[Freedos-user] Made XP work okay...
I got my K6-2 500 with 504 megs of ram running XP SP3 well enough by turning off the swap file. Don't let XP swap, Warcraft II works fine. The scsi hard drive, despite being a Seagate Cheetah, really slows the system down. I don't let my Linux firewall allow this old machine to access the Net, so there are a LOT of protection programs I don't need to run. I don't need spywareblaster, clamwin, spybot search and destroy, crap cleaner, or Windows defender for starters. I'm not 100% confident in the method I used to bypass activation. Would Microsoft please distribute an activation crack and let people freely use 32 bit Windows XP at will? I've been studying Windows 7 verses Windows XP and honestly, it's a toss up. Both systems are bloated and complex. A ROM based dos system is more secure than even the typical Linux system and it's going to be light weight. That's not saying much though, I can't compare Apples to Oranges and be fair about it. The ipxwrapper hack seems to force one to use Windows NT 4.0 or newer. If only someone would port ipxwrapper to freedos and write a program to create a DOS executable out of a Win32 app like Warcraft II BNE. Add network card support for many of the current network cards and on mobo nics to that, there is suddenly no reason why Warcraft II can't be played on old computers using a: free, lean, and nice operating system. Warcraft II and Freedos's memory footprint is small enough, even if the necessary WIN32 support is added most likely, that one should be able to run the game using freedos in way under 100 megs. Note that most network cards built into motherboards and many PCI network cards are currently not supported in DOS and one has to take care of that somehow. I think that running Warcraft II Battle.Net edition on a freedos system is possible, but there are a lot of pieces to pull together and Blizzard probably won't offer to help. Come on Blizzard, these games are not earning you revenue anymore and they are very popular. It annoys people when a company crushes efforts to create open source clones of it's popular software and this can incite boycotts. I am a legal owner of Warcraft II BNE, two copies actually. I should be able to play Warcraft II on systems that are current and supported as well as open. I'm sure ReactOS will work just fine on old hardware if it is stabilized, but it isn't stable right now and the developers have not released since October or longer. The only way to get free Windows NT it seems is to support the ReactOS project. Sadly, I can't. Even if they make their fundraising goals and can hire competent programmers to help move the project along faster, there is no telling when stability will be achieved. -- LogMeIn Rescue: Anywhere, Anytime Remote support for IT. Free Trial Remotely access PCs and mobile devices and provide instant support Improve your efficiency, and focus on delivering more value-add services Discover what IT Professionals Know. Rescue delivers http://p.sf.net/sfu/logmein_12329d2d ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Made XP work okay...
windows xp can and will corrupt files until activation. while this is partially avoidable by quickpar and/or multipar, the problem will persist by design 'til you activate. (it's easy over the toll-free phone number provided). i avoid the problem by getting a cheap copy of xp for a dell, (works with other, though!) with unused serial sticker, over ebay, and just activating it. presto: no more data trubbles forever! like it or not, you can't use xp without problems until you buy it, and activate it like microsoft wants, but then when you do, it's rock solid and exhibits zero data corruption. you get what you pay for. freeware the cost is zero. been there, done that. proof positive. rock solid, no exception(s). a word to the wise. eufdp...@yahoo.com eufdp...@yahoo.com eufdp...@yahoo.com eufdp...@yahoo.com eufdp...@yahoo.com From: Michael Robinson plu...