Re: [Freedos-user] hard drive question?
Hi, interesting read...complete with weikipedia's often begging for real sources smiles. still it seems the novel 7 is older officially than what we are already using. Kare On Sun, 11 Nov 2012, Felix Miata wrote: On 2012-11-11 22:44 (GMT-0500) Karen Lewellen composed: I have Novell DOS 7 also. what is novell dos 7? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novell_dos -- The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant words are persuasive. Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation) Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks! Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ -- Everyone hates slow websites. So do we. Make your web apps faster with AppDynamics Download AppDynamics Lite for free today: http://p.sf.net/sfu/appdyn_d2d_nov ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user -- Everyone hates slow websites. So do we. Make your web apps faster with AppDynamics Download AppDynamics Lite for free today: http://p.sf.net/sfu/appdyn_d2d_nov ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] hard drive question?
Op 12-11-2012 18:14, Karen Lewellen schreef: Hi, interesting read...complete with weikipedia's often begging for real sources smiles. still it seems the novel 7 is older officially than what we are already using. Earlier in the thread you mentioned a 13GB disk seen a bit smaller with all things going wrong. This might mean the system has a BIOS harddisk-recognition limitation, usually bugging out partition management. For reference again Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_Drive_Overlay Hopefully the system will accept FreeDOS just fine on the harddisk. Always disliked DDO software, it messed up lots of disk tools. Bernd -- Everyone hates slow websites. So do we. Make your web apps faster with AppDynamics Download AppDynamics Lite for free today: http://p.sf.net/sfu/appdyn_d2d_nov ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] hard drive question?
On 2012-11-11 22:44 (GMT-0500) Karen Lewellen composed: Felix Miata wrote: Maybe I missed it, but I haven't seen proof 7.03 cannot coexist with a large HD. Is it a lack of FAT32/2GB partition support? That's her obstacle? the dell inspirium 7500, spelling comes with a 12 gig hard drive. When Inspiron http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/psyd/specs.htm we started the installation though, Dr dos via fdisk indicated only 7500 or so, creating its first primary fat 16 partition at the 2 gig level...although we would find later that such was not what the drive was showing. We then tried, first the minimal fat 32 support for the logical rives in its extended partitions, then to create fat 16 ones. the former failed totally. the latter worked only slightly. while there were variations the experimenting, the logical drives were less than 2 gig in most cases both as fat 16 and fat 32. what would happen at the fat 16 level was that while the second and third, say e: and F: drives functioned fine, the d: as in the line where the extended and primary met did not, general protection errors, not allowing us to copy files or create directories, no allocation units on that part of the drive. We took a look with ranish finding over lapping partitions everywhere, the actual c drive was 4 gig, the cylinder arrangement was off etc. although we tired using ranish to create the partitions instead, Dr dos 7.03 simply would not see them at all, no matter how divided, even as fat 16. There are more details, but that gives You an idea. I did a little investigating and determined Novell DOS didn't include LBA support, so I'm not even going to look for my NDOS 7 floppies. It was late when I looked, so I don't remember whether I found out if DR DOS included LBA or not, but the investigation prompted me to perform some experiments with my PIII Dell laptop after swapping the installed HD for another purely to do this with, size 30GB. Using DFSee (running on FreeDOS), I wiped, forced geo to H255 S63 (required for maximum DOS partition size, I think), then created: FAT pri 2047M FAT pri 243M FAT pri 200M FAT log 2047M FAT log 2047M FAT log 2047M FAT32 log (balance of space) I then set the first active and booted FreeDOS kernel 2040. It reported various errors for all partitions. Then I did some math: 512512BPS 240255 Heads 63 63 Sectors 77414408225280 Bytes per cylinder 7560 8033 divide by 1024 1890 2008 divide by 4 Then I repeated the first wipe and partition process, except for the sizes, while leaving the laptop BIOS default heads at 240: FAT pri 1875M FAT pri 243M FAT pri 200M FAT log 1875M FAT log 1875M FAT log 1875M FAT32 log 20664M (balance) On next FreeDOS kernel 2040 boot, it reported all (visible, skipping the 243 240) partition sizes without errors: C: 1875 MB D: 1875 MB E: 1875 MB F: 1875 MB G:20664 MB This result suggests to me that limiting partition sizes to less than the maximum sizes FAT16 supports, as I did on second try, might get her going without errors. I also tried other combinations. 255 63 geo with 2039M partitions also produced startup partition table errors, as did 255 63 geo with 2000M partitions. Switching back to 240 63 geo and 2037 partitions produced no errors. I still think it's worth trying smaller partitions. I do also suggest doing all partitioning, and formatting, with modern tools (other than Ranish), followed by installing DR DOS simply by doing 'SYS C:' from a floppy boot, then completing installation manually, or doing same without the size reductions, if you can't get DR DOS to install according to its own instructions. -- The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant words are persuasive. Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation) Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks! Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ -- Everyone hates slow websites. So do we. Make your web apps faster with AppDynamics Download AppDynamics Lite for free today: http://p.sf.net/sfu/appdyn_d2d_nov ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] hard drive question?
