Re: [Freedos-devel] How to work with FAT12 in FreeDOS 1.3
On 4/23/2022 3:42 AM, richardkolacz...@hotmail.com wrote: I am trying to setup FAT12 drives so that I can test doslfn and doslfnMS which have been very recently updated. I can only work via bare metal mode (usb BOOT disk is C:\ with also partitions D:\ and E:\). To date I have created a FAT16 partition (D:\) which both Windows and FreeDOS can recognize and work with. I cannot find a way to reformat just the D:\ partition into a FAT12 - neither via Windows, CMD or so far by FreeDOS. I was aiming for a 256 MB FAT12, but if this is not possible then a 32 MB FAT12 will do. How would that have to be able to work? Logically? FAT12 is called FAT12 because it uses 12 bits for each cluster number, which means that you can have a maximum of 4087 clusters (8 clusters are used up by the FAT structures itself). Given a default cluster size of 4KB on a hard drive (partition), that leaves you with a maximum drive/partition size of a tad less than 16MB. Pre-DOS 3.0, you could have 8KB clusters, for a maximum of 32MB drive/partition size. But that is still a fraction of the 256MB you were trying to create. DOS 3.0 and up would format any drive/partition larger than 16MB as FAT16. And for trying to use long file names with FAT12, that should be considered futile as well from the start, as the number of (root) directory entries severely limits the number of files you could store on such a partition. Those restrictions eased with the introduction of FAT16 in DOS 3.0, but personally, I would not bother at all with LFN unless you're using a FAT32 partition. Ralf -- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] Freedos EDIT
Hello, On Fri, 22 Apr 2022 at 22:28, Eric Auer wrote: > > Hi Tom, > > > I just noticed that the source to FreeDOS EDIT > > > https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distributions/1.2/repos/base/edit.zip > > is incomplete as it assumes an existing DFLAT library which is not > > included, and at least non-trivil to locate on the internet. > If you have troubles to find or compile, let me know. > Looking at my archives, there was a file with the obscure name > DFP100S.ZIP containing the sources. Such things happened when > people pretended that web browsers are unable to access files > with longer names than 8+3 characters :-p > Well DOS does not without LFN, and I try to use 8.3 to create DOS packages. Aitor ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] Update on website usability test
On Sat, Apr 23, 2022 at 5:02 AM Eric Auer wrote: [..] > It may be my German bad understanding of fashion, but: > > A professional designer donated a new website design and > the result was that in a test, 2 out of 5 topics were > almost impossible to find. That does not sound like an > "overall ... good" and professional product to me. This is a common misunderstanding of usability tests. Finding tasks that are difficult or impossible does not necessarily mean the design is bad. It depends on tester feedback. In this case, it seems most of the changes will be "tweaks" rather than "throw it out and start again." [..] > Why does the new download page REMOVE all other GOOD > to have links found on the old download page? Being > "how to install", "verify", "what's included" and > "read the readme", as well as "how to write IMG" and > a link to the individual package file archive? That was something from the proposed design, to put less text on each page. The web designer's proposed design moved the "How to install" link to the front page, so the updated design didn't include that link on the "Download" page. I thought it was an interesting change, and I hoped it might help point people to the install instructions. But see below - testers didn't look for this on the front page, they looked for it on the "Download" page. The other links for "verify," "what's included," "readme," etc aren't on the "Download" page in the test site because I was a bit rushed to complete the new test site before they started usability testing, and I knew "verify," "what's included," "readme," etc wouldn't be used for the usability test - so I saved that for later work. (Remember that I said this was a "mostly-working version" of the new website.) [..] > The current design focuses on "download" and "news", > while adding common other topics on the top menu bar > and social media (only as non-accessible graphical > logo links) and other things in the bottom menu bar. > > The new design largely preserves the menu bars, but > tucks away the news behind a small text link which > does not have any glitter added. > > While it is very nice and unusual that a project as > FreeDOS still has regular interesting news and is > not one of those retro projects which have not been > touched for years. So the news should get more shine. Moving the news updates off the front page to a separate "News" page was part of the proposed design. I wasn't a fan of it, but I figured "let's test it and see how well it works." >From the feedback, and listening to the students' presentation, it seems clear that a separate "News" page isn't the right way to do it. I agree with the recommendation to turn these into bullet points somehow, but I'd like to put these back on the front page. > Instead, the new design gives more spotlights to the > youtube channel, system requirements (which are rather > boring: it SHOULD run on every PC, but on very new PC, > you will need a VM or emulator to compensate the lack > of BIOS and, not mentioned in the new design at all, > almost every game will need those for sound anyway), > "about", games, application and programming, > > However, "about" just is an optional detour to reach > the games, application and programming pages, why? > With a rather short text about the why of FreeDOS, > with a typo "sofwtare" ;-) I just fixed the typo for you. :-) Almost everything you've mentioned about the front page was part of the proposed website design. I thought it would be interesting to have them tested for usability. Breaking out the "About" pages was one of my changes. While this usability test didn't show issues there, I don't think breaking them out like this is the right way to go. I attended one of their tests, and that tester got a little lost (not very lost, more *distracted*) with the "About" pages. So I'll find a way to streamline that, maybe put it onto one page. I'm not sure. I'll wait until the other student groups have reported their findings before I plan any changes. > The new "games" section links to several online > games collections, but does not provide hints on > the sound issue. And there could be a number of > shiny game screenshots on it as well :-) [..] Yup, I planned to add more screenshots to the "Games" section, but I ran out of time before the students needed to start usability testing. :-) > PS: Why does the start page say you need INTEL > CPU? How about AMD, Cyrix and all other brands? > Excluding ARM, Apple and Motorola, but still... The web designer proposed having a "system requirements" section on the front page, and I thought that was a good idea. For a while, a lot of people were emailing me to ask why they couldn't run FreeDOS (on bare metal) on their new Raspberry Pi. Or why they couldn't install FreeDOS on their new 2022 laptop. And the answer is because like any DOS, FreeDOS requires an Intel-compatible CPU and a BIOS. You can't boot any DOS on ARM, or on an Intel CPU that o
Re: [Freedos-devel] How to work with FAT12 in FreeDOS 1.3
On Sat, 23 Apr 2022 at 12:43, richardkolacz...@hotmail.com wrote: > > I cannot find a way to reformat just the D:\ partition into a FAT12 - > neither via Windows, CMD or so far by FreeDOS. I was aiming for a 256 MB > FAT12, but if this is not possible then a 32 MB FAT12 will do. 32MB is the theoretical maximum with standard-size clusters, but I think for over 16MB old MS-DOS will use FAT16. Maybe smaller. You are going *wayy* too big. Try starting with say 1MB and slowly doubling it... I reckon 8 or 16 is likely to be the maximum. Remember that until Compaq DOS 3.31, the maximum size _for FAT16_ was 32MB. -- Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven UK: (+44) 7939-087884 ~ Czech [+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal]: (+420) 702-829-053 ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] How to work with FAT12 in FreeDOS 1.3
Thanks for quick reply. So too big, how big can I go and the CMD line (in FreeDOS) to achieve some sort of FAT12 drive (for my USB stick D:\ partition)? For FORMAT testing, I have FAT12, FAT16 and FAT32 drives in my DOSEMU2 installation. Those are created by manually changing the partition types in diskimage files, which is a bit of an insider trick, but you should be able to do the same with FDISK on real hardware :-) My FAT12 drive is a bit smaller than 8 MB, the FAT16 and FAT32 drives are both circa 32 MB each. Note that there are different partition types for < 32 MB and > 32 MB and for CHS and LBA. I recommend that you use LBA where available. You can have FAT16 drives with up to 2 GB (4 GB with the non-standard 64 kB cluster size) and FAT32 drives must be at