[Freedos-user] which open source libraries work?
Just wondering what Open Source libraries in the graphics/multimedia/audio areas anyone's had any luck getting to build and work with on FreeDOS? I read programs with SDL library work in some cases with HX Extender. Am assuming SDL doesn't build on its own in djgpp or a similar C/C++ compiler for DOS. PDcurses works. Djgpp looks like it has an ncurses port (or maybe it's just using PDCurses in some form). Read something about WxUniversal (a port of WxWindows using MGL). Anyone been able to get it working or even find the sources for the proper version of MGL anymore? Saw something about Nano-X too, but it needs the MGL library as well. Also saw mention of miniGLX, GGI, DirectFB but no information on whether there are DOS ports. Anyone had any luck using one of these libraries or something like them? Any other cross-platform GUI or screen libraries that have a DOS port out there? Is there a good C/C++ audio library to use with programs? Was wondering if the code from the DOS version of Timidity could be plugged into the latest version or maybe someone knows of a better source for a sound API? Thanks. Sincerely, Laura http://www.distasis.com/cpp -- Crystal Reports - New Free Runtime and 30 Day Trial Check out the new simplified licensing option that enables unlimited royalty-free distribution of the report engine for externally facing server and web deployment. http://p.sf.net/sfu/businessobjects ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] X for DOS
Marco Antonio Achury Palma wrote: Exist newer ports to X on DOS. Some times appear here people asking for a free win3.1 replacement. Why not to have X Windows system for DOS? Would like to see an X Windows implementation for DOS if only to get some nice apps that will work on X Windows ported to DOS. I really haven't seen much in this area and especially not current work. However, will share what links I've run across if it helps. Probably not what you're looking for, but might be of interest anyway. There's Nano-X which is in active development: http://www.microwindows.org/ Looks more like a GUI option for djgpp than an X server option, but I don't know enough of the details. Would be very curious to hear if anyone's worked with Nano-x or Microwindows for djgpp and DOS. Please share further info on it if you have any. Thanks. Ran across this section in the FreeDOS archive. I'm guessing these are legacy ports: http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/gui/xwin/ There's mention of an Open Source version of Desqview/X at the end of this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DESQview The link to Sourceforge is no longer available. Am wondering how far they got and if there's still code around for this project. Some X related stuff mentioned here including shareware X-Appeal, but some of the links seem to be down: http://www.fdisk.com/doslynx/ If you want to go to a newer Windows platform there's a port of X to Cygwin and the Xming server for Win32. Am guessing you probably want to stay with DOS though. If HX extender gets advanced enough in the future, it might be able to help run something like this on DOS one day. Sincerely, Laura http://www.distasis.com/cpp -- Crystal Reports - New Free Runtime and 30 Day Trial Check out the new simplified licensing option that enables unlimited royalty-free distribution of the report engine for externally facing server and web deployment. http://p.sf.net/sfu/businessobjects ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] Documentation
Have some general suggestions for documentation at the FreeDOS web site, mostly as a temporary measure until FreeDOS version 1.1. is released. I think, for new users like myself, it would be extremely helpful if there was a note on the download page (http://www.freedos.org/freedos/files/) that newer kernel and drivers are available that would make the system more stable. Also, a link to where to find these updates, maybe pointing to http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/fdupdate/ The other thing I'd find extremely helpful is a page on the wiki with examples on how to set up fdconfig.sys and autoexec.bat (or should that be fdauto.bat). The page could go through some of the typical programs/drivers/memory manager to add to that file and when and why to use each alternative. Also, some info on freecom and shell alternatives and nansi.sys or alternatives to color/customize freecom or shells. Maybe someone can help add some info on it here: http://wiki.fdos.org/Installation/CustomStartup and/or at some of the wiki pages like this one? I noticed the link at http://www.freedos.org/freedos/links/ Free Software for DOS needs an update. Had to do the same at my web site a few months back as I also have a link to that page on my web site. Might also be nice to add the WordPerfect for DOS site to this list http://www.columbia.edu/~em36/wpdos/ Even though WordPerfect is still proprietary, there are some parts of it that