Re: [Freedos-user] Video modes
You could try the Text Mode utility from Jason Hood, available here: http://adoxa.3eeweb.com/ -- View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/Video-modes-tp34636525p34649342.html Sent from the FreeDOS - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- LogMeIn Central: Instant, anywhere, Remote PC access and management. Stay in control, update software, and manage PCs from one command center Diagnose problems and improve visibility into emerging IT issues Automate, monitor and manage. Do more in less time with Central http://p.sf.net/sfu/logmein12331_d2d ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Networking
Marcos: So where exactly is the file server that's storing the data file(s) in this scenario? Is it on the doctor's PC, assistant's PC, or some other location? -- View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/Networking-tp34020890p34021413.html Sent from the FreeDOS - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- Live Security Virtual Conference Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/ ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Virtual floppy change problem with VirtualBox
Jack-181 wrote: I will NOT cache a drive which cannot tell me when its media has changed, and I REFUSE to add all of the logic in UIDE that Eric notes the DOS kernel contains, to find out if a media-change has occurred using other methods! It's not impossible to cache floppies, Jack. You just need to do it differently than you're doing now. Probably the simplest thing you can do is an indirect collaboration with DOS. You can simply ignore the hardware change line completely, like DOS basically does. The only time DOS should try to access the boot sector (sector 0 on a floppy) is when it's trying to figure out if the media has changed or not, and you can use that as a signal to flush the cache entries for that disk. You could even go a step further and compare the cached sector 0 and the new one to see if the disk has really changed or not, and not flush the cache if it hasn't, but I'm sure that's too complicated for you to implement. I can't think of a scenario where that wouldn't solve the problem. The only potential issue I can see is if the disk has an MBR or GPT at sector 0 instead of a boot sector, but that shouldn't ever happen on a floppy. -- View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/Virtual-floppy-change-problem-with-VirtualBox-tp33859302p33897120.html Sent from the FreeDOS - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- Live Security Virtual Conference Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/ ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Long-term survival of FreeDOS
If you could boot up in only a few seconds, would you turn things off when you weren't using them (not necessarily servers, but clients)? -- View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/Long-term-survival-of-FreeDOS-tp33661875p33684868.html Sent from the FreeDOS - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- For Developers, A Lot Can Happen In A Second. Boundary is the first to Know...and Tell You. Monitor Your Applications in Ultra-Fine Resolution. Try it FREE! http://p.sf.net/sfu/Boundary-d2dvs2 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] ...and about FreeCon this time
Some DOS *apps* cared and choked on it, so I wrote Korn shell alias wrappers to reset the option delimiter char to / before running them, and set it back to - when they exited. Like I said, this is why it won't work in the _general_ case. There are situations and programs where it can work, and others where it can't. You had to write temporary scripts to skirt around the issue for certain applications, which was precisely my point. You are correct that it can be _made_ to work, but it takes customization for individual programs, and even knowledge on behalf of the user to make sure they think about what they are doing. -- View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/...and-about-FreeCon-this-time-tp33670275p33671896.html Sent from the FreeDOS - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- Better than sec? Nothing is better than sec when it comes to monitoring Big Data applications. Try Boundary one-second resolution app monitoring today. Free. http://p.sf.net/sfu/Boundary-dev2dev ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Arachne Troubles
FWIW, I had problems with my computers also. The original DSL modem I had (provided by the phone company) worked fine, but it eventually went belly up. I bought a new one (made by ActionTec), but for some unknown reason DOS WATTCP doesn't like the DHCP server provided by the new modem. In Windows, everything works fine. I was never able to figure out why WATTCP doesn't like the DHCP server, but managed to work around the issue by using static IP's. BTW, static IP's are also very useful sometimes even in Windows for things like network printers, because print driver software often expects the IP address of a printer to never change. If you add or remove devices from the network every once in awhile, or don't turn your network-attached printers on for days or weeks at a time, the IP addresses can change, and Windows may not be able to find the printer any more. Very annoying. I don't know if this will fix your particular problem or not, but here's what I did. First of all, I got into the DSL modem DHCP configuration to set up a range of static IP addresses I could use. In the DHCP configuration, I set up the range of DHCP assigned addresses to 192.168.1.240 - .254. This lets me use 192.168.0.1 - .239 for static IP's for DOS, printers, and other situations where a static IP is preferable to DHCP. Obviously, I need to keep track of what static IP is assigned to what so I don't end up having conflicts. Then, in WATTCP.CFG (for my main computer) I have the following: my_ip=192.168.0.2 host_name=Bret_Desktop netmask=255.255.255.0 nameserver=8.8.8.8 nameserver=8.8.4.4 gateway=192.168.0.1 domain.suffix=domain.bretnet.com I have similar things in my WATTCP.CFG for the other computers also, with the my_ip and host_name changed as appropriate. This fixed the problems with both Arachne and Dillo. -- View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/Arachne-Troubles-tp33653764p33657954.html Sent from the FreeDOS - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- For Developers, A Lot Can Happen In A Second. Boundary is the first to Know...and Tell You. Monitor Your Applications in Ultra-Fine Resolution. Try it FREE! http://p.sf.net/sfu/Boundary-d2dvs2 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] hardware timer QueryPerformanceCounter
