Re: [Freedos-devel] Back at it with DOG

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

On Wed, May 29, 2024 at 9:53 PM Wolf Bergenheim via Freedos-devel
 wrote:
>
[..]
> Now a question:
> What are your dev setups like? I'm on a linux host computer and I've
> been using both DOSBox and QEMU to build and test in. I find though
> that it's a bit of a chore, since DOSBox crashes randomly (like when
> compiling), or QEMU segfaults when I mount my dog source directory
> as a virtual FAT drive. So now I'm looking at setting up Dosemu2
> (I remember using doemu ~20 years ago).
>
> What do your dev environments look like? How do you make an efficient
> edit-build-test cycle? Has anyone tried using watcom as a crosscompiler?


I run Linux on my desktop, and I boot FreeDOS inside that using QEMU.
Here's my command line:

qemu-system-i386 -enable-kvm -m 32 -audiodev pa,id=snd -machine
pcspk-audiodev=snd -device sb16,audiodev=snd -device
adlib,audiodev=snd -hda freedos.qcow2 -hdb mystuff.qcow2 -cdrom
T2405LIVE.iso -boot menu=on


But that has some extra stuff in there just to make the PC speaker
work. If you don't care about the PC speaker, but still want SB16 and
Adlib, you can just do this:

qemu-system-i386 -enable-kvm -m 32 -device sb16 -device adlib -hda
freedos.qcow2 -hdb mystuff.qcow2 -cdrom T2405LIVE.iso -boot menu=on


And if you don't care about sound at all, then it's a very simple command line:

qemu-system-i386 -enable-kvm -m 32 -hda freedos.qcow2 -hdb
mystuff.qcow2 -cdrom T2405LIVE.iso -boot menu=on


I use '-boot menu=on' because I sometimes need to boot the LiveCD for
testing, and the boot menu makes that easy. I can also use the same
command line (it's a script) to install the next FreeDOS monthly test
release and just use the menu to select the LiveCD to install from.


My "C:" drive is freedos.qcow2 and my "D:" drive is mystuff.qcow2.
Keeping these separate makes it really easy to reinstall FreeDOS with
the monthly test releases. I keep all my stuff on "D:" and just
wipe/reinstall the "C:" drive. I don't keep any of my data on "C:".

I used to map a virtual drive to a folder on Linux - but like you
found, I sometimes had problems with that (not all the time, just
sometimes) so I stopped doing that. When I need to get access to my
virtual drive, I use guestmount from the libguestfs package to "mount"
the virtual disk from Linux:

$ mkdir mystuff
$ guestmount -a mystuff.qcow2 -m /dev/sda1 mystuff
...
$ guestunmount mystuff


I write my code directly in FreeDOS. I often use OpenWatcom, but I
also like IA-16 GCC. I use FED as my programming editor.


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Re: [Freedos-devel] FreeDOS on Pocket386

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

Jim Hall wrote:
[..]
> > It arrived Friday. I powered it on to make sure it works, and it does.
> > They've pre-installed some pirated copy of Win95 on there, but I'll
> > reinstall the whole thing with FreeDOS anyway. :-)
> >
> > The Pocket386 only boots from the internal C: drive (a CF card). I
> > thought I still had a CF card reader (can't find it) so I've ordered a
> > new one. My plan is to image the CF card from Linux and make a copy,
> > then use QEMU with that drive image to install FreeDOS, then write the
> > image to the CF so I can boot the Pocket386 with it.
> >
> > I also ordered a PS/2 keyboard, because the built-in keyboard is too
> > tiny to do real work on. It's 8 1/4 x 4 1/2 x 1 1/4 (inches).


Jerome Shidel wrote:
> Having fun with your 386?
>
> Does it have sound and does it work under DOS?
>
> Where are you Benchmarks??


I haven't tinkered with it too much yet, because that micro keyboard
makes my wrists ache just by *looking* at it. The keys are so tiny
(letters are 13mm x 11mm .. arrows and punctuation keys are 10mm x
11mm) that I often hit the key next to the letter I'm trying to type.
I'm looking forward to using a full-size PS/2 keyboard. :-)

Win95 says:

Cirrus Logic CL-GD 5420 r1 Rev 0 video card (512k video memory)
8 MB RAM
Ad Lib Gold compatible OPL3 sound card

The CPU is 386SX-40.


Since I can't install DOS applications yet (that's why I ordered a CF
card reader) I can't say if the Ad Lib sound card actually works with
DOS games. I'll share an update when the CF card reader arrives and I
wipe this with FreeDOS and put some games and other software on it.
:-)


Jim


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Re: [Freedos-devel] Proposal for new package in T2405

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

Jim Hall wrote:
>
>> This didn't get any discussion a month ago. Since it didn't appear in
>> T2405, I wanted to raise it again for T2406. Can we add this to T2406?
>> Adding a DJGPP.ENV file is all you need to compile programs with IA-16
>> GCC without installing the full DJGPP environment.
>>
>> To make it easier to add to the distribution, I've created a 427-byte
>> zip file that contains DJGPP.ENV and SETENV.BAT; if you unzip this at
>> the root dir, then both get installed to \devel\i16gcc. I've copied
>> the zip file to the FreeDOS Files Archive at Ibiblio, here:
>>
>> https://ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/devel/c/gcc-ia16/
>> I16ENV.ZIP
>>
>> The I16ENV.TXT file is just a brief Readme about it.

Jerome Shidel wrote:
>
> Wouldn’t it make more sense to just add those files to the 
> https://gitlab.com/FreeDOS/devel/i16gcc package?
>
> But, I don’t use it. So, maybe that would be an issue or confusing to users.


We can add it to that package, if you think that's better. But I also
wrote this in my original email:

[..]
:: But because we aren't updating any original IA-16 GCC packages, it
:: keeps things clean at the expense of a little extra "overhead" for the
:: package. But if you're installing a C compiler, you likely can spare
:: the tiny extra space.

..so I thought it might be nice not to "pollute" TK Chia's IA-16 GCC
release with these two files. And we already have several other
packages that are part of IA-16 GCC, adding this one didn't seem like
a lot of overhead.

But ultimately it doesn't matter to me if it gets merged into the
https://gitlab.com/FreeDOS/devel/i16gcc package or stays separate.


Jim


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Re: [Freedos-devel] Free FDISK 1.3.15

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

On Tue, May 28, 2024 at 6:04 PM Bernd Böckmann via Freedos-devel
 wrote:
>
> Free FDISK 1.3.15 is released.
>
> https://github.com/FDOS/fdisk/releases/tag/v1.3.15
>
> Fixes:
[..]


Thanks! I've posted a news item and mirrored this to the FreeDOS Files
Archive at Ibiblio.


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[Freedos-devel] FreeDOS on Pocket386

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

*I'm resending (with a few edits/updates) because this message failed
over the weekend due to the SF list server outage


You may remember the Book8088 micro-laptop and Hand386 handheld from
last year. I always said I'd buy one if they were the other way
around: a handheld 8088 or a '386 laptop.

Well, then they started selling the Pocket386 - and I bought one.

It arrived Friday. I powered it on to make sure it works, and it does.
They've pre-installed some pirated copy of Win95 on there, but I'll
reinstall the whole thing with FreeDOS anyway. :-)

The Pocket386 only boots from the internal C: drive (a CF card). I
thought I still had a CF card reader (can't find it) so I've ordered a
new one. My plan is to image the CF card from Linux and make a copy,
then use QEMU with that drive image to install FreeDOS, then write the
image to the CF so I can boot the Pocket386 with it.

I also ordered a PS/2 keyboard, because the built-in keyboard is too
tiny to do real work on. It's 8 1/4 x 4 1/2 x 1 1/4 (inches).


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Re: [Freedos-devel] Proposal for new package in T2405

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

This didn't get any discussion a month ago. Since it didn't appear in
T2405, I wanted to raise it again for T2406. Can we add this to T2406?
Adding a DJGPP.ENV file is all you need to compile programs with IA-16
GCC without installing the full DJGPP environment.

To make it easier to add to the distribution, I've created a 427-byte
zip file that contains DJGPP.ENV and SETENV.BAT; if you unzip this at
the root dir, then both get installed to \devel\i16gcc. I've copied
the zip file to the FreeDOS Files Archive at Ibiblio, here:

https://ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/devel/c/gcc-ia16/
I16ENV.ZIP

The I16ENV.TXT file is just a brief Readme about it.


On Wed, Apr 10, 2024 at 10:52 AM Jim Hall  wrote:
>
> Based on my other email about getting IA-16 GCC to work on T2404
> without installing DJGPP, I propose adding a new package in T2405
> called I16ENV that just has two files in it:
>
> /devel/i16gnu/djgpp.env
> /devel/i16gnu/setenv.bat
>
> The DJGPP.ENV file contains just:
>
> DJDIR=
>
> And the SETENV.BAT file sets the PATH and points the DJGPP environment
> variable to the DJGPP.ENV file, like this:
>
> @ECHO OFF
> PATH %PATH%;C:\DEVEL\I16GNU\BIN
> SET DJGPP=C:\DEVEL\I16GNU\DJGPP.ENV
>
>
> Since it gets installed in the IA-16 GCC directory, it shouldn't get
> confused with the DJGPP stuff. If the DJGPP env file is called
> DJGPP.ENV, it will make more sense when people find references to
> "DJGPP.ENV" in other documentation. And because the package will be
> named similarly to the other IA-16 GCC packages, users will be more
> likely to install it when they install IA-16 GCC. But because we
> aren't updating any original IA-16 GCC packages, it keeps things clean
> at the expense of a little extra "overhead" for the package. But if
> you're installing a C compiler, you likely can spare the tiny extra
> space.
>
> This will be a good way for others to start testing compiling programs
> using IA-16 GCC in a working default configuration on a fresh install,
> starting with the next test release.
>
> This works on my T2404 installation. Here is a copy/paste of my
> FreeDOS session after a fresh reboot (using unmodified FDAUTO.BAT):
>
> C:\DEVEL>dir /b
> I16GNU
> WATCOMC
>
> C:\DEVEL>cd i16gnu
>
> C:\DEVEL\I16GNU>dir /b
> BIN
> IA16-ELF
> LIB
> LIBEXEC
> SHARE
> DJGPP.ENV
> SETENV.BAT
>
> C:\DEVEL\I16GNU>type setenv.bat
> @ECHO OFF
> PATH %PATH%;C:\DEVEL\I16GNU\BIN
> SET DJGPP=C:\DEVEL\I16GNU\DJGPP.ENV
>
> C:\DEVEL\I16GNU>type DJGPP.ENV
> DJDIR=
>
> C:\DEVEL\I16GNU>setenv.bat
>
> .. now I'll switch to the D: drive to compile a program ..
>
> D:\SRC>dir /b hello.*
> HELLO.C
>
> D:\SRC>type hello.c
> #include 
> int main()
> {
> puts("Hello world");
> return 0;
> }
>
> D:\SRC>i16gcc -Wall -o hello.exe hello.c
>
> D:\SRC>dir /b hello.*
> HELLO.C
> HELLO.EXE
>
> D:\SRC>hello.exe
> Hello world


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[Freedos-devel] Virtual dot matrix printer

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

I created a FreeDOS program that simulates printing on a 9-pin impact
("dot matrix") printer.

I made this for a few reasons: 1. I am writing an article about dot
matrix printing, and didn't have a good way to demonstrate it; and 2.
It was something fun to do in an afternoon.

A few notes:

- This is a simplified version of a dot matrix printer. Characters are
5x8. The 9th "pin" is reserved for underline only. Although printer
control codes aren't implemented yet, so underline doesn't work
anyway.

- I didn't create a character set as "firmware" for the virtual
printer. So currently, printable characters are rendered as the bit
pattern for the character's ascii code (except 32, which is rendered
as a space).


I've shared it on my GitHub, with screenshots of the output:
https://github.com/freedosproject/vp


Compile with OpenWatcom. Uses the MIT license.


Jim



*I grabbed the "freedosproject" username some time ago so no one else
could take it and use it for something else. I use this account to
share source code for programming projects that I do on the YouTube
channel. The FreeDOS source archive is at GitLab:
https://gitlab.com/FreeDOS (there's also a link from my GitHub
profile)


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Re: [Freedos-devel] Proposal for new package in T2405

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

*Resending as I think my other email this weekend was lost due to the
SF email list servers issue:



This didn't get any discussion a month ago. Since it didn't appear in
T2405, I wanted to raise it again for T2406. Can we add this to T2406?
Adding a DJGPP.ENV file is all you need to compile programs with IA-16
GCC without installing the full DJGPP environment.

To make it easier to add to the distribution, I've created a 427-byte
zip file that contains DJGPP.ENV and SETENV.BAT; if you unzip this at
the root dir, then both get installed to \devel\i16gcc. I've copied
the zip file to the FreeDOS Files Archive at Ibiblio, here:

https://ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/devel/c/gcc-ia16/
I16ENV.ZIP

The I16ENV.TXT file is just a brief Readme about it.



On Wed, Apr 10, 2024 at 10:52 AM Jim Hall  wrote:
>
> Based on my other email about getting IA-16 GCC to work on T2404
> without installing DJGPP, I propose adding a new package in T2405
> called I16ENV that just has two files in it:
>
> /devel/i16gnu/djgpp.env
> /devel/i16gnu/setenv.bat
>
> The DJGPP.ENV file contains just:
>
> DJDIR=
>
> And the SETENV.BAT file sets the PATH and points the DJGPP environment
> variable to the DJGPP.ENV file, like this:
>
> @ECHO OFF
> PATH %PATH%;C:\DEVEL\I16GNU\BIN
> SET DJGPP=C:\DEVEL\I16GNU\DJGPP.ENV
>
>
> Since it gets installed in the IA-16 GCC directory, it shouldn't get
> confused with the DJGPP stuff. If the DJGPP env file is called
> DJGPP.ENV, it will make more sense when people find references to
> "DJGPP.ENV" in other documentation. And because the package will be
> named similarly to the other IA-16 GCC packages, users will be more
> likely to install it when they install IA-16 GCC. But because we
> aren't updating any original IA-16 GCC packages, it keeps things clean
> at the expense of a little extra "overhead" for the package. But if
> you're installing a C compiler, you likely can spare the tiny extra
> space.
>
> This will be a good way for others to start testing compiling programs
> using IA-16 GCC in a working default configuration on a fresh install,
> starting with the next test release.
>
> This works on my T2404 installation. Here is a copy/paste of my
> FreeDOS session after a fresh reboot (using unmodified FDAUTO.BAT):
>
> C:\DEVEL>dir /b
> I16GNU
> WATCOMC
>
> C:\DEVEL>cd i16gnu
>
> C:\DEVEL\I16GNU>dir /b
> BIN
> IA16-ELF
> LIB
> LIBEXEC
> SHARE
> DJGPP.ENV
> SETENV.BAT
>
> C:\DEVEL\I16GNU>type setenv.bat
> @ECHO OFF
> PATH %PATH%;C:\DEVEL\I16GNU\BIN
> SET DJGPP=C:\DEVEL\I16GNU\DJGPP.ENV
>
> C:\DEVEL\I16GNU>type DJGPP.ENV
> DJDIR=
>
> C:\DEVEL\I16GNU>setenv.bat
>
> .. now I'll switch to the D: drive to compile a program ..
>
> D:\SRC>dir /b hello.*
> HELLO.C
>
> D:\SRC>type hello.c
> #include 
> int main()
> {
> puts("Hello world");
> return 0;
> }
>
> D:\SRC>i16gcc -Wall -o hello.exe hello.c
>
> D:\SRC>dir /b hello.*
> HELLO.C
> HELLO.EXE
>
> D:\SRC>hello.exe
> Hello world


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Re: [Freedos-devel] Email test

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

Thanks to Wilhelm and Andy for letting me know the email list services
are working again. It looks like the email list servers on SourceForge
were not processing email for at least a few days, possibly all
weekend (Monday was a holiday in the US). I opened a support ticket
about it, but they haven't updated the ticket yet - but at least I
know things are working again. Thanks.


*You can ignore this thread now


On Tue, May 28, 2024 at 11:01 AM Andy Stamp  wrote:
>
> Seen May 28 12:00 EDT.
>
> On Tue, May 28, 2024 at 11:33 AM Jim Hall via Freedos-devel 
>  wrote:
>>
>> My email to the list bounced as undeliverable, but I'm sending this test 
>> just in case it was a temporary hiccup.
>>
>> Can someone reply to this thread if you can see this message?
>>
>> *sent May 27 11:20pm


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[Freedos-devel] Email test

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

My email to the list bounced as undeliverable, but I'm sending this test
just in case it was a temporary hiccup.

Can someone reply to this thread if you can see this message?

*sent May 27 11:20pm
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Re: [Freedos-devel] zoo

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

[..]
> > But I got the feedback from Jerome  to ask the FD mailing list first as it 
> > is not possible to remove it if only one person
> > asks for removing. So I did this.
>
> So Jerome is now suddenly the official rule maker for FreeDOS? I don't 
> remember dicussing this.
>

No. I think it was "Wilhelm probably asked Jerome a question off-list,
and Jerome asked Wilhelm ['feedback'] to put that question on the
email list" .. because we shouldn't be having off-list conversations.
(Keeping all conversations on the email list is a good thing.)


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Re: [Freedos-devel] prog lang. year for watcom compiler/programming book list?

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

There's the ebook and video series I did a few years ago. It's meant to
teach the basics of programming in C, using openwatcom on FreeDOS.

https://www.freedos.org/books/cprogramming/


There also used to be a print book you could but at low cost on Lulu, but I
took it off sale a while back. If you would like to order it, let me know
and I can reactivate the listing so you can buy it.




On Wed, May 22, 2024, 8:26 PM Richard Stoltenberg via Freedos-devel <
freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net> wrote:

> Greetings:
> I got my program to compile under watcom 1.9 but it has errors.  Not
> looking for help directly, but good programming documentation.  Does anyone
> have any good free/paid programming books with examples?  found: The ANSI C
> Programming Language
> by Brian W. Kernighan, Dennis M. Ritchie (not cheap)
> and Ansi C Programming Concept Kindle Edition
> by Sivarasan R (Author) cheaper
>
> is Ansi-C the right year compiler and language? wasn't clear from a
> view of your youtube videos and website, I enjoy.  Thanks.
>
> ___
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> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
>
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Re: [Freedos-devel] zoo

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

> On Wed, 22 May 2024, tom ehlert via Freedos-devel wrote:
>
> > it seems that no knowledgable person  finds zoo interesting enough to fix 
> > it.
> > and those who care about zoo have no clue.

On Wed, May 22, 2024 at 12:24 PM Steve Nickolas via Freedos-devel
 wrote:
>
> Was zoo even popular in its heyday?
>
> I feel like when it comes to DOS, for the last 30 years it's been
> exclusively ZIP, except in Japan where it's been exclusively LHA...


