Re: [Freedos-user] On to FreeDOS 2.0...
On 13 mei 2007, at 09:38, Florian Xaver wrote: *No more 386- support I don't like this. Wow, not so fast! The purpose of FreeDOS is to reproduce a MSDOS system on x86 CPUs... Go read Jim's manifesto ;-) Wasn't it the purpose of FreeDOS 1.0? What changed with 8086 code? I think nothing. Since FreeDOS 1.0, support for 8086 actually improved. A few executables were unnecessarily incompatible with 8086 and have been fixed through trivial changes to compilation/compression settings. Also I'm quite sure that there were real bugfixes for at least one 8086 compatible program. And of course there will be future bugfixes for programs that are currently 8086 compatible. Joris. - This SF.net email is sponsored by DB2 Express Download DB2 Express C - the FREE version of DB2 express and take control of your XML. No limits. Just data. Click to get it now. http://sourceforge.net/powerbar/db2/ ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] On to FreeDOS 2.0...
On Sunday 13 May 2007 09:38, Florian Xaver wrote: why not? There could be a choice of standard configuration and enhanced configuration. HX Extender should be a must :-) Also FDAPM XDMA should be included in the enhanced config.sys. Yes, if you are talking about an enhanced conf, then I will agree. But by default (basic conf.), the user should get something similar to an MSDOS clone, without bells and whistles... File manager should be optional. Personally, I don't use such tools, I prefer to COPY / DEL and REN my files. Of course there should be at least 2-3 choices for file manager. Why optional? If it is installed, you need not use it. Don't like to have things I will never use :-P Command-line is enough for me, Yes, but new users like GUI, I think. I'm not sure there are much new users in FreeDOS... it's rather old MSDOS users which discovered a free alternative, and I think they are expecting to replace their MSDOS installation, not a desktop OS... Of course, a GUI should be available IF the user wants it (again, enhanced install?)... I think there should be 3 modes of installing FreeDOS: 1. Basic install = kernel + freecom + move/format/fdisk etc... The user get a clone of a MSDOS install - not more, not less. Of course things like FDAPM/XDMA should be included anyway. It's my prefered way of using FreeDOS :-) 2. Enhanced install - All the above + some GUIs / HX ext / maybe few games etc... 3. Custom installation - let the user to choose (check/uncheck) what packages he exactly wants to install. Mateusz Viste Fox - This SF.net email is sponsored by DB2 Express Download DB2 Express C - the FREE version of DB2 express and take control of your XML. No limits. Just data. Click to get it now. http://sourceforge.net/powerbar/db2/ ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] On to FreeDOS 2.0...
Hopefully I don't rant too much... I rarely post on the list at all but I think that there has been a trend recently to add features to FreeDOS but skip over the fact that it's supposed to reproduce DOS as faithfully as possible. I wasn't all that happy with FD 1.0 and still use my custom install of beta-9 rc5. --- Florian Xaver [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi Jim, I all! (snip) *Using 4DOS as standard command tool, and Bash or freecom as choice. Why? I've had no problem with FreeCOM as it is what it's supposed to do: be a clone of COMMAND.COM. Bash should NOT be an option because this is DOS, if I wanted a *nix I'd use it instead of DOS. Plus, if people wanted bash they'd also need to install a bunch of *nix utilities to use it (since all bash scripts require ls, rm, etc. which are not, and should not be part of a default DOS installation IMO). *PythonD as modern script language Why Python and not Perl or any other scripting language? Should we give preference to one at all? DOS predates Python by long enough that I would just find it strange to see included by default. I'd expect something like BASIC or REXX as the scripting language for a DOS. If I wanted Python/Perl/etc. I would install it myself. Although, I find it strange that you'd suggest Python over REXX since you want 4DOS included which allows you to use REXX code in .BAT file. *Using an Editor which supports large files (like FED or SETEDIT) So long as they reproduce the features of the original default editors for DOS they shouldn't be that bad but the current ones are fine. *One standard file manager (my choice would be FW or NDN) I don't like this idea since I don't use either. If a user wants a file manager they'd install one that they'd like which might not be either of those. No one expects DOS to come with a file manager and I think giving preference to one project over another isn't a good thing. *No more 386- support This I think is a horrible idea since the whole purpose of FreeDOS is to have an open-source clone of DOS that can work on old machines. I also think, that it shouldn't be a BIG collection of all free DOS programs. The distribution should contain less, but powerful programs. (Download via WGET for additional tools could be possible.) If there are more than one (like file managers) we could make a poll at freedos.org where user and developer can choose them. I do agree here and think