Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS 1.0 (was Network sharing)
Or maybe to install a Linux as second operating system... ;-) Would have taken less than the 2 days to install your Ultimate... Eric, I hate to have to use windows but 99.9 % of the folks and all of Regions Bank use Windows so I have to stay compatible althou I would love to be able to use DOS for myself just to play. That's one reason I would have loved to have been able to access the hard drives with FreeDos since I have a D drive I could really used but it is formatted using the new file system so why I would really wish someone would fix or add the new file system to freedos. But it is interesting that any Vista internally is Ultimate, just with some features blocked depending on which Vista you bought. No not blocked. When you buy windows Vista you get an upgrade cd and on this CD are all the different versions of Vista. Basic, business, premium, Ultimate. You buy your key and with this key and the CD you can install which ever version you want from that CD. They are all on that one CD. I guess they could be blocked and just parts load but who know only Microsoft and they aren't talking other than telling me I had the CD to install Ultimate and if they sent another one it would be that CD. As a matter of fact I have 3 of those CD's one just wasn't enough.BG Ron Spruell Sr. - This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2008. http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse012070mrt/direct/01/ ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS 1.0 (was Network sharing)
Ron Spruell schreef: Jim I understand what you mean by a virtual machine because I know what virtual memory is as per Microsoft but for me making a virtual would be just as hard as making Free Dos run. I would much rather be able to run FreeDos A virtual machine as ment here is often also called an Emulator (they exist for game consoles as well). some PC emulators are Bochs, QEMU, VirtualPC, VMware. from a DVD or CD since I can boot from either. I have my system set to search for a bootable DVD or CD or Floppy then go to the hard drive. I changed this when I found out about FreeDos a couple of weeks ago. If it will boot from a CD or DVD I can burn either one with an ISO image file I can do that. That way I know if I boot from either all I have to do to get my system back like it's suppose to be is remove the CD or DVD and re-boot. The only dangerous tool from a LiveCD (CD which boots FreeDOS from a fake diskette, then loads CDROM drivers to get access to the remainder of the CD/DVD beyond the initial 1.44MB) is Fdisk as it can change/ruin the master boot record (MBR), which contains information about your harddisk layout. FreeDOS can only access FAT filesystems, not NTFS for example which Windows uses nowadays almost exclusively. Fixing MBR issues is quite nicely done with a free tool called TESTDISK (I recovered 36GB of music with it..accidentally deleted wrong disk/partition during a Windows 2000 installation a while ago) In an emulator no single action can harm your harddisk contents nor current Windows installation. 2. when booting what files does it boot and where or the files located like Autoexec.bat config.sys and so on and are these the only ones FreeDos uses are there more. A LiveCD contains a bootloader. Nowadays that's an operating system's own bootloader (Windows, ReactOS) or an indirect bootloader (GRUB, ISOLINUX). Isolinux is used most on various Linux distributions, and also for FreeDOS. Isolinux loads a fake 1.44MB floppy through a driver called MEMDISK, and fills this 1.44MB with the contents of a floppy disk image file we've called FDBOOT.IMG. This imagefile contains the contents you'd also need for loading up a real DOS diskette..a KERNEL (kernel.sys), a SHELL (command.com), driver loading file CONFIG.SYS (yes also using this name in FreeDOS though FDCONFIG.SYS is also a valid name) and a startup scriptfile (AUTOEXEC.BAT or whatever file the SHELL= line in config.sys might refer to) customising the boot image part is no easy job, and an emulator is best used. Basicly you load FDBOOT.IMG with for example WinImage, convert to 1.44MB format if needed, then write it to a real diskette. Next, open the Config.sys and autoexec.bat files, and adjust them. Save the files to disk. Next, open WinImage again, read in the diskette and save the contents to FDBOOT.IMG again (usually in the ISOLINUX directory). Finally, you'd have to create a new bootable CD/DVD using MKISOFS with a lot of fancy parameters/options. Blair Campbell might have some scripts to do all of this stuff, as well as Jeremy Davis maybe. The most fancy option ofcourse would be to have a LiveCD, and some temporary storage somewhere. You'd boot up the LiveCD then, write the contents to the temporary storage, modify the contents, and recreate the ISO file. Writing CD/DVD from DOS is a challenge though, as I know of no suitable single tool (they tend to need some non-free driver. For example CDRECORD needs an ASPI driver that supports writing to the device). Bernd - This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2008. http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse012070mrt/direct/01/ ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS 1.0 (was Network sharing)
