Hi :-) Yes, FreeDOS clones DOS and that forces it to support old interfaces...
> DR DOS had a multitasker. And MS DOS had limited task swapping in DOSSHELL, yes. If you ask me, it is easier to run multiple virtual DOS windows (DOSEMU, DOSBOX or even complete virtual PC) on modern PC: Those are not limited by the ability of the multitasker to handle various hardware, because they handle ALL hardware visible to the DOS in the respective virtual box. You could try Tri-DOS, but stability is rather limited. I think most programs with graphics, sound, network or even with non-trivial DOS extenders or memory usage (EMS, XMS, VCPI, DPMI) will have troubles even in a good multitasker like Windows 3 (supports multiple virtual DOS windows in parallel) or the DR DOS one. Would be interesting to know which multitasker is how strong, in particular the DR DOS one. > Note that the SoundBlaster DOS drivers (.SYS) did the exact same thing > on DOS: since modern SB cards were hardware-wise completely different > cards, namely Ensoniq, they had to provide "drivers" that would enable > you to continue to play games (and programs) written for the original > SoundBlaster (1.x or 2.0, Pro and 16). The SoundBlaster 16 PCI cards... That is unfortunately only a part of the problem: The DOS "drivers" for sound cards usually only do initial hardware setup. They do not tell a DOS game how to use the sound card, so the game still onky knows how to use SoundBlaster. The SoundBlaster PCI cards came with a protected mode "driver" which actually created a complete simulation of a SoundBlaster in a similar way to what DOSBOX and DOSEMU and virtual PC do when they simulate a complete set of DOS game friendly hardware for the game. The problem is that SoundBlaster Live PCI drivers only work with games with no or well-behaved DOS extenders, because of the protected mode usage as requirement for being able to simulate any hardware. Some (even PCI) sound cards also had chips which could simulate part of a SoundBlaster in hardware. Drivers for those could for example react to interrupts generated by the chips and use software to assist in the simulation of SoundBlaster compatibility. Unfortunately, those tend to only work well on mainboards which still are designed with a minimum of ISA infrastructure awareness. I have a few DOS friendly PCI sound cards and none of them has reasonable DOS game support on modern mainboards. (By the way: If we both are in Germany, you can try some of my cards...) > 1. The network hardware is one example. For every ISA network card you > had a DOS driver, and sometimes even a proprietary protocol (NetWare). Most of the time things work okay with PCI RTL8139 chipset for DOS, but to be honest, networking is not very nice in a single tasking OS anyway. Quite a few already PCI network chipsets do have DOS drivers on CRYNWR. > 2. I don't know if there is one, but a CPU throttling driver... You can use ACPI throttling with FDAPM and some experiments exist for "change clock and voltage and save power" features of AMD and Intel. Plus of course you can use POWER and FDAPM for the classic HLT method of reducing power consumption. If your PC only runs DOS all the time, you can probably simply use the BIOS setup to underclock and undervolt your CPU "statically" without drivers. DOS games run better at low CPU speed anyway :-) > 3. USB devices like USB sound cards, USB video cards (enabling you to > use a second/third/... montior) will not work. USB video capturing USB sound would make sense, but USB video-out and USB video-in do not, if you ask me. You would first need to have any DOS software which does anything with a second monitor at all! Or a DOS video editing software. Fun fact: I have written and used a DOS software which used two PCI video cards at the same time, one in text mode and one in graphics mode. Very few ancient DOS programs did support the parallel use of VGA compatible cards and black and white HGC. > devices (WebCams, analog TV, DVB, ...) To make use of that, you would need a DOS version of Skype and some sort of DOS living room hub software for watching TV. I think it is a lot easier to use your TV or a multi tasking OS to watch TV today. > 4. Some input devices like keyboards and mice don't work correctly, > or additional functions are not accessible (additional mouse buttons > / wheels). Again, there is no DOS driver to program these functions. I believe CTMOUSE does have support for a wheel and maybe some extra buttons, but of course there are no apps in DOS which would use them. Keyboards and mice are generally supported by the BIOS - even the USB style ones - so they should always work in DOS! Note that you could define your own key mapping for extra keys such as media player keys by simply reconfiguring your DOS keyboard layout. However, while your Linux or Windows could start a media player if you press "play", the single tasking DOS will not! You could configure your DOS media player software to use the extra multi media keys on your keyboard, but this would be much less fun than the possibilities in multi tasking OS ;-) > 5. Is there a DOS driver for USB joysticks? I know that analog joysticks > on the MIDI port (gameport) will likely work, but do digital protocols > work as well? The problem is that the analog joystick is "horribly" easy to read in DOS game software, so nobody ever used the BIOS interface to read it. Because of that, a DOS driver for USB joysticks COULD give access to the joystick situation in the BIOS interface, but no game would care! In other words, a DOS driver for USB joysticks will have the same evil problem as a DOS "driver" for modern sound chips: It will have to use protected mode to create the illusion of analog joystick hardware, to force old games to actually process the USB joystick signals... > 6. How is the support for graphics cards? Are there tools to add > additional VESA modes if they happen to be missing in the BIOS? Even the newest graphics cards still have VESA support for DOS, but they may support only a few modes because Windows and Linux rarely use VESA for everyday graphics. They only use VESA for booting etc. There are DOS drivers for some older graphics cards to add a list of VESA modes, such as SciTech UNIVBE, but you still will not find DOS games which actually work well with 16:9 modes or high resolutions. All modern graphics cards have hardware 3d support and often hardware support for fast, low-CPU video file decoding, which is all completely out of scope for all old DOS games and DOS video players afaik. > 7. I recently re-installed a IDE/ATAPI Zip Drive (250MB). I guess > there will be a DOS driver available for this one. Yes. The chance is even bigger than the chance to use it in Win XP. > And will USB Zip Drives also work in DOS? (I know that > parallel port versions and IDE versions do, but USB?) I did not know that ZIP still were produced when USB was invented... > 8. But the worst incompatibility of them all is the lack of CSM > (Compatiblity Support Module) on modern UEFI machines. Or does FreeDOS > run on EFI/UEFI? This is not the job of DOS! What you want to do is run a BIOS CSM such as SeaBIOS on your UEFI machine. After loading the BIOS module you should be able to enjoy all non-EFI operating systems, including DOS and older versions of Windows, on your old computer. But Windows will often try to use own hardware drivers instead of the BIOS, so I would guess that DOS runs more stable on your 2 TB harddisk than any ancient version of 32 bit Windows... :-) > IMHO, for games lack of sound and mouse/joystick support really > is the fun-killer. That is exactly why people love DOSBOX, DOSEMU and other virtual PC solutions: They simulate old hardware and that forces old DOS games to use your modern sound and joystick. DOS itself cannot help you in that, because the games do NOT ask DOS, nor the BIOS, to connect them to your sound or joystick. They just contain hardwired drivers in the games themselves, which support only SoundBlaster and analog sticks. However, your MOUSE should generally work with DOS, as long as your BIOS has reasonably USB keyboard / mouse legacy support. This will provide BIOS or even simulated PS/2 hardware representations of the generic concept of any USB keyboard or mouse for DOS and your game. Cheers, Eric ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ What NetFlow Analyzer can do for you? Monitors network bandwidth and traffic patterns at an interface-level. Reveals which users, apps, and protocols are consuming the most bandwidth. Provides multi-vendor support for NetFlow, J-Flow, sFlow and other flows. Make informed decisions using capacity planning reports. http://sdm.link/zohomanageengine _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