@robinson-west.com To: freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net Sent: Wednesday, December 26, 2012 5:58 AM Subject: [Freedos-user] Made XP work okay... I got my K6-2 500 with 504 megs of ram running XP SP3 well enough by turning off the swap file. Don't let XP swap, Warcraft II works fine. The scsi hard drive, despite being a Seagate Cheetah, really slows the system down. I don't let my Linux firewall allow this old machine to access the Net, so there are a LOT of protection programs I don't need to run. I don't need spywareblaster, clamwin, spybot search and destroy, crap cleaner, or Windows defender for starters. I'm not 100% confident in the method I used to bypass activation. Would Microsoft please distribute an activation crack and let people freely use 32 bit Windows XP at will? I've been studying Windows 7 verses Windows XP and honestly, it's a toss up. Both systems are bloated and complex. A ROM based dos system is more secure than even the typical Linux system and it's going to be light weight. That's not saying much though, I can't compare Apples to Oranges and be fair about it. The ipxwrapper hack seems to force one to use Windows NT 4.0 or newer. If only someone would port ipxwrapper to freedos and write a program to create a DOS executable out of a Win32 app like Warcraft II BNE. Add network card support for many of the current network cards and on mobo nics to that, there is suddenly no reason why Warcraft II can't be played on old computers using a: free, lean, and nice operating system. Warcraft II and Freedos's memory footprint is small enough, even if the necessary WIN32 support is added most likely, that one should be able to run the game using freedos in way under 100 megs. Note that most network cards built into motherboards and many PCI network cards are currently not supported in DOS and one has to take care of that somehow. I think that running Warcraft II Battle.Net edition on a freedos system is possible, but there are a lot of pieces to pull together and Blizzard probably won't offer to help. Come on Blizzard, these games are not earning you revenue anymore and they are very popular. It annoys people when a company crushes efforts to create open source clones of it's popular software and this can incite boycotts. I am a legal owner of Warcraft II BNE, two copies actually. I should be able to play Warcraft II on systems that are current and supported as well as open. I'm sure ReactOS will work just fine on old hardware if it is stabilized, but it isn't stable right now and the developers have not released since October or longer. The only way to get free Windows NT it seems is to support the ReactOS project. Sadly, I can't. Even if they make their fundraising goals and can hire competent programmers to help move the project along faster, there is no telling when stability will be achieved. -- LogMeIn Rescue: Anywhere, Anytime Remote support for IT. Free Trial Remotely access PCs and mobile devices and provide instant support Improve your efficiency, and focus on delivering more value-add services Discover what IT Professionals Know. Rescue delivers http://p.sf.net/sfu/logmein_12329d2d ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user -- LogMeIn Rescue: Anywhere, Anytime Remote support for IT. Free Trial Remotely access PCs and mobile devices and provide instant support Improve your efficiency, and focus on delivering more value-add services Discover what IT Professionals Know. Rescue delivers http://p.sf.net/sfu/logmein_12329d2d___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Windows 98SE and ipxwrapper...
Op 26-12-2012 5:40, dmccunney schreef: I have an old Fujitsu Lifebook p2110 with an 867mhz Transmeta Crusoe CPU and 256MB RAM (of which the Crusoe grabs 16MB off the top for code morphing.) That morphing and learning the architecture is indeed slow for a while, possibly forever. The big issue on the Lifebook is a slow IDE4 HD with an anemic transfer rate. IDE4 is a BIOS limitation, so a faster drive isn't an option. Big apps just load slow, aside from RAM requirements once up. I don't even try to run a current Firefox, as it's really sluggish on Linux or Windows. To the extent I browse from the box (seldom), I use Midori, Opera, SeaMonkey 1.X, or (if in Windows) occasionally IE (long enough to go to a known good site, grab something, and exit.). Economically probably not worthwile, but SSDs exist in various forms. The usual SAS, SATA and PCIe (and mSATA), but also still old IDE in both desktop (40pin) and laptop versions (44pin). I'm not sure if any NT-family Windows version is just as compatible with old software as that Win98 is. Likely Linux with Wine comes close as well. Bernd -- LogMeIn Rescue: Anywhere, Anytime Remote support for IT. Free Trial Remotely access PCs and mobile devices and provide instant support Improve your efficiency, and focus on delivering more value-add services Discover what IT Professionals Know. Rescue delivers http://p.sf.net/sfu/logmein_12329d2d ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Windows 98SE and ipxwrapper...
