[Freedos-user] can FreeDOS do anything to make up for Virtualbox and VMWare's lack of decent support for DOS sound?
This is kind of a sore point when using Windows-based virtualization apps. Virtualbox (and I believe VMWare) support SoundBlaster 16, but only to a certain extent (as in later versions of Windows). They don't support DOS sound, period. One of the things I noticed with DOS games is that I/O ports are not supported (e.g. A220 and P330) by Virtualbox or VMWare's implementation. Because I remembered that BIOS extensions are something that were used many years ago to adapt machines BIOS that (for instance) didn't support larger sized HDDs, I'm wondering if the same sort of thing can be done to implement a much more accurate version of a SoundBlaster ISA card which allows DOS games to fully recognize an improved virtualized ISA sound card and make use of it. I know that DOSBox is able to achieve sound for DOS games, so it seems like something not too difficult unless the virtual app would block it from working. I figured the easiest path would be something like what DOSBox uses, except implemented in FreeDOS but a BIOS 'extension' is another avenue. I guess a BIOS extension would depend on having access to the code for SeaBIOS or whatever Oracle or VMWare uses to virtualize hardware. Steve___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Installing FreeDOS alongside MS-DOS on old system
On Mon, 16 Sep 2019 17:13:42 +0200 Eric Auer wrote: > Hi Jon, > > > To answer the question which packages are BASE, check > > > http://www.freedos.org/software/ > > The idea is that BASE has similar functionality to what > you get with a 3 floppy MS DOS installation or with the > DOS mode of Windows 95 or 98. Of course there are very > interesting packages in the other categories, but unless > you have plenty of space, you will not usually want to > install all from all categories! You probably will not > even need everything from BASE, depending on your taste. My question isn't actually what packages are in base. My question is, given the presence of an existing MS-DOS install, what is the minimal set of packages that would need to be unpacked onto the MS-DOS partition *in order to get the package manager running*. Once the package manager is running under MS-DOS, I can use it to pull in any other desired components of FreeDOS, then add a boot option for FreeDOS to GRUB. Do I just need to install the package manager itself, or does it have other dependencie? For instance, does it use batch scripts that require FreeCOM? Does it, in general, require the presence of any FreeDOS components other than itself? > We did have older installers which tried to automatically > insert FreeDOS at places where other MS operating systems > already are present, but there are too many possibilities > to smoothly handle them all and in particular new Windows > versions have too little DOS in them for our installers to > be able to properly edit multi boot related files. So this > is something to be better done by hand. As experienced DOS > user, you will understand how to do it and as human, you > will be able to adjust it to your system :-) Fair enough. > Regarding your user space installer, where would you want to > run it? Inside an existing DOS? Then it would have to leave > the SYS and config / autoexec edit steps to the user, as too > many variants are possible. It would basically just be some > way to run the package manager with user-specified source and > target locations and a wildcard list of packages to install. > > Maybe some experienced package manager user can give us the > syntax for doing exactly that with very little typing :-) > > You would neither want to FDISK nor FORMAT when doing those > steps from an already existing DOS, obviously, to keep that. The userspace installer is a separate idea from the "within DOS" installer, and would run from within a multitasking OS such as *nix or Windows (modern NT-kernel Windows, not DOS-kernel Windows). The primary component would be a *nix or Win32/64 implementation of the FreeDOS package manager, which would unpack FreeDOS packages selected by the user to the mountpoint of a specified FAT partition or disk image. Optional functions could include writing a boot sector and providing a default autoexec.bat / config.sys when there is not an existing DOS installation on the disk / image provided, and potentially even creating a new disk image or partitioning a disk. If the above optional features were included, it present the user with the following menu when run: "Welcome to the FreeDOS installer for Linux! Do you want to: 1) Manage FreeDOS packages on a FAT partition mounted on this machine? 2) Create a FreeDOS disk image for use in a virtual machine? 3) Install FreeDOS to an unused disk or partition on this machine?" ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Freedos vs ms-dos 7.1