that FreeDOS is straying too much from DOS feature wise while leaving certain compatibility holes open. Network: Latest Arachne (a much more advanced version should be distributed soon) is a ''must, also tools like WGET. And one big problem still exists: a driver. So there should be a note at the installer, which points to FreeDOS Wiki or another site, where a good documentation exists ( about installing such a driver). What do you mean by a driver? Also, while I love Arachne, this runs counter to what you said above with wanting FreeDOS to not be a large collection of free DOS programs. And the GUI? I would say OZONE :-)) Even with the drag'n'drop-bug it has many features and developing of programs isn't difficult. Why not Windows? :-) Having a default GUI is bad since there are competing projects and, again, I dislike giving preference to one project over another when the projects are equal. Plus, DOS didn't come with a GUI and people used to pay for different ones. Also, I would not choose Ozone (although it's nice) for a DOS GUI anyways (I personally prefer OpenGEM). Be a better Heartthrob. Get better relationship answers from someone who knows. Yahoo! Answers - Check it out. http://answers.yahoo.com/dir/?link=listsid=396545433 - This SF.net email is sponsored by DB2 Express Download DB2 Express C - the FREE version of DB2 express and take control of your XML. No limits. Just data. Click to get it now. http://sourceforge.net/powerbar/db2/ ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] On to FreeDOS 2.0...
While FreeDOS isn't something like Gentoo (or Linux at all), I'd love to have some kind of build system so we ensure the 8086 compatibility. Right now all programs have to be compiled by their own makefiles (and compilers, linkers etc), and I got no idea on how to make it like a batch job, some kind of master script for compiling (and compressing) all programs for a certain platform. The suggestion of 4DOS seems fine as both usable shell, and as a way to have additional functionality during installation time (for example creating diskettes from the CD). On the other hand, 4DOS is worthless for diskettes for example due to size of its binary (200KB?) and requiring swapping to XMS, EMS or disk. Once I can get my hands on VmWare Workstation 6 I'll do some DOS-related stuff again, provided I dont lack time. It's still a nice project and it would be a shame if it was stalled at the magic 1.0 label. Bernd - This SF.net email is sponsored by DB2 Express Download DB2 Express C - the FREE version of DB2 express and take control of your XML. No limits. Just data. Click to get it now. http://sourceforge.net/powerbar/db2/ ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Calculator for DOS
Is this the right address? I can't find the server at mateusz.viste.free.fr. On 5/6/07, Mateusz Viste [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi, Little annoucement: I started a small project few days ago. FoxCalc is a calculator with a text user interface and mouse support. It is not a TSR, just a stand-alone program with a basic TUI. I wrote the program in FreeBASIC, so it needs at least a 80386 to run. Download and screenshot there: http://mateusz.viste.free.fr/dos/en/foxcalc.htm Best regards, Mateusz Viste Fox - This SF.net email is sponsored by DB2 Express Download DB2 Express C - the FREE version of DB2 express and take control of your XML. No limits. Just data. Click to get it now. http://sourceforge.net/powerbar/db2/ ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] announce: dosfsck 2.11b file system checker
Hi everybody, I uploaded a new version of the DOS port of dosfsck 2.11 (based on Linux dosfstools 2.11), 2.11.dos2 on my page: http://www.coli.uni-saarland.de/~eric/stuff/soft/by-others/dosdosfsck-2.11b.zip Summary of the changes: Dosfsck will now print memory usage info in -v mode. Usage is roughly 20 bytes per cluster plus 84 bytes per file or directory. Typical are 1-2 MB for FAT16. Worst case are 7 MB for FAT16, 416 MB for FAT32 of 4M clusters. Maybe more if LFN are present or 2 pass repair is active. Because dosfsck cannot know whether your DPMI uses a swap file on the checked drive, all swapping of virtual memory is now disabled. Kernel checks for FAT32 support are better now, so you things work better on MS DOS (no FAT32 drives, only FAT32 diskimages there) now. The full list of changes is: - dosfsck: update version number, avoid duplicate -v version string print - dosfsck.c: set DJGPP CRT flag to lock memory - VM swapping would be bad - lowfat32.c: only use FAT32 int 21.73 API after checking if DOS knows it - lowfat32.c: _dos_getdiskfree return was treated wrong way round, fixed! - various: alloc() now keeps stats, use myfree to keep free stats, stats of heap memory usage are printed in verbose mode and on error - fat.c, check.c: to save memory, do not store 4 reserved FAT32 bits in a separate int. Instead, mask them for each access. Get RAM use CPU. Suggested extra change: If you think that dosfsck -v does not give enough progress info, I could add printing of a . for each 1 MB of FAT read and/or each 1000 checked files/directories. Would that be a good setting? If yes, I would just re-upload the file with that change, so take care to update your copy if you already mirror this version ;-). Thanks for testing! :-) Cheers, Eric - This SF.net email is sponsored by DB2 Express Download DB2 Express C - the FREE version of DB2 express and take control of your XML. No limits. Just data. Click to get it now. http://sourceforge.net/powerbar/db2/ ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] announce: updated volinfxl disk usage info tool
