Re: [Freedos-user] BIOS weirdness with SATA/IDE adapter (was IDE <-> CF adapters)
On Wed, 3 Mar 2021 at 13:11, Jon Brase wrote: [...] > when I input a manual drive size, I indeed get the 504 MiB limit (it resets [...] > Any ideas? Yes. Use a disk manager. It will install a tiny overlay before the OS boots and that will allow you to use arbitrarily-large disks without problems. (Probably not with Linux, but with DOS, Win9x, OS/2 and maybe even NT). OnTrack's version is now freeware: https://www.philscomputerlab.com/ontrack-disk-manager.html There are alternatives such as EZDrive: https://www.philscomputerlab.com/western-digital.html More info: https://www.rigacci.org/docs/biblio/online/firmware/diskmgr.htm Just be careful using boot disks -- you need the disk manager on your boot disks too. Boot from a non-disk-manager disk and writing to the drive *will* corrupt it. -- 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 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] BIOS weirdness with SATA/IDE adapter (was IDE <-> CF adapters)
On Tue, 9 Mar 2021 at 22:28, Jon Brase wrote: > > > On 3/3/21 7:30 AM, Liam Proven wrote: > > Yes. Use a disk manager. It will install a tiny overlay before the OS > > boots and that will allow you to use arbitrarily-large disks without > > problems. (Probably not with Linux, but with DOS, Win9x, OS/2 and > > maybe even NT). > > Actually, it looks like, through kernel 2.5., Linux explicitly > detected and worked with both OnTrack and EasyDrive. Since that version, > it has a tunable offset parameter that can be set appropriately for > either one by the user (63 sectors for OnTrack, 1 for EasyDrive). All > other avenues seem to have failed, so I may well be going that route next. That is actually quite impressive! I did not know that. Thanks for the info. Once installed, it's a good, simple, easy solution. I used to use them a lot back in the day (late 1990s, roughly.) Installing a CPU upgrade in an old PC was rarely worth the hassle, but if you replaced a small hard disk (especially if compressed with DoubleSpace or something) with a big more modern one, and maxed out the RAM, the performance improvement was often very gratifying for a relatively small spend. In one friend's machine, I did this _and_ an IDT WinChip CPU upgrade. The old boot HDD I retained but made drive D: and put the Windows swapfile on it. This was a small faff as it was a low-profile Dell and there wasn't a suitable 2nd HDD bay. I improvised with cable ties and duct tape. Later on he bought a new box and gave it to his dad. His dad had a friend around to install a new program on it or something trivial and got curious about the drive arrangement. A message was relayed from friend to father to son to me: "whoever upgraded your son's old PC for him _really_ knew what he was doing! I've never seen an old 486 perform so well, so I opened it up. Tell your son's mate that he did the neatest, tidiest and most comprehensive upgrade I've ever seen!" So, that was nice. :-) -- 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 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] BIOS weirdness with SATA/IDE adapter (was IDE <-> CF adapters)
On Tue, 9 Mar 2021 at 23:37, dmccunney wrote: > > On my old XT clone, I had a replacement 10mhz motherboard with a NEC > v20 CPU. The V20 was compatible with the Intel 8088, but had better > microcode, for a cheap 5% speedup. It had 640K RAM and two Seagate > ST-225 MFM HDs. I got it an AST- 6Pak K addon card that added another > megabyte of RAM. AST software let me make 512MB of the RAM a RAMdisk, > 256K a dick cache, and he oter 256K could be EMS for apps that could > use it. (I made the RAMdisk first in my PATH, and put frequently used > apps like LIST there, and set TEMP and TMP to point to it so things > that honored that would use the RAMdisk for temp files. It sped up > Zipping stuff a treat. A freeware utility could map unused video RAM > to DOS. I used a Hercules video card, so 64K were available to be > mapped to DOS, and the machine booted reporting 704K DOS RAM. > Performance was acceptable, thank you. That sounds like a *very* seriously tricked-out XT-class machine! Wow! MS OSes were always a work thing for me. My own computers went Sinclair -> Amstrad PCW (the last new CP/M computer) -> Acorn Archimedes. For £800 – probably under $1500 at the time – I had an 8MHZ RISC computer with 1MB of flat unsegmented RAM in 1989. And none was used for the OS, because it ran from ROM chips. When my Archimedes died, I got a 486DX 50MHz notebook -- not a DX/2, just DX -- and I ran OS/2 2.0 on it. Even though it only had 8MB of RAM, it ran well. > The current desktop uses a quad core Intel i5 CPU and 3.5 ghz, with an > automatic turbo mode to 3.9 ghz. It has 20GB RAM, and boots and runs > from a 256B PAnasonic SSD. Performance is lovely. There are faster > machine out there, but since I'm not doing things like heavy video > editing or compiling a large application from a source tree, it's > moare tyhan adequate for what I do. That is a pretty good spec! O_o Yes, I find that since the point at which quad-core CPUs were affordable, performance no longer matters much. I buy used kit if possible, mostly laptops now, according to things like keyboard quality and screen resolution. So long as it has, say, a Core i5 and enough RAM or the RAM is cheap to add, it will do. I still have some Core 2 machines in use; they're fine for light use, despite being over a decade old. Koomey's Law has truly supplanted Moore's Law now. -- 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 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] BIOS weirdness with SATA/IDE adapter (was IDE <-> CF adapters)
On Wed, 10 Mar 2021 at 22:37, Jon Brase wrote: > Unfortunately, it's not working. OnTrack sees the same ultra-small capacity > for the drive as the BIOS and Linux see on that machine. It picks up the > other 40 GB 2.5" PATA drive, but the SSD + Adapter can't be extended from > what the BIOS sees to the actual size of the drive. I even tried a different > SSD on the adapter, and got almost the exact same crippled size (130 MB), so > I don't even get to test if Linux's offset parameter works, even OnTrack > isn't seeing the full drive size. > > My working theory at this point is that the adapter is detecting that it's > working wtih an old BIOS and "helpfully" setting up a temporary Host > Protected Area on the drive, after which it refuses to acknowledge that any > area after the 130 MB mark even exists until poweroff. I haven't been able to > boot an environment that has hdparm(8) available, so I haven't been able to > test this. OK, I was alarmed by the mention of "SSD + adapter" so I went back and reread the root message. (I can't go back 2 months because I only just re-subbed to the list after a decade (!) away.) But it's a SATA-to-PATA adapter? That introduces an extra layer of complexity to the question. :-( Also, IIUC, you are trying to access _existing_ partitions? No, I do not think a disk manager will help you there. Disk managers bypass the BIOS restrictions by remapping or translating disks' real values, but they do not just fix the problem. Once you have a disk manager installed, I think you will need to create _new_ partitions after getting a DiskMgr working, using whatever translated scheme it creates. Therefore I would backup the data on the existing drive onto another machine, perhaps a networked one; zero the disks, or at least their first 1kB or so, to erase any exiating partitions; try to create _new_ partitions with the DiskMgr's translation in effect; then copy the data back. (If this includes a bootable OS, then e.g. boot from a Linux live medium, CD or DVD or USB, and connect to the machine with the backups over the network and use Linux to restore the data onto the newly-repartitioned machine. However, saying all that: I do not see any info about what the host machine is. If it is new enough to have PCI slots, then a SATA controller with a BIOS of its own should, in theory, bypass all this nightmare. Citation with model recommendations: https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=62958 A firmware-equipped SATA controller (i.e. not some cheap thing that just adds additional ports and is not bootable) will appear to the PC as a SCSI controller and its firmware will take over the INT13 BIOS calls for disk access completely. If you do decide to go that route, though, I advise _against_ mixing SATA and EIDE/PATA disks. Let the SATA controllers' firmware take over completely and do not use the motherboard's EIDE channels at all. -- 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 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] BIOS weirdness with SATA/IDE adapter (was IDE <-> CF adapters)
On Thu, 11 Mar 2021 at 00:32, dmccunney wrote: > > On Wed, Mar 10, 2021 at 5:07 PM Jon Brase wrote: > > On 3/9/21 4:35 PM, dmccunney wrote: > > > As a general rule, consumer machines are I/O bound, not compute bound. > > > The CPU spends most of its time in an idle loop waiting for stuff to > > > be read from/written to disk. > > > > Actually, as a general rule, on a consumer machine, both the CPU and the > > disk spend most of their time waiting for user input to give them > > something to do. Disk waits are nothing compared to the eternity between > > the keystrokes of a fast typist, and that's if the user is neither away > > nor lost in thought. > > I can't agree. We are not in the single-user, single tasking DOS days > when one thing was going on at a time. Agreed. Way back in the mid-1990s I ran the testing labs for one of the UK's largest computer magazines, PC Pro. (Known as "PC @uthority" in Australia.) I organized a labs test of PCs with Win NT 4. This really showed which manufacturers knew their stuff. In the Pentium 1 era, Intel really advanced the art of motherboard chipsets. Its old 82430 "Neptune" chipset for the 5V Pentium (60MHz & 66MHz) was very conventional. The 82430 FX "Triton" chipset for the 3.3V Pentium (75/90/100/120/133MHz) was a revelation. Its EIDE controller, the PIIX chip, could do busmastering I/O, allowing the disk drives to use DMA to put data into RAM. A device driver was supplied on floppy. On Win9x this made little difference because its limited kernel could not overlap I/O. But on NT, even with 1 CPU, it was very different. Without the busmastering driver, each disk access used programmed I/O. NT booted as slowly as 9x. With the driver, when NT booted, you could *hear* when the kernel started executing. Disk access went from tick-tick-tick, tick-tick, tick-tick-tick-tick, to bzt-bzzzt-bzzt-bzt. Once the driver triggered, not only did disk access get quicker, but the CPU could get on with something else while it occurred. So your PC booted noticeably faster -- it took minutes off a long boot sequence -- and you could continue to use the PC even under very heavy disk load. It's not just a question of the CPU sitting waiting any more, although that's true, it does. But with a modern OS with a pre-emptive kernel, it can queue up a bunch of I/O commands and then leave that particular I/O subsystem to its own devices (literally!) and go off and do something else while the subsystem does the work and puts the data direct into RAM without CPU intervention. Now that multicore CPUs are standard this is even more important. One core can be doing a virus scan while another core is doing a spellcheck and another core is servicing the UI so your PC still responds to you. To measure it, for example, one can set a program transcoding a video file, which running standalone would take say 10min, and then run a script that puts Photoshop through its paces for about 10min. On a system without DMA I/O, with both tasks running, they will take on the order of twice as long. With DMA I/O, a background task will only slow the foreground task by a few %. For me, as someone who used to do benchmarking for a living, this was one of the biggest advances I ever saw in personal computing since the 1980s, and it went almost totally unnoticed in the industry as a whole -- sadly a lot of folk writing about computing in the 21st century lack training, scientific literacy, and a basic understanding of statistics and ideas like a significant or insignificant difference. I've seen websites making buying recommendations based on measuring external sources' bar charts with a ruler, when they did not notice that the Y axis did not begin at zero. -- 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 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] BIOS weirdness with SATA/IDE adapter (was IDE <-> CF adapters)
Warp on a specialized > telephony server at an employer. It was a black box. It just ran. > If it hung, reboot it. I never had to dig into OS/2 itself. It was and is horrific to install. (I have not tried Arca Noæ Blue Lion but I do have eComStation and it's a nightmare to try to install.) But in 1992-1994 or so, it was so far in advance of Windows in actual use that it was embarrassing. > I had 8MB on the 386 running Win3.1, watched my Unix machine run > rings around it, and looked at Redmond, WA, and said "What are you > *doing*?" I still say that on occasion. Well, quite! > There are bigger, faster boxes out there. A friend who is an > architect at an ISP talks about machines using nVME being "wicked > fast". So they are, but you get a machine specced to use it with it > pre-installed. Everything I've seen says "Good luck on trying to > upgrade to it after the fact on older kit." Agreed. > The fascinating bit for me is that the distinction between RAM and > disk is steadily blurring. Things like nVME make it possible to have > what works like RAM but is non-volatile storage whose content will > survive a reboot. > > We are just scratching the surface here. I agree. Actually this was the subject of a talk I delivered at the FOSDEM conference last month, which was a follow-up to my talk at FOSDEM 2020. They may interest folk here. https://liam-on-linux.livejournal.com/77065.html (2020 talk, slides, video etc. https://liam-on-linux.livejournal.com/69099.html -- 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 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] BIOS weirdness with SATA/IDE adapter (was IDE <-> CF adapters)
On Fri, 12 Mar 2021 at 20:56, Jon Brase wrote: > > As far as I can tell, OnTrack partitions the disk as part of installing its > translation scheme. Yup, I think so. Haven't used it this century, TBH. > So I have an existing disk, and took an image of each partition on it with > partimage(1). > > I got my new SSD+adapter, partitioned it (with blank partitions), blasted the > partition images to the new partitions, and expanded the filesystems to fill > the > partitions. And then ran into trouble with no more than the first 130 MB of > the SSD > showing up when booted in this machine (it's fine in another IDE machine > that's > ~5 years newer, which is the machine I used to do the imaging). Really, at > least Linux > *should* have been booting at that point, because kernel versions as recent > as what > I'm using are *supposed* to ignore the information that comes from the BIOS > on drive > sizes. So I beat my head against the wall trying to get that working, gave > up, and decided > to nuke everything to the ground and start over with OnTrack. Then it turned > out that > even OnTrack doesn't see more than the first 130 MB of the disk, which makes > me really > suspect that more than just BIOS is involved (as the entire point of OnTrack > is to work > around BIOS limitations). As I said before, I suspect what's happening is > that the adapter > is detecting something that the BIOS is doing while trying to figure out the > capacity of the > disk, and "helpfully" setting up an HPA on the drive (and doing so so > aggressively that all > but a thousandth of the capacity of the disk is lost). Augh! :-( This does sound nasty. I had a quick look around for PCI (as in, _not_ PCI-e) SATA controllers. There seem to be plenty around the $15-$25 mark. Whether that would be affordable and worthwhile for you, only you can judge. I found a tiny handful of ones that explicitly say that they have a BIOS but they tend to be a lot more expensive. It's the sort of thing you _might_ pick up super-cheap on eBay or something. > The case is marked as an AST Bravo MS P/75. The information I can find on > that online suggests it has one of the following two mainboards: Aha! I used to have one of its kin, an AST Premmia. It was a dual Pentium 100 box; I ran NT 4 Server on it, running an external RAID in a huge SCSI-2 cabinet containing 7 * full-height 5.25" SCSI hard disks + 4 CD-ROMs. It was a very cheap server, and very robust for many years. > The machine has 40 MiB of RAM installed. I notice that all three boards show > a maximum capacity of 128 MiB of RAM. If I could ever find compatible RAM, > that's a tempting option. Caveat: you might find that it only has enough tag RAM in its L2 cache to cache 64MB of RAM. This was quite common in early Pentium boxes. Finding tag RAM these days is... unlikely, I suspect. In my testing, adding more RAM past 64MB actually slowed down machines without enough tag RAM. N.B. tag RAM is not the same as cache RAM; it's part of what controls the cache. Upgrading the cache (e.g. with a COAST -- cache-on-a-stick -- module) normally did _not_ upgrade the tag RAM. > It has a riser with 2 ISA slots and a PCI slot on the left side, and an ISA > and a PCI on the right. The ISA slots on the left side are occupied with an > ethernet card and a soundblaster. The PCI slot on the left looks like it may > be fouled by the ethernet card, there's not a lot of space between it and the > ISA slot above, and I'm not sure if I could actually fit a card into that > slot without it coming into contact with the ethernet card. The slots on the > right side are free. > Unless I buy an entirely new optical drive, that will at least stay on IDE, > as all the SATA optical drives in the house are in use by other computers. > OTOH, the prospect of actually being able to boot the thing directly from > optical is enticing. Well, there are PCI SATA controllers with an IDE channel too... https://www.amazon.com/Rosewill-RC-212-Controller-Supports-non-RAID/ https://www.amazon.com/VT6421A-3-Port-SATA-Raid-Controller/dp/B000YMJ6ZE/ I have also read that some SATA-EIDE converters work in both directions, sometimes set with a jumper. So maybe you could use the one you already have, IIUIC, to attach a PATA optical drive to a SATA port... :-/ -- 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 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] formatting floppies
On Thu, 25 Mar 2021 at 02:09, wrote: > > Hi All: > > I need to low level format a bunch of older 1440k floppies that are starting > to lose their integrity. A low level format often works to revitalize them. Low-level formatting is really only a hard disk thing -- and an old hard disk thing, at that. It's not possible on most IDE drives and probably impossible on any EIDE or SATA drive. > But, I could not get the FreeDOS formatter to do anything but reformat the > directory area. So is it doing a quick format? (`format a: /q`) Try: format a: /u or if you don't want prompts, format a: /autotest These are the MS command variants but I suspect they'd work. -- 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 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] FSF