were freely released (with links to pieces at both sites previously mentioned). Maybe a links page could be added or moved to the wiki so everyone could share their favorite DOS related sites and help keep links up-to-date? I also added a few minor updates to the wiki on some of this stuff that I thought might be useful to newer users. Hope it's helpful. Sincerely, Laura http://www.distasis.com/distasis/write.htm -- Crystal Reports - New Free Runtime and 30 Day Trial Check out the new simplified licensing option that enables unlimited royalty-free distribution of the report engine for externally facing server and web deployment. http://p.sf.net/sfu/businessobjects ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] getting applications working
My favorite DOS programming editor (ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/editor/edwin15c.zip) fails and won't run. Has anyone been able to get edwin working on FreeDOS? Eric Auer wrote: Please describe the failure in more detail. Tried with minimal drivers, HIMEM or HIMEMX and nothing else? Tried it with the out-of-the-box FreeDOS setup in fdconfig.sys. So whatever it set up, I used. I tried each of the 3 boot options at the beginning. Every time I run the program it says it can't find the overlay file. The install program says it can't find the edwin.com program. The files all sitting in the same directory. If you want, you can pull down the program from the garbo archive and see if it does any better on your machine. I even tried running it with HX extender and got the same results. Any good text/programming editors that can handle switching between multiple documents and with good keymapping support? I really need an editor I can remap the command keys with since I'm pretty used to using certain key sequences. I guess I can always get by on edit or pico or nano if I can't find anything else. One place I worked, we used to use Brief. It was a nice programming editor. Mateusz Viste wrote: You'll need also GUS instruments to make it work with MIDI (I can provide you GUS files if you won't be able to find them). Timidity can also work with GUS patches. I have the FreePats standard GUS patch distribution. FreePats is the only group I've found that's working on Open Source patch and sf2 files. By the way, they need volunteers. So, if anyone can record some instruments to share or wants to help out in any way, please let them know. The FreePats project site is: http://freepats.zenvoid.org/ Found copies of Timidity for DOS: http://sca.uwaterloo.ca/www.cgs.fi/tt/timidity/distribution.html Now I just have to try to get it set up properly. That's usually a nuisance. Tried mpxplay. Works fine on my machine for midi files. Any good Karaoke players out there (for kar files)? I'll see if I can get Timidity working for that purpose, but there's a recent patch for midi karaoke (kar) files created with abc2midi that I'm sure never made it into the older builds of the program. I also tried mplayer. Seemed to work without crashing, although the display jittered and there was a lot of text in the background. Is there a version of vlc or xine that works on DOS? dos386 wrote: No, get FreeBASIC compiler. There are some interpreters but... Eric Auer wrote: FreeBASIC usually works very well and it has a QBASIC compat mode :-) Don't need Qbasic, just basic. Does FreeBASIC only compile or can it run programs in interpreted mode? Would prefer interpreted. I still have my Microsoft Basic Professional Compiler for DOS. I bought the last version before they switched to Visual Basic. Any big differences between it and FreeBASIC as far as building programs? I tried out some old applications I'd built using my Basic compiler on FreeDOS. All of them seemed to run. Only issue was with sound, which doesn't appear to be working using the BASIC commands. I downloaded the latest version of pictview plus many of the files at http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/fdupdate/ Didn't see any instructions on how to update. Hope unziping in the \FDOS directory is okay, because that's what I did. Still appears to be booting and running okay. Eric Auer wrote: HIMEM to HIMEMX, EMM386 to nothing or JEMM Is there a web site or a how to with instructions on how to switch some of these and which ones to use? A sample fdconfig.sys with some of these would be nice. I've been trying for a few days now to get USB working. Checked out the FreeDOS wiki on the subject and the sites it pointed to and some others the search engine brought up. Tried at least 4 different methods. Nothing seemed to work. I tried again after updating the kernel and other files today. I put the following in my fdconfig.sys: 2?DEVICE=C:\FDOS\USBDISK.SYS and then ran dosuhci. It crashed or hung a lot. I did finally manage to get a directory of my e: drive (USB flash drive). The first time I try dir e: on a drive it takes an incredibly long time to run, like 5 minutes or more. Once it showed the directory for a first time, performance got a little better. However, trying to get a directory of my CD when this stuff is loaded crashed my system. Any tips on getting better performance from a USB drive? I'm thrilled I can at least get a directory some of the time and it seems to be able to copy some files. Does size of the USB drive affect how well it performs? Was wondering if I should stay with the smaller drives so it might display the directory faster? Hope this gets less buggy in future releases (of FreeDOS and the USB driver). One last question. Is there a good forum or mailing list for discussing porting/compiling Open Source applications to DOS? Mateusz Viste
