Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[Darrin M. Gorski]

That makes great sense - learning!

Thanks for the reply, the detail, and the great links.

- Darrin

On Sat, May 15, 2021 at 12:33 PM Robert Riebisch 
wrote:

> Hi Darrin,
>
> > How is EIDL (claims to mimic IDLE.COM ) different from
> > FDAPM (which is basically POWER.EXE)?
>
> Exactly in that way! (EIDL doesn't mimic MS POWER.EXE.)
>
> Quoting myself from
> :
> ###
> Recently I wanted to know, how IDLE.COM in Microsoft Virtual PC works. I
> can say, it is a rather simple tool and contains lots of garbage in its
> only 128 bytes. -- IDLE works by hooking the DOS idle interrupt 28h and
> executing a HLT instruction every time.
>
> At the end I put together a tool, that does the same. I named it EIDL,
> but you pronounce it "idle". (A little play with the German language.)
> It's 80 bytes only, but comes with source code for NASM.
>
> See it as little ASM example, because it is not as advanced as all the
> other DOS idlers including Eric Auer's FDAPM.
> ###
>
> FDAPM has commands to control APM functions, to reboot the machine, to
> power off, to flush disk caches. (see DOC\FDAPM\FDAPM.TXT)
>
> EIDL.COM takes 80 bytes on disk. (Comppressed) FDAPM.COM takes 7,434
> bytes.
> (Ignoring cluster sizes on disks.)
>
> > I'm curious to know the differences between all of the solutions really.
>
> Feel free to try all the solutions to find the one, that fits your needs
> best.
>
> > But I'm mostly curious why (freedos related) FDAPM didn't work for you?
> > (worked great for me!)
>
> I never said, it didn't work.
>
> Cheers,
> Robert
> --
>   +++ BTTR Software +++
>  Home page: https://www.bttr-software.de/
> DOS ain't dead: https://www.bttr-software.de/forum/
>
>
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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[Robert Riebisch]

Hi Darrin,

> How is EIDL (claims to mimic IDLE.COM ) different from
> FDAPM (which is basically POWER.EXE)?

Exactly in that way! (EIDL doesn't mimic MS POWER.EXE.)

Quoting myself from
:
###
Recently I wanted to know, how IDLE.COM in Microsoft Virtual PC works. I
can say, it is a rather simple tool and contains lots of garbage in its
only 128 bytes. -- IDLE works by hooking the DOS idle interrupt 28h and
executing a HLT instruction every time.

At the end I put together a tool, that does the same. I named it EIDL,
but you pronounce it "idle". (A little play with the German language.)
It's 80 bytes only, but comes with source code for NASM.

See it as little ASM example, because it is not as advanced as all the
other DOS idlers including Eric Auer's FDAPM.
###

FDAPM has commands to control APM functions, to reboot the machine, to
power off, to flush disk caches. (see DOC\FDAPM\FDAPM.TXT)

EIDL.COM takes 80 bytes on disk. (Comppressed) FDAPM.COM takes 7,434 bytes.
(Ignoring cluster sizes on disks.)

> I'm curious to know the differences between all of the solutions really.

Feel free to try all the solutions to find the one, that fits your needs
best.

> But I'm mostly curious why (freedos related) FDAPM didn't work for you?
> (worked great for me!)

I never said, it didn't work.

Cheers,
Robert
-- 
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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[Darrin M. Gorski]

> There also is my tiny EIDL:

How is EIDL (claims to mimic IDLE.COM) different from FDAPM (which is
basically POWER.EXE)?

I'm curious to know the differences between all of the solutions really.

But I'm mostly curious why (freedos related) FDAPM didn't work for you?
(worked great for me!)

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

- Darrin


On Thu, May 13, 2021 at 12:03 PM Robert Riebisch 
wrote:

> Hi Thomas,
>
> > Thank you, Mateusz!
> >
> > Let’s save the planet with FreeDos!
>
> There also is my tiny EIDL: 
>
> Cheers,
> Robert
> --
>   +++ BTTR Software +++
>  Home page: https://www.bttr-software.de/
> DOS ain't dead: https://www.bttr-software.de/forum/
>
>
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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[Robert Riebisch]

Hi Thomas,

> Thank you, Mateusz!
> 
> Let’s save the planet with FreeDos!

There also is my tiny EIDL: 

Cheers,
Robert
-- 
  +++ BTTR Software +++
 Home page: https://www.bttr-software.de/
DOS ain't dead: https://www.bttr-software.de/forum/


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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[Bryan Kilgallin]

Dan:

I was born in '86 so by the time I started playing on computers it was 
in the Windows 95 days, and my first time actually using a computer with 
any real idea of what I was doing was on Windows 98.


I played Lunar Lander in `73 on a Teletype.

By that time 
everything I needed to do was GUI based so I never really used DOS and 
the first time I ever used a command-line tool was in college with XP 
systems.


In `74, I typed punched-cards. The university computer centre had a 
turnaround time of two hours!


I'm also fascinated by 
older and alternative tech so I setup a VM and installed a copy of 
MS-DOS 6 and started practicing it using an old DOS guide from the early 
90's that I found on the Internet Archive.


In `83, my first computer used BASIC as its operating system!

I primarily use it for distraction free writing (I'm boring and really 
like MS-EDIT, or whatever the built in text editor is), but I also enjoy 
the old games and exploring old programs like word processors, and the 
like.


I'm trying to learn how to print from FreeDOS to an Ethernet/USB laser 
printer.



OpenGEM is also cool.


In `84, I bought the second Mac sold in Victoria.

I just wiped my old ThinkPad (T42) to install FreeDOS on actual hardware 
and look forward to getting more familiar with it.


I had a palmtop the size of a large chocolate bar. It had DOS.
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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[Dan Scott]

Well I'm admittedly late to the party on this one, but I guess I'll 
chime in anyway.


I was born in '86 so by the time I started playing on computers it was 
in the Windows 95 days, and my first time actually using a computer with 
any real idea of what I was doing was on Windows 98.  By that time 
everything I needed to do was GUI based so I never really used DOS and 
the first time I ever used a command-line tool was in college with XP 
systems.


I started working in IT a couple years back and was more familiar with 
the Linux command line but I wanted to get a better feel for using it in 
Windows since that was what we used at work.  I'm also fascinated by 
older and alternative tech so I setup a VM and installed a copy of 
MS-DOS 6 and started practicing it using an old DOS guide from the early 
90's that I found on the Internet Archive.  Shortly thereafter I heard 
Jim talking about FreeDOS with Bryan Lunduke and decided to give it a go.


I primarily use it for distraction free writing (I'm boring and really 
like MS-EDIT, or whatever the built in text editor is), but I also enjoy 
the old games and exploring old programs like word processors, and the 
like.  OpenGEM is also cool.


I just wiped my old ThinkPad (T42) to install FreeDOS on actual hardware 
and look forward to getting more familiar with it.


Dan


On 4/14/2021 11:59 AM, Johnpaul Humphrey wrote:

In light of the "DOS was dead" discussion, I wanted to ask a question.
I was *born* after support was dropped for MS-DOS, so I can't claim
nostalgia as my reason for use. Recently I installed FreeDOS on my
modern HP-Pavilion laptop, alongside BSD, Linux, and plan9. I did this
because I like DOS's speed and assembly programming.
It worked fine after I fixed the beep bug with your help.
So my question is, why do YOU use FreeDOS?
Is it primarily nostalgia? Legacy program support? Speed?
Note that I don't consider running legacy software a bad reason. I was
shocked by how much good software has been "thrown away" because of
its age. On Linux all my favorite software (vi, siag office, twm,
motif ) was written before I was born. However, that is not my
primary reason for using FreeDOS. my primary reason is because it is
like the motorcycle of operating systems. It is lightweight, has no
red tape to cut through to do things, and is monotasking. (Monotasking
is also why I don't use it as much as I would like to, but why I use
it at all.)
I figured that if I had a different reason than what everybody
assumes, that some of you might as well. Everyone seems to assume that
DOS is used by people who are unable to cope with progress and have to
run their ancient version of word perfect. If that is your reason, it
is not a bad reason. I was thinking of eventually writing a 64-bit dos
work [sort of] alike eventually, but it would not be able to support
legacy programs due to segment offset addressing and a million other
things.


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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[Ralf Quint]

On 4/18/2021 4:58 AM, Liam Proven wrote:


The next impolite email I receive from you will result in a block.
Ditto for Ehlert. This will not inconvenience you, but unless you
actively like attacking strangers on the internet who are trying to
offer help, guidance and advice free of charge, _modify your tone_.


Well, maybe you should live what you are preaching...

Ralf



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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[Jim Hall]

On Sun, Apr 18, 2021 at 6:59 AM Liam Proven  wrote:
>[..]
> FreeDOS commands are different in places; output is different in
> places. That is fair; it is a community effort and an unauthorised
> copy of a long-obsolete OS. I have no right to demand 100%
> compatibility, and I don't. But I was surprised and annoyed by the
> differences, and since at present I only use DOS for fun, then I will
> not use something that annoys me.
>


FreeDOS is not "an unauthorized copy" of MS-DOS. FreeDOS is a
DOS-compatible operating system. We built FreeDOS using open
documentation and standards, such as Ralf Brown's Interrupt List
(RBIL) and printed documentation (such as the command documentation
from the printed MS-DOS user manuals).

Saying FreeDOS is "an unauthorized copy" implies that FreeDOS copied
MS-DOS source code, which is not the case. In fact, we have rejected
contributions from people who have hinted (or even joked) that they
had seen the MS-DOS source code, before Microsoft re-released the
source code to MS-DOS 1.25 and MS-DOS 2.0 via GitHub in 2018. *This
source code re-release is distributed under the MIT License (aka
"Expat" License) and is compatible with the GNU GPL. Developers who
download and study these versions of MS-DOS are welcome to contribute
to FreeDOS.

Words matter. Please do not suggest that FreeDOS "copied" the MS-DOS
source code. Instead of "unauthorized copy," you might instead say
"re-implementation."

Jim


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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[Bryan Kilgallin]

Thanks, Liam:


But I was surprised and annoyed by the
differences, and since at present I only use DOS for fun, then I will
not use something that annoys me.


There is always something to learn. Everything changes. Perhaps it is 
harder for an expert to learn, than for a novice.

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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[Eric Auer]

Hi Liam,

if I understand you correctly then you say I behaved as if
you were not well-informed when you said that config files
have different names in FreeDOS. Now given that you ARE
well informed, you must have been talking about something
else than config.sys and autoexec.bat because those 2 CAN
use the same filenames in FreeDOS and MS DOS. Which means
you must have meant OTHER config files, but which ones do
you mean specifically? It was in no way my intention to
make you angry by MENTIONING file naming possibilities!

> Drive A: is the 5.25" disk drive
> Drive B: is the 3.5" disk drive
> 
> This does not work in 4DOS, because 4DOS insists that text output
> with the `ECHO` command has matching single or double quotes

Interesting. We do not advertise 4DOS that much, though,
given some licensing details, if I remember correctly. I
hope FreeCOM command.com has fewer such incompatibilities.

> FreeDOS commands are different in places; output is different in
> places. That is fair...

Now that we have been talking about config files: FreeDOS does
not implement the config.sys menu syntax of MS DOS 6, but uses
a different syntax, yes. There was some discussion about that
years ago. As there were too few users who wanted the kernel
to be a drop-in replacement for the MS DOS kernel, while many
users start with the default config dropped by the installer
and add their own extensions manually, there never was enough
momentum to add MS DOS style config menu syntax. Maybe there
even were some patches offered, but I honestly do not remember.

Actually I wonder whether DR DOS, PC DOS or other commercial
DOS kernels support the MS DOS config menu syntax and whether
they (also) support their own variations and extensions of it?

>> PS: No, I do not need downloads of other copyrighted DOSes.

That was related to DR DOS and PC DOS. As far as I know, only
the core files of DR DOS are freely available (also EDR DOS)
while PC DOS is at best abandonware? If PC DOS has officially
been made freeware, then I have missed the accouncement, sorry.

But no, this was not meant as complaining about AVAILABILITY,
it can be read explicitly as ME not planning to switch to a
less free DOS while I already have a more free one. Which I
do like to compare in features and compatibility to others.

I do know that MS has made very old versions of MS DOS free
or even open, but I doubt that people use such old versions.
I also doubt that any DOS vendor cares about whether their
twenty or thirty year old products are found in www today.

> You do not appear to be interested; you only seem to want to needle
> me. I am not rising to it. You do not seem to want to know.

To be more specific, I was hoping for some insights of how much
RAM you were using for what, to get an idea of where the areas
are in which FreeDOS is wasting RAM versus where it already is
doing okay. Both for kernel and shell and for various drivers.