t should be easier to fake old hardware on modern hardware than it was to > get to FreeDOS 1.0. There are multiple PC emulators already. > You can literally strip down modern Linux to create this emulator. How? Why? > Your emulator is the current Linux kernel stripped down to create a fake > Pentium I MMX on a modern PC that doesn't have a BIOS at all. That is not even related to what the Linux kernel does, you know. > The threat of secure boot and EFI to Linux and FreeDOS and any other open > source operating system is real. Up to a point, but you have not proposed anything to tackle this in any way. > If you want most people to care about FreeDOS, fork it now. You still have not explained why. > The fork must run syslinux Why? > on a modern motherboard that expects you to turn on secure boot for Windows > 10. Who cares? Turn it off, boot DOS as it is. > Don't even call the fork FreeDOS exactly You want the project to abandon everything it's done for 25 years or so and you have not given a single reason. Do you know how insane you are sounding? Very mad indeed, if you do not realise. Deranged and irrational. > because DOS in the modern era has never been on anything that doesn't have a > BIOS How could it? > with the notable exception of the Raspberry Pi where I'm curious how that > even works. So go read. Learn. Do less ranting. > The Pi uses a RISC processor To be specific, an Acorn RISC machine, like the one I bought in 1989 and which still can run the same OS: RISC OS. You should try it. There are free emulators if you don't have a Pi. > where the 8086 all the way up to the Penitum I 233 MMX is a CISC processor. Still is. > The Pi processor is an orange where the IBM PC processor is an apple and > you can't compare apples to oranges. I love apples and oranges where it's > absurd to try and compare them. Totally irrelevant and mystifying. This was a very long rant with very little direction and you have not done anything to explain why you want what you say you want. -- 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 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] FSF
On Tue, 30 Mar 2021 at 15:02, Adam Nielsen via Freedos-user wrote: > > > Even today, where is NT lite from Microsoft? > > Do you mean Windows PE? AFAIK that's available for free, even though > it's not open source. I don't think so, no. PE is a limited live runtime Windows for booting off external media. I took "NT Lite" as a reference to NLite: https://www.nliteos.com/ ... i.e. the ability for the end-user to choose what they want included in Windows, and not to install (or at least to later remove) things they don't want. I have a test machine with Windows Thin PC on. This is the "thin-client", allegedly cut-down version of Windows 7, and it's still in active support – the last edition of W7 to have that status. It still has a bunch of junk preinstalled and you can't remove it. It's rather disappointing -- it is bloated and sluggish on an Atom with HT & 2GB RAM. > Microsoft doesn't really care any more about the OS. Its market share > is shrinking because the world is changing, which is why they > practically give away Windows 10 for free now. Agreed. The killer product in the MS portfolio is, as it has been for decades, Outlook + Exchange Server. Horrible broken email client that it is, it's the market leader by a long way, and it can do things no rival can do so well. MS no longer care if you run Office on Windows, Office on Win10, Web Outlook on a Chromebook or whatever, a remote-desktop session from some past-it old Pentium 1 box -- it doesn't matter. They still get the CAL revenues whichever way. > The threat *was* real many years ago when EFI and Secure Boot first > came out. Since then every computer I've used has had both EFI and > Secure Boot, and on every single one of them I had no problem just > switching it off and booting Linux. Microsoft isn't really that > interested any more in Secure Boot given the shrinking market share > of PCs. Secure Boot can only be disabled on x86 UEFI machines. For instance, it is immutably enabled on MS' own ARM-powered computers. > First you say you want SATA and USB support removed, but then you are > saying it must run on a modern motherboard? Which is it, you can't > have both! :-D Like I said, a deeply confused message... > I think you'd be surprised how many motherboard firmware updates still > require you to boot off a USB stick into - wait for it - FreeDOS, in > order to reflash the EEPROM. As of today, I don't think I have yet > owned a PC that has never booted some form of DOS to reflash its > EFI/BIOS chip. Maybe soon it will become one of those things you need > Windows for, but for the moment it's still something I have been able > to do without Windows. Sadly, yes, Windows *is* common for this now. However some ROM firmware can now read the BIOS update file straight off FAT-formatted USB (even a Windows self-extracting archive) and apply it to themselves, all insite the CMOS Setup tool. This is my favourite way: no OS at all required. > I've never heard of DOS or FreeDOS running natively on the Pi It can't. This is a question regularly asked by people who do not understand the differences between different CPU architectures. You can't run classic MacOS on a MIPS computer, or SGI IRIX on PowerPC, or Solaris on an ARM computer, and you can't run DOS on an ARM. But the OP seems not to fully understand these differences. -- 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 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] FSF
On Tue, 30 Mar 2021 at 21:12, Ralf Quint wrote: > > Well, RSM is just all around one miserable excuse of a human being. RMS, not RSM. He shares his initials with the mathematical concept root mean square. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_mean_square > The basic issue at hand isn't that much his "unpopular opinion" about how HE > thinks open source software should be handled, but a much more society > related issue, something he has been shown to be at odds with for a long time. Well, yes... > The key issue that got him kicked out of the FSF two years ago (as well as > forced out of MIT!) was to suggest that those underage victims of Eppstein "Epstein" not Eppstein. > that his chum Minsky had been playing with did so "willingly" That is not correct. It is not fair to attack the man based on an incorrect depiction of what he said. I am not defending him here; I am merely saying, if you want to talk about whether his views are unacceptable or not, then get them right. It not fair to damn someone for something they did not say. > Stallman said that “the most plausible scenario” was that Epstein’s victim > “presented herself to [Marvin Minsky] as entirely willing.” That is fair but it contradicts your previous sentence. > Stallman cast doubt over the use of the term “sexual assault” Person A is approached by Person B. Person B says that they want to have sex with person A. Stallman said that if Person B _appears to person A_ to consent – that is, if Person B *lies* and *says* that they consent -- then it is not assault. As far as Person A knows, it is consensual. Whether Person B did so based on coercion by a third party, and that coercion is unknown to Person A, or for some other reasons, if Person A doesn't know that the consent is a lie, then Person A has not committed an assault. IANAL but AFAICS that is a legitimate statement of the situation. I fully understand a lot of people find it unacceptable, but a lot of people find RMS in general unacceptable and the things he says and does unacceptable. That is RMS' problem. But AFAICS his statement of the facts here, _while being speculation_, is correct. > Stallman also described the distinction between a 17 or 18 year old victim as > a “minor” detail, and suggested that it was an “injustice” to refer to it as > a “sexual assault.” AIUI, it depends on jurisdiction. I was born in the UK although I no longer live there. The UK is made of several different countries, with different ages of consent. For centuries, young couples who were underage in England eloped to Scotland to marry; in Scotland they were of age. The nearest town was famous for this: see the intro to this article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gretna_Green In England, a couple over 16 but under 18 need their parents' consent to marry. In Scotland, they don't. So, go to Scotland, get married, return to England, and it's done and the parents have no power to annul it. Similarly, and again, IANAL and this is only AIUI, if one partner in said married couple took nude photos of their partner, their legal spouse, then that would be to create child pr0ngraphy, and thus illegal. You can marry, you can have sex, but you can't take a photo of your husband or wife naked, or take a photo of you having sex. Summary: the law is an ass, and you cannot safely make blanket statements such as "she was underage" on the assumption this is true everywhere for any given age. At 17 you would be wrong across the whole of the UK, AIUI. > Someone who as a public person makes comments like this is just one of the > most despicable persons. He did not say what you claim. > There are no two ways about it. Yes there are. You are falsely misrepresenting him and his words and judging him according to things you only imagine he said. That is unfair and wrong. > And if someone doesn't understand this issue at hand is part of the > problem... It appears that someone here does not fully and properly understand this issue, and it is you, Ralf. -- 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 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Using a USB stick and an optical drive
On Fri, 9 Apr 2021 at 13:22, Stephanos wrote: > 1) Download one of the ISO files Fine > 2) Make a CD bootable What... why? > 3) Write my BIOS upgrade file to the memory stick > Then insert the CD into the laptop and > a) boot the laptop into DOS > b) Insert the memory stick and navigate to the memory stick (by trying > all the drive letters possible: A:, B: C: D: etc) No, won't work. The FreeDOS 1.0 ISO is all you need. Write it to a USB key, not a CD. Then check it boots. If it books, copy the Dell BIOS upgrade onto the USB key. Boot, use F5 or Shift to bypass CONFIG.SYS/AUTOEXEC.BAT completely, and run the update. No need for an optical disk at all. Don't waste it. No external drive needed either. -- 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 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] GNU General Public License...
On Fri, 9 Apr 2021 at 13:36, Michael Christopher Robinson wrote: > I can be a part of a healthy conversation, otherwise I have to respectfully > withdraw. Please do. -- 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 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Using a USB stick and an optical drive
On Fri, 9 Apr 2021 at 14:31, Stephanos wrote: > > Dear Liam > > Thanks for that. A little more info please > 1) Which of the six options at the website > (https://www.freedos.org/download/) are you suggesting I download. I have used FreeDOS 1.0 for this in the past. All you need is to boot the computer, nothing else. You don't need to (and should definitely not) install anything. The downloads for 1.0 are here: https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distributions/1.0/ Pick the smallest "base" ISO you can get. Alternatively the UNETBOOTIN USB-writing tool has a built-in option to make a FreeDOS 1.0 boot USB. I can't give exact instructions as all PCs are different, and you have not told us the exact model of yours, except that it's a Dell. If it does not default to booting from USB, usually, on most, pressing F12 immediately after it finishes its Power-On Self Test (POST) will let you choose a boot device. So, [1] Write FreeDOS 1.0 ISO to USB, e.g. using Rufus. [2] turn PC off [3] insert your FreeDOS bootable USB key [4] turn PC on [5] After any initial power-on messages appear, and it beeps, *immediately* press F12 [6] if a menu letting you choose boot device appears, pick the USB key [7] see if it works. If it boots FreeDOS, then reboot, remove the key, boot your normal OS as usual, copy the BIOS update onto the key in the normal way, reboot off the key again, and try running it. I advise you to ignore the suggestions from "Michael Christopher Robinson" which are incorrect and dangerous. -- 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 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Using a USB stick and an optical drive
On Fri, 9 Apr 2021 at 21:41, tom ehlert wrote: > It is safe but will not solve your problem. The BIOS updater .EXE is a > Windows program, and will only run on Windows. Tom, do not guess. Check, be sure, before you post. Here is the BIOS update: https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-uk/drivers/driversdetails?driverid=r281635&lwp=rt Note what it says: « This file format consists of a BIOS executable file. The Universal (Windows/MS DOS) format can be used to install from any Windows or MS DOS environment. » EXE is the file format for Windows (and OS/2) as well as DOS, you know. -- 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 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Using a USB stick and an optical drive
On Fri, 9 Apr 2021 at 15:31, Stephanos wrote: > > I have used ReactOS in a virtual environment. To attempt to use an unfinished reverse-engineered clone of Windows to install a firmware upgrade is tantamount to suicide. You are positively asking for it to go wrong and corrupt your BIOS chip, turning your laptop into a brick. Do not even _try_ it. Michael was insane to even suggest it. > As a best guess would putting ReactOS onto a memory stick overcome this > problem? NO! Please do not try this unless you want to buy a new computer. What I have described is 100% safe, it will work, and you will be fine. It is also easy and straightforward. What Michael is advocating is difficult, extremely unlikely to work and probably dangerous. On Fri, 9 Apr 2021 at 15:56, Stephanos wrote: > 1) the BIOS upgrade file size is 1950KB Doesn't matter, but you can't fit that on a floppy anyway. > 2) I have an external floppy drive but might not have floppies, I will > search You don't need them. > 3) I have an external USB CD/DVD reader/writer, that usually needs both > of its 2 USB cables to power it when burning You don't need that either. I have _done_ what I am describing, within this year so far, on my work Dell laptop. I am *telling* you it works, unlike other people in this thread who are guessing based on no evidence. > 4) There is some sort of 32/64 bit issue with this laptop I have never > understood. The version of Kubuntu 18.04 is 64 bit. When I download an > installation file for another programme, one that says it does 32 and > 64, the output to screen says that the 32 bit version is being installed. It depends on the submodel; there seem to be 3, from the manual: https://downloads.dell.com/manuals/all-products/esuprt_laptop/esuprt_inspiron_laptop/inspiron-15-n5030_setup%20guide_en-us.pdf If you have a Pentium Dual Core, that's a poor processor. The other models look OK. I think it's just an early 64-bit machine. It should be fine. > 5) I do not have zip or LS120 drives No need. > Just seen Tom's contribution. Does the file size support that theory. Not really, no. -- 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 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Using a USB stick and an optical drive
On Fri, 9 Apr 2021 at 17:06, Eric Auer wrote: > > Hi! I do not understand where Windows and ReactOS are > getting into the equation here. If you have Linux, you > can search in your software center whether you find an > app to install BIOS updates. The `fwupgmgr` tool does exist, but I find it does not support much hardware and has severe restrictions. For instance on my work Dell Latitude E7270, it cannot update the firmware because Linux was installed in "legacy" mode, i.e. BIOS-compatible; `fwudmgr` only works in UEFI mode. So it is no help to me. > If you have some DOS tool > for that, you should run DOS for the tool, not Windows. Dell's page says it's DOS. I believe the people who wrote the tool, don't you? > Some BIOS even are > able to install updates from files on USB sticks etc. Yes, mine can. But I have to put it on a FAT USB key anyway, so first time, I used DOS. Once I had updated it, later, a newer update could be read direct from USB. But I think this machine is too old. > http://freedos.org/download/ explicitly offers DIFFERENT > downloads for CD/DVD and for USB. Obviously it is easier > to use the USB version if you want to run DOS from USB. You say that, but then you proceed to give complicated steps for writing a small image and then deleting part of its contents to make room. That doesn't sound simple to me. I wrote the FreeDOS 1.0 ISO to an old 1GB USB key and I had about 0.99 GB free. ;-) Don't make it more complicated than it needs to be. Remember the KISS Principle! -- 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 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Using a USB stick and an optical drive
On Fri, 9 Apr 2021 at 17:39, Michael Christopher Robinson wrote: > > Some version of Windows is what Dell expects him to have to update his BIOS, > that's where that came in. No, it doesn't, and you are wrong. PLEASE stop giving ill-informed, bad and dangerous advice. -- 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 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Using a USB stick and an optical drive
On Fri, 9 Apr 2021 at 17:42, Stephanos wrote: > 1) I have WINE on my laptop and run several MS applications. Is it safe > to treat the BIOS upgrade file as an application and run it in WINE? OMG *no!* Do not even try. It is _extremely_ unlikely to work, but if it does, it is extremely likely to trash your computer. A BIOS update needs low-level hardware access to write new data to a very specific storage chip on your motherboard. Any tiny glitch in timing or compatibility, the write fails, and your computer will never work again. Do not even _consider_ using any other OS than the one specified by the manufacturer. An emulator on an alien OS, or a "fake" Windows like ReactOS, is suicidal. > 2) I could install DOS Box, which is new to me, I have the same > question, is it safe? Yes but it can't flash BIOSes -- it contains a BIOS emulator -- and it can't write USB sticks. It was another ludicrous suggestion. Please stop listening to this dangerous advice. > 3) Is running a version of Windows, 7 perhaps, in VMWare, and then > executing the BIOS upgrade file feasible and safe. NO! No emulators, no clones, no VMs. Use bare naked DOS on the bare metal. > These 3 are appealing options if they are feasible and safe? They are not appealing, not feasible, and. not safe. They are suggestions from someone who does not understand how this stuff works but does not _know_ that they don't understand. You would not try to change a tyre on your car while rolling down the motorway at 70mph, and if you did, you would die. Same with trying to reflash firmware under emulators under a multitasking OS. It is just as dangerous and just as foolhardy, but poor Michael here doesn't know that so he is telling you to wedge a shoe on the accelerator and climb out the window. *DO NOT LISTEN TO HIM.* Just get Unetbootin and use that. It is very easy. https://unetbootin.github.io/ -- 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 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Using a USB stick and an optical drive
