Re: [Freedos-user] Forwarding and commenting a FreeDOS 1.3rc3 critical review

[Eric Auer]

Hi, forwarding a verbose update of the review from Laaca on BTTR :-)

My summary: Better LFN, faster disk I/O, problem of opening many small
files on CD being slow (how about using more CACHE, Jerome? Maybe even
with read-ahead or similar speed tricks?), problem of the Live CD not
having apps pre-installed (it has to unzip them first), problem of the
Live CD having too few apps available, lack of progress/status info,
lack of analysis of existing system structure before install, lack
(?) of ability to select install size (base, full etc.), lack of a
mechanism to dual-boot on FAT (you know my opinion about that),
lack of "what has been done where" summary log on the target drive,
wish that running "help" should initially display an introduction
or readme about what can be found where on the installed system,
lack of utilities for manual installs and repairs in the live cd,
wish for image viewer and mpxplay on live cd and default install,
wish to add image editors, wish for descript.ion or similar method
to let people know what zip contains what in the on-CD repository,
wish to have separate directories for apps which are multiple files?

The original update from Laaca on BTTR is below. Regards, Eric



Source: https://www.bttr-software.de/forum/forum_entry.php?id=17804

Well, I wrote quite crititical review about FreeDOS 1.3rc. It was
reposted into FreeDOS user forum and was few times commented and it is
of course commented also here.
Just to be clear - I don't complain about DOS as such but specificaly
about FreeDOS 1.3rc and mainly about installer.
I will try to summarize my criticism into several categories:
1) Missing DOS/FreeDOS features
2) FreeDOS live system from CD
3) FreeDOS installation
4) Help system
5) Packages

ad 1) Here is not much to say. I miss some feature in modern DOS system
but it is not fault of the FreeDOS community. I would like to see a
better LFN driver, better disk read/write/seek performance (much worse
than f.e. under Win98). We do not have a good ASPI driver we do not have
a good task switcher and so on and so on. But again, this is not the
point of my criticism.

ad 2) Why the booting starts with unzipping of many basic utilities like
ATTRIB.ZIP, FORMAT.ZIP, COMP.ZIP and so on. Why it just does not unzip
something like BASE.ZIP which would contain all this basic utilities?
You forgot how slow is the file seeking on the CD on the real hardware?
Sure, the contiuous read is fast on most of CD drives but seeking and
opening the large amount of small files is a pain.
And after this we have only very bare system with only few
applications/utilities. It is much worse than very ancient Live CD of
FreeDOS 0.9a which I have and occasionaly use (although it is also a
.BAT files complicated mess). In 0.9 it ended in rather primitive menu
system but working system which allowed many tasks. Even much better is
Hiren boot CD. I heard that it is based on Linux or Windows. But I have
a completely different experience. I have a older version (Hiren 9.5?)
which is DOS based. The boot proces ends in quite nice menu sorted into
categories and subcategories which instantly allow quite wide spectrum
of useful things what to do in DOS.

ad 3) Installer should be generaly much more user friendly and should
inform a user about the process. It would be nice if it could perform a
system scan in the begining and resume the system from point of view of
DOS compatibility.
Like "Warning, no IDE/ATAPI interface, optical drives will not work" or
"Your processor does not support a 32-bit protected mode - the install
set will be adjusted for it".
In case when some existing disk partitions are present it should offer
the installation of boot manager (preferably BootMGR by BTTR software).
FDisk should be replaced by some better alternative.
Also - the user should be prompted to choose a variant of installation
(very basic, extended, full) and also a list of desired applications via
a expandable list for custom modifications of the options above.
I like the point that current installer creates a multi configuration
FDCONFIG.SYS. It is important because on the tested notebook (Dell
Latitude 610) the first two options did not work for me and only the
other options were working.
And finally - after the installation must be displayed (and also saved
into some protocol file) some summarization of whole process.


ad 4) Help system must be totaly reworked. After writing "help" should
be displayed some overview like:
* FreeDOS core files and installed into C:\ and C:\FDOS\BIN. Other
available disks are: .
* For your convience are prepared these BAT scripts
- for filemanager write "dz"
- for system info write "sysinfo"
- for more info about applications in C:\EDITORS write "help editors"
- for more info about applications in C:\SOUND\ write "help sound"
...
- for more info about DOS core utils and DOS batch language write "help dos"

ad 5) In harddisk mode and live CD mode must be easily available
utilities for 

Re: [Freedos-user] Forwarding and commenting a FreeDOS 1.3rc3 critical review

[Jerome Shidel]

> On Apr 29, 2021, at 2:09 PM, Harald Arnesen  wrote:
> 
> Deposite Pirate [29.04.2021 19:20]:
> 
>> April 29, 2021 6:32 PM, "geneb"  wrote:
>>> On the surface of it, he's apparently asking for a "windows experience" in 
>>> a text mode operating
>>> system. DOS isn't a "point and drool your way to fame and fortune" 
>>> operating system. If he thinks
>>> this is bad, he'd have a stroke when presented with a non-graphical UNIX 
>>> system. ;)
>> 
>> The FreeDOS install system is the worst I've ever seen of all DOSes because 
>> it's merely a bunch of
>> batch scripts (which are going to be slower) and not a proper C or assembly 
>> program like DR/PC/MS-DOS.

Because all it’s logic is in some batch files?

Multi-languages, multiple themes, advanced mode and on and on and on. As batch 
scripts go, it pushes the limits of what can be done. 

Sure the installer could have been done in assembly or one of the HLLs. But, it 
was asked to be done as a batch with only
a few simple questions. The funny part is -- there were several people that it 
couldn’t even be done at all. But, there it is and it works well enough. 

> 
> I shouldn't think that would matter much. Most of the time is spent on
> unzipping the various programs anyway.
> -- 
> Hilsen Harald

Yup, mostly.

However it should be noted that depending on the hardware and install media 
used, installation time can very a lot. For example, I can do a FULL install of 
RC4 (coming soon) to a completely blank VM in VirtualBox (including 
partitioning) from the LiveCD in under a minute. If I use the FullUSB and its 
VMDK attached as a HD, it is even faster (although I probably spend 2 minutes 
changing VM settings and such after the install). VMware fusion is almost as 
fast. QEMU on the other hand is kinda slow probably 2-3 minutes and a FULL 
install takes longer. But then again, I was running QEMU on Linux inside a 
VirtualBox instance on an older Mac. Your results may very.

What it comes down to is this: Like any program, performance will vary based on 
your computer system.

Jerome



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Re: [Freedos-user] Forwarding and commenting a FreeDOS 1.3rc3 critical review

[Jon Brase]

On 4/29/21 4:57 PM, Jim Hall wrote:

We could bolt on a graphical desktop environment onto FreeDOS, but the
"graphical desktop" discussion never goes anywhere. Some people want
*this* GUI and others want *that* GUI. We have three graphical
desktops for FreeDOS: SEAL, oZone and OpenGEM. None are actively
maintained, but OpenGEM is the most mature. When I demo'd SEAL and
oZone for the YouTube channel, I found lots of bugs still present in
both of these desktop environments. So I'd hesitate to promote either
of those as "the one and only" FreeDOS graphical desktop.


I'm not particularly attached to any particular GUI, or to having a GUI 
in FreeDOS per-se, but I'm a bit concerned, in terms of preserving 
historical software, that the Win16 API is not well served by existing 
options (Wine, NTVDM, MS-DOS/Win3 under virtualization, Win3 under 
DOSBox, etc), compared to the resources that are available for DOS, so 
I'd really like to see something I'll call "Free-point-one", a FOSS 
implementation of Win16 built on FreeDOS. I imagine that you probably 
regard it as out of scope for FreeDOS, and in any case it's late for 
such a project to get started, but given the history of the Win16 API, 
it's a very DOS-adjacent problem, if you know what I mean.




