Re: [Freedos-devel] dosfsck, chkdsk, whatever and doslfn41
Hi, On Mon, Jan 9, 2012 at 3:21 AM, Rugxulo rugx...@gmail.com wrote: HI, On Sun, Jan 8, 2012 at 8:26 AM, Eric Auer e.a...@jpberlin.de wrote: fixing a filesystem is an important thing... does anyone know if any or all of the filesystem repair programs work with doslfn? or does doslfn basically not matter? The dosfsck tool does a bit of checking and fixing for LFN: Just to clarify, FreeDOS has a port (thanks to Eric) of DOSFSCK (32-bit via DJGPP): http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/dos/chkdsk/dosfsck/ I'm not sure if Imre's (16-bit) CHKDSK supports LFNs, but I'd suppose not. PS: Cool that FreeDOS 1.1 is out, thanks to Bernd! Is it safe to test on my already Linux DOS dual boot PC? I downloaded it (one PC only, so far) but haven't tried it yet (though I'm basically already running latest stuff). Been busy with other dumb things. Presumably Bernd will read this and respond better. I don't think there's any liveCD portion this time (yet), but there's an .iso inside an .iso. I guess by default it brings up an installer. So if you already have a dual boot setup, it probably won't break anything unless you're careless, heh. I guess you could extract and mount the inner .iso manually if you wanted (SHHDCD or whatever, I forget exactly), but this is mostly just a BASE release w/ sources (plus very few extras), right? -- Ridiculously easy VDI. With Citrix VDI-in-a-Box, you don't need a complex infrastructure or vast IT resources to deliver seamless, secure access to virtual desktops. With this all-in-one solution, easily deploy virtual desktops for less than the cost of PCs and save 60% on VDI infrastructure costs. Try it free! http://p.sf.net/sfu/Citrix-VDIinabox ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel Thanks to Eric's port of the dosfsck, so we have a tool known to support LFN (if I understand correctly). I think, as long file name entries are stored as directory entries with label, hidden, system attribute, they are not likely to be damaged by a chkdsk program if the disk logical structure is in good condition. On the other hand, for some defrag program that reorganizes file name sorting in the directory, if that program doesn't support LFN, it is likely to damage the order of the LFN, -- but I'm not sure if the order is important in the LFN entries -- maybe yes? Best regards, Robbie (Decheng) Fan -- Ridiculously easy VDI. With Citrix VDI-in-a-Box, you don't need a complex infrastructure or vast IT resources to deliver seamless, secure access to virtual desktops. With this all-in-one solution, easily deploy virtual desktops for less than the cost of PCs and save 60% on VDI infrastructure costs. Try it free! http://p.sf.net/sfu/Citrix-VDIinabox___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] [Freedos-user] FreeDOS 1.1
On Fri, Dec 16, 2011 at 1:45 AM, Bernd Blaauw bbla...@home.nl wrote: Op 15-12-2011 18:33, Mark Brown schreef: As for other news, how is Freedos 1.1 coming along? Do you need it badly? yes! will anyone please send me a copy of it? It will be published when done, likely just before Christmas. Current binary release is about 16MB but I'll have to add sources, per (GPL) license conditions of most programs/components. This will increase size of the CD image file. This 1.1 release might quite fast result in a 1.2 release as well due to a lack of extra testing time. Having all recent updates bundled together is already a big advantage though. Bernd -- 10 Tips for Better Server Consolidation Server virtualization is being driven by many needs. But none more important than the need to reduce IT complexity while improving strategic productivity. Learn More! http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sdnl/114/51507609/ ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel Just a buzz, I'm trying out the previous FreeDOS 1.1 beta CD. I haven't got it a full stretched run yet. It's definite to have the release version, either 1.1 and 1.2 and try them out in full. -- Robbie (Decheng) Fan (aka Robbie Mosaic) -- Learn Windows Azure Live! Tuesday, Dec 13, 2011 Microsoft is holding a special Learn Windows Azure training event for developers. It will provide a great way to learn Windows Azure and what it provides. You can attend the event by watching it streamed LIVE online. Learn more at http://p.sf.net/sfu/ms-windowsazure___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] e-mail of September 19
Right. But I know Rugxulo is expert in this area, so I'd like to have a try. :-P On Tue, Sep 20, 2011 at 12:23 PM, jasse...@itelefonica.com.br jasse...@itelefonica.com.br wrote: Decheng Fan wrote: Yes, I still want to do this. To try run in VM and if it works fine then it should be fine on physical hardware. Not always, unfortunately. Nor in the other direction. -- All the data continuously generated in your IT infrastructure contains a definitive record of customers, application performance, security threats, fraudulent activity and more. Splunk takes this data and makes sense of it. Business sense. IT sense. Common sense. http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-d2dcopy1 ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel -- Robbie (Decheng) Fan (aka Robbie Mosaic) -- All the data continuously generated in your IT infrastructure contains a definitive record of customers, application performance, security threats, fraudulent activity and more. Splunk takes this data and makes sense of it. Business sense. IT sense. Common sense. http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-d2dcopy1___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] How does the boot sector know the partition start
