Re: [Freedos-devel] EXE2BIN
OK, obsolete WDE is on the CD in FREEDOS\3RDPARTY ... The CD has a strange and obsolete kernel: - NOT UPX'ed - 2040 from May-25 The floppy DOES have kernel 2040 ... but I really would kick anything except 2040 and maybe 2038 and maybe 2036 (as from 1.0 distro). No need for 2039 or even 2034. The floppy does something (wow) ... but what's the point of FREELDR.SYS (almost 400 KiB) and the other Linux file (having S and H as failed attempt to reduce risk of discovery) ? The floppy offers me to boot IO.SYS even if there is none :-D And of course even the floppy should have EDIT (buggy, 64 KiB limit) and INFOPAD (almost mature, = 80386) and UNTGZKIR, maybe even 7ZDECWATT. -- ~~~ wow ~~~ -- Got Input? Slashdot Needs You. Take our quick survey online. Come on, we don't ask for help often. Plus, you'll get a chance to win $100 to spend on ThinkGeek. http://p.sf.net/sfu/slashdot-survey ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] EXE2BIN
Op 30-7-2011 15:08, dos386 schreef: OK, obsolete WDE is on the CD in FREEDOS\3RDPARTY ... I remember adding that (just like EXTRACT for bootdisk contents under Windows), just can't think of any purpose/use that I added it for, anymore. Will be removed then. If anyone knows a rather universal bootdisk utility I'm interested. * has to be a separate program * has to be able to load uncompressed floppy image of any 2.88MB or smaller yet size (like my 360KB image) * has to work under DOS, Win3.1, Win9x, 32bit and 64bit Windows flavors. A few different versions is also fine. WinImage and/or Extract go a long way already. The CD has a strange and obsolete kernel: - NOT UPX'ed - 2040 from May-25 yes Jeremy's initial 'MEMDISK arguments' supporting 386+ kernel. I still have to verify a worthy replacement exists. Kernel 2040 was released, 386 version was released a bit later. 8086+ version doesn't support this MEMDISK stuff so far, and I didn't bother yet to check if the official 386+ kernel has this stuff compiled in. I wonder if FreeDOS kernel (both 8086 and 80386+ versions) can be UPX'd using LZMA stuff instead of NRV/LZO. The floppy DOES have kernel 2040 ... but I really would kick anything except 2040 and maybe 2038 and maybe 2036 (as from 1.0 distro). No need for 2039 or even 2034. I'm keeping things around for testing purposes, as different kernels have different abilities (and bugs..). It's a nice techdemo as well. The floppy does something (wow) ... but what's the point of FREELDR.SYS (almost 400 KiB) and the other Linux file (having S and H as failed attempt to reduce risk of discovery) ? The Linux file is SYSLINUX, a bootloader for FAT. Just like Isolinux is for use in iso9660 images. I don't care if it uses SHR by default (syslinux.com installer) just like old MSDOS did. FreeLDR I want around for booting ReactOS, which is my entire point of adding Syslinux in the first place instead of a pure DOS bootdisk. Already found a way to reduce size back to 130KB or so. 7Zip's ultra-force GZIP settings make this 126KB, but not tested if that works. The floppy offers me to boot IO.SYS even if there is none :-D Can't be helped, bootloaders never check for kernel existance before offering things. The idea is to add IO.SYS yourself so MSDOS can be used to verify certain behaviour of programs and drivers. DEVICE=JEMM.EXE FASTBOOT followed by DIR A: for example. And of course even the floppy should have EDIT (buggy, 64 KiB limit) and INFOPAD (almost mature,= 80386) and UNTGZKIR, maybe even 7ZDECWATT. I'll add what I can. Intended goals for next bootdisk release: Bootdisk features: * Uses Syslinux bootloader for expanded capabilities * Added pre-386 compatibility through FreeDOS bootsector, combined with CPU-check and 8086 FreeDOS kernel/shell Pre-386 means FD kernel, 386+ loads Syslinux * ReactOS's bootloader FreeLoader added through MBOOT.C32, loading Gzip-compressed MultiBoot-compliant FREELDR.GZ(SYS) * Added ability to regression-test FreeDOS against multiple kernels * UIDE driver provides IDE/SATA CD-ROM access for FD1.1 install * CD-mounting capabilities present (CDROM.BAT C:\FDBOOTCD.ISO) * Internet-based installation of FD1.1 possible through packet driver, DHCP program and HTGET/FTP (not WGET, size constraints). VMware-specific so far (PCNTPKT.COM driver) * Sticking to normal bootdisk layout instead of specific 16KB clustersizes for FreeLDR as used on previous disks. Missing: * Syslinux-loadable netbooting code would be nice, from Rom-o-Matic / GPXE , or IPXE projects. DHCP only, no PXE/TFTP-stuff as most consumer routers don't provide that anyway unfortunately. * GRUB. No plans on adding this * Small bootdisk image to demonstrate ramdisk uses * Small ISO image to demonstrate ramdisk uses * A Memtest program * Flashrom program (version 0.94) * Smart Boot Manager for CD-booting (lacking a .c32 version) -- Got Input? Slashdot Needs You. Take our quick survey online. Come on, we don't ask for help often. Plus, you'll get a chance to win $100 to spend on ThinkGeek. http://p.sf.net/sfu/slashdot-survey ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] EXE2BIN
Will be removed then. WDE is cool, but version 0.30 please :-) Internet-based installation of FD1.1 possible through packet driver, DHCP program and HTGET/FTP (not WGET, size constraints). VMware-specific so I hope it will work on real PC too :-) -- ~~~ wow ~~~ -- Got Input? Slashdot Needs You. Take our quick survey online. Come on, we don't ask for help often. Plus, you'll get a chance to win $100 to spend on ThinkGeek. http://p.sf.net/sfu/slashdot-survey ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] EXE2BIN
Op 30-7-2011 15:42, dos386 schreef: Will be removed then. WDE is cool, but version 0.30 please :-) I'll have a look. Internet-based installation of FD1.1 possible through packet driver, DHCP program and HTGET/FTP (not WGET, size constraints). VMware-specific so I hope it will work on real PC too :-) Space limitations, and I'm currently too lazy for any 'detect PCI ID, search correct packet driver and load that'. It's still a to-do item for the FreeDOS 1.1 distro (wondering if I should execute DHCP.EXZE at each startup as well..). Sticking to the AMD packet driver for VMware is so much easier right now. -- Got Input? Slashdot Needs You. Take our quick survey online. Come on, we don't ask for help often. Plus, you'll get a chance to win $100 to spend on ThinkGeek. http://p.sf.net/sfu/slashdot-survey ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] EXE2BIN
Who gives a shit? It's included in MS-DOS 6.22, it'll be included in FreeDOS. It's not hurting you is it? You don't suffer from erectile disfunction because you ? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erectile_dysfunction - because you can't write correctly :-D In short, I don't think EXE2BIN belongs in BASE for FreeDOS. So do I. I don't know of anybody using it I don't use it and have no clue for what it is supposed to be useful. Other things to remove from BASE: - KERNELS 2040 - WDE 0.30 - UPX Things to add: - KERNEL 2040 - WDE 0.30 - some useful archivers (UNTGZKIR, 7-ZIP) - some useful and small compilers (FASM ? NASM8086 ?) -- ~~~ wow ~~~ -- Got Input? Slashdot Needs You. Take our quick survey online. Come on, we don't ask for help often. Plus, you'll get a chance to win $100 to spend on ThinkGeek. http://p.sf.net/sfu/slashdot-survey ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] EXE2BIN
BTW, what's the goal of EDLIN ??? Never used it ... But please keep DEBUG, I'm using it (but not as ASS'embler, maybe add FASM also ?) -- ~~~ wow ~~~ -- Got Input? Slashdot Needs You. Take our quick survey online. Come on, we don't ask for help often. Plus, you'll get a chance to win $100 to spend on ThinkGeek. http://p.sf.net/sfu/slashdot-survey ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] EXE2BIN
Hi! BTW, what's the goal of EDLIN ??? Never used it ... It is there for nostalgic reasons and aims to be the DOS text editor which is translated into most languages ;-) But actually even the author of MS EDLIN barely used it, so we can be happy to also have our EDIT text editor. But please keep DEBUG, I'm using it I agree. It is good to have a generic classic debugger even when more fancy things like 386SWAT exist. DEBUG is still great for smaller tasks, people are used to the syntax and our DEBUG is actually quite extended :) Eric -- Got Input? Slashdot Needs You. Take our quick survey online. Come on, we don't ask for help often. Plus, you'll get a chance to win $100 to spend on ThinkGeek. http://p.sf.net/sfu/slashdot-survey ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] EXE2BIN
