work at all because the BIOS doesn't have APM (only ACPI). So, if you're trying to create a "universal" disk, you probably shouldn't use FDAPM at all. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ All of the data generated in your IT infrastructure is seriously valuable. Why? It contains a definitive record of application performance, security threats, fraudulent activity, and more. Splunk takes this data and makes sense of it. IT sense. And common sense. http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-d2d-c2 _______________________________________________ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