On Fri, 9 Apr 2021 at 23:36, tom ehlert wrote: > it's not. I know. but it's a file format that can transport both a DOS > and Windows executable in the same file. This is not correct. In fact this tech was possible before Windows 3.0 even launched; it was called a "family app" or "family mode". Read about it here: https://www.landley.net/history/mirror/os2/history/os213/index.html It is also possible for Windows binaries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.exe#Windows > get a copy of RUFUS for Linux. There is no such thing. https://www.how2shout.com/tools/rufus-for-linux-not-available-use-these-best-alternatives.html -- 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 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Using a USB stick and an optical drive
On Sat, 10 Apr 2021 at 12:13, Mateusz Viste wrote: > > You should have done like Liam tells you from the beginning. Thank you! :-) > He provides > correct, detailed and verified steps. The operation is as simple as > booting DOS from a removable drive (CD/floppy/USB) to run a single > executable... Any other method is likely to either not work or damage > your PC (esp. if you follow what Michael C. Robinson has been > suggesting). Using Windows to update a BIOS firmware looks perhaps like > an easy way out, but I wouldn't risk my PC with it myself, even if it's > one of the methods suggested by the motherboard producer. I agree on all counts. Booting DOS from a USB key is quite easy on any computer from the last 10-15 years. It needs no drivers or anything; the system firmware makes the USB key look like a hard disk to DOS, so it is _much easier_ than trying to access a USB device from DOS, which needs complex drivers and configuration. And since the USB key can be used again and again, unlike an optical medium, it is more environmentally friendly too, as well as easier. -- 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 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Using a USB stick and an optical drive
On Mon, 12 Apr 2021 at 15:57, Adam Nielsen via Freedos-user wrote: > > Probably many of these don't apply to FreeDOS. The boot menu (where > you saw the FDOS option) I think at least gives you the option of > pressing F8 to toggle single-stepping, which will ask you to answer yes > or no for each thing that tries to load. You could do this and just > answer N for everything, which although a bit tedious would achieve the > same result. I guess the other thing, which I thought I had used with FreeDOS, is to hold down Shift as DOS boots, which does the same as F5: skips processing of CONFIG.SYS/AUTOEXEC.BAT. > One other thing - the service tag you're using, that matches the > service tag shown in the F2 BIOS setup? I thought something similar: there seem to be 3 variants of the D5030, using Intel and AMD chips -- which must also mean a different motherboard and chipset, as AMD and Intel chips do not work in each other's motherboards or even fit into each other's sockets. An Intel BIOS won't work in an AMD board, and an AMD BIOS won't work on an Intel board. For at least one variant, revision A02 looked to be the latest. -- 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 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Recovery of a file on a non booting Windows computer
On Wed, 14 Apr 2021 at 14:20, Stephanos wrote: > > Dear All > > I want to boot to freeDOS using a CD ROM. Then I want to insert a > memory stick into the computer and copy a file from the Windows HDD onto > the memory stick. Is this possible and if so which version of freeDOS > do I use? Stephanos, we have answered this question for you already. It is the same question as your BIOS question. No, you cannot. DOS does not support USB directly. You can't access USB devices from DOS without configuring drivers. We told you this already re the BIOS update. (There _are_ some drivers, for USB 1, for _some_ chipsets, but they are difficult to configure. If you have to ask, you can't do it.) But if you boot FreeDOS from a USB key, the BIOS emulates a hard disk for DOS and it will work. This is the same answer as your BIOS question. -- 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 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] DOS was dead...
On Wed, 14 Apr 2021 at 14:02, Michael Christopher Robinson wrote: > > I am fully aware that BIOS used to be updated in MS-DOS. I am 41 years old, > older than some people who seem to be experts on this and probably older than > Liam. I have 12 years and a lot more than 12 operating systems on you. So, no. You are wrong. Again. > Reality is, Windows 95 dos and Windows 98SE DOS is not really dos per se Wrong. > and Windows ME DOS is definitely a weird hybrid that is way different from > all previous versions of MS-DOS that Microsoft created. Wrong. > I agree that using Windows NT to update BIOS or even Firmware is > foolishness. Real NT is fine. Fake NT (e.g. ReactOS or WINE) is _not_ fine. > Microsoft could have open sourced MS-DOS 4.0, they never have. [1] MS *has* open-sourced DOS 1 and 2. https://github.com/microsoft/MS-DOS [2] MS didn't write DOS 4. IBM did. > The Raspberry Pi which is sadly a proprietary hardware platform, does nut > support DOS. I thought it did by some miracle. It doesn't. It can't. It's an ARM chip. DOS doesn't run on ARMs and ARM OSes don't run on DOS. You also can't fit bicycle tyres to an Aston Martin. They are different beasts. > Apparently, nobody has released a hypervisor for the Raspberry Pi 4 that will > emulate an 80386 or earlier well enough to run FreeDOS or any DOS without > issues. This is nothing to do with hypervisors. No hypervisor can run an x86 OS on an ARM, or an ARM OS on an x86. What you need is an emulator. You can emulate DOS on a Pi if you want. https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=21 https://github.com/jhhoward/Faux86/releases -- 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 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] DOS was dead...
On Wed, 14 Apr 2021 at 19:11, Ralf Quint wrote: > Actually, in that part, Michael was correct. And as people like you seem > to pushing that old myth of "Windows 9x runs on top of DOS", one of my > next projects when I find time will be to come up with the definitive > proof for that... I ran the beta while it was still called Windows 4. I gave feedback to Microsoft on it. I built a custom version of it for PC Pro magazine in the UK that installed and ran from a 16MB SSD (as big as we could get in 1996) -- which meant removing about ¾ of Windows' files by hand, including trimming the fonts that it used, to get it into so little space. Windows 95A uses MS-DOS 7, which it is possible to boot directly into by editing the MSDOS.SYS file (which in this version is a configuration file, not a binary as in older versions.) Win95B and later use MS-DOS 7.1, which adds FAT32 support. Again, it is perfectly possible to extract this and run it standalone if you wish. Indeed people have done this and made it into a standalone product, which you can download -- for example, here: https://winworldpc.com/product/ms-dos/7x > Well, basically see above. Windows ME doesn't depend on "DOS" just as > much (or little) as Windows 9x does, and they removed one additional > stop from the boot process to make it even less dependent... It skips the config files and loads the GUI directly -- i.e. it executes C:\WINDOWS\WIN.COM directly, instead of COMMAND.COM. You can easily patch it not to do so. https://www.computerworld.com/article/2802303/dos-lives-in-windows-me--how-to-regain-the-ability-to-boot-and-run-in-character-mode.html Windows ME will even create a boot floppy for you, which boots to normal command-line DOS -- with some restrictions. If you wish, you can patch the boot disk by changing just 2 bytes to make it completely functional: https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/3286/how-did-windows-me-cripple-dos WinME still runs on DOS. DOS was bundled with Win95, Win98 & WinME, which was an illegally anti-competitive move since other companies sold DOS-compatible OSes. MS were sued by Digital Research: http://www.digitalresearch.biz/DR/Info/fullstory/amendment.html DR produced a modified version of DR-DOS that could run Windows 95: https://web.archive.org/web/20170624231328/https://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/1996865/cebit-caldera-windows-dr-dos-denying-ms-claims It was codenamed "Winglue" and demonstrated at CEBIT: https://www.theregister.com/1998/09/28/caldera_s_dr_gets_onsatellite/ I stand by my comments. -- 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 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS
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. :-) -- 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 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] DOS was dead...
On Thu, 15 Apr 2021 at 14:49, Jerome Shidel wrote: > > A while back, I was looking for a distro that still actively supported 32-bit > hardware. Most mainstream distros have > moved to 64-bit only. However, out of the ones I’ve tried that still do > 32-bit, most seem sluggish at best. Interesting. I have a Sony Vaio P sub-netbook that only has a 32-bit CPU. I tried: • MX Linux (worked, has what I consider bloat and wasn't as customisable as I would like) • Crunchbang++ (very small text, not as lightweight as original CrunchBang: ±210-200MB RAM in use) • Raspberry Pi Desktop x86 (very customisable, full desktop, and used less RAM than CB++ (±205MB) I also saw that Mageia still supports x86-32 but it is not mentioned as a lightweight distro. > https://www.slitaz.org/en/ Worth knowing -- thanks. I haven't looked at Slitaz in a decade. I will bear it in mind. -- 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 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS
r trivial OS but it was about 1% of the size of Windows 95 and it did the core stuff for the time: multitasking, using the 386 chip and all its memory... No GUI, no windowing, but DR had other products that did that stuff. DR originally did a multitasking CDOS for 286 computers, which could use 16MB of RAM and multitask DOS apps, but Intel removed the CPU feature the OS used before the 80286 shipped. Without it, it couldn't multitask DOS apps. Later Intel put it back, but it was too late, DR got wounded _again_ and it was too late. So DR re-targeted the OS as a realtime OS called FlexOS and sold it for things like cash registers. Remember the lightweight GEM desktop? FlexOS had a multitasking GEM GUI called X-GEM on top. A form of it still is sold today -- IBM owned it for years and called it the IBM 4680 and 4690 OS. (Catchy, huh?) Later it sold it to Toshiba who still support it. 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. I used a distro in the mid-1990s that ran in 3MB of disk space (2 floppies) — http://www.toms.net/rb/ — and another that installed onto a DOS hard disk in a subdirectory and took about 10MB — http://www.ipt.ntnu.no/~knutb/linux486/download/pygmy/pygmy09help.html -- 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 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS
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&T 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/ -- 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 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] DOS word processors / text editors
On Thu, 15 Apr 2021 at 14:58, Thomas Desi wrote: > > Hi John, > thanks for your experience account and software list. > I am intrigued - as »collecting« word processors/text editors in the "quest > for the best« - I managed to find > the following. > (https://winworldpc.com/download/c3806cc3-a010-c2a4-0911-c3a6e280947e) > > What version woud you advice or are you using? There is a significant > difference in size between v.1.00 and 1.01 as you can see… I suggest 1.01 -- some of the differences are mentioned here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprint_(word_processor) Sprint had several interesting attributes: • a configurable user interface: it could pretend to be MS Word (pre-CUA version), WordStar, WordPerfect, DisplayWrite etc. • continuous background saves -- their demo at shows was to turn the PC off as someone was typing, then reboot it and show that the word the demonstrator was typing had been saved But it was a bit too late. The DOS market was changing: disk caching was becoming common, which broke the continuous-save functionality. UIs were standardising on CUA menus. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Common_User_Access ... And WordPerfect soon owned the DOS wordprocessor market. -- 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 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] DOS was dead...
On Thu, 15 Apr 2021 at 18:50, Harald Arnesen wrote: > > I would try Void Linux and Alpine Linux on such hardware. Good points. Thanks for the tips -- to be honest I did not know they supported x86-32. I have tried both before, but only in VMs. Void Linux I quite liked: very simple and clean, but seemed feature-complete and fast. Alpine I found very challenging indeed; although I have seen a running instance with a full Xfce desktop, I was not able to install the packages and get a graphical desktop working on my test install. The documentation is scant and patchy, and because it is a rolling-release, often what docs are out there are outdated, and tell you detailed steps to accomplish something that no longer work 6 months later. This is one of the big strengths of Arch Linux: although it's a rolling release, the documentation is lavish and exceptionally complete. The snag with rolling-release distros is that they are only suitable for machines in constant use, where you can frequently update. They are problematic on machines you may only use once every few months; each time you turn the computer on, you need to do a massive update, and because some subcomponents may change in major ways, things can break. I run openSUSE Tumbleweed on my machine in the office. I have been working from home for over a year now. I think that when I finally return to the office, it will be easier to reformat the machine and start over than to update a year-old rolling release that has been booted about 3 times in a year. -- 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 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] DOS was dead...
on Garber, about porting VirtualPC from MacOS on PowerPC to Windows on x86, and he said "it's very efficient. What you want when doing CPU emulation is a nice close match between host architecture and emulated "guest" architecture. The ideal is a 1:1 mapping of instructions. You might be surprised, but when doing x86 on x86, they're a really good match!" So VMware became a hit, VirtualPC sold well on its coattails, and Intel and AMD responded by adding virtualisation instructions to their hardware architectures. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86_virtualization#AMD_virtualization_(AMD-V) Running x86 code on x86 goes back a lot further than you might think. It goes back to the early 1980s, and the 386 was merely the first x86 chip to add hardware acceleration with Virtual86 mode. > So there is inevitably an incremental transition process, rather than an > immediate snapover to a fully protected environment. The PC wasn't the only > hardware platform and DOS wasn't the only OS that this happened to. I am curious. Aside from mainframes or minicomputers, what other architectures gradually added hardware protection and virtualisation features which the OS then supported? MacOS never got proper memory protection. Nor did AmigaOS on 680x0. Atari TOS never did; MiNT is all-software. Commodore Unix on the Amiga 3000/4000 did but could not run AmigaOS apps. Atari Unix on the TT, ditto. Acorn RISC-iX on the R-series ARM workstations, ditto. RISC OS never supported this. Ditto QDOS, Minerva or SMSQ/E on the QL and its clones. I can't think of any other micro architecture that really did. Maybe Microware OS-9? > Of course, talking about this process in the present tense, as if it's > something that still happens today, may not be the best, as any unprotected > architecture introduced with modern transistor budgets likely has a specific > purpose like hard realtime and will never see a transition to a protected > architecture, and any general-purpose architecture introduced today is almost > certain to have memory protection. Agreed. -- 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 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS
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. -- 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 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS
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=&advanced=1&author=liam+proven&date=the+dawn+of+time&results_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. :-) -- 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 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS
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. -- 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 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS
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&T 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&T 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,
Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS
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. -- 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 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS
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. -- 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 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS
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. -- 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 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS
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? -- 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 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS
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. -- 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 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Why do you use DOS
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_. -- 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 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Why I use DOS a.k.a. FreeDOS for Dummies?