Dear Eric Is there anyone I can call at the moment with a few questions I have about Freedos? It seems too unwieldy to explain in email. I have questions that are intertwined and depend on the answers etc, 5-10 minutes would be enough.Regards Thalis -- goodness = beauty = truth 16.09.2019, 17:25, "Eric Auer" :Hi! If you ask me, you usually only want to installsources for one package at a time, while readingthose particular sources, not for the whole systemat the same time. Some sources are rather large.Regarding your aim, even really old computers areusually strong enough for a simple Linux, which ismore effective for surfing the web or using office.However, you can imagine that Netscape 4, runningon 16 MB RAM, will be almost as bad as Arachne forsurfing modern websites. But with a fraction of theRAM of a modern smartphone you can already run somefar more modern Linux browsers than Netscape 4 :-)For text based browsing, try LINKS, LYNX or W3M, andmake sure to use wired internet if you are using DOS.If only wireless exists, you can use external deviceswhich bridge between wireless and a LAN connector.I agree that many Linuxes probably dropped supportfor older CPU than Pentium Pro / Pentium III in thedefault install. I even feel increasing pressure toinstall the 64 bit version of stuff, although, intheory, it should not matter with 4 GB RAM or less.Regards, EricPS: As said, you may also get very slow install whenthe installer happens to run with a badly chosen ordetected set of drivers for stuff like internet, USBor UMB / EMS, or bad config options for those.PPS: Thanks for the clarification, Geraldo :-)___Freedos-user mailing listFreedos-user@lists.sourceforge.nethttps://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Replace Windows 98SE with Linux....
Hi! > source system. Can Q-Soft 2 run on any Linux system via Wine? You will have to try. How fancy is the GUI / network / etc.? How much contact to low level hardware is required? > Can Linux still support the ISA bus I see drivers for ancient graphics cards vanishing from default distros from time to time, but I guess you still have something VESA VBE compatible and maybe PCI network? I assume you only need ISA for your special hardware ISA cards for which you will need special drivers anyway? Are Linux drivers for those available? Which features etc.? > and run on as little as a 2.4 Ghz Pentium 4 SBC? Easily. As with Windows, it is significantly less fun to run on a single core CPU, but unlike Windows, Linux will not keep one core busy with antivirus 24/7 ;-) > Can Freedos replace the MS-DOS 6.22 system in this machine? Probably, unless you also run Windows for Workgroups or other things highly optimized to run with *Microsoft* DOS. > The major problems you will run into is the proprietary ISA card. > Maybe Virtualbox could help here on a powerful enough SBC with a > PICMG-1.3 backplane that has ISA. Small computers from the Raspberry Pi size? Those usually use ARM CPU, so even running DOS or Win9x at all will need a simulation step. Of course you could use Virtualbox or similar tools, but then you could just as well use ANY new computer in the first place and simulate everything else. Your problem will be to use your special ISA cards and as your software seems to require Win9x, not just DOS, just running FreeDOS on bare hardware will not be enough. You can of course try the HX DOS extender which can run some "low requirement" Windows apps directly in DOS for that, but I would not expect Wine to work well. Too many layers of abstraction between your Windows app and the ISA slot. Industry PC with DOS compatible CPU and ISA slot may work. So what exactly are the requirements of your software and what are the features of your ISA cards? Non-ISA hardware and software might exist, maybe even open source, which can do similar work than your Q-Soft, but I do not know what Q-Soft and QSP do? Regards, Eric ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Freedos vs ms-dos 7.1
Hi! If you ask me, you usually only want to install sources for one package at a time, while reading those particular sources, not for the whole system at the same time. Some sources are rather large. Regarding your aim, even really old computers are usually strong enough for a simple Linux, which is more effective for surfing the web or using office. However, you can imagine that Netscape 4, running on 16 MB RAM, will be almost as bad as Arachne for surfing modern websites. But with a fraction of the RAM of a modern smartphone you can already run some far more modern Linux browsers than Netscape 4 :-) For text based browsing, try LINKS, LYNX or W3M, and make sure to use wired internet if you are using DOS. If only wireless exists, you can use external devices which bridge between wireless and a LAN connector. I agree that many Linuxes probably dropped support for older CPU than Pentium Pro / Pentium III in the default install. I even feel increasing pressure to install the 64 bit version of stuff, although, in theory, it should not matter with 4 GB RAM or less. Regards, Eric PS: As said, you may also get very slow install when the installer happens to run with a badly chosen or detected set of drivers for stuff like internet, USB or UMB / EMS, or bad config options for those. PPS: Thanks for the clarification, Geraldo :-) ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] Replace Windows 98SE with Linux....