On Fri, 29 Jul 2011, Eric Auer wrote: Hi! BTW, what's the goal of EDLIN ??? Never used it ... It is there for nostalgic reasons and aims to be the DOS text editor which is translated into most languages ;-) But actually even the author of MS EDLIN barely used it, so we can be happy to also have our EDIT text editor. EDLIN was dropped from MS-DOS base after 5.0, though IBM kept it a little longer, only dropping it from 7. It was intended to be replaced quickly but never was, probably because it was very light and could run on anything. But please keep DEBUG, I'm using it I agree. It is good to have a generic classic debugger even when more fancy things like 386SWAT exist. DEBUG is still great for smaller tasks, people are used to the syntax and our DEBUG is actually quite extended :) To the point the DR DOS people actually took their SID debugger and hacked it into a version of DEBUG! (They had, originally, quite different syntaxes.) -uso. -- Got Input? Slashdot Needs You. Take our quick survey online. Come on, we don't ask for help often. Plus, you'll get a chance to win $100 to spend on ThinkGeek. http://p.sf.net/sfu/slashdot-survey ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] EXE2BIN
Hi, On Fri, Jul 29, 2011 at 2:03 AM, dos386 dos...@gmail.com wrote: In short, I don't think EXE2BIN belongs in BASE for FreeDOS. So do I. I don't know of anybody using it I don't use it and have no clue for what it is supposed to be useful. In old days, MASM, LINK, EXE2BIN was the norm. These days, any linker worth its salt can already do that. Like I said, LINK supposed came with MS-DOS until 4.x, for some reason. No idea why anybody else (DR-DOS, etc.) would include EXE2BIN without at least LINK. And I just double-checked, the kernel uses EXEFLAT, not EXE2BIN, so I have no idea. (I was halfway wondering if maybe now or at one time they used it, but guess not. At least the copyright to EXEFLAT is from 10 years ago and still mentions DOS-C.) Other things to remove from BASE: - KERNELS 2040 - WDE 0.30 - UPX UPX is too useful, IMHO, though I know some shun it (which seems weird). And I don't think WDE is included in there (yet). At least a quick search couldn't find it in BASE or UTIL. Things to add: - KERNEL 2040 - WDE 0.30 - some useful archivers (UNTGZKIR, 7-ZIP) - some useful and small compilers (FASM ? NASM8086 ?) WDE might be too low-level for most users. I dunno, I vaguely thought it was already in UTIL (or somewhere), but guess not. Still a cool tool, but not hugely crucial, I guess. Some archivers are already in UTIL. But yeah, perhaps at least UNZIP should be in BASE. Dunno, Jim doesn't want any disruptive changes in 1.1, maybe FD 2.0. -- Got Input? Slashdot Needs You. Take our quick survey online. Come on, we don't ask for help often. Plus, you'll get a chance to win $100 to spend on ThinkGeek. http://p.sf.net/sfu/slashdot-survey ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] EXE2BIN
Hi, On Fri, Jul 29, 2011 at 6:14 AM, Eric Auer e.a...@jpberlin.de wrote: BTW, what's the goal of EDLIN ??? Never used it ... It is there for nostalgic reasons and aims to be the DOS text editor which is translated into most languages ;-) Presumably it's for limited automated scripting (e.g. edlin changes.txt) a la *nix ed. Also, on *nix, ed is used as recovery editor, usually statically linked, when everything else is borked. Though sometimes you can find vi too. Well, ed is the standard *nix editor. The difference is that edlin doesn't support regex. sed is the *nix stream editor (loosely based upon ed) and does line-by-line editing (and not in-place), hence it can edit files bigger than memory (and supports better scripting, though arcane). But actually even the author of MS EDLIN barely used it, so we can be happy to also have our EDIT text editor. Tim Paterson? Yeah, it was just a quick hack for him, but apparently some (MS-DOS) were slower to upgrade to full-screen than others (DR-DOS). (...and just to combine e-mails...) (Steve Nickolas): EDLIN was dropped from MS-DOS base after 5.0, though IBM kept it a little longer, only dropping it from 7. It's still included in 32-bit Windows (and debug and edit95 too). ;-) Yeah, with MS-DOS 5.0, EDIT/QBASIC was standard, so they didn't need it anymore. It was intended to be replaced quickly but never was, probably because it was very light and could run on anything. Writing a good text editor isn't easy, and there have been probably thousands (see http://www.texteditors.org for a list). Besides, nobody can agree what to use: VIM, GNU Emacs, etc. etc. -- Got Input? Slashdot Needs You. Take our quick survey online. Come on, we don't ask for help often. Plus, you'll get a chance to win $100 to spend on ThinkGeek. http://p.sf.net/sfu/slashdot-survey ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] EXE2BIN
Op 29-7-2011 19:02, Rugxulo schreef: - KERNELS 2040 - WDE 0.30 - UPX UPX is too useful, IMHO, though I know some shun it (which seems weird). And I don't think WDE is included in there (yet). At least a quick search couldn't find it in BASE or UTIL. I can't even recall what WDE was for anymore. I'll check if any old kernels still present and will remove them, though the SYS and batchfiles in there are usefull. UPX is sometimes shunned due to the NRV compression library used, which is proprietary, and thus sometimes considered incompatible with opensource software. There's an opensource UCL library, and the resulting UPX binaries are available. I'll use those as soon as someone can guarantee me they run on 386+ instead of 80586+ / 80686+. UPX is convenient to have around indeed, if space limited. The bugreports showed that the extra FDISK utility included in FreeDOS doesn't like UPX due to a file checksum (integrity test) being done before running. - KERNEL 2040 - WDE 0.30 - some useful archivers (UNTGZKIR, 7-ZIP) - some useful and small compilers (FASM ? NASM8086 ?) I'm pretty sure 2040 has been added, though I might have forgotten that on the 360KB bootdisk image. Some archivers are already in UTIL. But yeah, perhaps at least UNZIP should be in BASE. Dunno, Jim doesn't want any disruptive changes in 1.1, maybe FD 2.0. Depends how you define 1.1. A small base set has limitations. Having a full CD as Jeremy and Blair prepared in the past, should offer enough opportunity to add programs to people's desire. -- Got Input? Slashdot Needs You. Take our quick survey online. Come on, we don't ask for help often. Plus, you'll get a chance to win $100 to spend on ThinkGeek. http://p.sf.net/sfu/slashdot-survey ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] EXE2BIN
Hi, On Fri, Jul 29, 2011 at 1:57 PM, Bernd Blaauw bbla...@home.nl wrote: Op 29-7-2011 19:02, Rugxulo schreef: I can't even recall what WDE was for anymore. disk editor, basically for viewing raw disks and/or editing or saving bits to wherever. Not useful except for hardcore nerds. http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/util/disk/wde/ I'll check if any old kernels still present and will remove them, though the SYS and batchfiles in there are usefull. I agree too too many kernels around to test can be confusing, but checking against an older one can help spot regressions. UPX is sometimes shunned due to the NRV compression library used, which is proprietary, and thus sometimes considered incompatible with opensource software. There's an opensource UCL library, and the resulting UPX binaries are available. I'll use those as soon as someone can guarantee me they run on 386+ instead of 80586+ / 80686+. The included UPX307D.BAT (by me!) doesn't even have -march in it, so only -mtune was used. So it's safe (386 only). DJGPP defaults to -mtune=pentium anyways. UPX is convenient to have around indeed, if space limited. The bugreports showed that the extra FDISK utility included in FreeDOS doesn't like UPX due to a file checksum (integrity test) being done before running. XFDISK? I posted to the bugtracker (a few days ago) the one-byte patch by Eric :-)) to fix that. Some archivers are already in UTIL. But yeah, perhaps at least UNZIP should be in BASE. Dunno, Jim doesn't want any disruptive changes in 1.1, maybe FD 2.0. Depends how you define 1.1. A small base set has limitations. Having a full CD as Jeremy and Blair prepared in the past, should offer enough opportunity to add programs to people's desire. Since the installer requires it anyways, it's more or less BASE.;-) -- Got Input? Slashdot Needs You. Take our quick survey online. Come on, we don't ask for help often. Plus, you'll get a chance to win $100 to spend on ThinkGeek. http://p.sf.net/sfu/slashdot-survey ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] EXE2BIN