It is not my intention to whine about copyrights, but it is not
my intention either to install a whole virtual machine just to
find out more about the vague hint that DR DOS or PC DOS uses
less RAM than FreeDOS. It would have been nice if you would have
been willing to talk about it, but it certainly is not worth the
stress to accuse each other of all sorts of things instead of
doing a little mailing list chat about compatibility and RAM.

No worries! Eric



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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[Liam Proven]

On Sun, 18 Apr 2021 at 12:34, Eric Auer  wrote:
>
> If you have only autoexec.bat and config.sys then FreeDOS
> will use those. The reason why FreeDOS first tries fdconfig.sys
> is that you can install FreeDOS and MS DOS on the same drive
> with a boot manager and people wanted to be able to have two
> different sets of config files in that case :-) But again, you
> can simply use the classic MS DOS style config file names with
> FreeDOS as well if you do not need the distinction.

One of the _very_ annoying things about attempting to discuss the
differences between OS implementations (e.g. PC DOS vs MS-DOS vs DR
DOS vs FreeDOS), or Linux distros, or Linux vs *BSD * SCO Xenix/Unix,
is that people assume that one's knowledge level is lower than their
own.

I've been using DOS for 36 years, professionally implemented,
supported and maintained it for ~20 years starting 33 years ago, and
still use it for fun.

*PLEASE* do not patronise me by attempting to explain small stuff like
this to me. Assume I know what I am talking about. Try to imagine that
you're talking to someone whose knowledge level is the same or greater
than your own.

I occasionally put FreeDOS onto a USB stick to flash BIOSes. I tried
v1.0 when it came out, to wipe some old PCs I was donating to
Computers4Africa:
https://www.ictforeducation.co.uk/details/computers-4-africa.html

I was startled to discover that my name was in the credits. I was
peripherally involved in the FreeGEM project, I wrote and translated
some docs, debugged the installation batch files for Shane Coughlan's
OpenGEM, and so my name was in there.

I do not claim to be a FreeDOS expert. I could, though, claim to be a
PC, MS and DR DOS expert.

Your messages, along with Tom Ehlert's, are making me very very angry
and it with real effort that I am typing a calm and reasonable
response.

As an example of how I do not like changes to DOS, I avoided 4DOS back
in the day, because it broke some of my batch files. I displayed
messages in AUTOEXCEC.BAT telling my customers, for example...

Drive A: is the 5.25" disk drive
Drive B: is the 3.5" disk drive

This does not work in 4DOS, because 4DOS insists that text output with
the `ECHO` command has matching single or double quotes, whereas in
COMMAND.COM, it echoes unquoted text without break characters before
quotes. If a product breaks compatibility with existing config files
or scripts without offering a *substantial* benefit in return, then I
will not use it.

FreeDOS commands are different in places; output is different in
places. That is fair; it is a community effort and an unauthorised
copy of a long-obsolete OS. I have no right to demand 100%
compatibility, and I don't. But I was surprised and annoyed by the
differences, and since at present I only use DOS for fun, then I will
not use something that annoys me.

 > In that case, which small classic drivers do you recommend?

I don't.

*Particularly* in the light of this:

> PS: No, I do not need downloads of other copyrighted DOSes.

Which I find *highly* offensive, annoying, and is in fact inaccurate,
unfair and unrepresentative.

I will not reply as I want to. I am trying to be polite.

You do not appear to be interested; you only seem to want to needle
me. I am not rising to it. You do not seem to want to know. You seem
to want to falsely accuse me of piracy. If you want to know, I have
given you the clues. Go find out for yourself.

The next impolite email I receive from you will result in a block.
Ditto for Ehlert. This will not inconvenience you, but unless you
actively like attacking strangers on the internet who are trying to
offer help, guidance and advice free of charge, _modify your tone_.

-- 
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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[Eric Auer]

Hi Liam,

>> Please mention a few examples of differences :-)

> Different names for config files are the start.

If you have only autoexec.bat and config.sys then FreeDOS
will use those. The reason why FreeDOS first tries fdconfig.sys
is that you can install FreeDOS and MS DOS on the same drive
with a boot manager and people wanted to be able to have two
different sets of config files in that case :-) But again, you
can simply use the classic MS DOS style config file names with
FreeDOS as well if you do not need the distinction.

>> In that case, I guess you are now using some PC or DR DOS parts
>> combined with more modern, smaller drivers popular in FreeDOS?

> Nope. I prefer to keep things as original as possible.

In that case, which small classic drivers do you recommend?

Regards, Eric

PS: No, I do not need downloads of other copyrighted DOSes.



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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[Liam Proven]

On Sun, 18 Apr 2021 at 00:48, Eric Auer  wrote:
>
> Please mention a few examples of differences :-)

Different names for config files are the start.

> In that case, I guess you are now using some PC or DR DOS parts
> combined with more modern, smaller drivers popular in FreeDOS?

Nope. I prefer to keep things as original as possible. I use IBM tools
and drivers on PC DOS, if necessary supplemented with MS ones from the
Win98SE boot disk (for example SCANDISK and the MS editor -- I'm not
fond of IBM E). Likewise, DR tools with DR-DOS.

Jim Hall scolded me the last time I posted links, but if you search
with Google on the site liam-on-linux.livejournal.com for "DR DOS" or
"PC DOS", you will find descriptions of what I have done and downloads
of VirtualBox VHD images.

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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[Eric Auer]

Hi Liam,

> I personally prefer running PC DOS 7.1 or DR-DOS. The small differences
> in FreeDOS irritate me, and I am more familiar with these versions.

Please mention a few examples of differences :-)

> I was an expert in DOS manual memory management and could usually get
> circa 620 kB free conventional memory even on a heavily-loaded machine
> with multimedia, an optical drive and a network stack.

In that case, I guess you are now using some PC or DR DOS parts
combined with more modern, smaller drivers popular in FreeDOS?

Eric



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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[TK Chia]

Hello Ralf,


On a slightly related note: https://www.pcjs.org/blog/2018/05/27/ . :-)

Well, that article has a whole lot of nothing about "CALL 5".


Read on carefully. :-)  There is a VM of PC-DOS 2.0 which includes a
utility that was part of Microsoft Word ... and the utility uses `call 5'.

(Apparently --- per the blog post --- the utility using `call 5'
survived the transition from the 8086 to the 80286, and it was on the
80286 that it started to cause problems (because of A20).)


(Technical Reference) manual, nor do I recall this mentioned in more
than passing in any 3rd party "DOS internal" kind of books.


The `call 5' syscall interface is quite simple:
  * only syscalls 0--0x24 are allowed;
  * the syscall number goes into cl, not ah;
  * all other syscall parameters are as for `int 0x21'.

The interface does not really give programmers any extra power that
normal `int 0x21' calls cannot give --- which might explain why most
"DOS internal" texts do not care much about it.  But it is there, and
even later versions of MS-DOS (and FreeDOS) still have it.


By and large, people just need to stop spreading the myth that "DOS is
copied/stolen from CP/M" or similar nonsense.


True that.

Thank you!

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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[Ralf Quint]

On 4/17/2021 10:23 AM, TK Chia wrote:

Hello Ralf,


The "CALL 5" equivalent was never properly implemented, I guess Peterson
ran into problems with the differences of the 8080 and 8086 CPUs.


[...]


And you will have a hard time to find any serious documentation on that
CALL 5 stuff for any version of DOS. And I would be surprised if  there
would have been anything left after the rewrite of DOS for MS-DOS 2.0.


The `call 5' implementation was very clunky --- involving running some
pesky extra instructions not needed by the `int 0x21' path --- but it
most probably did work back then.

In a way, it had to work --- the programs translated using Paterson's
Z80-to-8086 source code translation relied on the `call 5' actually
working as a syscall mechanism.

On a slightly related note: https://www.pcjs.org/blog/2018/05/27/ . :-) 

Well, that article has a whole lot of nothing about "CALL 5".

I am working with DOS since December 1981, so that is for almost 39.5 
years now, and I have never even once come across a program that would 
use it, nor have I ever found any shred of information about using this 
"CALL 5" in ANY DOS version. It will not show up in any MS or IBM DOS 
(Technical Reference) manual, nor do I recall this mentioned in more 
than passing in any 3rd party "DOS internal" kind of books.


The only place where this is ever mentioned, beside in descriptions of 
the DOS PSP, stating usually just its mere existence, is in the 86-DOS 
Programmer's Manual 
(https://web.archive.org/web/20190623112725/http://www.patersontech.com/dos/Docs/86_dos_prog.pdf), 
then even there just as a note to it being a tool helping in the 
translation of existing CP/M-80 programs, and a clear note that this is 
not to be used for any new program (page 7).


By and large, people just need to stop spreading the myth that "DOS is 
copied/stolen from CP/M" or similar nonsense.


Ralf


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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[TK Chia]

Hello Ralf,


The "CALL 5" equivalent was never properly implemented, I guess Peterson
ran into problems with the differences of the 8080 and 8086 CPUs.


[...]


And you will have a hard time to find any serious documentation on that
CALL 5 stuff for any version of DOS. And I would be surprised if  there
would have been anything left after the rewrite of DOS for MS-DOS 2.0.


The `call 5' implementation was very clunky --- involving running some
pesky extra instructions not needed by the `int 0x21' path --- but it
most probably did work back then.

In a way, it had to work --- the programs translated using Paterson's
Z80-to-8086 source code translation relied on the `call 5' actually
working as a syscall mechanism.

On a slightly related note: https://www.pcjs.org/blog/2018/05/27/ . :-)

Thank you!

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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[Ralf Quint]

On 4/17/2021 3:39 AM, TK Chia wrote:

Hello Liam, hello Tom,


And according to the mainstream account (?), CP/M-86 would not be
released until late 1981.  QDOS was released earlier, in mid-1980
(https://archive.org/stream/byte-magazine-1980-08/1980_08_BYTE_05-08_The_Forth_Language#page/n173/mode/2up). 




QDOS's system call interface (`call 5') was in fact based on that of the
_8O8O_ version of CP/M, while CP/M-86 decided instead to implement a
different syscall interface (`int 0xe0').


I misspoke a bit here:  `call 5' was just one of QDOS's system call
interfaces (the other syscall interface supported by QDOS would be the
`int 0x21' that MS-DOS programmers are familiar with). 


The "CALL 5" equivalent was never properly implemented, I guess Peterson 
ran into problems with the differences of the 8080 and 8086 CPUs.


That's why the INT 21h as the actual DOS API was introduced. For which 
no equivalent exists in CP/M-80. And yes, CP/M-86 didn't exist at that 
time, at least not anywhere outside of Kildall's office, if at all...


And you will have a hard time to find any serious documentation on that 
CALL 5 stuff for any version of DOS. And I would be surprised if  there 
would have been anything left after the rewrite of DOS for MS-DOS 2.0.



Ralf


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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[Verite Philippe]

yes something of fdapm goin the startup . in the autoexec.bat but by default in rem lineciaoenvoyé : 16 avril 2021 à 13:15de : Thomas Desi à : "Discussion and general questions about FreeDOS." objet : Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOSMateusz, this _one_= 66297 2009-09-11 18:42:08 fdapm-2009sep11.zip on https://www.auersoft.eu/soft/I read the fdapm.txt and notes but can’t figure out: does it go into CONFIG.SYS or AUTOEXEC ?T h omasAm 16.04.2021 um 12:58 schrieb Mateusz Viste :On 16/04/2021 12:53, Thomas Desi wrote:Is there somebody who happens to know about the functionality (usability/) regarding DOSidle + FreeDos? Should I Autoexec.batFreeDOS comes with FDAPM, which provides a similar functionality (among other interesting features). There is also an IDLEHALT kernel configuration (to be set through CONFIG.SYS) that enables a subset of what FDAPM is capable of, for those who do not wish to use a powersaving TSR.Mateusz___Freedos-user mailing listFreedos-user@lists.sourceforge.nethttps://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user ___Freedos-user mailing listFreedos-user@lists.sourceforge.nethttps://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[Liam Proven]

On Sat, 17 Apr 2021 at 13:36, tom ehlert  wrote:
>
> and by extension FreeDOS is an unlicensed copy of MSDOS 6.x ?
>
> nope.

And now you are talking to yourself – and disagreeing with yourself?!

Are you feeling all right?

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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[Liam Proven]

On Sat, 17 Apr 2021 at 11:21, tom ehlert  wrote:

> by TK Chia's remark, CP/M-86 didn't even exist yet when he wrote QDOS.
> and QDOS couldn't compete with CP/M as CP/M doesn't run on 8088.

