Hi Jim,
Please find attached my interview.
Feel free to come back to me if any comments.
Regards.
El lun, 25 jul 2022 a las 20:47, Jim Hall (<jh...@freedos.org>) escribió:
> Hi everyone
>
> I wanted to share an update on the FreeDOS 28th Anniversary Ebook. You
> may remember this is the book of interviews with FreeDOS developers
> and users.
>
> I've started a GitLab project for the ebook. You can find it here:
> https://gitlab.com/freedosproject/freedos28/
>
> I've uploaded plain text copies of the interviews I've received so
> far. If you are interested in participating in the ebook, and
> ESPECIALLY IF YOU ALREADY RESPONDED TO THE INTERVIEW, please take a
> look at the project. If you responded to the interview, but you don't
> see your interview listed, THAT MEANS I DON'T HAVE A COPY OF YOUR
> INTERVIEW (I may have missed it in my Inbox, or it was caught by a
> spam filter, etc.) If your interview isn't there, LET ME KNOW so I can
> get your interview response added.
>
> If you want to contribute to the ebook, but haven't responded to the
> interview, this is your last opportunity to do so. You can find the
> list of questions in the GitLab project.
>
> I originally planned to have other technical editors help me with the
> editing process, but that didn't work out due to timing. So I will do
> the editing myself, with input from the community! I'll plan to edit
> everything in the open on GitLab.
>
> The first phase was to get everyone's raw interview responses into
> GitLab. The next phase is to organize the responses into a structure
> or format. I'll do those edits in LibreOffice, which is how I'll
> publish the ebook. Drafts will get posted as ODT and PDF files.
>
> The updated (expected) schedule is:
>
> July to early August - edit
> early to mid August - first draft
> community review opportunity
> mid to late August - second draft
> community review opportunity
> late August - final (published)
>
>
> Jim
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Freedos-devel mailing list
> Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
>
Interview questions
My name is Javier Gutiérrez Chamorro (Guti), a Spanish fan of DOS in all of its
flavors, including FreeDOS. So I am glad taking part in this 28th Anniversary
book. Thank you Jim for letting me jump in.
I am mostly know for my site https://javiergutierrezchamorro.com, started back
in 2004 and still active. The beginnings were mostly computing and software
development related, with a special mention to retro-computing. Nowadays I am
mostly focused in watch and other reviews, but vintage computing and software
is still there.
I was the man behind Scratch Upload, a project aimed to keep DOS programs in
their latest available versions in a moment where most abandonware sites
where basically focused in games. Thanks to the Internet Archive project,
the vast majority of the contents where still available:
https://archive.org/details/scratchupload
Back in the old good DOS days, and also later on when OS/2 and Windows gained
popularity, I still developed shareware and freeware programs as De Trans
Software (D.T.S.), Rainbow Software Limited (RSL) and Swap Software
Incorporated (SSI).
Non-technical:
>What is your earliest/first memory of using DOS? This is basically a
>"how did you start using DOS" question.
Even if I played a bit with an Amstrad 1512 at my father's office (running
MS-DOS 3.20), it was not until the Christmas at 1990 that I was gifted an
Amstrad PC-2086 that came with MS-DOS 3.30. It was an affordable machine
but at the same time with lots of special particularities, specially its
Paradise VGA graphics.
Then I moved to DR-DOS 3.40, and PC/DOS 5.00. After that, I got "specialized"
in niche DOSses: PC/DOS 2000, PTS-DOS 6,7 and my beloved OpenDOS featuring
the best of DR-DOS in an opened source fashion.
>How did you first get interested in FreeDOS? How did you hear about
>it? What was the first thing you did/tried on FreeDOS?
At that time I was very active in different communities, and FreeDOS
sounded aloud. I tried it, and at first glance was impressed that it
simply worked! Open source was not so popular at the time, with the
exception of Linux, so having a DOS compatible environment which was
free to use was great. I remember playing with the MICRO-C Compiler,
the tool recommended at that time for creating freeDOS software. It
was years behind the Borland's one I used, but was a good start.
>How do you run FreeDOS today? If it's a virtual machine, tell us about it
>and how you set up the VM. If it's real hardware, tell us about the setup.
I still have an old Pentium II with 32 MB. of memory running DOS, I use to
change from one distribution to another from time to time. I do not use it
regularly, but guess that it has MS-DOS 7.1 currently. My daily usage is
on VirtualBox virtual machines, if we do not take into account DOSBox, a
nice project too.
My setup is targeted more on nostalgia than usability, QEMM 97, DesqView,
and also a custom personal distro I have created mixing the latest versions
included in DR-DOS since 7.01 to the controversial 8.0/8.1.
Also I have a FreeDOS 1.3 image where I like to play with open source tools,
including Open Watcom V2 fork, a project which I like a lot too.
>What's cool about FreeDOS 1.3? What features do you use the most?
One think I love, and that was dreamed when only commercial DOSes where
available was the possibility of having different kernels, compiled with
different compilers and optimized with different CPU. It is so nice to
see how new hardware and capabilities have been implemented: huge memories
on JEMM386, FAT32 support, and fast disk caches and virtual disks.
>Why do you run FreeDOS in 2022?
When developing I like the freedom DOS provides, you have full control and
full access to the hardware. You run in a real hardware, not in a virtual
environment controlled by the OS. With FreeDOS you have also the freedom of
it being free.
I am still writting about DOS retro computing:
https://www.javiergutierrezchamorro.com/category/informatica/retro/
>What programs do you like to run on FreeDOS? Do you have a favorite app,
>or favorite game? If you could take only one DOS program with you to a
>desert island, what would it be?
With no doubt Borland C++ 3.1 is the one I spend most time. But would like to
mention Wordperfect 6.1/6.2 the epitome in DOS evolution.
Programmer:
What's the coolest program you've written for DOS? Could be any version
or distro of DOS here.
Lots of ones in the past to mention. But recently
>What program/s have you written for FreeDOS? Why did you decide to
>write it/them?
I can remember UPTIME
(https://nikkhokkho.sourceforge.io/static.php?page=UPTIME), ZEROFILL
(https://nikkhokkho.sourceforge.io/static.php?page=ZEROFILL) all two included
in FreeDOS, but also BEEP
(https://www.javiergutierrezchamorro.com/beepbell-en-ensamblador/).
Reasons for each program are different, but all of them start because they are
useful to you. In the case of UPTIME I started it in order to try the
improvements on FAST compiler after Bruce Axtens released FAST and SOFA as
open source. I peaked FAST decades ago before knowing assembler and it
amazed me. So as a challenge, I decided to write UPTIME in FAST!. Sadly
latest FAST version was buggy, and it required to apply lots of workarrounds
so for UPTIME v2 I decided to rewrite it in assembly (JWASM).
>What's different about writing programs for DOS than another operating
>system like Windows or Linux?
One additional advantage of DOS is that it still has the 8 bit philosophy, it
allows you to create small, but at the same time, useful programs that can be
developed in a few hours or days, in contrast with modern systems in which
needed effort can easily surpass it by a factor of 5x.
Legal:
This ebook will be distributed under the Creative Commons
Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) license, and
may also be reprinted in a paper book format via our print-on-demand
partners at Lulu. You can find the Creative Commons terms at:
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
>To indicate you agree to your content being included under the Creative
>Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) license,
>please type "I AGREE" here:
I AGREE
>Please type your name EXACTLY as you would like it spelled in the book:
Javier Gutiérrez Chamorro (Guti)
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