Hi, On Tue, Oct 2, 2018 at 4:28 AM stecdose <stecd...@gmail.com> wrote: > > It takes a few days for me, but I haven't lost interest if it looked > like ;)
Okay, cool. > I will prepare a network disk, but this does not fit on the fdbase-floppy at > all :( > I really like this idea :) I think I forgot to mention AdvanceComp (advdef -z4, advzip -z4) to recompress (.gz, .zip, etc) with 7-Zip's improved Deflate (no EOS markers??). It should be 99% (or 100%??) compatible with all unzippers (except kunzip? I forget ...). I haven't kept up in recent years, so I forget where it's located (official URL). I know I mirrored some older ones to iBiblio for us. Also, later versions were somewhat sloppy and needed LFNs for tmpfile (which is a bug, but I never cared enough to officially complain). * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AdvanceCOMP * http://www.advancemame.it/comp-readme * https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/util/file/7zip/advancecomp/ Hmmm, I do vaguely recall that his builds were cross-compiled with old GCC 3.x, which was slower, so I did (once or twice) rebuild it with newer GCC 4.x (DJGPP) for faster runs. But in recent years I didn't care about such "minor" savings at all anymore. (But, just saying, it's still worth mentioning to you! Try it, and see!) > Maybe Procedure for network disk would be: boot up with that disk, some > dialog driven network-configuration, automatic time update with a list > of time servers, I tried to auto-enable packet driver in my MetaDOS. There was a .BAT (stub?) that optionally ran PicoSNTP, I think, but I only used it a very few times. (I should re-test on my old P4.) By default it only comes with (mTCP) FTP but can grab other tools from iBiblio (or elsewhere), if needed. > change disks to installer disk, start installer. > > 2). XCDROM is ancient and replaced by UIDE. > This one makes me a bit confused. I searched for UIDE and here a three > quotes: > ... > There is no source download anymore and somewhere I read he stopped to > make source public. > I don't think it is wise to use this driver/these drivers. So still > searching for some. I found a few that I still have to investigate, > bookmarked. Ugh, I didn't mean to bring up the stressful drama. (FreeDOS is totally innocent, BTW, and so am I.) To you, I only meant "use the one mirrored on iBiblio that still has free/libre sources (circa 2015)": * https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/dos/ellis/drivers-2015-03-05.zip Don't waste your time on ("newer") drivers as they can't be redistributed and lack sources. (That was not our decision.) > > I doubt many are still using 286s (whereas I know several still use > > 486s). I'm not against it, but it's somewhat impractical to demand 286 > > compatibility. In theory, we should be careful, but in practice it's > > almost a lost cause. Again, I'm sympathetic, but it's only worth > > worrying about "for fun" rather than an absolute mandate. > > But this is just what I want to have it for. For all those PCs can't > boot from/doesn't have a CD-drive but having a 3.5" floppy. And this > goes down to 286 as well. I'm absolutely not opposed, and I'm definitely sympathetic, but lots of software just plain can't rebuild for or run atop 286. You can do some things ... but not much (by default, at least not easily). It's still worth trying, in theory, but we're so limited in contributors anyways, and 286s are so rare, that unless we have active contributors, it's more of a perfectionist dream than direly worth wasting tons of hours on. > My first PC was a 286 with a 5,25" and I had to borrow a 3,5" drive to > install dos 6.22 and win 3.1. I've still got some 5.25" floppies for MS-DOS 5.0 from my (second but used) 486 (that is frail and disconnected, maybe unreliable). And I never barely used 5.25" on that machine anyways. I'm totally sympathetic, but some things are harder to do than they seem. > I think any older PC than 286 wont support a 3.5" floppy. Dunno, email Jim Leonard! ;-) Or one of the other gurus (Mike Chambers, Mike Brutman). Honestly, I don't know if any of those three hang around here (anymore, if ever). But they're the ones I would personally ask (if possible, if reasonable). I never had an 8086 myself, but I'm sympathetic (in software), so I never intentionally was incompatible (even if my efforts are weak, I'm no pro). > I have added an option now to choose between 8086 and 386 kernel, which > one should be installed. floppy boots with 8086. Not totally implemented > right now, still some work... 386 kernel makes absolutely no difference nor improvement, AFAIK. It's not even worth carrying around both. Just use the 8086, it's 100% good enough, keep it simple. > If I had a 5.25" drive I would make a base disk (set) for these too, I > have a shoe box full of untested 5,25" floppies... I would recommend doing development on a virtual machine and then, when finished/finalized, writing to physical floppy. It's just easier (and less prone to physical errors). > > (e.g. DJGPP) really is extremely popular and too good to ignore > > (mostly). > DJGPP is too complex and too big to fit on a floppy or some more... If > anyone needs this on a system only having a few MB HDD and a 3,5" > floppy, there are better ways to get this onto. I made a one-floppy (.7z-compressed) DJGPP install years ago: * https://sites.google.com/site/rugxulo/DJGPP203.7Z?attredirects=0 I started in 2009 and last updated it in 2012. It can even include (older, OpenWatcom-compiled) 7zdecode.exe on the disk, too! It's roughly 6 MB unpacked (but half that if you later UPX), so it can easily fit it onto RAM disk for best speed. It had (old but "classic") GCC 2.95.3 + BinUtils 2.16.1 + DJDEV 2.03p2, GNU Make, and a few other minor things. Not many people used it, but I thought it was cool. Though I did rebuild some pieces (atop NTVDM? using GCC 4.2.x?) via "-Os" just to save space. 7-Zip's (LZMA) solid compression helped, too. I also made some .7z files of OpenWatcom (1.3 or 1.7, 16-bit target only), but I never really needed or used those. Each of those would also fit on a 1.44 MB, 3.5" floppy disk, if desired. But it just depends on what you're trying to do. (DeSmet C would certainly fit on floppy. So would SmallerC, which I also think is awesome. So would CC386, almost, maybe two floppies needed there.) > As I have removed a little stuff from base disk, I have now space for infozip. I'm sure we could check the linker map or fiddle with various compilers to get smallest binary, if truly needed. But if you create/control your own archives, just use UNTARDOS instead. (Usually .tar.gz is smaller than .zip anyways.) > Yesterday I got a Commodore 386-SX25 with 2MB RAM. Will also test on this > machine. IIRC, my one-flop DJGPP also had WMEMU387.DXE for those FPU-less computers (like my own 486 Sx/25, which [again] is disconnected). But I recall that even GCC 2.95.3 was mostly too slow on 486 (although okay on 586), so you might honestly prefer GCC 2.7.2.3 (which I also [barely] rebuilt years ago) since it was faster. Still a "good" compiler version, not sure if I ever bothered trying GCC 2.8.1. (Heck, you could try the old EMX/GCC dual version there, too, if morbidly curious.) > When it's done I also add a Makefile for bcc/dev86 on DOS-host. > This seems the most easiest to do. Make it a .BAT instead since I don't know what Make you'd use there. (16-bit Dmake?) Even OpenWatcom has WmakeR (real-mode version) although the compiler itself is 386-hosted. (There's also WasmR, but there are too many other assemblers and too many options, so it's questionable whether you'd prefer that for anything big or not.) _______________________________________________ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