Did the original Mac compete with the PC? The PC can't run MacOS. The
Mac couldn't run DOS (without expensive hardware addons, anyway.)

And yet, *yes* they competed.

If one is selling into the same market of potential customers, yes,
you are competing.

> so you claim that DRDOS  3.31 was an unlicensed copy of MSDOS 3.x ?

Person A paints a picture. Person B makes a copy and sells millions of
copies. Person A comes back and sells copies of the original, with
advertising that it is the basis of Person B's derivative.

Is Person A ripping off Person B's work?

I am going to say *no*, they are not. It was their original work, and
a derivative that sold more does not change who created it.

> few people would agree with you on that.

To be honest, I think very few people would agree with what you
obviously feel are strong counter-arguments. To me, your arguments
make no sense at all.

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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[tom ehlert]

Hallo Herr tom ehlert,

am Samstag, 17. April 2021 um 11:20 schrieben Sie:

> BTW: your original statement was

>   'Remember that in effect MS-DOS was an unlicensed copy of Digital
>Research's CP/M and particularly CP/M-86.'

> by TK Chia's remark, CP/M-86 didn't even exist yet when he wrote QDOS.
> and QDOS couldn't compete with CP/M as CP/M doesn't run on 8088.

>> I still maintain there is a bit of a difference between copying a
>> rival's API in order to launch a competing product, and copying a
>> rival's API in order to do something completely different with it.

> so you claim that DRDOS  3.31 was an unlicensed copy of MSDOS 3.x ?

> few people would agree with you on that.

and by extension FreeDOS is an unlicensed copy of MSDOS 6.x ?

nope.

Tom



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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[TK Chia]

Hello Liam, hello Tom,


And according to the mainstream account (?), CP/M-86 would not be
released until late 1981.  QDOS was released earlier, in mid-1980
(https://archive.org/stream/byte-magazine-1980-08/1980_08_BYTE_05-08_The_Forth_Language#page/n173/mode/2up).



QDOS's system call interface (`call 5') was in fact based on that of the
_8O8O_ version of CP/M, while CP/M-86 decided instead to implement a
different syscall interface (`int 0xe0').


I misspoke a bit here:  `call 5' was just one of QDOS's system call
interfaces (the other syscall interface supported by QDOS would be the
`int 0x21' that MS-DOS programmers are familiar with).

Thank you!

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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[tom ehlert]

BTW: your original statement was

  'Remember that in effect MS-DOS was an unlicensed copy of Digital
   Research's CP/M and particularly CP/M-86.'

by TK Chia's remark, CP/M-86 didn't even exist yet when he wrote QDOS.
and QDOS couldn't compete with CP/M as CP/M doesn't run on 8088.

> I still maintain there is a bit of a difference between copying a
> rival's API in order to launch a competing product, and copying a
> rival's API in order to do something completely different with it.

so you claim that DRDOS  3.31 was an unlicensed copy of MSDOS 3.x ?

few people would agree with you on that.





Tom



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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[TK Chia]

Hello Liam,


All right, I have to concede that point.


Thank you --- glad we could agree. :-)


I still maintain there is a bit of a difference between copying a
rival's API in order to launch a competing product, and copying a
rival's API in order to do something completely different with it.


Personally I am not very sure that the original purveyors of QDOS or
MS-DOS 1.x intended for their offerings to "compete" head-on with
CP-M/86.  Perhaps this question is best left to the academic historians.

According to Paterson (the author of QDOS) himself
(http://dosmandrivel.blogspot.com/2007/09/design-of-dos.html),

"We knew Digital Research was working on a 16-bit OS, CP/M-86. At one
point we were expecting it to be available at the end of 1979. Had it
made its debut at any time before DOS was working, the DOS project would
have been dropped. SCP [Seattle Computer Products] wanted to be a
hardware company, not a software company."

And according to the mainstream account (?), CP/M-86 would not be
released until late 1981.  QDOS was released earlier, in mid-1980
(https://archive.org/stream/byte-magazine-1980-08/1980_08_BYTE_05-08_The_Forth_Language#page/n173/mode/2up).

QDOS's system call interface (`call 5') was in fact based on that of the
_8O8O_ version of CP/M, while CP/M-86 decided instead to implement a
different syscall interface (`int 0xe0').

Thank you!

--
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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[Liam Proven]

On Fri, 16 Apr 2021 at 17:40, TK Chia  wrote:

> > Is it? By whom?
>
> The whole discussion around the recent Google v. Oracle court case?

Hmm. Good point.

> If anything, it should show clearly that there is _nothing_ _nefarious_
> whatsoever in writing a system which implements a similar API --- or
> even the exact same API --- as some other system.

All right, I have to concede that point.

> It only "sounds" nefarious in the MS-DOS 1.x case, because Microsoft
> "The Great Satan" happens to be involved.

Well, to be fair, MS wasn't a great or especially nefarious company
(yet) back then.

Google didn't go into business offering its own JVM in competition
with Sun or Oracle. (Although Microsoft did!)

Google was targetting a different market that Java was barely present
in. J2ME had significant presence in featurephones, before smartphones
appeared, but they were dying when  Android switched target from being
a Blackberry-knockoff to being an iPhone-knockoff instead.

> I am pretty sure that _any_ interface for interacting with an OS _has_
> to be public information at some point.  Otherwise there is no way for
> third parties to actually, well, write applications for it.
>
> Thank you!

:-D

That is a compelling argument, I have to admit. OK, you have me.

I still maintain there is a bit of a difference between copying a
rival's API in order to launch a competing product, and copying a
rival's API in order to do something completely different with it.

WINE is not a competitor to Windows, any more than Sun's WABI was.
Android is not a competitor to the JVM. AIX was not a competitor to
HP-UX or Solaris, say, except inasmuch as their manufacturers had
rival hardware product lines. Solaris was of no interest or relevance
to IBM RS6000 customers, and AIX was of no interest to Sun customers,
and so on. Each only ran on their own proprietary hardware until late
in the era of proprietary RISC workstations.

But I must concede your overall point.

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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[Liam Proven]

On Fri, 16 Apr 2021 at 17:38, Deposite Pirate  wrote:
>
> It's pretty obvious it was highly inspired by the design of CP/M.

Well, yes.

> Also by the design of UNIX, either through CP/M (flat files) or later
> when Microsoft (who's first OS product was Xenix) added pipes and
> other original UNIX ideas.

This is true, but that was MS-DOS _2_ and after that point it started
to diverge radically from its ancestor.

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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[TK Chia]

Hello Tom,


JMP 5 terminates a program


Just a minor nitpick: that will be `jmp 0' (with cs = PSP).  `call 5'
performs a syscall with the syscall number in the cl register.

(Also, I recall --- if I remember correctly --- the actual CP/M-86
actually exposes a different `int 0xe0' interface for syscalls; and
MS-DOS's `jmp 0' and `call 5' interfaces were actually based on the 8080
version of CP/M.)

Thank you!

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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[TK Chia]

Hello Liam,


that's the way other programs talk to the OS; copying it was and is
considered fair game.

Is it? By whom?


The whole discussion around the recent Google v. Oracle court case?

If anything, it should show clearly that there is _nothing_ _nefarious_
whatsoever in writing a system which implements a similar API --- or
even the exact same API --- as some other system.

It only "sounds" nefarious in the MS-DOS 1.x case, because Microsoft
"The Great Satan" happens to be involved.


CP/M's API was not public info, although in those early days most
companies did publish source code to enable software to be ported.


I am pretty sure that _any_ interface for interacting with an OS _has_
to be public information at some point.  Otherwise there is no way for
third parties to actually, well, write applications for it.

Thank you!

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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[Deposite Pirate]

April 16, 2021 1:36 PM, "Liam Proven"  wrote:
> I have looked into this in considerable depth and that article you
> cite is based on a misunderstanding of the claims.
> 
> Nobody is saying that Paterson or SCP _copied code_ from CP/M into
> QDOS. That is not the claim here, so that oft-cited article wastes a
> lot of effort debunking the wrong claim based on misunderstanding the
> allegation.
> 
> The claim is that Paterson re-implemented, from scratch, cleanly and
> with his own code, the _design_ of CP/M.

It's pretty obvious it was highly inspired by the design of CP/M.
Also by the design of UNIX, either through CP/M (flat files) or later
when Microsoft (who's first OS product was Xenix) added pipes and
other original UNIX ideas.


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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[Liam Proven]

On Fri, 16 Apr 2021 at 16:07, tom ehlert  wrote:

> you are talking about the MSDOS 1.0 API.

Yes, I am.

> that's the way other programs talk to the OS; copying it was and is
> considered fair game.

Is it? By whom?

I mean, it definitely happens. There are multiple DOSes out there,
including Datalight ROM-DOS:
https://www.datalight.com/products/rom-dos/

... and the Russian PTS-DOS:
http://phystechsoft.ru/pts-dos

CP/M itself has also been copied multiple times. I am aware of...

• CPMish -- https://github.com/davidgiven/cpmish
• Cromemco CDOS -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cromemco_DOS
• SAM Coupé ProDos -- https://sam.speccy.cz/cpm.html

There were others. Most of these were quite niche and not particularly
competitors to DR's OS. E.g. CDOS was contemporary but only ran on
Cromemco kit, AFAIK. SAM ProDos (unrelated to Apple ProDos) was long
after. CPMish is a modern product built by combining 2 very old
replacements for _parts_ of CP/M.

The thing about SCP QDOS is that it started out as something tiny and
niche and no real threat to DR. SCP was a small company. But MS
promised IBM an OS when MS didn't have one, so they bought QDOS,
renamed it, and in the end it went directly up against CP/M-86 but at
1/6 of the price.

That is why DR was aggrieved, and I think it's a legitimate reason.

>  nothing about 'lifting'.

Taking another company's design and re-implementing it does not
involve _stealing_ their code, but it is not completely "fair game" as
you maintain, I think.

> 'design' usually refers to the internal way this API is implemented,
> and was in no way copied.

The API itself was and has a design. _That_  is what was copied. Not
the implementation.

> > That is why it was DR was able to offer DR-DOS.
> MSDOS 1.0 came out 1981. DRDOS 3.31 was published 1988.

DR-DOS was not the first. E.g. DR's DOS Plus, as bundled with the BBC
Micro 8086 co-processor, the BBC Master 512, and the early Amstrad
PC1512 and PC1640, was 3 years earlier.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOS_Plus

You might be familiar with the Amstrad machines via the Schneider
brand, I think?

 > and I really doubt it contains many lines from the CP/M code or even
> the same internal organisation as CP/M as it
> would be of little use for directories, memory allocation (segments) and more.

Nobody is alleging it does.

> and was wildly successful doing this ;)

Harsh. Not inaccurate, but harsh.

Someone came along, copied their product and sold it much cheaper, and
the company struggled. No surprise there.

> if it's ok to say that linux lifted the design from unix you may
> insist on saying this.

I would say that, yes.

This is a whole other discussion, but some important core facts:

Novell donated the UNIX™ trademark to the Open Group in 1993. Since
then, any product that passes Open Group certification can be called
"Unix". It has not been anything connected with containing AT code
for 38 years.

Apple Mac OS X passed the certification and was this a Unix™.
Several Linux distributions have passed, including Euler OS and K-OS,
so yes, Linux is a Unix™ now.

Neither contains any AT UNIX code and they don't need to.

But yes, Linux is a 3rd party clean re-implementation of the UNIX API.

_However_ that API was published, as was the source code of Unix in
the first 6 or 7 versions. It was put out there so others could work
with it, and that includes copying it. There are multiple other
re-implementations of Unix. All of the BSD versions, QNX, Minix, MWC
Coherent, any many more, all are reimplementations. DEC's OpenVMS has
a POSIX-compatibility module, which is why DEC added "Open" to the
name. So does IBM z/OS. So does Windows NT -- the latest version is
called "Windows Services for Linux", WSL.

This was public information, widely available. OpenVMS and z/OS were
not really competitors.

CP/M's API was not public info, although in those early days most
companies did publish source code to enable software to be ported.
MS-DOS was not originally one of many rivals; it was pretty much the
*only* one on the PC platform. Nobody thought the PC would get so big.

I don't blame Tim Paterson. I don't think he did anything wrong; it
was fair enough. He did not plan to create a multi-billion-dollar
industry. He didn't plan to make Bill Gates the richest man in the
world. He didn't plan to crush DR, although I suspect MS did.

But he did take someone else's design, yes.

> I however don't think so. 'lifting' implies
> some unproper behaviour

That is why I used the word, yes.