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Re: [Freedos-user] Forwarding and commenting a FreeDOS 1.3rc3 critical review

[Jim Hall]

On Thu, Apr 29, 2021 at 5:39 PM geneb  wrote:
>[..]
> > OpenGEM is nice and I believe it is quite mature. And being based on
> > DR-DOS GEM (and the Atari TOS) the OpenGEM user interface should be
> > somewhat familiar to old-school DOS users. I like OpenGEM, as much as
> > I might like any DOS graphical desktop.
[..]
>
> Preaching to the choir - I got it open sourced in '97. ;)
>
> g.
>

:-)


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Re: [Freedos-user] problems with FreeDOS 1.3RC....

[Jerome Shidel]

> On Apr 29, 2021, at 3:39 PM, Eric Auer  wrote:
> [..]
> Does version 1.3rc3 already offer the ELTORITO driver as option?
> Then it should work with that as long as it has booted FROM the ISO.

RC3 does not have ELTORITO driver.

RC4 includes the ELTORITO driver.

> 
> Or does it always use the UDVD2 driver? The UDVD2 driver SHOULD
> support SATA, but you may have to disable AHCI in your BIOS setup
> and switch to legacy style disk controller support.

For RC3, yes. RC4 not always.

RC4 is undergoing final review. It ain’t far off.

:-)

Jerome



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Re: [Freedos-user] Forwarding and commenting a FreeDOS 1.3rc3 critical review

[geneb]

On Thu, 29 Apr 2021, Jim Hall wrote:


We could bolt on a graphical desktop environment onto FreeDOS, but the
"graphical desktop" discussion never goes anywhere. Some people want
*this* GUI and others want *that* GUI. We have three graphical
desktops for FreeDOS: SEAL, oZone and OpenGEM. None are actively
maintained, but OpenGEM is the most mature. When I demo'd SEAL and
oZone for the YouTube channel, I found lots of bugs still present in
both of these desktop environments. So I'd hesitate to promote either
of those as "the one and only" FreeDOS graphical desktop.

Realistically, OpenGEM/FreeGEM don't *need* to be maintained.  They're 
feature-complete.



OpenGEM is nice and I believe it is quite mature. And being based on
DR-DOS GEM (and the Atari TOS) the OpenGEM user interface should be
somewhat familiar to old-school DOS users. I like OpenGEM, as much as
I might like any DOS graphical desktop. Even so, I'm not convinced
that FreeDOS needs to install a default GUI. A graphical desktop
doesn't really help you to run DOS programs. For example: when you
launch a "plain" DOS application from OpenGEM, you leave the graphical
environment. It's not like Linux or Windows where the DOS application
starts up in a "window" while you do other OpenGEM things.


Preaching to the choir - I got it open sourced in '97. ;)

g.

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Re: [Freedos-user] Forwarding and commenting a FreeDOS 1.3rc3 critical review

[Jim Hall]

On Thu, Apr 29, 2021 at 11:31 AM geneb  wrote:
>[..]
> On the surface of it, he's apparently asking for a "windows experience" in
> a text mode operating system.  DOS isn't a "point and drool your way to
> fame and fortune" operating system.  If he thinks this is bad, he'd have
> a stroke when presented with a non-graphical UNIX system. ;)
>

Let's keep this a respectful conversation and not start a "point and
drool" grudge match. :-)

Like any DOS, FreeDOS has always been a single-user "single task"
command line operating system. FreeDOS is not trying to create the
next "Windows" or become the next "Linux." FreeDOS is DOS, and that
includes all the limitations that come with DOS.

We could bolt on a graphical desktop environment onto FreeDOS, but the
"graphical desktop" discussion never goes anywhere. Some people want
*this* GUI and others want *that* GUI. We have three graphical
desktops for FreeDOS: SEAL, oZone and OpenGEM. None are actively
maintained, but OpenGEM is the most mature. When I demo'd SEAL and
oZone for the YouTube channel, I found lots of bugs still present in
both of these desktop environments. So I'd hesitate to promote either
of those as "the one and only" FreeDOS graphical desktop.

OpenGEM is nice and I believe it is quite mature. And being based on
DR-DOS GEM (and the Atari TOS) the OpenGEM user interface should be
somewhat familiar to old-school DOS users. I like OpenGEM, as much as
I might like any DOS graphical desktop. Even so, I'm not convinced
that FreeDOS needs to install a default GUI. A graphical desktop
doesn't really help you to run DOS programs. For example: when you
launch a "plain" DOS application from OpenGEM, you leave the graphical
environment. It's not like Linux or Windows where the DOS application
starts up in a "window" while you do other OpenGEM things.


Jim


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Re: [Freedos-user] Forwarding and commenting a FreeDOS 1.3rc3 critical review

[Eric Auer]

Hi Jim,

>> https://www.bttr-software.de/forum/board_entry.php?id=17794

Of course, fresh replies keep coming in there, too :-)

> 1. Ugly FDISK
> 2. LiveCD is unusable

The Live CD is not useful as "Boot and get tools" CD, but
I am not sure whether that is the goal. However, just "Boot
as if you had put a DOS boot disk into your floppy drive"
would really miss most of the opportunities of having more
space on CD, even if you want to be humble. Do not be TOO
humble.

> 3. After installation, the installer doesn't set up a GUI
> or even a file manager by default

It seems the installation is BASE only. Again, only putting
alternatives for those things on a whole target harddisk
partition which you would have gotten from 3 floppies full
of MS DOS does not match the vast space even of a 20 year
old computer. We do not need th

> 4. Complaints about the programs and utilities, and how
> they are organized

By the way, there could be more "luring me into the LSM HTML
overview" for example at the root directory of the IBIBLIO
category directories of our classic package collection which
you link directly from http://freedos.org/download/ ==>
https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/
because there are no readme files or anything similar. Only
the inconspicuous "What's included" link, but not the big
colored "FreeDOS files archive" link gives you orientation:

https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distributions/1.2/repos/pkg-html/index.html

Good to know that FreeDOS 1.3rc4 will bring improvements :-)

About FDISK, what are YOUR thoughts about xfdisk, spfdisk, ranish?

> - Compatibility is key.
> - FreeDOS 1.3 will remain 16-bit.

Nothing stops you from including 32-bit apps like DOSFSCK
in particular on a CD ISO which is almost impossible to
boot on 16-bit hardware anyway. You can limit stripping
down things to 16-bit only to the floppy edition of 1.3,
which should ALSO make KSSF loading for FreeCOM available
as normal XMS swap FreeCOM is a big memory hog on systems
which do not provide XMS. Of course, please also include
both FDXMS286, 8086-compatible (but FAT32-enabled?) kernel
and the 386+ EMS/XMS drivers there. After all, even 386
computers are still hard to boot from CD/DVD drives.

> - FreeDOS 1.3 will retain focus on a single-user command-line environment.

Agreed, no need to default-install a GUI and most GUIs are
somewhat large so the could be reserved to larger versions
of the ISO. Still nice to have a big ISO with plenty BUT
not all apps to have a good pile of apps without requiring
additional separate downloads :-)

> - FreeDOS 1.3 will continue to run on old PCs
> (XT, '286, '386, etc)

In particular the floppy edition. There is not much point
to say the CD edition is not allowed to require e.g. 16 MB
of RAM for cache and RAMDISK in a world where only such PC
which cannot boot a CD at all have less than that amount.

> but will support new hardware with expanded driver support,
> where possible.

Sure!

> - The "Base" package group will contain everything that
> replicates the functionality from MS-DOS.

YES, as a means of organizing stuff, but NO, the CD ISO
edition should make it very clear that BASE is only for
minimalists and it should already include MORE than BASE
ready for install without requiring additional downloads.

Also, the Live CD mode should already have a bit more
than BASE, but it could work with "unzipping selected
packages to a RAMDISK of maybe 12 or 128 MB" if we want
to avoid to include packages twice (packaged and live).

> I don't see turning FreeDOS into a "mini-Windows" or a "mini-Linux."

Indeed.