My experience was ZOO was somewhat popular for sharing files for a
while. I found a lot of ZOO files on ftp sites at the time, and shared
on Usenet using ASCII encoding.

I saw LHA for a while, and that was much better than ZOO. For what I
saw, LHA (almost?) completely replaced ZOO.

But once ZIP came along (with Pkzip) everything moved to ZIP almost
overnight. It was like everyone stopped using LHA and moved to ZIP.
And once Info-Zip happened, you started to see ZIP files on Unix
systems too.


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Re: [Freedos-devel] FreeDOS Edlin 2.24 is out!

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

Jim wrote:
[..]
> > FYI: I've fixed the source files on my end and mirrored that version
> > to Ibiblio. It's at:
> >
> > https://ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/dos/edlin/2.24/
> >
> >
> > I've also uploaded a compiled version of EDLIN16.EXE (compiled using OW.BAT)

Gregory wrote:
>
> Okay. Fixed. -- Gregory
>


Awesome, thanks! I've re-mirrored this edlin 2.24 to Ibiblio.

I'll also make a news item on the website for it!


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Re: [Freedos-devel] FreeDOS Edlin 2.24 is out!

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

On Thu, May 16, 2024 at 1:36 PM Gregory Pietsch via Freedos-devel
 wrote:
>
> FreeDOS Edlin 2.24 has been released to an unsuspecting world! Jim Hall
> sent me some edits that moved the copyright to the help screen and
> changed "Abort edit" to "Really quit". It's available on SourceForge
> and Jim should mirror it very soon now!
>


Thanks! Unfortunately, this still advertises itself as 2.23. Can you
fix it on SF and I can re-mirror that?

D:\SRC\EDLIN224>find "2.23" config*.*
 CONFIG-H.BC
#define PACKAGE_STRING "edlin 2.23"
#define PACKAGE_VERSION "2.23"
#define VERSION "2.23"
 CONFIG-H.OW
#define PACKAGE_STRING "edlin 2.23"
#define PACKAGE_VERSION "2.23"
#define VERSION "2.23"
 CONFIG.GUE
 CONFIG_H.IN
 CONFIG.SUB
 CONFIGUR
 CONFIGUR.AC


Might want to update ow.bat too:

D:\SRC\EDLIN224>find "2.23" *.bat
 OW.BAT
REM builds FreeDOS's edlin 2.23 (by Gregory Pietsch:  gpiet...@comcast.net)
if not exist edlin-2.23\nul if exist edlin-2.23.zip unzip edlin-2.23.zip
if not exist edlin-2.23\nul goto end
cd edlin-2.23


I should have sent complete changes that updated the version to 2.24
for you, too. Sorry about that.


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Re: [Freedos-devel] FreeDOS Edlin 2.24 is out!

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

On Thu, May 16, 2024 at 1:49 PM Jim Hall  wrote:
>
> On Thu, May 16, 2024 at 1:36 PM Gregory Pietsch via Freedos-devel
>  wrote:
> >
> > FreeDOS Edlin 2.24 has been released to an unsuspecting world! Jim Hall
> > sent me some edits that moved the copyright to the help screen and
> > changed "Abort edit" to "Really quit". It's available on SourceForge
> > and Jim should mirror it very soon now!
> >
>
>
> Thanks! Unfortunately, this still advertises itself as 2.23. Can you
> fix it on SF and I can re-mirror that?
>[..]

FYI: I've fixed the source files on my end and mirrored that version
to Ibiblio. It's at:

https://ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/dos/edlin/2.24/


I've also uploaded a compiled version of EDLIN16.EXE (compiled using OW.BAT)


Jim


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Re: [Freedos-devel] still can't find the source code

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

On Fri, May 10, 2024 at 11:01 AM Steve Nickolas via Freedos-devel
 wrote:
>[..]
> I'm 44 and surmise that I am one of the *younger* regulars on the list, so
> is it really any surprise things are a bit old-fashioned around here?
> (Some of the other old-times probably know what an ignorant little n00blet
> I was when I first showed up here in the late 1990s.)
>

I don't know if you're the youngest on the list, but definitely not
the youngest person to use FreeDOS.

We get a fair number of new FreeDOS users who are at university - so
that's probably 18 years old? I get a lot of these emails, probably
because my email is everywhere (trademark statement, etc). I suspect
these new users discover FreeDOS as part of a computer science course
or an IT/MIS course. That would make sense, because DOS is a simple
operating system that makes it very easy to walk through "how
computers work" : boot the kernel, which reads CONFIG.SYS, start the
command shell, which reads AUTOEXEC.BAT, and you're ready to enter
commands.

That's why when I updated the website last year, I made such an effort
to do several rounds of design .. usability test .. update ..
usability test .. update. The goal was to answer most questions via
the website, without emailing me. My inbox gets less of these
questions now, so I guess it's working. :-)


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Re: [Freedos-devel] still can't find the source code

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

On Fri, May 10, 2024 at 8:46 AM Green Fog via Freedos-devel
 wrote:
>
> There you go. The 2 requirements for free dos being a thing are
> just not there. not ease of use. I need to use an antique mail
> list for communication and wiki/documentation. It's absurd
> and very not efficient. I am very busy, and I can't afford
> the time to download each of these packages one by one. That
> is not how the source code should be distributed. Ease of use
> is none. Documentations are very bad. The sites linked to are
> web 0.1 material. Good documentation and know-hows are what
> drive further development, so I can say free dos is dead,
> and I will not invest more time on it.
>
> Calling me a troll and telling me not to talk to me? How old
> are you? That is not very welcoming and very immature. Either
> way, I am gone.


I'm usually a very nice guy, but I have to call this out:

If there was ever a prime example of how *not* to ask for help, this
email thread was it.


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Re: [Freedos-devel] Where is the source code?

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

On Wed, May 8, 2024 at 10:28 AM Bernd Böckmann via Freedos-devel
 wrote:
>
>
> > I like that idea. I think a good place to add these would be in the
> > "Technical information" section on that page, maybe as another row of
> > "info boxes" before (or after? not sure) the row that has RBIL, VGA
> > programming, and the Graphics Programming book.
>
> I would put it below Technical Information as another row.


Sounds good! I'll probably use this as a comment right before it:
"Looking to get started in DOS programming? These YouTube videos show
you how to write your first programs:"


> > What are some good YouTube channels about DOS programming that I
> > should point to?
>
> I like the following playlist. He uses Turbo C, PowerBasic, NASM. While he 
> does it on DosBox, the skills are transferable. Be aware: heavy german accent 
> :)
>
> https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGJnX2KGgaw2L7Uv5NThlL48G9y4rJx1X


Thanks for that! I'll be sure to include that one.

Anyone else have other recommendations?


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Re: [Freedos-devel] Where is the source code?

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

Jim Hall wrote:
> > To make this more clear on the website, I've changed the info box
> > title from "Create new programs" to "For developers" - and changed the
> > action link in that info box from "Create programs" to "Developers".
> > I've also changed the "sitenav" link in the website

Tom Ehlert wrote:
> Wow. having "sitenav" at the bottom of the page in 5 point font is really 
> inventive.

It is not 5-point font. The website doesn't set a font size except for
headings and the dates on the news items, so your browser will use
whatever your default font size is set at. On Firefox and Google
Chrome (you said you use Firefox) the website footer renders using the
same font size as the main body text.


> How about having ONE place to navigate the site; maybe near the
> " Read the wiki / Ask a question / Report a bug " location?


I hate to be the one to tell you, but "how Tom navigates a website" is
not the same as "how many others navigate a website." Today, many more
people expect to find a "mini 'site navigation' menu" in the footer.
It's just what they've come to expect; if they can't find a link in
the main body of the page, they look in the footer for a "mini 'site
navigation' menu". We saw this feedback in the usability test reports,
too. So when I updated the website, I made sure to include a "mini
'site navigation' menu" (a list of links to major areas of the
website) in the footer. The menu looks like this:

> Home Wiki Questions Bugs
> About Games Apps Devel


> now show me a way to locate the command.com sources.
>
> or the sources for the DVD driver.


You're a smart guy and you've been part of FreeDOS for many years. I
know you can find it. On the "Developer" page (from an earlier email,
this is now called "For developers" on the main page, and links to
) you'll find a page that has
information and links. AT THE TOP of the page, it says:
"FreeDOS is a collection of programs and utilities, so not everything
is in one place. The FreeDOS kernel is currently maintained by Jeremy
Davis and the source code is on his GitHub. Find other FreeDOS source
code in our GitLab:"

..and then you have links for:

> Kernel sources
> FreeDOS sources
> How to contribute

Click on the "FreeDOS sources" link, and you'll end up at the FreeDOS
source code archive at . You can find the
source code there, including command.com ("FreeCOM") and everything
else. The kernel sources are in there too, but you probably already
know that.


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Re: [Freedos-devel] Where is the source code?

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

On Wed, May 8, 2024 at 9:32 AM Bernd Böckmann via Freedos-devel
 wrote:
>
>
> > To make this more clear on the website, I've changed the info box
> > title from "Create new programs" to "For developers" - and changed the
> > action link in that info box from "Create programs" to "Developers".
> > I've also changed the "sitenav" link in the website footer from
> > "Create" to "Devel". And I changed the web page title on the
> > https://www.freedos.org/about/devel/ page from "Create new programs"
> > to "For developers" to match the info box title from the main page.
>
> I think this is an improvement!
>
> In a time where for most young programmers YouTube is their primary
> source of information it is perhaps a good idea to place a few YouTube
> channels regarding DOS programming more prominently on the developer
> section, including Jims?

I like that idea. I think a good place to add these would be in the
"Technical information" section on that page, maybe as another row of
"info boxes" before (or after? not sure) the row that has RBIL, VGA
programming, and the Graphics Programming book.

What are some good YouTube channels about DOS programming that I
should point to?


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Re: [Freedos-devel] still can't find the source code

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

*First: it is not good "netiquette" to start a new thread when you are
following up from a previous post. You should have written this as a
reply to your first email.

On Wed, May 8, 2024 at 4:50 AM Green Fog via Freedos-devel
 wrote:
>
> I can see the potential of Freedos if these 2 conditions are met:


Your subject line says you still cannot find the source code. Why did
you not click on the link that was suggested to you in the reply? In
my reply last night, I told you exactly where to find the source code.
I also said you can install the source code when you install FreeDOS.

You didn't read the answer to your question, and now you are requiring
"conditions" for FreeDOS. I think you are trolling, so this is my last
reply to you.


> 1, ease of use. Absolutely both for users and developers. Or else who
> is going to use it? or develop more fun and useful applications to
> it. So that means better documentation, easier access to not only the
> source code but also the known-hows on everything. I am able to find
> some source code from github, which only consists of 3.7MB. I am not
> sure how that translates into a 400MB ISO. I can't find any developer
> section. Are we in the matrix?


The "Developer" page that I pointed to in my last reply has a link
called "FreeDOS sources" that points to the FreeDOS source code
archive at GitLab  which is where you'll
find everything. The "Developer" page also has a link called "Kernel
sources" that points to Jeremy's kernel (he's the current maintainer)
at GitHub .

But maybe you found my personal project on GitHub
 that is called 'freedosproject.' I
originally had a different GitHUb username, but I changed to
'freedosproject' so no one else would try to "claim" that username and
confuse things. My personal project has this description:

"Some of the sample programs I write for the FreeDOS channel on
YouTube. For the FreeDOS source code archive instead, visit
https://gitlab.com/freedos;


> 2, Better documentation. The site has a wiki section that is not part
> of the site, and is very inadequate. The official site absolutely needs
> to provide more information on many aspects including the full source
> code if it's available.


When you clicked on the "Read the wiki" link on the FreeDOS website,
did you *read* the page that came up before you ended up on the wiki
website? The page stays up for 15 seconds, and says this:

"We are currently moving the wiki to a new website. Note that we
haven't finished moving everything over, so some links are "red"
because those pages don't exist yet. They'll be there soon."

That page also has a big button you can click to go right to the wiki
at 


Jim


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Re: [Freedos-devel] Where is the source code?

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

On Wed, May 8, 2024 at 3:23 AM tom ehlert via Freedos-devel
 wrote:
>
>
> > On Tue, May 7, 2024, 8:46 PM Green Fog via Freedos-devel <
> > freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net> wrote:
>
> >> I neither can find the source code in www.freedos.org or sourceforge.net.
> >> Is this an open source project or not? I highly suggest that the source
> >> code download link to be included in your main page.
> >>
>
>
> > It's on the website, under the "developer" section.
>
> in my version of firefox, there is no "developer" section on www.freedos.org
>
>
> > In the info box where it says:
>
> *>>>Create new programs*
> *>>>FreeDOS includes lots of compilers, assemblers, and other programming
> > tools so you can create your own DOS programs. You can also modify FreeDOS
> > itself, because we include the source code under an open source license.*
> *>>>*
> *>>>Create programs*
>
>
> > ..click on the link, and you'll find a page with more information and links
> > to the source code.
>


And yet you quoted back to me the text from the "info box" that has
the link about where to find the "developer" section?


To make this more clear on the website, I've changed the info box
title from "Create new programs" to "For developers" - and changed the
action link in that info box from "Create programs" to "Developers".
I've also changed the "sitenav" link in the website footer from
"Create" to "Devel". And I changed the web page title on the
https://www.freedos.org/about/devel/ page from "Create new programs"
to "For developers" to match the info box title from the main page.


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Re: [Freedos-devel] Connection info for the virtual get-together

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

[...]
> Not a typo. :-)
>
> It just happens that the 30th anniversary is a Saturday. (June 20, 1994 -
> 2024.)
>
> Now you're trying to confuse me, aren't you... 
>



Wow, of all the places to have a typo, it's in an email where I claimed no
typo. 


That should have been:
June 2*9*, 1994-2024
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Re: [Freedos-devel] Where is the source code?

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

On Tue, May 7, 2024, 10:20 PM Jim Hall  wrote:

>
>
> On Tue, May 7, 2024, 8:46 PM Green Fog via Freedos-devel <
> freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net> wrote:
>
>> I neither can find the source code in www.freedos.org or sourceforge.net.
>> Is this an open source project or not? I highly suggest that the source
>> code download link to be included in your main page.
>>
>
>
> It's on the website, under the "developer" section.
> [..]
>


I'll add that you can automatically install the source code when you
install FreeDOS. It is one of the installation options, very easy to find.

>
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Re: [Freedos-devel] Where is the source code?

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

On Tue, May 7, 2024, 8:46 PM Green Fog via Freedos-devel <
freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net> wrote:

> I neither can find the source code in www.freedos.org or sourceforge.net.
> Is this an open source project or not? I highly suggest that the source
> code download link to be included in your main page.
>


It's on the website, under the "developer" section.

In the info box where it says:

*>>Create new programs*
*>>FreeDOS includes lots of compilers, assemblers, and other programming
tools so you can create your own DOS programs. You can also modify FreeDOS
itself, because we include the source code under an open source license.*
*>>*
*>>Create programs*


..click on the link, and you'll find a page with more information and links
to the source code.


I put this here because usability testing showed that people expected to
find FreeDOS source code in a place where developers would find other info
about *developing programs on FreeDOS*.
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Re: [Freedos-devel] Connection info for the virtual get-together

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

On Tue, May 7, 2024, 9:23 PM Ralf Quint via Freedos-devel <
freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net> wrote:

> On 5/5/2024 10:15 AM, Jim Hall via Freedos-devel wrote:
> [..]
> > We talked about doing the next virtual get-together on Saturday, June
> > 29 (11am-noon, US/Central). That's the FreeDOS 30th anniversary, so it
> > seems like a great opportunity for a virtual get-together! We
> > alternate topics, and today was "technical" - so that conveniently
> > means June 29 will be "social." :-)
>

I just checked my note that I quickly put in an online calendar the
> other day and wanted to add that to my paper/wall calendar, when I
> noticed that June 29th is a Saturday, not the usual Sunday.
> Don't know if this is just a typo or a more serious missed-take... 
>


Not a typo. :-)

It just happens that the 30th anniversary is a Saturday. (June 20, 1994 -
2024.)
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Re: [Freedos-devel] Connection info for the virtual get-together

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

Thanks to everyone who joined the virtual get-together today! We had
11 people on the call, and we did some virtual debugging, demo'd some
programs, and talked about other technical topics.


We talked about doing the next virtual get-together on Saturday, June
29 (11am-noon, US/Central). That's the FreeDOS 30th anniversary, so it
seems like a great opportunity for a virtual get-together! We
alternate topics, and today was "technical" - so that conveniently
means June 29 will be "social." :-)


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[Freedos-devel] Connection info for the virtual get-together

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

Hi everyone!

Here's how to connect to the virtual get-together, in 20 minutes from now.

FYI that we need to keep today's meeting to an hour. We usually go over,
but I'm not able to today.


FreeDOS virtual get-together (technical)
Sunday, May 5  •  11:00 AM – 12:00 PM
Google Meet joining info
Video call link: https://meet.google.com/nzf-gjbv-mqp



Or dial: +1 570-671-0066 PIN: 595 262 465#
More phone numbers: https://tel.meet/nzf-gjbv-mqp?pin=436657902
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Re: [Freedos-devel] [Semi-OT] Thoughts: Actually doing stuff with MS-DOS 4.01

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

On Fri, May 3, 2024, 11:19 PM Steve Nickolas via Freedos-devel <
freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net> wrote:

> On Fri, 3 May 2024, Jim Hall via Freedos-devel wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> > The FSF people also say the Expat/MIT license is compatible with the GNU
> > GPL. You can copy code from an Expat licensed project and paste it into a
> > GNU GPL'd project.
>
> And thus MS-DOS 4 can theoretically (not really in practice) benefit
> FreeDOS.
>


Yes. I wrote an article about it when Microsoft released the earlier MS-DOS
under the same license:

https://opensource.com/article/18/10/microsoft-open-source-old-versions-ms-dos

>
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Re: [Freedos-devel] [Semi-OT] Thoughts: Actually doing stuff with MS-DOS 4.01

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

On Fri, May 3, 2024, 10:53 PM Steve Nickolas via Freedos-devel <
freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net> wrote:

> So I've had some thoughts regarding the MS-DOS 4 source drop, regarding
> [...]
> (The obvious question:
> Why not use what FreeDOS already has?  A: Because I'd like to have the
> entirety of the project under a single license - that being the X license
> Microsoft and IBM are already using.)
>


FYI: the license Microsoft has used for the official MS-DOS source code
releases is the MIT License. The FSF people call this the Expat license.

The FSF people also say the Expat/MIT license is compatible with the GNU
GPL. You can copy code from an Expat licensed project and paste it into a
GNU GPL'd project.