On 2012-11-12 18:42 (GMT+0100) Bernd Blaauw composed: Earlier in the thread you mentioned a 13GB disk seen a bit smaller with all things going wrong. This might mean the system has a BIOS harddisk-recognition limitation, usually bugging out partition management. My slightly newer Dell PIII laptop has no such problem. IIRC, the last PC BIOS with such a limit predate the 440BX chipset in her Inspiron 7500 by at least a year. For reference again Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_Drive_Overlay Hopefully the system will accept FreeDOS just fine on the harddisk. Always disliked DDO software, it messed up lots of disk tools. I have to think a pure DOS only user would have little or no need for a HD bigger than the maximum supported by the BIOS. I'd use what is available natively rather than using an overlay for the rather modest space gain between ~8G 13G. -- The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant words are persuasive. Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation) Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks! Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ -- Everyone hates slow websites. So do we. Make your web apps faster with AppDynamics Download AppDynamics Lite for free today: http://p.sf.net/sfu/appdyn_d2d_nov ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] hard drive question?
Hi, We had no difficulty installing the five disk set of Dr dos 7.03 onto the primary dos partition it created...that was never the issue. The issue instead was using the rest of the hard drive in any fashion that Dr dos would understand. No matter how far below 2 gig we went. The fdisk must see 12 gig in order to partition 12 gig. I believe we have discovered from prior posts that freedos can read disks far larger than the hard drive in this system. If the multitasking option you suggested proves a viable option either for freedos, or ms dos 7.1, then I will let her know of the option. I will be basing my sharing on what documentation I find on that program. Otherwise her friend must find a hard drive for that dell laptop of 6 gig or so for Dr dos 7.03 to be happy. Thanks for the exploration. Karen On Mon, 12 Nov 2012, Felix Miata wrote: On 2012-11-11 22:44 (GMT-0500) Karen Lewellen composed: Felix Miata wrote: Maybe I missed it, but I haven't seen proof 7.03 cannot coexist with a large HD. Is it a lack of FAT32/2GB partition support? That's her obstacle? the dell inspirium 7500, spelling comes with a 12 gig hard drive. When Inspiron http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/psyd/specs.htm we started the installation though, Dr dos via fdisk indicated only 7500 or so, creating its first primary fat 16 partition at the 2 gig level...although we would find later that such was not what the drive was showing. We then tried, first the minimal fat 32 support for the logical rives in its extended partitions, then to create fat 16 ones. the former failed totally. the latter worked only slightly. while there were variations the experimenting, the logical drives were less than 2 gig in most cases both as fat 16 and fat 32. what would happen at the fat 16 level was that while the second and third, say e: and F: drives functioned fine, the d: as in the line where the extended and primary met did not, general protection errors, not allowing us to copy files or create directories, no allocation units on that part of the drive. We took a look with ranish finding over lapping partitions everywhere, the actual c drive was 4 gig, the cylinder arrangement was off etc. although we tired using ranish to create the partitions instead, Dr dos 7.03 simply would not see them at all, no matter how divided, even as fat 16. There are more details, but that gives You an idea. I did a little investigating and determined Novell DOS didn't include LBA support, so I'm not even going to look for my NDOS 7 floppies. It was late when I looked, so I don't remember whether I found out if DR DOS included LBA or not, but the investigation prompted me to perform some experiments with my PIII Dell laptop after swapping the installed HD for another purely to do this with, size 30GB. Using DFSee (running on FreeDOS), I wiped, forced geo to H255 S63 (required for maximum DOS partition size, I think), then created: FAT pri 2047M FAT pri 243M FAT pri 200M FAT log 2047M FAT log 2047M FAT log 2047M FAT32 log (balance of space) I then set the first active and booted FreeDOS kernel 2040. It reported various errors for all partitions. Then I did some math: 512512 BPS 240255 Heads 63 63 Sectors 77414408225280 Bytes per cylinder 7560 8033 divide by 1024 1890 2008 divide by 4 Then I repeated the first wipe and partition process, except for the sizes, while leaving the laptop BIOS default heads at 240: FAT pri 1875M FAT pri 243M FAT pri 200M FAT log 1875M FAT log 1875M FAT log 1875M FAT32 log 20664M (balance) On next FreeDOS kernel 2040 boot, it reported all (visible, skipping the 243 240) partition sizes without errors: C: 1875 MB D: 1875 MB E: 1875 MB F: 1875 MB G:20664 MB This result suggests to me that limiting partition sizes to less than the maximum sizes FAT16 supports, as I did on second try, might get her going without errors. I also tried other combinations. 255 63 geo with 2039M partitions also produced startup partition table errors, as did 255 63 geo with 2000M partitions. Switching back to 240 63 geo and 2037 partitions produced no errors. I still think it's worth trying smaller partitions. I do also suggest doing all partitioning, and formatting, with modern tools (other than Ranish), followed by installing DR DOS simply by doing 'SYS C:' from a floppy boot, then completing installation manually, or doing same without the size reductions, if you can't get DR DOS to install according to its own instructions. -- The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant words are persuasive. Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation) Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks! Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ -- Everyone hates slow
Re: [Freedos-user] hard drive question?
