Hi there, If you're not interested in the background, please skip to THE QUESTION. :)
On Saturday, June 1st, 2024 at 2:51 AM, Roger via Freedos-user wrote:
Would be really interesting to hear, how people continue actively using DOS today, including their hardware/software environment. ...
See below. I hope it's interesting. On Mon, 3 June, 2024 at nine seconds before midnight Jim Hall wrote:
... I met with someone last year who uses FreeDOS to drive a CNC router to make actual products. (CNC = "Computer Numerical Control" .. that is the fancy term for "a machine controlled by a computer.) I recall that the CNC was running from a Dell PC, and they had a serial selector that let the PC control two (or three?) different CNC routers .. but one at a time.
Maybe I can help the guy. :) More on that later. But this is more of a quest for information than an offer of help. About 40 years ago I started writing software to help run my business. We still use it, as do several customers. I'm still working on it as the government keeps moving the goal posts - but that's another story. It's all on bare metal except for the build system (it's compiled in a DOS emulator) and for some development, both just for convenience. Initially it only ran on DOS, and for serious use (e.g. sending bills to customers) it's still only used on DOS although since the early 2ks it has also run on Linux, mostly for maintenance and training. On DOS there were several ways of using more than the base 640k of memory but over the years most of them fell by the wayside; my make files still theoretically can build several different 'models', but for many years I've built only DPMI executables using the venerable X32 DOS extender. The C/C++ compiler and a few libraries are the original Zortech tools which I actually paid for back in the day. They've been upgraded over the years and are now provided free by Digital Mars, but I'm terrified of unexpected issues so I've never upgraded them. There were quite a few gremlins in the early days, some of them not immediately obvious. The tools I'm using now are those which have stood the test of time. As far as the business uses are concerned there's no particular reason to move from DOS, and there are good reasons not to move (particularly the need for caution with business data) but I'm considering FreeDOS for a number of reasons, listed here I guess in ascending priority: 1. Debugging - for example I have some machines which will apparently run DOS, but not my business software. It isn't easy to debug MS-DOS. 2. Development - it might make some things easier for me. It could be useful to have a DOS network connection for development but I'll avoid it like the plague for systems with real business data. 3. Probably the most pressing right now, USB support. Few machines thesedays are equipped with PS/2 keyboard connectors. Thus far I've simply relied on older gear. Eventually that won't be an option, so I'd like now to set up a FreeDOS system which uses a USB keyboard. THE QUESTION 8<---------------------------------------------------------------------- I've looked at quite a bit of the documentation (and as you see in the mailing list archives) but I haven't seen it written in so many words. So here's the main question: Will FreeDOS, out of the box, work on a machine with a USB keyboard? Several of the threads I've seen here seem to be telling me that the answer is 'no'. I've seen a couple of stand-alone USB drivers for DOS mentioned here and there with caveats, but I haven't seriously looked at them yet. If there's experience Out There which may smooth my path I'll be very grateful to hear it. I'm sort of expecting that I'll have to load a third-party driver early in the boot process. That's OK I suppose. 8<---------------------------------------------------------------------- Getting back to the CNC machines and serial ports... Some time in the early 1990s my mother suggested that it would save a lot of time if she could have a workstation instead of having to wait for my sister's workstation to be free. This was her idea, not mine, and I feel the need to be clear about that. So I set about making my single-user business software package into a multi-user package. DOS was still the operating system, but it now supports multiple users on serial terminals, up to the limit of the hardware support. It took a while to get right, and it's a bit weird (for example some things can only be done safely when other things aren't being done) but with some cooperative working by the users it's supported several businesses for several decades. In my own business a 33MHz 386 with ISA multi-serial cards has supported a dozen concurrent users. I think several hundred users would probably be no trouble on a machine with a similar sort of specification if you could just get the hardware. This is based on my knowledge of the performance of the software and the system components and I haven't ever even simulated it. Some work in assembly language would be needed to use PCI serial cards other than in legacy mode, but I plan to do that whenever I get a minute. I haven't really thought about USB/serial converters although I so use them on several Linux boxes. Amongst other things the DOS business software can use a Linux box as a sort of go-between to transmit data to the government (which is now required here by law) and to send business documents (invoices, credit notes, statements) by email instead of printing paper forms. Maybe these techniques could find application with the CNC machines, it might be worth mentioning it to the guy if you bump into him again. -- 73, Ged. _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