Hi, On Thu, Jul 28, 2011 at 12:22 AM, Ralf A. Quint free...@gmx.net wrote: At 09:06 PM 7/27/2011, Rugxulo wrote: I've seen some strange hacks, but .BAT is far from ideal for normal computations. It's not supposed to do computations, it's for file scripting. Do due with what's available... I know, but I've always expected every OS to come with some minimal programming / scripting, but they don't usually. Yeah, it's easy for people to jump on a bandwagon when they hear/read over and over things like this. They're worse re: OOP, i.e. must use it for everything!! But I am sure that not even a small percentage of those folks that keep repeating that stuff never actually used it (or even tried). It's not flavor of the month or Linux / Win / Mac doesn't support it, so they don't care. I have seen more spaghetti code in C/C++/Java/C#/Ruby/Python/etc than I have ever seen in BASIC. It's not the programming language that's used that is the problem, it's the programmer that doesn't know how to use it (properly)... They all have uses, I guess, but most of them aren't as readable as they think! At least, I always wonder how anybody can brag about how less obfuscated they are vs. others. At times they all get kinda hairy. My only real complaint against BASIC is that there are too many incompatible dialects, but all languages suffer from that (though perhaps less than BASIC for whatever reason). Have been using DOS since January '82, when we got at a former employer an IBM-PC on loan for 4 weeks from Computerland in Bonn. Was running a modified PC DOS 1.01 to support the 10MB harddrive from Corvus, with a whooping 256KB RAM. Later that year, after we had to give the IBM back, we got one of the first Sirus-1, a luxury model compared to the IBM, with 1.2MB floppy drives, 896KB of RAM and 800x400 highres (mono) graphics. That one had already MS-DOS 1.25. And before we had to give that one back, we got (as HP software OEM) a prototype of the HP-150, running what was becoming MS-DOS 2.01, 640KB RAM and 2x720KB 3.5 floppy drives. But at that time, we preferred the HP-9816, a non-DOS 68000 based workstation, running HP (Rocky Mountain)BASIC in ROM or UCSD Pascal/FORTRAN from the same 9121 floppy drives from the HP-150, or even the HP-85/86, also programmed/running in HP BASIC, all with line numbers, still nice structured programs... ;-) I wish more developers would use old machines so that they would understand and appreciate them more. At least then maybe their stuff wouldn't become as slow and bloated. Seriously, if you don't test on old machines, you tend to forget your limitations. There's really no good reason for a compiler to need 120 MB of RAM just to optimize a single C++ file. Or perhaps there should be a way to tell it to only use xyz MB of RAM. Well, these days it's kinda a lost cause, AMD64 makes people think RAM is unlimited. Sometimes limits are good, they force you to think harder! -- Got Input? Slashdot Needs You. Take our quick survey online. Come on, we don't ask for help often. Plus, you'll get a chance to win $100 to spend on ThinkGeek. http://p.sf.net/sfu/slashdot-survey ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] EXE2BIN
Hi, On Tue, Jul 26, 2011 at 10:14 PM, Ralf A. Quint free...@gmx.net wrote: At 04:11 PM 7/26/2011, Rugxulo wrote: It's just hard to imagine why they would ever include LINK and EXE2BIN when nothing comes with DOS that can use them. BASICA/GW-BASIC surely didn't. I don't know, I'm not as savvy as some people here (Ralf?). Well, as you asked... ;-) EXE2BIN and LINK where indeed include for quite a while as not every compiler out there back then included it's own linker and specifically some of the Microsoft compiler itself. I just wonder why they ever stopped including it. (Wait, I forget now if DR-DOS 7.03 [1998] included EXE2BIN, lemme check ... YES!) Weird, again. It even explicitly says it works on a linker's output, but there is no linker included!! What kind of logic is that? Of course, no terribly huge surprise considering some of the other differences. EDIT is full-screen (but no BASIC, so debug [8086-686] is basically all you have for scripting). Weren't they the first, years before MS, to have full-screen EDIT? (No edlin at all!) Also, they include other weird stuff including (among others): lock, diskmap, netwars, password, rendir, taskmgr, touch, xdel, xdir, [Jim Kyle's] devload, loader, etc. etc. But they also include a lot of the same other common stuff: backup, restore, recover, assign, chkdsk, fdisk, diskopt [defrag], drmouse, deltree [.bat wrapper around xdel], graphics, graftabl, keyb, nlsfunc, emm386 [built-in DPMI and /MULTI drivers], share, nwcdex, xcopy, label, etc. etc. (BTW, this version had no ViewMax nor FAT32 nor LFN tools and only optional Personal Netware crud.) As you probably know, 7.03 is IBM PC-DOS 6.00 compatible (at least according to normal version detection) and even the kernel file(s) are named IBMBIO.COM and IBMDOS.COM. (Udo's EDR-DOS changed this back similar to older-style, I think.) And IMHO, these are two tools that do not need to be included in a basic release of FreeDOS, those are things that should be however made available in an developer add-on or what ever you want to call it... Yes, like I said, I don't see how anybody can use it by default. What kinda bothers me about all these changes is that no suitable replacement is available. Sure, /olddos/ has QBASIC, but later versions didn't have even that. I don't know, it's weird. As far as the inclusion of a BASIC interpreter goes, the reasoning might very likely have been that the number of user actually writing their own BASIC programs compared to the number of overall users had dropped significantly. Or perhaps they realized there were too many users creating open source BASIC apps!;-)I mean, you didn't have a choice, it was an interpreter! ;-)I was always amazed at all the cool QB programs out there. They squeezed a lot out of it (160 kb RAM free, IIRC). My(uninformed, weak) guess is that they expected VBscript to replace that, but who knows. (God help anybody bothering with PowerShell, that syntax looks horrible! But hey, the advantage is that it comes installed by default. Unfortunately, you have to deal with the v1, v2, upcoming v3 [??] issue, which is bad. Bah, annoying.) That's all Windows stuff that shouldn't concern in here... Well, last I checked, MS *still* included edlin, debug, and edit95 in 32-bit Windows! Yes, all DOS apps, IIRC! But no QBASIC to be found. :-( I just meant that PowerShell and VBscript seemed to have (strangely) taken the place of (what used to be) QBASIC. Not exactly a friendly migration. :-/ In other words, I understand wanting to be compatible, but I consider BWBASIC (even if weak) or AWK to be better than nothing and at least a semi-familiar scripting tool for people using FreeDOS. At least, those would be more useful than EXE2BIN (to me) I would not call BWBASIC weak but including it would give users a basic scripting tool which goes beyond the DOS batch scripting. Well, .BAT isn't exactly Turing complete, last I checked. It's not a programming language (though 4DOS or XP's CMD most likely qualifies). I know users can get a real programming tool themselves, I'm just saying, having it built-in is more useful overall. It's not that I think BWBASIC is bad, just far from complete or what most users would expect. But it's a lot better than nothing! Don't know what AWK has to do with either BWBASIC, EXE2BIN or DEBUG, but awk is certainly not DOS and therefor should IMHO not be included in any base package... Well, no, not necessarily in BASE, but I think it's pretty universally accepted (e.g. POSIX) and would be better than trying to (over)use Debug to do things that it wasn't designed for. Awk is just a language and not really DOS nor otherwise. I can't help but feel something should be there. Seeing that there is so little respect for the old tools that made out DOS, I am not sure if I should pick up one of my projects I had started a few years back, a GW-BASIC clone, looks like there won't be much interest for this
Re: [Freedos-devel] EXE2BIN
Hi, (sorry for dragging this out so long!!) On Wed, Jul 27, 2011 at 1:08 AM, Rugxulo rugx...@gmail.com wrote: I know users can get a real programming tool themselves, I'm just saying, having it built-in is more useful overall. It's not that I think BWBASIC is bad, just far from complete or what most users would expect. But it's a lot better than nothing! Just for the record, DOSEMU (z:\bin) has BWBASIC (and other things): exe2bin (*sigh*), touch, tee, wcd, etc. (rest is normal BASE stuff). But they also have z:\gnu, which has: mv, tail, grep, cat, rm, cp, cut, ls, cmp, tac, head (presumably all from GNUish). So, long story short, nobody can agree what is classic DOS. Everybody only has a very rough idea. I don't mind us sticking to it, but it feels odd when it's not practically usable. -- Got Input? Slashdot Needs You. Take our quick survey online. Come on, we don't ask for help often. Plus, you'll get a chance to win $100 to spend on ThinkGeek. http://p.sf.net/sfu/slashdot-survey ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] EXE2BIN