On Mon, 19 Apr 2021 at 19:06, TK Chia wrote: > > This is indeed interesting --- an OS that is fast and light, and knows > at least a few things about modern (21st-century) hardware and software > standards. There are quite a few out there. I wrote an article for the Register about a decade back with 25 alternative OSes for x86 machines https://www.theregister.com/Print/2013/11/01/25_alternative_pc_operating_systems/ It mentions KolibriOS, and FreeDOS, and very slightly cheats with one mention of a Linux remix, but it is a long-dead one now. It doesn't even mention my current favourite, which is Oberon. http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2009/04/22/oberon/ There are a _lot_ of choices out there that are not as bloated as modern Linux tends to be, and not super-simple and limited like DOS (any DOS). -- 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 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Why I use DOS a.k.a. FreeDOS for Dummies?
On Mon, 19 Apr 2021 at 19:53, Tomas By wrote: > > > Just a comment, Open Genera 2.0 (not tried it): > > https://archive.org/details/OpenGenera It is an absolutely fascinating OS and an important piece of history, but it's not freeware or FOSS, it's not a native x86 OS and must run on an emulator, and it is anything but simple! :-) There are several Lisp OSs that I know of for x86 computers. One is a largely stalled personal project: https://common-lisp.net/project/movitz/ One was a proof of concept but got quite far: https://github.com/mntmn/interim The one that I am most excited by is the personal project of the lead programmer of Tao Group's Taos and Intent/Elate: https://github.com/vygr/ChrysaLisp But none are beginner-friendly... Yet, anyway. :-) -- 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 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Print via network
On Fri, 23 Apr 2021 at 00:37, Bryan Kilgallin wrote: > > OK, I have plugged-in an Ethernet cable from the DOS PC to my router. > Now what? [1] Find out what network protocol(s) your printer speaks [2] Look for DOS support for 1 of those protocols [3] Install a DOS network stack that includes that protocol. But without answering #1 we can't really give much more in the way of pointers. -- 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 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Print via network
On Sun, 25 Apr 2021 at 10:44, Bryan Kilgallin wrote:
>
> Transmission Control Protocol / Internet Protocol ( TCP/IP ) used
> for instance by UNIX, GNU/Linux, Windows Vista, OS X and the Internet,
We already know it must be TCP/IP. Everything else is obsolete.
> Unfortunately, I don't see an intersection/match with my HL-3150CDN
> printer's protocols!
Any network printer under about a quarter of a century old supports TCP/IP.
On Sun, 25 Apr 2021 at 11:53, Bryan Kilgallin wrote:
>
> Liam wrote:
>
> {[1] Find out what network protocol(s) your printer speaks}
>
> {Protocols
Just _printing_ protocols. Nothing else matters.
> LPR/LPD
Sounds promising.
> Custom
> Raw Port/Port9100, IPP/IPPS,
Probably too new for DOS.
So your problem now is:
[1] Find a driver for your Ethernet card. Someone else is addressing that.
[2] Set up a TCP/IP stack and bind it to the card.
[3] Find and install an LPD/LPR client on that stack.
I found this, from this list, 14Y ago.
https://freedos-user.narkive.com/uTRrLddU/printing-to-a-network-printer
--
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Re: [Freedos-user] Print via network
On Mon, 26 Apr 2021 at 01:21, Bryan Kilgallin wrote: > > I copied the PRODOS.EXE file to my FreeDOS PC and entered "prodos". > Which resulted in this error: > "This program cannot be run in DOS mode.". Could be a self-extracting archive. If you have Windows, try running it under Windows, then copy across the unpacked files. If you don't, you could try WINE on Linux, or just try opening it with a Linux archive manager -- many of them can unpack Windows SEAs. -- 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 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Why I use DOS a.k.a. FreeDOS for Dummies?
On Mon, 26 Apr 2021 at 06:01, Ralf Quint wrote: > I am not sure if that is any more efficient for at least 99.99% of all > use cases then using LibreOfiice/OpenOffice Writer, Microsoft Word or > WordPerfect on Windows or Linux GUI based systems. It depends what you want or need. In my day job as a text writer, I mostly work in DocBook XML or AsciiDoc, so I use FOSS editors for Linux that understand those formats. As a journalist and freelance tech writer, I mostly worked in an outliner. http://www.outliners.com/ This used to be a major category for DOS and in the DOS era there were many. https://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/6291 However, these days, only one major WP still includes an outliner: MS Word. For this reason, I keep an old copy of Word under WINE on my Linux laptops: usually Word 97. None of the rest of Office, just Word. Sadly there is nothing else like its outliner any more. WPS Office has one but it's very clunky and I find WPS Office to have a bad UI these days -- it is mandatory Ribbon-style, which I hate. It used to have proper menus, but those old versions had a poor, barely-working outliner. LibreOffice doesn't have one at all, and nor does any other FOSS tool I know. (Note, there are 2 kinds of outliner: intrinsic and extrinsic. Extrinsic or 2-pane outliners are a sort of mind-mapping or organizing tool. Only intrinsic ones are any use to me as a writer. Sadly there are plentiful FOSS extrinsic outliners but they're no use to me.) -- 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 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Why I use DOS a.k.a. FreeDOS for Dummies?
On Mon, 26 Apr 2021 at 19:33, Thomas Desi wrote: > > Interesting! > Some „folding“, like in VIM (zf) and others could be used as „outliner“. Folding is not the same thing, although it is one small element of what an outliner does. > http://www.outliners.com/is unfortunately a 404 (April 26, 2021,19:29) Strange. For me, it automatically redirects, and I copied and pasted the URL directly. http://outliners.scripting.com/ is the redirect. -- 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 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Why I use DOS a.k.a. FreeDOS for Dummies?
On Mon, 26 Apr 2021 at 19:57, Bryan Kilgallin wrote: > > Under Linux, I used "manuskript" to write a memoir. Interesting -- thanks, that's a new one to me. I have had a very brief play -- it crashes in seconds on macOS which I happen to be using at this moment -- but it looks like it has a lot of extra functionality I'd not need -- character tracking, plots, etc., rather like Scrivener -- but if the outliner is capable, it could help me. -- 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 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Why I use DOS a.k.a. FreeDOS for Dummies?
On Mon, 26 Apr 2021 at 23:47, Jim Hall wrote: > These days, my favorite DOS word processor is Microsoft Word for DOS. > Microsoft released a copy for free on their download.microsoft.com > website. It feels quite modern compared to today's word processors. > The key combinations that you just "assume" on today's word processors > work in Word for DOS. Ctrl-i for italics, ctrl-b for bold, etc. That > works well for me. Absolutely -- Word 5.5 for DOS is good and completely free. It was MS' way of offering a Y2K fix with minimal effort. Sadly, it doesn't also apply to Word 6, which was the last ever version and which is a more pleasant tool IMHO. Word 6 uses the same menu layouts and file formats as Word 6 on Mac and 16-bit Windows, and Word 95 on 32-bit Windows, and can round-trip documents just fine. The outliner works better in 6, too. :-( I do own copies of Word 97 and Office 2000, so I think I can use down-level versions legally, but sadly Word 6 is not freeware. -- 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 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Print via network
On Mon, 26 Apr 2021 at 19:49, Bryan Kilgallin wrote: > > Linux Archive Manager unpacked it! Great! So, your next step is probably to try to get the MS Network Client. It's included on all the Windows NT Server CDs. If I remember correctly, v3.0 includes sharing functionality -- it makes DOS into a server. You don't want or need that; it takes a *lot* of memory. You just need the client part. I think the preceding version of the MS Client (v2.5 maybe?) is client-only, no server, which is much easier and takes less RAM. Find that, try to install it, and point it at the NDIS directory in that driver you downloaded. -- 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 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Why I use DOS a.k.a. FreeDOS for Dummies?
On Tue, 27 Apr 2021 at 10:03, Thomas Desi wrote: > > Hi Liam, > > maybe this is not the place to ask, but, vDOS looks nice. Strangely it can > not run the »Eve.exe«. > (Neither does DOSbox). Funny. Only FreeDOS allows. Might be a video issue. I am not sure why you are replying to me, as I did not recommend vDos, link to it or anything. You were the one who introduced it to the thread. Personally, I do not routinely run Windows for anything anywhere. I use Linux and macOS both at home and at work. I keep Windows around on most of my machines, mainly for reflashing firmware and things, but it's not in daily, weekly or even monthly use. I am vaguely aware of vDos as there is a Mac port of it, which is used for running DOS WordPerfect on Macs: http://www.columbia.edu/~em36/wpdos/vdoswp.html I have tried that and it works. The font rendering is nice, the host-OS interoperability is nice, but it also feels like a fragile solution to me and I do not routinely use it. When I want to use DOS on a modern 64-bit OS, I run it in a VM. For me, usually VirtualBox, because it is both FOSS and cross-platform. However it is hard to move files between host and guest OSes. I am working on a DOS networking stack to run in DOS under VirtualBox but it's low on my to-do list. On Linux, there is DOSemu. This runs a real copy of DOS in a dedicated VM but also sets up host/guest integration. It works well and I like it. I was at a talk on DOSemu 2 which could be a significant improvement -- but I have not played with it yet, as AFAIK no distribution includes it so far. I note that DOSemu 1 on Debian, Ubuntu, openSUSE etc. still includes FreeDOS 0.9-something, pre-1.0 as far as I can recall. That might be something for the FreeDOS team to investigate and rectify. :-) -- 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 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] hardware recommendations
On Tue, 27 Apr 2021 at 14:58, Eric Auer wrote: > Computers which support ONLY UEFI > operating systems will not work (unless you load a CSM, but there > is none I could recommend for DOS). CSM is short for Compatibility Support Module. It is a module that enables UEFI firmware to also support "legacy" booting, i.e. BIOS compatibility. Windows 7 required this. AFAIK this is a vendor choice, normally, not an end-user one. I do not think that an end-user, the owner, can add CSM to an existing machine whose firmware lacks it. > But most computers still do > support BIOS, I think. UEFI vs BIOS is either-or. A single machine can't have both, and I do not know of any where it is a choice. It is a design decision. I suspect that 99% of PC vendors will have no idea what "does your firmware support CSM" would mean. Therefore a salesperson will almost certainly just lie and say "yes" to get the sale. The real question is: "can the machine boot DOS?" Even so, I think very few would know. Try it and see is the best answer. -- 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 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] hardware recommendations
On Tue, 27 Apr 2021 at 15:55, Mateusz Viste wrote: > > On 27/04/2021 15:43, Liam Proven wrote: > > UEFI vs BIOS is either-or. A single machine can't have both, and I do > > not know of any where it is a choice. It is a design decision. > > On my Thinkpads the BIOS allows to choose the boot method - either UEFI > or "legacy". The latter allows to boot DOS, the former doesn't. I own 5 Thinkpads. I know. This does not mean you are choosing between 2 firmware chips, a BIOS one and a UEFI one. It has 1 type of firmware, only, and this has CSM: i.e. it can emulate a BIOS. The difference is in the boot media. It can boot legacy media (via a bootsector in the MBR) and it can boot UEFI media (by loading a stub in a FAT32-format EFI System Partition, the ESP). Most firmware has this and can do both. Some have a setting to let you choose which it tries first. The Thinkpad firmware lets you make the choice every boot. This kind of thing is *why* I buy Thinkpads. -- 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 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] hardware recommendations
On Tue, 27 Apr 2021 at 16:43, Frantisek Rysanek wrote: > > ITX motherboards by Gigabyte, with BayTrail and Apollo Lake ATOM, do > have the "legacy BIOS boot" (and CSM support) available in the BIOS. A PC BIOS is a type of program stored in a repogrammable nonvolatile memory chip on a PC's motherboard. Because it's a program, but ships in a chip, it's somewhere between software (just bits and bytes, no physical existence) and hardware (solid material object that you can kick.) So it is called "firmware", because it's between "soft" and "hard", not quite one or the other. A BIOS is one type of firmware. UEFI is a different type of firmware. There are others, but not in PCs, usually. If a computer has UEFI, it doesn't have a BIOS. If it has a BIOS, it doesn't have UEFI. CSM is a UEFI feature. If a machine's firmware has CSM, it must be UEFI. If it is UEFI, it is not a BIOS. That means the computer does not have a BIOS: it has UEFI instead. > You can select whether to have it or not, there are several items in > the BIOS Setup related to that. If it has UEFI then it doesn't have a BIOS. It is impossible to talk about the differences between BIOS and UEFI if the terms are used interchangeably. If I called Linux "a kind of DOS" and tried to discuss the difference between MS-DOS, FreeDOS and Torvalds DOS we would all get very confused and we could not effectively communicate. So it's important to be clear and get it right. Really important. I am not being picky about this for fun; it really matters. Some UEFI can emulate a BIOS. Some can't. > ITX motherboards by AsRock, with Gemini Lake ATOM: UEFI only. > Not in the least apologetic about it :-) > The motherboard user's guide, typically available in PDF for download > off the vendor's website, typically has a couple screenshots of the > BIOS SETUP. If there's not a word about a CSM or legacy boot, beware. > > There were some earlier examples of motherboards where the CSM > initially wasn't available, and got added in a later version of the > BIOS. But, I wouldn't rely on this anymore - for many vendors it's > UEFI-only from now on. They are probably all UEFI-only, but some have UEFI with BIOS emulation -- that is, CSM -- and some have UEFI without. -- 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 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Forwarding and commenting a FreeDOS 1.3rc3 critical review