Hi Ron, The only dangerous tool from a LiveCD... is Fdisk as it can change/ruin the master boot record (MBR), which contains information about your harddisk layout... ... Format ought to do a number on you also Well Bernd meant you can only format drives which have a drive letter in DOS. Because Windows XP and similar often use NTFS drives (not FAT), their drives are often simply invisible to DOS without extra drivers, so you cannot format them accidentally. You cannot even modify files. Of course you CAN accidentally damage files or format drives if they use FAT, as used in Win98 and similar. The limit for FAT16 partition size is ca 2 Gigabyte, unless you use less compatible larger clusters of more than 32 kilobyte. Limit of FAT32 is more or less arbitrary. Windows 98 had a limit of 4 mio clusters because it could only handle FAT tables of 16 MB in RAM. It also had a limit of 128 GB harddisk size, as it did not support LBA48... FreeDOS does not have those FAT32 limitations, but you can expect that it will be very slow and that defrag or dosfsck (chkdsk) will take lots of time and/or memory if you have too many clusters. Limitations for harddisk size in FreeDOS are: At most 2 Terabytes because we only read classical MBR / partition tables, but if your BIOS cannot do LBA48, then FreeDOS has a 128 GB limit like Win98. With very old BIOSes, you could even have limits like 32 GB, 8 GB, or even less. However, you can often install extra tools like Ontrack in the MBR to help the BIOS. [...Windows Fax software broken on any normal Vista...] only way to get fax capabilities in vista was upgrade to Ultimate Or maybe to install a Linux as second operating system... ;-) Would have taken less than the 2 days to install your Ultimate... But it is interesting that any Vista internally is Ultimate, just with some features blocked depending on which Vista you bought. As far as I understand, Spinrite can recover (possibly deleted) files from (possibly damaged) FAT and now also NTFS filesystems, probably by copying them to other drives or repairing the errors. That is a different story compared to make the NTFS drive look like a normal DOS drive, and I assume Spinrite is more a tool than a driver... Anyway, information on how to access NTFS even for writing is available by reading code and docs from the Linux NTFS 3G drivers. The developers were very careful to make those drivers clean wrt license and origins of technical information. Eric :-) PS: Could you configure your email client to quote things by putting in front of the quoted lines (not mixing quoted and unquoted text in one line) ? Thanks ;-) - This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2008. http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse012070mrt/direct/01/ ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS 1.0 (was Network sharing)
Hi Jim, There are several free ($0) virtual machine environments you can use. VirtualPC, VirtualBox, VMWare are all very good. On my Linux system, I use VirtualBox and DOSEmu, both for different things. I used to run VMWare. That's still nice, but I'm trying out VirtualBox right now. Other choices are Qemu and Bochs. The latter has a nice built-in debugger, so I like Bochs for debugging things which are hard to figure out on real hardware. Note that DOSEmu only works in Linux (maybe it can be ported to other x86 Unixes like Mac OS and BSD). Most others are multi platform or at least available for both Linux and Windows :-). Or course this does not help you if you want to use the full CPU speed for DOS or if you want to do some hardware related stuff such as interacting with custom hardware or flashing your BIOS. I think as long as you do not run things like SYS / FDISK / FORMAT, the risk of damaging your Windows by using FreeDOS is limited :-). Eric - This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2008. http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse012070mrt/direct/01/ ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS 1.0 (was Network sharing)
Hi Ron, If you downloaded fdfullcd.iso from http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distributions/1.0/ then you got it from the official location. On 1/20/08, Ron Spruell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Well I must have done something wrong, which isn't beyond me.BG I downloaded an image file from somewhere called fdfullcd.iso and using that I burnt a cd. Where can I find the program or the official web site to down load the right version? Well I booted from it but it had boot errors so I had to steop them and skip the problem statements but it made the cd drive A: if I remember correctly and the A: drive c: and It did not list my two hard drives. Well I had to step thru the boot files because as it booted it have a couple of errors so I stepped thru and bye passed the ones that was giving the problem and got it to boot. But then it did what I already told you about the drives maybe needing a driver for the drives I have don't know enough and it did not have my 2 hard drives listed and changed the other two as I have already stated. Then I went looking on the cd for the sys.ini auto.exe.bat config.sys and other boot files which is obvious I dodn't know what boot files free dos uses and couldn't find them. Know they have to be there somewhere but maybe I was looking for the wrong file names. When I found them I was going to take out the problem boot statements after I re-burned Free Dos on a rewriteable CD. Well as I said I couldn't find them don't know what to look for and am stumped unless you can shed some light on these problems. Ron Spruell Sr. - This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2008. http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse012070mrt/direct/01/ ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS 1.0 (was Network sharing)
Hi Ron, I know I mentioned it in my off-list email to you earlier this week, but you can boot FreeDOS from CD and use it via LiveCD, but you still have direct access to the hardware and if you do something in FreeDOS without realizing what's going on (disk tools, etc.) you can quickly make your C: Windows system unusable. I would really encourage any casual DOS user to run FreeDOS in a virtual environment. I'd suggest the same for you. There's pretty much no risk of damaging your system accidentally when run inside a virtual machine. And unless you're doing development, the minor loss in performance by running in a virtual machine isn't noticeable. There are several free ($0) virtual machine environments you can use. VirtualPC, VirtualBox, VMWare are all very good. On my Linux system, I use VirtualBox and DOSEmu, both for different things. I used to run VMWare, and that's still nice, but I'm trying out VirtualBox right now. :-) -jh On 1/20/08, Ron