Hi, Thank you for so detailed explanation! This helps me a lot! I'll take time to read it more carefully and search through the Web for clearer understanding. Thanks again. Best regards, Robbie On Tue, Sep 20, 2011 at 10:30 PM, C. Masloch c...@bttr-software.de wrote: Hi, This doesn't seem to have received any answers yet. I see the MBR code essentially loads the boot sector of the active partition and puts it at address :7c00. Then the boot code is executed by jumping to that address. This is correct. 1. INT 0x13 with AH=0x42 does extended read operation. But what if the BIOS is old? Will it do nothing and set an error flag in CF? Yes, BIOSes not supporting (LBA) extended functions should flag an error. However, the boot sector or MBR can/should test whether the BIOS supports (LBA) extended functions via the detection function first. That's 13.40 or something, look it up in your reference. As opposed to only checking CF, you should check for both NC and the signature value (in bx I believe) to verify that the detection function is supported. MBRs and boot sectors depending on LBA support are easier to write; specifically as you do not have to write handling for two interfaces and as calculating CHS addresses from linear sector numbers is then unnecessary. (LBA addresses are the same as linear sector numbers.) (Getting rid of the LBA support and always using the CHS interface is a bad idea though, because CHS is limited to the first 8 GiB or so of the disk.) 2. Compared to the MBR, does the boot sector also contain partition location information? I searched the Web and looked at some pages about it, but didn't find any. Then, how does it call INT 13 and boot the kernel? Maybe I'm not understanding this correctly, so please correct me if I'm wrong. This is how it's usually done for FAT partitions, yes. In the FAT BIOS Parameter Block (BPB, it contains informations about the file system) there is one field often called hidden sectors. This is simply the number of sectors on the disk that are in front of the boot sector; in other words, the (LBA) address of this partition. This information is virtually useless: if you know where you read the sector from, you shouldn't need that information in the sector itself. However, as you must have noticed, there is no interface for how to pass the sector address from the MBR code to the boot sector code, so this field is necessary as it isn't communicated to the boot sector code. Knowledge of the file system can be read and calculated from the BPB, including the position of the FATs, the root directory (FAT12/16 special area or FAT32 cluster) and the data area. The boot sector code parses as much of that as necessary, then scans through the root directory. (Some loaders expect the first root directory entry to be the one for their kernel.) The loader then reads either the first few sectors of the first/only kernel file or that entire file. (In the former case, the first few sectors contain a more advanced file system driver.) On FAT32, some systems use secondary boot code sectors behind the first one to store more code. (This is similar to the loading scheme which stores a more advanced driver at the beginning of the kernel file.) Regards, -- All the data continuously generated in your IT infrastructure contains a definitive record of customers, application performance, security threats, fraudulent activity and more. Splunk takes this data and makes sense of it. Business sense. IT sense. Common sense. http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-d2dcopy1 ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel -- All the data continuously generated in your IT infrastructure contains a definitive record of customers, application performance, security threats, fraudulent activity and more. Splunk takes this data and makes sense of it. Business sense. IT sense. Common sense. http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-d2dcopy1___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] Freedos and lack of drivers
Hi Rugxulo, You introduction really made me wanting to try out DOSEMU. It's unfortunate that I allocated all my hard disk space (120GB) of my computer to Windows, so the option would be limited to a Virtual Machine. Thus I'll try your idea, with DeLi + DOSEMU inside VMware or Virtual Box. Thank you for your idea. Best regards, Robbie (Decheng) Fan On Mon, Sep 19, 2011 at 3:13 AM, Rugxulo rugx...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, 2011/9/18 Aitor Santamaría aitor...@gmail.com: 2011/9/13 Jim Hall jh...