Microsoft seems to think everyone can buy a new computer frequently, but the QSP-2 uses an ISA shared memory card that is not compatible with non ISA systems and Q-Soft 2 seems to require dos based Windows. Since Microsoft has graciously decided that $100k+ machines which depend on Windows 98SE don't matter, the ideal solution substitutes an open source system. Can Q-Soft 2 run on any Linux system via Wine? Can Linux still support the ISA bus and run on as little as a 2.4 Ghz Pentium 4 SBC? Can Freedos replace the MS-DOS 6.22 system in this machine? The major problems you will run into is the proprietary ISA card. Maybe Virtualbox could help here on a powerful enough SBC with a PICMG-1.3 backplane that has ISA. Even a substitute for Windows 98SE running on top of Freedos for the gui would be a nice alternative. I know there is FLTK for a gui environment on Freedos, but how do you implement the WIN32 API or does wine work with FLTK and Freedos? -- Michael C. Robinson ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] unp - "Executable file restore utility"
Hey Eric/Folks, How are you doing? Ah no, I didn't mean to create any problem I just found the unp and wanted to share because it might be useful at some point... Keep Rocking! :) 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 On Mon, 16 Sep 2019 at 00:12, Eric Auer wrote: > > > Hi Geraldo, > > are you sure you want to start a discussion about > password cracking here?? Of course there are other > reasons why unpacking can be useful - for example > to re-package in more modern ways or to re-stub > software which uses outdated DOS extenders etc. > > Regards, Eric > > > > ___ > Freedos-user mailing list > Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Installing FreeDOS alongside MS-DOS on old system
Hi Jon, FreeDOS supports 28 bit LBA, so depending on whether you have BIOS bugs which require lower limits, you could use any size of harddisk as long as all partitions used by FreeDOS end within the first 128 GB ;-) Not sure whether Windows 95 supports LBA. MS DOS 6 does not, but it does not support FAT32 either: You could put the FAT16 disks in the first 8 GB (reachable without LBA) and add FAT32 and other partitions for the other systems after that. Note that if the ISO does not fit on your partition, then copying all ZIPs from the ISO on your partition and then unzipping them would not fit either. But the good news is that the BASE system is a lot smaller and there is no need to install the sources, in particular not of many packages at the same time. So you could just mount the ISO in your Linux and then manually unzip a few ZIPs of your choice to your DOS partition to use very little FreeDOS disk space. I agree that mounting the ISO in DOS is not a good choice if you want to keep your partition sizes as they are now. To answer the question which packages are BASE, check > http://www.freedos.org/software/ The idea is that BASE has similar functionality to what you get with a 3 floppy MS DOS installation or with the DOS mode of Windows 95 or 98. Of course there are very interesting packages in the other categories, but unless you have plenty of space, you will not usually want to install all from all categories! You probably will not even need everything from BASE, depending on your taste. The theoretical minimum would be the kernel and FreeCOM command.com plus of course SYS (I even have a Linux Perl script to create artificial boot sectors without having to boot DOS first, but that may need extra manual steps) but in practice you want to add at least a few drivers such as HIMEMX and CTMOUSE and for example FreeDOS EDIT. The SHSUCDX driver and CTMOUSE are small and effective, but I can imagine that you prefer to keep your old low level CD ROM driver on top of that, if your drive is old. > http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distributions/1.2/repos/pkg-html/group-base.html We did have older installers which tried to automatically insert FreeDOS at places where other MS operating systems already are present, but there are too many possibilities to smoothly handle them all and in particular new Windows versions have too little DOS in them for our installers to be able to properly edit multi boot related files. So this is something to be better done by hand. As experienced DOS user, you will understand how to do it and as human, you will be able to adjust it to your system :-) The only FreeDOS things which need more work than unzipping packages into a common FreeDOS subdirectory are the two boot config / autoexec files (which you should customize anyway) and the initial boot process: You need the kernel.sys file to be in the root directory and