Hi Michael,
An unanswered question is are you able to successfully install Windows 3.1
itself over FreeDOS? Attempting to do so here aborts the install while it
is within the initial stages of running Windows after preliminary DOS file
copies on disk 1 and 2. There is a fatal general protection or stack fault
which consistently stops the process.
Yes I were able to do that. I copied all disk contents into 7 directories
first (because I got an original and therefore very old pile of disks and
I wanted to have a backup first). Then I copied all 7 directories into
one directory, and started the install process from there.
Of course I selected manual / custom installation, and used
some sane / generic drivers (VGA16, LMouse, no network...)
at first. Everything worked okay, even MSD worked (looks as
if I do not have data at anyPSP[2c] which makes MSD hang in
RAM). When I later switched to SVGA driver and installed SB 1.5
drivers (at least the very old and not feature-rich drivers
of Win3.1 - I do not have my SB AWE32 driver CD at hand...),
the installer asked me to insert the right floppy,
so I did. Actually after the first error I am given
the chance to type a directory instead, but inserting
the right floppy is easier ;-).
Later for actually RUNNING Win3.1 (only /s mode works
and DOS sessions do not work) I added a menu entry to
my config sys which uses MS HIMEM 3.07 and MS EMM386
4.44 and optionally MS SMARTDRV 4.xx (which I prefer
to avoid - and I load it in a way which disables delayed
writes, later SMARTDRV versions have delayed writes even
disabled by default anyway). But a quick test suggested
that even the FreeDOS drivers are no problem. If you have
EMM386 loaded, Win 3.1 will attempt to run in 386Enh mode
and then fail with unsupported MS DOS (sic!) version,
so you must use /s option (order of options matters, if
you use the wrong order, the /s is ignored. You must not
use the /d:... options for /s mode either...). For FreeDOS
EMM386, Win 3.1 will also complain that there is no GEMMIS
support (okay, it does not mention the evil word ;-), and
it will ask you to use MS EMM386 instead. For /s mode you
can even work without any EMM386 at all, but then I cannot
use 386SWAT - because for 386SWAT I must first do toggle
to other PCI VGA, 'boot' BIOS of that VGA, toggle back,
and this (done by a DJGPP-compiled toggler tool and a NASM
BIOS loader tool which just loads the, luckily relocateable,
BIOS image of the 2nd VGA into DOS RAM, backups IDT and BIOS
data area, 'boots' that BIOS (call far...), restores IDT and
B.D.A. -- card shows text mode splash screen, BIOS of the
other card is compatible enough to handle text mode on both
cards) crashes for some unknown reason if I have HIMEM loaded
and have no EMM386 loaded. Maybe A20 troubles or something
bad which is caught by EMM386 but allowed by HIMEM...?
So in short: Everything done with only FreeDOS components
and files which were on the 7 3.5inch disks of this original
(German) Win3.1 copy here. And working - as far as it works
(no 386Enh, no DOS sessions) - without having to use a debugger.
I only did use 386SWAT to find out more about how Win 3.1
could be made working together with FreeDOS better than it is
already working anyway.
Some system.ini excerpts:
[boot]
386grabber=vga.3gr
...
286grabber=vgacolor.2gr
...
display.drv=supervga.drv
mouse.drv=lmouse.drv
network.drv=
language.dll=langger.dll
sound.drv=mmsound.drv
comm.drv=comm.drv
keyboard.drv=keyboard.drv
system.drv=system.drv
drivers=mmsystem.dll
[386Enh]
... well, I tuned that a lot manually but /3 does not work anyway ...
... what does local=CON mean by the way?
[NonWindowsApp]
MouseInDosBox=0
... and DSWAP/WSWAP uses %temp% to swap around sessions, but DOS
sessions in /s mode do not work either, so ...
CommandEnvSize=512
[drivers]
timer=timer.drv
midimapper=midimap.drv
Wave=sndblst2.drv
MIDI=sndblst2.drv
MIDI1=msadlib.drv
[LogiMouse]
Type=Serial
Model=C_Series
Port=1
DragLock=None
[sndblst.drv]
port=220
int=5
[display]
svgamode=88
... well, THAT was not selected by me, just using 800x600x256 default ...
Eric
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