@freedos.org: In DOS, it would be awesome to have true multitasking Pick the smallest Linux distribution that you know. These days that would probably be MicroCore (aka, TinyCore w/o X11) Linux. It's about a 7 MB .ISO download. I think the RAM usage is pretty low. I haven't tested DOSEMU, but I think nowadays you need Glibc 2.2, kernel 2.6, etc. (which it has, IIRC). So you can't just randomly pick any old Linux, sadly. http://distro.ibiblio.org/tinycorelinux/welcome.html Some people have suggested Debian in the past as a good stable starting point. But I remember DeLi 0.7.2 (uclibc-based) had a DOSEMU package, and that's been resurrected as ConnochaetOS (though I haven't tested it yet): http://www.connochaetos.org/wiki/ Remove X and anything about graphics. Yes but easier said than done. Remove any Unix stuff, I guess you mean all the unnecessary POSIX tools. At least substituting Busybox should cover a good deal of it. The barebones stuff is kernel (vmlinuz), initrd.gz, and root system (/bin/sh) etc. (I think), and Gujin is a good boot loader (with DOS version), meant to replace Loadlin / Lilo. Wouldn't it be great that you'd have several FreeDOSes running simultaneously? (switch with Ctrl+Alt+Fn). Well, yes, that would be the whole point. But here's a naive question: can a single DOSEMU session use more than 64 MB of memory? (Newer GCCs really eat a lot.) You wouldn't have the problem of modern hardware (Linux does the part), but then you have quite other disadvantages (I don't know how good would be the drive mapping process that DOSEMU does. Would be nice if DOSEMU scanned all the disks and mapped ALL partitions automatically). Well, the only disadvantage isn't really one at all: it's not perfect (but no DOS environment, or any OS, is). So there are bugs and incompatibilities, just like anything. But overall it works quite well. In the meantime, yes, at least task switching would be great. Old-style real mode stuff should be easy to swap in and out of memory. (I remember some old swappers from 80xxx snippets, but I don't know how stable they were.) I imagine that it's when you start adding ten bazillion memory managers that things get complex. http://www.filegate.net/pdnasm/ The real problem is trying to determine what apps you want to run. Personally I'd prefer DJGPP (cmdline, textmode) stuff and similar, but even that is probably a bit too complex for a simple memory swapper. Though of course DOSEMU handles DPMI fine. P.S. Actually at one time I wanted to build pcemu under (DOS) Minix 2.04 to be able to fake multitasking, but ACK didn't like the stock sources, and I never fiddled with it further. http://pcemu.sourceforge.net/ http://www.minix3.org/previous-versions/Intel-2.0.4/ -- BlackBerryreg; DevCon Americas, Oct. 18-20, San Francisco, CA http://p.sf.net/sfu/rim-devcon-copy2 ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel -- BlackBerryreg; DevCon Americas, Oct. 18-20, San Francisco, CA Learn about the latest advances in developing for the BlackBerryreg; mobile platform with sessions, labs more. See new tools and technologies. Register for BlackBerryreg; DevCon today! http://p.sf.net/sfu/rim-devcon-copy1 ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] Freedos and lack of drivers
Hi Rugxulo, On Mon, Sep 19, 2011 at 11:43 AM, Rugxulo rugx...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, Vista and 7 let you resize the NTFS partition. With XP you may have to use (external) GParted (on a Linux liveCD), which is a little tricker. Then ideally you'd maybe (?) use EasyBCD to configure the Windows bootloader (as I don't think GRUB cooperates very well, at least IMHO). Thanks for this good idea. I'll try that. so the option would be limited to a Virtual Machine. Thus I'll try your idea, with DeLi + DOSEMU inside VMware or Virtual Box. Thank you for your idea. It's certainly safer / easier to install in VM but perhaps slower and buggier (depending). Yes, I still want to do this. To try run in VM and if it works fine then it should be fine on physical hardware. Well, Connochaet (sp?) is based upon ArchLinux now, so perhaps it's more compatible than even old DeLi was. I just know that DeLi (esp. before the Unicode-aware 0.8.0) was very very light on RAM. Of course, who knows, perhaps uclibc had bugs re: DOSEMU anyways, dunno. :-/ But MicroCore might work too, and personally I'd probably try that first. (My other PC uses Lucid PuppyLinux, partially Ubuntu compatible, and DOSEMU works fine there. But it's not super ultra minimal, it's got X11 and other stuff, totals about 130 MB.) Anyways, I dunno, sometimes things work, sometimes they don't. You never know until you try. That's all part of the fun (and frustration) with computers. ;-) Nice recommendations. I'll try DeLi first, because I'm not so much a Linux power user. Best regards, Robbie -- BlackBerryreg; DevCon Americas, Oct. 18-20, San Francisco, CA Learn about the latest advances in developing for the BlackBerryreg; mobile platform with sessions, labs more. See new tools and technologies. Register for BlackBerryreg; DevCon today! http://p.sf.net/sfu/rim-devcon-copy1 ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
[Freedos-devel] How does the boot sector know the partition start
Hello everybody, Recently I read about two examples of MBR boot code. One is Windows 98 MBR (not yet finished reading), another is Minix MBR (almost finished reading). The Minix MBR seems more advanced, but let me skip this for now. I see the MBR code essentially loads the boot sector of the active partition and puts it at address :7c00. Then the boot code is executed by jumping to that address. I have the following questions: 1. INT 0x13 with AH=0x42 does extended read operation. But what if the BIOS is old? Will it do nothing and set an error flag in CF? 2. Compared to the MBR, does the boot sector also contain partition location information? I searched the Web and looked at some pages about it, but didn't find any. Then, how does it call INT 13 and boot the kernel? Maybe I'm not understanding this correctly, so please correct me if I'm wrong. Thanks and best regards, Robbie (Decheng) Fan -- BlackBerryreg; DevCon Americas, Oct. 18-20, San Francisco, CA http://p.sf.net/sfu/rim-devcon-copy2___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] Freedos and lack of drivers