More info here:
https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html#Expat
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Re: [Freedos-devel] FreeDOS Runtime

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

Good "netiquette" is to only discuss one topic per email thread, so I
started a new thread for Runtime:

On Thu, May 2, 2024 at 4:12 PM Eric Auer via Freedos-devel
 wrote:
[..]
> *Runtime*
>
> Jim's version is a small C program, 120 lines, using catgets
> for messages which can be translated in different languages.
> The binary is a 22kB EXE (31kB without UPX). There were text
> files with EN, RU, DE, HU and LV translations, I believe?
>
> My version is a small ASM program, made with NASM. It has
> a main file, circa 450 lines, and a language include file,
> circa 150 lines, which at the moment contains EN, DE, NL,
> PT, ES, FR, TR, IT, PL and RU messages :-) To add languages,
> you have to build a new binary. Not very hard, but harder
> than just editing a text file which can be used by CATGETS.
> The binary is a 2kB COM (3kB without UPX).
>
> Note that texts in all 10 language are INCLUDED in the 2kB
> COM file of my tiny version. No separate NLS files there.
>
> As a task left as an exercise for the user, one could port
> the C version to Tom's small KITTEN alternative to CATGETS.
>
> My preferred option would be to add HU and LV translations
> to my small RUNTIME and use that instead of the big one ;-)
>


I wrote the Runtime program, so I guess I'll speak to that.

This is a very old program. I don't remember why I wrote it, but I'm
sure I was doing some debugging on a program and was trying to
fine-tune the performance, and needed a way to test how long it took
to run after making improvements. There are lots of programs out there
to track the run-time of a program on DOS, and I probably gave a quick
look around - but decided it would be just as easy to write my own for
what I needed to do. It was just a quick program that I probably wrote
in ten minutes.

And I probably released it in case it was useful to someone else. I
don't think I intended it to become part of the distribution, but it
did.

I just looked at the zip file for Runtime 1.0. It's a very simple
program, just sets a timer, runs a program, then reports how long the
program ran.


That's the long version to say: I don't have a particularly strong
opinion to keep the old Runtime in the distribution. We can swap it
out.

I looked at your Runtime, and the messages are very simple:


1. seconds [as in, 'this ran in 4 seconds]

2. passed [as in, '4 seconds have passed']

3. a 1-line "about" message

4. a 1-line "usage" message

5. a 1-line "information" message

6. a "COMSPEC not found" error message


So it's just 6 messages, which seems right. It's not a very complicated program.


I'm in favor to swap out the old Runtime with this Runtime. No issues
here. I think it would be great to have those 6 messages translated
into the missing HU and LV translations, but I don't think we need to
"wait" for those messages to get translated.

What do others think? You can "+1" if you just want to agree to swap
out my old Runtime with Eric's newer Runtime.


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Re: [Freedos-devel] FreeDOS Terminal

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

Good "netiquette" is to only discuss one topic per email thread, so I
started a new thread for Terminal:


On Thu, May 2, 2024 at 4:12 PM Eric Auer via Freedos-devel
 wrote:
> Willi has asked Jerome and me whether RUNTIME and TERMINAL
> in the auersoft.eu versions were real updates or just tests.
>
> Jerome asked him to ask on the LIST, so I answer HERE ;-)
[..]

Yes, and please avoid sending off-list emails. We have the email list
so we can talk about things in the open.


> *Terminal*
>
> Regarding TERMINAL, the distro contains version 3.2a 2015-05-16.
> The files in the ZIP have timestamps between 2001 and 2005 for
> source code and 2021-2022 for translations.
> http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/repositories/unstable/pkg-html/terminal.html
>
> The version mentioned by Willi, terminal-2007jun20, contains
> 2007 changes to terminal.asm, term-irq.asm and term-data.asm,
> with the following minimalist changelog:
>
> "update in V3.3 6/2007: added a forgotten in al,dx term-irq.asm:217"
>
> The change in terminal.asm are just adding the above as a comment.
> The change in term-irq.asm is just adding that "in al,dx".
> The change in term-data.asm is just changing version and date in
> the msg_hello string. Note that the sources have LONG FILE NAMES
> which somehow got lost in the download available on Ibiblio!
>
> The version on ibiblio comes with more metadata in APPINFO: The
> LSM file and small TERMINAL.xyz files in different languages xyz,
> for example the French APPINFO/TERMINAL.FR file says:
>
> Begin3
> Language:FR, 850
> Title:   terminal
> Description: Un petit terminal vt100/ansi pour tous les PC
> Keywords:terminal, rs-232, vt100
> End
>
> I guess it would be nice if the ibiblio version got updated with
> my 2007 version, but preserving the nice added ibiblio metadata.
> Please take care to preserve source LFN and timestamps, though.


I see the 2007 Terminal in the Ibiblio archive, so it looks like we
made a copy at some point. It is here:

https://ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/util/user/terminal/


The 2007 version has these file dates/times:

$ ls -l
total 224
-rw-r- 1 freedos users  6014 Nov 16  2001 README
-rw-r--r-- 1 freedos users 46662 Nov 18  2001 terminal-2001nov18.zip
-rw-r--r-- 1 freedos users 48049 Nov  6  2002 terminal-2002nov06.zip
-rw-r--r-- 1 freedos users 44538 Apr 23  2005 terminal-2005apr23.zip
-rw-r--r-- 1 freedos users 44520 Jun 20  2007 terminal-2007jun20.zip
-rw-r--r-- 1 freedos users 13608 Apr 23  2005 terminal-rom.tar.gz


And:

$ unzip -l terminal-2007jun20.zip
Archive:  terminal-2007jun20.zip
  Length  DateTimeName
-  -- -   
0  06-20-2007 11:17   terminal/
 4175  10-20-2001 01:37   terminal/term-comm.asm
 6613  06-20-2007 11:17   terminal/term-data.asm
 1823  10-18-2001 14:55   terminal/term-def.asm
  635  10-19-2001 17:39   terminal/eecho.asm
 6333  04-23-2005 14:16   terminal/term-tty.asm
 3867  06-20-2007 11:17   terminal/terminal.com
  123  10-19-2001 17:40   terminal/eecho.com
11944  06-20-2007 11:17   terminal/terminal.asm
  197  11-16-2001 13:05   terminal/prn-term.inf
 7962  06-20-2007 11:16   terminal/term-irq.asm
 2516  11-16-2001 11:27   terminal/term-menu.asm
17061  10-20-2001 15:15   terminal/term-ansi.asm
 8359  10-19-2001 15:32   terminal/term-disp.asm
 3175  04-23-2005 14:14   terminal/term-set.asm
 6014  11-16-2001 13:04   terminal/terminal.txt
18349  03-01-2002 08:29   terminal/copying.txt
 3975  11-06-2002 14:04   terminal/term.bat
- ---
   103121 18 files


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[Freedos-devel] Reminder: FreeDOS virtual get-together coming up (Sunday)

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

Hi everyone!

I wanted to remind everyone of the upcoming FreeDOS virtual
get-together, happening on Sunday, May 5 at 11am US/Central (use your
favorite timezone converter to find your local time).

I'll share the link when the meeting starts. As before, we'll use Google Meet.

We alternate topics every time, and the May meeting will be
'technical.' This is a great opportunity to do live debugging, ask
about setup and configuration, and other 'tech' topics.


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Re: [Freedos-devel] MS-DOS 4.0 source released as open source under MIT license

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

On Sun, Apr 28, 2024 at 4:33 PM Han Held via Freedos-devel
 wrote:
>
> For anyone interested, Neozeed has a youtube video that he put up that walks 
> through the steps of fetching dos 4's source from github and building a 
> bootable copy of it.
> [Compiling MS-DOS 4.0 using DOSbox & Qemu]
>


I also posted a video on the FreeDOS YouTube channel, earlier today,
showing how to MS-DOS 4.00 on FreeDOS. (All credit to ecm's fixes.)
This uses a fresh, vanilla FreeDOS 1.3 "plain DOS" install, with the
FDAUTO.BAT file replaced with a single PATH statement (only because I
didn't need all the other stuff to do the build).

https://youtu.be/X7r76V_gWQ8


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Re: [Freedos-devel] MS-DOS 4.0 source released as open source under MIT license

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

To correct myself: I was getting a bunch of unrelated errors because I
made a mistake in my SETENV.BAT file. I set the CL, LINK, and MASM
variables to point to the executables (similar to what you might do on
Unix makefiles with CC, CFLAGS, etc)

But those variables are options to those commands (like DIRCMD) so
that was causing additional garbage.


If I clear out the CL, LINK, and MASM variables, my build attempt
fails in the same way that the OS/2 Museum does.


But hey, MS-DOS Edlin builds correctly - so there's that! But it won't
run on FreeDOS because "Incorrect DOS version." :-)


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Re: [Freedos-devel] MS-DOS 4.0 source released as open source under MIT license

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

Jim Hall wrote:
[..]
> > But when I try to build it, it fails in the MAPPER directory with
> > "line too long":
> >
[..]
> >> cd ..\mapper
> >> nmake
> >>
> >> Microsoft (R) Program Maintenance Utility   Version 1.00.05
> >> Copyright (c) Microsoft Corp 1987, 1988. All rights reserved.
> >>
> >> masm -Mx -t  -I. -I..\inc -I..\dos chdir.asm,chdir.obj;
> >> D:\src\tools\MASM.EXE(1): error A2106: Line too long
>

Robert Riebisch wrote:
> UTF-8 conversion is the culprit:
> https://www.os2museum.com/wp/how-not-to-release-historic-source-code/


Well, that's unfortunate. But at least it's not just me.

Before I saw your reply, I also realized that the source files were
converted to UNIX LF ending (missing CR) so I ran unix2dos on Linux
using 'find' to get all the *.INC and *.ASM files:

unix2dos -f -ascii -437


..but that didn't help.

I'm kind of busy with other things, so I'm not going to throw myself
at this. But please share if they provide a fixed version.


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Re: [Freedos-devel] MS-DOS 4.0 source released as open source under MIT license

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

On Fri, Apr 26, 2024 at 2:28 PM Jim Hall  wrote:
>
[..]
> How did you compile it? I'm having trouble getting the compile to work.
>
> Here's what I'm doing: I've booted my system using FreeDOS but using
> their tools. My C: drive is FreeDOS, and my D: drive is empty except
> for the SRC directory from the MS-DOS 4.0 release on GitHub. I set up
> my environment by editing the SETENV.BAT and running it:
>
[..]
>
> It's interesting that line 1 of CHDIR.ASM is just an empty ";" comment
> (line 1 is 1 character long) so I don't get why MASM says line 1 is
> too long.


Also interesting is that when the build fails, CHDIR.ASM has been deleted:

> D:\SRC\MAPPER>dir chdir.*
>  Volume in drive D is MSDOS4
>  Volume Serial Number is 3353-1607
>
>  Directory of D:\SRC\MAPPER
>
> CHDIROBJ14,702  04-26-24  6:53p
>  1 file(s) 14,702 bytes
>  0 dir(s) 489,603,072 bytes free


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Re: [Freedos-devel] MS-DOS 4.0 source released as open source under MIT license

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

> On Fri, 26 Apr 2024, Bernd Böckmann via Freedos-devel wrote:
>
> > Microsoft and IBM released the source code of MS-DOS 4.0 under MIT
> > license [1]. To me, it looks fairly complete.

On Fri, Apr 26, 2024 at 2:25 AM Steve Nickolas via Freedos-devel
 wrote:
>
> Everything but himem, dosshell, gwbasic, and parts of xmaem/xma2ems,
> apparently.  I got most of it compiled using the tools in the archive.


How did you compile it? I'm having trouble getting the compile to work.

Here's what I'm doing: I've booted my system using FreeDOS but using
their tools. My C: drive is FreeDOS, and my D: drive is empty except
for the SRC directory from the MS-DOS 4.0 release on GitHub. I set up
my environment by editing the SETENV.BAT and running it:


@echo off
echo setting up system to build the MS-DOS 4.01 SOURCE BAK...
set COUNTRY=usa-ms
set BAKROOT=D:
rem BAKROOT points to the home drive/directory of the sources.
set LIB=%BAKROOT%\src\lib
set INIT=%BAKROOT%\src\tools
set INCLUDE=%BAKROOT%\src\inc
set PATH=%BAKROOT%\src\tools;C:\freedos\bin
set CL=%INIT%\CL.EXE
set LINK=%INIT%\LINK.EXE
set MASM=%INIT%\MASM.EXE


This is my PATH:

> D:\>path
> PATH=D:\src\tools;C:\freedos\bin


Yes, I'm really running the Microsoft NMAKE from their tree:

> D:\>nmake
>
> Microsoft (R) Program Maintenance Utility   Version 1.00.05
> Copyright (c) Microsoft Corp 1987, 1988. All rights reserved.
>
> NMAKE : fatal error U1051: usage : 'NMAKE' [-bcdeinpqrst -f makefile -x 
> stderrfi
> le] [macrodefs] [targets]
> Stop.


But when I try to build it, it fails in the MAPPER directory with
"line too long":

> D:\>cd src
> D:\SRC>nmake
>
> Microsoft (R) Program Maintenance Utility   Version 1.00.05
> Copyright (c) Microsoft Corp 1987, 1988. All rights reserved.
>
> cd messages
> nmake
>
> Microsoft (R) Program Maintenance Utility   Version 1.00.05
> Copyright (c) Microsoft Corp 1987, 1988. All rights reserved.
>
> attrib -R usa-ms.msg
> buildidx usa-ms.msg
> Index file and message file are of different levels.
> Message file and index file will be updated.
> Message file updated.
> Index file updated.
> attrib +R usa-ms.msg
> cd ..\mapper
> nmake
>
> Microsoft (R) Program Maintenance Utility   Version 1.00.05
> Copyright (c) Microsoft Corp 1987, 1988. All rights reserved.
>
> masm -Mx -t  -I. -I..\inc -I..\dos chdir.asm,chdir.obj;
> D:\src\tools\MASM.EXE(1): error A2106: Line too long
> D:\src\tools\MASM.EXE(10): error A2106: Line too long
> D:\src\tools\MASM.EXE(11): error A2106: Line too long
> D:\src\tools\MASM.EXE(13): error A2106: Line too long
> D:\src\tools\MASM.EXE(19): error A2106: Line too long
> D:\src\tools\MASM.EXE(31): error A2106: Line too long
> D:\src\tools\MASM.EXE(34): error A2106: Line too long
> D:\src\tools\MASM.EXE(36): error A2106: Line too long
> D:\src\tools\MASM.EXE(38): error A2106: Line too long
> D:\src\tools\MASM.EXE(40): error A2106: Line too long
> D:\src\tools\MASM.EXE(41): error A2106: Line too long
> D:\src\tools\MASM.EXE(47): error A2106: Line too long
> D:\src\tools\MASM.EXE(48): error A2106: Line too long
> D:\src\tools\MASM.EXE(77): error A2106: Line too long
> D:\src\tools\MASM.EXE(88): error A2106: Line too long
> D:\src\tools\MASM.EXE(114): error A2106: Line too long
> D:\src\tools\MASM.EXE(120): error A2106: Line too long
> D:\src\tools\MASM.EXE(127): error A2106: Line too long
> D:\src\tools\MASM.EXE(141): error A2106: Line too long
> D:\src\tools\MASM.EXE(142): error A2106: Line too long
> D:\src\tools\MASM.EXE(150): error A2106: Line too long
> D:\src\tools\MASM.EXE(154): error A2106: Line too long
> D:\src\tools\MASM.EXE(156): error A2106: Line too long
> D:\src\tools\MASM.EXE(164): error A2106: Line too long
> D:\src\tools\MASM.EXE(165): error A2106: Line too long
> D:\src\tools\MASM.EXE(166): error A2106: Line too long
> D:\src\tools\MASM.EXE(167): error A2106: Line too long
> D:\src\tools\MASM.EXE(168): error A2106: Line too long
> D:\src\tools\MASM.EXE(169): error A2106: Line too long
> D:\src\tools\MASM.EXE(171): error A2106: Line too long
> D:\src\tools\MASM.EXE(172): error A2106: Line too long
> D:\src\tools\MASM.EXE(174): error A2106: Line too long
> D:\src\tools\MASM.EXE(184): error A2106: Line too long
> D:\src\tools\MASM.EXE(185): error A2106: Line too long
> D:\src\tools\MASM.EXE(188): error A2106: Line too long
> D:\src\tools\MASM.EXE(194): error A2106: Line too long
> D:\src\tools\MASM.EXE(202): error A2106: Line too long
> D:\src\tools\MASM.EXE(207): error A2106: Line too long
> D:\src\tools\MASM.EXE(218): error A2106: Line too long
> D:\src\tools\MASM.EXE(219): error A2106: Line too long
> D:\src\tools\MASM.EXE(231): error A2106: Line too long
> D:\src\tools\MASM.EXE(237): error A2106: Line too long
> D:\src\tools\MASM.EXE(239): error A2106: Line too long
> D:\src\tools\MASM.EXE(241): error A2106: Line too long
> D:\src\tools\MASM.EXE(246): error A2106: Line too long
> D:\src\tools\MASM.EXE(251): error A2106: Line too 

[Freedos-devel] The new FreeDOS wiki

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

I wasn't able to finish copying over the content from our old wiki to
the new wiki before SourceForge applied another update to their web
server, which completely broke the old wiki.

But I copied over most of the wiki before then. Two things that are
obviously missing are two setup guides: Installing FreeDOS, and
Networking FreeDOS. Several other missing pages describe program
usage, which I plan to copy from Willi's HTML Help content.

Even though the old wiki is effectively broken, the content is still
on the SF server. I plan to copy the guide content directly from the
SF database and put them into the new wiki. I'll have time after May 5
to do that, so no changes planned until then.


The new wiki is at:
https://wiki.freedos.org/wiki/

I've put up a note on the old wiki to point people to the new wiki:
https://freedos.sourceforge.io/wiki/

*I just realized the wiki website "front page" still has the "coming
soon" message .. I'll turn that into a redirect:
https://wiki.freedos.org/

I've also updated the www.freedos.org "Read the wiki" link .. this
brings up an interstitial page that used to let folks know that we
were moving the wiki, and the old wiki was showing "unstyled" pages.
Now the interstitial lets folks know that the wiki has some "red"
links that will get filled in soon.

Note: While I was putting content on the new wiki, I realized we
should have more wiki pages about programs, so the red links are *not*
pages that are missing from the old wiki - they are new pages that
haven't been written yet.


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[Freedos-devel] Edlin [was: libm-0.7 Released!]

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

Tom Ehlert wrote:
> > btw: do you have a lot of communication about EDLIN?

Gregory Pietsch wrote:
>
> I did have a lot of communication about Edlin when it was first released, but 
> not as much anymore.


I actually use Edlin, and I do so without irony. It's great if you run
a command and want to make a quick BAT file out of it. I don't need
Edit for that, I can just as easily tap out a few lines in Edlin and
save it.