Regards, Eric



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Re: [Freedos-user] Forwarding and commenting a FreeDOS 1.3rc3 critical review

[Jim Hall]

On Thu, Apr 29, 2021 at 11:55 AM Eric Auer  wrote:
>
>
> Hi TK Chia,
>
> > Apparently the review was from Laaca --- the author of Blocek.
>
> Yes, I mean that post. However, I have only quoted part of
> the post and not mentioned the name because my impression
> was that just publicly shouting how horrible and disgusting
> FreeDOS is cannot be the start of a productive discussion:
>
> https://www.bttr-software.de/forum/board_entry.php?id=17794
>

Yes, my impression of Laaca's post was that it was mainly venting. And
I see a few replies on Laaca's BTTR post that suggest that.

Yet, feedback is useful. But sometimes you have to dig a little deeper
to understand what the feedback is actually trying to say. Reading
through Laaca's post, it seems the major complaints about FreeDOS 1.3
RC3 are:

1. Ugly FDISK
2. LiveCD is unusable
3. After installation, the installer doesn't set up a GUI or even a
file manager by default
4. Complaints about the programs and utilities, and how they are organized


And there are some valid complaints there. But I think the "coming
soon" FreeDOS 1.3 RC4 addresses some of these (I've been working with
Jerome on RC4, especially in doing a package review). The RC4 LiveCD
environment is much better. And the organization of the programs and
utilities is also improved.

Yes, FDISK is the plain black-and-white version of FDISK we've always
had. It's also virtually identical to MS-DOS FDISK. It would be really
nice to have an updated FDISK program, one that is a little friendlier
than plain FDISK. I imagine a tool similar to Disk Druid

would be easier for folks to use and would still feel like "DOS."
Probably the best way to create this kind of tool is to fork FDISK, to
take advantage of Tom's recent bug fixes in FDISK. But as Tom
discovered when he updated FDISK to fix several partition bugs, the
FDISK source code is really ugly and needs a *lot* of cleanup. This
could be a really interesting project for a developer with some DOS
experience. I'll update the "Contribute" page with this idea.

I think we've been clear about #3, though. FreeDOS is DOS, and every
time this discussion comes up, the email list community is clear: we
prefer FreeDOS to be more like classic DOS. I captured those
sentiments in the FreeDOS wiki when describing the goals and core
assumptions for FreeDOS 1.3:

- Compatibility is key.
- FreeDOS 1.3 will remain 16-bit.
- FreeDOS 1.3 will retain focus on a single-user command-line environment.
- FreeDOS 1.3 will continue to run on old PCs (XT, '286, '386, etc)
but will support new hardware with expanded driver support, where
possible.
- The "Base" package group will contain everything that replicates the
functionality from MS-DOS.

I don't see turning FreeDOS into a "mini-Windows" or a "mini-Linux."
Yes, we include a number of Unix-like tools, but we also include a
bunch of other tools and programs that are very DOS-like.


> I had not been paying attention that Laaca advertised a system
> information screen in his own BLOCEK app here, but given that he
> has added that, he could also make a stand-alone sysinfo tool to
> include in the distro, for those who do not know that they have
> to look for that information inside a text editor.

I did not realize there was a system information function inside
Blocek, either.* I agree this would be interesting to pull out as a
separate tool so users can see it.

We used to have a Compinfo tool in FreeDOS (the one you mentioned
below) but it has not been maintained in a very long time. Would be
interesting to try it again, to see how well it works compared to
Blocek's system information feature.

> Alternatively, which system information tools with suitable open
> source license could be included?
[..]
> https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/util/system/compinfo/
>
> Would COMPINFO be sufficient?
>

-Jim


* I don't use Blocek as my text editor, so I hadn't seen the system
information feature. Blocek requires graphics mode and a mouse, which
is too much when all I want to do is edit text. And Blocek's key
bindings seem incomplete compared to other editors; I don't know how
to select text with the mouse or via the keyboard. But my DOS text
editing needs are simple (I use FED to write code, and FreeDOS EDIT
for everything else) so maybe I am not the right user for Blocek.


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Re: [Freedos-user] Forwarding and commenting a FreeDOS 1.3rc3 critical review

[Liam Proven]

On Thu, 29 Apr 2021 at 22:00, Eric Auer  wrote:
>
> there have been TSR to display a clock or other status in DOS,
> at a selectable location or by reserving a whole line on screen.

The clock is a lot easier than the battery level, though... But I
guess there are probably standard APM calls to query remaining battery
power. I always load POWER.EXE when running PC/MS/DR DOS in VMs,
because it makes the CPU usage drop to zero when the VM is idle. I
think it (or analog) might support a how-much-charge-is-left call but
I don't know.

> About your suggestion to show which drives exist at boot: The
> installer could use VOL, a FOR loop and testing whether or not
> a drive exists to display such information. There also are some
> left-over tools from older versions of the distro to check which
> drives are CD/DVD, which are FAT12, FAT16 or FAT32, how much
> space is free on them and so on.

Yup. A simple list would help.
>
> The output of MEM is so long (shortest style is without /C I think)
> that you would not fit much else on the screen. Same for the output
> of LBACACHE (when loading, or using the INFO or STAT options later).

There's always `mode con lines=43` or `mode con: lines=50` :-)

> The good thing about VER /R is that it shows both kernel and command.com
> version in 3 lines (plus one empty line before that). As people probably
> use UHDD+UDVD2 instead of LBACACHE+?+CDRCACHE, cache info will differ.

Well, yes.

> What would be the pros and cons relative to the already existing DOS
> versions of Ranish, fdisk, xfdisk and spfdisk?

Ahh, good point. Like I said, I generally stick to the on-board tools
in PC/DR DOS, without 3rd party additions. I wasn't aware of these,
except Ranish, which is the only tool I know that can renumber
existing partitions in place. I am not sure I've used it this century,
though.

> > I have long been pondering a very simple, very heavily cut-down,
> > text-only Linux whose main purpose was to multitask multiple instances
> > of DOSemu
>
> Too late? ;-) https://cmaiolino.wordpress.com/dosbian/

Well, no, but good find!

That's an ARM distro, not x86. It runs DOSbox, a PC emulator, whereas
DOSemu runs DOS sessions on the bare metal of x86 machines. DOSbox is
mainly aimed at games, whereas DOSemu is intended for productivity
apps, and allows reading files on Linux partitions, printing to Linux
printers, etc.

But conceptually close!

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Re: [Freedos-user] problems with FreeDOS 1.3RC....

[Eric Auer]

Hi Ralf,

>> https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distributions/1.3/previews/1.3-rc3/FD13-LiveCD.zip
>>
>> I don't have any blank CDs so burned the ISO onto a DVD+RW disc
> 
> That won't work, not sure how you have burned a CD ISO image onto a DVD

That should actually work without problems :-) And as you see at
the end of the mail, it has worked for one of his three computers
where the driver (UDVD2?) was able to work with the controller.

The others might have been SATA in AHCI mode, but SATA without
AHCI mode should also work with UDVD2.

When in doubt, I recommend the ELTORITO driver, which works with
BIOS assistance on most drives as long as you booted from them.

Of course you are right that DVD tend to use other formats in
various situations, e.g. UDF instead of ISO9660 filesystems.

But when you burn an ISO which is meant for a CD onto a DVD,
it is enough that both have 2048 byte sector size. It just
does not make use of the remaining space and nobody stops
you from putting ISO9660 filesystems on DVDs to boot them.

A more interesting problem are the CD/DVD drive DOS drivers.
The thread at the BTTR forum mentions this page about FreeDOS:

http://www.z80.eu/freedoscd.html

It explains how to replace the embedded XCDROM CD/DVD driver of
the old FreeDOS 1.0 distro by GCDROM for SATA, Panasonic for USB
or some other drivers. I doubt that GCDROM would be able to work
on more drives than UDVD2 and I doubt that the instructions are
easily translated into similar changes for FreeDOS 1.3, but the
described tools are still nice to know for WINDOWS users who want
to modify the content of FreeDOS ISO images :-)

Regards, Eric

PS Harald: Some of our package managers ARE written in C and DO
have built-in ZIP libraries. I agree that accessing many small
files can be quite inefficient (even with a bit of cache). Not
sure how bad it is if 1.3 uses more BAT. Maybe a RAMDISK helps?