On Wed, Sep 14, 2011 at 6:54 PM, Steve Nickolas lyricalnan...@usotsuki.hoshinet.org wrote: On Wed, 14 Sep 2011, Andreas Berger wrote: Writing a multitasker is easy, but I have no understanding about how DPMI, rings and resource allocation work. I think the idea of a bare-bone linux behind the scene is a very good. Truth be told I would like to see OS/2 resurrected with true DOS windows. A free OS/2 clone would really be nice. And the DOS personality could be implemented by FreeDOS code (plus the OS/2 side of the DOS command stuff in c:\os2). -uso. -- BlackBerryreg; DevCon Americas, Oct. 18-20, San Francisco, CA Learn about the latest advances in developing for the BlackBerryreg; mobile platform with sessions, labs more. See new tools and technologies. Register for BlackBerryreg; DevCon today! http://p.sf.net/sfu/rim-devcon-copy1 ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel Really fills the open source market. I mean, FreeDOS fills the DOS position, ReactOS maps on to the NT, and then another project for OS/2. Maybe... For multitasking, I two situations: 1. do it in real mode. 2. do it in V86 mode. For V86 (virtual 8086) mode, a minimal Linux + DOSEmu sounds the best solution to me, because although it requires a Linux, as we have modern machines with ample RAM (for DOS and a minimal Linux, at least) and ample hard disk space, and these two are ready stuff, there is really no need to bother other solutions. -- Robbie (Decheng) Fan (aka Robbie Mosaic) -- Doing More with Less: The Next Generation Virtual Desktop What are the key obstacles that have prevented many mid-market businesses from deploying virtual desktops? How do next-generation virtual desktops provide companies an easier-to-deploy, easier-to-manage and more affordable virtual desktop model.http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfnl/114/51426474/___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] Freedos and lack of drivers
On Wed, Sep 14, 2011 at 8:31 PM, Travis Siegel tsie...@softcon.com wrote: Another thing I wonder, is why it is that nobody has built anything that allows executing of multiple oses on a single computer, using one cpu core for each os, thereby allowing each os to run natively on it's own cpu, thus eliminating the need to vertualize anything (except perhaps output and input), but then each and every os would have it's own cpu, and all of them would run at full native speeds. Then you could have as many oses running as you have cpu cores to handle them. (still waiting) I guess someone will do it eventually, but until they do, I'll stick with my osx machine, and my several dos boxes scattered everywhere. :) For this, I think co-Linux is an example. It runs in parallel with other OS. Although I don't know how it shares resources, whether all through host OS or just partially. -- Doing More with Less: The Next Generation Virtual Desktop What are the key obstacles that have prevented many mid-market businesses from deploying virtual desktops? How do next-generation virtual desktops provide companies an easier-to-deploy, easier-to-manage and more affordable virtual desktop model.http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfnl/114/51426474/___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] Freedos and lack of drivers
On Sun, Sep 11, 2011 at 6:07 AM, Rugxulo rugx...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, On Sat, Sep 10, 2011 at 3:38 AM, Bernd Blaauw bbla...@home.nl wrote: Op 10-9-2011 9:47, Jim Michaels schreef: I could see multithreading support in 7-zip. but then again files aren't usually very big in DOS. I don't know if OpenWATCOM or DJGPP has support for POSIX threads. Programs that are multithreaded either have to implement their own SMP support or rely on the operating system's kernel/architecture to do so. As DOS by default doesn't support SMP, 7zip would have to implement their own DOS support for speaking to multiple processors. I'm not aware of any DOS program accessing multiple processors. Maybe a Distributed.net client, but that's about it. There are multitasking DOSes (DR-DOS, RDOS, TSX-32 ??, etc.), but most of them I haven't tried. And of course Windows and OS/2 or Linux's DOSEMU sorta count, at least the 32-bit versions. Normal vanilla DOS (API) doesn't have SMP or threading, but some of these variants have their own. (I've never tried RDOS, but it sounds really good. DR-DOS is okay if you can live with the old tools, bugs, and 64 MB per task limitation.) Of course, that doesn't help us, but whatever. ;-) p7zip 9.13 has been ported to DOS via DJGPP. Unlike older versions (used GNU pth), this one uses FSU pthreads (initially written for Ada/GNAT, though ironically latest Ada for DJGPP doesn't support tasks at all, probably because FSU was basically abandoned a long time ago). Unlike GNU pth, you don't need a socket