> BTW: your original statement was
>
>   'Remember that in effect MS-DOS was an unlicensed copy of Digital
>Research's CP/M and particularly CP/M-86.'
>
> which was, is, and ever will be bullshit.

Yes. I said that, I meant it, and I stand by it.

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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[tom ehlert]

Hallo Herr Liam Proven,

am Freitag, 16. April 2021 um 13:44 schrieben Sie:

> On Thu, 15 Apr 2021 at 19:48, tom ehlert  wrote:
>>
>> that is simply not true. to start this sentence with 'Remember'
>> as in 'as everyone knows' is bullshit conspiracy tactics.

> I stand by it.

> As the late great Dr Gary Kildall said:

> "Ask Bill [Gates] why the string in [MS-DOS] function 9 is terminated
> by a dollar sign. Ask him, because he can't answer. Only I know that."

>  —  Gary Kildall Quoted in James Wallace and Jim Erickson
> (1991-05-08), "Bill Gates: Of Mind and Money", Seattle
> Post-Intelligencer

> Source: https://quotepark.com/authors/gary-kildall/

> The _design_ of SCP QDOS, and therefore IBM PC DOS, and therefore
> MS-DOS, was directly lifted from DR CP/M. That is why it was so
> compatible and why it was easy to port CP/M code to DOS on 8086.

you are talking about the MSDOS 1.0 API.
that's the way other programs talk to the OS; copying it was and is
considered fair game. nothing about 'lifting'.

and indeed most of MSDOS 1.0 API is a direct copy of CP/M, or at least
as similar as sensible.

   strings end with '$' (for whatever weird reason)

   JMP 5 terminates a program

   FCB functions use the same field


'design' usually refers to the internal way this API is implemented,
and was in no way copied.

> That is why it was DR was able to offer DR-DOS.
MSDOS 1.0 came out 1981. DRDOS 3.31 was published 1988.
and I really doubt it contains many lines from the CP/M code or even
the same internal organisation as CP/M as it
would be of little use for directories, memory allocation (segments) and more.


> That is why DR competed
> with MS by offering multitasking OSes (Concurrent CP/M, Concurrent
> DOS, FlexOS, Multiuser DOS) which could multitask DOS apps.

and was wildly successful doing this ;)

> I am not saying Paterson stole the code. I am saying he lifted the design.

if it's ok to say that linux lifted the design from unix you may
insist on saying this. I however don't think so. 'lifting' implies
some unproper behaviour

BTW: your original statement was

  'Remember that in effect MS-DOS was an unlicensed copy of Digital
   Research's CP/M and particularly CP/M-86.'

which was, is, and ever will be bullshit.

Tom



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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[Thomas Desi]

Thank you, Mateusz!

Let’s save the planet with FreeDos!


> Am 16.04.2021 um 13:35 schrieb Mateusz Viste :
> 
> On 16/04/2021 13:15, Thomas Desi wrote:
>> this one= 66297 2009-09-11 18:42:08 fdapm-2009sep11.zip 
>>  on 
>> https://www.auersoft.eu/soft/ 
> 
> Yes.
> 
>> I read the fdapm.txt and notes but can’t figure out: does it go into 
>> CONFIG.SYS or AUTOEXEC ?
> 
> It is a TSR, not a driver - hence you can set it through autoexec.bat, or 
> even run by hand from the command line.
> 
> Mateusz
> 
> 
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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[Mateusz Viste]

On 16/04/2021 13:15, Thomas Desi wrote:
this one= 66297 2009-09-11 18:42:08 fdapm-2009sep11.zip 
 on 
https://www.auersoft.eu/soft/ 


Yes.

I read the fdapm.txt and notes but can’t figure out: does it go into 
CONFIG.SYS or AUTOEXEC ?


It is a TSR, not a driver - hence you can set it through autoexec.bat, 
or even run by hand from the command line.


Mateusz


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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[Liam Proven]

On Thu, 15 Apr 2021 at 19:48, tom ehlert  wrote:
>
> that is simply not true. to start this sentence with 'Remember'
> as in 'as everyone knows' is bullshit conspiracy tactics.

I stand by it.

As the late great Dr Gary Kildall said:

"Ask Bill [Gates] why the string in [MS-DOS] function 9 is terminated
by a dollar sign. Ask him, because he can't answer. Only I know that."

 —  Gary Kildall Quoted in James Wallace and Jim Erickson
(1991-05-08), "Bill Gates: Of Mind and Money", Seattle
Post-Intelligencer

Source: https://quotepark.com/authors/gary-kildall/

The _design_ of SCP QDOS, and therefore IBM PC DOS, and therefore
MS-DOS, was directly lifted from DR CP/M. That is why it was so
compatible and why it was easy to port CP/M code to DOS on 8086. That
is why it was DR was able to offer DR-DOS. That is why DR competed
with MS by offering multitasking OSes (Concurrent CP/M, Concurrent
DOS, FlexOS, Multiuser DOS) which could multitask DOS apps.

I am not saying Paterson stole the code. I am saying he lifted the design.

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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[Liam Proven]

On Thu, 15 Apr 2021 at 18:40, Jim Hall  wrote:
>
> I encourage you to write articles about FreeDOS. Your outline (above)
> about DOS drive letters would probably be very interesting to a lot of
> readers on the right websites.

Thanks. I have posted it on my blog:
https://liam-on-linux.livejournal.com/79973.html

I am a professional technical writer these days, working for the
largest independent enterprise Linux vendor. It doesn't leave me a lot
of time.

I used  to be a technical journalist for about 20 years. I wrote for
PC Magazine, Mac User, PC Pro/PC @uthority, Computer Buyer, PC
Advisor, Network News, and most recently, I had a column in Custom PC
for its first year of publication, among many others. I was the editor
of Heise's UK website and a regular contributor to The Inquirer and
The Register.

Most of these have now closed down.

There's a list of my Register articles here:
https://search.theregister.com/?q==1=liam+proven=the+dawn+of+time_per_page=100

I don't have much time for it any more as I'm a full-time writer and
editor, and also (at 53) a new dad with an 18-month-old daughter.

But thank you for the encouragement. :-)


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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[Liam Proven]

On Thu, 15 Apr 2021 at 18:30, Jim Hall  wrote:
>
> The "MS-DOS was a copy of CP/M" story is a myth. They both referenced
> other operating systems, and likely Tim Paterson referenced the CP/M
> manual when implementing some internal features of Q-DOS to create
> PC-DOS (then MS-DOS) but there's been code comparisons and binary
> analysis by several folks, and none that I'm aware of concluded that
> DOS was a copy of CP/M.
>
> Here's one example:
> https://www.embedded.com/was-dos-copied-from-cp-m/

I have looked into this in considerable depth and that article you
cite is based on a misunderstanding of the claims.

Nobody is saying that Paterson or SCP _copied code_ from CP/M into
QDOS. That is not the claim here, so that oft-cited article wastes a
lot of effort debunking the wrong claim based on misunderstanding the
allegation.

The claim is that Paterson re-implemented, from scratch, cleanly and
with his own code, the _design_ of CP/M.



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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[Thomas Desi]

Mateusz, 
this one= 66297 2009-09-11  18:42:08fdapm-2009sep11.zip 
 on 
https://www.auersoft.eu/soft/

I read the fdapm.txt and notes but can’t figure out: does it go into CONFIG.SYS 
or AUTOEXEC ?

T h omas


> Am 16.04.2021 um 12:58 schrieb Mateusz Viste :
> 
> On 16/04/2021 12:53, Thomas Desi wrote:
>> Is there somebody who happens to know about the functionality (usability/) 
>> regarding DOSidle + FreeDos? Should I Autoexec.bat
> 
> FreeDOS comes with FDAPM, which provides a similar functionality (among other 
> interesting features). There is also an IDLEHALT kernel configuration (to be 
> set through CONFIG.SYS) that enables a subset of what FDAPM is capable of, 
> for those who do not wish to use a powersaving TSR.
> 
> Mateusz
> 
> 
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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[Mateusz Viste]

On 16/04/2021 12:53, Thomas Desi wrote:

Is there somebody who happens to know about the functionality (usability/) 
regarding DOSidle + FreeDos? Should I Autoexec.bat


FreeDOS comes with FDAPM, which provides a similar functionality (among 
other interesting features). There is also an IDLEHALT kernel 
configuration (to be set through CONFIG.SYS) that enables a subset of 
what FDAPM is capable of, for those who do not wish to use a powersaving 
TSR.


Mateusz


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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[Thomas Desi]

@TameDOS ist this like „DOSidle“?

I found „DOSidle", by Marton Balog, 1998, to reduce CPU load, i.e. also reduce 
power consumption of the cpu i guess.
There is a fix of a mouse bug by  „pm386" 
(https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=43384) : UPDATE Aug 12 2015: There is a 
new release DOSidle 2.51, which you can find here DOSidle new version 2.50 
(fixes mouse problems). Haven’t any experience with such add-ons in DOS-

Is there somebody who happens to know about the functionality (usability/) 
regarding DOSidle + FreeDos? Should I Autoexec.bat  
-T h omas




> Am 15.04.2021 um 18:40 schrieb JR :
> 
> 
> 
> On 2021/04/15 18:05, Liam Proven wrote:
>> On Thu, 15 Apr 2021 at 14:17, JR  wrote:
>>>  I run DOS under XP with
>>> "TAME" to stop 100% CPU usage.
>> I am curious -- how? In some sort of VM? MS VirtualPC is a free
>> download now... something like that?
> I've got the name wrong. It's TameDOS.
> Nope, not free. It appears to be still available at $20 from the author
> http://www.tamedos.com/tame/tamehome.htm
> 100% CPU usage on a notebook is very noisy with the fan running flat out.
> 
>> 
>>> and then Mark William's COHERENT.
>> Ah, that was an amazing OS in its day. So Unix-like, AT sent Dennis
>> Ritchie himself to the MWC offices to check it wasn't pirated. It
>> wasn't.
> I didn't know that ;-) Coherent was advertised in BYTE magazine and was very 
> reasonably priced at the time. It came with and impressive 1200 page plus 
> printed manual. When I moved to DOS, I think I used Kermit to transfer my 
> source files from Coherent to a DOS partition.
>> 
>> https://groups.google.com/g/alt.folklore.computers/c/_ZaYeY46eb4/m/5B41Uym6d4QJ
>> 
>> It's FOSS now.
>> 
>> http://www.nesssoftware.com/home/mwc/
>> 
> 
> 
> 
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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[Mercury Thirteen via Freedos-user]

I was fortunate enough for my early years to be in the DOS era (albeit near its 
end) and I still remember the tiny pang of sadness upon reading that Microsoft 
was phasing out the venerable platform.

My first computer was an IBM PC/XT with DOS 3.something, which was a 
hand-me-down from my uncle after the university at which he works decided to 
dispose of it. Years later, I graduated to another hand-me-down; a Packard Bell 
486 machine with a mind-blowing 4 megs of RAM running DOS 6.22 and Windows 
3.11, obtained from a friend at church. Both machines were a fascinating 
learning experience, teaching me the ins and outs of "The DOS Way" and they 
were my first exposure to programming, first in QBASIC, then Microsoft's Visual 
BASIC for DOS, then eventually Bob Zale's Power BASIC. I've since moved on to 
Assembly, C, and JavaScript for the occasional day-job coding I need to perform 
- [Dijkstra's quote be darned 
(lol)](https://programmingisterrible.com/post/40132515169/dijkstra-basic) - but 
BASIC is still a faithful favorite. Some of my work has involved the machine 
tool industry, which has many CNC operators still using DOS-based PLC controls 
to this day. When an aging PC gives up the ghost on a vertical turret lathe 
valued in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, the ability to quickly set up a 
new replacement system complete with FreeDOS and a small collection of utility 
programs to get the client up and running is invaluable. Additionally, I still 
occasionally use DOS personally because, despite all the "advances" coming out 
of Redmond, I find Windows offerings way too bloaty and chock full of 
training-wheels design - both of which I detest. Even Linux, as enlightened as 
it is, pales in comparison to the speed, efficiency, small size, and sheer 
customizibility of FreeDOS.

In short, (Free)DOS is everything an OS should be. It puts power in the user's 
hands to control their machine however they wish. It remembers that the owner 
of the computer is the user - not the OS.

Kudos to Jim et al. for their work on this great platform!

Sent with [ProtonMail](https://protonmail.com) Secure Email.

‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐
On Wednesday, April 14, 2021 11:59 AM, Johnpaul Humphrey jpth1...@gmail.com 
wrote:

> In light of the "DOS was dead" discussion, I wanted to ask a question.
> I was born after support was dropped for MS-DOS, so I can't claim
> nostalgia as my reason for use. Recently I installed FreeDOS on my
> modern HP-Pavilion laptop, alongside BSD, Linux, and plan9. I did this
> because I like DOS's speed and assembly programming.
> It worked fine after I fixed the beep bug with your help.
> So my question is, why do YOU use FreeDOS?
> Is it primarily nostalgia? Legacy program support? Speed?
> Note that I don't consider running legacy software a bad reason. I was
> shocked by how much good software has been "thrown away" because of
> its age. On Linux all my favorite software (vi, siag office, twm,
> motif ) was written before I was born. However, that is not my
> primary reason for using FreeDOS. my primary reason is because it is
> like the motorcycle of operating systems. It is lightweight, has no
> red tape to cut through to do things, and is monotasking. (Monotasking
> is also why I don't use it as much as I would like to, but why I use
> it at all.)
> I figured that if I had a different reason than what everybody
> assumes, that some of you might as well. Everyone seems to assume that
> DOS is used by people who are unable to cope with progress and have to
> run their ancient version of word perfect. If that is your reason, it
> is not a bad reason. I was thinking of eventually writing a 64-bit dos
> work [sort of] alike eventually, but it would not be able to support
> legacy programs due to segment offset addressing and a million other
> things.
> Freedos-user mailing list
> Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[Johnpaul Humphrey]

Alvah Whealton
> (roll your own excuses)

Off topic slightly, but I have installed a windows-like distro on
several people's computers, because they were used to windows, but
were worried about viruses, scammers,  There are times I think, if
they could just use UNIX or more on topic DOS, they would never go
back. But they are scared of major change.
Those distros are for people who want windows but not Microsoft.

On Thu, Apr 15, 2021 at 11:41 AM Alvah Whealton  wrote:
>
>
>
> On Thu, Apr 15, 2021 at 12:04 PM Liam Proven  wrote:
>>
>>
>> Partly because OS/2 failed, and MS cheated DR out of its fair share of
>> the market, we never got the multitasking relatives of DOS we could
>> have had in the 1980s. Instead, we got a very heavyweight inefficient
>> series of ones in the 1990s... and we still run their descendants
>> today.
>>
>> And in its efforts to keep up, Linux has grown just as bloated.
>
>
> Amen to that.
>
> Adding insult  to injury,  I  am amazed at how many distros pat themselves on 
> the back for being "just like Windows."
>
> I have to wonder what percentage of the folks who migrate from Windows to 
> such distros will actually return  to Windows when either:
>
> a)  they discover that the  distro  is not a  Windows  clone
> or
> b) their friends  are not making the switch
> or
> c) the crap  software they bought off the shelf won't run on Linux
> or
> (roll your own excuses)
>
> Al Whealton
>
>
>
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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[Alvah Whealton]

On Thu, Apr 15, 2021 at 12:04 PM Liam Proven  wrote:

>
> Partly because OS/2 failed, and MS cheated DR out of its fair share of
> the market, we never got the multitasking relatives of DOS we could
> have had in the 1980s. Instead, we got a very heavyweight inefficient
> series of ones in the 1990s... and we still run their descendants
> today.
>
> And in its efforts to keep up, Linux has grown just as bloated.
>

Amen to that.

Adding insult  to injury,  I  am amazed at how many distros pat themselves
on the back for being "just like Windows."

I have to wonder what percentage of the folks who migrate from Windows to
such distros will actually return  to Windows when either:

a)  they discover that the  distro  is not a  Windows  clone
or
b) their friends  are not making the switch
or
c) the crap  software they bought off the shelf won't run on Linux
or
(roll your own excuses)

Al Whealton



>
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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[Tomas By]

Etcher has a validation step also, which I find reassuring.

There is a linerar relationship between the length of the source code
and the number of bugs, so it is probably not quite as bad as X1000.

Perhaps X100.

/Tomas


On Thu, 15 Apr 2021 18:02:51 +0200, Liam Proven wrote:
> Balena Etcher is one of my favourite examples. It burns ISO images to
> Flash drives, and nothing else. This is a job you can do in 500 kB of
> code if you're very lazy and inefficient.
> 
> But Etcher is an Electron app: it's written in JavaScript (a *wildly*
> bad choice for such a task) and so it embeds an entire copy of the
> Chromium web-rendering engine just to display a line of text and ask
> which file and which drive.
> 
> Result: it's an 85MB compressed download, and that's after they have
> managed to make it smaller in recent releases.
> 
> It is on the order of _one thousand times_ bigger than it needs to be
> to perform its task. That implies that it has in the region of a
> thousand times more potential bugs, vulnerabilities etc.
> 
> Just to write a file to a device, something I'd normally do with the command:
> dd if=linux.iso of=/dev/sdb
> 
> (27 characters and contains 90% of the functionality of Etcher.)


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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[tom ehlert]

I basically agree with what you write, but

> Remember that in effect MS-DOS was an unlicensed copy of Digital
> Research's CP/M and particularly CP/M-86.

that is simply not true. to start this sentence with 'Remember'
as in 'as everyone knows' is bullshit conspiracy tactics.

Tom




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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[Jim Hall]

On Wed, Apr 14, 2021 at 6:16 PM Adam Nielsen via Freedos-user
 wrote:
>[..]
> As to the original question, while I only use DOS for nostalgia
> reasons, I think it makes an excellent teaching tool for learning how
> modern computers work.  It's especially useful for people who wish to
> run Windows, as many conventions that started with DOS (such as drive
> letters) are still used today.  But DOS exposes everything at a much
> lower level so it makes it easier for a beginner to get a feeling for
> how the machine is affected by what they do.  Even modern Windows is
> having a bit of a resurgence when it comes to the command line, so all
> the skills DOS users learned with command line programs are even more
> relevant today in the world of Windows than they ever have been before.
>

I agree! DOS is a very simple operating system without a lot of moving
parts. It makes a great platform to talk about "how computers work"
because everything is so direct: after the computer starts up and
completes the POST, the bootloader launches the operating system. The
FreeDOS kernel reads FDCONFIG.SYS (or CONFIG.SYS, if FDCONFIG.SYS is
not there) for settings. Somewhere in FDCONFIG.SYS is a SHELL= line
that tells FreeDOS how to launch the Command shell (or uses a default
if not there). And the Command shell reads AUTOEXEC.BAT for its
initialization before presenting an interactive prompt.

That's a very simple process without a lot of moving parts. And fairly
easy to explain:

1. POST
2. Kernel
3. Kernel reads its settings
4. Kernel launches Command shell
5. Command shell reads its settings
6. C:\> prompt


I teach a Management Information Systems ("MIS") class, and I use this
when we learn how computers work. Once the students understand the
basics with DOS, it's pretty easy to translate that to more modern
operating systems like Linux or Windows.


Jim


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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[JR]

On 2021/04/15 18:05, Liam Proven wrote:

On Thu, 15 Apr 2021 at 14:17, JR  wrote:

  I run DOS under XP with
"TAME" to stop 100% CPU usage.

I am curious -- how? In some sort of VM? MS VirtualPC is a free
download now... something like that?

I've got the name wrong. It's TameDOS.
Nope, not free. It appears to be still available at $20 from the author
http://www.tamedos.com/tame/tamehome.htm
100% CPU usage on a notebook is very noisy with the fan running flat out.




and then Mark William's COHERENT.

Ah, that was an amazing OS in its day. So Unix-like, AT sent Dennis
Ritchie himself to the MWC offices to check it wasn't pirated. It
wasn't.
I didn't know that ;-) Coherent was advertised in BYTE magazine and was 
very reasonably priced at the time. It came with and impressive 1200 
page plus printed manual. When I moved to DOS, I think I used Kermit to 
transfer my source files from Coherent to a DOS partition.


https://groups.google.com/g/alt.folklore.computers/c/_ZaYeY46eb4/m/5B41Uym6d4QJ

It's FOSS now.

http://www.nesssoftware.com/home/mwc/





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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[Jim Hall]

On Thu, Apr 15, 2021 at 11:04 AM Liam Proven  wrote:
>
> On Thu, 15 Apr 2021 at 01:16, Adam Nielsen via Freedos-user
>  wrote:
> >
> > Have you written down your tips and tricks for this anywhere?  I find
> > these sorts of things interesting to read, mostly for nostalgia
> > reasons - as in finally learning about things that mystified me when I
> > was younger.
>
> For DOS memory optimisation? No... I have considered it, but it's
> quite a complex process and some of it depends a bit on other
> knowledge (e.g. dependencies among DOS drivers, or the few drivers
> that can be loaded either from CONFIG.SYS _or_ from AUTOEXEC.BAT).
>
> I tried writing up just the DOS disk drive letter assignment
> algorithm, but even that is quite complex!
>
> Axioms:
> • DOS only understands FAT12, FAT16 and in later versions FAT32. HPFS,
> NTFS and all *nix filesystems will be skipped.
> • We are only considering MBR partitioning
>
> So:
>
> • Hard disks support 2 partition types: primary and logical. Logical
> drives must go inside an extended partition.
> • MBR supports a legal max of 4 primaries per drive.
> • Only 1 primary partition on the 1st drive can be marked "active" and
> the BIOS will boot that one _unless_ you have a *nix bootloader
> installed.
> • You can only have 1 extended partition per drive. It counts as a
> primary partition.
> • To be "legal" and to support early versions of NT and OS/2, only 1
> DOS-readable primary partition per drive is allowed. All other
> partitions should go inside an extended partition.
> • MS-DOS, PC DOS and NT will only boot from a primary partition.
>
> Those are our "givens". Now, after all that, how does DOS (inc Win9x)
> assign drive letters?
>
> 1. It starts with drive letter C
> 2. It enumerates all available hard drives visible to the BIOS
> 3. The first *primary* partition on each drive is assigned a letter.
> 4. Then it goes back to the start and starts going through all the
> physical hard disks a 2nd time.
> 5. Now it enumerates all *logical* partitions on each drive and
> assigns them letters.
> 6. So, all the logicals on the 1st drive get sequential letters
> 7. Then all the logicals on the next drive
> 8. And so on through all logicals on all hard disks.
> 9. Then drivers in CONFIG.SYS are processed and if they create drives
> (e.g. DRIVER.SYS) those letters are assigned next.
> 10. Then drivers in AUTOEXEC.BAT are processed and if _they_ create
> drives (e.g. MSCDEX) those are assigned next.
>
> So you see... it's quite complicated. :-)
>
> Assigning upper memory blocks is _more_ complicated.
>

I encourage you to write articles about FreeDOS. Your outline (above)
about DOS drive letters would probably be very interesting to a lot of
readers on the right websites.

I write a lot of articles for OpenSource.com - including articles
about FreeDOS. In fact, I've arranged with the editors to write a
month-long article series about FreeDOS throughout June 2021. And
OpenSource.com has run articles about FreeDOS from other folks,
including Kevin O'Brien's recent article series about FreeDOS. I'm
sure they'd be interested in running other articles about FreeDOS.

I also write for CloudSavvyIT, including some FreeDOS stuff. Several
of my early articles were about FreeDOS, and I recently posted two
articles about DOS (both related to DOS text colors; I think they will
show up in the next week or so).

And I'm sure you can find other websites to write for. Generally, the
websites that focus on open source software are more receptive to
articles about FreeDOS.

Look for a "contact us" link or an "editors" link on the website, and
reach out to them. The secret in the publishing world is that most
websites are hungry for new content, so if you come to them with an
article idea (or better, a "first draft" for your article) they will
probably say Yes.

Jim


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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[Jim Hall]

On Thu, Apr 15, 2021 at 11:04 AM Liam Proven  wrote:
>[..]
> Ha! Drive letters most definitely did _not_ start with DOS.
>
> Remember that in effect MS-DOS was an unlicensed copy of Digital
> Research's CP/M and particularly CP/M-86. When the IBM PC was
> launched, IBM offered a choice of 3 OSes: PC DOS, CP/M-86 and the UCDS
> p-System (a bytecoded Pascal IDE and run-time environment.)
>


The "MS-DOS was a copy of CP/M" story is a myth. They both referenced
other operating systems, and likely Tim Paterson referenced the CP/M
manual when implementing some internal features of Q-DOS to create
PC-DOS (then MS-DOS) but there's been code comparisons and binary
analysis by several folks, and none that I'm aware of concluded that
DOS was a copy of CP/M.

Here's one example:
https://www.embedded.com/was-dos-copied-from-cp-m/


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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[Liam Proven]

On Thu, 15 Apr 2021 at 14:17, JR  wrote:
>  I run DOS under XP with
> "TAME" to stop 100% CPU usage.

I am curious -- how? In some sort of VM? MS VirtualPC is a free
download now... something like that?