On 2012-11-12 13:59 (GMT-0500) Karen Lewellen composed: We had no difficulty installing the five disk set of Dr dos 7.03 onto the primary dos partition it created...that was never the issue. The issue instead was using the rest of the hard drive in any fashion that Dr dos would understand. No matter how far below 2 gig we went. The fdisk must see 12 gig in order to partition 12 gig. ... Otherwise her friend must find a hard drive for that dell laptop of 6 gig or so for Dr dos 7.03 to be happy. I still believe the problem is one or both of two: 1-using DR DOS 7.03 FDISK (at all, for anything) 2-trying to partition more than ~8GB of the 13GB (contiguous, starting at front) I still suggest to try a modern partitioning tool and not use DR DOS FDISK at all. Additionally, I suggest creating less than ~8GB total from the front of the disk for partitions. Acquiring a smaller than 8GB HD should not be necessary. Also, it may prove difficult to find one so small that can be expected to be reliable. Everything that small is rather ancient. In deciding how to partition, if you haven't already, be sure to consider cluster overhang wastage by using FAT16 for large partitions. With a 32k cluster size on a 2GB partition, 32k is the minimum filesystem allocation size for every file of 32k or less. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Allocation_Table -- The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant words are persuasive. Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation) Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks! Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ -- Monitor your physical, virtual and cloud infrastructure from a single web console. Get in-depth insight into apps, servers, databases, vmware, SAP, cloud infrastructure, etc. Download 30-day Free Trial. Pricing starts from $795 for 25 servers or applications! http://p.sf.net/sfu/zoho_dev2dev_nov ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] hard drive question?
Hi, Let me be more clear since you may have missed this. gives me a chance to share a source for utilities. we tried using many from the ultimate boot cd, www.ultimatebootcd.com Including both ranish partition manager andgparted as suggested. All of these tools are modern, start creating the partitions from the front of the disk as in cylinder 0, and all of our efforts always to create less than 8 gig of partition from the front. In fact in order to create the required fat 16 primary partition it must be less than 2 gig at the front of the disk. I do agree about using Dr dos's fdisk, which is why we tried so many other ones. in the end though the operating system must see what we are doing. Karen On Mon, 12 Nov 2012, Felix Miata wrote: On 2012-11-12 13:59 (GMT-0500) Karen Lewellen composed: We had no difficulty installing the five disk set of Dr dos 7.03 onto the primary dos partition it created...that was never the issue. The issue instead was using the rest of the hard drive in any fashion that Dr dos would understand. No matter how far below 2 gig we went. The fdisk must see 12 gig in order to partition 12 gig. ... Otherwise her friend must find a hard drive for that dell laptop of 6 gig or so for Dr dos 7.03 to be happy. I still believe the problem is one or both of two: 1-using DR DOS 7.03 FDISK (at all, for anything) 2-trying to partition more than ~8GB of the 13GB (contiguous, starting at front) I still suggest to try a modern partitioning tool and not use DR DOS FDISK at all. Additionally, I suggest creating less than ~8GB total from the front of the disk for partitions. Acquiring a smaller than 8GB HD should not be necessary. Also, it may prove difficult to find one so small that can be expected to be reliable. Everything that small is rather ancient. In deciding how to partition, if you haven't already, be sure to consider cluster overhang wastage by using FAT16 for large partitions. With a 32k cluster size on a 2GB partition, 32k is the minimum filesystem allocation size for every file of 32k or less. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Allocation_Table -- The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant words are persuasive. Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation) Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks! Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ -- Monitor your physical, virtual and cloud infrastructure from a single web console. Get in-depth insight into apps, servers, databases, vmware, SAP, cloud infrastructure, etc. Download 30-day Free Trial. Pricing starts from $795 for 25 servers or applications! http://p.sf.net/sfu/zoho_dev2dev_nov ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user -- Monitor your physical, virtual and cloud infrastructure from a single web console. Get in-depth insight into apps, servers, databases, vmware, SAP, cloud infrastructure, etc. Download 30-day Free Trial. Pricing starts from $795 for 25 servers or applications! http://p.sf.net/sfu/zoho_dev2dev_nov ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] hard drive question?