One thing that would make that easier is a command line option to
suppress Edlin output. Something like /QUIET or /Q to not display the
"welcome" message (copyright & license). Because if I run a command
and want to make a BAT file out of it, the extra text might push some
interesting stuff off the top of the screen.

Also, it would be nice if Edlin supported the /? option on DOS to
display the usage. Right now, it assumes any command line parameter is
a file:

> C:\> edlin /?
> edlin 2.23, copyright (c) 2003 Gregory Pietsch
> This program comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
> It is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it
> under the terms of the GNU General Public License -- either
> version 2 of the license, or, at your option, any later
> version.
>
> /?: New file.
> *

Here's an idea: if Edlin supported /? for usage, Edlin might only
display the "welcome" screen there and *not* display it during normal
program startup. That would remove my need for a /QUIET command line
option.


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Re: [Freedos-devel] libm-0.7 Released!

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

On Sat, Apr 13, 2024 at 12:35 PM Gregory Pietsch via Freedos-devel
 wrote:
>
> Submitted for your approval, the latest version of libm, FreeDOS's
> public domain math library, has been released! For this version,
> I have worked on edge cases regarding complex numbers and dug deep
> into the C99 Standard.
>[..]


Very cool!

Gregory emailed this to me so I could put it on Ibiblio. I've mirrored
this release in the usual place on the FreeDOS Files Archive:

https://ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/devel/libs/libm/0.7/


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Re: [Freedos-devel] I16GCC would need DJGPP, but DJGPP not present in FDT2404 (fixed!)

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

On Wed, Apr 10, 2024 at 10:20 AM Jim Hall  wrote:
> The DJGPP environment variable just needs to point to a file called
> DJGPP.ENV (or whatever) that contains a bunch of environment settings
> for programs that were compiled with DJGPP. For example, this file
> contains stanzas for GNU Emacs, GNU Bison, and other programs.
>
> But you can point to any file. [..] my DJGPP.ENV file is basically
> empty:
>
> C:\SRC>type DJGPP.ENV
> DJDIR=
>
>
> But I can compile just fine:
[..]


And a further demo:

When I installed FreeDOS T2404, I installed the I16GCC packages, but
obviously T2404 doesn't include the DJGPP stuff. So can you compile
programs using IA-16 GCC on T2404 without DJGPP? Yes! Just do what I
did. Here's my demo:


My C:\DEVEL directory contains just OpenWatcom C and IA-16 GCC. I
added the T.ENV file (because you can call the DJGPP env file
anything) and the ARGS.C file is just a dummy program I wrote as a
demo:

C:\DEVEL>dir /b
I16GNU
WATCOMC
ARGS.C
T.ENV

C:\DEVEL>type t.env
DJDIR=

C:\DEVEL>type args.c
#include 
int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
 int i;
 for (i = 0; i < argc; i++) {
  puts(argv[i]);
 }
 return 0;
}


And now compile it by setting the DJGPP variable to point to the
(empty) T.ENV file, then run IA-16 GCC as usual:

C:\DEVEL>set DJGPP=C:\DEVEL\T.ENV
C:\DEVEL>path C:\freedos\bin;C:\devel\i16gnu\bin
C:\DEVEL>i16gcc -Wall -o args.exe args.c
C:\DEVEL>args.exe this is a test 1 2 3 4 5
C:\DEVEL\ARGS.EXE
this
is
a
test
1
2
3
4
5


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[Freedos-devel] Proposal for new package in T2405

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

Based on my other email about getting IA-16 GCC to work on T2404
without installing DJGPP, I propose adding a new package in T2405
called I16ENV that just has two files in it:

/devel/i16gnu/djgpp.env
/devel/i16gnu/setenv.bat

The DJGPP.ENV file contains just:

DJDIR=

And the SETENV.BAT file sets the PATH and points the DJGPP environment
variable to the DJGPP.ENV file, like this:

@ECHO OFF
PATH %PATH%;C:\DEVEL\I16GNU\BIN
SET DJGPP=C:\DEVEL\I16GNU\DJGPP.ENV


Since it gets installed in the IA-16 GCC directory, it shouldn't get
confused with the DJGPP stuff. If the DJGPP env file is called
DJGPP.ENV, it will make more sense when people find references to
"DJGPP.ENV" in other documentation. And because the package will be
named similarly to the other IA-16 GCC packages, users will be more
likely to install it when they install IA-16 GCC. But because we
aren't updating any original IA-16 GCC packages, it keeps things clean
at the expense of a little extra "overhead" for the package. But if
you're installing a C compiler, you likely can spare the tiny extra
space.

This will be a good way for others to start testing compiling programs
using IA-16 GCC in a working default configuration on a fresh install,
starting with the next test release.

This works on my T2404 installation. Here is a copy/paste of my
FreeDOS session after a fresh reboot (using unmodified FDAUTO.BAT):

C:\DEVEL>dir /b
I16GNU
WATCOMC

C:\DEVEL>cd i16gnu

C:\DEVEL\I16GNU>dir /b
BIN
IA16-ELF
LIB
LIBEXEC
SHARE
DJGPP.ENV
SETENV.BAT

C:\DEVEL\I16GNU>type setenv.bat
@ECHO OFF
PATH %PATH%;C:\DEVEL\I16GNU\BIN
SET DJGPP=C:\DEVEL\I16GNU\DJGPP.ENV

C:\DEVEL\I16GNU>type DJGPP.ENV
DJDIR=

C:\DEVEL\I16GNU>setenv.bat

.. now I'll switch to the D: drive to compile a program ..

D:\SRC>dir /b hello.*
HELLO.C

D:\SRC>type hello.c
#include 
int main()
{
puts("Hello world");
return 0;
}

D:\SRC>i16gcc -Wall -o hello.exe hello.c

D:\SRC>dir /b hello.*
HELLO.C
HELLO.EXE

D:\SRC>hello.exe
Hello world


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Re: [Freedos-devel] I16GCC would need DJGPP, but DJGPP not present in FDT2404 (fixed!)

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

On Tue, Apr 9, 2024 at 5:46 PM Paul Dufresne via Freedos-devel
 wrote:
>
> But installing I16BUTIIL,
> SET DJDIR=C:\DEVEL\I16GNU
> i16gcc -o hel2.exe hel2.c
> works!
>
[..]


The DJGPP environment variable just needs to point to a file called
DJGPP.ENV (or whatever) that contains a bunch of environment settings
for programs that were compiled with DJGPP. For example, this file
contains stanzas for GNU Emacs, GNU Bison, and other programs.

But you can point to any file. Here's an example: I started with a
fresh install of FreeDOS 1.3 (plain DOS .. and installed the "DJGPP"
package and the various I16GCC packages). The IA-16 GCC is installed
in C:\DEVEL\I16GNU, and the bin directory is C:\DEVEL\I16GNU\BIN

I set up a new directory called C:\SRC that contains this:

C:\SRC>dir /b
DJGPP.ENV
HELLO.C


The "HELLO.C" source file is just a dummy "Hello world" program:

C:\SRC>type hello.c
#include 
int main()
{
 puts("Hello world");
 return 0;
}


As I mentioned, the DJGPP stuff needs to look in the DJGPP.ENV file
for default settings. The file minimally needs to have DJDIR defined.
But in the case of IA-16 GCC, this is safe to leave empty because
IA-16 GCC is its own compiler. So my DJGPP.ENV file is basically
empty:

C:\SRC>type DJGPP.ENV
DJDIR=


But I can compile just fine:


C:\SRC>path C:\freedos\bin;C:\devel\i16gnu\bin
C:\SRC>set DJGPP=C:\src\DJGPP.ENV
C:\SRC>i16gcc -Wall -o hello.exe hello.c
C:\SRC>hello.exe
Hello world


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Re: [Freedos-devel] FreeDOS Wiki

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

On Tue, Mar 26, 2024 at 5:25 PM Jerome Shidel via Freedos-devel
 wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> Apparently, the (old) FreeDOS wiki on sourceforge is down or broken.
>
> After visiting the FreeDOS.org website, navigating to “Read the
> wiki” and waiting, I just get a blank page after redirection to the
>
> https://freedos.sourceforge.io/wiki/index.php/Main_Page web page.


I was *this* close to getting the last two guides ("Installing
FreeDOS" and "Networking FreeDOS") copied over, but ran out of time
because of some things at work. Then SourceForge broke something on
their end a few days ago. I'll do a selective Mediawiki upgrade on SF
over the weekend to get things back to a working state so I can
copy/paste the rest of the content.

The data is still there in the database, it's just that the PHP code
is barfing somewhere because the older Mediawiki doesn't seem to work
well on the newer PHP that SF upgraded to.

After I get those two guides copied over, I'll open it up to user
accounts to anyone who wants one. And I'll add a redirect to hide the
"w" in the URL, and change the "wiki" link on the www.freedos.org
website to point to the new website.

Any content after the two guides is pretty minor (command line usage,
etc) which can get moved over time.


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Re: [Freedos-devel] FETCH4FD

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

On Sat, Mar 23, 2024 at 6:23 AM Danilo Pecher via Freedos-devel
 wrote:
>
> Neofetch is a good way to give you a quick overview of the machine's
> parameters. It's perhaps more of a gimmick under DOS, but in a unix
> environment it can be a godsent. When I was database administrator at
> Infineon I had to work with about 3000 different machines running
> either Linux, Solaris, AIX or HP-UX. So you have 3000 different
> hostnames to ssh into. Some you visit almost daily, but some test
> servers or legacy systems you only visit once in a very long while.
>
> In that case it is more than helpful to have the most pertinent
> parameters at a glance right after login.
>


Definitely neofetch (or similar .. there were other programs like that
before it) is useful when you're managing a network of servers that
have different specs. But as you wrote, I'm not sure that a program
that just collects and prints system info is particularly useful to
install by default on a DOS machine in 2024. So while I think it's
great to write a new program for FreeDOS, I'm not very excited about
including FETCH4FD in the FreeDOS install, unless there's some other
useful feature (for example, command line tests that could run
silently to automate BAT files depending on the system type, or free
disk, or available memory - such as FETCH4FD /TEST /MEM=16 returns 0
[success] if the system has at least 16MB of memory, or /TEST
/FREE=100 returns 0 [success] if the current drive has 100MB or more
of free disk space.)

In the original DOS era, there were lots of programs that did this.
One obvious example was Norton's SI (System Info) utility. And years
ago, we used to include COMPINFO in a previous FreeDOS distribution,
but I don't remember why we stopped including it. If I had to guess,
probably it was the same question of "usefulness."


I'm also not sure FETCH4FD is the best name, but that's entirely my
personal preference. To me, "Fetch" implies it's going to retrieve a
file or some other resource over a network. As in "to go for and then
bring back something for someone." Also, FETCH4FD is difficult for me
to type because of the "4" in there. To me, more obvious (and easier
to type) names include DOSINFO or SYSINFO.

Jim


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Re: [Freedos-devel] FreeDOS wiki updates + questions

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

> On Wednesday, March 20th, 2024 at 10:09 AM, Jim Hall via Freedos-devel 
>  wrote:
>
[..]
> > What to do about the "Networking How-to"? This is a collection of
> > pages that wasn't written as a typical "wiki" page (every page in a
> > wiki should stand on its own, with links to other pages for more info)
> > but as a series of pages that follow step 1, step 2, .. etc.
> >
> > Should I just copy/paste those pages into the new wiki, or move them
> > out into a new kind of "how-to" article?
> >
> > We have another collection of pages for an "Installation Guide" and I
> > have the same question there.
> >
> >
> > Related:
> >
> > I (and others) wrote a bunch of articles about FreeDOS for
> > Opensource.com before they stopped publishing (about a year ago).
> > Opensource.com is still up, and I'd like to copy/paste the FreeDOS
> > articles into a website that we control in case Opensource.com goes
> > away. At least the articles I wrote, and I can ask permission of other
> > authors if I have their contact info.
> >
[..]
> >
> > Should I just copy/paste those into the new wiki, or should I create a
> > new website to republish these, like a howto.freedos.org website .. or
> > maybe a "howto" directory on the new wiki website (but outside the
> > "wiki" itself) like wiki.freedos.org/howto .. or a "howto" directory
> > on the main website, like www.freedos.org/howto .. what's the best
> > plan?
[..]

On Wed, Mar 20, 2024 at 1:50 PM Mercury Thirteen via Freedos-devel
 wrote:
> Personally, I'm a big fan of keeping information in one easy to access
> place. If it were me, I would put the articles in their own section
> on the wiki under a helpful title, where they could also be linked to
> from other articles in the wiki, e.g. an article on how to install
> FreeDOS could link to How-Tos detailing how one would partition and
> format their drive. I'm no SEO expert by far, but I would think that
> the fact that the articles are not simply copy-pasted but are also
> linked to from other pages on the site - not to mention that there
> is a ton of other content on the wiki, making it more than a simple
> copy-paste ripoff of the source site - would mitigate the down-ranking
> which Google et al. may otherwise do.


I'm definitely a fan of not adding more work for myself. :-)

Adding the how-to articles inside the wiki seems like a good idea,
then. And that way, it keeps all documentation in one place. Maybe
I'll create a "parent" entry like "Howto" and copy/paste all the other
how-to articles under that so you have paths like
wiki.freedos.org/Howto/(topic) or whatever.


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[Freedos-devel] FreeDOS wiki updates + questions

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

I've been moving the FreeDOS wiki content over by copy/paste. And I've
finished almost all of the tricky pages .. then it's a collection of
small pages (mostly usage pages for programs) which I think should go
quickly. Then I'll add wiki editor accounts for anyone who wants them.

The new wiki will be here:
https://wiki.freedos.org/w/index.php?title=Main_Page

(don't bookmark that yet .. the "w" part in the URL will likely go away)


Question:

What to do about the "Networking How-to"? This is a collection of
pages that wasn't written as a typical "wiki" page (every page in a
wiki should stand on its own, with links to other pages for more info)
but as a series of pages that follow step 1, step 2, .. etc.

Should I just copy/paste those pages into the new wiki, or move them
out into a new kind of "how-to" article?

We have another collection of pages for an "Installation Guide" and I
have the same question there.


Related:

I (and others) wrote a bunch of articles about FreeDOS for
Opensource.com before they stopped publishing (about a year ago).
Opensource.com is still up, and I'd like to copy/paste the FreeDOS
articles into a website that we control in case Opensource.com goes
away. At least the articles I wrote, and I can ask permission of other
authors if I have their contact info.

Again, these aren't written to be "wiki" pages, they are standalone
articles about how to do something in FreeDOS (like how to use CD and
DIR, other useful commands, conio programming, .. etc) in 800 to 1000
words.
https://opensource.com/tags/freedos

Should I just copy/paste those into the new wiki, or should I create a
new website to republish these, like a howto.freedos.org website .. or
maybe a "howto" directory on the new wiki website (but outside the
"wiki" itself) like wiki.freedos.org/howto .. or a "howto" directory
on the main website, like www.freedos.org/howto .. what's the best
plan? Since Google's "SEO" ranking generally "down-ranks" websites
that copy/paste content from other websites, creating a new website
name like howto.freedos.org seems like a good idea, but I don't want
to create a bunch of work for myself if others have a better idea


Jim


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Re: [Freedos-devel] Reminder: FreeDOS virtual get-together on Sunday

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

Interesting! I didn't get a prompt from Google Meet to specify how
long to let the meeting continue after I left, so I was concerned that
Meet just dropped everyone after I had to leave. I'm glad it kept the
meeting going for other folks.


On Sun, Mar 10, 2024 at 4:04 PM Jerome Shidel via Freedos-devel
 wrote:
>
> Hi Jim,
>
> > On Mar 10, 2024, at 1:42 PM, Jim Hall via Freedos-devel 
> >  wrote:
> >
> > On Sun, Mar 10, 2024 at 12:09 PM Jim Hall  wrote:
> >>
> >> Thanks to everyone who joined the FreeDOS virtual get-together today!
>
> We hung out for about 45 minutes after you left. Then, I had to go. Don’t 
> know  oh w about the rest. They could still be there. :-)
>
> Jerome
> >
>
>
> ___
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> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel


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Re: [Freedos-devel] Reminder: FreeDOS virtual get-together on Sunday

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

On Sun, Mar 10, 2024 at 12:09 PM Jim Hall  wrote:
>
> Thanks to everyone who joined the FreeDOS virtual get-together today!
>
> This call was really just "social time" so we spent a lot of time
> catching up with one another.
>
> The next virtual get-together will focus on "technical." That's a
> great opportunity to do live debugging, work through issues, and cover
> other tech topics related to FreeDOS.


I'm looking ahead on my calendar, and April will be tough for me (lots
going on). Let's do the next virtual get-together on Sunday, May 5.


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Re: [Freedos-devel] Reminder: FreeDOS virtual get-together on Sunday

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

Thanks to everyone who joined the FreeDOS virtual get-together today!

This call was really just "social time" so we spent a lot of time
catching up with one another.

The next virtual get-together will focus on "technical." That's a
great opportunity to do live debugging, work through issues, and cover
other tech topics related to FreeDOS.


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[Freedos-devel] Here's the meeting URL

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

I'll start the get-together in a few minutes, but here's the URL for
anyone who needs it:

FreeDOS virtual get-together (social)
Sunday, March 10 · 11:00am – 12:30pm
Time zone: America/Chicago
Google Meet joining info
Video call link: https://meet.google.com/eua-spwn-euy
Or dial: ‪(US) +1 347-305-6319‬ PIN: ‪692 124 151‬#
More phone numbers: https://tel.meet/eua-spwn-euy?pin=5735754726737


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[Freedos-devel] Reminder: virtual get-together

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

Hi everyone

Don't forget about this morning's virtual get-together!

We are on Daylight Saving Time in the US. It's 9:00am now, so that means
the meeting is in two hours from now (11:00-12:00).


See you then!
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Re: [Freedos-devel] I'm migrating the wiki

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

A quick status on migrating the wiki:

I set up a new Wikimedia instance on a new wiki.freedos.org host this
week, and yesterday I started to copy content from the old wiki into
the new wiki. This is a copy/paste exercise for a few reasons that
I've explained in another email, but here's a summary:

[begin summary]
Background: Long ago, SourceForge set up a shared Mediawiki
environment for all projects hosted at SF. Every project used the same
wiki system but had a different prefix. All SF users had a wiki login
by default. Later, SF decided to stop hosting a shared wiki, so they
made a data export available to every project and provided
instructions to set up your own Mediawiki. We did that on the SF web
host. In late-ish 2023, SF's website update meant our wiki can't use a
stylesheet. I can't blame them, the wiki software was out of date
(very difficult to update a website hosted at SF).