> and then Mark William's COHERENT.

Ah, that was an amazing OS in its day. So Unix-like, AT sent Dennis
Ritchie himself to the MWC offices to check it wasn't pirated. It
wasn't.

https://groups.google.com/g/alt.folklore.computers/c/_ZaYeY46eb4/m/5B41Uym6d4QJ

It's FOSS now.

http://www.nesssoftware.com/home/mwc/

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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[Liam Proven]

On Thu, 15 Apr 2021 at 01:16, Adam Nielsen via Freedos-user
 wrote:
>
> Have you written down your tips and tricks for this anywhere?  I find
> these sorts of things interesting to read, mostly for nostalgia
> reasons - as in finally learning about things that mystified me when I
> was younger.

For DOS memory optimisation? No... I have considered it, but it's
quite a complex process and some of it depends a bit on other
knowledge (e.g. dependencies among DOS drivers, or the few drivers
that can be loaded either from CONFIG.SYS _or_ from AUTOEXEC.BAT).

I tried writing up just the DOS disk drive letter assignment
algorithm, but even that is quite complex!

Axioms:
• DOS only understands FAT12, FAT16 and in later versions FAT32. HPFS,
NTFS and all *nix filesystems will be skipped.
• We are only considering MBR partitioning

So:

• Hard disks support 2 partition types: primary and logical. Logical
drives must go inside an extended partition.
• MBR supports a legal max of 4 primaries per drive.
• Only 1 primary partition on the 1st drive can be marked "active" and
the BIOS will boot that one _unless_ you have a *nix bootloader
installed.
• You can only have 1 extended partition per drive. It counts as a
primary partition.
• To be "legal" and to support early versions of NT and OS/2, only 1
DOS-readable primary partition per drive is allowed. All other
partitions should go inside an extended partition.
• MS-DOS, PC DOS and NT will only boot from a primary partition.

Those are our "givens". Now, after all that, how does DOS (inc Win9x)
assign drive letters?

1. It starts with drive letter C
2. It enumerates all available hard drives visible to the BIOS
3. The first *primary* partition on each drive is assigned a letter.
4. Then it goes back to the start and starts going through all the
physical hard disks a 2nd time.
5. Now it enumerates all *logical* partitions on each drive and
assigns them letters.
6. So, all the logicals on the 1st drive get sequential letters
7. Then all the logicals on the next drive
8. And so on through all logicals on all hard disks.
9. Then drivers in CONFIG.SYS are processed and if they create drives
(e.g. DRIVER.SYS) those letters are assigned next.
10. Then drivers in AUTOEXEC.BAT are processed and if _they_ create
drives (e.g. MSCDEX) those are assigned next.

So you see... it's quite complicated. :-)

Assigning upper memory blocks is _more_ complicated.

NT changes this and I am not 100% sure of the details. From observation:

NT 3 did the same, but with the addition of HPFS and NTFS (NT 3.1 &
3.5) and NTFS (3.51) drives.
NT 4 does not recognise HPFS at all but the 3.51 driver can be retrofitted.
NT 3, 4 & 5 (Win2K) *require* that partitions are in sequential order.
Numbers may be missing but you can't have, say:

[part № 1] [part № 2] [part № 4] [part № 3]

They will blue-screen on boot if you have this. Linux doesn't care.

Riders/:
[1] The NT booloader must be on the first primary partition on the first drive.
[1b] A 3rd party boot-loader can override this and, for instance,
multi-boot several different installations on different drives
[2] The rest of the OS can be anywhere, including a logical drive.


NT 6 (Vista) & later can handle it, but this is because MS rewrote the
drive-letter allocation algorithm. (At least I _think_ this is why but
I do not know for sure; it could be a coincidence.)

Conditions: the NT 6+ bootloader must be in the same drive as the rest
of the OS. The bootloader must be on a primary partition. Therefore,
NT 6+ must be in a primary partition, a new restriction. NT 6+ must be
installed on an NTFS volume, therefore, it can no longer dual-boot
with DOS on its own & a 3rd party bootloader is needed.

NT 6+ just does this:
[1] The drive where the NT bootloader is becomes C:
[2] Then it allocates all readable partitions on drive 1, then all
those on drive 2, then all those on drive 3, etc.

So just listing the rules is quite complicated. Turning into a
step-by-step how-to guide is significantly longer and more complex. As
an example, the much simpler process of cleaning up Windows 7/8.x/10
if preparing to dual-boot took me several thousand words, and I
skipped some entire considerations to keep it that "short".

https://liam-on-linux.livejournal.com/68495.html

> Given the upswing in retro-gaming (as you can see by the increase in
> eBay prices for DOS-compatible hardware over the last few years), it
> seems more and more people who grew up with DOS games are now reaching
> the age where they have the time and financial means to go build the DOS
> PC they always wanted.  Knowing how to set it up better than you ever
> could back in the day would be something quite valuable.  I've lost
> count of the number of new discoveries about old hardware I wish I
> could've gone back and told myself about 20 years ago!

Fair point!

> Personally I have a collection of hardware from the 1990s that I picked
> up cheap over the years (often for free as people were 

Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[ZB]

On Thu, Apr 15, 2021 at 01:15:30PM +, Deposite Pirate wrote:

> The mainstream is the domain of the followers, those who don't have a clue.

The mainstream is a source of new hardware and software -- whether you like
it, or you don't
-- 
regards,
Zbigniew


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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[Deposite Pirate]

April 15, 2021 3:10 PM, "ZB"  wrote:
> Yes, there is. When new software is created only by hobbyists -- no longer
> by companies -- and also new hardware is created only as hobby thing, not
> mass-manufactured by any company, not sold in the shops when there are no
> new device drivers created (again just as hobby) we have to admit such
> platform fell out of "mainstream" (from any "stream", actually, maybe with
> exception of "hobbystream"), becoming "retro"

The mainstream is the domain of the followers, those who don't have a clue.


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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[ZB]

On Wed, Apr 14, 2021 at 06:17:15PM +, Deposite Pirate wrote:

> Because there is no such thing as a "retro" or "ancient" computer.
> That wording is programmed obsolescence propaganda.

Yes, there is. When new software is created only by hobbyists -- no longer
by companies -- and also new hardware is created only as hobby thing, not
mass-manufactured by any company, not sold in the shops when there are no
new device drivers created (again just as hobby) we have to admit such
platform fell out of "mainstream" (from any "stream", actually, maybe with
exception of "hobbystream"), becoming "retro"
-- 
regards,
Zbigniew


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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[JR]

Hi All
I am 66 years old and have been developing microprocessor based products 
for over 35 years and use DOS 90% of the time. I run DOS under XP with 
"TAME" to stop 100% CPU usage. The XP PC is on my network but remains 
invisible to the Internet. A MikroTik router has been setup to 
accomplish this. I use a dedicated PC running LUBUNTU for email and Web. 
(Thunderbird and Firefox). Prior to DOS I used TSC's Flex, TSC's Uniflex 
and then Mark William's COHERENT.

Principle DOS applications that I run are:-
CO - Michael Mefford's DirMagic
MS - Micro Star from Borland's Editor Toolbox
SP - Sprint - Borland's Word Processor - Produce Postscript files which 
are converted to PDF's. Used for all documentation, letters and quotations.

AS12 - Motorola's open source assembler for the HCS12 family.
asm03 - Budd Pass's 68XX assembler
asm8 - Tony Papadimitriou's freeware assembler for Motorola/ Freescale/ 
NXP HCS08 MCU family

TCC - Borland's C compiler.
grep - Borland's version.

Fast, vanilla and solid!

Regards, John

On 2021/04/14 17:59, Johnpaul Humphrey wrote:

In light of the "DOS was dead" discussion, I wanted to ask a question.
I was *born* after support was dropped for MS-DOS, so I can't claim
nostalgia as my reason for use. Recently I installed FreeDOS on my
modern HP-Pavilion laptop, alongside BSD, Linux, and plan9. I did this
because I like DOS's speed and assembly programming.
It worked fine after I fixed the beep bug with your help.
So my question is, why do YOU use FreeDOS?
Is it primarily nostalgia? Legacy program support? Speed?
Note that I don't consider running legacy software a bad reason. I was
shocked by how much good software has been "thrown away" because of
its age. On Linux all my favorite software (vi, siag office, twm,
motif ) was written before I was born. However, that is not my
primary reason for using FreeDOS. my primary reason is because it is
like the motorcycle of operating systems. It is lightweight, has no
red tape to cut through to do things, and is monotasking. (Monotasking
is also why I don't use it as much as I would like to, but why I use
it at all.)
I figured that if I had a different reason than what everybody
assumes, that some of you might as well. Everyone seems to assume that
DOS is used by people who are unable to cope with progress and have to
run their ancient version of word perfect. If that is your reason, it
is not a bad reason. I was thinking of eventually writing a 64-bit dos
work [sort of] alike eventually, but it would not be able to support
legacy programs due to segment offset addressing and a million other
things.


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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[Adam Nielsen via Freedos-user]

> I was an expert in DOS manual memory management and could usually get
> circa 620 kB free conventional memory even on a heavily-loaded machine
> with multimedia, an optical drive and a network stack.
> 
> These skills are completely obsolete and redundant these days.

Have you written down your tips and tricks for this anywhere?  I find
these sorts of things interesting to read, mostly for nostalgia
reasons - as in finally learning about things that mystified me when I
was younger.

Given the upswing in retro-gaming (as you can see by the increase in
eBay prices for DOS-compatible hardware over the last few years), it
seems more and more people who grew up with DOS games are now reaching
the age where they have the time and financial means to go build the DOS
PC they always wanted.  Knowing how to set it up better than you ever
could back in the day would be something quite valuable.  I've lost
count of the number of new discoveries about old hardware I wish I
could've gone back and told myself about 20 years ago!

Personally I have a collection of hardware from the 1990s that I picked
up cheap over the years (often for free as people were throwing it out
as obsolete) and my goal is to one day set up a small computer lab with
it all.  That's the point where getting network drivers loaded while
still having enough free memory to run the games themselves would be
very useful!

As to the original question, while I only use DOS for nostalgia
reasons, I think it makes an excellent teaching tool for learning how
modern computers work.  It's especially useful for people who wish to
run Windows, as many conventions that started with DOS (such as drive
letters) are still used today.  But DOS exposes everything at a much
lower level so it makes it easier for a beginner to get a feeling for
how the machine is affected by what they do.  Even modern Windows is
having a bit of a resurgence when it comes to the command line, so all
the skills DOS users learned with command line programs are even more
relevant today in the world of Windows than they ever have been before.

It is, after all, my "obsolete" DOS skills that have allowed me, in an
office setting, to show people how to do things like get a list of
files in a directory into a text file, manipulate them with an Excel
formula, produce a set of rename commands, and then run them in a
command prompt to do a bulk rename of a few hundred files.

Tasks like this are things you cannot do entirely via the default GUI
and the first thing people do (who aren't familiar with DOS) is jump on
Google and look for a program that can do it for them.  These often
cost money and/or are filled with ads (or worse) and are usually
massive downloads because of all the awful graphics they come with to
bulk out the program, to disguise the fact that it doesn't actually do
much at all.

But a few simple commands unchanged since early versions of DOS can do
it in no time, with no additional software installs required.  So being
familiar with DOS can still to this day give you skills that are useful
with even the latest computers and operating systems.

Cheers,
Adam.


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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[David Gifford Sr. via Freedos-user]

 Liam ProvenMuch the same here, just quite proficient with DOS back in the 
80's, I like that it's fast only doing ONE thing at a time, and boots so 
quickly. Not to mention, it doesn't spy on you! And right, you aren't tempted 
to surf the web/ LOL

On Wednesday, April 14, 2021, 6:11:02 PM EDT, Liam Proven 
 wrote:  
 
 On Wed, 14 Apr 2021 at 18:00, Johnpaul Humphrey  wrote:
>
> So my question is, why do YOU use FreeDOS?

OK. Disclaimer first: I do have FreeDOS here and there but I
personally prefer running PC DOS 7.1 or DR-DOS. The small differences
in FreeDOS irritate me, and I am more familiar with these versions. I
worked in tech support on DOS in the 1980s and 1990s and know those
versions best.

That aside: why do I still run DOS?

Well, I built up a lot of skills in DOS in my early career – I won
jobs on the basis of my DOS troubleshooting and optimisation skills. I
was an expert in DOS manual memory management and could usually get
circa 620 kB free conventional memory even on a heavily-loaded machine
with multimedia, an optical drive and a network stack.

These skills are completely obsolete and redundant these days.