Hi Karen, (Bob: please see below...) important snippet from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DR-DOS#After_Novell Support for LBA and FAT32 originally was a DRFAT32 device driver, so in old DR DOS, you first have to boot from a FAT16 partition which is entirely in the first 8 GB of your disk and less than 2 GB in size, I would assume. Also, FDISK may be limited, so you better use something else than old DR DOS FDISK to partition... In DR DOS 7.04 and newer, things were getting better, but it is unlikely that you have that version. However, based on OpenDOS 7.01 source code, EDR-DOS implemented a free kernel with FAT32 and LBA support (version DR DOS 7.01.08 of July 2011). Due to license conflicts with the free improvements, DR DOS 8.0 and 8.1 have been discontinued, so DR DOS 7.03 (from the year 1999!) is the most recent DR DOS. I strongly recommend EDR DOS instead: http://www.drdosprojects.de/index.cgi/download.htm (just get the binaries, otherwise you need source+patch+compiler) Note that EDR DOS comes with very little extra software - simply use the extra software of another DOS like DR DOS or FreeDOS :-) Hi Bob, I wonder what the brandand firmware revisions the harddrive(s) in question are and whether or not they have a size-limiting jumper connected. Doesn't such a jumper, in combination with hardcoded BIOS settings, control the cylinders-heads-sectors that the DOS flavor sees? And doesn't DOS itself need a device driver in order to talk The last time that I saw such a jumper, it limited the size to 32 GB to avoid crashes with broken BIOSes. Also, some drives came with software to limit them to 128 GB to avoid yet other compatibility issues. Unless you have a VERY old BIOS (early 1990s) you do not need drivers: The BIOS will support sizes up to 128 GB using LBA, or in newer BIOS versions even up to 2 TB and more. Older DOS versions only support CHS which is where geometry (cylinder head sector) matters. If at all possible, use DOS versions and partition types with LBA, as those do not need to worry about geometry. For example MS DOS 4 does not support LBA, so you must use CHS and geometry must match between BIOS *and* partitioning *and* DOS. The BIOS will usually select some default with many (240, 254, 255?) heads for big disks, to get as much of the disk as possible in the first 1024 cylinders but you still do not get further than 8 GB. So if you must use CHS, pretend that your whole disk is smaller. Even MS DOS 4 can then use up to 2 GB per drive letter but do not get too close to 2048 MB or it will fail. Really old (also early 1990s, 1980s) BIOS versions do not support geometry settings above 16 heads, so you would need dynamic drive overlay or ontrack style drivers (actually installed as sort of boot loader) to get beyond 500 MB (0.5 GB). That said, a normal FreeDOS with FAT32 support can use the first 2 TB of your disk as long as you use LBA FAT32 type partitions. You can even make one partition of that size if you do not want to use several drive letters... Using SSD is no problem for DOS at all, only the size matters, the BIOS supports it all. If DOS would KNOW that the disk is SSD, it could get a bit more speed. Also, modern harddisk and SSD allow parallel access to gain speed, but DOS is not multitasking things anyway. Note that DOS drivers like UIDE allow faster data transfer in cases where the driver built into the BIOS is slow. So DOS drivers for disks do exist, but are not essential. -- Monitor your physical, virtual and cloud infrastructure from a single web console. Get in-depth insight into apps, servers, databases, vmware, SAP, cloud infrastructure, etc. Download 30-day Free Trial. Pricing starts from $795 for 25 servers or applications! http://p.sf.net/sfu/zoho_dev2dev_nov ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] hard drive question?
Hi, On Mon, Nov 12, 2012 at 1:33 AM, Felix Miata mrma...@earthlink.net wrote: On 2012-11-12 01:20 (GMT-0600) Rugxulo composed: DOSEMU isn't in any official Fedora repo My other 24/7 machine runs openSUSE, with DOSEMU from standard repo. I find OpenSUSE's installation the best of any bar none, and Fedora's (and Mageia's, and *buntu's) lacking hugely in flexibility by comparison. I've not tried OpenSUSE. Perhaps it was their one-time recommendation of at least 1 GB of RAM that put me off, dunno. Though I'm not very savvy on Linux either. These days, for simplicity, I just run PuppyLinux (actually, triple boot), which seems to work fine for my weird uses. Dunno about DOSEMU in OpenSUSE, I heard one guy from DJGPP (Juan) say that it didn't work very well for him there. Fedora I've only barely used, and even its installer these days needs 700+ MB of RAM, ugh. Like I said, for dumb reasons they don't include DOSEMU by default. So you have to download it elsewhere, e.g. RPMfind. (I think the last time I tried was when I very very briefly tested DOSEMU x86-64 for the Hexen2 DJGPP port, which worked fine except for no sound, oddly enough.) In my limited use in the past, these settings sometimes helped, just FYI: su -c 'sysctl -w vm.mmap_min_addr=0' su -c 'sesetbool -P mmap_low_allowed 1' -- Monitor your physical, virtual and cloud infrastructure from a single web console. Get in-depth insight into apps, servers, databases, vmware, SAP, cloud infrastructure, etc. Download 30-day Free Trial. Pricing starts from $795 for 25 servers or applications! http://p.sf.net/sfu/zoho_dev2dev_nov ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] hard drive question?
