Eric, It’s involved, but so was writing an MS-DOS clone almost 17 years ago that is able to run 98% of all DOS software natively factoring in the quirks and undocumented and partially documented structures that had to be "clean room" implemented to avoid infringement.
You and I were around for the beginnings of FreeDOS (when Pat was involved) and it was looking shaky then. Now FreeDOS in places were there was nothing to fit the bill, such as BIOS update disks, disk recovery tools, and emergency boot disks. What I am advocating is a next level inclusion. Version 1.2 of FreeDOS is what, pushing out things that don’t use the GPL license and/or is free but the source code is no where to be found. The idea I have isn’t to create DOS windows in Windows but rather to build, using the Windows kernel which we can pull portions from Wine and/or ReactOS, load Windows drivers, and create a hardware compatibility layer whereby you can map an onboard sound card to the Sound Blaster settings, i.e., SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 T3 P330 H6 E620. USB game controllers can be mapped to the game port, USB printers to the parallel port, etc. I’m not interested incorporating the GUI portion of Windows and given the open source nature of some of the other projects, I think having access to incorporate these pieces into a FreeDOS 32 project would be ideal. > On May 31, 2015, at 7:08 AM, Eric Auer <e.a...@jpberlin.de> wrote: > > > Hi Antony, > > if the goal is only to use Windows driver, then writing > a clone of Windows is a high price. Plus it already has > been paid, by the ReactOS project. Note that DOS windows > in Windows often do not gain from Windows drivers: For > example if your soundcard comes with a Windows driver, > your DOS games still can not use that, even in Windows. > > The exception would be dosemu and dosbox in Linux and, > only the latter, in Windows: Those simulate a PC with > DOS compatible hardware. They are not just DOS windows. > > So regarding the balance between gain and effort, the > big question is: For WHICH (categories of) pieces of > Windows hardware do you want better DOS support? You > already say that mouse, keyboard and storage are not > enough, so what else? > > You mention VMware, Parallels and VirtualBox: Those > all simulate complete PC hardware, VM aware client > drivers there are just to add features, such as the > host / client drive sharing for which at least some > VMware DOS driver already has been written afaik :-) > > I remember that the "joystick" category already is > known to DOS USB drivers: The problem probably is > that many games do NOT use the BIOS calls to query > joystick status. Instead, they directly access the > joystick port hardware, but that expects non-USB. > > Again, full hardware simulations can give your DOS > game access to non-DOS sound and joystick, but DOS > windows in Windows are not enough for that... > > And a full hardware simulation is not what you are > looking for, apparently: You "only want DOS which > somehow at the same time is almost Windows, so it > can use Windows drivers". To make that really work, > you would end up having a lot of Windows plus some > PC hardware simulator, which is much more than DOS. > > For thinking about how small a system could be to > combine DOS and sufficient magic to support those > pieces of "Windows" hardware you are intersted in, > the main question is: WHICH Windows hardware driver > categories are you interested in? > > Regards, Eric > > PS: Your intuition that using Windows drivers and > not Linux drivers for DOS probably comes from DOS > and Windows being from the same company. Yet BOTH > modern driver ecosystems are totally DOS unrelated. > There IS some DOS software with Linux sound drivers. > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > _______________________________________________ > Freedos-devel mailing list > Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