At 10:32 PM 7/26/2011, Steve Nickolas wrote: On Wed, 27 Jul 2011, Rugxulo wrote: Hi, On Tue, Jul 26, 2011 at 6:36 PM, Steve Nickolas lyricalnan...@usotsuki.hoshinet.org wrote: Some versions of MS-DOS even included LIB (I have some specimens of 2.x and 3.x that do). DEC's releases for the Rainbow even had MASM (!). Now that is surprising! I wonder which version (and why they stopped). That's the kind of thing that would explain LINK + EXE2BIN. But why on DEC Rainbows? Perhaps they signed a better licensing deal? Who knows. Can't remember (prolly 2.0). It was on the MS-DOS 2.01 master. I am fairly certain that whatever DEC Rainbow version of MS-DOS 2.01 you have that this is the same disk/image that I have in my archive. And I am also certain that this is not a genuine/virgin setup/master disc but a copy of a user modified boot disk and therefor happens to have the masm.exe file on it... Ralf -- Got Input? Slashdot Needs You. Take our quick survey online. Come on, we don't ask for help often. Plus, you'll get a chance to win $100 to spend on ThinkGeek. http://p.sf.net/sfu/slashdot-survey ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] EXE2BIN
At 11:08 PM 7/26/2011, Rugxulo wrote: Well, .BAT isn't exactly Turing complete, last I checked. Why would that possibly matter? GW-BASIC is fine if you like it. Most will complain about line numbers. What's wrong with line numbers? As I already mentioned, too many people these days don't seem to know/remember what DOS was and how it was used for more than a decade. And nobody really complained and the PC world still kept advancing... Ralf -- Got Input? Slashdot Needs You. Take our quick survey online. Come on, we don't ask for help often. Plus, you'll get a chance to win $100 to spend on ThinkGeek. http://p.sf.net/sfu/slashdot-survey ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] EXE2BIN
Hi, On Wed, Jul 27, 2011 at 10:29 PM, Ralf A. Quint free...@gmx.net wrote: At 10:32 PM 7/26/2011, Steve Nickolas wrote: Can't remember (prolly 2.0). It was on the MS-DOS 2.01 master. I am fairly certain that whatever DEC Rainbow version of MS-DOS 2.01 you have that this is the same disk/image that I have in my archive. And I am also certain that this is not a genuine/virgin setup/master disc but a copy of a user modified boot disk and therefor happens to have the masm.exe file on it... Slightly unrelated (at least re: DEC Rainbow), but there's now several articles about MS-DOS being 30 years old today. Both articles apparently have screenshots which show some of the included commands: http://www.reghardware.com/2011/07/27/ms_dos_turns_30/ http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/30-Jahre-MS-DOS-1286525.html Summary (may not be complete, only quoted from screenshots): MS-DOS 1.19 (eh?): command.com, sys.com, chkdsk.com, configur.com, debug.com, diskcomp.com, diskcopy.com, edlin.com, exe2bin.exe (!), filcom.com, format.com, lib.exe, link.exe, print.com, rdcpm.com ... and the biggest in size are (by far) link, lib, configur. PC-DOS 1.00: ibmbio.com, ibmdos.com, command.com, format.com, chkdsk.com, sys.com, diskcopy.com, diskcomp.com, comp.com, date.com, time.com, mode.com, edlin.com, debug.com, basic.com, basica.com ... with biggest being basic*. -- Got Input? Slashdot Needs You. Take our quick survey online. Come on, we don't ask for help often. Plus, you'll get a chance to win $100 to spend on ThinkGeek. http://p.sf.net/sfu/slashdot-survey ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] EXE2BIN
On Wed, 27 Jul 2011, Rugxulo wrote: At 10:32 PM 7/26/2011, Steve Nickolas wrote: Can't remember (prolly 2.0). It was on the MS-DOS 2.01 master. I am fairly certain that whatever DEC Rainbow version of MS-DOS 2.01 you have that this is the same disk/image that I have in my archive. And I am also certain that this is not a genuine/virgin setup/master disc but a copy of a user modified boot disk and therefor happens to have the masm.exe file on it... Ah. :/ Slightly unrelated (at least re: DEC Rainbow), but there's now several articles about MS-DOS being 30 years old today. Both articles apparently have screenshots which show some of the included commands: http://www.reghardware.com/2011/07/27/ms_dos_turns_30/ http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/30-Jahre-MS-DOS-1286525.html Summary (may not be complete, only quoted from screenshots): MS-DOS 1.19 (eh?): command.com, sys.com, chkdsk.com, configur.com, debug.com, diskcomp.com, diskcopy.com, edlin.com, exe2bin.exe (!), filcom.com, format.com, lib.exe, link.exe, print.com, rdcpm.com ... and the biggest in size are (by far) link, lib, configur. Sounds like Zenith MS-DOS 1.25 (whose command.com version was 1.19). -uso.-- Got Input? Slashdot Needs You. Take our quick survey online. Come on, we don't ask for help often. Plus, you'll get a chance to win $100 to spend on ThinkGeek. http://p.sf.net/sfu/slashdot-survey___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] EXE2BIN
Hi, On Wed, Jul 27, 2011 at 10:37 PM, Ralf A. Quint free...@gmx.net wrote: At 11:08 PM 7/26/2011, Rugxulo wrote: Well, .BAT isn't exactly Turing complete, last I checked. Why would that possibly matter? Hmmm? The whole point was about what is/was included by default, e.g. DEBUG vs. QBASIC or LINK or EXE2BIN vs. nothing. So .BAT is often called a scripting language, but it's not even close to being useful for anything outside very simple things. I mean, I've seen some strange hacks, but .BAT is far from ideal for normal computations. GW-BASIC is fine if you like it. Most will complain about line numbers. What's wrong with line numbers? To me? Nothing besides a little inconvenience. To others it's a deal breaker. Look, I'm far from a BASIC guru (and I also like esolangs), so it wouldn't bother me. But I've read (over and over and over) about how people hate BASIC and spaghetti code from line numbers. Remember that QBASIC was hugely popular (and still is), and it was optional there. I'm no zealot, but the structured programming ideal had a fair point. As I already mentioned, too many people these days don't seem to know/remember what DOS was and how it was used for more than a decade. And nobody really complained and the PC world still kept advancing... Some of us can't remember because we weren't there. I only first used MS-DOS 6 in 1994. (Though I had used Apple II before that with line-numbers galore!) Sorry!! Please don't take my comments as criticism, but you will indeed have to put on some asbestos if you expect people to use line-numbered BASIC. I have no qualms, it's all the same to me. -- Got Input? Slashdot Needs You. Take our quick survey online. Come on, we don't ask for help often. Plus, you'll get a chance to win $100 to spend on ThinkGeek. http://p.sf.net/sfu/slashdot-survey ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] EXE2BIN
At 09:06 PM 7/27/2011, Rugxulo wrote: Hi, On Wed, Jul 27, 2011 at 10:37 PM, Ralf A. Quint free...@gmx.net wrote: At 11:08 PM 7/26/2011, Rugxulo wrote: Well, .BAT isn't exactly Turing complete, last I checked. Why would that possibly matter? Hmmm? The whole point was about what is/was included by default, e.g. DEBUG vs. QBASIC or LINK or EXE2BIN vs. nothing. So .BAT is often called a scripting language, but it's not even close to being useful for anything outside very simple things. I mean, I've seen some strange hacks, but .BAT is far from ideal for normal computations. It's not supposed to do computations, it's for file scripting. Do due with what's available... GW-BASIC is fine if you like it. Most will complain about line numbers. What's wrong with line numbers? To me? Nothing besides a little inconvenience. To others it's a deal breaker. Look, I'm far from a BASIC guru (and I also like esolangs), so it wouldn't bother me. But I've read (over and over and over) about how people hate BASIC and spaghetti code from line numbers. Remember that QBASIC was hugely popular (and still is), and it was optional there. I'm no zealot, but the structured programming ideal had a fair point. Yeah, it's easy for people to jump on a bandwagon when they hear/read over and over things like this. But I am sure that not even a small percentage of those folks that keep repeating that stuff never actually used it (or even tried). I have seen more spaghetti code in C/C++/Java/C#/Ruby/Python/etc than I have ever seen in BASIC. It's not the programming language that's used that is the problem, it's the programmer that doesn't know how to use it (properly)... As I already mentioned, too many people these days don't seem to know/remember what DOS was and how it was used for more than a decade. And nobody really complained and the PC world still kept advancing... Some of us can't remember because we weren't there. I only first used MS-DOS 6 in 1994. Have been using DOS since January '82, when we got at a former employer an IBM-PC on loan for 4 weeks from Computerland in Bonn. Was running a modified PC DOS 1.01 to support the 10MB harddrive from Corvus, with a whooping 256KB RAM. Later that year, after we had to give the IBM back, we got one of the first Sirus-1, a luxury model compared to the IBM, with 1.2MB floppy drives, 896KB of RAM and 800x400 highres (mono) graphics. That one had already MS-DOS 1.25. And before we had to give that one back, we got (as HP software OEM) a prototype of the HP-150, running what was becoming MS-DOS 2.01, 640KB RAM and 2x720KB 3.5 floppy drives. But at that time, we preferred the HP-9816, a non-DOS 68000 based workstation, running HP (Rocky Mountain)BASIC in ROM or UCSD Pascal/FORTRAN from the same 9121 floppy drives from the HP-150, or even the HP-85/86, also programmed/running in HP BASIC, all with line numbers, still nice structured programs... ;-) Ralf -- Got Input? Slashdot Needs You. Take our quick survey online. Come on, we don't ask for help often. Plus, you'll get a chance to win $100 to spend on ThinkGeek. http://p.sf.net/sfu/slashdot-survey ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] EXE2BIN
