This is a test to see if I'm still getting messages from our friend in SobyLand. I've been reluctant to post since getting several private emails berating me for using Microsoft Virtual PC, telling me what a fool I am for daring to dream of building my own operating system, telling me my chances of success are vitually nill, that it will take me years to learn a language like C++, and that most operating systems end up requiring the use of more than one language. I've also had people question my use of Ada for operating systems work, despite the fact there's a major project underway to build a secure real-time OS in Ada. I have at least 10 years of programming experience in Ada 83/95, and I'm recently updating to Ada 2005. I have been programming in assembler and many high level languages since 1972, and I live for computers and the space program used to be just about the most important thing in my life other than family. I remember Alan Shepherd's first flight and watched all the space missions I could as a child, including the moon landings. I've worked on real-time operating systems that flew in space onboard the shuttle, in the European Spacelab, thank you very much, and was even the sole person in charge of maintenance of the GCOS operating system for ground checkout of Spacellab using the ATE (Automatic Test Equipment). I think I know as much about computers and programiming as any of you on this forum, and though you may specialize in some narrow little area, I don't think you have much of a leg up on me with regards to overall experience in computers.
So it is with some degree of mirth that I read some of your responses, telling me this emulator works better than that emulator, and don't use M$ products or you are a fool. I've been using Microsoft tools since 1986, with the first available software development kit for Windows, something like version 1.03, and I built programs using that SDK using Microsoft/IBM Pascal until I discovered you could overflow the symbol table of the compiler with the smallest Windows program, so I ended up switching to Microsoft C for further development. I already knew C from my work on the Software Productivity Project at TRW, my employer from 1978-2001. I worked on the earliest Berkeley Unix system porting a huge database system from VAX/VMS to Unix, about 60,000 lines of Pascal, 20,000 lines of Fortran, and I even converted some assembly code from the DEC format to the Unix format. I thought it was clever to use VAX Fortran and capture the assembly output, reformat it, and then use it in assembler on the Unix side. So when people make fun of me for writing a toy operating system that "no one else has', I just laugh right back at them. I've written assembly code on the PC from the time I got my first PC back in 1987, and I had several systems before that. My first computer came in kit form, a Northstar Horizon Z80A machine running at a screaming 4 MHz, and I started out with only one 16 KB S100 memory card, and upgraded eventually to 56 KB total memory. I've disassembled the operating system, relocated it to a different load address in memory, and a variety of other projects in 8080/Z80 assembly language, which I used to be able to read in hex without consulting a chart. I also wrote a Z80 emulator on a VAX 11/780 in 1981, in DEC Macro Assembler, when I worked at the Army Advanced Research Center. It could run the Northstar code and had an emulated floppy drive, stored on disk on the VAX. So don't tell me I have no chance of success. Don't tell me it can't be done or my first goal will be to prove you wrong, that it indeed can be done! I appreciate all the well-intended advice from the nice people here, and I overlook the personal attacks on my credibility. I used to write programs almost 24/7, even on my lunch breaks at work. That's how much I like programming. What I don't like is naysayers, telling me that I can't do what I want to do. I don't like people to question my sincerity, my honesty, or my integrity. Every word I've posted is true, and if you don't like it, you know what you can do with your opinion. Opinions are like ________'s, everyone has one, and your ____ stinks just like everyone else's, to quote a few old sayings! I deliberately left blanks so you can fill in the blanks with your own interpretations and expletives if required. Just for the record, I downloaded a free trial version of VMWARE, and installed it, got my unlock code, tried to install FreeDOS on it, just like I had done with Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 earllier. It turns out that both EMM386.EXE and JEMM386.EXE failed in a very similar manner and I don't know if I have the time or the energy to try to figure out exactly why. I do know that some of the first crashes of FreeDOS under Virtual PC were caused by a particular driver. I followed the recommendations of one of the NICER people here, and loaded the drivers one at a time for troubleshooting purposes, and that led me to conclude that this particular driver was the one which was acting like a spoilt child and causing me grief. Since I've gone to the effort of installing Virtual PC and it's working, I might just stick with it. But I would like to try DOSEMU for further development at some point. I do appreciate this forum and enjoy reading about other people's projects. Sometimes it takes me a while to absorb all the information and decide the best course of action, and I often choose to go BOTH ROUTES, or ALL OF THE ABOVE, when given suggestions, to systematically eliminate the wheat from the chaff. Troubleshooting is an important skill, and you have to use techniques like "divide and conquer", "process of elimination", "trial and error", and "blind luck" to succeed!!!! I especially enjoyed getting responses from Erik Auer, since I worked in Germany for over two years on the European Spacelab program, probably before many of you were born, in 1979-80, and again in 1983-84. I'm somewhat of a rocket scientist by nature, being an aerospace engineer, majored in aerodynamics, particularly numerical modelling of flow fields using the finite element method, and also minored in aeroelasticity, if you know what that means. I taught myself most of what I know about computers by reading every available book in the university library and every book I could find on DOS internals, Windows internals, and programming of any sort, and many, many books on computer science. So in a sense I'm also a computer scientist, and I've taken graduate courses in operating systems, programming languages, algorithms, artificial intelligence, computer architecture, etc. So don't tell me I can't do something. Perhaps I'm a fool t think I could build my own operating system, but I'm relying on about 35 years of programming experience. Programming was my job for about 25 of those years, and programming is also my hobby, and I will probably die sitting here at this PC programming till 4 AM, when the anti-virus scan kicks in and slows my PC down. I guess I need a faster PC. Again, I want to express my appreciation for those people who are truly helpful and not just expressing contempt for my efforts. I'd be tempted to write more if encouraged, or less if discouraged, or even leave if that's what the consensus opinion turns out to be, that I don't belong here. Sincerely, Brent D. Martin BrentMartin wrote: > > > Please! > > I'm getting one of these messages every time I post something here. > > > SobyLand does not accept mail from your address. > > The headers of the message sent from your address are show below: > > > I do not want any more of these messages and I don't know any polite way > to say so without offending someone's sensibilities. If someone doesn't > want to see my messages they couldn't have found a better way of letting > me know than whatever he's currently doing, sending me a nasty message > every time I post at all. > > Am I doing something wrong by posting here? Must I accept spam rejection > letters from people who don't like me just to be able to post here? > > Please explain to me the error of my ways if I'm doing something > incorrectly, please. > > Sincerely, > > Brent D. Martin > -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Is-there-any-way-I-can-stop-getting-these-messages--tf3404426.html#a9553519 Sent from the FreeDOS - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT & business topics through brief surveys-and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.php&p=sourceforge&CID=DEVDEV _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