On Thu, 29 Apr 2021 at 18:17, Johnpaul Humphrey wrote: > > I do not know about SYSINFO. I do not use it too much. having a way to > check battery would be good on laptop. I guess this is part of the problem. We forget how things are on a multitasking OS. There used to be a very obscure OS called Digital Research DOS Plus. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOS_Plus It was an ancestor of DR-DOS, but before DR had the idea of doing a rival to MS-DOS. DOS Plus was descended from Concurrent CP/M, but was a single-user system with some, very limited, MS-DOS compatibility. In the UK it was shipped with the first Amstrad PCs (Europe's first cheap PC clones) and Acorn's BBC Master 512, an educational Mostek 6502 computer with an Intel 80186 co-processor. The most visible difference between DOS Plus and any other DOS was that DOS Plus displayed a status line at the bottom of the screen, showing the time, what if anything was printing in the background, which of its 4 screens you were on and some other info. It could multitask CP/M-86 programs, but not DOS ones. But without multitasking, how could you display a battery monitor? On DOS, nothing can "run in the background" because there is no background to run in. In principle it could be in the prompt, but apart from the time, there is no mechanism to _dynamically_ update an environment variable to hold a changing value. One could write a TSR to do it (I think!) but that is more precious base memory used up. The one thing I can think of is that in DOSemu in Linux, when you start a session, it lists the available drives and what they are mapped to. I always put a few commands in at the end of AUTOEXEC.BAT to display the disk cache size (SMARTDRV /V on PC DOS), the amount of free base memory (MEM /C), and the DOS version (VER /R). A list of available drives would be a really nice addition. For a more friendly FDISK, it might be possible to adapt the Linux `cfdisk` tool, a menu-driven disk-partitioner, but it seems to have more risk than benefit. Since DOS cannot by default access or display drives formatted with NTFS, HPFS, ext2/3/4, XFS, Btrfs, ZFS etc., then a friendly partitioner that makes it easy to remove drives whose contents you can't see is asking for trouble. Better to boot a Linux CD and use GParted. I have long been pondering a very simple, very heavily cut-down, text-only Linux whose main purpose was to multitask multiple instances of DOSemu -- making it work like DESQview or something in the late 1980s/early 1990s. An OS in the tens of megabytes, worst case a few hundred megs, which let you multitask DOS apps at full native speed. (I.e. unlike DOSbox or some other emulator). It might be both fun and useful, but it's not really DOS any more... -- 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 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Forwarding and commenting a FreeDOS 1.3rc3 critical review
On Thu, 29 Apr 2021 at 22:00, Eric Auer wrote: > > there have been TSR to display a clock or other status in DOS, > at a selectable location or by reserving a whole line on screen. The clock is a lot easier than the battery level, though... But I guess there are probably standard APM calls to query remaining battery power. I always load POWER.EXE when running PC/MS/DR DOS in VMs, because it makes the CPU usage drop to zero when the VM is idle. I think it (or analog) might support a how-much-charge-is-left call but I don't know. > About your suggestion to show which drives exist at boot: The > installer could use VOL, a FOR loop and testing whether or not > a drive exists to display such information. There also are some > left-over tools from older versions of the distro to check which > drives are CD/DVD, which are FAT12, FAT16 or FAT32, how much > space is free on them and so on. Yup. A simple list would help. > > The output of MEM is so long (shortest style is without /C I think) > that you would not fit much else on the screen. Same for the output > of LBACACHE (when loading, or using the INFO or STAT options later). There's always `mode con lines=43` or `mode con: lines=50` :-) > The good thing about VER /R is that it shows both kernel and command.com > version in 3 lines (plus one empty line before that). As people probably > use UHDD+UDVD2 instead of LBACACHE+?+CDRCACHE, cache info will differ. Well, yes. > What would be the pros and cons relative to the already existing DOS > versions of Ranish, fdisk, xfdisk and spfdisk? Ahh, good point. Like I said, I generally stick to the on-board tools in PC/DR DOS, without 3rd party additions. I wasn't aware of these, except Ranish, which is the only tool I know that can renumber existing partitions in place. I am not sure I've used it this century, though. > > I have long been pondering a very simple, very heavily cut-down, > > text-only Linux whose main purpose was to multitask multiple instances > > of DOSemu > > Too late? ;-) https://cmaiolino.wordpress.com/dosbian/ Well, no, but good find! That's an ARM distro, not x86. It runs DOSbox, a PC emulator, whereas DOSemu runs DOS sessions on the bare metal of x86 machines. DOSbox is mainly aimed at games, whereas DOSemu is intended for productivity apps, and allows reading files on Linux partitions, printing to Linux printers, etc. But conceptually close! -- 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 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Diskman in our Ibiblio collection
On Fri, 7 May 2021 at 03:58, dmccunney wrote: > Once upon a time, an outfit called Mark of the Unicorn made an editor > for CP/M called Mince, which was an acronym for Mince Is Not Complete > Emacs. It used the Emacs design and keyboard mappings, but there were > limits to what you could do in CP/M where you *might* have 48K to hold > OS, program, and data. It was ported to MS DOS by MOTU. As far as I > can tell, it was then acquired by a company called Underware and > sold/supported by them. > > Borland acquired the product from Underware, and released a version as > The Final World. Final Word was then released in a new version and > renamed Sprint. Sprint was a popular word processor for MS DOS, > notable for an extensive macro language making it more like "real" > emacs.. As DOS became moribund and Windows took over. Borland > withdrew Sprint from the market. I have a copy of Sprint sent to me > in the original distribution archive, but he didn't specify where *he* > got it. Lacking provenance, I *didn't* make it available for download > from TextEditors. I just documented that it used to exist. Fair. I tried Sprint back when it was new. It was a remarkable program, with 2 compelling features: • it could emulate the UIs of most of the leading DOS WPs of the time, so whatever one you knew, you could use Sprint; • it saved continuously in the background, so even if the PC crashed, you shouldn't lose more than a word or 2 of your text. The snags were: #1 was rapidly becoming irrelevant as everyone's DOS apps converged on the IBM CUA standard of look and feel, as even today, most GUIs still honour, even on Linux... ... and #2 didn't work so reliably with the fairly new tech of DOS disk caches that could cache writes as well as reads. Meanwhile, Sprint was relatively poor at formatting and layout, and printer drivers, which were becoming killer features at the time. A very good idea that came along a bit too late. > Borland has been gradually releasing ancient stuff under a Community > license, and things like Turbo Pascal and Turbo C are available as a > free download and free to use. If memory serves, source is available > too, but of questionable use. Good luck acquiring the proper > toolchain and being *able* to change and rebuild.it. > > I recall Brief being promised, but not available the last time I > looked. Should it *become* available. I\ll link to it on TextEditors/ I never used Brief but then I was not and am not really a programmer. However I note that there is a GPL clone of it: https://github.com/adamyg/grief And a commercial one: https://crisp.com/ Neither supports DOS, but as Grief looks to be a text-mode app, it might be feasible to port it. Probably a lot of work for someone, though. > There *isn't* one. WordStar was never formally made freeware. It was > simply abandoned. Note that the WordStar.org site explicitly *states* > you will not find binaries there, and why.. It's front and center on > the site.. Indeed so. There is the unfinished-but-working WordTsar: http://wordtsar.ca/ > Bluntly, the implicit assumption I might *not* have is offensive and > personally *insultiing*., If you want to continue this conversation > with me, you can give me a formal apology and *not* do that again.. To be honest, I have felt the same way about several people's replies to me here on this list. I was part of this community 12+ years ago, but I found the tone rather hostile so I left. Now I have returned, because I am intermittently pursuing a couple of DOS-related projects of my own, I quickly remembered why I left. All I can say is: it's not just you. :-( I get a strong feeling of being treated like an idiot and condescended to. -- 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 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Diskman in our Ibiblio collection
rdly bloated, > even the computer system is enormous. I agree again. We are going backwards nowadays. > Looking back at those thoughts, designs and ideas of thirty+ years ago, using > DOS, trying out maybe Plan9 (hmm…?) is worthwhile to get an idea that there > is more to computing than windows, linux or MacOS, more than MS-Word. This > can only achieved if the software enters a status of „oldtimer“, like with > cars in Europe, where after a while the whole issue of individual rights > might of design ideas become „open source“ out of public interest. This might > be very Un-American, right, I am writing from an European perspective. I don't know if you know, but Plan 9 and Acme, Rio etc. were inspired by an earlier OS, called Oberon. It is still around, runs on modern PC hardware, is FOSS, and is astonishingly small and fast. http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2009/04/22/oberon/ -- 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 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Freedos Install Problem
On Wed, 9 Jun 2021 at 18:05, Andrew wrote: > > 3) I havnt worked enough in getting the floppy working on the i386, i think > it has to do with a nonstandard ide connection. Standard floppy drives are *not* IDE. They have their own connection (34-way not 40-way) and this is attached to a floppy controller, not an IDE controller. There is no resemblance and no connection between the floppy and IDE controllers. It is just that both use ribbon cables, but of differing widths. N.B. There is a partial exception: "superfloppy" or "floptical" drive use IDE. These take different disks, such as 20MB or 120MB disks, but can read the old style of disks. Some RISC workstations did not have a floppy controller and so if they were fitted with the optional, and rare, floppy drive, these were SCSI floppies that only work on a SCSI card. But no PC-compatible I recall ever used SCSI floppy drives, because they were far too expensive. > The bios doesnt give an error when the connector is upside down, and it sees > the drive If a floppy is connected with the cable in the wrong orientation, the classic giveaway is that the floppy drive's access light will be permanently illuminated. -- 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 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Print
On Sun, 20 Jun 2021 at 10:17, Bryan Kilgallin wrote:
>
> I wish to print from a FreeDOS PC. That connects via Samba to an Ubuntu
> server. That speaks via Ethernet to a Brother GDI printer. František has
> been advising me on this project.
>
> On the FreeDOS PC:
> * LMHOSTS lists the printer against its IP address; and
> * LOGON.BAT lists the server and print queue, and
> specifies "net use LPT2:, with the server, print queue,
> and password.
That looks good! Great progress from when you first asked.
> But I cannot get PRINT to work!
OK, question 1: why do you need the PRINT command? It's a background
spooler. It is not in any way needed for DOS printing.
> {PRINT README.TXT}
Did you not specify to print to LPT2:?
> Next I read
> "Device to direct Print [PRN=0]".
So it's not going to LPT2: – it's going to PRN:
[1] You don't need PRINT. To test if printing works, just do
copy readme.txt lpt2:
[2] If you *do* want background printing, you need to tell PRINT where
to send the data:
PRINT /D:LPT2: readme.txt
https://web.csulb.edu/~murdock/print.html
If you want to set the default DOS printer, you can use the MODE command. E.g.
mode lpt2:
https://my.okidata.com/MAN-380.NSF/WebBPXContents/7B4C04EE632B2D93852562190053A902?OpenDocument
But note that most DOS 3rd party apps will probably ignore this
setting. DOS only has very basic plain-text printing support, with no
device drivers, so almost all DOS apps implemented their own printer
support with device drivers to enable different font sizes, *bold* and
_underline_ and /italics/ and so on.
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Re: [Freedos-user] Print
On Sun, 20 Jun 2021 at 13:44, Bryan Kilgallin wrote:
>
> From the FreeDOS PC, I can print a little over a hundred characters.
So does that meant that it _can_ print something?
> Because I want to print, and it's called "PRINT"!
OK, but it is not like that.
DOS inherits a lot of its design from CP/M, but then after MS-DOS 2,
MS started to try to bring some Xenix technology to DOS.
So CP/M's special device names became a sort of magic files on DOS.
The main magic files are...
CON: -- the console, normally the screen, but can be redirected to a
serial port with the CTTY command
AUX: -- the auxiliary console (usually COM1:)
PRN: -- the default printer
LPT1: -- Line Printer 1, i.e. the 1st parallel port
LPT2: -- the 2nd parallel port. From your copied output this is what
you are redirecting to the network printer.
COM1: (and 2--4) -- the serial ports
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOS#Reserved_device_names
If you have mapped LPT2 to the network printer then you *must* print
to LPT2. Sending to PRN or LPT1 won't do anything because there's no
device there.
The easy way to print to any port is just to copy or echo a file to that port.
You *do not need* the PRINT command. The print command is for
*background* printing, so that a user of a non-multitasking OS can get
on with doing something else while the printer works.
This is called printer spooling.
Over the network it makes no difference, but it is one more thing to
go wrong and one more thing to troubleshoot. Don't make anything any
more complex than absolutely necessary when you're still trying to
find if it works at all.
The network does spooling anyway. It is totally redundant. Do not use it.
> I have been experimenting. Whether I do or don't, the result's the same!
If you print to LPT1 or PRN *without* assigning it to the network
print queue, then nothing should come out.
We need complete and accurate information to try to troubleshoot
this, and you are not providing it... :-(
> Then I used this option. It only worked after the file name. If before
> it, I got a "not found" error!
> "/d:device"
> https://www.computerhope.com/printhlp.htm
>
> > [1] You don't need PRINT. To test if printing works, just do
> >
> > copy readme.txt lpt2:
> {README.TXT => LPT2}
> I notice a seemingly long time elapsed after entering the command on the
> FreeDOS PC. So I reboot the printer.
I do not know what the material in {curly brackets} means so I do not
know how to interpret your reply.
Is the printer a laser printer? If so, then when printing, it will
store up text until it has a full page _then_ print it. A laser
printer is physically only able to print a whole page at a time. It
can't print a few lines at a time like a dot-matrix or inkjet.
So if you only send a few lines, you need to send a form feed after it
to tell the printer "that's all, now print it."
https://www.winsteps.com/winman/formfd.htm
So you'd do:
echo myfile.txt > lpt2:
... then...
echo ^L > lpt2:
^L means "press Ctrl and the letter l"
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Re: [Freedos-user] Print
On Sun, 20 Jun 2021 at 17:52, Ralf Quint wrote: > > That doesn't make any sense. There must be something else in play for > that to work. PRN: is an alias to LPT1: > > There should be no printout what so ever of you would send data to PRN: > and have the network printer assigned to LPT2: Agreed. Bryan is not telling us the full story here. I have asked for more info, been told "I do not perceive your specification of further information required!" ... (whatever that means) so I am giving up here. -- 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 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Building Plan9's Sam text editor on FreeDOS? (+ Edlin without line numbers?)
On Mon, 21 Jun 2021 at 05:42, Mart Zirnask wrote: > > However, I am a fan of the Sam text editor, originally developed for > the Plan 9 OS. SAM, Acme and the Plan 9 Rio environment were inspired by Niklaus Wirth's Oberon environment. The UI is quite similar to the Oberon UI. Quick intro: http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2009/04/22/oberon/ Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oberon_(operating_system) Some of the history: https://people.inf.ethz.ch/wirth/Articles/LeanSoftware.pdf Academic assessment: http://people.cis.ksu.edu//~danielwang/Investigation/System_Security/download.pdf (Warning, non HTTPS link, but it's real, valid and safe.) Thus, you might find it interesting and instructive to check out Oberon. Modern versions run on top of Windows, macOS and Linux, but it also used to run on top of DOS if that's what you want. https://sourceforge.net/projects/dosoberon/files/DOS%20Oberon%20System%203%20Version%202.0/ -- 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 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] tunein.com and freedos?