Who gives a shit? It's included in MS-DOS 6.22, it'll be included in FreeDOS. It's not hurting you is it? You don't suffer from erectile disfunction because you dir and see exe2bin listed there do you? NO! Jebus Christ, can't you find something better to bitch about? Or how about fixing something while you're at it? - Original Message - From: Rugxulo rugx...@gmail.com To: freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net Sent: Tuesday, July 26, 2011 12:47 AM Subject: Re: [Freedos-devel] EXE2BIN Hi again, On Sun, Jul 17, 2011 at 3:48 PM, Steve Nickolas lyricalnan...@usotsuki.hoshinet.org wrote: Exe2bin: Not all software uses compilers which create COM directly. PC DOS 2000 doesn't even *have* exe2bin. I'm not sure about MS-DOS 6.22 since I can't find an online listing. (I used to know a site, but alas ) Anyways, EXE2BIN *may* have been moved to the 6.22 Supplemental add-on or even Step-up add-on, not sure. But it seems MS-DOS 5 did have it by default: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/75712 On a semi-related note, I don't think LINK was included after MS-DOS 4. (It's still on MS' FTP, but it's now a 386 PharLap .EXE, which is vaguely weird for a 16-bit only OMF linker. I don't know their licensing and IIRC it seems to be only a upgrade for MS VC 1.52 users, so it's probably only for them. Meh.) In short, I don't think EXE2BIN belongs in BASE for FreeDOS. I don't know of anybody using it. Okay, since Eric mentions it, I can vaguely remember that thinks like MASM did need it, but since we don't include MASM, why do we include EXE2BIN?? We don't include a linker either (as mentioned). So any alleged programmers would still have to add those to their toolset too. A quick check at EXE2BIN included with FreeDOS shows that it's basically just verbatim OpenWatcom 1.5 [sic] EXE2BIN except apparently recompiled with Borland / Turbo C, perhaps for smaller size?? (Latest OW 1.9 is an .EXE of approx. 20 kb, while this one once decompressed [UPX] is like a 13 kb .COM.) The Software List says ramax is the author / maintainer, but considering all the *heavy* mentions of OpenWatcom in the sources and the fact that the help screen is almost identical (at least feature parity) makes me doubt that. In fact, you may find it funny (!) to know that the LICENSE.TXT is bigger than the program!! I know it's not important to mention this. I also know nobody will agree with me, most likely. I'm just saying, seriously, do we need it?? I'm not saying throw it out completely, just get it from OpenWatcom if you really need it (since it's the same!!). Besides, 1.9 1.5, so nyah. ;-) The tool basically only strips the .EXE header but *also* resolves any relocs. So I guess it *could* be useful to someone, but *by itself* it's fairly useless (and redundant) in BASE. So there, is that an exhaustive enough analysis? :-/ -- Magic Quadrant for Content-Aware Data Loss Prevention Research study explores the data loss prevention market. Includes in-depth analysis on the changes within the DLP market, and the criteria used to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of these DLP solutions. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfnl/114/51385063/ ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel -- Magic Quadrant for Content-Aware Data Loss Prevention Research study explores the data loss prevention market. Includes in-depth analysis on the changes within the DLP market, and the criteria used to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of these DLP solutions. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfnl/114/51385063/ ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] EXE2BIN
On Tue, 26 Jul 2011, Joe Cosentino wrote: Who gives a shit? It's included in MS-DOS 6.22, it'll be included in FreeDOS. It's not hurting you is it? You don't suffer from erectile disfunction because you dir and see exe2bin listed there do you? NO! Jebus Christ, can't you find something better to bitch about? Or how about fixing something while you're at it? For the record and for the sake of historical accuracy, I checked the installation floppies for both upgrade and nonupgrade versions of MS-DOS 6.22, as well as full installers all the way down to 5.0 - 5.0 was the last version to include exe2bin on the install floppies. IBM actually kept it longer - exe2bin wasn't removed from their install floppies until 7.0 (6.1 and 6.3 both have it, and it's not even compressed!) -uso. -- Magic Quadrant for Content-Aware Data Loss Prevention Research study explores the data loss prevention market. Includes in-depth analysis on the changes within the DLP market, and the criteria used to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of these DLP solutions. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfnl/114/51385063/ ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] EXE2BIN
Steve Nickolas wrote: For the record and for the sake of historical accuracy, I checked the installation floppies for both upgrade and nonupgrade versions of MS-DOS 6.22, as well as full installers all the way down to 5.0 - 5.0 was the last version to include exe2bin on the install floppies. MS-DOS 6.0 Supplemental Files http://support.microsoft.com/kb/124382/en-us MS-DOS 6.22 Supplemental Disk: Description and how to obtain http://support.microsoft.com/kb/117600/en-us Robert Riebisch -- BTTR Software http://www.bttr-software.de/ -- Magic Quadrant for Content-Aware Data Loss Prevention Research study explores the data loss prevention market. Includes in-depth analysis on the changes within the DLP market, and the criteria used to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of these DLP solutions. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfnl/114/51385063/ ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] EXE2BIN
HAHA, Oh snap, son! - Original Message - From: Robert Riebisch r...@bttr-software.de To: freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net Sent: Tuesday, July 26, 2011 2:49 PM Subject: Re: [Freedos-devel] EXE2BIN Steve Nickolas wrote: For the record and for the sake of historical accuracy, I checked the installation floppies for both upgrade and nonupgrade versions of MS-DOS 6.22, as well as full installers all the way down to 5.0 - 5.0 was the last version to include exe2bin on the install floppies. MS-DOS 6.0 Supplemental Files http://support.microsoft.com/kb/124382/en-us MS-DOS 6.22 Supplemental Disk: Description and how to obtain http://support.microsoft.com/kb/117600/en-us Robert Riebisch -- BTTR Software http://www.bttr-software.de/ -- Magic Quadrant for Content-Aware Data Loss Prevention Research study explores the data loss prevention market. Includes in-depth analysis on the changes within the DLP market, and the criteria used to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of these DLP solutions. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfnl/114/51385063/ ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel -- Magic Quadrant for Content-Aware Data Loss Prevention Research study explores the data loss prevention market. Includes in-depth analysis on the changes within the DLP market, and the criteria used to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of these DLP solutions. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfnl/114/51385063/ ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] EXE2BIN
Hi, On Tue, Jul 26, 2011 at 2:12 PM, Joe Cosentino hardmar...@comcast.net wrote: Who gives a shit? I don't know, that's why I'm bringing it up. Constructive criticism is welcome (but ...). It's included in MS-DOS 6.22, it'll be included in FreeDOS. That's not a good metric since, as mentioned, FreeDOS doesn't include other things (link, qbasic, dosshell - wlink, bwbasic, doszip ?), at least not in BASE. (Besides, apparently MS-DOS 5 is last to have it by default without optional add-ons.) Like I said, I don't really care if it's included, but please not in BASE. It's not hurting you is it? You don't suffer from erectile disfunction because you dir and see exe2bin listed there do you? NO! It literally does nothing. I mean, how can you use it with a BASE-only install? You can't. You need other (external) tools. Most compilers and assemblers don't need it. All I can think of offhand is MASM, and we don't include MASM (obviously) nor even JWasm in BASE. It's an old copy (1.5) from OpenWatcom. At the very least somebody should update it to 1.9, though I personally doubt the functionality has improved at all. (Perhaps somebody should compile it with /d_WATCOM_LFN_ or whatever, at least that would be an improvement, sheesh.) Jebus Christ, can't you find something better to bitch about? Or how about fixing something while you're at it? This might be a good time to practice what you preach. -- Got Input? Slashdot Needs You. Take our quick survey online. Come on, we don't ask for help often. Plus, you'll get a chance to win $100 to spend on ThinkGeek. http://p.sf.net/sfu/slashdot-survey ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] EXE2BIN