Hi again, as small extra update, I uploaded a dusted up version of my good old Pascal volinfxl tool to my page: http://www.coli.uni-saarland.de/~eric/stuff/soft/specials/volinfxl-disk-usage-info.zip Changes: Volinfxl no longer requires a floating point unit, so it should work on really ancient computers now. At the same time, volinfxl now supports FAT32 size info, although the layout of the output may look bad for values 99 GB. Example output: VolInfXL by AuerSoft 1997-2000/2007, using MB=1048576 [ Remote CD-ROM is N: ] Ignoring drives with no label or label MS-RAMDRIVE C: [emu/freedos] 4.159 MB used, ( 56.361 MB of60.520 MB free) D: [DOSEMU-D...] 7.242 MB used, (0.730 MB of 7.972 MB free) E: [FAT16DISK..] 8.300 MB used, ( 24.185 MB of32.486 MB free) F: [THE-F-DRIVE]17.661 MB used, ( 14.386 MB of32.047 MB free) #: [SUMMARY: ]37.363 MB used, ( 95.664 MB of 133.027 MB free) Even though volinfxl is written in Pascal, the UPXed exe file is smaller than 4 kilobytes now :-). Enjoy! Cheers, Eric - This SF.net email is sponsored by DB2 Express Download DB2 Express C - the FREE version of DB2 express and take control of your XML. No limits. Just data. Click to get it now. http://sourceforge.net/powerbar/db2/ ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] The my deltrash utility...
Hello all! Please vote for adding the my utility, named deltrash, to the FreeDOS 2.0 distrivutive. Previously thank! - This SF.net email is sponsored by DB2 Express Download DB2 Express C - the FREE version of DB2 express and take control of your XML. No limits. Just data. Click to get it now. http://sourceforge.net/powerbar/db2/ ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] The my deltrash utility...
?? ?? schreef: Hello all! Please vote for adding the my utility, named deltrash, to the FreeDOS 2.0 distrivutive. Previously thank! There's no FreeDOS 2.0 anytime soon yet (though most likely a lot faster than the time between initial start and the 1.0 release), nor is there any need to vote. Programs usefull to FreeDOS (mostly opensource, and most opensource programs released under GPL) are available from http://www.freedos.org/freedos/software/ What we would like to know: * where to find the binary * where to find the sourcecode * how to compile (compile instructions, needed compiler etc) * under what license did you release your program? is it for example 'freeware', 'opensource under GPL', opensource under BSD license, released under MIT license? or even another license? License terms are interesting to know what the usage and distribution rights are for various people and groups. You as the author have to decide on that. Easiest is 'public domain', under which you give up all possible rights to your software and anyone can do with it what they want. Ofcourse the disadvantage could be that they remove your name as the author of the software for example :) Bernd - This SF.net email is sponsored by DB2 Express Download DB2 Express C - the FREE version of DB2 express and take control of your XML. No limits. Just data. Click to get it now. http://sourceforge.net/powerbar/db2/ ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Calculator for DOS
Fox I were chatting off-list - the servers were temporarily unavailable. I've mirrored this release on ibiblio, and posted a news item about it on the web site. On 5/13/07, Stegozor [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 5/13/07, Jim Hall [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Is this the right address? I can't find the server at mateusz.viste.free.fr. The URL works fine for me (just checked). I downloaded the calculator and it works quite fine under Windows Millennium too. Note there are minor differences between what you'll see on the screenshot and the application itself: square root has been replaced with 1/x and x^n with x^3. - This SF.net email is sponsored by DB2 Express Download DB2 Express C - the FREE version of DB2 express and take control of your XML. No limits. Just data. Click to get it now. http://sourceforge.net/powerbar/db2/ ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Calculator for DOS
On 5/13/07, Jim Hall [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Is this the right address? I can't find the server at mateusz.viste.free.fr. The URL works fine for me (just checked). I downloaded the calculator and it works quite fine under Windows Millennium too. Note there are minor differences between what you'll see on the screenshot and the application itself: square root has been replaced with 1/x and x^n with x^3. - This SF.net email is sponsored by DB2 Express Download DB2 Express C - the FREE version of DB2 express and take control of your XML. No limits. Just data. Click to get it now. http://sourceforge.net/powerbar/db2/ ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] On to FreeDOS 2.0...