On Tue, 22 Jun 2021 at 03:36, Karen Lewellen wrote: > > If so, what are you using for browser and playback? There is no modern browser for DOS -- but more to the point, there never will be. A DOS app can be a maximum of about 620-630k of memory. A modern browser can take approaching 1000× more than that and indeed at least one mainstream modern browser, Google Chrome, no longer supports 32-bit Linux at all. Between the very complex Document Object Model (DOM) of a web page required, and the Javascript interpreter needed to manipulate that, and a JIT compiler for Javascript to run that at a decent speed... fitting it all into 640kB is not possible. If you like the DOS family of OSes, and want to stay in that general family, but for whatever reason you do not want to run MS Windows, have you considered OS/2? It is still alive and can run on modern hardware. The current version is called Blue Lion and is sold by Arca Noae: https://www.arcanoae.com/blue-lion/ It natively supports DOS apps as well as its own OS/2 apps and Windows 3.x apps, so there is a very large selection of (admittedly now quite old) software out there for it. > One example where I would consider running freedos would be on a laptop, > outfitted with native networking with a wireless adapter that I could use > for travel. There is no wireless LAN support for DOS that I know of. If some ancient tools can be made to connect, they won't talk to modern Wifi systems, which have undergone multiple generation changes since the DOS era. > There is no existing Linux system that I could run in this fashion, > because for me personally, there is no existing Linux system providing > the adaptive technology I both desire and require. Can you give us some examples of what you need? -- 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 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] PCI SATA adapters with DOS
On Wed, 23 Jun 2021 at 11:39, Jon Brase wrote: > > Continuing a conversation from back in March, I took Liam's suggestion > of using a PCI SATA adapter. [...] > Still, despite everything under "the ugly", the most crucial elements of > my configuration are up and running with a lot more space than they used > to have. Well, good! It is definitely progress and I am happy to hear about 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 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] tunein.com and freedos?
On Thu, 24 Jun 2021 at 14:38, Eric Auer wrote: > > This is not true for apps which use DOS extenders. Those > can use several gigabytes of memory. There even are some > proof of concept extenders which let you use more than > 4 GB of RAM. OK, good point. I hadn't considered that. I still think that nobody is likely to even try to implement a modern browser for DOS, though. > > Only some ancient PCMCIA WiFi cards have DOS drivers, > but you can use an external bridge box to connect to > your WiFi by LAN cable. True. I have used such a solution on a RISC OS machine before now. It brings additional power, complexity and accessibility issues, though. -- 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 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] tunein.com and freedos?
> you might be aware of how poor even for those who lack physical issues, > the quality of Linux software speech is, for individuals that need access > for learning reasons, as well as for those experiencing blindness. Actually, yes, I have and yes, I do. > Kindly do not pretend to be expert in an area involving accommodations > before your ignorance hurts someone. Again with the false accusations. Karen, mind your manners. You are living up to the reputation of your name. > If freedos is never going to provide a proper browser, how can it claim to > be a fully functional operating system where networking is concerned? It doesn't. Apparently your ignorance about DOS is greater than the ignorance you are accusing this community of. -- 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 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] tunein.com and freedos?
. If that is the price of success, they are not willing to pay it. What Google has done is so unspeakable foul, so wrong, so blasphemous, they don't even talk about it. What effect has it had on Microsoft? A lot. Cheaper Windows laptops than ever, new low-end editions of Windows, serious efforts to reduce the disk and memory usage... And little success. The cheap editions lose what makes Windows desirable, and ultra-cheap Windows laptops make poorer slower Chromebooks than actual Chromebooks. Apple isn't playing. It makes its money in the high-end. Unfortunately a lot of people are very technologically conservative. Once they find something they like, they will stay with it at all costs. Like Karen here: she likes DOS, she likes her hardware screen reader, and she wants the world to come to her and interoperate with her obsolete tech. Anything else is interpreted as abuse. She would be much better off if she were willing to experiment and try other things, but she will not accept that. This attitude is what has kept Microsoft immensely profitable. A similar one is what has kept Linux as the most successful server OS in the world. It is just a modernised version of a quick and dirty hack of an OS from the 1960s, but it's capable and it's free. "Good enough" is the enemy of better. There are hundreds of other operating systems out there. I listed 25 non-Linux FOSS OSes in this piece, and yes, FreeDOS was included: https://www.theregister.com/Print/2013/11/01/25_alternative_pc_operating_systems/ There are dozens that are better in various ways than Unix and Linux. • Minix 3 is a better FOSS Unix than Linux: a true microkernel which can cope with parts of itself failing without crashing the computer. • Plan 9 is a better UNIX than Unix. Everything really *is* a file and the network is the computer. • Inferno is a better Plan 9 than Plan 9: the network is your computer, with full processor and OS-independence. • Plan 9's UI is based on Oberon: an entire mouse-driven OS in 10,000 lines of rigorous, type-safe code, *including* the compiler and IDE. • A2 is the modern descendant of Oberon: real-time capable, a full GUI, multiprocessor-aware, internet- and Web-capable. But almost everyone is too invested in the way they know and like to be willing to start over. So we are trapped, the monkey with its hand stuck in a coconut shell full of rice, even though it can see the grinning hunter coming to kill and eat it. We are facing catastrophic climate change that will kill most of humanity and most species of life on Earth, this century. To find any solutions, we need better computers that can help us to think better and work out better ways to live, better cleaner technologies, better systems of employment and housing and everything else. But we can't let go of the single lousy handful of rice that we are clutching. We can't let go of our broken political and economic and military-industrial systems. We can't even let go of our broken 1960s and 1970s computer operating systems. And every day, the hunter gets closer and his smile gets bigger. -- 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 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] tunein.com and freedos?
I am not interested into entering into debates about your medical claims. I do not live in your country and never have, so I doubt you could sue me if I had said anything actionable, which I have not. This is a mailing list. It cannot be edited. What is sent is sent and it cannot be changed. If you have problems with particular sound frequencies, or speech frequencies, then get professional assistance. Do not come on to a public mailing list and without mentioning any of them and demand that other people who are untrained volunteers and know nothing about you, your health, your disabilities or anything else, answer questions for you and then threaten them with legal action when you don't like what you hear. Good bye. I am filtering your email address to the trash from now on, something I have not needed to do for at least 5 years. ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Upgrading the BIOS with FreeDOS
On Mon, 28 Jun 2021 at 13:36, Paul Dufresne via Freedos-user wrote: > > More than once, I saw a motherboard manufucturer (I think it is ASUS) > claiming to have FreeDOS exe to upgrade the BIOS > but found the programs were Windows exe and would not run on FreeDOS. Question: Is it possible the download is a Windows self-extracting archive, and inside it, there is an upgrade image file and a DOS flash tool? Have you checked? Yes, this would on the surface appear to be a foolish thing for them to do, *but* 64-bit Windows will not run a DOS or 16-bit Windows self-extractor, so they may not have an easy choice. Non-technical users (that is, most of them) would not know what to do with a Zip file. If double-clicked Windows does not extract it but mount it as a virtual folder -- resulting in a DOS program not being able to see the contents of that folder, and also not be able to execute. -- 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 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Upgrading the BIOS with FreeDOS
without a recovery environment at hand... > We did not have another machine of that model to try on our own > first, so the customer ran the risk and served as a test pilot. Ahh > well. Fortunately he soon managed to plug the disk into another > machine, find the culprit driver binary and erase it from the disk. That's very nasty but I have seen similar behaviour. Windows' total failure to handle such things gracefully is one of the reasons I switched to mostly using Linux. It _tends_ (sometimes, not always) to handle things like device-driver failures in a more graceful way: e.g., dropping you to a command-line if it can't start the GUI, or giving you a standalone machine if the network fails, or working but at the wrong screen resolution, or something like that. Windows still tends to collapse on its face with a Blue Screen Of Death under such pressure. Life is too short, and one of the unspoken unpleasant truths of the computer industry is that Windows tech support people are a fungible commodity, with a market-controlled price. This means that most of them are not much use so they all tend to do things the simplest, most standard way (because that is all they know). That in turn means that you can easily hire them, in large numbers if needed because they are cheap, and if you have problems, you can fire them and hire other ones... and because your old techies didn't do anything fancy, the new ones will more or less understand the system and will be able to work with it. You don't really _want_ whizzkids on your staff: they will do fancy stuff nobody else understands. So this improves their job security -- they know you need to keep them. I was a Windows whizzkid in the late 1980s and early 1990s. I saw the way things were going by the mid 1990s, so I left the business and became a journalist. Then the Web killed all the computer magazines, so I became a technical writer instead. -- 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 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Shared Folders not allowed in VirtualBox FreeDOS?
On Wed, 14 Jul 2021 at 15:05, kaye n wrote: > > Hello Friends > > My host is a linux OS. I think I have successfully installed FreeDOS in > VirtualBox. > > When the virtual FreeDOS is running, I want to be able to access my USB flash > drive as well as a Windows partition on the physical hard drive. > > I assume this is not possible? Not enough info -- but I can tell you that yes, this is possible, but not easy. VirtualBox can share local drives on the host with a guest OS using SMB networking. Stage 1: sharing the drive Your Linux system must mount your Windows partition, so that VBox can see it to share it. If you do not automatically mount the Windows partition at boot, step 1 is: work out how to do that, and make it happen on startup. (This is not essential but makes life easier.) This means you must ensure the Windows partition and mount point's permissions are such that the user account that runs VirtualBox can read and write the Windows partition. Then, you can share it in VBox settings. But that is only the 1st half of the operation: the sharing stage. The 2nd stage is connecting to the shares This means that you must install a network stack on your copy of FreeDOS inside the VM. You will have to pick a network card in VBox that there are DOS drivers for, then install a network stack with those drivers. Then, you must install TCP/IP on that stack. (DOS networking was before TCP/IP caught on, and usually uses now-obsolete network protocols such as Microsoft NetBEUI or Novell IPX/SPX. Those are no use today. You need TCP/IP and that often means installing an additional network protocol.) Then, once you have this working and your DOS VM gets a TCP/IP address and you can see the host, you can connect to the shared drives in VBox from DOS. Summary: yes, it is possible, but it is not easy! :-) The 2nd thing you asked was accessing a USB key. There are 2 ways to do this. [1] Mount the USB key in Linux, make it a shared drive in VBox, and access it from the DOS VM the same was as the other shared drives described above. [2] Use VBox to make it a dedicated device for the VM -- not recommended, because FreeDOS doesn't have much in the way of USB support and so it will need a lot of extra work to get it shared. If this sounds intimidating and scary, well, it's because it is. So I would like to suggest a 3rd alternative: * Set up 2 drives for your DOS VM: a boot drive (C:) and a separate 2nd data drive (D:) Do this as 2 separate virtual hard disks in VBox. * Then, stop the DOS VM. * Make a new VM using a DOS-compatible OS such as Windows 95B or Windows 98SE. Install this, update it, make sure networking is enabled and working. * Next, connect your FreeDOS data drive to the new Win9x VM as the Win98 VM's D drive as well. * When you want to get stuff to/from the host, stop DOS and boot Win98. Use Win98 to get stuff on/off the host and save it on the data drive. * When finished, stop the Win98 VM and start your DOS VM. There are the files on the D drive. Work on them as you wish, then to put them back on the host, stop DOS and restart Win98. It's clunky but it's easier than configuring DOS networking. -- 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 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Shared Folders not allowed in VirtualBox FreeDOS?
On Wed, 14 Jul 2021 at 15:28, Mercury Thirteen via Freedos-user wrote: > > The short answer is no. Well, yes, agreed. > The long(er) answer is that VirtualBox makes available a specific programming > interface for the Shared Folders feature which provides both a 64-bit and > 32-bit entry point for the guest OS - something of which the 16-bit FreeDOS > (or any other flavor of DOS, for that matter) cannot natively take advantage. This is only half true. I mean, yes, it's true, it does, but it's irrelevant to DOS. This only applies to guest OSes where you're running Guest Additions. There are no VBox guest additions for DOS and never were. So, it is irrelevant. *But* Vbox provides emulated network cards to the guest. The following are available: • AMD PCNet PCI II (Am79C970A) • AMD PCNet FAST III (Am79C973), the default setting • Intel PRO/1000 MT Desktop (82540EM) • Intel PRO/1000 T Server (82543GC) • Intel PRO/1000 MT Server (82545EM) Citation: https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch06.html As the file-sharing functionality just uses Samba, any guest OS that can talk SMB networking can connect to the host and share drives. Citation: VBox documents how -- https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Sharing_files_with_DOS -- 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 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Accessing real floppy drive after booting the LiveCD
On Fri, 20 Aug 2021 at 19:02, Exilas wrote: > > In the hope someone could still provide me with additional hints, I'm > posting here all the information I've found about the involved hardware. Use the DRIVPARM command in CONFIG.SYS to inform the OS of the real drive type and parameters? -- 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 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] standby in FreeDos?
On Wed, 29 Sept 2021 at 14:20, Thomas Desi wrote: > > Hi, is it possible (application? program) to put the computer to „sleep“ > (i.e. „standby) in FreeDos? > Anyone any ideas? I *think* that so long as you have APM power management loaded -- POWER.EXE in my preferred DOSes -- then your BIOS sleep hotkey should work, and the computer _should_ come back from it. -- Liam Proven • Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk • gMail/gTalk/FB: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven • Skype: liamproven UK: +44 7939-087884 • ČR (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702-829-053 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] standby in FreeDos?