Jebus Christ, can't you find something better to bitch about? Or how about fixing something while you're at it? This might be a good time to practice what you preach. Sorry dude, but I've done more to advance this project in 6 months (not the last 6 months, mind you), than you have done in a lifetime. So shove it. Man, I'll bet the rest of you are glad to hear from me again! HA! -- Got Input? Slashdot Needs You. Take our quick survey online. Come on, we don't ask for help often. Plus, you'll get a chance to win $100 to spend on ThinkGeek. http://p.sf.net/sfu/slashdot-survey ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] EXE2BIN
Op 26-7-2011 22:32, Joe Cosentino schreef: Jebus Christ, can't you find something better to bitch about? Or how about fixing something while you're at it? This might be a good time to practice what you preach. As useless as EXE2BIN might be, we'll keep it..in BASE even. I'll admit to never having used it, same for EDLIN, DEBUG (unless explicitly instructed), COMP, DISKCOMP, APPEND, ASSIGN, PRINT, MIRROR, RECOVER, REPLACE, SORT, SUBST/JOIN, UNDELETE, UNFORMAT, VOL. Nevertheless they were present in DOS flavors we're trying to mimick, so keeping them around. Sorry dude, but I've done more to advance this project in 6 months (not the last 6 months, mind you), than you have done in a lifetime. So shove it. Both of you have had a considerable influence. You with a lot of basic tools/programs, Rugxulo managed to keep things up to date, as well as compiling and porting lots of stuff. See http://sites.google.com/site/rugxulo/ Anyway, bringing stuff up for discussion is fine. Basing an argument on other missing tools might be a pile of trouble though. I'll update EXE2BIN if it's indeed present in OpenWatCom. Let's keep things constructive as well. Heated arguments won't help get an improved FreeDOS released. Man, I'll bet the rest of you are glad to hear from me again! HA! Indeed, nice to see some faces show up again :) Bernd -- Got Input? Slashdot Needs You. Take our quick survey online. Come on, we don't ask for help often. Plus, you'll get a chance to win $100 to spend on ThinkGeek. http://p.sf.net/sfu/slashdot-survey ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] EXE2BIN
Hi, On Tue, Jul 26, 2011 at 3:32 PM, Joe Cosentino hardmar...@comcast.net wrote: can't you find something better to bitch about? Or how about fixing something while you're at it? This might be a good time to practice what you preach. Sorry dude, but I've done more to advance this project in 6 months (not the last 6 months, mind you), than you have done in a lifetime. So shove it. I know you've accomplished some things, and remember that I didn't insult you or deny your usefulness (but don't flatter yourself or get too big a head, there are many many others too). And yes obviously you haven't been as active lately, that's life, everybody's busy. It's not worth getting worked up over this, and you never did say you personally use EXE2BIN, so I think it's moot. Man, I'll bet the rest of you are glad to hear from me again! HA! http://www.freedos.org/freedos/lists/remind.txt -- Got Input? Slashdot Needs You. Take our quick survey online. Come on, we don't ask for help often. Plus, you'll get a chance to win $100 to spend on ThinkGeek. http://p.sf.net/sfu/slashdot-survey ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] EXE2BIN
Hi, On Tue, Jul 26, 2011 at 4:07 PM, Bernd Blaauw bbla...@home.nl wrote: Op 26-7-2011 22:32, Joe Cosentino schreef: Or how about fixing something while you're at it? This might be a good time to practice what you preach. As useless as EXE2BIN might be, we'll keep it..in BASE even. it's Jim and Jim alone's decision, he's the boss, and there is nobody else going to change this but him. I'm honestly NOT trying that hard to push this, just thought it seemed fairly obvious that nobody needed it by default! I admit it's definitely not up to me and doesn't majorly matter (esp. for 1.1), but since we were recently discussing what belongs where, I thought it was worth mentioning (esp. publicly for discussion). No, of course having it doesn't hurt, but it's a bit perplexing. I'd be VERY surprised if anybody actively wanted it there (in BASE). I'll admit to never having used it, same for EDLIN, DEBUG (unless explicitly instructed), COMP, DISKCOMP, APPEND, ASSIGN, PRINT, MIRROR, RECOVER, REPLACE, SORT, SUBST/JOIN, UNDELETE, UNFORMAT, VOL. Nevertheless they were present in DOS flavors we're trying to mimick, so keeping them around. At least all of those are stand-alone and actually useful (in select circumstances). Like I said, you can't actually use EXE2BIN without other tools, so it's worth a lot less than the above, IMO. Heck, a quick check shows that even I included it on my mini-distro (2008). I'm almost positive it was out of respect to BASE (at Eric's suggestion) rather than pure technical merit. I mean, it's just so useless there! Ah well. :-/ Sorry dude, but I've done more to advance this project in 6 months (not the last 6 months, mind you), than you have done in a lifetime. So shove it. Maybe, but I doubt it. No offense, I've seen your work, it's good and useful, I never complained (!), and for sure I don't claim *any* credit for helping FreeDOS, my efforts are almost nil. But there are many people who have done plenty more than either of us. Don't get a big head. Again, if we had to list all the contributors, even only recently, it would be more than just a handful. It's almost mind-boggling, it's just so many. Pat, Tim, Jim, Eric, Aitor, Henrique, Bernd, Jeremy, Bart, Blair, ... now I'm drawing a blank. But for sure it's tons and tons. (Trane, Steffan, Hjort, David, Charles, Loren, Jack, Fritz, Johnson, Laaca, Robert, Khusraw, DOS386, Japheth, Wolf, FAT32 dude [can't remember], Imre, Rene, Ben, Arkady, Lucho, ...) etc. etc. etc. (and that's just from *memory*!). Both of you have had a considerable influence. You with a lot of basic tools/programs, Rugxulo managed to keep things up to date, as well as compiling and porting lots of stuff. See http://sites.google.com/site/rugxulo/ No influence at all, I'm afraid, only very barely, and probably only then because volunteers are few. I just have a drive to work on improving DOS, which basically means (only) FreeDOS these days. I need to focus more instead of starting so many hacks, patches, builds, etc. It's just not easy to focus or plan when life throws so many wrenches at you. Anyway, bringing stuff up for discussion is fine. Basing an argument on other missing tools might be a pile of trouble though. I'll update EXE2BIN if it's indeed present in OpenWatCom. Do you have OW19 installed or should I just e-mail it to you? The old 1.5 version used in BASE contains this: exe2b15x.zip: .lsm, .com, 2 .txt, .en exe2b15s.zip: 4 .h, .c, .mak, .asm In other words, it's not a very complex project. I could (should?) grab sources and binaries and package it up for you all from OW19. (But should that all be one .ZIP these days, a la suggested FD 1.1 package format or did I misunderstand?) Are you honestly interested?? Let's keep things constructive as well. Heated arguments won't help get an improved FreeDOS released. Could've been nicer about disagreeing. Man, I'll bet the rest of you are glad to hear from me again! HA! Indeed, nice to see some faces show up again :) No, this wasn't a great way to (re)introduce yourself. But if you can think of other compilers or assemblers (besides MASM) needing EXE2BIN, please mention them (as I can't)! P.S. On a semi-related note, I know of at least one (old) compiler from 1991, Oberon/M, that didn't include a linker since it assumed MS LINK would be available (oops!). And of course it uses some non-standard OMF record that chokes most linkers (except QLINK /I:OMFIGN just ignores it [!] like MS Link but unlike every other one I tried except TLINK, which I shun because it ain't true freeware). In other words, most compilers wisely choose to bundle their own tools. (Okay, CM3/Win32 allegedly relies on MSVC LINK also, why?? Silly. Oh, and I did [miraculously] find M3/PC 1996 for DJGPP v2 recently, woot!) -- Got Input? Slashdot Needs You. Take our quick survey online. Come on, we don't ask for help often.