lib (libsocket, Watt-32), so it's easier to use, allegedly. But no, it's not real threads, just faking it so that p7zip compiles (as the p stands for POSIX, which obviously needs a lot more than minimal DOS/DJGPP services to run). HX works with Win32's 7ZA.EXE with (fake) threading, but no SMP support (yet), which is super complicated anyways. Besides, 7-Zip doesn't use much multithreading except to offload some file management, so it doesn't really help that much anyways, not 10x (nor even 2x) at least. Most home computers don't have many cores anyways, and it's hard to properly scale upwards in speed. -- Malware Security Report: Protecting Your Business, Customers, and the Bottom Line. Protect your business and customers by understanding the threat from malware and how it can impact your online business. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfnl/114/51427462/ ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel As far as I know, Linux at its start supports multi-threading with preemption. For Windows, Windows 95 supports preemtive multitasking, and Windows NT 4 supports SMP. Windows 3.x only supports non-preemptive (cooperative) multitasking, which means the thread (or process, as in Windows 3.1 no thread support exists) should call some system API to give up CPU explicitly, otherwise the thread would never be switched. 7-Zip with the 7z format seems to be utilizing multiple cores. I remember once I use 7z a -t7z -mx=1 it uses 4 CPU cores to compress, and the speed is faster. Best regards, Robbie (Decheng) Fan -- Using storage to extend the benefits of virtualization and iSCSI Virtualization increases hardware utilization and delivers a new level of agility. Learn what those decisions are and how to modernize your storage and backup environments for virtualization. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfnl/114/51434361/___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] If I want to compile applications in FreeDOS, which compiler should I use?
On Sun, Sep 4, 2011 at 7:27 PM, Bernd Blaauw bbla...@home.nl wrote: Op 4-9-2011 13:06, Decheng Fan schreef: I've also compiled FreeCOM, but there seems to be some warning messages, although I still get the final COMMAND.COM http://command.com/ file. The warning messages read like following: C:\WATCOM\BINNT\wcc -zq kswap.c -bt=dos @watcomc.cfg kswap.c(160): Warning! W102: Type mismatch (warning) kswap.c(160): Note! N2003: source conversion type is 'struct __iobuf *' kswap.c(160): Note! N2004: target conversion type is 'unsigned int ' ... C:\Nasm209\nasm.exe -f bin -o vspawn.com http://vspawn.com/ vspawn.asm vspawn.asm:342: warning: label alone on a line without a colon might be in error vspawn.asm:388: warning: label alone on a line without a colon might be in error These are 8086-specific disk-swapping helpers, so you can run a program while storing part of FreeCOM's memory on disk. Thus, they're optional. After compiling the kernel, I got KWC8616.sys as the kernel.sys file. Does this file name mean a kernel that runs on 8086, which supports FAT12/FAT16 (and because 80286/80386 is backwards compatible with 8086, so this kernel also runs on them?) A '86' runs on 8086 and above, thus most generic/universal. Ending up with a '16' means support for FAT12 and FAT16 only, thus no FAT32. Most universal is a KWC8632.SYS renamed to KERNEL.SYS. Most MSDOS (1.00-7.00) compatible is a KWC8616 (with version set to 5.00 or 6.22). If I want to debug the kernel, say, the boot process, I guess I need to use bochs for that purpose? or QEMU. Both have great logging/debugging ability, though I've not used that myself. And for device drivers is DOSEMU better for that purpose? No idea. I know Japheth added some config.sys version to the DEBUG 1.25 program..somewhere. My next step would be to understand the boot process as a whole. Kernel sourcecode would be best studied. Remember you've got a hardware boot routine (on x86 it's mostly BIOS, sometimes EFI with or without BIOS compatibility), accessing a disk and then is the DOS bootup (disk -- MBR -- partition -- bootsector -- kernel -- magic (memory setup, disk enumeration) -- config.sys processing -- driver loading -- shell loading -- init script -- more driver loading -- console ( stare at C:\_ ) Thanks and best regards, Robbie (Decheng) Fan Have fun -- Special Offer -- Download ArcSight Logger for FREE! Finally, a world-class log management solution at an even better price-free! And you'll get a free Love Thy Logs t-shirt when you download Logger. Secure your free ArcSight Logger TODAY! http://p.sf.net/sfu/arcsisghtdev2dev ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel Hi Bernd, Nice to see your e-mail. I think there is still a long way for me to go, since I remember seeing a book about MS-DOS 6.00 published in China, which was about 400 pages. I will pick up topics that are interesting to me along the way of the exploration. Best regards, Robbie (Decheng) Fan -- Malware Security Report: Protecting Your Business, Customers, and the Bottom Line. Protect your business and customers by understanding the threat from malware and how it can impact your online business. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfnl/114/51427462/___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] If I want to compile applications in FreeDOS, which compiler should I use?