On Wed, Dec 26, 2012 at 7:04 AM, Bernd Blaauw bbla...@home.nl wrote: Op 26-12-2012 5:40, dmccunney schreef: I have an old Fujitsu Lifebook p2110 with an 867mhz Transmeta Crusoe CPU and 256MB RAM (of which the Crusoe grabs 16MB off the top for code morphing.) That morphing and learning the architecture is indeed slow for a while, possibly forever. The CPU is quick enough. Transmeta was an early attempt at power saving for mobile devices (and notable because Linus Torvalds worked for them when they were still in stealth mode and no one knew what they were up to.) A faster CPU wouldn't get me much. Limits on the box have more to do with low RAM and slow drive.I/O. I posed around a bit when I got it looking for info, and it apparently got decent reviews when it was new. It came from Fujitsu with original WinXP, and SP2 seems to have been an after the fact addition by the original owner. I suppose that made performance a bit better, given the way Win service packs tend to increase RAM requirements. The big issue on the Lifebook is a slow IDE4 HD with an anemic transfer rate. IDE4 is a BIOS limitation, so a faster drive isn't an option. Big apps just load slow, aside from RAM requirements once up. I don't even try to run a current Firefox, as it's really sluggish on Linux or Windows. To the extent I browse from the box (seldom), I use Midori, Opera, SeaMonkey 1.X, or (if in Windows) occasionally IE (long enough to go to a known good site, grab something, and exit.). Economically probably not worthwile, but SSDs exist in various forms. The usual SAS, SATA and PCIe (and mSATA), but also still old IDE in both desktop (40pin) and laptop versions (44pin). Absolutely not economically worthwhile. I was given the box by a friend who upgraded, and it's mostly a What can I do to tweak it *without* spending money exercise. For instance, it is supposedly expandable to 384MB RAM with a 128MB RAM daughter card. You can still get that from MemoryX, but it will cost more than 4GB of DDR3 RAM for a current box. And even if I pull the IDE HD and substitute an SSD, I still have the BIOS limitation, so it's not clear things would be a lot quicker. I lose seek time and rotational latency, but still have the issue of how fast data can get into RAM. .I don't know, and am not spending the money required to find you. I'm not sure if any NT-family Windows version is just as compatible with old software as that Win98 is. Likely Linux with Wine comes close as well. Depends on what you're trying to run. I successfully run DOS apps in a console window on 2K. There are a few 32bit windows apps that insist on XP and won't install, but most of what I use does. I haven't had cause to try to run 16bit apps from the Win 3.X days. For the stated use case, I'd install a stripped down version of 98SE if I could get it to work as required. Bernd __ Dennis https://plus.google.com/u/0/105128793974319004519 -- LogMeIn Rescue: Anywhere, Anytime Remote support for IT. Free Trial Remotely access PCs and mobile devices and provide instant support Improve your efficiency, and focus on delivering more value-add services Discover what IT Professionals Know. Rescue delivers http://p.sf.net/sfu/logmein_12329d2d ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Made XP work okay...
Would Microsoft please distribute an activation crack and let people freely use 32 bit Windows XP at will? I prefer dumb programming questions (stack overflow) here ;-) -- LogMeIn Rescue: Anywhere, Anytime Remote support for IT. Free Trial Remotely access PCs and mobile devices and provide instant support Improve your efficiency, and focus on delivering more value-add services Discover what IT Professionals Know. Rescue delivers http://p.sf.net/sfu/logmein_12329d2d ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Made XP work okay...