Re: [Freedos-devel] EXE2BIN
Hi, On Tue, Jul 26, 2011 at 5:26 PM, Steve Nickolas lyricalnan...@usotsuki.hoshinet.org wrote: On Tue, 26 Jul 2011, Rugxulo wrote: On Tue, Jul 26, 2011 at 2:12 PM, Joe Cosentino hardmar...@comcast.net wrote: It's included in MS-DOS 6.22, it'll be included in FreeDOS. That's not a good metric since, as mentioned, FreeDOS doesn't include other things (link, qbasic, dosshell - wlink, bwbasic, doszip ?), at least not in BASE. (Besides, apparently MS-DOS 5 is last to have it by default without optional add-ons.) MS-DOS 6.0 has DOSSHELL in base. (PC DOS never lost it; even the last retail version still has the option to install it off the base install disks. You mean 2000 (aka, 7 w/ fixes)? Or IBM server scripting toolkit? But no, my point was I don't think even 6.22 had it anymore, only in Supp (or Stepup or whatever, can't remember), for some odd reason. On the other hand, it dropped BASIC, BASICA and QBASIC after 5.02, As you know, IBM and MS had a falling out around 1991. IBM allegedly still had full sources to MS-DOS 5 and Win 3.0, though, but they probably had to pay royalties on distributing them. So at least that's my guess at why they removed it (and/or because they also had REXX and E [editor] available, which came with PC-DOS 7, IIRC.) and while LINK remained in MS-DOS until 4.01, its last appearance in PC DOS is all the way back in 3.20.) I don't understand the reasoning behind that. Why not include it? Why make it harder to find? Maybe they had the idea that nobody uses it or it's buggy or limited or compilers have their own anyways. Most likely, and obviously I'm not in total disagreement here. Because while I think LINK is much more useful than EXE2BIN, even that can't be used by itself, you need a compiler (e.g. Oberon/M). BTW, as mentioned, latest (16-bit OMF) LINK is still (!) available on MS' FTP (though it requires 386 host due to PharLap extender), but it's basically just meant as an upgrade for MS VC 1.52 users. So I don't think it's true freeware. (Then again, if they didn't want anybody else using it, why the hell is it on public FTP? But that alone isn't enough justification. Still some people these days [not me] still link [sic] to their download.) I may suggest that since anything that really could use a linker comes with one, and exe2bin functionality is in most of them as well, having one in FreeDOS is redundant anymore. IBM actually dropped EXE2BIN the first time after 3.2 - 3.3 and 4.0 do not have it, but it came back with the DOS 5 reunification, to go away again with DOS 7. (I just did some analysis of DOS versions all the way back to 1.0x and all the way up to 7.0, to make sure my information here is correct!) It's just hard to imagine why they would ever include LINK and EXE2BIN when nothing comes with DOS that can use them. BASICA/GW-BASIC surely didn't. I don't know, I'm not as savvy as some people here (Ralf?). Other commands which were dropped by the 6.22 era, or at least relegated to a separate download/purchase, were ASSIGN (MS-DOS 6), BACKUP (MS-DOS 6 and PC-DOS 6, although MS-DOS 6.21 - but not 6.22, again - has it in base and PC DOS 7 also has it in base), JOIN (MS-DOS 6), MIRROR (made redundant with updates to FORMAT in DOS 6?), MSHERC (only used by QBASIC, QuickBasic and Visual Basic anyway), PRINTER.SYS (MS-DOS 6 and PC-DOS 7) and RECOVER (MS-DOS 6 and PC DOS 7). What kinda bothers me about all these changes is that no suitable replacement is available. Sure, /olddos/ has QBASIC, but later versions didn't have even that. I don't know, it's weird. My (uninformed, weak) guess is that they expected VBscript to replace that, but who knows. (God help anybody bothering with PowerShell, that syntax looks horrible! But hey, the advantage is that it comes installed by default. Unfortunately, you have to deal with the v1, v2, upcoming v3 [??] issue, which is bad. Bah, annoying.) In other words, I understand wanting to be compatible, but I consider BWBASIC (even if weak) or AWK to be better than nothing and at least a semi-familiar scripting tool for people using FreeDOS. At least, those would be more useful than EXE2BIN (to me), but perhaps some of us think DEBUG already covers all that. If it can't be done in DEBUG, it's can't be done at all. ;-)But seriously, we're not going to win a lot of fans telling them use DEBUG, so we should consider including Guenther's 16-bit AWK compile (though a newer version apparently came out two months ago, need to e-mail him!!). Okay, this thread got too long, feel free to ignore, I'm just posting some random ideas in case anybody finds it useful. -- Got Input? Slashdot Needs You. Take our quick survey online. Come on, we don't ask for help often. Plus, you'll get a chance to win $100 to spend on ThinkGeek. http://p.sf.net/sfu/slashdot-survey ___ Freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] EXE2BIN
At 04:11 PM 7/26/2011, Rugxulo wrote: It's just hard to imagine why they would ever include LINK and EXE2BIN when nothing comes with DOS that can use them. BASICA/GW-BASIC surely didn't. I don't know, I'm not as savvy as some people here (Ralf?). Well, as you asked... ;-) EXE2BIN and LINK where indeed include for quite a while as not every compiler out there back then included it's own linker and specifically some of the Microsoft compiler itself. A BASIC interpreter like BASICA/GWBASIC certainly did not need either of them. And IMHO, these are two tools that do not need to be included in a basic release of FreeDOS, those are things that should be however made available in an developer add-on or what ever you want to call it... Other commands which were dropped by the 6.22 era, or at least relegated to a separate download/purchase, were ASSIGN (MS-DOS 6), BACKUP (MS-DOS 6 and PC-DOS 6, although MS-DOS 6.21 - but not 6.22, again - has it in base and PC DOS 7 also has it in base), JOIN (MS-DOS 6), MIRROR (made redundant with updates to FORMAT in DOS 6?), MSHERC (only used by QBASIC, QuickBasic and Visual Basic anyway), PRINTER.SYS (MS-DOS 6 and PC-DOS 7) and RECOVER (MS-DOS 6 and PC DOS 7). What kinda bothers me about all these changes is that no suitable replacement is available. Sure, /olddos/ has QBASIC, but later versions didn't have even that. I don't know, it's weird. As far as the inclusion of a BASIC interpreter goes, the reasoning might very likely have been that the number of user actually writing their own BASIC programs compared to the number of overall users had dropped significantly. And pretty much all commercial software for DOS by that time were delivered in form of compiled programs, while in the early days, quite a number of software products were delivered as BASIC interpreter source files (hence the protection option when saving BASICA/GW-BASIC files). My(uninformed, weak) guess is that they expected VBscript to replace that, but who knows. (God help anybody bothering with PowerShell, that syntax looks horrible! But hey, the advantage is that it comes installed by default. Unfortunately, you have to deal with the v1, v2, upcoming v3 [??] issue, which is bad. Bah, annoying.) That's all Windows stuff that shouldn't concern in here... In other words, I understand wanting to be compatible, but I consider BWBASIC (even if weak) or AWK to be better than nothing and at least a semi-familiar scripting tool for people using FreeDOS. At least, those would be more useful than EXE2BIN (to me), but perhaps some of us think DEBUG already covers all that. If it can't be done in DEBUG, it's can't be done at all. ;-)But seriously, we're not going to win a lot of fans telling them use DEBUG, so we should consider including Guenther's 16-bit AWK compile (though a newer version apparently came out two months ago, need to e-mail him!!). I would not call BWBASIC weak but including it would give users a basic scripting tool which goes beyond the DOS batch scripting. Don't know what AWK has to do with either BWBASIC, EXE2BIN or DEBUG, but awk is certainly not DOS and therefor should IMHO not be included in any base package... Seeing that there is so little respect for the old tools that made out DOS, I am not sure if I should pick up one of my projects I had started a few years back, a GW-BASIC clone, looks like there won't be much interest for this at least in here. Or even bother to put the finishing touches on BACKUPRESTORE for that matter... :-( Ralf -- Got Input? Slashdot Needs You. Take our quick survey online. Come on, we don't ask for help often. Plus, you'll get a chance to win $100 to spend on ThinkGeek. http://p.sf.net/sfu/slashdot-survey ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] EXE2BIN