On Sun, Sep 4, 2011 at 8:18 PM, dos386 dos...@gmail.com wrote: And for device drivers is DOSEMU better for that purpose? I doubt that. Rather BOCHS, if it emulates the device you are interested in (PCI bridge in BOCHS is a dream so far) ... debugging drivers is always hard :-( No idea. I know Japheth added some config.sys version to the DEBUG 1.25 program..somewhere. There is support for a DOS SYS (instead of DOS COM) DEBUG in the source, so you must compile it yourself using JAWASM (works for me) and then you can load this DEBUG from FDCONFIG.SYS and use it to debug other SYS modules (untested). Anyway, why not code drivers as TSR's rather than DOS SYS ? Of course you can use JavaScript or CSS in your HTML with a DOS server, but BROWSERS for DOS will often ignore them and just look at the plain HTML. You might be interested to play with projects which work to change that. Arachne is now abandoned and needs a new maintainer. CSS support is limited and no JS. -- Special Offer -- Download ArcSight Logger for FREE! Finally, a world-class log management solution at an even better price-free! And you'll get a free Love Thy Logs t-shirt when you download Logger. Secure your free ArcSight Logger TODAY! http://p.sf.net/sfu/arcsisghtdev2dev ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel Hi dos386, Thanks for these interesting topics. I'm reading about the boot sector today. But these days I'm quite busy so I'm going to find some time slot later. Best regards, Robbie (Decheng) Fan -- Doing More with Less: The Next Generation Virtual Desktop What are the key obstacles that have prevented many mid-market businesses from deploying virtual desktops? How do next-generation virtual desktops provide companies an easier-to-deploy, easier-to-manage and more affordable virtual desktop model.http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfnl/114/51426474/___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] If I want to compile applications in FreeDOS, which compiler should I use?
to be more friendly to QBASIC style syntax :-) As with Java, I do not expect very interesting DOS ports of C# for DOS to exist. On the other hand, there are decent Perls for DOS... A lot of your experience also revolves around web and server tools and languages. Web servers are not a typical application in DOS, as it is not multitasked. Also, DOS web servers rarely support common scripting languages such as Perl, Python or ASP. Of course you can use JavaScript or CSS in your HTML with a DOS server, but BROWSERS for DOS will often ignore them and just look at the plain HTML. You might be interested to play with projects which work to change that. played with Linux for half a year so got basic knowledge of it. Among the computer science knowledge, I did well at data structure/common algorithms, assembly programming in 8086/80386 (user mode). I want to advance my skills in operating systems so I'd like to learn about FreeDOS first, while also do some contribution as long as I can. I think you will enjoy DOS then. It gives you flexibility to write user mode apps (with some limitations compared to bigger OS) while giving you the chance to create small software which has a direct feeling with the hardware because the OS layer is less heavy there which in turn makes it interesting to look at and work with the DOS kernel itself: The kernel has manageable complexity and mortals can actually understand the whole kernel while in Linux it will be hard to find an expert who even understands the whole disk subsystem ;-) Thanks and best regards, Robbie (Decheng) Fan (aka R.Mosaic) Thanks! Regards, Eric -- Get a FREE DOWNLOAD! and learn more about uberSVN rich system, user administration capabilities and model configuration. Take the hassle out of deploying and managing Subversion and the tools developers use with it. http://p.sf.net/sfu/wandisco-d2d-2 ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel Hello Eric, I've successfully compiled the kernel from Windows, using newest releases of the tools: Open Watcom C/C++ 1.9 for Windows NT (The DR-DOS Club Wiki page provided by dos386 told me that 1.7 is enough), Nasm 2.09 for Windows (Web page told me that 2.0 is enough), UPX 3.07 for Windows. I understand that all the tools support DOS as a target, so I can use them to cross-build. I then used sys.com to transfer the system to a floppy disk (I'm using Virtual PC so it's a virtual floppy disk), and booted from it with FreeCOM, and it works. I've also compiled FreeCOM, but there seems to be some warning messages, although I still get the final COMMAND.COM http://command.com/ file. The warning messages read like following: C:\WATCOM\BINNT\wcc -zq kswap.c -bt=dos @watcomc.cfg kswap.c(160): Warning! W102: Type mismatch (warning) kswap.c(160): Note! N2003: source conversion type is 'struct __iobuf *' kswap.c(160): Note! N2004: target conversion type is 'unsigned int ' ... C:\Nasm209\nasm.exe -f bin -o vspawn.com vspawn.asm vspawn.asm:342: warning: label alone on a line without a colon might be in error vspawn.asm:388: warning: label alone on a line without a colon might be in error After compiling the kernel, I got KWC8616.sys as the kernel.sys file. Does this file name mean a kernel that runs on 8086, which supports FAT12/FAT16 (and because 80286/80386 is backwards compatible with 8086, so this kernel also runs on them?) If I want to debug the kernel, say, the boot process, I guess I need to use bochs for that purpose? And for device drivers is DOSEMU better for that purpose? My next step would be to understand the boot process as a whole. Thanks and best regards, Robbie (Decheng) Fan -- Special Offer -- Download ArcSight Logger for FREE! Finally, a world-class log management solution at an even better price-free! And you'll get a free Love Thy Logs t-shirt when you download Logger. Secure your free ArcSight Logger TODAY! http://p.sf.net/sfu/arcsisghtdev2dev___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] ANSI C (C89) locale.h -- DOS compiler support?
On Sun, Sep 4, 2011 at 3:25 AM, Rugxulo rugx...@gmail.com wrote: Hi guys, Just curious, does anybody know of a C compiler that actually supports a *functional* locale.h ?? It doesn't seem like most (if any) barely support it, if at all. Kinda strange since it's a requirement for ANSI C (1989), esp. since the DOS support is presumably there (COUNTRY.SYS + NLSFUNC). It just seems weird to be missing pretty much everywhere. (I don't expect full C94 / NA1 's wchar_t, wcs*, etc., just wondering why it's not more widely supported in DOS.) -- Special Offer -- Download ArcSight Logger for FREE! Finally, a world-class log management solution at an even better price-free! And you'll get a free Love Thy Logs t-shirt when you download Logger. Secure your free ArcSight Logger TODAY! http://p.sf.net/sfu/arcsisghtdev2dev ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel Hi Rugxulo, It sounds interesting. Multi-lingual support provided by the OS platform was really something that I have used on Windows and Linux, but I never used it on MS-DOS or FreeDOS. I knew there are country.sys in MS-DOS and code page support (even there is a Simplified Chinese version of MS-DOS 6.22), but I don't know how to use them in programs. Is locale.h functional in Microsoft compilers? Best regards, Robbie (Decheng) Fan -- Special Offer -- Download ArcSight Logger for FREE! Finally, a world-class log management solution at an even better price-free! And you'll get a free Love Thy Logs t-shirt when you download Logger. Secure your free ArcSight Logger TODAY! http://p.sf.net/sfu/arcsisghtdev2dev___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
[Freedos-devel] If I want to compile applications in FreeDOS, which compiler should I use?