Hi again, On Wed, Dec 26, 2012 at 4:58 AM, Michael Robinson plu...@robinson-west.com wrote: I got my K6-2 500 with 504 megs of ram running XP SP3 well enough by turning off the swap file. Don't let XP swap, Warcraft II works fine. 500 MB should be plenty for XP. Seriously, I know software is always increasing requirements, but it's not reasonable (IMO) to need more than that. While I can't say I've ever played Warcraft 2, I don't think it would need much RAM, relatively, compared to newer stuff. http://www.mobygames.com/game/warcraft-ii-tides-of-darkness That says it is indeed a DOS (or Macintosh) game, surprisingly. So you only need Win32 for networking?? I think Mike Brutman said there was an experimental third-party build of DOSBox with NE2000 support. (Doesn't DOSBox support IPX??) Though if the game uses / needs Win32-specific stuff, you're probably out of luck. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warcraft_2 This says it works on other OSes too. (Battle.net is a separate version? Which one do you have and use?) Linux, Amiga4, etc. Even Saturn and Playstation consoles supposedly run it. So, worst case scenario, you can use or grab one of those if your PC isn't good enough. The scsi hard drive, despite being a Seagate Cheetah, really slows the system down. I don't let my Linux firewall allow this old machine to access the Net, so there are a LOT of protection programs I don't need to run. I don't need spywareblaster, clamwin, spybot search and destroy, crap cleaner, or Windows defender for starters. In fairness, it's not MS' fault that so many viruses etc. target Windows. And yes, antiviruses make things worse a lot of times. It's more painful on older machines. I'm not 100% confident in the method I used to bypass activation. Would Microsoft please distribute an activation crack and let people freely use 32 bit Windows XP at will? IIRC, Win2k didn't need activation and had smaller footprint, hence why many prefer it. But it wasn't ever targeted for home users, only pros. Still, you could probably find a copy on eBay. I've been studying Windows 7 verses Windows XP and honestly, it's a toss up. Both systems are bloated and complex. When XP came out, it had much higher requirements than Win9x. But it offered a lot more, including better stability. But of course the DOS compatibility is much lower. :-( Though XP is light years slimmer and more functional (for DOS) than later versions, even with the bloated SP3. So I would definitely not use Win7 in any capacity for DOS stuff unless you were willing to live exclusively inside emulators (DOSBox) or hypervisors (VirtualBox), aka slow and buggy. A ROM based dos system is more secure than even the typical Linux system and it's going to be light weight. That's not saying much though, I can't compare Apples to Oranges and be fair about it. Dunno. Again, you could probably try something else like FreeBSD with emulator, esp. without X11. That should be fairly slim on RAM usage. http://wiki.minix3.org/en/UsersGuide/RunningOnBochs?action=showredirect=UsersGuide/RunningMinixOnBochs The ipxwrapper hack seems to force one to use Windows NT 4.0 or newer. If only someone would port ipxwrapper to freedos and write a program to create a DOS executable out of a Win32 app like Warcraft II BNE. Add network card support for many of the current network cards and on mobo nics to that, there is suddenly no reason why Warcraft II can't be played on old computers using a: free, lean, and nice operating system. The Battle.net version is supposedly is Win32 native and uses TCP/IP. So if you can find that, that might be better for you than trying to get a DOS game working on NT (who [server OS] was never targeted for games, hence why MS didn't fix bugs there for Quake [DOS]). You're right, with enough motivation (and preferably source code), a motivated person could fix any of these issues and make it more DOS friendly. See Hexen2 [Quake-based], which (thanks to hard work of Ozkan Sezer and others) was re-ported back to DOS/DJGPP and works fabulously. But that is unlikely to happen for most games, esp. for DOS. People would rather work on Linux or Windows native ports (or 64-bit) than anything else, apparently. Warcraft II and Freedos's memory footprint is small enough, even if the necessary WIN32 support is added most likely, that one should be able to run the game using freedos in way under 100 megs. Note that most network cards built into motherboards and many PCI network cards are currently not supported in DOS and one has to take care of that somehow. I think that running Warcraft II Battle.Net edition on a freedos system is possible, but there are a lot of pieces to pull together and Blizzard probably won't offer to help. I doubt it would work, but you could also try something like SanOS: Sanos is a minimalistic 32-bit x86 OS kernel for network server appliances running on standard PC hardware. The kernel implements basic
Re: [Freedos-user] Made XP work okay...
