Re: [Freedos-user] DOSBOX isn't for everyone...

[Rugxulo]

Hi,

On Mon, Mar 23, 2020 at 10:52 PM  wrote:
>
> Just a thought, some of us have old computers that we want to run freedos on.
> Running Linux on a Pentium 4 and trying to run Dosbox on top of that is going
> to be pretty have for that machine.

Obviously, but my own Pentium 4 from 2002 (mostly) died many years
ago. I was still minimally testing it via floppy and USB (via PLoP
boot manager) with some simple networking (via packet driver) a few
years ago.

But, no offense, hardware is very cheap nowadays, and a P4 is very
outdated. I'm totally sympathetic, but we've jumped the shark. No one
cares about old machines like that anymore (except luddites like us).
Modern computers are way different (ahem, AVX-512).

> Some people aren't grabbing a multi core modern computer when they use 
> freedos.

BIOS/CSM will die forever in 2020, allegedly, according to Intel.
Luckily, most new machines all have hardware VT-X (EPT) extensions, so
we can at least run FreeDOS speedily under VBox or KVM (QEMU) with
their fake BIOSes. (I've not tested any CoreBoot / LibreBoot machines
nor SeaBIOS payloads, but it presumably works for some limited
hardware, according to what I've heard.)

> Some of us want to use old computers, 386 anyone?

You mean like this? (Don't get your hopes up.)

* https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/ao486_MiSTer

> Linux won't run on a 286 or XT by the way.

ELKS will (or even old Minix 2.0.2), but that's not quite the same.

> Modern Linux distributions, don't expect them to work with less than a 1 Ghz 
> processor
> with at least 1 gig of ram.

Even worse, actually!

Yeah, DOSBox itself needs 1 Ghz just to emulate a "fast" 486 DX2 with
(max) 64 MB of RAM. It doesn't go higher than Pentium, which leaves
out a lot of "newer" stuff. VirtualBox is better overall, but DOSBox
is better for games (that's literally all it's meant for). N.B. I'm
not too familiar with VDosPlus or various other forks, but they aim to
focus away from gaming towards productivity.

> Even the popular arm processors that run Linux, Raspberry Pi 3 and Pi 4,
> run at over 1 ghz. Freedos is an OS that works on any ancient PC including
> dinosaurs like the veritable 8086. Just saying ;-)

Different niches, yes. Both are good in their own ways. Just some have
an easier time attracting volunteers. "A poor carpenter blames his
tools!"

You know there are several Windows 10 laptops running natively atop
ARM64 nowadays? And they emulate Win32 [sic] w/ SSE2 (aka, P4)
userland software and DirectX (9-12). These are "always on" mobile
laptops using phone/mobile data with extremely good battery life (20+
hours). They're using Qualcomm Snapdragon, IIRC. Highly intriguing (as
even MSVC has native ARM target support nowadays). Granted, that
probably?? doesn't include NTVDM, alas ...!


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Re: [Freedos-user] Freedos cost...

[Jim Hall]

The kind folks at Ibiblio provide hosting at no cost.

Hosting content in the public interest is in Ibiblio's mandate. And there's
a history of Ibiblio hosting open source software. In the mid 1990s,
Ibiblio was called SUNSITE at UNC and was one of two key Linux software
repositories. The other was tsx11 at MIT. (That's at a time when "Linux
programs" were just Unix programs recompiled from source.)

When I announced FreeDOS, I reached out to SUNSITE and asked if they would
create a similar folder for FreeDOS stuff. They obliged, since it was
similar to Linux. But we didn't get a top level directory like /pub/Linux
which is why FreeDOS is located deep in /pub

Our hosting at SourceForge is also provided for free. SF provides our email
lists, bug tracker, wiki, and a few other things.

I pay for everything else out of pocket. Website hosting, bandwidth, etc.
Our traffic loads aren't when they once were (but still high, higher than
some Linux distros) so it's not too expensive. There's a Patreon or PayPal
if you want to contribute; that's also how I dedicate time away from
consulting to work on a few things (website update, wiki, bugs, other
stuff).