I could export the data from SF and import it into a new wiki, but
that would import *all* of the wiki users. And the SF database
includes *all* SF users. I don't want to import all those unneeded
accounts, so I'm setting up a fresh wiki. There aren't a ton of pages
in our wiki, so I'm copy/pasting everything.
[end summary]

SF is planning another website update on March 18. There's no reason
to think the old SF web hosting will stop working, but I am making
that a self-imposed deadline; I want to get all of our wiki content
moved by March 18. I think I'll make that deadline.

So far, it's been very do-able. I made a lot of content updates on the
"front" page of the wiki and the first few other pages I moved over. I
think I've finished the pages that needed the most updating (out of
date) so the most recent pages I've moved were a copy/paste exercise
with very minimal edits for any obvious spelling/grammar.

Dreamhost (the web hosting company) has very strict anti-spam measures
in place, so sometimes I run against that when pasting long blocks of
very technical text that might include commands. I think that's
triggering the spam protection so those pages are taking more effort
to get in (doing it in parts seems to help) but most are just
copy/paste.

As part of this exercise, I'm also making all the pages look more
consistent. That usually means pages need to have a 1-line summary at
the top, rather than starting with a long block of text.

I'm also adding more links to things that should be in the wiki. Some
of those will get "filled in" as part of the migration, others will be
new pages. So if you see red links, don't panic. That's what a wiki is
for.

If you want to see the new wiki, it is at https://wiki.freedos.org/w/

(The "w" part will go away eventually, but for now it's basically a
"hidden unless you know it's there" location.)

Once I get all the content moved over, I'll set up wiki accounts for
anyone who wants them.

Jim


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Re: [Freedos-devel] I'm migrating the wiki

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

On Thu, Mar 7, 2024 at 3:53 PM Jim Hall  wrote:
>
> Just wanted to share that I'm (finally) migrating the FreeDOS Wiki
> content. I've set up a new wiki instance on a new server, and I'm
> going through the list of pages on the old wiki, and copy/pasting the
> content on the new wiki.
>
[..]
> *Unrelated: The shared hosting service is currently experiencing an
> outage, so the website (and new wiki) is down. It should be working
> again soon. I think we can assume this is a coincidence to my working
> on the new wiki. :-)

Turns out, not unrelated, and not a coincidence. The server has an
uptime of over 49 days, so it wasn't a server failure. They looked
into other causes for me.

Short version: I had put in a few pages before I discovered the "Live
preview" feature of the Wiki. I assumed it was a client-side visual
editor or preview (it is not). After effectively spamming the server
with traffic (new preview after I keep typing) the server temporarily
blocked my IP. That's why all my websites on their shared hosting went
"down." It resolved on its own when the block was lifted.

So that was self-inflicted. I'll stop using "Live preview" but they've
added my IP to a whitelist anyway.


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[Freedos-devel] I'm migrating the wiki

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

Just wanted to share that I'm (finally) migrating the FreeDOS Wiki
content. I've set up a new wiki instance on a new server, and I'm
going through the list of pages on the old wiki, and copy/pasting the
content on the new wiki.

That sounds like a lot of work, but a lot of the content needs to be
updated anyway, so this is a good opportunity to do that.

-Jim


*Unrelated: The shared hosting service is currently experiencing an
outage, so the website (and new wiki) is down. It should be working
again soon. I think we can assume this is a coincidence to my working
on the new wiki. :-)


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[Freedos-devel] Website has moved to new hosting

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

FYI that the www.freedos.org website has moved to new hosting. It's
still at the same website hosting company, but on a new server. (This
was the web hosting company doing a planned replacement of the old
hardware.) Things look like they have moved over okay, I don't see any
issues.

They are keeping the old web server running for a while, to respond to
any requests on the old server (for example, with the old hostname in
your DNS cache). I've posted the announcement about the upcoming
get-together on both servers.

If you're curious if you're accessing the new server or the old one, I
added this temporary file on the new server. It tells you if you are
using the new server or the old one:
https://www.freedos.org/new.txt


If you can see the contents of that file, you're using the new web
server. If you get a "404" error, then you are using the old web
server (try again in a few days).

Jim


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[Freedos-devel] Reminder: FreeDOS virtual get-together on Sunday

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

Hi everyone!

I wanted to send a reminder of our upcoming FreeDOS virtual
get-together on Sunday, March 10. Same time as usual: from 11am to
noon US/Central (use your favorite timezone converter to find your
local time).

However, note that March 10 is also the start of US Daylight Saving
Time, so clocks will be "ahead" one hour. If your region doesn't
observe Daylight Saving Time, or has a different changeover date,
please be aware of the time issue.

I'll send an email to the list with the URL to join before the meeting
starts. We will do the meeting again with Google Meet, since that has
worked out well.

We alternate topics on the get-together. Last month was 'technical'
topics, this month is social time. We may still talk about technical
items, but mostly this is an opportunity to get to know folks as more
than just an email address.

See you then!

Jim


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Re: [Freedos-devel] Updated FDAUTO.BAT file

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

And I just saw the typo in DOSLFN.CON ... should be DOSLFN.COM

I don't have LFN loaded, so I didn't see this come up. :-P


Jerome: If you accept this for the next test release, please fix my typo. :-)


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Re: [Freedos-devel] Updated FDAUTO.BAT file

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

Resending with FDAUTO.BAT as a file attachment (renamed FDAUTO.TXT) so
it's easier to try out the config.


Jim
@ECHO OFF
REM - Updated AUTOEXEC file

REM - set basic environment

set DOSDRV=C:
set DOSDIR=%DOSDRV%\FREEDOS

path %DOSDIR%\BIN
if not exist %DOSDIR%\LINKS\NUL goto NOLINKS
path %PATH%;%DOSDIR%\LINKS
:NOLINKS

set NLSPATH=%DOSDIR%\NLS
set HELPPATH=%DOSDIR%\HELP

set TEMP=%DOSDIR%\TEMP
set TMP=%TEMP%

if "%CONFIG%"=="5" goto END

set OS_NAME=FreeDOS
set OS_VERSION=T2403

REM - cfgfile and autofile might be deprecated in future

set CFGFILE=%DOSDRV%\FDCONFIG.SYS
set AUTOFILE=%DOSDRV%\FDAUTO.BAT
alias cfg=edit %CFGFILE%
alias auto=edit %AUTOFILE%

REM - detect CPU, load CPU-specific configs

if not exist %DOSDIR%\BIN\VINFO.COM goto ENDCPU
%DOSDIR%\BIN\VINFO.COM /m
if errorlevel 3 goto CPU386
if errorlevel 2 goto CPU286
goto ENDCPU

:CPU286

fdapm APMDOS
ctmouse

goto ENDCPU

:CPU386
if "%CONFIG%"=="4" goto CPU286

lh fdapm APMDOS
lh ctmouse
REM lh share

if not exist %DOSDIR%\BIN\DOSLFN.CON goto NOLFN
lh %DOSDIR%\BIN\DOSLFN.CON
REM - Add other stuff here once LFN is loaded..
:NOLFN

if not exist %DOSDIR%\BIN\CDROM.BAT goto NOCDROM
call %DOSDIR%\BIN\CDROM.BAT
REM - Add other stuff here once CDROM is loaded..
:NOCDROM

:ENDCPU

REM - load other configs using external BAT files

if not exist %DOSDIR%\BIN\FDNET.BAT goto NONET
call %DOSDIR%\BIN\FDNET.BAT
REM - Add other stuff here once FDNET is loaded..
:NONET

if not exist %DOSDIR%\BIN\FDASSIST.BAT goto NOASSIST
call %DOSDIR%\BIN\FDASSIST.BAT
:NOASSIST

if not exist %DOSDIR%\BIN\WELCOME.BAT goto NOHELLO
call %DOSDIR%\BIN\WELCOME.BAT
:NOHELLO

MEM /C /N

REM - local settings

set BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5 P330
set DIRCMD=/O:GNE /Y
set COPYCMD=/-Y

REM nlsfunc %DOSDIR%\BIN\COUNTRY.SYS
REM display CON=(EGA,858,2)
REM mode CON CP PREP=((858) %DOSDIR%\CPI\EGA.CPX)
REM keyb US,858,%DOSDIR%\BIN\KEYBOARD.SYS
REM chcp 858
REM mkeyb UK

alias reset=fdisk /reboot
alias reboot=fdapm warmboot
alias halt=fdapm poweroff
alias shutdown=fdapm poweroff

:END
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[Freedos-devel] Updated FDAUTO.BAT file

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

Hi everyone

The new T2403 release prompted me to finish updating the FDAUTO.BAT file.

Quick background: This started because I was looking to prevent the
CTMOUSE driver from loading .. but it was a bit hard to read the
FDAUTO file. So I simplified it on my end.

This should do everything the previous FDAUTO did - I just moved
things around. Interestingly, I also freed up a tiny amount (160
bytes) of memory. Here's the MEM output from a fresh boot before I
made changes:

> Memory TypeTotal   Used   Free
>         
> Conventional  639K33K   606K
> Upper   0K 0K 0K
> Reserved  385K   385K 0K
> Extended (XMS) 31,616K   433K31,183K
>         
> Total memory   32,640K   851K31,789K
>
> Total under 1 MB  639K33K   606K
>
> Total Expanded (EMS)8,816K (9,027,584 bytes)
> Free Expanded (EMS) 8,192K (8,388,608 bytes)
>
> Largest executable program size   605K (619,552 bytes)
> FreeDOS is resident in the high memory area.

And here's the MEM output from a fresh boot with the new FDAUTO file:

> Memory Type Total  Used   Free
>         
> Conventional  639K33K   606K
> Upper   0K 0K 0K
> Reserved  385K   385K 0K
> Extended (XMS) 31,616K   433K31,183K
>         
> Total memory   32,640K   851K31,789K
>
> Total under 1 MB  639K33K   606K
>
> Total Expanded (EMS)8,816K (9,027,584 bytes)
> Free Expanded (EMS) 8,192K (8,388,608 bytes)
>
> Largest executable program size   605K (619,712 bytes)
> FreeDOS is resident in the high memory area.

160 bytes isn't much, but I thought it was interesting. :-)

The original FDAUTO was 98 lines, my cleaned up FDAUTO file is 101
lines but I think it's easier to read. The general idea is to put
"system" stuff at the top, and "user" stuff at the end. In summary, it
sets a few env variables, then loads CPU-specific configs (for
example: LFN and CDROM on 386+, ..) then loads the "supporting" BAT
files if they are there. I moved the user's local settings (BLASTER,
DIRCMD, aliases, ..) to the end of the file:

> @ECHO OFF
> REM - Updated AUTOEXEC file
>
> REM - set basic environment
>
> set DOSDRV=C:
> set DOSDIR=%DOSDRV%\FREEDOS
>
> path %DOSDIR%\BIN
> if not exist %DOSDIR%\LINKS\NUL goto NOLINKS
> path %PATH%;%DOSDIR%\LINKS
> :NOLINKS
>
> set NLSPATH=%DOSDIR%\NLS
> set HELPPATH=%DOSDIR%\HELP
>
> set TEMP=%DOSDIR%\TEMP
> set TMP=%TEMP%
>
> if "%CONFIG%"=="5" goto END
>
> set OS_NAME=FreeDOS
> set OS_VERSION=T2403
>
> REM - cfgfile and autofile might be deprecated in future
>
> set CFGFILE=%DOSDRV%\FDCONFIG.SYS
> set AUTOFILE=%DOSDRV%\FDAUTO.BAT
> alias cfg=edit %CFGFILE%
> alias auto=edit %AUTOFILE%
>
> REM - detect CPU, load CPU-specific configs
>
> if not exist %DOSDIR%\BIN\VINFO.COM goto ENDCPU
> %DOSDIR%\BIN\VINFO.COM /m
> if errorlevel 3 goto CPU386
> if errorlevel 2 goto CPU286
> goto ENDCPU
>
> :CPU286
>
> fdapm APMDOS
> ctmouse
>
> goto ENDCPU
>
> :CPU386
> if "%CONFIG%"=="4" goto CPU286
>
> lh fdapm APMDOS
> lh ctmouse
> REM lh share
>
> if not exist %DOSDIR%\BIN\DOSLFN.CON goto NOLFN
> lh %DOSDIR%\BIN\DOSLFN.CON
> REM - Add other stuff here once LFN is loaded..
> :NOLFN
>
> if not exist %DOSDIR%\BIN\CDROM.BAT goto NOCDROM
> call %DOSDIR%\BIN\CDROM.BAT
> REM - Add other stuff here once CDROM is loaded..
> :NOCDROM
>
> :ENDCPU
>
> REM - load other configs using external BAT files
>
> if not exist %DOSDIR%\BIN\FDNET.BAT goto NONET
> call %DOSDIR%\BIN\FDNET.BAT
> REM - Add other stuff here once FDNET is loaded..
> :NONET
>
> if not exist %DOSDIR%\BIN\FDASSIST.BAT goto NOASSIST
> call %DOSDIR%\BIN\FDASSIST.BAT
> :NOASSIST
>
> if not exist %DOSDIR%\BIN\WELCOME.BAT goto NOHELLO
> call %DOSDIR%\BIN\WELCOME.BAT
> :NOHELLO
>
> MEM /C /N
>
> REM - local settings
>
> set BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5 P330
> set DIRCMD=/O:GNE /Y
> set COPYCMD=/-Y
>
> REM nlsfunc %DOSDIR%\BIN\COUNTRY.SYS
> REM display CON=(EGA,858,2)
> REM mode CON CP PREP=((858) %DOSDIR%\CPI\EGA.CPX)
> REM keyb US,858,%DOSDIR%\BIN\KEYBOARD.SYS
> REM chcp 858
> REM mkeyb UK
>
> alias reset=fdisk /reboot
> alias reboot=fdapm warmboot
> alias halt=fdapm poweroff
> alias shutdown=fdapm poweroff
>
> :END



Personally, I'm not a fan of cfgfile and autofile since the user could
always rename FDCONFIG.SYS in favor of using CONFIG.SYS .. but FDAUTO
will still report "Done processing startup files C:\FDCONFIG.SYS and
C:\FDAUTO.BAT" (this is actually printed in WELCOME.BAT). So I've left
a comment in the updated FDAUTO that "cfgfile and autofile might be
deprecated in future".
:-)


Jim


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Re: [Freedos-devel] FDISK 1.3.14

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

Excellent news! I'll post an item on the website about it.

I can't login to Ibiblio from where I'm at right now, so I can't
mirror it - maybe someone else with Ibiblio access can do that for me.
Otherwise I'll mirror this to Ibiblio over the weekend.


Jim

On Thu, Feb 22, 2024 at 12:25 PM Bernd Böckmann via Freedos-devel
 wrote:
>
> I imported FDISK 1.3.14 to the FreeDOS package repository. Changes from last 
> imported version are:
>
> Fixes:
> - CRITICAL: Fix a drive letter disagree between DOS and FDISK in cases
>  involving multiple disks and a mix of active and non-active
>  primary partitions.
> - HIGH: Prevent querying LBA capabilities via INT13,41, if LBA access is 
> disabled
>  by the user. This caused some broken BIOS to crash the system,
>  like BIOS version 0.9.4 of Book8088 and Xi8088.
>
> Changes:
>  - Do not check for extra cylinders by default. DR-DOS refuses to use
>partitions exceeding the BIOS reported disk size, despite being valid.
>  - Update German translation.
>
> Bernd
>
>
>
> ___
> Freedos-devel mailing list
> Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel


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Re: [Freedos-devel] NewDOS source code has been published!

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

On Sat, Feb 17, 2024 at 8:39 AM Wilhelm Spiegl via Freedos-devel
 wrote:
>
> Hi Jim,
>
> I forgot to mention that there is another great new thing: NewDOS and its 
> source code is free since 2024-02-06!
> NewDOS itself is freeware since 2018.
>
> You can grab it here: https://www.newdos.de/home/download.htm
>
[...]
> @Jim: Would it be possible to keep a copy ad ibiblio or anywhere else?
>


Sure thing. We've mirrored a few other DOS projects when they went
offline. For example, before GNUish went offline, they reached out to
me to ask if I'd mirror GNUish at Ibilbio. And I did. Since NewDOS is
GNU GPL, I'm comfortable mirroring the last copy at Ibiblio.

As with GNUish, I mirrored this outside the standard "FreeDOS Files"
area. You can find it here:

https://ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/mirrors/www.newdos.de/




*By the way, GNUish was mirrored here:
https://ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/mirrors/gnuish/

..although the "gnuish" location is really a Unix symlink to here:
https://ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/mirrors/ftp.sunet.se/pub/simtelnet/gnu/gnuish/


*And: If anyone here is already linking to GNUish from another
website, FYI that I just now created the 'mirrors' subdirectory, to
keep things organized on Ibiblio. If you have a website that links to
the GNUish mirror, you should change your link from
https://ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/gnuish/
..to
https://ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/mirrors/gnuish/


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[Freedos-devel] Directory cleanup on Ibiblio

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

FYI that I've done a little reordering in the 'dos/debug' directory on
Ibiblio. We actually have three versions of DEBUG here, so I wanted to
make clear which was which:


The change: Because it was the "original" FreeDOS DEBUG, we had each
version of Vojta's DEBUG as a separate directory under
https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/dos/debug/

These are the DEBUGversions:
> 0.95  1.01  1.06  1.08  1.10  1.12  1.14  1.16  1.18  1.20  1.22  1.24
> 0.98  1.02  1.07  1.09  1.11  1.13  1.15  1.17  1.19  1.21  1.23  1.25

And because Debug/X picked up where Vojta's DEBUG left off, we tracked
each version in the same directory at
https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/dos/debug/

These are the Debug/X versions:
> 1.27  1.28  1.29  2.0  2.01  2.02

And because lDebug was a variation from Debug/X, I originally put them
in a subdirectory at
https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/dos/debug/ldebug/

These are the lDebug releases:
> rel1  rel2  rel3  rel4  rel5  rel6  rel7


But I wanted to make clear which versions were which. Specifically, it
seemed unclear (to me) to have Vojta's DEBUG and ecm's Debug/X "mixed"
in the same directory, but not lDebug. So I made a new directory for
'vojta' and 'debugx'. So now each variation on DEBUG has its own
directory:


*"parent" directory:
https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/dos/debug/

vojta - Paul Vojta's original DEBUG, the original FreeDOS DEBUG
https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/dos/debug/vojta/

debugx - Japheth's Debug/X, based on Vojta's DEBUG
https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/dos/debug/debugx/

ldebug - ecm's lDebug, based on Debug/X
https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/dos/debug/ldebug/



I'll add a text file in the "parent" directory to clarify which is which.


Jim


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[Freedos-devel] Updated news items

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

I'm assuming folks check the website pretty regularly for various news -
but in case not, I wanted to share these news items you may have missed
about recent program updates.

I try to stay up to date on new programs coming out, but I'm sure to miss
some things. If a program has a new version out, please share that here on
the email list.

















