Hi Anthony, please explain in which way Windows WITHOUT a GUI would be something that we want to add to FreeDOS: There already are really good, free and open DPMI based DOS extenders for DOS.
FreeDOS itself is not running in protected mode, but every EMM386 style software must use protected mode (not to be confused with EMS hardware solutions for old computers) and Windows in 386 enhanced mode is not compatible with normal EMM386. Instead, it uses an exotic interface called GEMMIS to REPLACE EMM386 on the fly. This only works with non-free versions, for example Microsoft EMM386. The solution is to use either the Microsoft version or simply not use EMM386. In some cases, HIMEM and similar drivers can cause similar problems, but again, you can use the Microsoft drivers :-) Microsoft mainly patches DOS when it tries to put it into a protected mode bubble to be able to run DOS windows in a Windows session. In standard mode, Windows is more like a normal program for DOS, which makes things easier :-) As described earlier in this thread, you do have to edit your Windows config AND you have to use special versions of the FreeDOS kernel to support that bubble wrapping or patching of FreeDOS for 386enh Windows compatibility. If Windows can not figure out how to patch DOS, it will give a similar error message to the already protected mode one. > Microsoft demonstrated a means of providing multitasking and 32-bit > functionality on top of a 16-bit OS through the development of Windows 3.x > and Windows 9x. If we are able to build a 32-bit subsystem that can utilize > the device drivers and other existing components of the 32-bit Microsoft > subsystem (Win32s or Windows 9x) then FreeDOS gains a 32-bit option that > provides the backwards compatibility that is needed to meet spec. Everything that you mention in the previous paragraph is useful only for graphical Windows software: To summarize, you really should try Linux with Wine, or ReactOS for it. Regards, Eric PS: Even running only multiple DOS Windows in Windows is already something that does need the GUI of Windows, too. But you can work with DOS "task swappers", as TriDOS :-) They swap between different (full screen) DOS sessions. This is not related to how many bits your Windows has. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
