[Freedos-user] Installing FreeDOS alongside MS-DOS on old system
Hello everyone, I have an old 1995-vintage pentium system running a triple-boot of Debian, MS-DOS 6.22, and Windows 95. I would like to install FreeDOS along side MS-DOS on the DOS 6.22 partition, but have been running into some trouble. The machine has a CD drive, but cannot boot from CD, and I cannot get the FreeDOS 1.2 install floppy to simultaneously recognize the CD drive and the HDD. (Actually I can get a configuration where the CD drive seems to be recognized by the installer, which then complains that it can't find any fixed disks, but when I drop to a shell, I can browse the HDD but not the CD-drive). I have tried moving the floppy contents to a subdirectory on the target drive, but the install scripts seem to have too many lines that assume that the directory structure from the floppy is at the root of the drive in question, and I don't really want to drop the floppy contents directly into the root of my DOS partition because they contain an autoexec.bat (instead of fdauto.bat), so if I'm not careful I could end up blowing away the existing autoexec.bat on the drive. I suppose I could just drop components in one by one, but that sounds like a lot of work. So I have a few questions: 1) Can anybody think of anything that might resolve the drive detection issue? 2) Is there any alternative to or subset of the installer files on the floppy image such that I can boot into my existing DOS installation and pull everything off the CD, considering that preliminary steps like partitioning or formatting my HDD are neither needed nor desired? 3) Is there some Grand Unified Tarball that I can just unpack to the mountpoint of my DOS partition in Debian (rather than unpacking the zips for individual packages one by one)? 4) Failing that, what's the minimum set of packages from freedos.org/software that I'd have to unpack on the MS-DOS partition to pull down the rest from the net? I assume FDNPKG at least. Does it have any dependencies? Also, I see a package "FDIMPLES" that seems to imply that FDINST is an available package manager, which FDIMPLES uses, and I see a corresponding "FDI sources" package but I don't see any sign of a binaries package for FDI (or is it all scripts?). Pulling down packages from the net from within DOS isn't something I really want to do, though I can if all else fails. I have a network stack installed on my MS-DOS partition, but mostly use it on my LAN and try not to have anything but Linux talk to the outside internet. In my current configuration, autoexec.bat actually loads the driver briefly, syncs the system time with a local NTP server (the RTC battery died long ago), and then unloads the driver again, so I'm not actually even on the network under DOS most of the time. Jon Brase ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] unp - "Executable file restore utility"
Dear Friends, How are you doing? At random, I was watching a youtube video on password cracking of dos games (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMz_PYnpJPY) and I found unp (http://unp.bencastricum.nl) Maybe we could ask the author if he could add an open-source license so we can add on FreeDOS? "What the ... is UNP? Yeah.. good question... If you start it, it's first line will tell you it's an "Executable file restore utility". And I guess that is exactly what it was when I started it. When I started UNP it was written to be able to decompress (restore) all kinds of compressed executable files (for MS-DOS that is). What is UNP capable of? As explained in the previous section, UNP is able to decompress executable files. But while developing it, I found the need for additional features which I implemented as well. UNP is now capable of doing much and much more to your file than just decompression: - Convert your executable file from a .COM to a .EXE structure and vice versa. - Insert small files (comments for example) into .EXE file's headers. - Remove an overlay from an .EXE file. - Copy just the overlay from an .EXE file to another file. - Merge overlays into your image (.EXE files only) . - Optimize and shrink your .EXE file by removing useless data from the header. - Increase your header's size to a multiple of 512 (some claim that this causes the program to be loaded faster). - Optimize relocations items (makes the program hdropt from pkware obsolete). What routines can UNP remove? AINEXE V2.1 ANTIBODY AVPACK V1.20 AXE V2.2 CENTRAL POINT ANTI-VIRUS V1, V1.1 COM2CRP V1.0 COMLOCK V0.10 COMPACK V4.4, V4.5 CRYPTA V1.00 CRYPTCOM DELTAPACKER V0.1 DIET V1.00, V1.00d, V1.02b, V1.10a, V1.20, V1.44, V1.45f ENCRCOM V2.0 EPW V1.2, V1.21, V1.30 EXELITE V1.00aF EXEPACK V4.00, V4.03, V4.05, V4.06 F-XLOCK V1.16 ICE V1.00 IMPLODE V1.0 Alpha KVETCH V1.02ß LINK /EXEPACK V3.60, V3.64, V3.65, V3.69, V5.01.21 LZEXE V0.90, V0.91, V1.00a MCLOCK V1.2, V1.3 MEGALITE V1.18a, V1.20a OPTLINK PACKEXE V1.0 PACKWIN V1.0 PASSCOM V2.0 PGMPAK V0.13, V0.14, V0.15 PKLITE V1.00ß, V1.00, V1.03, V1.05, V1.12, V1.13, V1.14, V1.15, V1.20, V1.50 POJCOM V1.0 PRO-PACK V2.08, V2.14 PROCOMP V0.82 PROTECT! EXE/COM V1.0, V1.1, V2.0, V3.0, V3.1, V4.0, V5.0 SELF-DISINFECT V0.90ß SHRINK V1.0 SCRNCH V1.00, V1.02 SYRINGE TINYPROG V1.0, V3.0, V3.3, V3.6, V3.8, V3.9 TURBO ANTI-VIRUS V7.02A, V9.40 UCEXE V2.3 USERNAME V2.00, V2.10, V3.00 WWPACK V3.00, V3.01, V3.02 " Kind Regards, Geraldo Netto Sapere Aude => Non dvcor, dvco site: http://exdev.sf.net/ github: https://github.com/geraldo-netto linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/geraldonetto/ facebook: https://web.facebook.com/geraldo.netto.161 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