I had Warcraft II Tides of Darkness, is a DOS program, I used to run this program on a Win95 machine with 16 MB of RAM. Windows is required in order to run scenary editor, but the game itself is a DOS program. As long as I know Warcraft II battle net edition is a newer version, but I have not experience with that. There is a free alternative to warcraft II, Freecraft running on linux, is not more under active development, with this program you can to open .mud scenary files from Warcraft. I have used freecraft, runs great on a 160 Mb machine, using Damn Small Linux, freecraft is available as package from DSL web. El 26/12/2012 07:01 p.m., Rugxulo escribió: Hi again, On Wed, Dec 26, 2012 at 4:58 AM, Michael Robinson plu...@robinson-west.com wrote: I got my K6-2 500 with 504 megs of ram running XP SP3 well enough by turning off the swap file. Don't let XP swap, Warcraft II works fine. 500 MB should be plenty for XP. Seriously, I know software is always increasing requirements, but it's not reasonable (IMO) to need more than that. While I can't say I've ever played Warcraft 2, I don't think it would need much RAM, relatively, compared to newer stuff. http://www.mobygames.com/game/warcraft-ii-tides-of-darkness That says it is indeed a DOS (or Macintosh) game, surprisingly. So you only need Win32 for networking?? I think Mike Brutman said there was an experimental third-party build of DOSBox with NE2000 support. (Doesn't DOSBox support IPX??) Though if the game uses / needs Win32-specific stuff, you're probably out of luck. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warcraft_2 This says it works on other OSes too. (Battle.net is a separate version? Which one do you have and use?) Linux, Amiga4, etc. Even Saturn and Playstation consoles supposedly run it. So, worst case scenario, you can use or grab one of those if your PC isn't good enough. The scsi hard drive, despite being a Seagate Cheetah, really slows the system down. I don't let my Linux firewall allow this old machine to access the Net, so there are a LOT of protection programs I don't need to run. I don't need spywareblaster, clamwin, spybot search and destroy, crap cleaner, or Windows defender for starters. In fairness, it's not MS' fault that so many viruses etc. target Windows. And yes, antiviruses make things worse a lot of times. It's more painful on older machines. I'm not 100% confident in the method I used to bypass activation. Would Microsoft please distribute an activation crack and let people freely use 32 bit Windows XP at will? IIRC, Win2k didn't need activation and had smaller footprint, hence why many prefer it. But it wasn't ever targeted for home users, only pros. Still, you could probably find a copy on eBay. I've been studying Windows 7 verses Windows XP and honestly, it's a toss up. Both systems are bloated and complex. When XP came out, it had much higher requirements than Win9x. But it offered a lot more, including better stability. But of course the DOS compatibility is much lower. :-( Though XP is light years slimmer and more functional (for DOS) than later versions, even with the bloated SP3. So I would definitely not use Win7 in any capacity for DOS stuff unless you were willing to live exclusively inside emulators (DOSBox) or hypervisors (VirtualBox), aka slow and buggy. A ROM based dos system is more secure than even the typical Linux system and it's going to be light weight. That's not saying much though, I can't compare Apples to Oranges and be fair about it. Dunno. Again, you could probably try something else like FreeBSD with emulator, esp. without X11. That should be fairly slim on RAM usage. http://wiki.minix3.org/en/UsersGuide/RunningOnBochs?action=showredirect=UsersGuide/RunningMinixOnBochs The ipxwrapper hack seems to force one to use Windows NT 4.0 or newer. If only someone would port ipxwrapper to freedos and write a program to create a DOS executable out of a Win32 app like Warcraft II BNE. Add network card support for many of the current network cards and on mobo nics to that, there is suddenly no reason why Warcraft II can't be played on old computers using a: free, lean, and nice operating system. The Battle.net version is supposedly is Win32 native and uses TCP/IP. So if you can find that, that might be better for you than trying to get a DOS game working on NT (who [server OS] was never targeted for games, hence why MS didn't fix bugs there for Quake [DOS]). You're right, with enough motivation (and preferably source code), a motivated person could fix any of these issues and make it more DOS friendly. See Hexen2 [Quake-based], which (thanks to hard work of Ozkan Sezer and others) was re-ported back to DOS/DJGPP and works fabulously. But that is unlikely to happen for most games, esp. for DOS. People would rather work on Linux or Windows native ports (or 64-bit) than anything else, apparently. Warcraft II and Freedos's
Re: [Freedos-user] Made XP work okay...