On Tue, 26 Jul 2011, Ralf A. Quint wrote: Seeing that there is so little respect for the old tools that made out DOS, I am not sure if I should pick up one of my projects I had started a few years back, a GW-BASIC clone, looks like there won't be much interest for this at least in here. Or even bother to put the finishing touches on BACKUPRESTORE for that matter... :-( I for one would particularly be interested in a gwbasic clone that actually works like gwbasic. -uso. -- Got Input? Slashdot Needs You. Take our quick survey online. Come on, we don't ask for help often. Plus, you'll get a chance to win $100 to spend on ThinkGeek. http://p.sf.net/sfu/slashdot-survey ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] EXE2BIN
At 08:10 PM 7/26/2011, Steve Nickolas wrote: On Tue, 26 Jul 2011, Ralf A. Quint wrote: Seeing that there is so little respect for the old tools that made out DOS, I am not sure if I should pick up one of my projects I had started a few years back, a GW-BASIC clone, looks like there won't be much interest for this at least in here. Or even bother to put the finishing touches on BACKUPRESTORE for that matter... :-( I for one would particularly be interested in a gwbasic clone that actually works like gwbasic. That was my basic idea, but beside that I got interrupted at some point by health and other personal issues, I got a bit stuck at implementing routines for the floating point math in MBF (which is what BASICA/GW-BASIC and the early MS BASIC compiler use). I have some old routines for most of the single precision stuff but doing double precision with only 16bit registers at hand is a bit tough. And without MBF (Microsoft Binary Format), it can't work like GWBASIC. Otherwise, so far it will read and (de)tokenize any BASICA/GWBASIC program that I had thrown at it, it will do LIST and LLIST and I have most of the known memory map as well as PEEK and POKE working... Will see how I get time, as I am now self-employed for the last couple of month trying to start my own business, and see that I continue on this after I got BACKUPRESTORE out... Ralf -- Got Input? Slashdot Needs You. Take our quick survey online. Come on, we don't ask for help often. Plus, you'll get a chance to win $100 to spend on ThinkGeek. http://p.sf.net/sfu/slashdot-survey ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] EXE2BIN
Hi, On Tue, Jul 26, 2011 at 6:36 PM, Steve Nickolas lyricalnan...@usotsuki.hoshinet.org wrote: Some versions of MS-DOS even included LIB (I have some specimens of 2.x and 3.x that do). DEC's releases for the Rainbow even had MASM (!). Now that is surprising! I wonder which version (and why they stopped). That's the kind of thing that would explain LINK + EXE2BIN. But why on DEC Rainbows? Perhaps they signed a better licensing deal? Who knows. -- Got Input? Slashdot Needs You. Take our quick survey online. Come on, we don't ask for help often. Plus, you'll get a chance to win $100 to spend on ThinkGeek. http://p.sf.net/sfu/slashdot-survey ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] EXE2BIN
On Wed, 27 Jul 2011, Rugxulo wrote: Hi, On Tue, Jul 26, 2011 at 6:36 PM, Steve Nickolas lyricalnan...@usotsuki.hoshinet.org wrote: Some versions of MS-DOS even included LIB (I have some specimens of 2.x and 3.x that do). DEC's releases for the Rainbow even had MASM (!). Now that is surprising! I wonder which version (and why they stopped). That's the kind of thing that would explain LINK + EXE2BIN. But why on DEC Rainbows? Perhaps they signed a better licensing deal? Who knows. Can't remember (prolly 2.0). It was on the MS-DOS 2.01 master. -uso.-- Got Input? Slashdot Needs You. Take our quick survey online. Come on, we don't ask for help often. Plus, you'll get a chance to win $100 to spend on ThinkGeek. http://p.sf.net/sfu/slashdot-survey___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] EXE2BIN
Hi again, On Sun, Jul 17, 2011 at 3:48 PM, Steve Nickolas lyricalnan...@usotsuki.hoshinet.org wrote: Exe2bin: Not all software uses compilers which create COM directly. PC DOS 2000 doesn't even *have* exe2bin. I'm not sure about MS-DOS 6.22 since I can't find an online listing. (I used to know a site, but alas ) Anyways, EXE2BIN *may* have been moved to the 6.22 Supplemental add-on or even Step-up add-on, not sure. But it seems MS-DOS 5 did have it by default: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/75712 On a semi-related note, I don't think LINK was included after MS-DOS 4. (It's still on MS' FTP, but it's now a 386 PharLap .EXE, which is vaguely weird for a 16-bit only OMF linker. I don't know their licensing and IIRC it seems to be only a upgrade for MS VC 1.52 users, so it's probably only for them. Meh.) In short, I don't think EXE2BIN belongs in BASE for FreeDOS. I don't know of anybody using it. Okay, since Eric mentions it, I can vaguely remember that thinks like MASM did need it, but since we don't include MASM, why do we include EXE2BIN?? We don't include a linker either (as mentioned). So any alleged programmers would still have to add those to their toolset too. A quick check at EXE2BIN included with FreeDOS shows that it's basically just verbatim OpenWatcom 1.5 [sic] EXE2BIN except apparently recompiled with Borland / Turbo C, perhaps for smaller size?? (Latest OW 1.9 is an .EXE of approx. 20 kb, while this one once decompressed [UPX] is like a 13 kb .COM.) The Software List says ramax is the author / maintainer, but considering all the *heavy* mentions of OpenWatcom in the sources and the fact that the help screen is almost identical (at least feature parity) makes me doubt that. In fact, you may find it funny (!) to know that the LICENSE.TXT is bigger than the program!! I know it's not important to mention this. I also know nobody will agree with me, most likely. I'm just saying, seriously, do we need it?? I'm not saying throw it out completely, just get it from OpenWatcom if you really need it (since it's the same!!). Besides, 1.9 1.5, so nyah. ;-) The tool basically only strips the .EXE header but *also* resolves any relocs. So I guess it *could* be useful to someone, but *by itself* it's fairly useless (and redundant) in BASE. So there, is that an exhaustive enough analysis? :-/ -- Magic Quadrant for Content-Aware Data Loss Prevention Research study explores the data loss prevention market. Includes in-depth analysis on the changes within the DLP market, and the criteria used to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of these DLP solutions. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfnl/114/51385063/ ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