So, installing DOS, especially on real hardware, is a fun chance to
exercise old skills that I do not get to use any more.

There are a huge number of DOS applications out there as abandonware
these days, albeit only quasi-legal. It's the work of minutes to
assemble a top-flight selection of office apps worth thousands of
£/$/€  30 years ago. I know how to use many of these apps very quickly
and efficiently.

DOS takes little maintenance, especially compared with 21st century Windows.

It's very fast, it does a lot of what I need, and also it's blissfully
free of distractions once you've got it working. You can't just
Alt-Tab to another window and then waste hours idly surfing the Web.
You can't meaningfully use the Web at all. That helps me to get more
done.

It's also handy for re-flashing BIOSes and things like that. :-)

-- 
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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[Mercury Thirteen via Freedos-user]

Sent with [ProtonMail](https://protonmail.com) Secure Email.

‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐
On Wednesday, April 14, 2021 6:09 PM, Liam Proven lpro...@gmail.com wrote:

> On Wed, 14 Apr 2021 at 18:00, Johnpaul Humphrey jpth1...@gmail.com wrote:
>
>> So my question is, why do YOU use FreeDOS?
>
> OK. Disclaimer first: I do have FreeDOS here and there but I
> personally prefer running PC DOS 7.1 or DR-DOS. The small differences
> in FreeDOS irritate me, and I am more familiar with these versions. I
> worked in tech support on DOS in the 1980s and 1990s and know those
> versions best.
> That aside: why do I still run DOS?
> Well, I built up a lot of skills in DOS in my early career –

"But what I do have are a very particular set of skills, skills I have acquired 
over a very long career..."
Liam, are you sure your last name isn't Neeson? lol
But seriously though, you capture many of the same reasons I myself still use 
DOS. I may not use it often, but when I do, the immense power and control it 
gives me to perform the task at hand is unparalleled. Cheers to (Free)DOS! :D

> I won jobs on the basis of my DOS troubleshooting and optimisation skills. I
> was an expert in DOS manual memory management and could usually get
> circa 620 kB free conventional memory even on a heavily-loaded machine
> with multimedia, an optical drive and a network stack.
> These skills are completely obsolete and redundant these days.
> So, installing DOS, especially on real hardware, is a fun chance to
> exercise old skills that I do not get to use any more.
> There are a huge number of DOS applications out there as abandonware
> these days, albeit only quasi-legal. It's the work of minutes to
> assemble a top-flight selection of office apps worth thousands of
> £/$/€ 30 years ago. I know how to use many of these apps very quickly
> and efficiently.
> DOS takes little maintenance, especially compared with 21st century Windows.
> It's very fast, it does a lot of what I need, and also it's blissfully
> free of distractions once you've got it working. You can't just
> Alt-Tab to another window and then waste hours idly surfing the Web.
> You can't meaningfully use the Web at all. That helps me to get more
> done.
> It's also handy for re-flashing BIOSes and things like that. :-)
> ---
>
> Liam Proven – Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
> Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk – gMail/gTalk/gHangouts: lpro...@gmail.com
> Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn/Flickr: lproven – Skype: liamproven
> UK: +44 7939-087884 – ČR (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053
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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[Liam Proven]

On Wed, 14 Apr 2021 at 18:00, Johnpaul Humphrey  wrote:
>
> So my question is, why do YOU use FreeDOS?

OK. Disclaimer first: I do have FreeDOS here and there but I
personally prefer running PC DOS 7.1 or DR-DOS. The small differences
in FreeDOS irritate me, and I am more familiar with these versions. I
worked in tech support on DOS in the 1980s and 1990s and know those
versions best.

That aside: why do I still run DOS?

Well, I built up a lot of skills in DOS in my early career – I won
jobs on the basis of my DOS troubleshooting and optimisation skills. I
was an expert in DOS manual memory management and could usually get
circa 620 kB free conventional memory even on a heavily-loaded machine
with multimedia, an optical drive and a network stack.

These skills are completely obsolete and redundant these days.

So, installing DOS, especially on real hardware, is a fun chance to
exercise old skills that I do not get to use any more.

There are a huge number of DOS applications out there as abandonware
these days, albeit only quasi-legal. It's the work of minutes to
assemble a top-flight selection of office apps worth thousands of
£/$/€  30 years ago. I know how to use many of these apps very quickly
and efficiently.

DOS takes little maintenance, especially compared with 21st century Windows.

It's very fast, it does a lot of what I need, and also it's blissfully
free of distractions once you've got it working. You can't just
Alt-Tab to another window and then waste hours idly surfing the Web.
You can't meaningfully use the Web at all. That helps me to get more
done.

It's also handy for re-flashing BIOSes and things like that. :-)

-- 
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Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk – gMail/gTalk/gHangouts: lpro...@gmail.com
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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[John R. Sowden]

All of the reasons that Thomas voiced, and to that I add control.  I 
want to automatically save files where I want them, not expecting a 
worker to go to "documents' then choose amongst various "folders" to 
find the correct one, which sometimes is not. We use WordStar for DOS 
and FoxPro for DOS.  We only use Quattro Pro for accounting files that 
are before about 1990. Searching for files or info inside files is fast.


Games are not an issue.

I think I about covered it.  Oh, yes, it was an improvement over CP/M 
amd TRS-DOS.  Another one-there were written manuals, many of which I 
still have.


John



On 4/14/21 9:23 AM, Thomas Desi wrote:

HI Johnpaul - whom are you addressing in your mail saying

"So my question is, why do YOU use FreeDOS?"

just in case…  ;) here is my „ranting rating“:

- I am 50ish and not so much nostalgic about computing, but:

- want to get rid of networking on my „composing tool“
- want to have a lighting fast bootup
- want to have 1 (one!!) single app that I use,
- don’t want the virus thing (do we?)
- don’t want all those hidden spying/cookies/passwords/logins
- (single user instance, at home, old computer: who ever would want to get into 
my files? If they start the computer, they wouldn’t know what to do when seeing 
the FreeDos splash screen ; ) - Kidding)
- don't want "update nagging“, this has become crazyness. (legacy program like, 
e.g. VDE Editor and others can’t possibly made any better … like in „here is the 
update to the wheel“..)
- want to be able to switch the thing off with a button: „Zip!“ and walk away 
from the screen.
- (and no waiting or „the computer was not correctly shut down … bla blabla“)
- No „power saving“ or „standby modes“ which anyway also consume quite an 
amount of energy, with funny standby-lights flashing all night in your 
appartment. Just switch it entirely off.
- single simple view of what I have written (actual OS suggest to become a 
virtuoso in creating folders/directories and drop files on a „desktop“ which is 
a fake folder, too…
- want to have single files that represent an „app“. (not thousands of 
libraries, dependencies, installs, dlls, blablabl)
- a disk with FEW files alltogether. (Windows10 uses around 300,000 files for a 
fresh 12 GIGABYTE install! THREEHUNDRED THOUSAND)
- a system of a handful of commands I program on my „macro pad“ - and press it 
without need to type in, not even „dir“ or „cd ..“ or „type“ etc…
- want SIMPLICITY, purism, „control“ ...
- want to learn to understand a little how actually a computer works as a tool, 
not as a consumer gadget that could - theoretically - do EVERYTHING and drives 
me nuts because of the running „why doesn’t it do this and that“…
- and a few more which sound quite similar to your reasons!

I agree that there has been a huge amount of programming work, carefully 
written out documentations and alike become obsolete in the last decades.

In my experience (Text/composing/editing( I don’t see ANY difference working on 
a Windows10 Computer in Word today and how it was back in say 1988 when I had 
my first machine regarding the workflow… Text-editing hasn’t changed in the 
last decades, that is why Emacs and VI(m) are still much in use. But I guess 
this is a different story and doesn’t fit into this thread.


- T-h-omas



Am 14.04.2021 um 17:59 schrieb Johnpaul Humphrey :

In light of the "DOS was dead" discussion, I wanted to ask a question.
I was *born* after support was dropped for MS-DOS, so I can't claim
nostalgia as my reason for use. Recently I installed FreeDOS on my
modern HP-Pavilion laptop, alongside BSD, Linux, and plan9. I did this
because I like DOS's speed and assembly programming.
It worked fine after I fixed the beep bug with your help.
So my question is, why do YOU use FreeDOS?
Is it primarily nostalgia? Legacy program support? Speed?
Note that I don't consider running legacy software a bad reason. I was
shocked by how much good software has been "thrown away" because of
its age. On Linux all my favorite software (vi, siag office, twm,
motif ) was written before I was born. However, that is not my
primary reason for using FreeDOS. my primary reason is because it is
like the motorcycle of operating systems. It is lightweight, has no
red tape to cut through to do things, and is monotasking. (Monotasking
is also why I don't use it as much as I would like to, but why I use
it at all.)
I figured that if I had a different reason than what everybody
assumes, that some of you might as well. Everyone seems to assume that
DOS is used by people who are unable to cope with progress and have to
run their ancient version of word perfect. If that is your reason, it
is not a bad reason. I was thinking of eventually writing a 64-bit dos
work [sort of] alike eventually, but it would not be able to support
legacy programs due to segment offset addressing and a million other
things.


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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[Johnpaul Humphrey]

Thank you for all your replies! So far I am seeing the following "themes"

* Speed and startup time
* Running "timeless" software that was abandoned largely because of
propaganda and business
* Keeping Old hardware running.
* Distraction free
* Avoid being terrorized by the modern commercial experience.


On Wed, Apr 14, 2021 at 11:45 AM Deposite Pirate
 wrote:
>
> April 14, 2021 6:01 PM, "Johnpaul Humphrey"  wrote:
> > So my question is, why do YOU use FreeDOS?
>
>
> Because there is no such thing as a "retro" or "ancient" computer.
> That wording is programmed obsolescence propaganda. A computer is
> a useful tool as long as it works as expected and there is no good
> reason to throw it away. As long as it works it is no less capable
> then the day you got it. Emulation always sucks more or less. It is
> never perfect. Real hardware is always better. DOS is an appropriate
> OS for some tasks.
>
> When it comes to games, better graphics != better gameplay. Like
> better special effects doesn't make for a better movie. And better
> sound production doesn't make for better music. In fact better
> graphics in games, better special effects in movies and better
> sound production in music are far too often just a way to distract
> from the lack of skills, ideas of those who made them. Also a good
> movie, good music or a good game never gets old, this is how you
> actually know it is good. Most games, movies and music are just
> an endless stream of generic boring fast food-like entertainment
> for living intestines (consumers) being fleeced and sedated.
>
>
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-- 
Johnpaul T. Humphrey


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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[Deposite Pirate]

April 14, 2021 6:01 PM, "Johnpaul Humphrey"  wrote:
> So my question is, why do YOU use FreeDOS?


Because there is no such thing as a "retro" or "ancient" computer.
That wording is programmed obsolescence propaganda. A computer is
a useful tool as long as it works as expected and there is no good
reason to throw it away. As long as it works it is no less capable
then the day you got it. Emulation always sucks more or less. It is
never perfect. Real hardware is always better. DOS is an appropriate
OS for some tasks.

When it comes to games, better graphics != better gameplay. Like
better special effects doesn't make for a better movie. And better
sound production doesn't make for better music. In fact better
graphics in games, better special effects in movies and better
sound production in music are far too often just a way to distract
from the lack of skills, ideas of those who made them. Also a good
movie, good music or a good game never gets old, this is how you
actually know it is good. Most games, movies and music are just
an endless stream of generic boring fast food-like entertainment
for living intestines (consumers) being fleeced and sedated.


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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[Carsten Strotmann]

Hi,

On 14 Apr 2021, at 17:59, Johnpaul Humphrey wrote:


So my question is, why do YOU use FreeDOS?


 * I maintain open source software that run under DOS (besides other 
operating systems).

 * I like to program "low-level" with direct hardware access
 * I like the quick startup time of DOS
 * I have some DOS programs that have no equivalent under modern 
operating systems

 * I have a bunch of older PCs (8086-i486) that I run on DOS

Greetings

Carsten



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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[Eric Auer]

>> Or something like Dosbian Linux on Raspberry Pi which
>> just immediately boots into only a DOS window.   
>> 

> Is it known here whether this supports proprietary SVGA text modes, (e.g.
> Trident's 132x43, 132x30, 132x60)?

The website says it is based on a modified dosbox and
dosbox supports only Tseng Labs SVGA according to

https://www.classicdosgames.com/tutorials/advanceddosbox.html

but that page says you could try PCem if you want Trident.
Not sure if PCem is available for Raspberry Pi, of course.