Hello everybody, I'm new to this mailing list, and I want to contribute to FreeDOS in some way a developer can do. Since I've used FreeDOS just as a replacement for MS-DOS, I know how to install it and how to run applications in it, but I don't know what's the standard (or recommended) development environment to develop applications in FreeDOS. Would you please let me know? I've checked out the subversion repository of FreeDOS, and there are several sub-directories: freecom - from the trunk directory it seems it contains the FreeCom shell, am I right? kernel - from trunk directory it seems it contains the kernel source code, am I right? mem - from the trunk directory it seems it contains mem.exe source code? BTW, my point of interest is in the kernel part and also utility applications. As I've always been developing user-mode applications since I've learned programming 15 years ago, to develop the kernel it would take some time for me to start. To learn about the kernel, I'd also like to know how to compile the kernel, e.g. which compiler is the standard or recommended to use. And do you have any suggestions on how to test/debug the kernel? A short introduction of myself: I graduated from Shanghai Jiao Tong University computer science as a bachelor in 2004, and got a master of engineering degree from SJTU in 2009 (in computer technology). I've worked on C/C++ programming on the Windows platform, C#/ASP.NET/Windows Forms, also some C++/CLI; I've self-studied MS-DOS, QBASIC, JavaScript/CSS/HTML. I've played with Linux for half a year so got basic knowledge of it. Among the computer science knowledge, I did well at data structure/common algorithms, assembly programming in 8086/80386 (user mode). I want to advance my skills in operating systems so I'd like to learn about FreeDOS first, while also do some contribution as long as I can. Thanks and best regards, Robbie (Decheng) Fan (aka R.Mosaic) -- Get a FREE DOWNLOAD! and learn more about uberSVN rich system, user administration capabilities and model configuration. Take the hassle out of deploying and managing Subversion and the tools developers use with it. http://p.sf.net/sfu/wandisco-d2d-2___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] If I want to compile applications in FreeDOS, which compiler should I use?
/CSS/HTML. I've You have a lot of MS experience then... Honestly, I never found MSVC very debugging-friendly... As for QBASIC, the Freebasic compiler has a command line option to be more friendly to QBASIC style syntax :-) As with Java, I do not expect very interesting DOS ports of C# for DOS to exist. On the other hand, there are decent Perls for DOS... A lot of your experience also revolves around web and server tools and languages. Web servers are not a typical application in DOS, as it is not multitasked. Also, DOS web servers rarely support common scripting languages such as Perl, Python or ASP. Of course you can use JavaScript or CSS in your HTML with a DOS server, but BROWSERS for DOS will often ignore them and just look at the plain HTML. You might be interested to play with projects which work to change that. played with Linux for half a year so got basic knowledge of it. Among the computer science knowledge, I did well at data structure/common algorithms, assembly programming in 8086/80386 (user mode). I want to advance my skills in operating systems so I'd like to learn about FreeDOS first, while also do some contribution as long as I can. I think you will enjoy DOS then. It gives you flexibility to write user mode apps (with some limitations compared to bigger OS) while giving you the chance to create small software which has a direct feeling with the hardware because the OS layer is less heavy there which in turn makes it interesting to look at and work with the DOS kernel itself: The kernel has manageable complexity and mortals can actually understand the whole kernel while in Linux it will be hard to find an expert who even understands the whole disk subsystem ;-) Thanks and best regards, Robbie (Decheng) Fan (aka R.Mosaic) Thanks! Regards, Eric -- Get a FREE DOWNLOAD! and learn more about uberSVN rich system, user administration capabilities and model configuration. Take the hassle out of deploying and managing Subversion and the tools developers use with it. http://p.sf.net/sfu/wandisco-d2d-2 ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel -- Fan Decheng (AKA Robbie Mosaic) Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow. -- Eric S. Raymond GPL is less free in some aspects. -- Bram Moolenaar -- uberSVN's rich system and user administration capabilities and model configuration take the hassle out of deploying and managing Subversion and the tools developers use with it. Learn more about uberSVN and get a free download at: http://p.sf.net/sfu/wandisco-dev2dev ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] If I want to compile applications in FreeDOS, which compiler should I use?
On Sun, Aug 21, 2011 at 9:46 PM, dos386 dos...@gmail.com wrote: Welcome :-) Kernel AFAIK compiles with OW 1.9 + NASM (what versions ???). Tools are OW or BC or NASM or JAWASM. (BTW: is this documented somewhere ... easy to find and up-to-date ? Wiki ?) For new code you can use any compiler, though: http://www.unet.univie.ac.at/~a0503736/php/drdoswiki/index.php?n=Main.Development -- Get a FREE DOWNLOAD! and learn more about uberSVN rich system, user administration capabilities and model configuration. Take the hassle out of deploying and managing Subversion and the tools developers use with it. http://p.sf.net/sfu/wandisco-d2d-2 ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel Hi dos386, Thank you for this information. I'll look at the wiki page and try them. If I have further questions I will come to ask you again. Best regards, Robbie -- uberSVN's rich system and user administration capabilities and model configuration take the hassle out of deploying and managing Subversion and the tools developers use with it. Learn more about uberSVN and get a free download at: http://p.sf.net/sfu/wandisco-dev2dev ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
