Hi, So for the pure fun of it, I decided to install Windows 3.11 on FreeDOS knowing full well how well it would work. (Cue laugh track)
I don’t know how far anyone has gotten with this process but so far what I have found is that FreeDOS (unlike MS-DOS) in it’s default configuration ends up in protected mode. If you’re in protected mode, Windows is unable to use DOSX and switch to protected mode. Fortunately, Microsoft includes HIMEM.SYS and EMM386.EXE with WfW. In VirtualBox, EMM386.EXE NOEMS appears to hang FreeDOS at boot, but HIMEM.SYS does work. Through process of elimination, I figured that DOSLFN is the culprit that is switching FreeDOS to protected mode. Once I commented out the line, I got an error message that the DOS version is unsupported, at which point Windows returns to the command prompt. I think somewhere along the line the memory control blocks get mutilated because the next internal command I run (“dir”) bombs with a message regarding being unable to terminate the resident FreeCOM and then a message about invalid opcodes. VirtualBox then hangs and I have to reboot. I have a copy of Undocumented DOS 2nd Edition (complete with the source code) so I have been running some of the tools that they wrote to test DOS compatibility, and presently, there seems to be an issue with SHARE. The MSDETECT code that I fully expected to fail (after a reboot because of the invalid opcode) returned that FreeDOS is a legitimate Microsoft DOS (which we know isn’t true). ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