On Wed, 29 Sept 2021 at 19:10, Eric Auer wrote: > > I *think* depending on your BIOS settings the sleep button > could indeed work. This should not depend on whether you > have POWER or FDAPM loaded, as far as I remember. OK, fair point. However, given that the OP _also_ said: > On my Lenovo machine [...] > booted from a FreeDos USB-Stick, the fan and I guess the harddisk are running > all the time. ... then I think that they really need to load the POWER/FDAPM driver to prevent their CPU running at 100% all the time. -- Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven UK: (+44) 7939-087884 ~ Czech [+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal]: (+420) 702-829-053 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] MKEYB related stuff
On Mon, 11 Oct 2021 at 21:19, E. Auer wrote: > > By definition, anything above 127 is not ASCII, so it will depend > on the codepage. Still, it is extremely rare that people use more > than one codepage on the same system AND have identical characters > with different byte values depending on which codepage they use AND > have keyboard drivers which support both BUT want to switch on the > fly instead of using a boot menu option or a simple batch script to > go to one of the codepage/layout combinations. Agreed! > The real solution for the whole mess would probably be to use > Unicode and graphical fonts with a few 1 or more glyphs, > but that would also be a very unlikely choice for DOS users ;-) Yeah, no. :-) > So while I can confirm that it is possible to design a problem to > which your plan would be a solution, I still have big problems with > the question "Will any user apart from yourself need anything even > remotely as flexible as your planned inter-driver config signals?" Also agreed. A question: Does the old MS-style [ [CONFIG.SYS] country=044,437,c:\dos\country.sys [AUTOEXEC.BAT] keyb uk,437,c:\dos\keyboard.sys ] ... config still work? If not, would it work if the files were copied from MS-DOS or DR-DOS or something? If someone requires this level of configurability, then I guess it's necessary functionality. Back when I did DOS tech support in a Swedish stockbroker in the early 1990s, I had one Norwegian user. For them, I had to configure the Norwegian codepage and Norwegian keyboard layout, because PC ANSI had the letters å and æ that Norwegian needs, but not ø. (Instead it has the Swedish letters ä and ö.) The Norwegian codepage redefines the ¥ symbol to be ø. (And something else for Ø I suppose, but I forget after nearly 30 years.) So you couldn't write about amounts in Japanese Yen in Norwegian (!). A decade later I was engaged to a Norwegian and learned to speak the language at a basic level. One letter may not seem like much but it was a big deal for about 10 million people. -- Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven UK: (+44) 7939-087884 ~ Czech [+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal]: (+420) 702-829-053 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] MKEYB related stuff
On Mon, 11 Oct 2021 at 22:25, Aitor Santamaría wrote: > > Yeah, good to clarify. It does work (with either FD-KEYB or MKEYB). > > The question in discussion here is: if you later want to change to, say, > codepage 850: > (a) with FD-KEYB, you issue KEYB UK,850,,C:\DOS\KEYBOARD.SYS (no reboot) > (b) with MKEYB, you edit your AUTOEXEC.BAT and reboot > > Discussing the usability of that (for how many users that's useful). Worth knowing. Thank you. It's unlikely but now I live in the Czech Republic, which has lots more extra letters than Norwegian -- several of which I can't type on this Mac -- I may need that some day. Meantime this info might be useful to ... -- Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven UK: (+44) 7939-087884 ~ Czech [+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal]: (+420) 702-829-053 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] UHDD update! FDAPM update! Feedback please :-)
On Sun, 7 Nov 2021 at 19:15, E. Auer wrote: > there has been almost none about > the FDAPM and UHDD updates recently. I don't know if you realised, but you have mentioned UHDD several times without ever, that I have seen, saying what it is, what it is for, how it works or how to use it. I think you just assume everyone knows. I can say with confidence _everyone_ does _not_ know, inasmuch as I do not! -- Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven UK: (+44) 7939-087884 ~ Czech [+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal]: (+420) 702-829-053 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Question about FreeDOS 3.0
Just for clarity, I thought I'd try to highlight some of the errors and misconceptions in your lengthy email. On Sun, 5 Dec 2021 at 03:16, richardkolacz...@hotmail.com wrote: > the option of FreeDOS 3.0 is not always available There is no such thing as FreeDOS 3.0 and never has been. Maybe someone at HP made a mistake but it does not exist. > the G7 version always had FreeDOS 2.0 There is no such thing as FreeDOS 2.0 either. It does not exist. > it is not possible to reinstall Windows on a larger (or another for that > matter) PCIe M.2 SSD This is not true. You can reinstall it or you can copy it, whichever you prefer. It may be that your PC cannot take a larger disk but that is a different question. If you wish to *move* Windows to a bigger disk, you could do this: * get a cheap external drive such as a USB hard disk * boot from a Linux USB key * use GParted to copy your Windows install to the external disk * remove your small internal disk * fit a larger internal disk * boot from the Linux key again and copy your partitions back. Resize as needed. * boot from a Windows USB key and repair your boot record so it's bootable > Various manufacturers/vendors of PCIe SSD would not be willing to state they > would offer a refund for purchase of a new larger SSD M.2 if it turns out > that the operating system could not be migrated to the new SSD. No, they won't. If their kit is fine but you don't know how to do it, why should they give you your money back? > Similarly, the few software houses (with OS "clone" capabilities) completely > side-stepped the issue of refund if their software failed to "migrate" the OS > to a new larger PCIe SSD). They can't. They don't know that hardware incompatibilities or user error will stop it working, so it is not possible for them to 100% guarantee it will work. > It turns out, after reading about the thousandth google search result on the > matter, that the "formatting/installation process" to have an operating > system on a PCIe M.2 SSD is "proprietory/custom" for each computer > manufacturer Not true as far as I know. I've formatted several of them, some repeatedly, and never used a vendor tool. Sounds like someone somewhere is lying. > AND Windows will not support what is needed to allow cloning of the > operating system Not true. > (BECAUSE the format of a PCIe SSD is custom). Not true. > As a spare part I could not buy from HP a larger capacity PCIe SSD (with > windows) - in fact when was available, just to replace the existing 256 GByte > drive was about US$950 (more than what I actually paid for the laptop). It is generally a bad idea to buy spares from a system vendor this way because of the expense. > I gather that buying Windows already installing on a PCIe SSD A Windows install is tailored to that PC. They can't be sold pre-installed. > has to be much more expensive than the separate purchase of Windows and PCIe > SSD No; because it doesn't exist. But a manufacturer's spare is not the same thing. > because of the "complexity" involved of installing an OS onto a PCIe SSD > (whereas an OS on a SATA SSD is relatively easy). They are 100% as easy as each other; they are the same process. > After using the laptop with Windows booting from the PCIe SSD - running > Windows from a SATA SSD is so very slow (like about a minute compared to a > few seconds). Shouldn't be, no. The difference in my experience is tiny. > So I am "window shopping" for a "better laptop" than what I have at present > and from my experience it is better for me to have the factory preconfigure > "everything" rather than messing around with saving a few dollars and trying > to do things myself (eg install OS on PCIe SSD, RAM memory upgrade that is > truely compatible (speed, voltage) etc). In my extensive experience -- over a third of a century -- the reverse is true. It is far *far* better to learn to do this stuff yourself and as a result it will save you thousands and a lot of grief. > As a side note, apparently the main market for HP computers with FreeDOS > installed is CHINA. Large use of pirated OSes because it's not illegal there. Also, several domestic Linux distributions which are improving fast and leapfrogging Western ones: Deepin, Kylin, etc. > I hope to hear soon from Jim Hall regarding "what's up" with the HP FreeDOS > 3.0. You've been told already but you apparently refuse to accept it. It is a typo or something. This product is not real, does not exist, never had and probably never will. -- Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven UK: (+44) 7939-087884 ~ Czech [+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal]: (+420) 702-829-053 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Question about FreeDOS 3.0
On Sun, 5 Dec 2021 at 18:12, Travis Siegel wrote: > > Paragon software has a program that will allow you to clone a disk from > a smaller to a larger disk with no problem, even the other way too, as > long as the blank space on the disk allows the material to fit onto the > disk itself. Yup. Heard of it. Never used it. Meant to be good, I think. > > Also, the difference between 2fTB drives Do you mean 2 TB? Not sure where the F came from. > and larger ones is (mostly) a > matter of gpart VS. MBR, That's GPT vs MBR. "Gpart" is a program. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gpart > and of course, the whole EUFI bios It's UEFI, not EUFI. Important to get it right when someone might be Googling it. Don't call it a "UEFI bios". A PC either has a BIOS or it has a UEFI. UEFI is not a type of BIOS; it's a replacement for a BIOS. It's like saying "a Harley Davidson is a motorcycle car". It's not; either it's a car, *or* it's a motorbike. It's not both. Some UEFI firmware can emulate a BIOS -- most, in fact. But not all. MBR and GPT are partitioning systems. MBR can be used on any disk up to 2TB but not more. GPT can be used on any size of drive but must be used on drives bigger than 2TB. -- Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven UK: (+44) 7939-087884 ~ Czech [+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal]: (+420) 702-829-053 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Question about FreeDOS 3.0
On Mon, 6 Dec 2021 at 01:08, Michał Dec wrote: > > dd is a great alternative since it's free. As in freedom. Yes and no. Mostly no. > >GPT can be used on any size of drive but must be used on drives bigger than > >2TB. [Annoying graphical attachment removed] This is a mailing list. Please use plain text. -- Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven UK: (+44) 7939-087884 ~ Czech [+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal]: (+420) 702-829-053 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Question about FreeDOS 3.0
On Mon, 6 Dec 2021 at 01:08, Michał Dec wrote: > dd is a great alternative since it's free. As in freedom. I accidentally hit "send" while switching tabs, and it was too late when I came back. `dd` is not a replacement for tools such as Acronis because: 1. It requires considerable Unix knowledge 2. It requires bootable Linux media, knowing how to make them, and how to use them. 3. It is extremely dangerous and a slight error in the command will overwrite the user's hard disk. There is no feedback or confirmation. 4. It will not resize filesystems, which is the *whole point of the exercise* So: no, not a good tool. I have been using Unix systems professionally since 1988. I would not use `dd` for this task myself. > > >GPT can be used on any size of drive but must be used on drives bigger than > >2TB. Please use plain text when replying to emails. Read this if you don't understand why: https://useplaintext.email/ Your reply appeared to be simply "no". Please identify any other partitioning scheme for generic x86 clone PC-compatible computers which can partition media of larger than 2 TB, or a documented supported workaround that allows MBR to be safely used for drives bigger than 2TB. It must work at least as well as GPT, meaning it is free, works on any OS, allows the OS to be booted from the drive, etc. I do not know of any such system but I am always happy to learn. -- Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven UK: (+44) 7939-087884 ~ Czech [+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal]: (+420) 702-829-053 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Video complains that DOS should not be maintained
On Sat, 25 Dec 2021 at 05:43, Travis Siegel wrote: > > That was caldera that released their opendos as opensource, not Microsoft. Caldera released Digital Research's DR DOS 7.01 as FOSS. It then changed its mind and made v7.092 closed-source again, but 7.01 remains FOSS and turned into OpenDOS, AKA DR OpenDOS and Open DR DOS. And, for what it's worth, DR DOS has multitasking, and I've tried it, and it works. > There were versions of ms dos that escaped into the wild, but it wasn't > a sanctioned release from microsoft. This is not true. Microsoft has released MS-DOS 1.25, 2.0 and 2.11 as FOSS. The OS/2 Museum have rebuilt it from source: https://www.os2museum.com/wp/pc-dos-1-1-from-scratch/ https://www.os2museum.com/wp/dos-2-11-from-scratch/ -- Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven UK: (+44) 7939-087884 ~ Czech [+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal]: (+420) 702-829-053 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Video complains that DOS should not be maintained
On Sat, 25 Dec 2021 at 21:21, tom ehlert wrote: > > while technically true, it couldn't just multitask ramdom DOS programs > as multi tasking systems like OS/2 or better always could. Yes, it can. I have tested it with, for example, the MS-DOS Editor from Windows 98SE on one screen, WordPerfect 6.2 on another screen and MS Word 6 on a third screen. > programs would only multitask if specifically written to the DRDOS API > - which almost nobody did (for commercial avalable software). This is not true. > that is true. the (mostly) complete source code MSDOS 6.2 escaped into the > wild, > even if not widely available. You said, quote: > > it wasn't a sanctioned release from microsoft. Don't try to revise this now. Yes, there have been fully-sanctioned releases of MS-DOS from Microsoft. As I said: 1.25, and a set of source files containing a mix of 2.0 and 2.11 source code. Yes, there are *two* fully legal source code releases of MS-DOS from Microsoft itself. > MSDOS 2.11 might be interesting from a museum/historic prespective. > as an operating system it's completely obsolete and useless, and you will not > learn > much by studying the source code. This is true but an entirely different question which had not previously been discussed in this thread. Sure, yes, MS-DOS 2 is ancient and no real use now. However, you said that MS had not released DOS and that's wrong. You did not say "MS did not release the final version of DOS as FOSS", or "MS did not release a late enough version of MS-DOS to be useful." Those statements are true, but they aren't what you said. No, it's not really much use. Yes, it's only an archaeological curiosity. MS is not truly any friend or fan of FOSS and it only releases tiny useless dribs and drabs of FOSS code, such as DOS 1 and 2, Word for Windows 1.1, the Windows 3 File Manager and a few other trivial little things. That is because, IMHO, it's just a PR exercise. Today, the entire DOS and Windows 3/9x codebase is basically entirely obsolete and the company does not sell any products based on it. It *could* release everything prior to the Windows NT line with no substantial impact on any current product. However, this would cost it money. The code is probably a mess, and it contains material from third parties which would have to be removed. A large cleanup operation would be needed, which would take dozens of people maybe years of work, and MS stands to gain nothing from it. However, it would help FreeDOS, and WINE, and ReactOS, and several other FOSS projects, which MS management almost certainly does not want to do. So, given it would benefit others but not the company, *and* it would cost them serious money, I doubt it will happen. So if you had said that it hadn't released any _useful_ version of DOS, I'd agree. But you didn't say that. You said MS did not release DOS, and that is wrong. It's there and it's legit. > there's a LOT that happened between 2.11 (october 1983) and 6.22 (april 1994) 100% agree. -- Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven UK: (+44) 7939-087884 ~ Czech [+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal]: (+420) 702-829-053 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Video complains that DOS should not be maintained
On Sat, 25 Dec 2021 at 19:25, Jim Hall wrote: > > Caldera's release of DR-DOS and OpenDOS was definitely NOT under an "open > source" or "FOSS" license. Caldera claimed it was. Here is the press announcement: https://web.archive.org/web/19961018220910/http://caldera.com/news/pr002.html > The terms were basically "look but do not touch." You could not make any > derivatives from that source code, and could only refer to it for > "educational" purposes. That is a reasonable summary. The licences are here: https://github.com/the-grue/OpenDOS/blob/master/README.TXT https://github.com/the-grue/OpenDOS/blob/master/LICENSE.TXT No, it's not compatible with any true FOSS licence. But it *did* release the source -- I have a copy of the CD myself, direct from the company. And people *did* make derivative products from it, namely, the Open DR DOS Enhancement Project. https://archiveos.org/drdos/ The last release was 10Y ago, in 2011. Under the legal principle of laches, if DeviceLogics or DRDOS Inc wanted to bring any legal action on the basis of this, it had plenty of time -- a decade -- to do so. It has not. Nobody has. Therefore, nobody now can. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laches_(equity) -- Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven UK: (+44) 7939-087884 ~ Czech [+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal]: (+420) 702-829-053 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Video complains that DOS should not be maintained