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Re: [Freedos-user] problems with FreeDOS 1.3RC....

[Ralf Quint]

On 4/29/2021 12:30 PM, Glenn McCorkle wrote:

Houston, we have a problem.

re: FreeDOS 1.3RC

Downloaded
https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distributions/1.3/previews/1.3-rc3/FD13-LiveCD.zip

I don't have any blank CDs so burned the ISO onto a DVD+RW disc


That won't work, not sure how you have burned a CD ISO image onto a DVD 
in the first place. The discs look at a first glance, similar, but there 
are subtle differences in how the data is actually organized between them...


Ralf



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Re: [Freedos-user] Printing over the network

[Frantisek Rysanek]

Soo... Bryan, here's a cooked download:
http://frantisek.rysanek.sweb.cz/FD_NET.zip
Download the ZIP and try to read your way through the readme files 
included.

Note that a copy of this message goes to the mailing list.
I am hereby guilty of redistributing binaries from a couple different 
sources - if anyone feels offended, please complain to me and I will 
withdraw that ZIP immediately.

Over the last few days, I've found a few moments to play with the MS 
Network Client, E1000.dos from Intel, the dis_pkt.dos v1.11 and mTCP. 
I ended up trying it all in a VirtualBox, where the emulated Intel 
Pro 1000 actually has the same PCI device ID :-) as Bryan's physical 
PC... I did that in a physical LAN where I have access to a Linux 
machine running Samba, configured to support the ancient version of 
the SMB protocol and a handful of DOS-related configuration features.

I have "structured" the results of my effort into two directories:

1) one geared for "the way of the pure CRYNWR packet driver", 
prepared for mTCP. You can try sending something to your printer 
using "NC", but I doubt that the GDI thing would respond to e.g. 
plain ASCII.

2) another directory, centered around the MS Network Client (which 
can optionally have the packet driver shim loaded too). This should 
allow you to map a local LPT device in DOS to a MS Network shared 
printer (served by Samba on a Linux box). Which looks transparent to 
well-behaved DOS apps, and can be leveraged for a further on-the-fly 
processing of the print job in software on the Linux machine.

Either variant allows you to learn the IP addresses obtained by the 
DHCP client and to ping other machines in the local network - which 
is a good starting point / introductory lesson into TCP/IP networking 
on your DOS machine :-)

For the MS network client, I have taken "major inspiration" from the 
NetBootDisk 6.5. I've toyed with this before, and today I have just 
unpacked its ramdisk onto my virtual C drive, let it boot, and took 
the resulting system.ini and protocol.ini that the set of scripts 
produced :-) Also the sequence of loading the various binaries comes 
from the NBD. I just minimized the set of binaries required and 
de-modularized the original flexible "loading sequence" of the NBD.

I have managed to get a plain ASCII text file printed on a decade old 
multifunction LaserJet (1522 if memory serves), through my "printing 
infrastructure". The hand-over point from DOS to the first downstream 
print queue is "LPT2:" mapped by "net use ..." to a queue advertised 
by Samba on Debian 9. Samba takes the queue definitions from a local 
/etc/printcap, and some LPR follows up from there. I believe the 
plain ASCII file has reached the printer without any modification.

In your use case Bryan, my "package of canned DOS drivers" is just a 
first half of the needed configuration. Next up, we need to configure 
Samba and CUPS to transport and transform your print jobs :-) 

It would be easiest for me to just log into your Linux box, but that 
has some non-trivial prerequisites, such as a mapped port from your 
router's NAT outside (or a TeamViewer install on the Ubuntu box) and 
a fair bit of trust between the two of us, because letting me in your 
living room is a hefty security hole. Details should better be 
discussed in private messages, for security reasons.

Alternatively, I can try sending you a minimal smb.conf and some 
instructions on how to install Samba on Ubuntu. That, for a start. 
Then we'd need to figure out the queueing magic in CUPS. I don't have 
much experience with advanced CUPS sorcery, but in the older days 
I've read about automagical "queue filters" that could auto-detect 
the data format of the print job being supplied by the client, and 
transform the job accordingly to suit the printer... I dare not hope 
for all that intelligence in this case, but I mean to say that 
various magical things are theoretically possible :-)

Frank



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Re: [Freedos-user] Forwarding and commenting a FreeDOS 1.3rc3 critical review

[Eric Auer]

Hi Liam,

there have been TSR to display a clock or other status in DOS,
at a selectable location or by reserving a whole line on screen.

About your suggestion to show which drives exist at boot: The
installer could use VOL, a FOR loop and testing whether or not
a drive exists to display such information. There also are some
left-over tools from older versions of the distro to check which
drives are CD/DVD, which are FAT12, FAT16 or FAT32, how much
space is free on them and so on.

I myself have the 4 kB VOLINFXL tool which shows the NAME, SIZE,
USED and FREE space of all drives. You can find a copy e.g. on
http://ericauer.cosmodata.virtuaserver.com.br/soft/specials/

> I always put a few commands in at the end of AUTOEXEC.BAT to display
> the disk cache size (SMARTDRV /V on PC DOS), the amount of free base
> memory (MEM /C), and the DOS version (VER /R). A list of available
> drives would be a really nice addition.

The output of MEM is so long (shortest style is without /C I think)
that you would not fit much else on the screen. Same for the output
of LBACACHE (when loading, or using the INFO or STAT options later).

The good thing about VER /R is that it shows both kernel and command.com
version in 3 lines (plus one empty line before that). As people probably
use UHDD+UDVD2 instead of LBACACHE+?+CDRCACHE, cache info will differ.

> For a more friendly FDISK, it might be possible to adapt the Linux
> `cfdisk` tool...

What would be the pros and cons relative to the already existing DOS
versions of Ranish, fdisk, xfdisk and spfdisk?

> I have long been pondering a very simple, very heavily cut-down,
> text-only Linux whose main purpose was to multitask multiple instances
> of DOSemu

Too late? ;-) https://cmaiolino.wordpress.com/dosbian/

Regards, Eric



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Re: [Freedos-user] problems with FreeDOS 1.3RC....

[Eric Auer]

Hi Glenn, about booting 1.3rc3 ISO from DVD+RW:

> https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distributions/1.3/previews/1.3-rc3/FD13-LiveCD.zip

> Booted it up on this Intel i5 machine which has a SATA DVD+RW drive
> ERROR: Unable to initialize CD-ROM drive.

> ... Intel DualCore machine which also has a SATA DVD+RW drive.
> ERROR: Unable to initialize CD-ROM drive.

> Will now try booting it on the old-as-dirt circa 1997 P-II machine
> which has an IDE/PATA DVD+RW drive.
> (quite slowly 'cus this P-II is only 266Mhz and has only 512MB of RAM)
> R:\>

> So, SATA DVD+RW drives seem to be a no-go.

Does version 1.3rc3 already offer the ELTORITO driver as option?
Then it should work with that as long as it has booted FROM the ISO.

Or does it always use the UDVD2 driver? The UDVD2 driver SHOULD
support SATA, but you may have to disable AHCI in your BIOS setup
and switch to legacy style disk controller support.

Regards, Eric



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[Freedos-user] problems with FreeDOS 1.3RC....

[Glenn McCorkle]

Houston, we have a problem.

re: FreeDOS 1.3RC

Downloaded 
https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distributions/1.3/previews/1.3-rc3/FD13-LiveCD.zip

I don't have any blank CDs so burned the ISO onto a DVD+RW disc

Booted it up on this Intel i5 machine which has a SATA DVD+RW drive

Chose the live option... result ...

ERROR: Unable to initialize CD-ROM drive.
A:\>


So, booted it on the Intel DualCore machine which also has a SATA DVD+RW drive.

Chose the live option... result ...