Hi Eric, As a contact of Udo's with Udo in the exchange told us himself in a private exchange, those are uncompiled binaries, so cannot be installed as an stand alone os. his idea is for people to use those patches on an existing install of Dr dos that is not as current as 7.03, 7.01 in fact. Why he does not provide a compiled package is anyone guess. ask him if you wish. Indeed the Dr dos 7.03 structure has minimal fat 32 support, and one of the variations we tried was to format the rest of drive from its bootable primary, just for kicks. Likewise none of the partition tools in the ultimate boot cd collection, see partitioning, allowed Dr dos to see the results of their work. I do agree though interesting legal history. Karen On Mon, 12 Nov 2012, Eric Auer wrote: Hi Karen, (Bob: please see below...) important snippet from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DR-DOS#After_Novell Support for LBA and FAT32 originally was a DRFAT32 device driver, so in old DR DOS, you first have to boot from a FAT16 partition which is entirely in the first 8 GB of your disk and less than 2 GB in size, I would assume. Also, FDISK may be limited, so you better use something else than old DR DOS FDISK to partition... In DR DOS 7.04 and newer, things were getting better, but it is unlikely that you have that version. However, based on OpenDOS 7.01 source code, EDR-DOS implemented a free kernel with FAT32 and LBA support (version DR DOS 7.01.08 of July 2011). Due to license conflicts with the free improvements, DR DOS 8.0 and 8.1 have been discontinued, so DR DOS 7.03 (from the year 1999!) is the most recent DR DOS. I strongly recommend EDR DOS instead: http://www.drdosprojects.de/index.cgi/download.htm (just get the binaries, otherwise you need source+patch+compiler) Note that EDR DOS comes with very little extra software - simply use the extra software of another DOS like DR DOS or FreeDOS :-) Hi Bob, I wonder what the brandand firmware revisions the harddrive(s) in question are and whether or not they have a size-limiting jumper connected. Doesn't such a jumper, in combination with hardcoded BIOS settings, control the cylinders-heads-sectors that the DOS flavor sees? And doesn't DOS itself need a device driver in order to talk The last time that I saw such a jumper, it limited the size to 32 GB to avoid crashes with broken BIOSes. Also, some drives came with software to limit them to 128 GB to avoid yet other compatibility issues. Unless you have a VERY old BIOS (early 1990s) you do not need drivers: The BIOS will support sizes up to 128 GB using LBA, or in newer BIOS versions even up to 2 TB and more. Older DOS versions only support CHS which is where geometry (cylinder head sector) matters. If at all possible, use DOS versions and partition types with LBA, as those do not need to worry about geometry. For example MS DOS 4 does not support LBA, so you must use CHS and geometry must match between BIOS *and* partitioning *and* DOS. The BIOS will usually select some default with many (240, 254, 255?) heads for big disks, to get as much of the disk as possible in the first 1024 cylinders but you still do not get further than 8 GB. So if you must use CHS, pretend that your whole disk is smaller. Even MS DOS 4 can then use up to 2 GB per drive letter but do not get too close to 2048 MB or it will fail. Really old (also early 1990s, 1980s) BIOS versions do not support geometry settings above 16 heads, so you would need dynamic drive overlay or ontrack style drivers (actually installed as sort of boot loader) to get beyond 500 MB (0.5 GB). That said, a normal FreeDOS with FAT32 support can use the first 2 TB of your disk as long as you use LBA FAT32 type partitions. You can even make one partition of that size if you do not want to use several drive letters... Using SSD is no problem for DOS at all, only the size matters, the BIOS supports it all. If DOS would KNOW that the disk is SSD, it could get a bit more speed. Also, modern harddisk and SSD allow parallel access to gain speed, but DOS is not multitasking things anyway. Note that DOS drivers like UIDE allow faster data transfer in cases where the driver built into the BIOS is slow. So DOS drivers for disks do exist, but are not essential. -- Monitor your physical, virtual and cloud infrastructure from a single web console. Get in-depth insight into apps, servers, databases, vmware, SAP, cloud infrastructure, etc. Download 30-day Free Trial. Pricing starts from $795 for 25 servers or applications! http://p.sf.net/sfu/zoho_dev2dev_nov ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user -- Monitor your physical,
Re: [Freedos-user] hard drive question?
Hi, On Mon, Nov 12, 2012 at 11:14 AM, Karen Lewellen klewel...@shellworld.net wrote: interesting read...complete with weikipedia's often begging for real sources smiles. still it seems the novel 7 is older officially than what we are already using. CP/M-86 eventually evolved into DR-DOS (and even uses similar internal versioning) with many improvements, which was a big motivating factor (allegedly) for some features in MS-DOS 5 and 6 (e.g. HILOAD, MEMMAX). DR-DOS was originally from Digital Research (DR, no surprise). DR-DOS 5 was their MS-DOS 3.3 compatible, DR-DOS 6 was MS-DOS 5, and DR-DOS 7 calls itself compatible with IBM 6 (probably due to IBMBIO.COM and IBMDOS.COM or whatever, I forget offhand). Novell apparently wanted to compete with MS-DOS at one time, so they bought DR, hence the naming of Novell DOS. That was the 7.00 version with true pre-emptive multitasking. But they didn't keep it up very long. I think they discontinued it when it was announced that Win95 would include MS-DOS 7 by default. They sold it (or branched it off?) to Caldera. DR-DOS 7.03 still says Caldera on it. Caldera turned into Lineo (embedded systems??) and eventually sold (forked?) off to DeviceLogics and DR-DOS, Inc., which is (I think) where it stands today. I don't think they ever cared as much for DOS as Linux. I think rumor was that they used DR-DOS profits to fund their Linux-based businesses. Anyways, the whole OpenDOS mess was only temporary, hence 1997 saw the rise and fall of OpenDOS 7.01, the only release (kernel and shell sources but non-commercial only). Due to too many compilers and archaic version control, they didn't even release the last Novell version, so it lacked a few important bugfixes. DR-DOS 7.02 and 7.03 (commercial, closed source) followed (until late 1998 / early 1999) with quite a few improvements (e.g. bugfixed 32-bit DPMI) thanks to Matthias Paul and others, but Caldera disbanded them after that, so it wasn't really worked on anymore (not counting the very spartan unofficial 7.04 with a few tweaks for certain OEMs). And no, DR-DOS 7.03 doesn't include any FAT32 nor LFN stuff (why, patents??). I'm probably summarizing this badly, but that's roughly how I understand it (from far away, of course). -- Monitor your physical, virtual and cloud infrastructure from a single web console. Get in-depth insight into apps, servers, databases, vmware, SAP, cloud infrastructure, etc. Download 30-day Free Trial. Pricing starts from $795 for 25 servers or applications! http://p.sf.net/sfu/zoho_dev2dev_nov ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] hard drive question?