Hi Flox! Talking about FreeDOS 2.0, there will hopefully be 1.1 early this summer, as many packages have been updated since we released 1.0, and some issues in 1.0 should be fine tuned anyway :-). *Using 4DOS as standard command tool, and Bash or freecom as choice. I still think FreeCOM is the better default, has most compatibility. But the others should certainly be included. As for example ReginaRexx and Perl for DOS and FreeBasic.net :-). *Using JEMM as memory manager Very good idea. And JEMMX as option - it has plugins, one might eventually write a virtual SB16 to AC97 hardware plugin for that plugin system. Another candidate might be DISPLAY, as that uses quite a bit of RAM. *Using HX Extender Co to support Windows programs in DOS I would just include it, but would not load any DOS extender as TSR by default. *PythonD as modern script language Why not... *Using an Editor which supports large files (like FED or SETEDIT) Maybe not as default - SETEDIT is really big - but SETEDIT should nevertheless be INSTALLED by default. And/or FED. *One standard file manager (my choice would be FW or NDN) To be more exact: At least one file manager and GUI should be part of a recommended install. *No more 386- support It does not make much difference to compile most apps for 8086, so I would only optimize those for 386+ where you get a real gain from 32bit and/or protected mode usage. Dosfsck and the caches are good examples of 386+ modules. While only few people use pre-386 CPU, I still prefer to keep using FreeDOS as such useable on ancient PC. Of course you can always say PC XT users can use FreeDOS 1.0... I also think, that it shouldn't be a BIG collection of all free DOS programs. Agreed, for example bootablecd.de has a separate games CD anyway, and there are piles and piles of freeware, shareware and abandonware for DOS. It is certainly not our mission to throw all those in some ISO or anything. Our distro should fit on 1 CDROM, at most a few 100 MB installed, with mostly open source and other very free software. Possible with 1.0, when you skip the few largest packages, you get a 100 MB DOS. than one (like file managers) we could make a poll at freedos.org where user and developer can choose them. I see no problem in including 2-3 file managers, but before we would include 10, we should better vote for the 2-5 best. Network: Latest Arachne (a much more advanced version should be distributed soon) is a ''must, also tools like WGET. And one big We should really talk about internet with DOS more - it seems many people do use their old PC with DOS and Arachne to have a second surf PC around, so FreeDOS should make a statement that we do support that use of DOS, too. Eric - This SF.net email is sponsored by DB2 Express Download DB2 Express C - the FREE version of DB2 express and take control of your XML. No limits. Just data. Click to get it now. http://sourceforge.net/powerbar/db2/ ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Calculator for DOS
On Sunday 13 May 2007 20:48, Stegozor wrote: Note there are minor differences between what you'll see on the screenshot and the application itself: square root has been replaced with 1/x and x^n with x^3. No, the buttons are exactly the same as you can see on the screenshot. You use probably some non-437 codepage, that's why the graphic representation of the buttons changes... I will have to add in the future version some routine to check what is the current CP, and IF cp437, THEN displays the buttons as 3 ASCII chars (for example x^2 instead of x²).. Mateusz Viste Fox - This SF.net email is sponsored by DB2 Express Download DB2 Express C - the FREE version of DB2 express and take control of your XML. No limits. Just data. Click to get it now. http://sourceforge.net/powerbar/db2/ ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user