ERROR: Unable to initialize CD-ROM drive.
A:\>
___

Will now try booting it on the old-as-dirt circa 1997 P-II machine
which has an IDE/PATA DVD+RW drive.

BRB


There we go... she's loading-up.
(quite slowly 'cus this P-II is only 266Mhz and has only 512MB of RAM)

OK loaded-up and sitting at

R:\>



So, SATA DVD+RW drives seem to be a no-go.

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Re: [Freedos-user] Forwarding and commenting a FreeDOS 1.3rc3 critical review

[Harald Arnesen]

Deposite Pirate [29.04.2021 19:20]:

> April 29, 2021 6:32 PM, "geneb"  wrote:
>> On the surface of it, he's apparently asking for a "windows experience" in a 
>> text mode operating
>> system. DOS isn't a "point and drool your way to fame and fortune" operating 
>> system. If he thinks
>> this is bad, he'd have a stroke when presented with a non-graphical UNIX 
>> system. ;)
> 
> The FreeDOS install system is the worst I've ever seen of all DOSes because 
> it's merely a bunch of
> batch scripts (which are going to be slower) and not a proper C or assembly 
> program like DR/PC/MS-DOS.

I shouldn't think that would matter much. Most of the time is spent on
unzipping the various programs anyway.
-- 
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Re: [Freedos-user] Forwarding and commenting a FreeDOS 1.3rc3 critical review

[Liam Proven]

On Thu, 29 Apr 2021 at 18:17, Johnpaul Humphrey  wrote:
>
> I do not know about SYSINFO. I do not use it too much. having a way to
> check battery would be good on laptop.

I guess this is part of the problem. We forget how things are on a
multitasking OS.

There used to be a very obscure OS called Digital Research DOS Plus.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOS_Plus

It was an ancestor of DR-DOS, but before DR had the idea of doing a
rival to MS-DOS. DOS Plus was descended from Concurrent CP/M, but was
a single-user system with some, very limited, MS-DOS compatibility. In
the UK it was shipped with the first Amstrad PCs (Europe's first cheap
PC clones) and Acorn's BBC Master 512, an educational Mostek 6502
computer with an Intel 80186 co-processor.

The most visible difference between DOS Plus and any other DOS was
that DOS Plus displayed a status line at the bottom of the screen,
showing the time, what if anything was printing in the background,
which of its 4 screens you were on and some other info. It could
multitask CP/M-86 programs, but not DOS ones.

But without multitasking, how could you display a battery monitor? On
DOS, nothing can "run in the background" because there is no
background to run in.

In principle it could be in the prompt, but apart from the time, there
is no mechanism to _dynamically_ update an environment variable to
hold a changing value. One could write a TSR to do it (I think!) but
that is more precious base memory used up.

The one thing I can think of is that in DOSemu in Linux, when you
start a session, it lists the available drives and what they are
mapped to.

I always put a few commands in at the end of AUTOEXEC.BAT to display
the disk cache size (SMARTDRV /V on PC DOS), the amount of free base
memory (MEM /C), and the DOS version (VER /R). A list of available
drives would be a really nice addition.

For a more friendly FDISK, it might be possible to adapt the Linux
`cfdisk` tool, a menu-driven disk-partitioner, but it seems to have
more risk than benefit. Since DOS cannot by default access or display
drives formatted with NTFS, HPFS, ext2/3/4, XFS, Btrfs, ZFS etc., then
a friendly partitioner that makes it easy to remove drives whose
contents you can't see is asking for trouble. Better to boot a Linux
CD and use GParted.

I have long been pondering a very simple, very heavily cut-down,
text-only Linux whose main purpose was to multitask multiple instances
of DOSemu -- making it work like DESQview or something in the late
1980s/early 1990s. An OS in the tens of megabytes, worst case a few
hundred megs, which let you multitask DOS apps at full native speed.
(I.e. unlike DOSbox or some other emulator).

It might be both fun and useful, but it's not really DOS any more...


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Re: [Freedos-user] Forwarding and commenting a FreeDOS 1.3rc3 critical review

[Deposite Pirate]

April 29, 2021 6:32 PM, "geneb"  wrote:
> On the surface of it, he's apparently asking for a "windows experience" in a 
> text mode operating
> system. DOS isn't a "point and drool your way to fame and fortune" operating 
> system. If he thinks
> this is bad, he'd have a stroke when presented with a non-graphical UNIX 
> system. ;)

The FreeDOS install system is the worst I've ever seen of all DOSes because 
it's merely a bunch of
batch scripts (which are going to be slower) and not a proper C or assembly 
program like DR/PC/MS-DOS.


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Re: [Freedos-user] Forwarding and commenting a FreeDOS 1.3rc3 critical review

[Eric Auer]

Hi TK Chia,

> Apparently the review was from Laaca --- the author of Blocek.

Yes, I mean that post. However, I have only quoted part of
the post and not mentioned the name because my impression
was that just publicly shouting how horrible and disgusting
FreeDOS is cannot be the start of a productive discussion:

https://www.bttr-software.de/forum/board_entry.php?id=17794

I do not think that FreeDOS 1.3 aims to be a competitor to
Hiren or any of the Linux based "boot this and get a toolkit
full of easy to use apps to repair your system" Live CDs.

However, FDISK obviously does look as ugly as the MS DOS 1990s
version which makes it look horrible compared to GPARTED and
very unfriendly to use compared to the average modern Linux
installer which says "I see you have Windows 10 here, should
I shrink the partition and install Linux next to it? Or is it
okay to delete everything and use the whole drive for Linux?"
with only a small footnote saying "if neither of those two
choices are what you like, you can partition manually here".

I do NOT think that DOS can achieve that and I do NOT think
that we should port GPARTED and all the tools which it calls
in the background to DOS. Whoever wants to resize partitions
for dual-booting DOS with Windows 10 can simply boot a Linux
tool Live CD once. No worries, they are easy to use. And even
then, DOS has no tools which would be able to automatically
create a foolproof dual boot menu.

Bernd et al HAVE tried that in older versions of the distro,
for Windows 95/98 on FAT partitions, but it was far from being
foolproof so I am quite okay with forcing the user to manually
mess with such things instead of having an install wizard which
tries to do it but then fails and fries your other partitions.

Of course this topic is open for discussion :-)

I had not been paying attention that Laaca advertised a system
information screen in his own BLOCEK app here, but given that he
has added that, he could also make a stand-alone sysinfo tool to
include in the distro, for those who do not know that they have
to look for that information inside a text editor.

Alternatively, which system information tools with suitable open
source license could be included? As RayeR already wrote on BTTR,
HWINFO (which? note the Linux open source one, I assume), NSSI
(Navrátil Software System Information, mirrored on BTTR actually:
http://www.bttr-software.de/freesoft/system.htm ), VC (NC style
file manager, last update 2001?) etc. are not open source. BTTR
also lists AIDA (benchmarks and sysinfo), PC Diagnostics, etc.

I remember that MS DOS came with MSD (and MEMMAKER, a wizard to
optimize your config/autoexec for TSR/driver order in UMB etc.)
but I also remember that MSD was not particularily useful when
you compared it to classics such as Quarterdeck Manifest MFT.

As you can guess, FreeDOS is missing cool apps here. How about

https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/util/system/compinfo/

Would COMPINFO be sufficient?

How about file managers? NDN (Necromancer's DOS Navigator at
ndn.muxe.com) apparently has closed sources, but even supports
64-bit DPMI in DOS now? A free version of DOS NAVIGATOR, with
sources: https://www.ritlabs.com/en/products/dn/

The https://sourceforge.net/projects/doszip/ Doszip Commander is
yet another Norton Commander clone, as is the open source CONNECT
shell from http://www.dorlov.no-ip.com/Connect/ Some of the file
managers already are packaged for FreeDOS distros on ibiblio:

https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/util/disk/dn151/

https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/util/disk/dn2/

https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/util/file/doszip/

Which of those are or should be included / installed by default?