Nanosecond resolution is a little tough, but microsecond is pretty easy just using the PIT. Is microsecond good enough for your purposes? -- View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/hardware-timer-QueryPerformanceCounter-tp33536190p33544671.html Sent from the FreeDOS - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- This SF email is sponsosred by: Try Windows Azure free for 90 days Click Here http://p.sf.net/sfu/sfd2d-msazure ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] writing a loadable block driver for 4k-sector drive (Questions)
Bertho Grandpied wrote: Therefore my first interrogation is, what set of device header attributes - and associated functions, including IOCTL codes - must be present /at a minimum/ for letting DOS access the disk properly ? - For a tentative and probably naive self answer, could I get away with the driver attribute being all zeroes - and implement functions 0, 1, 2, 4, 8, 9 (alias for fn 8) /only/ ? Assuming this basic set of functions properly implemented, will the device work ? Do we /need/ 0D,0E (open/close) for instance ? FWIW, this is what is implemented in my USBDRIVE: 01h - Media Check 02h - Build BIOS Parameter Block 04h - Read 08h - Write 09h - Write with Verification 0Dh - Device Open 0Eh - Device Close 0Fh - Removable Media 11h - Generic IOCTL DOS 3 13h - Generic IOCTL DOS 4+ 17h - Get Logical Device 18h - Set Logical Device 19h - IOCTL Check DOS 5+ USBDRIVE is installed as a TSR instead of in CONFIG.SYS, so doesn't need or support Function 00h (Initialize). I don't know if all of these are actually needed or not, but they are supported. Here are the IOCTL functions supported by USBDRIVE: 40h - Set Device Parameters 60h - Get Device Parameters 41h - Write Track 61h - Read Track 42h - Format Track 62h - Verify Track 46h - Set Volume Serial Number 66h - Get Volume Serial Number 47h - Set Access Status 67h - Get Access Status Bertho Grandpied wrote: - Using a loadable driver for the block device implies DOS won't use /its/ internal buffers, so I don't have to care about DOS own buffers sizing, right ? Wrong. The reason you're even doing this in the first place is because DOS _will_ use its internal buffers. This wouldn't be necessary otherwise. IOW, you should still check the max sector size in the DOS List of Lists before you install yourself to make sure it's 512 bytes, and should refuse to install yourself if it's already 4096. The only way around this I know of is to install as an IFS (Installable File System / Network) driver, similar to how MSCDEX (and its clones) work. Bertho Grandpied wrote: - Besides, should I consider using the non IBM format bit in driver attribute ? From whatever docs I saw is unclear what non IBM changes exactly in how DOS uses the driver, nor the (dis)advantages of that approach and the requirements it puts on (removes from) the driver. None of the devices I've ever seen use the IBM format -- it changes the BPB. Probably a dangerous road to go down. -- View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/writing-a-loadable-block-driver-for-4k-sector-drive-%28Questions%29-tp33355861p33358781.html Sent from the FreeDOS - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- Try before you buy = See our experts in action! The most comprehensive online learning library for Microsoft developers is just $99.99! Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL - plus HTML5, CSS3, MVC3, Metro Style Apps, more. Free future releases when you subscribe now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/learndevnow-dev2 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] Multimedia Keyboards and Mouse Scroll Wheels
I personally would like to see modern DOS applications (the few that are still being developed) support the multimedia keys, power management keys, and scroll wheels on keyboards and mice. Modern (USB) keyboards and mice almost always have them, but DOS applications, even modern ones, almost never support them. I'm just wondering what others think about this, and how important they see this lack of support being? -- View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/Multimedia-Keyboards-and-Mouse-Scroll-Wheels-tp33329599p33329599.html Sent from the FreeDOS - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- Virtualization Cloud Management Using Capacity Planning Cloud computing makes use of virtualization - but cloud computing also focuses on allowing computing to be delivered as a service. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfnl/114/51521223/ ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Re : Support for 4k byte sectors + TDSK
Mark Brown-27 wrote: you *could* try USBASPI.SYS /V /W followed by DI1000DD.SYS ( works for me ) In my opinion, this is applying a band-aid to a problem that actually requires drastic surgery. USBASPI.SYS + DI1000DD.SYS may in fact work in certain situations. But, it is not a complete, or even a desirable, long-term solution. It is not open source, does not support USB devices other than disks (mice, keyboards, joysticks, printers, network, comm, ...), etc. It may get you by in the meantime while real solutions are developed, though. -- View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/Re-%3A-Support-for-4k-byte-sectors-%2B-TDSK-tp33277937p33280451.html Sent from the FreeDOS - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- Keep Your Developer Skills Current with LearnDevNow! The most comprehensive online learning library for Microsoft developers is just $99.99! Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL - plus HTML5, CSS3, MVC3, Metro Style Apps, more. Free future releases when you subscribe now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/learndevnow-d2d ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] USB/ASPI to DOS, 4K sectors.