least 32 MB and at most 2 TB (Terabytes) for MBR partitioned drives with 512 bytes per sector. FreeDOS does not yet support other sector sizes and although a few bits of code are available, it does not yet support GPT style partitioning in the kernel. I think Bret's USB drivers do support GPT partitioned USB storage media, but you will probably hit other DOS limitations when attempting to have more than 2 TB in a single drive letter. Anyway, for your FAT12 question, create a partition of FAT12 type, then format that. Because the distinction below/above 32 MB (64k sectors) and CHS/LBA does not exist in FAT12 partition types, you should probably assume hat it has to be CHS < 32 MB, even though the theoretical limit is 128 MB (4000+ clusters of 32 kB each). In general, I recommend cluster sizes up to 4 kB, so you would keep your FAT12 drives below 16 MB and your FAT16 below 256 MB. For larger drives, FAT32 is a better choice, in particular if you have mostly small files. Remember that every file is rounded up to whole clusters when it comes to disk space allocations. Drives and/or BIOS will often support access with 512 byte sector size, so you probably will not have to worry about the lack of 4k sector size support in FreeDOS. However, you will often see GPT partitioned drives on modern hardware - see above - and UEFI only systems without a BIOS or CSM (compatibility layer to provide BIOS interface on UEFI systems). You cannot run FreeDOS directly on such hardware yet. There is a small discussion about how to use open source CSM or BIOS implementations to potentially run DOS on 2022 computers at the moment, but no succes stories to share yet :-) Regards, Eric ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] How to work with FAT12 in FreeDOS 1.3
Thanks for quick reply. So too big, how big can I go and the CMD line (in FreeDOS) to achieve some sort of FAT12 drive (for my USB stick D:\ partition)? From: Steve Nickolas Sent: Saturday, 23 April 2022 8:59 PM To: Technical discussion and questions for FreeDOS developers. Subject: Re: [Freedos-devel] How to work with FAT12 in FreeDOS 1.3 On Sat, 23 Apr 2022, richardkolacz...@hotmail.com wrote: > I cannot find a way to reformat just the D:\ partition into a FAT12 - > neither via Windows, CMD or so far by FreeDOS. I was aiming for a 256 MB > FAT12, but if this is not possible then a 32 MB FAT12 will do. Both of those are too big for FAT12. 256 MB would require BIGFAT (which is a variant of FAT16), and even 32 MB really needs FAT16. -uso. ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] How to work with FAT12 in FreeDOS 1.3
On Sat, 23 Apr 2022, richardkolacz...@hotmail.com wrote: I cannot find a way to reformat just the D:\ partition into a FAT12 - neither via Windows, CMD or so far by FreeDOS. I was aiming for a 256 MB FAT12, but if this is not possible then a 32 MB FAT12 will do. Both of those are too big for FAT12. 256 MB would require BIGFAT (which is a variant of FAT16), and even 32 MB really needs FAT16. -uso. ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] How to work with FAT12 in FreeDOS 1.3
I am trying to setup FAT12 drives so that I can test doslfn and doslfnMS which have been very recently updated. I can only work via bare metal mode (usb BOOT disk is C:\ with also partitions D:\ and E:\). To date I have created a FAT16 partition (D:\) which both Windows and FreeDOS can recognize and work with. I cannot find a way to reformat just the D:\ partition into a FAT12 - neither via Windows, CMD or so far by FreeDOS. I was aiming for a 256 MB FAT12, but if this is not possible then a 32 MB FAT12 will do. I also tried using a USB floppy drive as a FAT12 test drive, but strangely Windows refuses to have anything to do with it. When in FreeDOS, attempting to read the USB floppy drive results in say a DIR listing of part of what's on the current FreeDOS drive followed by a lot of garbage - NO reference of what is on the floppy disk. If there are not any programs available to make FAT12 - is there a way to "manually" byte-wise change things on the FAT16 partition (D:\) giving the same effect as what FORMAT would have done? Richard From: Eric Auer Sent: Saturday, 23 April 2022 8:01 PM To: freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: Re: [Freedos-devel] Update on website usability test Hi Jim, hi everybody, sorry about being so late with the review. I hope the (rather critical, but of course not intended to be personal pouting & nagging) comments below still help. It may be my German bad understanding of fashion, but: A professional designer donated