Hi Bernd, On 2012.01.03 18:48, Bernd Blaauw wrote: > Your RUFUS USB formatter [ http://rufus.akeo.ie/ ] is > something that might end up on an updated FreeDOS distribution.
If that's the case, then I will feel obligated to ask what you guys would like to see added to Rufus, to better suit your needs. ;) > > VMSmount ( http://sourceforge.net/projects/vmsmount/ ) might draw your > attention Aha! Very interesting indeed. Thanks. > On NT/2000/ReactOS (all lacking the MSDOS option) you could perhaps > offer MSDOS in case the user provides the required files (io.sys at > minimum, supplemented by FreeDOS files?) externally as separate files or > as a bootdisk image (www.bootdisk.com). Also no idea if your program > works on Win95/98/ME, most software has abandoned that platform. Well, considering that Microsoft has declared EOL for Win2k/NT/Me/98/95 and more importantly, considering that MinGW, which is currently used to produce the binary version of Rufus, no longer offers guarantees that it can produce executables that work on Win2k or earlier, the choice is pretty clear => Rufus is supported on XP or later only. Unless there is a decent amount of user requests, I'm not sure spending time supporting platforms with a userbase that is dwindling is a good investment. Of course this doesn't mean that, if someone provides a patch that add 2k/NT/98 support to Rufus, it will be rejected, on the contrary. However, as I don't have any plans of doing so myself, someone else would have to make sure that support for older platforms is kept up to date. Recent experience (with MSVC6 support for libusb-1.0/Windows, which I'm also involved with and which went months being broken, without anybody noticing) has shown that spending a lot of time on "obsolete" platforms doesn't exactly pay off. ReactOS is a bit different, as unlike the others, I guess it is actively supported. However, I haven't really used it so far, and wonder how many people would be interested. Then again, if somebody else wants to check/add ReactOS support to Rufus, they are also more than welcome to submit patches. > I guess a DOS version would be slightly pointless, unless your program > would work in situations where FDISK/FORMAT/SYS wouldn't. That would be a nice challenge, but yeah, probably pointless or too time-consuming. > Finally, would a 'boot as A: / FDD / ZIP / HDD' set of options have any > use? See http://www.rmprepusb.com/ for example. The one thing I wouldn't mind adding is the ability to copy a bootable ISO on the USB drive (eg full FreeDOS, Linux live CD or even Windows installation ISO) and boot from it. I think people are growing tired of having to burn CDs or DVDs, or even install an optical drive on their target platform, and Universal USB Installer [1] seems to be able to do something like that to some extent (though it doesn't support the FreeDOS ISO), by extracting the files from the image onto a FAT32 partition and then adding the relevant bootloader. As to booting as FDD, ZIP etc and other options, I guess that too would depend on a demand for it. For the time being, I want to keep the tool simple, in line with what the HP Utility is doing, and leave more complex operations to other tools such as RMPrepUSB. > And allowing the program to format diskettes also? If it's not too complex, why not... I think I should have most of the elements needed already, though there are probably some quirks to FAT12 formatting. I have now created an enhancement for that. Is there still much demand for FreeDOS bootable floppies? Regards, /Pete PS: Congratulations on the FreeDOS 1.1 release! I'll try to align the files I use to 1.1 as well. [1] http://www.pendrivelinux.com/universal-usb-installer-easy-as-1-2-3/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Ridiculously easy VDI. With Citrix VDI-in-a-Box, you don't need a complex infrastructure or vast IT resources to deliver seamless, secure access to virtual desktops. With this all-in-one solution, easily deploy virtual desktops for less than the cost of PCs and save 60% on VDI infrastructure costs. Try it free! http://p.sf.net/sfu/Citrix-VDIinabox _______________________________________________ Freedos-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