In general, dosbox is quite versatile:

https://www.dosbox.com/wiki/Configuration:DOSBox

Hercules, CGA, Tandy, EGA, PCjr, VGA, S3 Trio64 SVGA,
Tseng Labs ET3000 SVGA, Tseng Labs ET4000 SVGA,
Paradise SVGA, VESA with VBE 1.3 etc.

https://devtidbits.com/2008/03/16/dosbox-graphic-and-machine-emulation-cga-vga-tandy-pcjr-hercules/

says the DOSBOX S3 Trio64 emulation is good enough
for VESA VBE 2.0 including LFB.

You can also check https://dosbox-x.com/ which funnily
enough provides a HX-DOS based version which lets you
run a DOS window inside DOS! Can help if your hardware
is not directly compatible with your app. No Raspberry
version, but supports ARM on Mac so maybe almost there?

Eric



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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[Felix Miata]

Johnpaul Humphrey composed on 2021-04-14 08:59 (UTC-0700):

> So my question is, why do YOU use FreeDOS?
> 
No upgrade path from the DOS apps I became dependent on 3 decades ago, primarily
Quattro Pro using the Lotus 1-2-3 menu system, and the WQ! and WQ2 file formats.
-- 
Evolution as taught in public schools, like religion,
is based on faith, not on science.

 Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks!

Felix Miata  ***  http://fm.no-ip.com/


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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[Felix Miata]

Eric Auer composed on 2021-04-14 18:36 (UTC+0200):

> Or something like Dosbian Linux on Raspberry Pi which
> just immediately boots into only a DOS window.
> 
Is it known here whether this supports proprietary SVGA text modes, (e.g.
Trident's 132x43, 132x30, 132x60)?
-- 
Evolution as taught in public schools, like religion,
is based on faith, not on science.

 Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks!

Felix Miata  ***  http://fm.no-ip.com/


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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[ZB]

On Wed, Apr 14, 2021 at 08:59:05AM -0700, Johnpaul Humphrey wrote:

> So my question is, why do YOU use FreeDOS?
> Is it primarily nostalgia? Legacy program support? Speed?

Visit sites like "vetusware" and you'll see that there's plenty of programs
that can still be useful today, while being used on modest hardware. You
don't need multicore CPU and 16-64 GB of RAM tu run spreadsheet or text
processor, it seems (just one example). Or to play interesting game.

DOS became the best "retro-computing" platform; while most of the software
for Amiga or Atari ST, that can be seen as still interesting even today, is
almost only gaming-related software, using DOS you are actually limited when
it goes to Internet services; for most of other areas of your activity you
can still use DOS software.

And please note, that there's still plenty of DOS-compatible hardware around
that can be bought on eBay etc. at rather decent prices, while e.g.
Amiga-related hardware (or similar) became very expensive
-- 
regards,
Zbigniew


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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[Johnpaul Humphrey]

> Whom are you addressing
Anybody that want's to talk about it.
I like your points. And yes the single program is a plus.

On Wed, Apr 14, 2021 at 9:25 AM Thomas Desi  wrote:
>
> HI Johnpaul - whom are you addressing in your mail saying
> > "So my question is, why do YOU use FreeDOS?"
>
> just in case…  ;) here is my „ranting rating“:
>
> - I am 50ish and not so much nostalgic about computing, but:
>
> - want to get rid of networking on my „composing tool“
> - want to have a lighting fast bootup
> - want to have 1 (one!!) single app that I use,
> - don’t want the virus thing (do we?)
> - don’t want all those hidden spying/cookies/passwords/logins
> - (single user instance, at home, old computer: who ever would want to get 
> into my files? If they start the computer, they wouldn’t know what to do when 
> seeing the FreeDos splash screen ; ) - Kidding)
> - don't want "update nagging“, this has become crazyness. (legacy program 
> like, e.g. VDE Editor and others can’t possibly made any better … like in 
> „here is the update to the wheel“..)
> - want to be able to switch the thing off with a button: „Zip!“ and walk away 
> from the screen.
> - (and no waiting or „the computer was not correctly shut down … bla blabla“)
> - No „power saving“ or „standby modes“ which anyway also consume quite an 
> amount of energy, with funny standby-lights flashing all night in your 
> appartment. Just switch it entirely off.
> - single simple view of what I have written (actual OS suggest to become a 
> virtuoso in creating folders/directories and drop files on a „desktop“ which 
> is a fake folder, too…
> - want to have single files that represent an „app“. (not thousands of 
> libraries, dependencies, installs, dlls, blablabl)
> - a disk with FEW files alltogether. (Windows10 uses around 300,000 files for 
> a fresh 12 GIGABYTE install! THREEHUNDRED THOUSAND)
> - a system of a handful of commands I program on my „macro pad“ - and press 
> it without need to type in, not even „dir“ or „cd ..“ or „type“ etc…
> - want SIMPLICITY, purism, „control“ ...
> - want to learn to understand a little how actually a computer works as a 
> tool, not as a consumer gadget that could - theoretically - do EVERYTHING and 
> drives me nuts because of the running „why doesn’t it do this and that“…
> - and a few more which sound quite similar to your reasons!
>
> I agree that there has been a huge amount of programming work, carefully 
> written out documentations and alike become obsolete in the last decades.
>
> In my experience (Text/composing/editing( I don’t see ANY difference working 
> on a Windows10 Computer in Word today and how it was back in say 1988 when I 
> had my first machine regarding the workflow… Text-editing hasn’t changed in 
> the last decades, that is why Emacs and VI(m) are still much in use. But I 
> guess this is a different story and doesn’t fit into this thread.
>
>
> - T-h-omas
>
>
> > Am 14.04.2021 um 17:59 schrieb Johnpaul Humphrey :
> >
> > In light of the "DOS was dead" discussion, I wanted to ask a question.
> > I was *born* after support was dropped for MS-DOS, so I can't claim
> > nostalgia as my reason for use. Recently I installed FreeDOS on my
> > modern HP-Pavilion laptop, alongside BSD, Linux, and plan9. I did this
> > because I like DOS's speed and assembly programming.
> > It worked fine after I fixed the beep bug with your help.
> > So my question is, why do YOU use FreeDOS?
> > Is it primarily nostalgia? Legacy program support? Speed?
> > Note that I don't consider running legacy software a bad reason. I was
> > shocked by how much good software has been "thrown away" because of
> > its age. On Linux all my favorite software (vi, siag office, twm,
> > motif ) was written before I was born. However, that is not my
> > primary reason for using FreeDOS. my primary reason is because it is
> > like the motorcycle of operating systems. It is lightweight, has no
> > red tape to cut through to do things, and is monotasking. (Monotasking
> > is also why I don't use it as much as I would like to, but why I use
> > it at all.)
> > I figured that if I had a different reason than what everybody
> > assumes, that some of you might as well. Everyone seems to assume that
> > DOS is used by people who are unable to cope with progress and have to
> > run their ancient version of word perfect. If that is your reason, it
> > is not a bad reason. I was thinking of eventually writing a 64-bit dos
> > work [sort of] alike eventually, but it would not be able to support
> > legacy programs due to segment offset addressing and a million other
> > things.
> >
> >
> > ___
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> >
>
>
>
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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[Eric Auer]

Hi!

> - want to get rid of networking on my „composing tool“

If that means you want audio in DOS, then I strongly
recommend running DOS inside a hardware simulation
and NOT directly on hardware. Because VERY few apps
for DOS will be able to work with modern sound chips
directly. Accessing a simulated Sound Blaster helps.

> - want to have a lighting fast bootup

For that, installing DOS on raw hardware is best. Or
something like Dosbian Linux on Raspberry Pi which
just immediately boots into only a DOS window.

> - want to have 1 (one!!) single app that I use, 
> - don’t want the virus thing (do we?)
> - don’t want all those hidden spying/cookies/passwords/logins

Then just do not use the network ;-)

> - don't want "update nagging“, this has become crazyness.

Then you should probably not even connect the network.

> - want to be able to switch the thing off with a button

Again, installing DOS on raw hardware helps here.

> - single simple view of what I have written

Depends on how much you like DOS commands such as "DIR"?

> - want to have single files that represent an „app“.
> (not thousands of libraries, dependencies, installs, dlls

Even in DOS, that will depend on how simple your apps are.

> - a system of a handful of commands I program on my „macro pad“
> - and press it without need to type in, not even „dir“ or „cd ..“ or „type“

There are some hotkey or mouse menu apps for DOS to do that.

> - want to learn to understand a little how actually a computer
> works as a tool, not as a consumer gadget that could...

You can learn the necessary programming languages and read the
source code of FreeDOS and command.com in less than a year ;-)
For other DOS apps, your luck will vary depending on complexity.

So please be more specific on what you want to "compose" or text
edit and what should happen with the files once you have written
them. Without network, you probably plan some other, local uses.

Regards, Eric



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Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS

[Thomas Desi]

HI Johnpaul - whom are you addressing in your mail saying
> "So my question is, why do YOU use FreeDOS?"

just in case…  ;) here is my „ranting rating“: 

- I am 50ish and not so much nostalgic about computing, but: 

- want to get rid of networking on my „composing tool“
- want to have a lighting fast bootup
- want to have 1 (one!!) single app that I use, 
- don’t want the virus thing (do we?)
- don’t want all those hidden spying/cookies/passwords/logins
- (single user instance, at home, old computer: who ever would want to get into 
my files? If they start the computer, they wouldn’t know what to do when seeing 
the FreeDos splash screen ; ) - Kidding)
- don't want "update nagging“, this has become crazyness. (legacy program like, 
e.g. VDE Editor and others can’t possibly made any better … like in „here is 
the update to the wheel“..)
- want to be able to switch the thing off with a button: „Zip!“ and walk away 
from the screen. 
- (and no waiting or „the computer was not correctly shut down … bla blabla“)
- No „power saving“ or „standby modes“ which anyway also consume quite an 
amount of energy, with funny standby-lights flashing all night in your 
appartment. Just switch it entirely off.
- single simple view of what I have written (actual OS suggest to become a 
virtuoso in creating folders/directories and drop files on a „desktop“ which is 
a fake folder, too…
- want to have single files that represent an „app“. (not thousands of 
libraries, dependencies, installs, dlls, blablabl)
- a disk with FEW files alltogether. (Windows10 uses around 300,000 files for a 
fresh 12 GIGABYTE install! THREEHUNDRED THOUSAND)
- a system of a handful of commands I program on my „macro pad“ - and press it 
without need to type in, not even „dir“ or „cd ..“ or „type“ etc…
- want SIMPLICITY, purism, „control“ ...
- want to learn to understand a little how actually a computer works as a tool, 
not as a consumer gadget that could - theoretically - do EVERYTHING and drives 
me nuts because of the running „why doesn’t it do this and that“…
- and a few more which sound quite similar to your reasons!

I agree that there has been a huge amount of programming work, carefully 
written out documentations and alike become obsolete in the last decades.

In my experience (Text/composing/editing( I don’t see ANY difference working on 
a Windows10 Computer in Word today and how it was back in say 1988 when I had 
my first machine regarding the workflow… Text-editing hasn’t changed in the 
last decades, that is why Emacs and VI(m) are still much in use. But I guess 
this is a different story and doesn’t fit into this thread.


- T-h-omas 


> Am 14.04.2021 um 17:59 schrieb Johnpaul Humphrey :
> 
> In light of the "DOS was dead" discussion, I wanted to ask a question.
> I was *born* after support was dropped for MS-DOS, so I can't claim
> nostalgia as my reason for use. Recently I installed FreeDOS on my
> modern HP-Pavilion laptop, alongside BSD, Linux, and plan9. I did this
> because I like DOS's speed and assembly programming.
> It worked fine after I fixed the beep bug with your help.
> So my question is, why do YOU use FreeDOS?
> Is it primarily nostalgia? Legacy program support? Speed?
> Note that I don't consider running legacy software a bad reason. I was
> shocked by how much good software has been "thrown away" because of
> its age. On Linux all my favorite software (vi, siag office, twm,
> motif ) was written before I was born. However, that is not my
> primary reason for using FreeDOS. my primary reason is because it is
> like the motorcycle of operating systems. It is lightweight, has no
> red tape to cut through to do things, and is monotasking. (Monotasking
> is also why I don't use it as much as I would like to, but why I use
> it at all.)
> I figured that if I had a different reason than what everybody
> assumes, that some of you might as well. Everyone seems to assume that
> DOS is used by people who are unable to cope with progress and have to
> run their ancient version of word perfect. If that is your reason, it
> is not a bad reason. I was thinking of eventually writing a 64-bit dos
> work [sort of] alike eventually, but it would not be able to support
> legacy programs due to segment offset addressing and a million other
> things.
> 
> 
> ___
> Freedos-user mailing list
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