Eric Auer-3 wrote: ... I find it a very good idea in USB drivers to support the ASPI API so other drivers and client apps can use that to access the drives in question :-) I disagree. ASPI and INT 13h are essentially competitive technologies, not complementary. If a disk can be accessed via one of the two methods, the other method isn't (or at least shouldn't be) necessary. Implementing both methods for the same disk is a waste of resources. However, in the particular case of DOS, I think the preferred method, by far, is INT 13h (at least in the case of DASD/hard/flash drives). There simply aren't very many ASPI utilities for DOS, and likely never will be. All of the common low-level DOS utilities that everyone is already familiar with (FDISK, NTFS drivers, caching programs like UIDE and LBACACHE, etc.) require INT 13h. Eric Auer-3 wrote: Once an ASPI to block device driver is loaded, FORMAT should work as well. As said, no free open driver for the ASPI to block connection exists yet, but it seems to have relatively low complexity. I think that's true for high-level formats (the kind done by FORMAT). Low-level formats, though rarely needed these days, do require INT 13h or an ASPI-specific utility. At least in DOS, I don't see where any value is created by adding an ASPI interface if an INT 13h interface already exists. The reverse is not true, however. -- View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/USB-ASPI-to-DOS%2C-4K-sectors.-tp33223596p33229775.html Sent from the FreeDOS - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- Try before you buy = See our experts in action! The most comprehensive online learning library for Microsoft developers is just $99.99! Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL - plus HTML5, CSS3, MVC3, Metro Style Apps, more. Free future releases when you subscribe now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/learndevnow-dev2 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Re : Support for 4k byte sectors
The advantage of a write-delay cache is that that the writing can be done when the system is idle (a simple form of multi-tasking). That counts as advanced cache with a lot of code and can go as far as a sort of ramdisk which syncs back to the harddisk slowly but steadily when the harddisk has time, in big cache. And it is not what I would suggest for DOS... That's basically what SMARTDRV and its equivalents do, though in a limited sense (they don't use oodles of memory and cache/RAMDisk the entire hard drive). Are you saying that you don't think programs like SMARTDRV belong in DOS? -- View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/Re-%3A-Support-for-4k-byte-sectors-tp33144850p33162629.html Sent from the FreeDOS - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- Keep Your Developer Skills Current with LearnDevNow! The most comprehensive online learning library for Microsoft developers is just $99.99! Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL - plus HTML5, CSS3, MVC3, Metro Style Apps, more. Free future releases when you subscribe now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/learndevnow-d2d ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Re : Support for 4k byte sectors
I use NTFS under Windows. Mark Russinovitch offered a freeware NTFS *reader* for DOS through his old Sysinternals site, and a payware driver that could also *write* to NTFS from DOS through the sister Winternals site. (It was intended for rescue operations on NTFS filesystems from DOS.) There are a few of different NTFS utilities for DOS, including the Winternals ones. I've only had limited success with the ones I've tried, and wouldn't recommend any of them very highly. It certainly doesn't help that NTFS is 100% proprietary, or that there are also several different revisions of NTFS. I'm not sure how thrilled I'd be at trying to use NTFS as the native file system on a DOS machine (aside from the philosophical questions about whether it's still a DOS system if you do...). I'm not sure anybody's even considering booting DOS from anything other than FAT. But, it's really nice to be able to access from DOS the non-boot partitions on a hard drive, or external drives like USB, that are formatted with NTFS or EXTx or exFAT or whatever. I wouldn't mind a driver that would let me read ext2/3/4 file systems under Linux from DOS, since FreeDOS is installed on a partition on a box that has Linux, too, but I'd hardly expect FreeDOS to run on top of a Linux FS. Is anybody even working on a EXTx driver for DOS? I know I've heard of a few people experimenting with exFAT, but haven't heard of anything actually being released. -- View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/Re-%3A-Support-for-4k-byte-sectors-tp33163231p33164647.html Sent from the FreeDOS - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- Keep Your Developer Skills Current with LearnDevNow! The most comprehensive online learning library for Microsoft developers is just $99.99! Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL - plus HTML5, CSS3, MVC3, Metro Style Apps, more. Free future releases when you subscribe now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/learndevnow-d2d ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Problem w/ CONFIG.SYS INSTALL