Spruell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: You know I have one question? Reading all the posts I realize that yes I liked DOS and I ran DOS as long as I could, even went to DR DOS when things were looking like Microsoft was going to drop DOS so I ran it as long as I could But I am not oin the league of you folks that get into the guts of this DOS. The question I have is this Can one of you if not a team get together and fix this DOS so that I or anyone could boot from a DVD or CD which ever and run this DOS off that media? I would also want it to recognize all my drives including the memory card readers? Would this be impossible? If not I would really like to have this DOS to be able to run off a DVD or CD in other words boot from either. I have the Microsoft DOS 5 and 6 books so I would have the information I need but I have to keep this machine Windows ready and can't take the chance I would mess something up and not be able to fix it. And I wouldn't have the knowledge to fix it if I broke it so the reason I want it to boot from a DVD or CD. Ron Spruell Sr. - This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2008. http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse012070mrt/direct/01/ ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS 1.0 (was Network sharing)
Jim I understand what you mean by a virtual machine because I know what virtual memory is as per Microsoft but for me making a virtual would be just as hard as making Free Dos run. I would much rather be able to run FreeDos from a DVD or CD since I can boot from either. I have my system set to search for a bootable DVD or CD or Floppy then go to the hard drive. I changed this when I found out about FreeDos a couple of weeks ago. If it will boot from a CD or DVD I can burn either one with an ISO image file I can do that. That way I know if I boot from either all I have to do to get my system back like it's suppose to be is remove the CD or DVD and re-boot. I will go to the site that the link is from and download again to make sure I have the right FreeDos and Build. I still need a few questions answered. 1. Will it boot from a CD or DVD it was mentioned it would. Yes you did mention that it would boot from the CD but what do you mean Live CD? Mine when I booted because I know nothing about this Dos and again I am green as a gourd and know nothing not a thing sorry, that's my problem but I really want to be able to run FreeDos because as I mentioned I always loved Dos. 2. when booting what files does it boot and where or the files located like Autoexec.bat config.sys and so on and are these the only ones FreeDos uses are there more. 3. what are the names of the files are they called autoexec.bat config.sys and are these the only ones again I tried to find these files on the CD I made and could not find them probably a personal problem always is.BG 4. If I know the above and if FreeDos will boot from a DCD or DVD I can fix the problem with some of the statements not working by just removing them. 5. After that I then can try and ask you guys why it wouldn't recognize my hard drives and why it renamed the CD I booted from as A and the floppy as C In other words I can start to play with it. I have an old Dos 5 manual so if FreeDos is like version 5 of Microsoft Dos version 5 I will have a book I can use. Thanks for the help I am getting more and more information each time. When I download the image file this time from the official site I will put it on a rewritable CD so that I can change the autoexec.bat and config.sys or whatever they are called and that should be easy if that's what they are called and where they are located. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jim Hall Sent: Sunday, January 20, 2008 6:02 PM To: freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS 1.0 (was Network sharing) Hi Ron, I know I mentioned it in my off-list email to you earlier this week, but you can boot FreeDOS from CD and use it via LiveCD, but you still have direct access to the hardware and if you do something in FreeDOS without realizing what's going on (disk tools, etc.) you can quickly make your C: Windows system unusable. I would really encourage any casual DOS user to run FreeDOS in a virtual environment. I'd suggest the same for you. There's pretty much no risk of damaging your system accidentally when run inside a virtual machine. And unless you're doing development, the minor loss in performance by running in a virtual machine isn't noticeable. There are several free ($0) virtual machine environments you can use. VirtualPC, VirtualBox, VMWare are all very good. On my Linux system, I use VirtualBox and DOSEmu, both for different things. I used to run VMWare, and that's still nice, but I'm trying out VirtualBox right now. :-) -jh On 1/20/08, Ron Spruell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: You know I have one question? Reading all the posts I realize that yes I liked DOS and I ran DOS as long as I could, even went to DR DOS when things were looking like Microsoft was going to drop DOS so I ran it as long as I could But I am not oin the league of you folks that get into the guts of this DOS. The question I have is this Can one of you if not a team get together and fix this DOS so that I or anyone could boot from a DVD or CD which ever and run this DOS off that media? I would also want it to recognize all my drives including the memory card readers? Would this be impossible? If not I would really like to have this DOS to be able to run off a DVD or CD in other words boot from either. I have the Microsoft DOS 5 and 6 books so I would have the information I need but I have to keep this machine Windows ready and can't take the chance I would mess something up and not be able to fix it. And I wouldn't have the knowledge to fix it if I broke it so the reason I want it to boot from a DVD or CD. Ron Spruell Sr. - This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2008. http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse012070mrt/direct/01/ ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user