Jim

On Mon, Mar 23, 2020, 7:28 PM  wrote:

> How are the repositories on ibiblio paid for? Freedos is free, and much of
> the programming work is done on a voluntary basis.
> Freedos is predominantly open source if not completely so. ReactOS is
> supported by a company that pays for the infrastructure
> to host the source code, a web site, some of the programming, etcetera.
> ReactOS is free to download and under the GPL 100%
> I believe. Could something similar be done for freedos? Could a person be
> trained and paid a modest salary to work on memory
> management for example, in the US $15/hour is modest for programming. I am
> willing to work on freedos for a low salary and have
> my code released under the GPL. If I were wealthy, I'd do the work for
> free.
>
> Freedos for a hobbyist project is in incredibly good shape. I would like
> to see this become an excellent dos, better than MSDOS,
> and sought after by industry for systems that currently require msdos.
> Everyone who has worked to make freedos what it is, pat
> yourselves on the back for a job well done. I want freedos to go further
> in terms of quality and become the most stable dos on the
> planet that is the most compatible dos with everything dos that is worth
> being compatible with.
>
> -- Michael C. Robinson
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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS wishlist and feature requests

[Rugxulo]

Hi,

On Mon, Mar 23, 2020 at 2:50 PM Eric Auer  wrote:
>
> In FreeDOS, you have to load a LFN driver TSR to use it, but I think
> most of command.com already is LFN-aware.

IIRC, it depends on the version. Some people (you?) still stuck with
older ("stable"?) 0.82pl3, which didn't support it. But the newer
0.84-pre2 (thanks to Blair) supports LFNs (though you can't have
DESCRIPT.ION shown on screen at the same time).

> You may have to set some shell options
> in your startup files (config, autoexec).

* http://help.fdos.org/en/hhstndrd/command/lfnfor.htm

> The question is which other apps need LFN support: As mentioned
> earlier, it would be possible to create a TSR (similar to SETVER
> in MS DOS) which knows which apps are LFN-aware and replaced LFN
> file and directory names in command line options by their short
> counterparts in the background for everything else. See that
> bunnyhop "c:\forest level\" fictional old game example :-)

Back in 2014, someone complained about EDIT not supporting LFNs. This
was the workaround I suggested:

=
@echo off
REM ... L.EXE is from DOSLFN ...
set /e EDITFILE=l.exe shortname %1
edit.exe %EDITFILE%
set EDITFILE=
=

> Regarding your other question: The standard answer is ReactOS
> which originally was meant to be a Windows NT alternative and
> actually did get updates in 2019

Since 2014, ReactOS does have its own (very incomplete but still
impressive) NTVDM. Their example showed them playing Duke Nukem 3D
(albeit without sound). But no DJGPP stuff would run, sadly.

> Parts of the code co-evolve with Wine, but to be honest, if you want to use
> Windows software on a modern PC, Wine in Linux will often be
> sufficient anyway.

WINE just minimally uses DOSBox, last I heard, but I haven't tried lately.

> Another way to run Windows software in DOS is Japeth's HX RT,
> which you could compare to an extremely extended DPMI extender
> including implementations of many popular Windows API calls:
>
> > https://www.japheth.de/HX.html
> > https://www.japheth.de/dwnload4.html

I'm surprised that old link (now) works again! But it's old versions.
His Github has been updated in the last month (2.18-pre or whatever),
so check there:

* https://github.com/Baron-von-Riedesel/HX

> This lets you run non-fancy Windows programs directly from the
> DOS prompt, for example compilers (non-graphical)

OBC (Oxford Oberon) works. So does native XDS (now open source,
Apache-licensed). Though you have to install them elsewhere first (not
just plain .ZIPs). IIRC, I had to do some fiddling (set HDPMI=32, set
DPMILDR=136, use ReactOS 0.3.14 [sic] MSVCRT.DLL).

7-Zip's 7za920.zip (non-graphical / cmdline: 7za.exe) from years ago
also worked fine.

* https://spivey.oriel.ox.ac.uk/corner/Installing_OBC_release_3.1
* https://github.com/excelsior-oss/xds
* https://www.7-zip.org/a/7za920.zip

> or graphical apps which only use SDL or similar very compatible frameworks,

Mateusz's port of Atomiks?