*Virtual SoundBlaster for HDA2024-02-14 4:35pmVSBHDA provides SoundBlaster
emulation for HDA (and AC97/SBLive). It is Japheth's fork of crazii's SBEMU
driver. This one works with an unmodified HDPMI32i, making it compatible
with HX. VSBHDA supports HDA (Intel's High Definition Audio), Intel ICH /
nForce, VIA VT82C686, VT8233/35/37, and VIA VT82C686, VT8233/35/37. It
emulates SoundBlaster 1.0, 2.0, Pro, Pro2, 16 in 8-bit, 16-bit, mono,
stereo, and high-speed modes. Version 1.1 is now available from VSBHDA on
GitHub.Updated Debug/X2024-02-14 4:32pmDebug/X is a package of debuggers by
Japheth, and includes Debug (like MS-DOS DEBUG), DebugX (an extended
version), and additional variants like DebugXv, DebugXg, DebugB or DebugR
that are useful in certain cases. Japheth recently released a new Debug/X
collection; version 2.02 fixes S command (position display was corrupted in
v2.00-v2.01). You can download the new version at Debug/X v2.02 or get the
source code from the Debug/X GitHub.JEMM 5.842024-02-14 4:24pmJEMM is an
"Expanded Memory Manager" (EMM) based on EMM386. Japheth updated JEMM with
a few fixes: + Simulate_IO() no longer calls trap handler + int 67h,
ax=5B01h will return error code A3h if checksum invalid + QPIEMU: new JLM
that partly implements QEMM's API + JEMMDBG: removed from binary package.
You can find it at the JEMM GitHub, or more directly from the JEMM 5.84
release.Blocek text editor minor update2024-02-09 6:24amLaaca has released
a minor update to the Blocek text editor. "The binaries are the same but I
included corrected documentation and message files. (Fixes wording and
typos.)" You can download the updated version 1.75b from the Blocek
website. *
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Re: [Freedos-devel] Xcopy 1.5

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

Answering my own question on this:

I don't know that anyone was aware of an updated version of Xcopy (1.5). So
this was just missed.

I think we should include Xcopy 1.5 in the next test release, T2403.


*We're all volunteers, if you see a new version of a program and no one is
talking about it, share that news on the email list.


On Fri, Feb 16, 2024, 11:14 PM Jim Hall  wrote:

> I noticed over on the BTTR forum, Fritz asked this question about Xcopy
> 1.5. But freedos-devel is really the best place to discuss FreeDOS
> distribution topics, so I wanted to start a thread here to make sure the
> question was asked in the right place:
>
> Fritz asked:
>
> >>>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> *[...]version 1.5 improved Open Watcom support (utilizes
> pieces from TCC2WAT), shared.incIn xcopy.txt you can read:Compiling the
> source code-Compiling the source code is possible
> with the following compilers:- Borland C++ (tm) 3.0 or higher- Borland
> Turbo C++ (tm) 3.0 or higherVersion 1.2 and newer can also be compiled with
> the now freeware- Borland Turbo C 2.01 compiler :-)Version 1.5 and newer-
> Open Watcom C/C++ 1.9/2.0pre (includes portions of tcc2wat)So my question:
> Is it useful to implement version 1.5 into the future FDT24xx versions?*
>
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[Freedos-devel] Xcopy 1.5

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

I noticed over on the BTTR forum, Fritz asked this question about Xcopy
1.5. But freedos-devel is really the best place to discuss FreeDOS
distribution topics, so I wanted to start a thread here to make sure the
question was asked in the right place:

Fritz asked:

>>>






























*Hi,while searching updates for FDT24xx I noticed that xcopy uses version
1.4.You can find it at:https://gitlab.com/FreeDOS/base/xcopy
history says that the only
difference between 1.4 and 1.4a is that a html file was added.At
https://github.com/FDOS/xcopy  there is an
unpublished and uncompiled version 1.5., see: history.txt,version
1.4---version 1.4a- added xcopy.htm Help file, based on
xcopy.txt (Stephan Peters)version 1.5 improved Open Watcom
support (utilizes pieces from TCC2WAT), shared.incIn xcopy.txt you can
read:Compiling the source code-Compiling the source
code is possible with the following compilers:- Borland C++ (tm) 3.0 or
higher- Borland Turbo C++ (tm) 3.0 or higherVersion 1.2 and newer can also
be compiled with the now freeware- Borland Turbo C 2.01 compiler :-)Version
1.5 and newer- Open Watcom C/C++ 1.9/2.0pre (includes portions of
tcc2wat)So my question: Is it useful to implement version 1.5 into the
future FDT24xx versions?*
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Re: [Freedos-devel] Talking about Soundblaster emulation

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

Since SBEMU (and I assume VSBHDA - I haven't used it) are working well
to provide sound support on modern systems, I wonder if we should
include it in the next version of FreeDOS - whether we call it
"FreeDOS 1.4" or "FreeDOS 2.0." What do folks think?

Do you use SBEMU or VSBHDA? What has been your experience? Do we
include both (seems duplicative) or just one (but which one)?

Whatever we decide, the next step would be to include it in the
monthly test releases to make it easier for people to experiment.


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Re: [Freedos-devel] Talking about Soundblaster emulation

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

On Thu, Feb 15, 2024 at 6:49 AM Eric Auer  wrote:
> Hi!
>
> Just noticed this video review and tutorial about making a FreeDOS
> boot stick with SBEMU on it, with Rufus in Windows, based on the
> FreeDOS 1.3 USB version:
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GKYcpXlGIM
>
> It just renames setup bat to bypass that step :-p
>
> Instead, it manually loads device=jemmex and jloads qpiemu,
> sets HDPMI, runs hdpmi32i -r -x and then sbemu. For some
> reason, ctmouse installation also is done manually here.
>
> It apparently was necessary to manually change some IRQ
> in BIOS setup to avoid SBEMU conflicts.
>
> Eric
>

Thanks for sharing that. It was a good review and tutorial about how
to set up sound on real hardware using FreeDOS and crazii's SBEMU.

The video is from 9 months ago so it's showing the old version of the
website. The new website is easier to use - but more importantly, it
has links to SBEMU ("SoundBlaster EMUlator") and VSBHDA ("Virtual
SoundBlaster for HDA," a fork of crazii's SBEMU). Since these are used
in gaming, the links are on the "Play classic games" page:
https://www.freedos.org/about/games/

*You can find those links (and a few others) at the bottom of the
page, in the "System tools for DOS games" section.


Jim


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[Freedos-devel] Removing MetaDOS from the files archive (Ibiblio)

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

I'm sharing this as an FYI.

We used to mirror a copy of Rugxulo's MetaDOS (from 2019) at the
FreeDOS Files Archive on Ibiblio. However, when it became too outdated
(and to remove confusion with the FreeDOS distribution) we eventually
marked the directory as "private" which effectively made it
inaccessible except by request. The "Unofficial" directory on Ibiblio
only has the metados.txt file from 2019 in it:
https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distributions/unofficial/

Through a bit of Googling, I think the last time anyone linked to it
in a public forum was Rugxulo in this 2021 post on DAD:
https://www.bttr-software.de/forum/forum_entry.php?id=17978=0=9=time

I believe we marked the directory as "private" shortly after that, anyway.

Since this is very old and March 2024 will be the "3 yrs" requirement
of the GNU GPL 3(b) if you count from 2021 [although since MetaDOS
included the source code, it already satisfied GNU GPL 3(a) anyway] I
plan to remove the "Unofficial" directory tree on Ibiblio at the
beginning of next month.


*GNU GPL:
https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.txt


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Re: [Freedos-devel] NLS in Edlin

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

Not really about internationalization, so I'll make it a separate email:


Whenever you quit Edlin, you always get this prompt:

> *q
> Abort edit (Y/n)? y

I always find it a little concerning when I've already saved my file
and Edlin asks if I want to "abort" my edit. It always makes me answer
"n" and then write the file with "w" anyway before I use "q" again to
quit. You get the same message with "e" ("end" : write and quit) which
also makes me feel weird, which is why I prefer "w" then "q" to write
then quit with individual steps so I know it's been saved.

So this one is really a suggestion: can we not display "Abort edit
(Y/n)?" if the file has been saved and no changes made? Or if that
"change detection" would be too much to add, then maybe don't display
that message with "e" because the program is supposed to write before
quitting anyway.


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Re: [Freedos-devel] NLS in Edlin

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

Gregory Pietsch wrote:
> Believe me, I've had a few headaches over the years regarding NLS. This
> led to the myriad of ways to do NLS in Edlin. Anyway, all the strings
> that would need to be translated are #defines in msgs.h, and I included
> a simple filter program to generate msgs.h files from the NLS files. I
> don't know if NLS was done the right way from the start (POSIX sus4,
> anyone?) but you shouldn't have to put a hundred FreeDOS programmers
> into a room and get 101 ways of doing NLS in a program.
>
> Edlin is supposed to be TINY, and I've turned into the guardian of bloat.
[..]

I suppose one option is to go the ed(1) route and minimize the output
it produces. But that starts to tilt dangerously into "user
aggressive" territory.

That said, maybe Edlin uses a bit too much text. For example, when you
start Edlin, it produces this copyright message (which should be
translated)
> edlin 2.23, copyright (c) 2003 Gregory Pietsch
> This program comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
> It is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it
> under the terms of the GNU General Public License -- either
> version 2 of the license, or, at your option, any later
> version.
>
> *

..where "*" is the prompt.

Does it need to produce that much text? Or could Edlin just start with
a "*" prompt?

When you ask for help with "?" Edlin produces this text:
> *?
>
> edlin has the following subcommands:
>
> # edit a single line[#],[#],#mmove
> a append[#][,#]p  page
> [#],[#],#,[#]ccopy  q quit
> [#][,#]d  delete[#][,#][?]r$,$replace
> e<>   end (write & quit)[#][,#][?]s$  search
> [#]i  insert[#]t<>transfer
> [#][,#]l  list  [#]w<>write
>
> where $ above is a string, <> is a filename,
> # is a number (which may be .=current line, $=last line,
> or either number + or - another number).

I don't know if the first "edlin has the following subcommands" line
needs to be there. That saves 1 line of translation, which isn't much.
But every little bit, right?

Jim


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Re: [Freedos-devel] Problem booting FreeDOS on Book8088 PC-XT laptop

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

roytam wrote:
[..]
> and as discussion in
> http://www.bttr-software.de/forum/board_entry.php?id=21061, FreeDOS
> can boot on Book8088 once FreeDOS' LBA support is disabled. This may
> because of XT-IDE BIOS and/or Xi8088 BIOS handling when Int 13h,AH=41h
> running twice by FreeDOS kernel.
>


That matches what Eric shared at this morning's virtual get-together
(and reshared in the "recap" thread) that there's a bug in XT-IDE's
firmware where if you check for LBA more than once, it hangs.


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Re: [Freedos-devel] Link for today's virtual meeting

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

On Sun, Feb 4, 2024 at 12:40 PM Jerome Shidel via Freedos-devel
 wrote:
>
> Hi Jim,
>
> Interestingly, when you left the online meeting, it kept going at
> least for a few seconds until I clicked end-call.
>
> I don’t know if it would have kept going indefinitely.
>
> We will have to try that next time.


That is interesting! I wonder how long it would have kept going? (My
guess: only another minute or two.) You should definitely stay on next
time to see when (if?) it kicks you off.

BTW, we had a great conversation today, thanks to everyone who joined:
Willi, Eric, Jerome, Ralf, Jeremy, Bernd, and Omar. We had some
"social time" chat in there too, like learning the MAD programming
language, learning assembly, .. but mostly we focused on these
technical topics:

1. Willi's HTML Help update. I sent another email to freedos-devel so
everyone could see this announcement. I'll also post an announcement
on the website.

2. The Book8088 problem. This was an interesting one to me. Bernd
reported that there's a bug in XT-IDE where if you check for LBA more
than once, it hangs. Folks are working on it. It would be *great* to
see follow-up discussion on this topic in freedos-devel.

3. Kernel updates from Jeremy. There are a few updates coming,
including Win311 compatibility. Jeremy had planned to make a release
of some kind in December, but got delayed. We were all interested in
trying out the new kernel in the next Monthly Test Build (T2403).
Jeremy plans to share an update on freedos-devel - hopefully soon -
even if it's just a "pre-release" version of the kernel.

4. Bernd is planning some fixes to HTML Help. I'll let Bernd share
details about that here on freedos-devel.


We're planning the next FreeDOS virtual get-together for Sunday, March
10 at the usual time. Unless a technical topic comes up in early
March, the next meeting will be "social time." That's a great
opportunity to get to know other FreeDOS people as more than just an
email address.

Jim


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Re: [Freedos-devel] Updated HTML Help

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

One question I have is: is there a zip file where I can download all
of HTML Help at once, to view on my local computer? I checked on your
website starting at
https://www.bootablecd.de/FreeDOS-Internet-version/help110/
and I couldn't see a link to a zip file.



On Sun, Feb 4, 2024 at 11:34 AM Jim Hall  wrote:
>
> I didn't see Willi's email to freedos-devel because it was part of an
> unrelated topic, so I am re-sharing his email under a new thread to
> raise visibility.
>
> Willi wrote:
> > As english help is completed now, i only have to run final things to reduce 
> > size and to look for bugs etc. It would be great if the fd community could 
> > REALLY check it.
> >
> > www.bootablecd.de/FreeDOS-Internet-version/help110/en/index.htm
> >
> > Too avoid at least one bad comment the fish is no longer in blue colour but 
> > in grey.
> > It will not be in htmlhelp or amb.
> > Could someone PLEASE PLEASE
> > check if the legal comments are correct?
> > I simple overtook them. What do I have to modify?
> > Is everything else correct?
> > I needed two years to rewrite everything from scratch and have no time to 
> > write changes every week from now on as this is the base for at least FOUR 
> > other languages.
> >
> > And now the bad news:
> > Mateusz is no longer willing to transform the htm files to amb. I can 
> > understand him.
> > As I cannot program, there are several ways to handle this:
> > - one of the group writes a checking and transformation tool htm to amb, I 
> > can try to ask Mateusz if he gives out the tool he used till now,
> > - as htmlhelp.exe
> > Works very good now, we only use htmlhelp and avoid double work
> > - I will not rewrite hundreds of files to amb manually, this in 5 
> > languages, please keep in mind that we have more than 350 files * 5 
> > languages!
> > This would need some years
> > - any other idea?


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[Freedos-devel] Updated HTML Help

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

I didn't see Willi's email to freedos-devel because it was part of an
unrelated topic, so I am re-sharing his email under a new thread to
raise visibility.

Willi wrote:
> As english help is completed now, i only have to run final things to reduce 
> size and to look for bugs etc. It would be great if the fd community could 
> REALLY check it.
>
> www.bootablecd.de/FreeDOS-Internet-version/help110/en/index.htm
>
> Too avoid at least one bad comment the fish is no longer in blue colour but 
> in grey.
> It will not be in htmlhelp or amb.
> Could someone PLEASE PLEASE
> check if the legal comments are correct?
> I simple overtook them. What do I have to modify?
> Is everything else correct?
> I needed two years to rewrite everything from scratch and have no time to 
> write changes every week from now on as this is the base for at least FOUR 
> other languages.
>
> And now the bad news:
> Mateusz is no longer willing to transform the htm files to amb. I can 
> understand him.
> As I cannot program, there are several ways to handle this:
> - one of the group writes a checking and transformation tool htm to amb, I 
> can try to ask Mateusz if he gives out the tool he used till now,
> - as htmlhelp.exe
> Works very good now, we only use htmlhelp and avoid double work
> - I will not rewrite hundreds of files to amb manually, this in 5 languages, 
> please keep in mind that we have more than 350 files * 5 languages!
> This would need some years
> - any other idea?


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[Freedos-devel] Link for today's virtual meeting

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

FreeDOS virtual get-together (technical)

Google Meet joining info

Video call link:

https://meet.google.com/kca-qufs-api


I'll see you there in fifteen minutes!


Or dial: +1 515-318-5132 PIN: 587 730 560#


More phone numbers: https://tel.meet/kca-qufs-api?pin=1068170768202
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Re: [Freedos-devel] Link for today's virtual meeting

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

Well, that email didn't get sent out on time ("fifteen minutes") ...
sorry for the delay. Meeting is starting now. :-)

On Sun, Feb 4, 2024 at 10:46 AM Jim Hall  wrote:
>
> FreeDOS virtual get-together (technical)
>
> Google Meet joining info
>
> Video call link:
>
> https://meet.google.com/kca-qufs-api
>
>
> I'll see you there in fifteen minutes!
>
>
> Or dial: +1 515-318-5132 PIN: 587 730 560#
>
>
> More phone numbers: https://tel.meet/kca-qufs-api?pin=1068170768202


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Re: [Freedos-devel] FreeDOS package data fork, sort of

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

Hi Eric

This is a really interesting effort and I think it would be good to
find a way to get Willi's efforts integrated somehow into the
changelog for the monthly test releases. But as you've mentioned,
there's a lot of overlap here. I think the right place to start is to
talk about it. But we NEED TO HAVE THE CONVERSATION ON THE EMAIL LIST,
so everyone can see it and talk about it. That's how "open source"
works.

I don't know the right solution to this, but if we DISCUSS IT TOGETHER
ON THE EMAIL LIST we can figure it out. I imagine there's a way that
Willi might create a file (export from his spreadsheet? or some other
method?) in some format that the automated distro build system can
read, and collate the data into the changelog that way.



On Thu, Feb 1, 2024 at 4:18 PM Eric Auer  wrote:
>
>
> Hi Jim, Willi is working on a spreadsheet which lists:
>
> website, our gitlab copy URL *or* some contact info or alternate URL,
> creator / maintainer, version (in distro versus upstream) and license
>
> for most of the packages in our distro. This seems to overlap
> heavily with metadata in our LSM, so it would be good if we
> could combine the data sources somehow. In other words: The
> spreadsheet info could be added to our LSM and cases where
> the upstream version is newer than ours could be updated.
>
> Conversely, Willi might be duplicating efforts in finding
> package URL, maintainers and contacts in cases where those
> listed in the LSM are still valid, so those could be added
> to his spreadsheet.
>
> In general, I sense some risks of duplicate work here! Who
> would be the right people to contact to get both metadata
> "repositories" merged? Our LSM and that spreadsheet, that
> is? And who and how generates our HTML from LSM these days?
>
> Background is that I would *really* like to get changelog
> info when packages get updated. The automated mails that
> get triggered by Jerome's toolchain just tell me THAT a
> new version got published, and which, but not WHY, nor
> WHAT changed in that. So Willi sent me that table in the
> hope that it could help me answer the question, while I
> think he should not be putting all that effort in some
> SEPARATE data table in the first place, but merge that.
>
> Regards, Eric
>


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Re: [Freedos-devel] Problem booting FreeDOS on Book8088 PC-XT laptop

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

Hi Eric!

