xp support will be phased out next year (2014).
there is support in windows 7 "xp mode" (via a virtual machine called microsoft
virtual pc) for win7ult. works on 64 and 32-bit. emulates 32-bit xp, which is
the only version that has command.com so it can run djgpp.
I need to test and see if my 64-bit box will run djgpp without modification...
this i something I need to find out, because I would still like to do dos
development.
it would be a quick test.
but my 64-bit box is inaccessible right now.
>________________________________
> From: Rugxulo <rugx...@gmail.com>
>To: Technical discussion and questions for FreeDOS developers.
><freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net>
>Sent: Thursday, April 25, 2013 5:05 PM
>Subject: Re: [Freedos-devel] FreeDOS limits! and FDNPKG v0.93a released
>
>
>Hi,
>
>On Wed, Apr 24, 2013 at 11:12 AM, Charles Belhumeur
><chbelhumeur2...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> I'm new to the whole FreeDos intitiative. If I might be allowed to add my
>> two cents. I'm working on an application for bioinformatics research. The
>> search for the best OS for this led me to FreeDos. Although I did end up on
>> picking Windows XP SP3 for the large user base and significant work to date
>> debugging the OS. I nixed FreeDos because the gene sequence files are too
>> massive, some in the area of 300 GB.
>
>XP's NTVDM works better (IIRC) than its successors. Despite some of
>XP's bugs that were never fixed, DJGPP worked around 'em (for 2.03p2
>and 2.04), so it works well there. Though I don't have any working XP
>machines anymore, sadly. (DOSEMU and native FreeDOS have different
>quirks and bugs, esp. regarding GNU AutoTools.)
>
>Though that won't help you with big files. DOS itself usually only
>supports 2 GB (e.g. FreeDOS) with some variants (e.g. Win9x)
>supporting 4 GB files with weird hacks (that aren't universally
>supported elsewhere). I guess you could (non-commercially) use EDR-DOS
>with FAT+ (and manually call the API), but I've not tried.
>
>I don't see how having one big 300 GB file is necessary. Just use 200
>files of 1.5 GB each. ;-)
>
>> The problem with Windows and LINUX for science work is they're kind of like
>> the family station wagon. Trying to be all things to everyone. Maybe even
>> worse they my be an RV monster will all the amenities including the kitchen
>> sink. This makes these OSs too big, glitchy and they require far too much
>> maintenance and support. All of which gets in the way of scientific work
>> and adds layers of needless difficulty for scientific workers. The
>> biologists who do grad studies in bioinformatics seem to have a bad time
>> with all the arcana. It stalls their careers and research for at least two
>> years. Cures for diseases and death for all us are similarly stalled by the
>> overcomplicated IT.
>
>Trying to keep backwards compatible while adding every new feature is
>difficult. x86 has been around for 30 years, so that's a lot of cpus!
>Even Windows 8 only runs with later-model P4s or newer. Everyone keeps
>(re)inventing every tech in incompatible ways. (And keeping up with
>constant kernel upgrades in *nix is annoying.)
>
>> When I was a student we had these HP workstations based on Motorola chips.
>> The ones I used had an OS based on Berkeley BASIC. They were powerful,
>> single tasking, big disks, lots of RAM in flat memory model, rock solid and
>> spit simple to use. In many ways ideal boxes for scientific and engineering
>> work. The Rocky Mountain BASIC compiler was spit easy for application
>> developers. No need to malloc, compartmentalize like C++ conventions and so
>> on. Just DIM and use the standard BASIC conventions. I knew engineers who
>> wrote a complete GUI under this scheme in a few months.
>
>For whatever reason, developers think differently these days. They
>overdo everything and use heavyweight solutions.
>
>> I've often thought these modern Intel boxes had the potential to be similar
>> platforms with the right OS. That's why FreeDos caught my eye. I think
>> there's a niche with big potential for FreeDos in science and engineering
>> work. My advice would be, and I don't say this lightly since I know what's
>> involved, bite the bullet, write whatever it takes to give users full access
>> to all the RAM and disk space under a DOS style interface. It only has to
>> be done right once and it will open up a lot of potential on these boxes to
>> a wide user base.