a new website design and the result was that in a test, 2 out of 5 topics were almost impossible to find. That does not sound like an "overall ... good" and professional product to me. The fact that your students commented that the website now looks like other websites about software sounds like "we are following a global trend to make websites look nicer while making them less usable"? :-p On the other hand, I guess it will be easy for you to make the important things easier to find on the news website, so we will get the best of BOTH worlds: New looks and an easy to use website. For me, it is always good to find the LIST OF PACKAGES with descriptions and versions quickly. At the moment, it only takes 2 or 3 clicks: "Download FreeDOS", then go to "What's included" and enjoy that packages are grouped by category in one large list, with each package name being a link to some HTML rendering of the LSM metadata. Your test tasks 1, 3, 5 are immediately answered by the start page of the current version, while the install instructions are in "download" and the mailing lists are in "forums", very few clicks away. In the new redesign, tasks 1, 2, 3, 5 are immediately linked on the start page, with 4 being hidden behind the two steps "contribute" and "join the forums" which is a code for "mailing lists" ;-) However, only 1 is one of the topics linked with an image on the start page, all others are not. Next, the new download page ONLY gives you download disks. Why does the new download page REMOVE all other GOOD to have links found on the old download page? Being "how to install", "verify", "what's included" and "read the readme", as well as "how to write IMG" and a link to the individual package file archive? All of those are very useful to read in context of downloading and I agree that other software websites also fail in providing this information in easy to find ways. But we should not follow that bad example! The current design focuses on "download" and "news", while adding common other topics on the top menu bar and social media (only as non-accessible graphical logo links) and other things in the bottom menu bar. The new design largely preserves the menu bars, but tucks away the news behind a small text link which does not have any glitter added. While it is very nice and unusual that a project as FreeDOS still has regular interesting news and is not one of those retro projects which have not been touched for years. So the news should get more shine. Instead, the new design gives more spotlights to the youtube channel, system requirements (which are rather boring: it SHOULD run on every PC, but on very new PC, you will need a VM or emulator to compensate the lack of BIOS and, not mentioned in the new design at all, almost every game will need those for sound anyway), "about", games, application and programming, However, "about" just is an optional detour to reach the games, application and programming pages, why? With a rather short text about the why of FreeDOS, with a typo "sofwtare" ;-) The new "games" section links to several online games collections, but does not provide hints on the sound issue. And there could be a number of shiny game screenshots on it as well :-) The new programming section looks like a quite useful collection of links to compilers, notably INcluding several freeware ones but EXcluding the open source DJGPP, why? Also, offering 3 Borland Pascal and 2 Borland C/C+
Re: [Freedos-devel] Update on website usability test
Hi Jim, hi everybody, sorry about being so late with the review. I hope the (rather critical, but of course not intended to be personal pouting & nagging) comments below still help. It may be my German bad understanding of fashion, but: A professional designer donated a new website design and the result was that in a test, 2 out of 5 topics were almost impossible to find. That does not sound like an "overall ... good" and professional product to me. The fact that your students commented that the website now looks like other websites about software sounds like "we are following a global trend to make websites look nicer while making them less usable"? :-p On the other hand, I guess it will be easy for you to make the important things easier to find on the news website, so we will get the best of BOTH worlds: New looks and an easy to use website. For me, it is always good to find the LIST OF PACKAGES with descriptions and versions quickly. At the moment, it only takes 2 or 3 clicks: "Download FreeDOS", then go to "What's included" and enjoy that packages are grouped by category in