I'm glad you're bringing this conversation back to freedos-devel ..
because this is a good place to discuss FreeDOS things.


Eric Auer wrote:
>>
>> Hi! As you may have read, some company has created an eeepc sized PC-XT
>> laptop called Book8088. It ships with MS DOS on a CF card. Bocke got an
>> EDR-DOS kernel and SvarDOS apps to work on it, too, but FreeDOS kernels
>> crash. SvarDOS is a FreeDOS based floppy distro - http://svardos.org/
>> which is maintained by Mateusz. It also has an active forum :-)
>>
>> Given that others must have used FreeDOS on 8086 or 8088 with 640k RAM
>> before, the assumption is that something goes wrong in/after partition
>> enumeration. Maybe some unsupported BIOS functionality is called or
>> there is an issue with the geometry?
>>
>> Now it would be useful to have a known good 8086 compatible kernel which
>> has some debug messages enabled. Which FreeDOS kernel binary would you
>> recommend for that? Or maybe somebody wants to join the thread on BTTR
>> and work on the kernel interactively?
>>
>> Modified BIOS versions for the Book8088 already exist, too. Also, it
>> turned out (according to VOGONS or VCFED) that the VGA BIOS has some
>> issue with Windows and other software. An update exists, but apparently
>> it cannot be flashed via ICP in-circuit, so one would have to desolder
>> the EEPROM to update the VGA BIOS to use the full resolution and colors.
>>
>> https://www.bttr-software.de/forum/board_entry.php?=21061_page=1=ASC=0=all=time=DESC
>>
>> shows photos telling us that one of the tested CF cards has geometry
>> 1006x16x63 with 1014048 LBA sectors, but there is no int 13.48 in the
>> BIOS, only int 13.8 support in the add-on XTIDE BIOS r625.
>>
>> A FreeDOS 2043 kernel built 2021-05-13 with FAT32 support built with
>> Watcom C (hopefully an 8086 compatible build!) shows the version and
>> copyright messages and lists the C: partition, but then hangs:
>>
>> C: HD1, Pri[1], CHS=0-1-1, start=0 MB, size=480 MB
>>
>> Regards, Eric


Louis Santillan wrote:
>
> I’m oso2k on bttr.  I don’t have bocke’s issue with booting my
> Book8088 v2 with FreeDOS.  I don’t know if they are having hardware
> issues.  I booted FD1.3 Floppy Edition on a Dell 316SX (386 16MHz)
> and have formatted a 256MB CF and a 512MB CF.  Both cards boot on my
> Dell 316SX and Book8088.  I shared images with the bttr folks.
>
> There have been various reports of various issues with some of the
> chips (CPU, ROM, RAM, CGA, VGA, DAC, OPL, etc).  Many of the chips
> are scavenged parts from other machines.  So it makes sense some of
> them could be duds.
>
> It would be the first I’ve seen that the IDE controller is faulty but
> I’ve also not researched issues extensively. I’ve been fortunate
> to have a Book8088 v2 that seems to be unaffected by bad chips for
> the things I’ve played with.

So it sounds like that's the same person who entered bug #391 in the
FreeDOS tracker:
https://sourceforge.net/p/freedos/bugs/391/

And in bug #391, I re-shared Louis's report about how it works:

: I have a Book8088 v2. I did some testing. I imaged the FD13BOOT.IMG from
: FD 1.3 Floppy Edition to my a slot on my Gotek formatted USB stick.
: I then used a Dell 316SX (a 386) with a Gotek FDD emulator & XT-IDE
: r625 to boot FD v1.3 over floppy. Next, I FDISK'd a 256MB CF card as
: FAT16 (CHS 984/16/32). Rebooted again to floppy and then ran format
: C:/q/s. I then copied a few binaries from the FD floppy to the CF card.
: Rebooted to verify the 256MB CF card would boot and it worked.
:
: Finally, popped out the CF card of the 316SX and placed it in the slot
: on the Book8088. Booted & it worked.


So we have at least one person (Louis) for whom the Book8088 is
working. So it doesn't appear to be systemic. I heard during the first
batch (Book8088 "v1") that some systems were flaky, and I would not be
surprised if it's the same here.

However, we have also seen other instances where CF-to-IDE was buggy,
or the CF was a problem. Changing the CF card is a simple test that
doesn't cost much (I just googled and found the smallest capacity at
less than $20). I suggested exactly this to Bojan in bug #391: "Do you
have another CF card you could try? I know that some users have
reported mixed results with CF-to-IDE, and sometimes the problem is
with the CF card itself. Trying with a different CF card (not just
another CF card, but another size and model would be best) would help
determine if it's the CF card that's the issue."

I haven't seen any followup from Bojan on that in bug #391, if they
have tried with another CF card. I don't follow the BTTR Forums but I
looked at some of the follow ups on this thread and it seemed Bojan
had made a backup of the original MS-DOS CF card, tried to install
FreeDOS, and then re-imaged it back to MS-DOS. So I think Bojan has
not tried another CF card? Does anyone know the status of testing with
a different CF card? I don't know what the vendor may have done to set
up the original 

Re: [Freedos-devel] Cleaning up FDAUTO

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

Here's my second pass at cleaning up my FDAUTO.BAT file. If you like
it, feel free to use it. This does a lot of streamlining from the
"stock" FDAUTO.BAT in T2402. I've pared it down to just a few jump
points that are more readable to me: HIGH, LOW, and LOCALCFG. At a
high level, it's organized this way:

1. "Global" settings
2. Test the CPU
3. If we can support it, use HIGH
4. If we can't, use LOW
5. Local settings

This doesn't really change the free memory (maybe a tiny savings, due
to order) but the most important is that I think it's easier to read.
See the REM blocks at the top to see what's changed from the "stock"
FDAUTO.BAT from T2402: the first REM block is from my first pass, the
second block is from my second pass.

I decided to remove the hard-coded AUTOFILE and CFGFILE entries, since
a user could rename their FDCONFIG.SYS to CONFIG.SYS (but the
hard-coded values would still show the old FDCONFIG.SYS). The boot-up
welcome message expects these values when it prints them out, but
that's an easy fix.

> @ECHO OFF
>
> REM - updated FDAUTO boot file
>
> REM - changes: all command names are lowercase, all env vars uppercase,
> REM - all "REM" are uppercase, all goto labels are uppercase.
> REM - "mem" moved to end. All empty "echo." statements removed.
> REM - streamline INITCDROM (only needs to be one line).
> REM - streadmline SUPPORT386 (move test to top).
> REM - moved local settings to FINAL.
> REM - streamlined the LFN test (REM'd out anyway).
> REM - streamlined the network test (user adds their own stuff anyway).
> REM - removed unneeded ONLY8086 section (prev now jumps to FINAL).
>
> REM - moved ctmouse to the end (local settings)
> REM - moved DIRCMD and CPYCMD to the end (local settings)
> REM - moved init cdrom to FINAL, removed INITCDROM goto label
> REM - renamed FINAL to LOCALCFG
> REM - removed hard-coded AUTOFILE and CFGFILE entries, and REM'd aliases
> REM -   ..this breaks the welcome message, but fix that later
> REM - moved aliases to LOCALCFG
> REM - renamed SUPPORT286 and SUPPORT386 to SIMPLE and HIGH clearer)
> REM - renamed SUPPORT386LOW to LOW
> REM - actually, SIMPLE is not needed (same as LOW) so changed vinfo goto
> REM -   ..and removed SIMPLE block
> REM - expanded MEM /C /N to MEM /C /NOSUMMARY
> REM - added vinfo tests for 101-104
> REM - moved config 4 test up, next to config 5 test, don't need to test cpu
> REM - fixed (not) loading FDAPM twice .. high and low
> REM - if vinfo doesn't exist, jump to LOW instead of LOCALCFG
> REM - if vinfo test 3-6, goto HIGH, otherwise goto LOW
> REM - changed vinfo test from /m to /p (if VM, reports "6")
>
> set DOSDRV=C:
> set DOSDIR=C:\FreeDOS
>
> set OS_NAME=FreeDOS
> set OS_VERSION=T2402
>
> set PATH=%DOSDIR%\BIN
> if exist %DOSDIR%\LINKS\NUL set PATH=%path%;%DOSDIR%\LINKS
>
> set LANG=EN
> set TZ=UTC
>
> set NLSPATH=%DOSDIR%\NLS
> set HELPPATH=%DOSDIR%\HELP
>
> set TEMP=%DOSDIR%\TEMP
> set TMP=%TEMP%
>
> if "%CONFIG%"=="5" goto END
> if "%CONFIG%"=="4" goto LOW
>
> if not exist %DOSDIR%\bin\vinfo.com goto LOW
>
> vinfo /p
> if errorlevel 6 goto HIGH
> if errorlevel 5 goto HIGH
> if errorlevel 4 goto HIGH
> if errorlevel 3 goto HIGH
>
> goto LOW
>
> :HIGH
>
> lh fdapm APMDOS
> REM lh share
>
> REM if not exist %DOSDIR%\BIN\DOSLFN.COM goto LOCALCFG
> REM lh %DOSDIR%\BIN\DOSLFN.COM
> REM set DIRCMD=%DIRCMD% /LFN
>
> goto LOCALCFG
>
> :LOW
>
> fdapm APMDOS
>
> :LOCALCFG
>
> if exist %DOSDIR%\bin\cdrom.bat call %DOSDIR%\bin\cdrom.bat
>
> if exist %DOSDIR%\bin\fdnet.bat call %DOSDIR%\bin\fdnet.bat start
> REM - add your own networking commands here: (if any)
>
> if exist %DOSDIR%\bin\fdassist.bat call %DOSDIR%\bin\fdassist.bat
> if exist %DOSDIR%\bin\cdrom.bat call %DOSDIR%\bin\cdrom.bat display
> if exist %DOSDIR%\bin\welcome.bat call %DOSDIR%\bin\welcome.bat
>
> REM - add your own settings here: (here are some examples)
>
> REM nlsfunc %DOSDIR%\BIN\COUNTRY.SYS
> REM display CON=(EGA,858,2)
> REM mode CON CP PREP=((858) %DOSDIR%\CPI\EGA.CPX)
> REM keyb US,858,%DOSDIR%\bin\keyboard.sys
> REM chcp 858
> REM mkeyb UK
>
> set DIRCMD=/P /OGN /Y
> set COPYCMD=/-Y
> set BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5 P330
>
> ctmouse
> mem /C /NOSUMMARY
>
> alias reboot=fdapm warmboot
> alias reset=fdisk /reboot
> alias shutdown=fdapm poweroff
>
> echo.
> echo Warning: This is a FreeDOS development build and is for testing purposes.
> echo It may exhibit behavior vary different from a release build and may not 
> be
> echo suitable for regular use. For general use, please consider using the 
> latest
> echo release build available at http://freedos.org
>
> :END


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Re: [Freedos-devel] Cleaning up FDAUTO

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

On Fri, Feb 2, 2024 at 5:30 PM Jim Hall  wrote:
>
> Hi everyone
>
> I've been testing the new 2402 release, and decided I finally wanted
> to streamline (cleanup?) the FDAUTO.BAT file to make it more readable
> and easier to see what's happening.
>
> First, here's my text description of what's going on in FDAUTO. I'll
> reply with a copy of the FDAUTO that I'm updating for my own system.
>[..]


And here is my first pass at a cleaned up FDAUTO. I'm not done, but
this is my work in progress. I think it's more readable: (see REM
comments at the start with a list of changes)

> @ECHO OFF
>
> REM - updated FDAUTO boot file
>
> REM - changes: all command names are lowercase, all env vars uppercase,
> REM - all "REM" are uppercase, all goto labels are uppercase.
> REM - "mem" moved to end. All empty "echo." statements removed.
> REM - streamline INITCDROM (only needs to be one line).
> REM - streadmline SUPPORT386 (move test to top).
> REM - moved local settings to FINAL.
> REM - streamlined the LFN test (REM'd out anyway).
> REM - streamlined the network test (user adds their own stuff anyway).
> REM - removed unneeded ONLY8086 section (prev now jumps to FINAL).
>
> set DOSDRV=C:
> set DOSDIR=C:\FreeDOS
>
> set OS_NAME=FreeDOS
> set OS_VERSION=T2402
>
> set PATH=%DOSDIR%\BIN
> if exist %DOSDIR%\LINKS\NUL set PATH=%path%;%DOSDIR%\LINKS
>
> set LANG=EN
> set TZ=UTC
>
> set NLSPATH=%DOSDIR%\NLS
> set HELPPATH=%DOSDIR%\HELP
>
> set TEMP=%DOSDIR%\TEMP
> set TMP=%TEMP%
>
> set DIRCMD=/P /OGN /Y
> set COPYCMD=/-Y
>
> set BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5 P330
>
> set autofile=C:\FDAUTO.BAT
> set cfgfile=C:\FDCONFIG.SYS
>
> REM alias cfg=edit %CFGFILE%
> REM alias auto=edit %AUTOFILE%
> alias reboot=fdapm warmboot
> alias reset=fdisk /reboot
> REM alias halt=fdapm poweroff
> alias shutdown=fdapm poweroff
>
> if "%CONFIG%"=="5" goto END
>
> if not exist %DOSDIR%\bin\vinfo.com goto FINAL
>
> vinfo /m
> if errorlevel 3 goto SUPPORT386
> if errorlevel 2 goto SUPPORT286
>
> goto FINAL
>
> :SUPPORT286
>
> fdapm APMDOS
> ctmouse
> goto FINAL
>
> :SUPPORT386
>
> if "%CONFIG%"=="4" goto SUPPORT386LOW
>
> lh fdapm APMDOS
> REM lh share
>
> REM if not exist %DOSDIR%\BIN\DOSLFN.COM goto NOLFN
> REM lh %DOSDIR%\BIN\DOSLFN.COM
> REM set DIRCMD=%DIRCMD% /LFN
>
> :NOLFN
>
> ctmouse
> goto INITCDROM
>
> :SUPPORT386LOW
>
> fdapm APMDOS
> ctmouse
>
> :INITCDROM
>
> if exist %DOSDIR%\bin\cdrom.bat call %DOSDIR%\bin\cdrom.bat
>
> :FINAL
>
> if exist %DOSDIR%\bin\fdnet.bat call %DOSDIR%\bin\fdnet.bat start
> REM - add your own networking commands here: (if any)
>
> if exist %DOSDIR%\bin\fdassist.bat call %DOSDIR%\bin\fdassist.bat
> if exist %DOSDIR%\bin\cdrom.bat call %DOSDIR%\bin\cdrom.bat display
> if exist %DOSDIR%\bin\welcome.bat call %DOSDIR%\bin\welcome.bat
>
> REM - add your own settings here: (here are some examples)
>
> REM nlsfunc %DOSDIR%\BIN\COUNTRY.SYS
> REM display CON=(EGA,858,2)
> REM mode CON CP PREP=((858) %DOSDIR%\CPI\EGA.CPX)
> REM keyb US,858,%DOSDIR%\bin\keyboard.sys
> REM chcp 858
> REM mkeyb UK
>
> mem /C /N
>
> echo Warning: This is a FreeDOS development build and is for testing purposes.
> echo It may exhibit behavior vary different from a release build and may not 
> be
> echo suitable for regular use. For general use, please consider using the 
> latest
> echo release build available at http://freedos.org
>
> :END


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[Freedos-devel] Cleaning up FDAUTO

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

Hi everyone

I've been testing the new 2402 release, and decided I finally wanted
to streamline (cleanup?) the FDAUTO.BAT file to make it more readable
and easier to see what's happening.

First, here's my text description of what's going on in FDAUTO. I'll
reply with a copy of the FDAUTO that I'm updating for my own system.

@ECHO OFF

-set a bunch of env variables
-set some aliases

-if CONFIG is 5 (safe mode) goto END

-if VINFO doesn’t exist, goto ONLY8086 (this really should just jump to FINAL)
-VINFO /m (gets CPU level)
-if 3, goto SUPPORT386
-if 2, goto SUPPORT286

:ONLY8086 (nothing really jumps here, it’s just a dummy label because
it’s not a ‘386 or ‘286)

-show MEM
-goto FINAL

:SUPPORT286 (only if this is a ‘286)

-load FDAPM
-load CTMOUSE
-show MEM
-goto FINAL

:SUPPORT386 (only if this is a ‘386)

-some commented out lines to set codepage and keyboard settings

-if CONFIG is 4 (low with some drivers) goto SUPPORT386LOW

-loadhigh FDAPM with APMDOS (this is also loaded in SUPPORT386LOW)
-commented out loadhigh SHARE

-commented out if DOSLFN, then goto USELFN
-goto NOLFN

:USELFN

-loadhigh DOSLFN
-set DIRCMD to use LFN

:NOLFN

-load CTMOUSE
-goto INITCDROM

:SUPPORT386LOW

-load FDAPM with APMDOS
-load CTMOUSE

:INITCDROM

-if the CDROM.BAT doesn’t exist, then goto FINAL
-call CDROM.BAT

:FINAL

-show MEM

-if FDNET.BAT doesn’t exist, then goto NONETWORK
-call FDNET.BAT START
-if errorlevel 1, goto NONETWORK

-commented out line to say you can load other stuff here after network loads

:NONETWORK

-if FDASSIST.BAT exists, call FDASSIST.BAT
-if CDROM.BAT exists, call CDROM.BAT
-if WELCOME.BAT exists, call WELCOME.BAT

-print some other messages here

:END (only jumps here if safe mode)

(done)


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Re: [Freedos-devel] Next FreeDOS virtual get-together

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

Jerome Shidel wrote:

>
> Did you decide on the new conferencing software?
>


I have a Google Apps subscription and Google Meet does a good job, doesn't
require installing client software, and it doesn't "cut off" after a half
hour. (When's I googled it, it looked like Meet would limit you to 30
minutes meetings - but that seems to be a limitation only for free gmail.com
users.)

So we're using Meet for now.
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Re: [Freedos-devel] MAD compiler for DOS?

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

Jim Hall wrote:
> > I am working on an academic project that requires understanding the MAD
> > programming language so I can pick apart (and faithfully recreate) an old
> > MAD program. That's the Michigan Algorithm Decoder, from 1959 and the early
> > 1960s.

tom ehlert wrote:
> it would make this much more interesting if you would describe why this 1960s 
> program
> does something interesting toda.

I have an interest in document preparation systems, especially the
early history of document preparation. I just find them fascinating -
probably because I wrote a lot of documents at university using nroff
and LaTeX .. but also because I earned my MS in technical writing and
I teach a few university courses on technical writing, including one
on "writing with digital technologies." So this program (Saltzer's
RUNOFF) is in my niche as an academic, and I want to write a book for
others in that niche.