Three alternatives to FDISK which are in our ibiblio collection are:

https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/util/disk/xfdisk/

https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/util/disk/ranish/
(Ranish Partition Manager, only version 2.37 comes with sources)

https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/util/disk/spfdisk/

Which of those are how good or bad in your experience? I guess the
installer uses FDISK because that can be scripted to some degree?

So... Suggestions please :-) Which 1. SYSINFO TOOL, 2. FILE MANAGER
and 3. PARTITION EDITOR should be installed by default, used during
installation, be made available on the Live CD, etc.?

Cheers, Eric





PS: Interesting that util/user contains LPTLINK, which might be
a 2005 laplink clone? Is vc.zip really VISICALC? License??

PPS: Buy my pathetic little TUI menu tool! (it is free, of course) :-D
https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/util/user/mausmenu.zip



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Re: [Freedos-user] Forwarding and commenting a FreeDOS 1.3rc3 critical review

[geneb]

On Thu, 29 Apr 2021, TK Chia wrote:


Hello Johnpaul Humphrey,


All the things he finds objectionable I would have called FEATURES. He
would do better on Ubuntu.


Me, I am not so sure.  That was from Laaca --- a developer of DOS
programs himself.  He also mentions that he had been "using DOS for 27
years".  So if he says that things are bad, maybe they _are_ bad (for
whatever reason), and we should take heed...



On the surface of it, he's apparently asking for a "windows experience" in 
a text mode operating system.  DOS isn't a "point and drool your way to 
fame and fortune" operating system.  If he thinks this is bad, he'd have 
a stroke when presented with a non-graphical UNIX system. ;)



g.

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Re: [Freedos-user] Forwarding and commenting a FreeDOS 1.3rc3 critical review

[Johnpaul Humphrey]

> The user even has no information which disc drives are in the system.
I believe I was able to get this information, but USB was not
recognized for obvious reasons.

> No file manager is prepared and the user has no usable help.
I did have to download a file manager to get one, but dir is a good start.
Help was less helpful than man on UNIX in my experience, why I can't tell.

> The install is slow
That is interesting. I guess I didn't know how fast installs could be.
The fastest install I have ever had is Haiku, which is like lightning,
but FreeDOS install seemed pretty fast. I have no experience with
other DOSs though.

I do not know about SYSINFO. I do not use it too much. having a way to
check battery would be good on laptop.

Do you want FreeDOS to be like Hiren's boot CD? I know LiveCD is often
used for Recovery, but that seems like a sad place to end up.


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Re: [Freedos-user] Forwarding and commenting a FreeDOS 1.3rc3 critical review

[Johnpaul Humphrey]

I did not realize that! I just read complaints about no file managers
and ugly programs. That changes things.

On Thu, Apr 29, 2021 at 8:40 AM TK Chia  wrote:
>
> Hello Johnpaul Humphrey,
>
> > All the things he finds objectionable I would have called FEATURES. He
> > would do better on Ubuntu.
>
> Me, I am not so sure.  That was from Laaca --- a developer of DOS
> programs himself.  He also mentions that he had been "using DOS for 27
> years".  So if he says that things are bad, maybe they _are_ bad (for
> whatever reason), and we should take heed...
>
> Thank you!
>
> --
> https://gitlab.com/tkchia :: https://github.com/tkchia
>
>
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Re: [Freedos-user] Forwarding and commenting a FreeDOS 1.3rc3 critical review

[TK Chia]

Hello Johnpaul Humphrey,


All the things he finds objectionable I would have called FEATURES. He
would do better on Ubuntu.


Me, I am not so sure.  That was from Laaca --- a developer of DOS
programs himself.  He also mentions that he had been "using DOS for 27
years".  So if he says that things are bad, maybe they _are_ bad (for
whatever reason), and we should take heed...

Thank you!

--
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Re: [Freedos-user] Forwarding and commenting a FreeDOS 1.3rc3 critical review

[Johnpaul Humphrey]

All the things he finds objectionable I would have called FEATURES. He
would do better on Ubuntu.

On Thu, Apr 29, 2021 at 8:19 AM Eric Auer  wrote:
>
>
> Hi! Forwarding something from the BTTR forum:
>
> "I tried to use the FreeDOS 1.3RC installation CD. Because I found
> a Dell Latitude610 notebook. And I am really dispappointed because
> it is something really awful. The live system is unusable, the boot
> process ends in the minimal configuration unable to do anything
> useful. No file manager is prepared and the user has no usable help.
> The user even has no information which disc drives are in the system."
>
> The review also compares it to the Windows-based Hiren Boot CD,
> making me wonder whether we play in the same usability league.
>
> In Hiren, you get a hierarchical menu of available utilities at
> boot. So for Live CD utility purposes, it is very easy to use.
>
> Next, the review tests installation, given that the Live CD use
> case is as unfriendly as you would expect DOS to be ;-)
>
> "Ugly FDisk (although we have a more user friendly partition tools)"
>
> Also, the install is slow. How slow is it? Are caches used? ELTORITO?
>
> After the install: Again "No file manager, no infi about installed
> drives. No utility for getting some system information" Interestingly,
> the reporter mentions the BLOCEK text editor as the only source for
> getting a system information overview?
>
> Which better SYSINFO utilities could we bundle? HWINFO, NSSI
> and VC probably are all closed source, what else is out there?
>
> Finally, the reporter (the whole post has a quite harsh tone)
> complains that the default install will install FAR too few
> useful apps and that the package management groups are badly
> sorted (e.g. no subcategories for utilities) and that there
> should be no base64 tool in "base"...
>
> Regards, Eric
>
>
>
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Re: [Freedos-user] Forwarding and commenting a FreeDOS 1.3rc3 critical review

[TK Chia]

Hello Eric,


Finally, the reporter (the whole post has a quite harsh tone)
complains that the default install will install FAR too few
useful apps and that the package management groups are badly
sorted (e.g. no subcategories for utilities) and that there
should be no base64 tool in "base"...


Apparently the review was from Laaca --- the author of Blocek.

Thank you!

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[Freedos-user] Forwarding and commenting a FreeDOS 1.3rc3 critical review

[Eric Auer]

Hi! Forwarding something from the BTTR forum:

"I tried to use the FreeDOS 1.3RC installation CD. Because I found
a Dell Latitude610 notebook. And I am really dispappointed because
it is something really awful. The live system is unusable, the boot
process ends in the minimal configuration unable to do anything
useful. No file manager is prepared and the user has no usable help.
The user even has no information which disc drives are in the system."

The review also compares it to the Windows-based Hiren Boot CD,
making me wonder whether we play in the same usability league.

In Hiren, you get a hierarchical menu of available utilities at
boot. So for Live CD utility purposes, it is very easy to use.

Next, the review tests installation, given that the Live CD use
case is as unfriendly as you would expect DOS to be ;-)

"Ugly FDisk (although we have a more user friendly partition tools)"

Also, the install is slow. How slow is it? Are caches used? ELTORITO?

After the install: Again "No file manager, no infi about installed
drives. No utility for getting some system information" Interestingly,
the reporter mentions the BLOCEK text editor as the only source for
getting a system information overview?

Which better SYSINFO utilities could we bundle? HWINFO, NSSI
and VC probably are all closed source, what else is out there?

Finally, the reporter (the whole post has a quite harsh tone)
complains that the default install will install FAR too few
useful apps and that the package management groups are badly
sorted (e.g. no subcategories for utilities) and that there
should be no base64 tool in "base"...

Regards, Eric



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Re: [Freedos-user] DOS on (very) small form factor PCs?