Hi, On Mon, Nov 12, 2012 at 2:20 PM, Eric Auer e.a...@jpberlin.de wrote: Hi Karen, (Bob: please see below...) important snippet from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DR-DOS#After_Novell Support for LBA and FAT32 originally was a DRFAT32 device driver, Which wasn't included in DR-DOS 7.03 (at least not my version). I don't know if it's publicly available, but I didn't see it on drdos.com . Not sure why, but those tweaks are long gone, AFAICT. so in old DR DOS, you first have to boot from a FAT16 partition which is entirely in the first 8 GB of your disk and less than 2 GB in size, I would assume. Also, FDISK may be limited, so you better use something else than old DR DOS FDISK to partition... I know DR-DOS 7.03 had an improved FDISK, but how good is anyone's guess. I vaguely remember the changelog mentioning that it could at least detect other partitions better (e.g. FAT32), but I never extensively used it, so I dunno the details. In DR DOS 7.04 and newer, things were getting better, but it is unlikely that you have that version. I don't think anyone has it, it's not an official full release with all utils, only a few patches for a few minor things for OEMs, maybe only for rescue floppies or similar. However, based on OpenDOS 7.01 source code, EDR-DOS implemented a free kernel with FAT32 and LBA support (version DR DOS 7.01.08 of July 2011). This may be for non-commercial use only. DR DOS 7.03 (from the year 1999!) is the most recent DR DOS. Yes, it's the same as Caldera DR-DOS 7.03 as it still says Caldera. This is the full install with all utils. I strongly recommend EDR DOS instead: http://www.drdosprojects.de/index.cgi/download.htm (just get the binaries, otherwise you need source+patch+compiler) Honestly, with so many other things to play with, I've never even tried EDR-DOS (sorry, Udo!). Never had a huge urge nor need. But I think this is only kernel and shell, not all the assorted utils. Note that EDR DOS comes with very little extra software - simply use the extra software of another DOS like DR DOS or FreeDOS :-) Right. IIRC, he tweaked a very few FreeDOS system tools to work with EDR-DOS. I have them backed up somewhere. Would be interested to take a look at again, but it's probably low priority. :-/ The last time that I saw such a jumper, it limited the size to 32 GB to avoid crashes with broken BIOSes. Also, some drives came with software to limit them to 128 GB to avoid yet other compatibility issues. Unless you have a VERY old BIOS (early 1990s) you do not need drivers: Just a side note: modern Windows (NT-based) won't format greater than 32 GB FAT32 partitions, officially due to speed reasons. Classic Windows (Win9x), IIRC, won't even work at all beyond 137 GB. That said, a normal FreeDOS with FAT32 support can use the first 2 TB of your disk as long as you use LBA FAT32 type partitions. You can even make one partition of that size if you do not want to use several drive letters... I know I've said this many times (sorry), but my current machine triple boots (Win7 64-bit, PuppyLinux 32-bit, FreeDOS 1.1-ish). The FAT32 partition is last and 4 GB in size (almost full too, oops! heheh). Though max filesize is still 2 GB (FreeDOS limitation), just FYI. Using SSD is no problem for DOS at all, only the size matters, the BIOS supports it all. If DOS would KNOW that the disk is SSD, it could get a bit more speed. Also, modern harddisk and SSD allow parallel access to gain speed, but DOS is not multitasking things anyway. They keep having improvements in SSD, e.g. some new manufacturing process from Intel. I've never cared, honestly. People want fast bootups, but others say it doesn't matter (as they rarely boot from scratch). Try JEMM386 FASTBOOT. Well, FreeDOS already boots pretty fast (five seconds?). Good for when you only want to do simple calculations, benchmarks, compiling, or gaming or whatever. ;-) Win8 supposedly saves (hibernates?) the kernel for future quicker loading at bootup. Others (e.g. Fedora? default yet?) use systemd, which tries to parallelize various things and save some info, but it's not initv compatible, hence won't work except on Linux. Other people say use small SSD for OS install and regular HD for storing lots of big files of multimedia (movies, music). And even hybrid SSD / HD drives exist nowadays, I think. (Bernd, weren't you getting a USB drive pre-install of Windows?) As always, with more options for flexibility comes much more complexity, so YMMV. -- Monitor your physical, virtual and cloud infrastructure from a single web console. Get in-depth insight into apps, servers, databases, vmware, SAP, cloud infrastructure, etc. Download 30-day Free Trial. Pricing starts from $795 for 25 servers or applications! http://p.sf.net/sfu/zoho_dev2dev_nov ___ Freedos-user mailing list
Re: [Freedos-user] hard drive question?