>
>DJGPP v2 (DPMI) already is fairly well working with reasonably high
>amounts of RAM (2 GB?). FreeDOS with FAT32 lets you use up to 2 TB of
>disk space for a partition (though only max 2 GB file sizes). No real
>PAE (yet) or 64-bit (ever) support, obviously.
>
>Another good option for FreeDOS is OpenWatcom + HX.
>
>So you can basically emulate subsets of POSIX or Win32 with these
>toolsets, if native DOS (x86 assembly) or pure standard code (e.g. ISO
>C, ISO Pascal) isn't to your liking.
>
>> You may want to approach these people http://www.htbasic.com/ with the
>> possibility of porting their compiler to FreeDos. This is the modern
>> version of the BASIC of the old HP workstations.
>
>I looked at this yesterday. It seems to be a commercial clone of RMB.
>Apparently they already had DOS ports, latest apparently being 6.0
>from 1998. Unfortunately, I don't see any way to acquire it except by
>buying either the legacy bundle or similarly using a newer product's
>serial key to get a compatible older serial number and password for
>it. And they are a bit pricey, to say the least. So I'm not sure how
>useful this is for FreeDOS, "as is", but hey, at least it exists.
>
>(The glib, over-simplified answer would be "Just use FBC" or similar,
>but I suspect that's not as easy or reliable as it sounds, in such
>cases.)
>
>> The old HP workstations had an interesting feature in their graphics
>> hardware. They didn't have separate text and graphic modes. No need for
>> switching. You could dump graphics and text to the same screen in its
>> single mode. This was a very nice feature for app developers. HTBAsic
>> still supports this.
>
>A lot of stuff is forced to GUI these days. You could argue it's for
>technical reasons (fonts for Unicode), but a lot of people (MS?) also
>think everything that isn't using a GUI is obsolete.
>
>As mentioned in other mailing list threads, FreeDOS can use several
>GUIs (mostly as third-party libraries) but doesn't require any by
>default.
>
>> Finally I'd like to comment on "The Wankers". There's wankers all over
>> science and engineering, especially in IT, who think making things
>> complicated and arcane makes them look like geniuses. F**k No! The whole
>> thrust of science is to simplify complicated phenomena into principles
>> everyone can understand and use. I always point out Einstein to the
>> wankers. They hate that sh*t! The UNIX/LINUX crowd seem especially prone
>> to "wankeritus". (F**k I really hate the wankers after all these decades in
>> science and engineering!)
>
>Managing complexity is not easy, but sadly most don't even try. They
>don't minimize requirements, just stick to de facto standards that are
>too brittle to reliably work (e.g. GNU AutoTools bugs, at least re:
>DJGPP). That really bugs me, but it's too much complexity for me to
>understand enough to (weakly try to) fix.
>
>About Einstein and simplicity, he's often quoted by Niklaus Wirth in
>his Oberon work. Though some people still use Modula-2 or Pascal or
>some variants (or on *nix usually stick to C99 or C++03 or Obj. C v2
>or ...). It's hard to get people to agree on anything: compilers,
>cpus, languages, libraries, build tools, etc.
>
>> The whole FreeDos initiative seems to be a group of people who get
>> this. I can't tell you how refreshing and novel this is after 30 years
>> of watching the simple basic functions of IT get twisted into the
>> overcomplicated mess we now have. Keep it up people! Well done!
>> Do whatever it takes to crack into a significant user base. I think
>> the time is right, the need is there.
>
>I don't know. DJGPP would probably be the best place to enhance
>things, but these days, volunteers are few. Again, most of it is just
>ports from GNU, but their POSIX-heavy tools tend to not work well on
>non-*nix (except sometimes with Cygwin or MinGW).
>
>> (Anybody remember VAX-VMS?)
>
>CWS (of CWSDPMI) always raved about it. In many ways, he helped make
>DJGPP as "rock stable" as VAX/VMS was renowned for. Unfortunately, as
>successful as DJGPP has been, these days it isn't appreciated as much
>as it deserves. (Though DJ works for Red Hat and, for now, still
>supports DJGPP on the side [website, ftp, mailing list] with the help
>of a select few gurus.)
>
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