>> *The storage card is like 2GB and I partitioned mine as about 1.5GB & >> 500MB— >> the 500MB D: is where I keep my documents & other files, and install any >> third >> party games & apps I want to use. Then whenever I want to install a new >> FreeDOS, >> I just wipe the 1.5GB C: partition and not touch my 500MB D: partition. > > Smart idea.
I've even take this a step further by installing a multi-boot manager. The one I use is a commercial program called System Commander, which I've had for a _long_ time. It will let you boot up to 26 different versions of DOS (in the boot menu they are labeled from A-Z which is why it's limited to 26). It keeps copies of all the boot files (the hidden ones and CONFIG/AUTOEXEC) in a "safe" place and copies them to where they need to go after you select which DOS you want to boot. I currently have 24 versions of DOS (various incarnations of MS, PC, Free, DR/EDR, and PTS). Specifically, it currently has both FreeDOS 1.2 and 1.3 as separate options -- I may add 1.4 in the future but I really don't see a need right now. I also have this multi-DOS option installed in several different VMs, including all the "major" ones (like VMWare, VirtualBox, DOSBox, QEMU, etc.) as well as several other "obscure" ones (a total of about 15 of them). So, between the multiple DOS versions and the different VMs I have hundreds of possible virtual test environments. My desktop is old enough to have a BIOS capable of booting DOS on the real hardware also. In order to get all this to work, I have a relatively small C: drive that just contains things needed to boot (System Commander with all the boot configurations it needs, some utilities like EMM/JEMM, a small text editor, and a few others). The various AUTOEXEC.BAT files (one for each DOS version) in the C: drive just make some initial configurations, including setting up some environment variables to identify which DOS manufacturer & version it is, and then it jumps to the "real" AUTOEXEC.BAT file on the second (usually D:) drive. Most of the various utilities and programs and documents are on the second drive -- the C: drive is small and just contains what's needed to start booting. The "real" AUTOEXEC.BAT file contains if/then type statements in various places to handle the special cases where certain versions of DOS won't work with certain utilities. For example, I use SUBST & SWSUBST to set up "special" drive letters, and SWSUBST doesn't work with some versions of DOS and I need to use the specific SUBST program that came with that particular version of DOS, or in DOSBox and its clones I need to use MOUNT instead of either SUBST or SWSUBST. It's not all that simple to set up an environment like this or to use it since there are so many "corner cases" where things are not quite what they should be. And you also have to setup various kinds of virtual disks for the different VM's (some will work with real hard drives, some need a particular type of virtual disk like IMG or VHD or VHDX or VMDK, etc.). Trying to keep everything at least semi-synchronized is a challenge. But having so many options for testing is good for development. _______________________________________________ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