On Sun, 26 Dec 2021 at 01:42, tom ehlert wrote: > I have to accept that as true. Though 'multiscreening' is not what > everybody thinks of when thinknig 'multitasking'. I can't help what people may think. All I can do is when I see people spreading incorrect information, I can answer with the facts. Multitasking is nothing whatsoever to do with windowing or windowing interfaces or GUIs. From the 1960s onwards, there were many multitasking OSes, including UNIX and DEC VAX-VMS, which existed long before the first terminals that could display a GUI. Many OSes can run many processes in the background, and possibly bring them to the foreground and let you interact with them, as well as letting multiple users connect to 1 computer and use it concurrently – but can't display any kind of GUI or windows or anything like it. Plain text-mode Linux without GUIs installed is still multitasking. Hundreds of millions of Linux servers around the world sit there multitasking, running web servers and databases and a million other things, without any ability to display 2 of those processes on screen at once. Concurrent CP/M and later Concurrent DOS multitask, but they don't and can't do windowing. On the console on the host box, you could use Alt+the numeric keypad to switch between 4 virtual consoles, and each could be running its own separate task, all at once. Plus multiple dumb terminals on serial ports, and those users could have 4 tasks each, too. Still no windowing. One at a time, full-screen. That is what DR-DOS does. Not in the kernel, no; the functionality is in a surprisingly small program called TASKMAX.EXE, which uses functionality in the DR DOS 386 memory manager, EMM386.EXE. It is described in the Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DR-DOS#Novell_DOS_7_/_Contribution_by_Novell It even supports some graphical games. If you load the ViewMax shell, it can control TaskMax. I am told PC GEOS can as well, but I have not tested this yet. Some testing results are here: https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=62270 > however DesqView, GEM and Windows 3.x are certainly multitasking systems > running on top of DOS. that doesn't make DOS a multitaskig system. No, but DR DOS is not MS-DOS. DR DOS started out as a cut-down version of Concurrent DOS, a true multiuser multitasking OS. Multitasking support is a built-in function that is included with the base OS and does not require any GUI or other layer installed. It can be used from the DOS command line. > >> programs would only multitask if specifically written to the DRDOS API > >> - which almost nobody did (for commercial avalable software). > > > This is not true. > ou might be right, but I would be surprised. I am telling you. I have done it. I have tested it. There are download links for boot disks I've built to demonstrate it on my blog, but the last time I posted a link to my blog, Jim Hall accused me of spamming, so I will not post it again. Google my name; I'm the only person with it. > I have no idea what you are arguing about. You said that there was no FOSS release of DOS by Microsoft. There was. This is nothing whatsoever to do with any leaked code, which must be regarded as stolen and cannot be used in anything else. -- Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven UK: (+44) 7939-087884 ~ Czech [+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal]: (+420) 702-829-053 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Video complains that DOS should not be maintained
On Sun, 26 Dec 2021 at 05:06, Jon Brase wrote: > > First, I've heard rumors (possibly true, possibly just people trying to make > MS look incompetent) that MS actually lost the source code to some > unspecified legacy version of Windows at some point (has to be legacy because > if it had been a then-current main product line it probably would have killed > them). I wouldn't be at all surprised. I daresay that there are only a handful of techies left at MS who date back 25+ years. > So if they lost the entire DOS-kernel Windows source tree sometime after the > release of XP, the reason they're not releasing sources for Win 3.x/9x may be > that said sources no longer exist. It could be. OTOH, there were multiple versions, and I'd be surprised if _all_ of them were lost. > Second, assuming they still have the sources, perhaps we can make it worth > their while: basically, propose that they name a price and start a > crowdfunding campaign. I think that the problem isn't money, it's programmer time. Win9x contained several versions of browsers that supported Flash, Java, RealPlayer, etc. This is non-MS code, so the company won't have the permissions to release it. So it has to be removed. I don't think Win9x contained a Netware client, but NT did. Similarly, some network protocols may contain code from other companies. That can't be released. It may contain code from individuals who can't be traced, or who are dead and so cannot give permission. It's not just a case of "what's it worth". It's a case of "how many skilled people working for how long will be needed to go through every line and remove anything that is not MS property." Is there enough documentation of what isn't MS code? Is there code the company can't admit to having stolen without permission? This talk by one of the core engineers of Sun Solaris and later of the Illumos FOSS descendant talks about some of the problems: https://youtu.be/-zRN7XLCRhc It's an hour long, fast-paced, goes into some technical detail, and I wasn't able to follow it at any more than 1x speed. There's a lot that is irrelevant, too, but if you can spare an hour, you will see the problems faced by a company that _wanted_ to release its OS as FOSS, and the vast effort it took. MS _doesn't_ want to. It's not just about money. -- Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven UK: (+44) 7939-087884 ~ Czech [+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal]: (+420) 702-829-053 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Video complains that DOS should not be maintained
On Sun, 26 Dec 2021 at 06:00, Thomas Mueller wrote: > > I would like to connect to the Internet using FreeDOS, but I haven't found a > compatible packet driver. > > Main purpose in connecting to the Internet from FreeDOS would be to prove it > can be done. Define "connecting to the Internet". I mean, people do this fairly routinely; you can serve web pages from DOS if you want. There were DOS email and chat and FTP clients; that stuff's fairly easy. It's the Web that's hard. -- Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven UK: (+44) 7939-087884 ~ Czech [+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal]: (+420) 702-829-053 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Video complains that DOS should not be maintained
to be multitasking-compatible. A multitasking DOS is not and can't really be 100% compatible with all DOS apps, and I think that is why MS didn't pursue this line. If the multitasking is in an additional layer, on top of DOS, then you can just quit that layer to run your games or other incompatible apps. Then, as PCs grew much more capable, you could run an entire virtual machine with a copy of DOS inside, to run those apps that need the whole PC to themselves in their own private environment, where they think that they do have the whole PC. That was doable by the early 1990s, for example in OS/2 2.0, but it wasn't really viable in the late 1980s. > My point here is, NT has indeed quite a bunch of more stable and better > thought features of an operating system that was conceived in the late 80's > rather in the late 70's (a better filesystem, more suitable to networks, and > basically, a brand new Win32 API more suitable for writing stable > applications), but I don't see multitasking as the feature that killed DOS. You know that NT is derived from 2 parent OSes, right? It was written by the architect and lead team of DEC's VAX-VMS OS, Dave Cutler, built on the basis of what was planned to be OS/2 3.0, a planned processor-independent version of OS/2 that would run on non-x86 chips. The prototype was built on Intel's i860 RISC processor, which was not x86. The chip was codenamed N-Ten: that is why the initials "NT". The design of NT owes a little to OS/2 and a lot to VMS -- a 1970s OS. > If Microsoft did not do it, imagine how nice it would be that there were in > FreeDOS an open source version of VMM32 with a good set of well written VxDs > (and that the very first thing it does after loading is NOT to find that > KRNL386.EXE and run it). Of course, that's an outstanding challenge, I don't > think anyone would do it :( Again, I think you are looking in the wrong direction at the wrong thing. Windows features are irrelevant. Look at DOS features and DOS multitaskers. Sadly DESQview never went open source. Nor did Concurrent DOS, or the multitasking bits of DR-DOS (just its kernel and command interpreter). In fact the only multitasking DOS that did become FOSS was PC-MOS/386. https://www.zdnet.com/article/ms-dos-variant-pc-mos386-reborn-as-open-source/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC-MOS/386 -- Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven UK: (+44) 7939-087884 ~ Czech [+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal]: (+420) 702-829-053 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Video complains that DOS should not be mantained
On Tue, 28 Dec 2021 at 01:27, Jose Senna wrote: > > Were is the right word. Most email > servers nowadays require TLS, which > is not available in DOS email clients. Ahh, that is a fair point. I hadn't thought about that. > There are few remaining FTP servers, > and I cannot tell how many also need > TLS. Not so sure about that. I know many FTP servers have gone, but those that remain aren't encrypted or secured that I've seen. SFTP != FTP. > I never used chat. It has its uses. TBH what annoys me are companies that use chat in place of email, because they don't know how to use email right. Hint: https://useplaintext.email/ -- Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven UK: (+44) 7939-087884 ~ Czech [+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal]: (+420) 702-829-053 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Video complains that DOS should not be maintained
On Tue, 28 Dec 2021 at 19:45, Deposite Pirate wrote: > > It's not up to Microsoft to release MS/PC-DOS > 2.x. IBM did the bulk of > the work on "MS" DOS for a while after 2.x and they would have to > have IBM's permission to even think about releasing it. With the exception of the versions released _after_ MS stopped developing, offering or selling DOS as a standalone product (i.e. PC DOS 6.3, 7.0, 2000 and 7.1) then the *only* version of MS-DOS mainly developed by IBM was MS-DOS 4.0x. If you know differently, please share some evidence, because I'd really like to know. -- Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven UK: (+44) 7939-087884 ~ Czech [+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal]: (+420) 702-829-053 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Video complains that DOS should not be maintained
On Tue, 28 Dec 2021 at 23:23, Deposite Pirate wrote: > > > > If you know differently, please share some evidence, because I'd > > really like to know. > > > > https://www.os2museum.com/wp/dos/dos-3-3/ > > "A much less obvious but no less significant change was that unlike all > previous versions, DOS 3.3 development was done solely at IBM. > Microsoft was busy working on OS/2 (not yet under that name) and the > OS/2 development team included many core DOS developers, such as Mark > Zbikowski." Fascinating! Thank you very much. I learned something this evening. :-) -- Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven UK: (+44) 7939-087884 ~ Czech [+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal]: (+420) 702-829-053 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Country Code
On Thu, 30 Dec 2021 at 11:39, JR wrote: First thing... > I am running FreeDos under Windows XP ... Er... How? 2nd thing: > included the line > "country=061,437,c:\windows\system32\country.sys" in the > c:\windows\system32\config.nt file Should this not be pointing to FreeDOS' directory and FreeDOS' `COUNTRY.SYS` file, not Windows'? -- Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven UK: (+44) 7939-087884 ~ Czech [+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal]: (+420) 702-829-053 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Country Code
On Thu, 30 Dec 2021 at 13:19, JR wrote: > Too long ago, I can't remember. Probably just followed the dots at the > time. Runs in a Windows VDM as far as I know. I have been using NT since the first version, 3.1, in 1993. There is no built-in facility or tool to run DOS under it and never has been. That is why I asked. This is highly relevant and important to the question. There are no "dots" to follow. OS/2 2.x and Warp could boot DOS from a floppy, but I don't think even they could run it from a disk partition. Not sure; I haven't used OS/2 in over 25 years. You *need* to give us more information, and accurate, verified information, not just guesses. > Sample output and version info. > > C:\>DIR F* /P > Volume in drive C is XP > > Directory of C:\ > > FAT-6502 05/17/17 7:12a > FCIV 05/17/17 7:12a > FED05/03/21 7:34p > FILE-D~1 04/23/18 7:19p > FREEDOS05/17/17 7:12a > 0 file(s) 0 bytes > 5 dir(s) 888,552,960 bytes free AFAIK XP *must* be installed in an NTFS partition. It cannot be installed on FAT. DOS can't boot from NTFS and can't read NTFS without additional drivers. So I still don't know what you're doing here. > C:\>VER > > FreeCom version 0.84-pre2 XMS_Swap [Aug 28 2006 00:29:00] > C:\> You might be able to execute FreeDOS' `COMMAND.COM` under a DOS Windows in XP but that's not running FreeDOS/ > I already tried c:\dos\country.sys and c:freedos\country.sys Did you check to see that the relevant files exist? There's no point randomly changing the lines. But anyway, I don't think this is going to work. If it can or it does it uses some tech I have never seen and that is not a standard part of the OS. -- Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven UK: (+44) 7939-087884 ~ Czech [+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal]: (+420) 702-829-053 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Country Code
On Thu, 30 Dec 2021 at 21:04, Deposite Pirate wrote: > > Windows XP can indeed officially be installed and boot from FAT32. > > https://kb.iu.edu/d/ajqm AFAICS that page is inconclusive and merely says that XP supports FAT16, 32 and NTFS, which was never in doubt. But I checked and you're right. It's a long time since I installed XP! It seems it's NT 6 and above (Vista & later) that make NTFS a hard requirement for the Windows System drive. FWIW, I always used to have a DOS boot partition (C:) and put Windows on D: back in the XP days. It was useful to have the ability to dual-boot DOS for BIOS reflashing and occasionally for emergency data recovery. I made the partition big enough to hold XP's pagefile, as this was slightly quicker than having it on NTFS, it reduced fragmentation on the Windows system drive, and if you needed the space in DOS you can just delete PAGEFILE.SYS — Windows will silently recreate it next boot. -- Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven UK: (+44) 7939-087884 ~ Czech [+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal]: (+420) 702-829-053 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Country Code
On Fri, 31 Dec 2021 at 00:02, Jon Brase wrote: > > NTVDM exists and runs a stripped down version of MS-DOS 5. I think it even > does have non-stripped versions of the relevant files available if the user > decides to sys a floppy. But I've never heard of it being possible to run > anything but there provided build of MS-DOS 5 in NTVDM. Maybe he ran the > FreeDOS installer and managed to pull in components of FreeDOS, but unless > he's using an emulator or VM, I agree that he certainly isn't running FreeDOS > on top of XP. Oh, yes, absolutely, but it's dedicated to the built-in DOS, as far as I know. -- Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven UK: (+44) 7939-087884 ~ Czech [+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal]: (+420) 702-829-053 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Country Code
On Fri, 31 Dec 2021 at 01:46, Deposite Pirate wrote: > > Windows NT was designed to work with FAT. Windows NT 4 ... and the 3 earlier versions... > always > first formats the install partition as a FAT16 filesystem and then if > you selected NTFS at install, it converts the FAT16 file system online > to NTFS on the first reboot after install. Yep. > This typical Microsoftish genius idea, makes you jump through all kinds of > hoops > that include a third party online repartitioning tool to install it on > an NTFS partition bigger than 2Gb. That's unfair. I think it's connected with the way NT <5 bootstrapped an installation. Relevant digression: you can start NT installation from DOS. This was a very useful feature and I urged IBM to copy it, but the techies I spoke to could not understand why. NT 3.x predates EIDE; indeed I ordered and returned a bunch of very early EIDE Pentium 1 PCs because NT could only see the first 512MB of their 540MB disks. We had to swap them for SCSI machines. When NT 3.1/3.5/3.51 came out, most PCs could not boot from CD. Many CD drives were attached to sound cards via proprietary interfaces; Panasonic, Mitsumi and Sony were common: https://goughlui.com/2012/11/12/tech-flashback-before-atapi-cd-roms-were-proprietary-interfaces/ No OS could boot off these, and most only supported DOS and Win9x in DOS compatibility mode. This also made it possible to install over the network without a local CD drive. So, you could boot a PC under DOS, make a FAT partition, copy the NT files from the CD or a network server onto the FAT partition, run WINNT.EXE *under DOS* and it built a very minimal installation system on the hard disk. The folder name varied but it was something like C:\~$win.nt$\ Then it rebooted the PC into that, where a 2nd stage setup ran and built the real NT system. Then it rebooted into _that_. If you picked NTFS that now ran `CONVERT C: /FS:NTFS` on your drive. I don't think MS was trying to be awkward, and this functionality was a lifesaver. It allowed me at one corporate client to bring up a whole roomful of dozens of NT 4 machines with only a single optical drive on the server, which saved so much money it paid for about 2-3 more PCs. You could bypass the DOS step by booting from 3 special NT boot floppies, but the DOS method was quicker, easier and more versatile. Under OS/2 2.x and later, you only had the floppy method, and you had to get your CD working under those boot floppies, adding drivers, editing its vast multi-hundred-line CONFIG.SYS file to suit... it was a major pain. If there were no OS/2 drivers for your CD, then you had to copy the install files to a partition that the boot floppies could access. The setup program only ran under OS/2 2 itself and couldn't start from DOS. But the 2-stage NT setup is why it went through this format-as-FAT-then-convert process. It limited your Windows system drive to a max of 4GB until PartitionMagic came along, but it worked and it meant it was easy to get NT onto machines that OS/2 only installed upon with great difficulty, or not at all. -- Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven UK: (+44) 7939-087884 ~ Czech [+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal]: (+420) 702-829-053 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