Thanks, Christian! When I first came across this problem, it seemed like maybe INSTALL= was using memory without an appropriate MCB, though from just perusing the code it looked like it was using INT 21.48 to allocate the memory. I had actually tried allocating an extra 64k segment at the top of conventional memory before, but that didn't fix it, so I assumed it was probably something else. I just did some testing, and it turns out that an extra 64k isn't enough to solve the problem, but 128k seems to be. The real number to use is probably somewhere in between. I'll leave it at 128k for now. Note to developers: If you're writing or modifying any new programs, and there's even a remote possibility that the user will try to use INSTALL= and will be using an un-patched version of FreeDOS, the the top part of conventional memory is off-limits! -- View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/Problem-w--CONFIG.SYS-INSTALL-tp30076203p30107045.html Sent from the FreeDOS - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- Nokia and ATT present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Problem w/ CONFIG.SYS INSTALL
I'm attaching a file that has a simple TSR with the problem (TESTFAIL.COM), as well as one that doesn't (TESTPASS.COM). I'm also including the source code (TEST.A36, in A386 format), as well as the KERNEL.SYS CONFIG.SYS I used to test with. The only difference between TESTFAIL TESTPASS is the size of the executable file itself. In the source code, I change ProgStackSize (line 1364 in TEST.A36) from 1024 for TESTFAIL to (1024-16) for TESTPASS. IOW, I simply decrease the executable's size by 1 paragraph and it starts working. TESTPASS TESTFAIL both work from the FreeDOS command-line, and they also work from MS-DOS 6.20 CONFIG.SYS and command-line. But only TESTPASS works from FreeDOS CONFIG.SYS. Changing the executable size up and down (by manipulating ProgStackSize in increments of 16 bytes) will cause different kinds of errors to occur. What the TSR does is simply intercept INT 8, and toggles the character at row 2, column 80 on the screen. There is still quite a bit of extra (uncalled) code in the program, but I stopped changing things when I got to a point where I could make it start and stop working with a single, simple change. Also, the program currently uses a TSR Exit (INT 21.31), even though it doesn't actually need to. I was just experimenting with INT 21.31 vs. INT 21.4C to see if it made any difference. So, as it is now, it leaves a real TSR segment in memory (one that intercepts INT 08 INT 2D), as well as a small segment near the top of conventional memory that doesn't actually do anything. I figured if the TSR exit worked but a regular exit didn't (for whatever reason), I could simply trap INT 28 or INT 21 with the TSR and release the unnecessary segment at a later point in time. It's very possible that there's a problem with my code and there's nothing wrong with the FreeDOS kernel, so any help at all would be appreciated. http://old.nabble.com/file/p30101181/TEST.ZIP TEST.ZIP ___ Bret -- View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/Problem-w--CONFIG.SYS-INSTALL-tp30076203p30101181.html Sent from the FreeDOS - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- Nokia and ATT present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] Problem w/ CONFIG.SYS INSTALL
I am writing a TSR, and having trouble getting it to work with FreeDOS. It installs just fine in MSDOS, also also installs just fine from a FreeDOS command prompt. But, when I try to install it using an INSTALL= or INSTALLHIGH= from CONFIG.SYS, the machine hangs. The hang occurs right after the program exits (INT 21.4Ch or INT 21.31h). If it helps in troubleshooting, the TSR does allocate and leave in place some extra memory segments that the TSR needs. I can install some of my other TSR's just fine from CONFIG.SYS. If I load JEMMEX, when the problem program exits, JEMM displays an Error 0D at CS:EIP X:Y, where X is always the CS of the previous TSR that was installed, and Y is always either or 0001. If I don't use JEMM, the machine just hangs with no error messages at all. I've been looking at some of the source code for FreeDOS, but nothing has revealed itself yet. I'm just wondering if someone could explain, at least in general terms, what is not there or is different (other than the shell program) when INSTALL is being used as opposed to an installation from the command-line? -- View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/Problem-w--CONFIG.SYS-INSTALL-tp30076203p30076203.html Sent from the FreeDOS - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- Nokia and ATT present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