[Freedos-user] getting applications working
I've been tracking FreeDOS development on and off for years. I finally had an excuse to install FreeDOS on one of my computers when I found it didn't have enough memory to run many of the newer operating systems. I have a Sony PCG-F540 laptop 500 MHz with 64 MB RAM and a 6 Gig hard disk. It has a Yamaha DS-XG sound card and Conexant 56K modem built in. I had to run the install CD twice to get FreeDOS installed on the hard drive. The first time, I tried to pick an image on bootup and the system locked up. Second time, I left it as default. I guess I'm not very familiar with the programs that installed with FreeDOS (other than the basic DOS stuff), because I got on and wasn't sure where to get started. I have a large cabinet full of legacy hardware and software, so I decided perhaps I should go back to the programs on DOS I'm most familiar with just to get going. My experience was that about half of the ones i tried on FreeDOS worked. I remember using Procomm Plus on my DOS PCs when I used to want to get my modem working. Tried my old version of Procomm Plus. The setup program works. The actual program fails. Anyone been able to get a version of Procomm Plus or even Procomm working? Any pointers to 'how to' documents on setting up one's modem? Going through my old sound programs, was surprised some of my Sound Blaster stuff worked with this sound card. Hadn't been able to get a lot of those programs working in years. CMF and ROL work really well. I have a couple of really good programs for playing those. Am having trouble with Wave files. Forget to check if there was a wave file player that came installed with FreeDOS. What do others use to play those files? Also, could not play MOD files. My favorite program sound2 (based on SoundTracker), just hangs. Any recommendations on a good mod file player? I couldn't help thinking Timidity++ would be great for playing midi and mod files. It works even without a sound card and has pdcurses and ncurses interfaces. Has anyone had any luck porting Timidity++ to DOS? Was thrilled to see my favorite ABC programs. One thing I don't have to try to convert. Was surprised I didn't see a program like midicomp (http://freepats.zenvoid.org/tools/midicomp/) though. Will have to see if I can get a version to compile. I have a ton of old BASIC programs. Any recommendations on a good BASIC interpreter? I've tried some Open Source ones in the past on other platforms, but they didn't seem to fully support all the commands the programs would need to run. Is there a good way to slow down old DOS games like pinball? I remember trying programs like whoa on years ago and they didn't seem to work well for what I needed. WordPerfect 6.0 appears to work fine. Was very happy to see that. My favorite DOS programming editor (ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/editor/edwin15c.zip) fails and won't run. Has anyone been able to get edwin working on FreeDOS? Is there a PNG viewer for FreeDOS? I tried an old copy of Pictview and it seems to work well on most graphics types but lacked PNG support. Some of my old PC Magazine and Big Blue utilities worked fine, like snapshot and dirmatch. However, the fireworks construction kit on one of my Big Blue disks just gives up and won't run past the intro screen. One last question. Is there a good forum or mailing list for discussing porting/compiling Open Source applications to DOS? There are several command line and a few pdcurses applicatons I like. Would be interested to see how many work on FreeDOS. I'd rather not reinvent the wheel and try to build them if someone's already done it though. Was thinking about trying applications like diffh, starchart, gle, midicomp, lcal, pcal, passwordsafe or pwsafe, diction, sdcv, gsar and a few others if I have the time. Still trying to get my bearings with FreeDOS, so any pointers to documentation, how-to's, etc. greatly appreciated. Thanks. Sincerely Laura http://www.distasis.com/cpp -- OpenSolaris 2009.06 is a cutting edge operating system for enterprises looking to deploy the next generation of Solaris that includes the latest innovations from Sun and the OpenSource community. Download a copy and enjoy capabilities such as Networking, Storage and Virtualization. Go to: http://p.sf.net/sfu/opensolaris-get ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