* http://atomiks.sourceforge.net/

> Note that only half a dozen of the most basic Windows DLL are
> emulated, so do not expect to run Chrome on DOS with HX GUI.

There used to be a compatibility list (or two), but they're outdated.
Obviously a lot of stuff doesn't work, but it's surprisingly good when
something does.

* https://www.japheth.de/HX/COMPAT.html
* http://www.xaver.me/drdoswiki/index.php?n=Main.HXDOScomplists


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[Freedos-user] DOSBOX isn't for everyone...

[michael]

Just a thought, some of us have old computers that we want to run freedos on. 
Running Linux on a Pentium 4 and trying to run Dosbox on top of that is going 
to be pretty have for that machine. Some people aren't grabbing a multi core 
modern computer when they use freedos. Some of us want to use old computers, 
386 anyone?
Linux won't run on a 286 or XT by the way. Modern Linux distributions, don't 
expect them to work with less than a 1 Ghz processor with at least 1 gig of 
ram. Even the popular arm processors that run Linux, Raspberry Pi 3 and Pi 4, 
run at over 1 ghz. Freedos is an OS that works on any ancient PC including 
dinosaurs like the veritable
8086. Just saying ;-)

 -- Michael C. Robinson
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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS wishlist and feature requests

[Rugxulo]

Hi,

On Mon, Mar 23, 2020 at 2:10 PM  wrote:
>
> A revival of the open source implementation of the IPX protocol would be 
> awesome.
> It would make a lot of old dos games work and an IPX/IP gateway could be
> a Linux server where the Linux server could handle security (anti virus squid 
> proxy anyone).

DOSBox already supports that (although I haven't tried):

* https://www.dosbox.com/wiki/Connectivity
* https://www.dosbox.com/wiki/Networking_using_DOSBox_IPX


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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS wishlist and feature requests

[Thomas Mueller]

Just the subject line made me immediately think of one deficiency I met with 
FreeDOS 1.3rc2.

Installation program needs to allow the user to see where the new FreeDOS will 
be installed to, and to give the user choice of where to install to.

I had a scary experience installing FreeDOS 1.3rc2.

It would be good to show available disks and partitions.

In my case, I would want to install FreeDOS to a USB stick, since I use GPT 
partitioning on hard drives, meaning incompatible with both FreeDOS and ReactOS.

Of course, I don't want to overwrite a USB stick already in use for something 
else, like FreeBSD, NetBSD, Linux, or Haiku.

MS-Windows users also don't want to trash their Windows installation, same 
might apply to Mac OS users.

from Jerome Shidel:

> What you suggest is/was contrary to the stated  design goals for the normal 
> operation of the installer.

> But...

> The installer does show and permit changing the target drive and directory 
> along with many other options. However, you must put (or launch) the 
> installer in advanced mode to be able to change those and some other settings.

> It just does not do that by default.

I guess I would not be considered a normal FreeDOS user.  But FreeDOS can be 
useful to access old Quattro Pro 5 for DOS spreadsheets, or dBASE databases.

Tom



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[Freedos-user] Freedos cost...

[michael]

How are the repositories on ibiblio paid for? Freedos is free, and much of the 
programming work is done on a voluntary basis.
Freedos is predominantly open source if not completely so. ReactOS is supported 
by a company that pays for the infrastructure
to host the source code, a web site, some of the programming, etcetera. ReactOS 
is free to download and under the GPL 100%
I believe. Could something similar be done for freedos? Could a person be 
trained and paid a modest salary to work on memory
management for example, in the US $15/hour is modest for programming. I am 
willing to work on freedos for a low salary and have
my code released under the GPL. If I were wealthy, I'd do the work for free.

Freedos for a hobbyist project is in incredibly good shape. I would like to see 
this become an excellent dos, better than MSDOS,
and sought after by industry for systems that currently require msdos. Everyone 
who has worked to make freedos what it is, pat
yourselves on the back for a job well done. I want freedos to go further in 
terms of quality and become the most stable dos on the
planet that is the most compatible dos with everything dos that is worth being 
compatible with.