On Wed, Dec 26, 2012 at 6:31 PM, Rugxulo rugx...@gmail.com wrote: 500 MB should be plenty for XP. Seriously, I know software is always increasing requirements, but it's not reasonable (IMO) to need more than that. While I can't say I've ever played Warcraft 2, I don't think it would need much RAM, relatively, compared to newer stuff. XP itself should run in it. The question if apps you will run under XP. I recently inherited an Acer notebook originally belonging to the late husband of a friend. She didn't need it, and figured I could put it to use as a traveling device. It came with XP Home. After applying all available patches since it had last been regularly used (a couple of years ago), then removing unneeded startup programs and turning off unneeded services, I got the base memory XP required after boot down to about 275MB. The box has 1.5GB RAM, so I have some headroom. (Nero Home Essentials, which I replaced with a few open source apps, is a pig, and a fair bit of the gains came from taking it out of the loop.) The scsi hard drive, despite being a Seagate Cheetah, really slows the system down. I don't let my Linux firewall allow this old machine to access the Net, so there are a LOT of protection programs I don't need to run. I don't need spywareblaster, clamwin, spybot search and destroy, crap cleaner, or Windows defender for starters. In fairness, it's not MS' fault that so many viruses etc. target Windows. And yes, antiviruses make things worse a lot of times. It's more painful on older machines. I've rethought my position on this stuff in recent years. Because it is the dominant OS on the desktop, Windows will be the principal target for viruses and the like. I have Windows Auto-update turned on on XP, because the odd patch still gets issued. I'm pleased to see MS issuing patches and making it possible to push them out and apply them automatically. I just wish MS had recognized the severity of the problems and started their security push years earlier than they did, The biggest net win was likely what they did with Vista and have continued with Win7: the default user has a Power User profile, which can run things, but not install them. Most bad stuff needs admin rights to do what it does, and bounces off if it can't get them. (I know folks running 2K and XP who deliberately set up Power User profiles and run under those, becoming administrator only when necessary for software installs and the like. I've had the odd wish that MS had started that practice back when NT was first released, with the NTFS filesystem able to properly enforce permissions on a user level.) On my old Lifebook, my Win2K Pro install got hosed by a Symantec A/V update, and I had to do a clean re-install and rebuild my config. When I did, I left A/V *off*. I also applied all available service packs and critical updates, then turned off the Update service. There won't be more updates for 2K, so why leave the service up looking for things that won't exist? (Doing that saved me a SVCHOST process and about 10MB RAM.) Viruses and the like are infections, and infections have vectors by which they enter the host body. Rather than trying to treat the infection once contracted (which is what many security programs try to so), keep it from infecting in the first place. The biggest vector for viruses is email attachments. I use GMail as my primary email account. GMail is web based, and mail resides on Google's servers. I prefer the web interface, and have no need for a local copy of 99.99% of the mail I get, so I don't download via POP. Mail and attachments usually never reach my machine. And GMail implements viewers for most common file types, so I can look at attachments without actually downloading them. Other downloads are all made from known good sites that scan on their end. I no longer run A/V in Windows. A/V does nothing to stop malware. That I deal with by not running IE, and using Firefox with the NoScript addon that blocks scripting if the site isn't in a whilelist. I have a few anti-malware tools like Malware Bytes and Spybot, but I *don't* run the resident extensions intended to do real-time blocking. I run the occasional on-demansd scan, and never find anything worse than tracking cookies, which I can block in other ways if I care. Usually, I don't. I *do* use CCleaner, but that has nothing to do with viruses or malware. It's simply a hand janitor program, useful for removing files like system logs I don't normally need. I'm not 100% confident in the method I used to bypass activation. Would Microsoft please distribute an activation crack and let people freely use 32 bit Windows XP at will? IIRC, Win2k didn't need activation and had smaller footprint, hence why many prefer it. But it wasn't ever targeted for home users, only pros. Still, you could probably find a copy on eBay. Win2K had home and pro variants. It does have a smaller footprint, but a lot of