you need a boot sector at a place where your boot menu can load it. In your case, this will probably be a file opened by GRUB, generated either by running our SYS with special options or even by my old Perl script, but for normal users, it would just be put into the boot drive boot sector by running SYS without options, which will very likely damage your other boot menu options. You probably know how to install and if necessary repair those. For the rest, even your command.com can be in any location as long as your config / autoexec points to where it is. Regarding your user space installer, where would you want to run it? Inside an existing DOS? Then it would have to leave the SYS and config / autoexec edit steps to the user, as too many variants are possible. It would basically just be some way to run the package manager with user-specified source and target locations and a wildcard list of packages to install. Maybe some experienced package manager user can give us the syntax for doing exactly that with very little typing :-) You would neither want to FDISK nor FORMAT when doing those steps from an already existing DOS, obviously, to keep that. Regards, Eric ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Installing FreeDOS alongside MS-DOS on old system
On Mon, 16 Sep 2019 00:07:50 +0200 Eric Auer wrote: > Hi Jon, > > for your advanced multi boot project, you could boot FreeDOS > from floppy and use the SHSU... drivers to open the ISO file > of the install CD as if it were a CD drive, after using your > Windows or Debian to copy the ISO to your DOS/Win95 harddisk. Unfortunately, the ISO would very nearly fill up that partition. While I'm not using any such software now, I had at one point had at one point been playing with ancient software on the machine in question that choked on HDDs over 8 GiB, and the largest disk I had under that limit was 4 GiB, so all three systems on the disk have fairly limited storage available. I've got a fair number of old DOS games installed on the DOS partition, so space is even more limited. If I put the ISO on that partition, I wouldn't have any space left to unpack anything. Now, I could prune stuff off the partition or move it to one of the other partitions, or I could get a screwdriver, image the disk to a larger HDD and then expand all the partitions out, so it's not that I absolutely can't drop the ISO in and mount it, but given the time and effort involed in those courses of action I do want to be sure that freeing up disk space and dropping the ISO in is my best option before I commit to either variant of that action. > The ISO has plenty of ZIPs to use with the package manager, > but you will be unable to see most of the apps which do the > install process, as those are in a boot disk image inside a > separate area of the ISO ;-) As an alternative to booting from the FreeDOS installer floppy and mounting the ISO, can you comment on the feasibility of unpacking the package manager into the existing MS-DOS installation and working from the CD, given that MS-DOS is not having any trouble with the CD drive? What minimal package set would I need to unpack manually? I assume FDNPKG, anything else? Is there any configuration that I'd need to do to point it at the install CD? > You can manually use the package manager to install the FreeDOS > packages of your choice to some FreeDOS specific directory on > your harddisk and you can use special options of SYS to create > a FreeDOS boot sector file and then add that file to your boot > menu, such as GRUB, instead of using SYS the normal way which > would overwrite your MS DOS or Win95 boot sectors. > > I would NOT use the normal install script, as that does not have > specific precautions to behave well in a system such as your PC > which has already 2 MS "DOS" style operating systems installed. Good to know. I don't know how common paralell DOS installs like what I'm planning are, but but given the fdauto.bat/fdconfig.sys convention they don't seem to be entirely unanticipated, so it might be good for FreeDOS to have an installer, or at least a standardized, how-to-ized manual install procedure for that use case. Likewise, given that I've found a separate Linux partition to be a very nice administrative environment for a DOS install on bare hardware, and the fact that the VM/emulation use case seems to be one that's forseen for many FreeDOS installs, it might be good to have a userspace installer for *nix and/or Win32 that can install FreeDOS with a user-selected package set to an empty FAT filesystem, either in a parition or an image file (let's call the concept "supersys"). Jon Brase ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