[Frantisek Rysanek]

On 29 Apr 2021 at 22:32, Adam Nielsen via Freedos-user wrote:

> > Thanks for the NUC warning, but Win98 actually will switch from BIOS
> > to built-in drivers which are likely not able to cope with new
> > chips.
> 
> That's what I thought too, but I figured it would at least run in
> compatibility mode and IIRC the BIOS had options to run the SATA
> interface in IDE-compatibility mode so I figured my chances were good
> but alas no.
> 
Either generic IDE mode can be enabled in the HW, or you have a 
chance if Win98 are willing to work via the "compatibility mode" 
(BIOS services) - that has theoretical chance of working even on 
fairly new AHCI controllers, provided that the "firmware" still has 
BIOS services (int 13h if memory serves). I've found this post about 
AHCI vs. Win98:
https://msfn.org/board/topic/173885-ahci-and-windows-9x/

Not that I've ever tried this on modern hardware :-)  Also, you'll 
have a hard time finding modern PC hardware with less than approx. 
1GB of RAM, which is another principal "no go" for Windows98...

Overall, to run Win98 on modern PC hardware, I'd strongly recommend 
to install some modern OS first (even Debian Linux) and install Win98 
in a virtual PC / emulator. No problem with RAM size, HDD controller, 
VGA hardware compatibility, legacy BIOS support, generally drivers 
for hardware. The same goes for Windows XP on modern hardware, and 
the Windows 7 will soon follow (or have followed already, around Kaby 
Lake if not earlier. No driver for USB 3.1+ XHCI.)

> I've only bought Intel boards for quite a few years now 
>
As much as I am a diehard fanboy of Intel PC CPU's and chipsets in 
the industrial hardware that we sell, I am not a fanboy of 
Intel-branded *motherboards*.

I've had one bad experience, about a decade ago, on an LGA775 board 
at the time, which had an odd glitch that the board sometimes (often) 
would not be able to start from ACPI S5, after it has been booted 
into Windows XP and shut down by software a couple times. You had to 
pull the cord out of the wall socket, or flip the rocker switch on 
the PSU. Linux did not have this problem. And it was a couple dozen 
boards sold, and no problem ever acknowledged from Intel...
Other than that, the Intel BIOS looks like something "smug and 
simple" = allowing Intel to be first to the market, with their shiny 
new silicon on their own motherboards, like a reference 
implementation... but somehow as if the motherboards don't get much 
love from their maker after launch.

So Intel CPU's and chipsets definitely yes, but on other vendors' 
motherboards. With respect to no-nonsense legacy BIOS compatibility 
and no-frills reliable hardware, I'd like to praise Advantech in the 
"industrial" segment and specifically Gigabyte in the office-grade PC 
segment. Preferably if you purchase models that are not "hot off the 
press", i.e. the BIOS is not an initial shipping version.

> I do like the NUC though and I found that some of their older models
> list Win98 as supported so I am on the lookout for those models, but
> even second-hand ones go for surprisingly high prices where I am, and
> people seem happy with them as they don't come up for sale very often.
> 
Or maybe they don't last very long before they start getting flakey 
;-)  To me, the NUC is a problematic form factor. I've been a 
troubleshooter for a wide range of industrial PC's, including 
passive/fanless models - and I know what sized aluminium box with how 
many fins it takes, to decently heatsink an ATOM, or a full-fledged 
Core i3/5/7 CPU (even the T/U/Y models). The NUC feels just too small 
and flat-surfaced for the CPU that's quietly ticking away inside. The 
elevated inner temperature also affects an SSD that serves as a boot 
disk... I certainly wouldn't buy a second hand NUC.

I'm a big fanboy of Intel ATOM CPU's, from Bay Trail onwards. For a 
variety of uses, not necessarily for DOS specifically...
My favourite construction is: get a passive-cooled MiniITX board with 
an ATOM, and add a slow-revolving fan. Or just an airshroud to direct 
the faint draft of air from the PSU fan through the CPU heatsink.

Frank


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Re: [Freedos-user] DOS on (very) small form factor PCs?

[Frantisek Rysanek]

Speaking of nice vs. less complete VESA BIOS ROM's, I've known Intel 
for not having a full set of VESA modes since their first integrated 
graphics adaptors (not sure if 810/815, but 845 and afterwards 
certainly) - namely, 16-color indexed VESA graphics modes were 
missing (anything with 4 bits per pixel), which prevented some old 
and odd CAD apps from working... and I recall some apps resulting in 
a white screen even in modes that theoretically should've worked...

And, Windows 98 have specific severe quirks which cause them a 
problem to install and run on 512+ MB of RAM. My friend Rayer has 
described many details on his website, only the page is in Czech:
http://rayer.g6.cz/os/os.htm#WIN98-512MB
Try google translator if interested :-)

Frank



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Re: [Freedos-user] DOS on (very) small form factor PCs?

[Thomas Desi]

speaking of „form factor“ I have to look at the „price factor“, too. 

The Spectra.at Board-Set, Mini-ITX H110 159315 comes EUR 769,- / Stk. (+ 
tax!!), delivery time 2-3 weeks…
(an no housing…)





> Am 29.04.2021 um 12:41 schrieb Adam Nielsen via Freedos-user 
> :
> 
>>> ...the board format does not matter much.
>>> It's the CPU model/generation that matters.  
>> 
>> NOT. AT. ALL.
>> 
>> each Intel/AMD CPU produced the last 20 years is able
>> to execute the same way that the previous versions did.
> 
> If it doesn't matter "at all" then where can I get a modern CPU with
> working support for ISA DMA?  It was removed back in one of the Pentium
> 4 chipsets so the CPU model/generation is definitely important.
> 
>> to summarize: unless you have special needs, just every mainboard
>> produced the last 40 years should work with ANYDOS. Don't ask for
>> sound...
> 
> That's no guarantee though.  Some modern machines only provide partial
> BIOS services - only enough to get common operating system installers
> to run and no more.  I have had machines that booted to DOS and I could
> install an operating system on and it ran fine, but they would lock up
> when I tried to run most DOS programs because they were missing a
> bunch of ROM BIOS services.  It looks like they don't always bother
> implementing the full feature set when for 99.999% of their customers
> it will never get used.
> 
> It seems UEFI machines are the worst offenders for this, as they ship
> with a BIOS compatibility layer that has been written from scratch, as
> opposed to older machines that run the same BIOS code that's been in
> use for decades.  They apparently left all the old BIOS code hanging
> around unchanged for years in those implementations, but when they had
> to write a BIOS-compatible layer for UEFI from scratch, it seems some
> vendors just did the bear essentials only.
> 
> One of these was a small form factor Intel NUC I bought a few years
> ago with the intention of installing Windows 98 on it to use for
> playing old Windows 3D games, but alas I couldn't even run the Windows
> installer either.  Many programs just made it freeze.  The device very
> specifically states that it only supports running a limited number of
> operating systems and they really mean it.
> 
> Cheers,
> Adam.
> 
> 
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> 



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Re: [Freedos-user] DOS on (very) small form factor PCs?

[Eric Auer]

Hi Adam,

while the ability to provide ISA-like DMA for PCI (e.g. sound cards)
or PCIe basically vanished at least 10 years ago, I am less pessimistic
about BIOS services. Can you give specific examples of too stripped
down BIOSes in recent mainboards? Wikipedia sounds more as if it took
until 2019 before a significant number of vendors stopped including
a CSM to provide BIOS-like services on their UEFI firmware? I have
also heard about VGA, VESA or VBE getting worse, for example no 8x14
font or only powers-of-two bytes per line in VBE framebuffer RAM etc.

Those do not sound as if they would seriously impact classic DOS apps
apart from the DOS game sound problem of having no Sound Blaster 16?

> If it doesn't matter "at all" then where can I get a modern CPU with
> working support for ISA DMA?  It was removed back in one of the Pentium
> 4 chipsets so the CPU model/generation is definitely important.
> 
> That's no guarantee though.  Some modern machines only provide partial
> BIOS services - only enough to get common operating system installers
> to run and no more.  I have had machines that booted to DOS and I could
> install an operating system on and it ran fine, but they would lock up
> when I tried to run most DOS programs because they were missing a
> bunch of ROM BIOS services.

> One of these was a small form factor Intel NUC I bought a few years
> ago with the intention of installing Windows 98...

Thanks for the NUC warning, but Win98 actually will switch from BIOS
to built-in drivers which are likely not able to cope with new chips.