On 2012-11-12 15:15 (GMT-0500) Karen Lewellen composed: Let me be more clear since you may have missed this. gives me a chance to share a source for utilities. we tried using many from the ultimate boot cd, www.ultimatebootcd.com I use it for several things, but partitioning is not among them. Including both ranish partition manager andgparted as suggested. All of these tools are modern, start creating the partitions from the front of the disk as in cylinder 0, and all of our efforts always to create less than 8 gig of partition from the front. In fact in order to create the required fat 16 primary partition it must be less than 2 gig at the front of the disk. I do agree about using Dr dos's fdisk, which is why we tried so many other ones. Sometimes what you get for free is worth exactly what you paid for it. I only use non-free DFSee (usable on 30 day trial for free) for my partitioning. It runs exactly the same on DOS, Windows, OS/2, Linux and Mac, and its partitions are also cross-platform compatible. If you don't want to try it yourself, I suggest if you haven't already to try Parted Magic. I repartitioned once more with DFSee to ensure all partitions on the 30G HD were below about 7.5GiB thus: FAT16 pri 2037.6M FAT16 log 1801.4M FAT16 log 1801.4M FAT16 log 1801.4M Next I booted a PC DOS 2000 floppy and did: format C: /s format D: format E: format F: PC DOS 2000 (aka PC DOS Version 7.0, Revision 1) now boots from HD, and I'm able to change to any of the 4 drives. PC DOS FDISK reports all correctly. With larger partitions leaving F: partly lying above the 8G limit, attempting to do anything with F: produced invalid drive specification. I expect DR DOS 7.3 should behave as well partitioned similarly. -- The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant words are persuasive. Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation) Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks! Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ -- Monitor your physical, virtual and cloud infrastructure from a single web console. Get in-depth insight into apps, servers, databases, vmware, SAP, cloud infrastructure, etc. Download 30-day Free Trial. Pricing starts from $795 for 25 servers or applications! http://p.sf.net/sfu/zoho_dev2dev_nov ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] hard drive question?
You know what I found amusing in the article? assuming this is correct, one could buy the entire code for $25k, smiles. A bargain perhaps by many standards..especially given how many systems adjust given away these days. I do sincerely think the community for a chance to think through what we have done. Kare On Mon, 12 Nov 2012, Rugxulo wrote: Hi, On Mon, Nov 12, 2012 at 11:14 AM, Karen Lewellen klewel...@shellworld.net wrote: interesting read...complete with weikipedia's often begging for real sources smiles. still it seems the novel 7 is older officially than what we are already using. CP/M-86 eventually evolved into DR-DOS (and even uses similar internal versioning) with many improvements, which was a big motivating factor (allegedly) for some features in MS-DOS 5 and 6 (e.g. HILOAD, MEMMAX). DR-DOS was originally from Digital Research (DR, no surprise). DR-DOS 5 was their MS-DOS 3.3 compatible, DR-DOS 6 was MS-DOS 5, and DR-DOS 7 calls itself compatible with IBM 6 (probably due to IBMBIO.COM and IBMDOS.COM or whatever, I forget offhand). Novell apparently wanted to compete with MS-DOS at one time, so they bought DR, hence the naming of Novell DOS. That was the 7.00 version with true pre-emptive multitasking. But they didn't keep it up very long. I think they discontinued it when it was announced that Win95 would include MS-DOS 7 by default. They sold it (or branched it off?) to Caldera. DR-DOS 7.03 still says Caldera on it. Caldera turned into Lineo (embedded systems??) and eventually sold (forked?) off to DeviceLogics and DR-DOS, Inc., which is (I think) where it stands today. I don't think they ever cared as much for DOS as Linux. I think rumor was that they used DR-DOS profits to fund their Linux-based businesses. Anyways, the whole OpenDOS mess was only temporary, hence 1997 saw the rise and fall of OpenDOS 7.01, the only release (kernel and shell sources but non-commercial only). Due to too many compilers and archaic version control, they didn't even release the last Novell version, so it lacked a few important bugfixes. DR-DOS 7.02 and 7.03 (commercial, closed source) followed (until late 1998 / early 1999) with quite a few improvements (e.g. bugfixed 32-bit DPMI) thanks to Matthias Paul and others, but Caldera disbanded them after that, so it wasn't really worked on anymore (not counting the very spartan unofficial 7.04 with a few tweaks for certain OEMs). And no, DR-DOS 7.03 doesn't include any FAT32 nor LFN stuff (why, patents??). I'm probably summarizing this badly, but that's roughly how I understand it (from far away, of course). -- Monitor your physical, virtual and cloud infrastructure from a single web console. Get in-depth insight into apps, servers, databases, vmware, SAP, cloud infrastructure, etc. Download 30-day Free Trial. Pricing starts from $795 for 25 servers or applications! http://p.sf.net/sfu/zoho_dev2dev_nov ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user -- Monitor your physical, virtual and cloud infrastructure from a single web console. Get in-depth insight into apps, servers, databases, vmware, SAP, cloud infrastructure, etc. Download 30-day Free Trial. Pricing starts from $795 for 25 servers or applications! http://p.sf.net/sfu/zoho_dev2dev_nov ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] hard drive question?