one large list, with each package name being a link to some HTML rendering of the LSM metadata. Your test tasks 1, 3, 5 are immediately answered by the start page of the current version, while the install instructions are in "download" and the mailing lists are in "forums", very few clicks away. In the new redesign, tasks 1, 2, 3, 5 are immediately linked on the start page, with 4 being hidden behind the two steps "contribute" and "join the forums" which is a code for "mailing lists" ;-) However, only 1 is one of the topics linked with an image on the start page, all others are not. Next, the new download page ONLY gives you download disks. Why does the new download page REMOVE all other GOOD to have links found on the old download page? Being "how to install", "verify", "what's included" and "read the readme", as well as "how to write IMG" and a link to the individual package file archive? All of those are very useful to read in context of downloading and I agree that other software websites also fail in providing this information in easy to find ways. But we should not follow that bad example! The current design focuses on "download" and "news", while adding common other topics on the top menu bar and social media (only as non-accessible graphical logo links) and other things in the bottom menu bar. The new design largely preserves the menu bars, but tucks away the news behind a small text link which does not have any glitter added. While it is very nice and unusual that a project as FreeDOS still has regular interesting news and is not one of those retro projects which have not been touched for years. So the news should get more shine. Instead, the new design gives more spotlights to the youtube channel, system requirements (which are rather boring: it SHOULD run on every PC, but on very new PC, you will need a VM or emulator to compensate the lack of BIOS and, not mentioned in the new design at all, almost every game will need those for sound anyway), "about", games, application and programming, However, "about" just is an optional detour to reach the games, application and programming pages, why? With a rather short text about the why of FreeDOS, with a typo "sofwtare" ;-) The new "games" section links to several online games collections, but does not provide hints on the sound issue. And there could be a number of shiny game screenshots on it as well :-) The new programming section looks like a quite useful collection of links to compilers, notably INcluding several freeware ones but EXcluding the open source DJGPP, why? Also, offering 3 Borland Pascal and 2 Borland C/C++ (you mistakenly called Turbo C 2.01 Turbo C++ 2.01, I think?) downloads next to DeSmet, Digital Mars, Smaller C and, oddly, PDcurses puts too much weight on Borland, I think. I certainly like Borland compilers, but it would be enough to give them 2 tiles on the new download page: One with all 3 Pascal download links and one with all C/C++ download links, to making the Borland offer look a bit more humble ;-) The new applications section starts with VisiCalc, AsEasyAs and Ability Plus (Office), which seems a bit of an arbitrary choice, then continues with links to 4 large DOS app archives combined with a link to Mercury's tiny archive and a link to a simple toolkit for caps and num lock, again a bit arbitrary in choice. I guess that is part of the new design being a reduced test edition for the moment, but the mix still feels odd. Nitpicking regards, Eric PS: Why does the start page say you need INTEL CPU? How about AMD, Cyrix and all other brands? Excluding ARM, Apple and Motorola, but still... ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] Freedos EDIT
tom ehlert [22/04/2022 14.31]: Can you complete the build with this? https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/devel/libs/dflat/ no. this is linux stuff with unknown conversion status. won't touch. How is this Linux stuff? This is the _readme.txt_ file from that directory: === if you use watcom c, and are having trouble compiling, here's a hint from the freedos-devel mailing list: >> Try these lines: >> >> wcc -ml -i=c:\\WATCOM\h -i=c:\freedos\source\INC hworld.c >> wlink @owlink.wcl >> >> where owlink.wcl is: >> === >> system dos >> option map >> option stack=8192 >> name hworld.exe >> file hworld >> libpath c:\freedos\source\lib >> libpath c:\watcom\lib286 >> libpath c:\watcom\lib286\dos >> library dflatplo.lib >> library dtool2lo.lib >> === >> >> And it works for me. > > Works also for me. :) === -- Hilsen Harald ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