How about classic DOS on the NUC? Which DOS apps locked up on which
other PC as you have mentioned above, trying to use which features?

Regards, Eric



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Re: [Freedos-user] DOS on (very) small form factor PCs?

[Adam Nielsen via Freedos-user]

> > ...the board format does not matter much.
> > It's the CPU model/generation that matters.  
> 
> NOT. AT. ALL.
> 
> each Intel/AMD CPU produced the last 20 years is able
> to execute the same way that the previous versions did.

If it doesn't matter "at all" then where can I get a modern CPU with
working support for ISA DMA?  It was removed back in one of the Pentium
4 chipsets so the CPU model/generation is definitely important.

> to summarize: unless you have special needs, just every mainboard
> produced the last 40 years should work with ANYDOS. Don't ask for
> sound...

That's no guarantee though.  Some modern machines only provide partial
BIOS services - only enough to get common operating system installers
to run and no more.  I have had machines that booted to DOS and I could
install an operating system on and it ran fine, but they would lock up
when I tried to run most DOS programs because they were missing a
bunch of ROM BIOS services.  It looks like they don't always bother
implementing the full feature set when for 99.999% of their customers
it will never get used.

It seems UEFI machines are the worst offenders for this, as they ship
with a BIOS compatibility layer that has been written from scratch, as
opposed to older machines that run the same BIOS code that's been in
use for decades.  They apparently left all the old BIOS code hanging
around unchanged for years in those implementations, but when they had
to write a BIOS-compatible layer for UEFI from scratch, it seems some
vendors just did the bear essentials only.

One of these was a small form factor Intel NUC I bought a few years
ago with the intention of installing Windows 98 on it to use for
playing old Windows 3D games, but alas I couldn't even run the Windows
installer either.  Many programs just made it freeze.  The device very
specifically states that it only supports running a limited number of
operating systems and they really mean it.

Cheers,
Adam.


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Re: [Freedos-user] DOS on (very) small form factor PCs?

[Frantisek Rysanek]

On 28 Apr 2021 at 23:24, tom ehlert wrote:
> 
> > ...the board format does not matter much.
> > It's the CPU model/generation that matters.
> 
> NOT. AT. ALL.
> 
> each Intel/AMD CPU produced the last 20 years is able
> to execute the same way that the previous versions did.
> 
...okay, apologies, it is not my intention to start a flame war :-)

I agree that in terms of instruction set and memory/addressing modes 
supported, even the most recent x86 CPU's can still run 16bit DOS-era 
code.

What I meant by "CPU" in this case was the broader platform that goes 
with it. The chipset, the "evolutionary generation" of the 
"firmware". Speaking of the chipset, I'm referring to legacy 
peripheral hardware, at least the presence of a decent "legacy 
SuperIO" chip in moderately dusty history, vs. the gallop towards 
newer and speedier USB and PCI-e standards. Yes I'm aware that modern 
"firmware" still tends to facilitate DOS operation by providing 
keyboard and mouse services (or even PS/2 controller emulation 
through SMM) on top of physical USB hardware... Think about software 
that's written for slow x86 CPU's, and fails miserably on anything 
faster than a couple hundred MHz - and no, it's not just the Borland 
Pascal CRT library, there are others of this class. There are games 
that kind of relied on CPU speed in some ballpark, otherwise the 
animations are too fast to even notice etc. Older BIOSes used to 
allow you to mess with ISA MMIO windows available for use with your 
peripheral devices - with the demise of ISA, BIOS config options 
related to memory space between 640 kB and 1 MB have quickly 
vanished, and the "firmware" takes liberty at using this range for 
whatever option ROM's it sees fit, thus making any "conventional 
memory volume tuning" pretty problematic.

In all those respects, the CPU generation is a pretty good predictor 
of what kind of a "platform" you get around it.

Speaking of tiny x86 platforms, I'm wondering what happened to the 
Intel Quark. Initially this looked like a contender against the DMP 
Vortex, but only until you looked at the peripherals present on the 
reference motherboards with Quark. In terms of peripherals, it's like 
comparing a traditional large Legoes kit of late eighties (Vortex) to 
a slick and glittery Tamagotchi (Quark).

I do feel guilty of promoting a particular vendor / product line, but 
let me repeat this link that I sent yesterday:
  https://www.icop.com.tw/product_list/44
Notice that the particular board format is a proprietary 100x66 mm, 
called "tiny module" by ICOP. This is not a PC104 format - which 
means lower price. Anything that has a PC104 connector on it is 
automatically +50%.
The "tiny module" form factor is not significantly larger than an 
RPI, and while it does not have the perfomance of an RPi, in terms of 
tinker-friendly interfaces, it probably gives the RPi a run - 
especially if you're fond of the 486-era legacy x86 style. Some 
models have an SD slot, some have an onboard SPI flash disk to boot 
from. The SoC has got an on-chip USB EHCI and an on-chip 100Mb LAN. I 
personally prefer the Vortex86*DX* era hardware by ICOP, exactly for 
its 486-ish features and peripherals. The nominal clock tends to be 
600 to 800 MHz, but can be underclocked down to 1/8th of that, in the 
BIOS (or programmatically). The VDX boards have a discrete SIS/XGI 
Z9s PCI graphics with a dedicated 32MB VRAM and a pretty good VESA 
BIOS ROM (a rich selection of classic SVGA video modes). I don't like 
the Vortex86*SX* as much (for obvious reasons) and I don't like the 
newer developments from DMP as much either, because of the "modern 
direction" these have taken. The VDX hardware doesn't have nearly the 
sort of problem with heat that an RPi tends to have, without 
additional heatsink upgrades.

That said, even the cheapest Vortex motherboards are still more 
expensive than an RPi.

The larger Vortex board formats, i.e. PC104 or 3.5" biscuit, have IDE 
(or SATA) or CompactFlash coupled to an IDE channel, and other 
goodies - those board models obviously cost more. But, at least you 
have a choice, and it's still classic 486 era busses and interfaces. 
I'm wondering why ICOP never produced say an ITX form-factor 
motherboard with an ISA slot, or a full-length ISA+PCI PICMG board. 
It probably wouldn't pay off (pay for the R) because 
retrofits/refurbs of full-scale computers in production use are 
really few and far between, and just nostalgia probably wouldn't 
generate enough sales.

A side note on CPU clock rate: in the golden era of EIST, before 
TurboBoost, it was fairly easy to poke some EIST-related MSR to 
underclock the CPU core on the fly. So we're speaking say Pentium 4 
or Pentium M up to Core 2 45nm. Even that way, you typically wouldn't 
get lower than say 600 MHz to 1 GHz on a particular CPU, where the 
IPC was already a multiple of what the old Pentium MMX would 
provide... so the EIST underclocking is not enough to dodge the 
"Borland 

Re: [Freedos-user] DOS on (very) small form factor PCs?

[Deposite Pirate]

April 29, 2021 11:31 AM, "Eric Auer"  wrote:

> Hi!
> 
>> There are PCEngines ALIX boards (AMD Geode) with VGA out, one
>> minipci slot. They are known to run FreeDOS. You probably
>> have to install it with PXE because there's no floppy or
>> CDROM drive.
> 
> According to https://www.pcengines.ch/alix.htm they are
> end of life and those few with VGA are out of stock.

They are not only sold by PCEngines, there are several
Embedded hardware online stores that have or stock and sell
them:

https://www.applianceshop.eu/pc-engines-alix-2d13.html


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Re: [Freedos-user] DOS on (very) small form factor PCs?

[Eric Auer]

Hi!

> There are PCEngines ALIX boards (AMD Geode) with VGA out, one
> minipci slot. They are known to run FreeDOS. You probably
> have to install it with PXE because there's no floppy or
> CDROM drive.

According to https://www.pcengines.ch/alix.htm they are
end of life and those few with VGA are out of stock.

https://www.pcengines.ch/apu2.htm seems to be with x86
CPU as well, but without any graphics?

Regards, Eric





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