Hi Eric, Thanks a lot for teaching me more about how the different DOS'es and BIOS'es work with respect to disk partitioning. This is a very interesting thread for me to follow. Bob On 11/12/12 3:20 PM, Eric Auer wrote: Hi Karen, (Bob: please see below...) important snippet from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DR-DOS#After_Novell Support for LBA and FAT32 originally was a DRFAT32 device driver, so in old DR DOS, you first have to boot from a FAT16 partition which is entirely in the first 8 GB of your disk and less than 2 GB in size, I would assume. Also, FDISK may be limited, so you better use something else than old DR DOS FDISK to partition... In DR DOS 7.04 and newer, things were getting better, but it is unlikely that you have that version. However, based on OpenDOS 7.01 source code, EDR-DOS implemented a free kernel with FAT32 and LBA support (version DR DOS 7.01.08 of July 2011). Due to license conflicts with the free improvements, DR DOS 8.0 and 8.1 have been discontinued, so DR DOS 7.03 (from the year 1999!) is the most recent DR DOS. I strongly recommend EDR DOS instead: http://www.drdosprojects.de/index.cgi/download.htm (just get the binaries, otherwise you need source+patch+compiler) Note that EDR DOS comes with very little extra software - simply use the extra software of another DOS like DR DOS or FreeDOS :-) Hi Bob, I wonder what the brandand firmware revisions the harddrive(s) in question are and whether or not they have a size-limiting jumper connected. Doesn't such a jumper, in combination with hardcoded BIOS settings, control the cylinders-heads-sectors that the DOS flavor sees? And doesn't DOS itself need a device driver in order to talk The last time that I saw such a jumper, it limited the size to 32 GB to avoid crashes with broken BIOSes. Also, some drives came with software to limit them to 128 GB to avoid yet other compatibility issues. Unless you have a VERY old BIOS (early 1990s) you do not need drivers: The BIOS will support sizes up to 128 GB using LBA, or in newer BIOS versions even up to 2 TB and more. Older DOS versions only support CHS which is where geometry (cylinder head sector) matters. If at all possible, use DOS versions and partition types with LBA, as those do not need to worry about geometry. For example MS DOS 4 does not support LBA, so you must use CHS and geometry must match between BIOS *and* partitioning *and* DOS. The BIOS will usually select some default with many (240, 254, 255?) heads for big disks, to get as much of the disk as possible in the first 1024 cylinders but you still do not get further than 8 GB. So if you must use CHS, pretend that your whole disk is smaller. Even MS DOS 4 can then use up to 2 GB per drive letter but do not get too close to 2048 MB or it will fail. Really old (also early 1990s, 1980s) BIOS versions do not support geometry settings above 16 heads, so you would need dynamic drive overlay or ontrack style drivers (actually installed as sort of boot loader) to get beyond 500 MB (0.5 GB). That said, a normal FreeDOS with FAT32 support can use the first 2 TB of your disk as long as you use LBA FAT32 type partitions. You can even make one partition of that size if you do not want to use several drive letters... Using SSD is no problem for DOS at all, only the size matters, the BIOS supports it all. If DOS would KNOW that the disk is SSD, it could get a bit more speed. Also, modern harddisk and SSD allow parallel access to gain speed, but DOS is not multitasking things anyway. Note that DOS drivers like UIDE allow faster data transfer in cases where the driver built into the BIOS is slow. So DOS drivers for disks do exist, but are not essential. -- Monitor your physical, virtual and cloud infrastructure from a single web console. Get in-depth insight into apps, servers, databases, vmware, SAP, cloud infrastructure, etc. Download 30-day Free Trial. Pricing starts from $795 for 25 servers or applications! http://p.sf.net/sfu/zoho_dev2dev_nov ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user -- Monitor your physical, virtual and cloud infrastructure from a single web console. Get in-depth insight into apps, servers, databases, vmware, SAP, cloud infrastructure, etc. Download 30-day Free Trial. Pricing starts from $795 for 25 servers or applications! http://p.sf.net/sfu/zoho_dev2dev_nov ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