I admit this is a very academic exercise. This is not going to be on
the New York Times "Best Sellers" list. If anyone sees it, it will
probably just be others in my corner of technical writing. And I'm
okay with that. :-)


Jim Hall wrote:
> > MAD is similar to original FORTRAN,

tom ehlert wrote:
> if wikipedia is right, NOPE.
> according to wikipedia, it's 'inspired' by ALGOL60. and that is not even 
> remotely close
> to FORTRAN.
>

Well, I knew MAD was originally derived from ALGOL60 but ended up in a
completely different place. I should have specified that I don't know
ALGOL60 .. but I do know FORTRAN77 (unfortunately). And I'm seeing
similar things in MAD (like boolean comparisons) to how old-style
FORTRAN did things. That's probably because FORTRAN and ALGOL60 were
just similar in that way. Only so many ways to add instructions when
they're punched on a card, for example.


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Re: [Freedos-devel] MAD compiler for DOS?

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

[..]

Jim Hall wrote:
[..]
> > I'm thinking about writing a book about the early history of document
> > preparation systems, and RUNOFF seemed a good place to start. I want
> > to faithfully recreate the MAD code in another programming language -
> > not an automated translation like ESR's translator would do, but an
[..]

Ralf Quint wrote:
> You seem to be as predisposed as me in always finding new deep dark
> rabbit holes to decent into 

It is definitely a rabbit hole. :-)

At first it was just curiosity of "what does this code *do*?" and then
it turned into "I wonder if I can rewrite this in something that's
easier to understand?"

But I have a particular interest in the early history of document
preparation systems, including troff (and nroff before that (and roff
before that (and RUNOFF before that))). So this rabbit hole was kind
of a tempting one to step into.


> Well, the Wikipedia page lists at least two MAD manuals (the compiler,
> not the magazine), I might just download these and have a look at this
> late tonight, Tuesdays I can't get to sleep until 2am anyway and always
> watching movies on YouTube gets boring after a while... ;-)

That's where I found the MAD manual too. It's interesting reading.
Especially so because they didn't write it for someone who had never
seen MAD (programming language before). In the part about the
"for-next" loop, rather than demonstrate it by saying "let's write a
simple program that counts from 1 to 10" they demonstrated it by
writing an algorithm to solve a polynomial. That's not a simple way to
show something. :-P

It takes a little skill to explain something, it takes great skill to
explain it *simply* to someone who's never seen it before.


Jim


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Re: [Freedos-devel] Aw] MAD compiler for DOS?

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

On Tue, Jan 30, 2024 at 3:51 PM Wilhelm Spiegl  wrote:
>
> https://wiki.edu.vn/wiki17/2021/01/05/mad-programmiersprache-wikipedia/amp/#
>
> I dont know if this helps, run a translator if necessary
>

That's very cool, thanks for sharing that. The "amp" page didn't work
for me, but I could access it here:
https://wiki.edu.vn/wiki17/2021/01/05/mad-programmiersprache-wikipedia/

I didn't realize MAD supported abbreviations of instructions. Another
way to get confused reading MAD source files. The wiki shows this
3-line program: (programs don't start with a "PROGRAM" instruction ..
you just start writing)

PRINT FORMAT HELLOW
VECTOR VALUES HELLOW=$13h0Hello, world*$
END OF PROGRAM


And apparently you can abbreviate those commands like this:

P'T HELLOW
V'S HELLOW=$13h0Hello, world*$
E'M


Fortunately, the source files I'm working with don't have (I think)
abbreviations like this, so I'm saved from that headache.


*Interesting note: The page is titled "WÜTEND" (translated to English
as ANGRY). I'm not sure if that's a German author who literally
translated "MAD" to "WÜTEND" or why that was done. :-)


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Re: [Freedos-devel] MAD compiler for DOS?

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

Jim Hall wrote:
> > On Mon, Jan 29, 2024 at 8:07 PM Jim Hall  wrote:
> >> I am working on an academic project that requires understanding the
> >> MAD programming language so I can pick apart (and faithfully recreate)
> >> an old MAD program. That's the Michigan Algorithm Decoder, from 1959
> >> and the early 1960s.
> >> [..]
> >> Does anyone know of a MAD compiler for DOS?


Ralf Quint wrote:
> Up to your email, I haven't even heard of a MAD compiler. Only the
> magazine... 
> (and interesting seeing that mentioned in the Wikipedia article LOL)


Yes, I hadn't heard of it either until a few months ago when I started
researching the RUNOFF source code. It's written about half in MAD and
about half in FAP (FORTRAN Assembly Programming). The RUNOFF program
is written in MAD with some support functions in FAP.

I'm thinking about writing a book about the early history of document
preparation systems, and RUNOFF seemed a good place to start. I want
to faithfully recreate the MAD code in another programming language -
not an automated translation like ESR's translator would do, but an
understandable recreation by a human who understands what the original
code is doing and recreates it in a sensible way in another
programming language. Might do it in C or BASIC. BASIC might be
easier, since I'm seeing some similarities between MAD and BASIC. But
I'd prefer to do it in C.

But step #1 is to understand what's going on in the code. MAD is
mostly readable, but the for-next loop equivalent is a little weird to
me. For example, to loop from 1 to 10 (inclusive) in C, you'd do this:

for (i = 1; i <= 10; i++) {
...
}


Just to compare: in FORTRAN77, it's like "DO label var = start, stop, step":

   DO 10 I = 1, 10, 1
 ...
10 CONTINUE


But in MAD, I *think* it's like "THROUGH label, FOR var = start, step,
failcondition":

   THROUGH LOOP, FOR I = 1, 1, I .GT. 10
 ...
LOOP   CONTINUE


And from what I can see, I think "failcondition" gets tested at the
end of each iteration, so it's more like this weird 'while'
construction in C:

  i = 1;
  do {
...
i++;
  } while ( !(i>10) );



That's why I wanted to write some sample code in a real MAD compiler,
to see if I'm correctly understanding that (and a few other odd things
in the language).


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Re: [Freedos-devel] FreeDOS on Book8088

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

[resending without photo attached]


On Tue, Jan 30, 2024 at 2:06 PM Jim Hall  wrote:
>
> Very helpful. I thought it might be something like this. I'll update the bug 
> with your info.
>
> Mind if I copy your photo into the bug report to show that it's working?
>
> On Tue, Jan 30, 2024, 1:44 PM Louis Santillan  wrote:
>>
>> I have a Book8088 v2.  I did some testing.  I imaged the FD13BOOT.IMG from 
>> FD 1.3 Floppy Edition[0] to my a slot on my Gotek formatted USB stick.  I 
>> then used a Dell 316SX (a 386) with a Gotek FDD emulator & XT-IDE r625 to 
>> boot FD v1.3 over floppy.  Next, I FDISK'd a 256MB CF card as FAT16 (CHS 
>> 984/16/32).  Rebooted again to floppy and then ran `format C:/q/s`.  I then 
>> copied a few binaries from the FD floppy to the CF card.  Rebooted to verify 
>> the 256MB CF card would boot and it worked.
>>
>> Finally, popped out the CF card of the 316SX and placed it in the slot on 
>> the Book8088.  Booted & it worked.  See the pic below for reference.
>>
>> No magic other than I've been working to restore the Dell 316SX so it now 
>> has a NIC with the XT-IDE r625 BIOS in it's ROM slot.  The original 3.5" & 
>> 5.25" drives aren't spinning and I need to refurb those next.
>>
>> The user on SF could try imaging a small (<2GB) USB stick with FD13BOOT.IMG 
>> and try booting off that as well.  It might take a reflash of the BIOS [1]. 
>> They'll need to hit 'A' quickly to redirect XT-IDE to boot off floppy 
>> instead of the CF.  I might test that as well.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> [0] 
>> https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distributions/1.3/official/FD13-FloppyEdition.zip
>> [1] 
>> https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php?threads/book-8088-discovery-and-modification-thread.1245155/post-1343495
>>
>> On Tue, Jan 30, 2024 at 8:23 AM Jim Hall via Freedos-devel 
>>  wrote:
>>>
>>> A user entered a bug that FreeDOS won't boot on the Book8088.
>>> https://sourceforge.net/p/freedos/bugs/391/
>>>
>>> > Hi. I got myself a Book8088 2.0 recently. It's a Chinese retro computer
>>> > with a NEC V20 processor, 640 kb ram and a CF card as a storage. It uses
>>> > Sergei Kiselev's BIOS_8088 with XTIDE extensions (which enable straight
>>> > up boot from CF card(.
>>> >
>>> > I tried multiple versions of 16-bit FreeDOS kernels (2039-2043) on it,
>>> > but they all get stuck at InitDisk function. It will actually print out
>>> > the partition and detect CHS parameters but will get confused by it and
>>> > try to "correct" it. That will cause it to get stuck.
>>> >
>>> > This little laptop came preinstalled with MS-DOS 6.22 and that works ok.
>>> >
>>> > Btw, It doesn't have an alternative IDE interface, so the CF card is
>>> > only means of storage.
>>> >
>>> > Also, the error still appears even if CF card is formatted as either
>>> > FAT16 or FAT32.
>>>
>>> Does anyone have one of these devices, or have more details about the
>>> internals? I know about this only from what I've seen on Facebook:
>>> it's a mini-laptop made from retro hardware with a CF card for
>>> storage, but no floppy.
>>>
>>> The bug report indicates that FreeDOS is stopping at the InitDisk function.
>>>
>>> The user reports that the device uses a CF card in a CF-to-IDE adapter
>>> to act as storage ("hard drive"). At my first guess, that's probably
>>> the issue. I know others have had mixed results with CF-to-IDE,
>>> usually because the CF-to-IDE isn't correctly emulating IDE or because
>>> the BIOS doesn't recognize the CF-to-IDE correctly. (Seems like
>>> neither is the case here, since the user reports the Book8088 came
>>> with a working copy of pre-installed MS-DOS.)
>>>
>>> I think other issues folks have had with CF storage is that the CF
>>> isn't set up right, so it has an incorrect partition table boundary,
>>> or something like that.
>>>
>>> My first guess is to ask the user to try a different CF card than the
>>> one they are using now, to see if it's an issue with the CF card
>>> itself.
>>>
>>> Suggestions?
>>>
>>>
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>>> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel


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[Freedos-devel] FreeDOS on Book8088

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

A user entered a bug that FreeDOS won't boot on the Book8088.
https://sourceforge.net/p/freedos/bugs/391/

> Hi. I got myself a Book8088 2.0 recently. It's a Chinese retro computer
> with a NEC V20 processor, 640 kb ram and a CF card as a storage. It uses
> Sergei Kiselev's BIOS_8088 with XTIDE extensions (which enable straight
> up boot from CF card(.
>
> I tried multiple versions of 16-bit FreeDOS kernels (2039-2043) on it,
> but they all get stuck at InitDisk function. It will actually print out
> the partition and detect CHS parameters but will get confused by it and
> try to "correct" it. That will cause it to get stuck.
>
> This little laptop came preinstalled with MS-DOS 6.22 and that works ok.
>
> Btw, It doesn't have an alternative IDE interface, so the CF card is
> only means of storage.
>
> Also, the error still appears even if CF card is formatted as either
> FAT16 or FAT32.

Does anyone have one of these devices, or have more details about the
internals? I know about this only from what I've seen on Facebook:
it's a mini-laptop made from retro hardware with a CF card for
storage, but no floppy.

The bug report indicates that FreeDOS is stopping at the InitDisk function.

The user reports that the device uses a CF card in a CF-to-IDE adapter
to act as storage ("hard drive"). At my first guess, that's probably
the issue. I know others have had mixed results with CF-to-IDE,
usually because the CF-to-IDE isn't correctly emulating IDE or because
the BIOS doesn't recognize the CF-to-IDE correctly. (Seems like
neither is the case here, since the user reports the Book8088 came
with a working copy of pre-installed MS-DOS.)

I think other issues folks have had with CF storage is that the CF
isn't set up right, so it has an incorrect partition table boundary,
or something like that.

My first guess is to ask the user to try a different CF card than the
one they are using now, to see if it's an issue with the CF card
itself.

Suggestions?


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Re: [Freedos-devel] MAD compiler for DOS?

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

On Mon, Jan 29, 2024 at 8:07 PM Jim Hall  wrote:
>
> I am working on an academic project that requires understanding the
> MAD programming language so I can pick apart (and faithfully recreate)
> an old MAD program. That's the Michigan Algorithm Decoder, from 1959
> and the early 1960s.
>[..]
> Does anyone know of a MAD compiler for DOS?

It's not (specifically) for DOS, but someone pointed me to Raymond's
MAD implementation. It translates MAD code to C, and you can compile
from there:
https://gitlab.com/esr/mad

I think that will do what I need. But if anyone knows of a full-on MAD
compiler for DOS, please let me know.


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[Freedos-devel] MAD compiler for DOS?

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

I am working on an academic project that requires understanding the MAD
programming language so I can pick apart (and faithfully recreate) an old
MAD program. That's the Michigan Algorithm Decoder, from 1959 and the early
1960s.

MAD is similar to original FORTRAN, but there are some things that are just
weird. So I thought if I had a MAD compiler, I could try writing a few
simple programs to make sure I understand what is going on.

This seems like something that might have been ported to DOS at some point
in the 1980s. At least, I thought that might be a good place to look.

Does anyone know of a MAD compiler for DOS?
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Re: [Freedos-devel] Is there an open source fmt clone for DOS?

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

On Wed, Jan 24, 2024 at 6:29 PM tauro via Freedos-devel
 wrote:
>
> This seems to be exactly what you're looking for.
>
> https://www.bttr-software.de/freesoft/unix.htm
>
> Under "GNU Textutils", you will find fmt.
>
> Here's a direct link for a 16 bit version:
>
> ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/gnuish/dos_only/tut111ax.zip

On Wed, Jan 24, 2024 at 7:16 PM Steve Nickolas  wrote:
> Gnuish?
>
> Otherwise I could try to bring it over from BSD?
>


I should have mentioned that I looked through GNUish (we mirrored
GNUish on our FreeDOS Files Archive at Ibiblio ages ago) but I didn't
see fmt or the Text Utils in there. I guess I missed it. Thanks to
tauro for the direct link!


Jim


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Re: [Freedos-devel] [OT] Text-mode Windows 11

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

On Thu, Jan 25, 2024 at 3:20 PM Aitor Santamaría via Freedos-devel
 wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> Off-topic (as it is WinNT), but in this video, the author claims to
> have built a text-mode 100MB small Windows 11.  It is shockingly slow,
> but it is still fun to see a text mode OS stripping the GUI.
>
> «text-only Windows 11 - possibly the smallest Windows image ever! - YouTube»


Interesting. As the person notes at around 3:45 in the video (and as
you highlighted) it is shockingly slow and there's not much you can
really do with it (because there aren't really any "console" programs
to run on Windows like this). But it's an impressive thing to do
anyway, just to do.


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[Freedos-devel] Is there an open source fmt clone for DOS?

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

I'm looking for a way to keep my text files (like README.TXT) tidy and
easy to read. One problem is that if I modify a plain text file in a
regular text editor, and change the line length in the middle of a
paragraph, now I have to fix all the lines around it so the lines are
all about 77 characters wide.

On Linux, I'd use the BSD 'fmt' command to do it. This is a trivial
program to write (and I just did) if you don't want cool features like
preserving indents. But there are probably lots of similar existing
programs to do the same thing - so I wondered if anyone knows of an
open source DOS version of 'fmt' (or something like it)?


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Re: [Freedos-devel] Question about edlin

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

On Mon, Jan 22, 2024 at 11:24 AM Gregory Pietsch via Freedos-devel
 wrote:
>
> FD edlin ignores a leading space. If you want the leading space to be
> searched for, put the string in quotes; e.g.
>
> 1r"written"," written"
>
> The reason why I didn't stick a ^Z there is because I wanted to get
> away from control characters in the commands, and a comma just looks
> better, IMHO.
>

Ah - very helpful! That solves my problem. Thanks!

Also can use the same trick to change a comma to something else.
Here's another 1-line demo:

*1p
1:*period,
*1r",","."
1: period.


If you can't see it well, that's a 'comma inside double quotes' then a
comma, then a 'period inside double quotes.'

But really it just needs the quotes about the comma, and only if it's
the first comma. Here's an example to change it back again:

*1r.,","
1: period,
*1r",",.
1: period.
*1r.,,
1: period,


That last one changes the period to a comma, and you don't need the
double quotes around the second comma in this case.


Jim


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[Freedos-devel] Question about edlin

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

I actually do use edlin sometimes. But I have a question that might
actually be a bug report:

When I try to search and replace text, and I want to add a space in
front of my replaced text, I can't get it to work. Am I doing this
wrong?

Here's an example: In this 1-line file, I want to edit the line from
"..file,written.." to "..file, written.." (I want to add a space
before the word "written")

D:\DOCS>edlin t.txt
edlin 2.23, copyright (c) 2003 Gregory Pietsch
This program comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
It is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it
under the terms of the GNU General Public License -- either
version 2 of the license, or, at your option, any later
version.

t.txt: New file.
*i
 : This is a plain text file,written in edlin.
 : .
*1rwritten, written
*l
1:*This is a plain text file,written in edlin.
*


I'm using the "r" (replace) instruction correctly: 1rfrom,to will
start at line 1 and replace "from" with "to".

But it looks like a leading space is ignored, so edlin treats my
"1rwritten, written" as just "1rwritten,written" and seems to ignore
it because the "from" and "to" strings are the same.

FYI: I can add a space in the middle of a replaced word, such as:

*1rtext,te xt
1: This is a plain te xt file,written in edlin.


Is "ignore leading spaces after the comma in the 'r' command" the
expected behavior from MS-DOS edlin?


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[Freedos-devel] Next FreeDOS virtual get-together

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

Hi everyone!

I promised to propose the next virtual get-together after the holiday
break, so here it is. :-)

How about Sunday, February 4 for the next get-together? That's three
Sundays from now.

Time is 11am to noon US/Central, same time as always. And we'll
probably go over that, because we always do. :-)


Jim


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Re: [Freedos-devel] FreeDOS Interim Build T2401

[Jim Hall via Freedos-devel]

On Mon, Jan 1, 2024 at 7:46 AM Jerome Shidel via Freedos-devel
 wrote:
>
> The FreeDOS Interim Test Build T2401 for January is now available for
> download at:
>
> https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distributions/test/
>
> Although this update consists of only a few simple changes, it is an
> important update from T2312.
>
> There were several packages that erroneously included a ‘.DATESTAMP’
[..]
> Unlike the large number of updates in T2312, there were no other
> significant or package updates in T2401.


Yay, thanks! I've grabbed the new version and am installing it now. I
don't usually do a 'full install' - usually just 'plain DOS' plus a
few packages that I use all the time - so I haven't encountered the
.DATESTAMP issue before. But I'll reply here if I see anything amiss.



Jim


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