Good morning,
> Let's face it, people will try the floppy distro on old, but > less than 35 years old PC, create FAT32 partitions because > their disk size asks for that, fail to format them, say only > to themselves that FreeDOS is crap and go back to dosbox :-( You may be right. But, I think it is worse than that. If it doesn’t work first time, regardless of hardware and lack of reading any instructions, most say “garbage” and move along. > > So thinking about it again, the whole idea of trying to make > the complete distro SORT OF 8086 compatible is much worse than > telling 8086 users to boot from some special 8086 floppy, use > that special 8086 FreeCOM and special 8086 UNZIP and see how > far they can get - WITHOUT introducing any horrible pitfalls > such as missing 386 drivers and FAT32 support to the floppy > distro. Two boot floppies would not be difficult for the RBE (release build environment) to create. There is no doubt it would be easier and safer than making FAT32 support loadable/unloadable from the 8086 kernel. Also, the 386 kernel would not have any need for such support and probably should not ever be built without FAT32. If I understood his message correctly, I think Jeremy has already offered the optimum solution. The next kernel build to include, a FAT32 Kernel for both 386 & 8086, plus a FAT16 only Kernel for 8086. This would provide the Floppy Edition the widest compatibility without needing separate boot disks. > The oldest computer with 1.44 MB drive I have seen so > far was a 286 or 386 and it is too long ago to remember which. The PCPartner 286 I had came with both 3.5" 1.44mb and 5.25’” 1.2mb drives. My father had a LaserXT Turbo. It had a 360k 5.25” drive. Over time, he did several upgrades to it. Swapped out original graphics card for VGA. Added an expansion board to support a 1.2mb 5.25” drive. Added an EMS board (I think 1Mb). Added Sound card (maybe original SoundBlaster). A couple hard drive upgrades with the largest being 60 or 80mb. > And it is generally hard for anybody with even slightly less > ancient hardware to even create 360k or 720k boot disks which > would work on the corresponding ancient drives: 1.44 MB drives > make more narrow, delicate magnetic zones, but READ 720k okay. It is a bit of a pain to create anything other than 1.44s on modern hardware. And that assumes you can get your hands on one from the dwindling supply of USB Floppy drives. (I should probably stock up on a couple, they are cheap) The overall design of the Floppy Edition permits a wide range of diskettes to be used. Unfortunately, not everything required by the installer quite fits on a 360k. (Although, I must admit, with a little more pruning and juggling by the installer and dropping the 386 kernel, It may just squeeze onto a 360) Anyhow, a user can simply migrate the 720k boot disk to 1.2, 1.44 or even 2.88mb disks without much difficulty. Then just copy the archive files to whatever size media they have handy. Those files are in 60k chunks to best suit all media sizes. The user with the FAT32/16 issue that I assisted whose problem resulted in my initial post had done that all on his own. He migrated the BOOT and archive files over to “5-inch floppy” and once he got past the partitioning issue, installation went perfect using the 9 diskettes he needed. (So must have been a 1.2Mb 5.25” drive and disks) All that being said, I could see how an even farther stripped down 8086 only 360k boot diskette could be useful. > > Good morning, Eric :-) Jerome _______________________________________________ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