 -- Michael C. Robinson
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[Freedos-user] fdnpkg.exe - how does it know where to install the packages to?

[michael]

I think I missed a command.com line in fdauto.bat where it still said C:... and 
that this is why fdnpkg.exe installed to the C drive.

If I'm wrong, why does fdnpkg.exe install to C: when I'm running on a Zip disk 
mapped to A: by the bios?

I'm test installing freedoom to see where it lands...
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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS wishlist and feature requests

[Jerome Shidel]

What you suggest is/was contrary to the stated  design goals for the normal 
operation of the installer. 

But... 

The installer does show and permit changing the target drive and directory 
along with many other options. However, you must put (or launch) the installer 
in advanced mode to be able to change those and some other settings.

It just does not do that by default.

> On Mar 23, 2020, at 5:35 PM, Thomas Mueller  wrote:
> 
> Just the subject line made me immediately think of one deficiency I met with 
> FreeDOS 1.3rc2.
> 
> Installation program needs to allow the user to see where the new FreeDOS 
> will be installed to, and to give the user choice of where to install to.
> 
> I had a scary experience installing FreeDOS 1.3rc2.
> 
> 
> Tom
> 
> 
> 
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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS wishlist and feature requests

[Thomas Mueller]

Just the subject line made me immediately think of one deficiency I met with 
FreeDOS 1.3rc2.

Installation program needs to allow the user to see where the new FreeDOS will 
be installed to, and to give the user choice of where to install to.

I had a scary experience installing FreeDOS 1.3rc2.


Tom



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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS wishlist and feature requests

[michael]

> I expect the GUI part and the machine part to communicate
> over a network, so I hope the GUI is much less hardware
> specific. Yet you say ReactOS is no option even there?
> You seem to be closely watching the ReactOS progress.
> Eric
> 

The Tyco QSP-2 does not use a network like one would typically 
expect between the real time head and the gui head.  It uses a 
proprietary ISA memory card that exists in both heads and sadly 
there are ribbon cables that run from the back of one case to 
the back of the other.  A Cat5 network cable between two network 
cards would be much better, but that's not how Tyco engineered 
their system.  50 wire ribbon cables.  This wasn't the right way 
to do this even twenty years ago.  Even a low voltage differential 
scsi cable would be better than two proprietary 50 wire cables...  
There is a tied reset button between the two heads as well, don't 
ask.  I find the tied reset buttons to be especially obnoxious 
and wrong headed, but that's how the system was designed and 
fighting it is both time consuming and pointless.

Yes, ReactOS will eventually (sooner than later I hope)
be a realistic option on an NT based PPM QSP-2.  ReactOS
will not work on a Tyco QSP-2 because of HAL.  Q-Soft 
written by Tyco goes to an ISA shared memory card directly 
without going through a driver.  In Windows 9x, you can do 
this.  In Windows XP, HAL does not allow this kind of 
access.  XP is more secure than Windows 98se and HAL is 
a good thing, but without source code to Tyco's Q-Soft 
it will be hard to impossible to rework Q-Soft so that it 
will function fully in an NT environment.  PPM owns the
Tyco QSP-2 and the proprietary software it uses where I
doubt that PPM is willing to release the source code to
the original Q-Soft for a reasonable price if any.

You are correct that the heavily ISA hardware side of a Tyco 
QSP-2 is getting harder to repair and/or replace these days.  
The Tyco machine my brother has is currently working, he 
actually has hardware that works without having to 
resort to total and crazy re-engineering.  If he needs a 
second machine though or if it becomes impractical to keep 
the Tyco going because a part that fails is say too 
expensive to repair or replace...  you get the idea.  Even 
if he gets a PPM QSP-2 in the future, he would be well 
served to replace Windows 7 with something that is open 
and that will not reach end of life or become unlicensed 
because Microsoft is convinced that everyone can replace 
their OS and their computer for that matter every three 
years.

If a computer runs a piece of equipment that is say $3k,
buy the comparable piece of equipment with the new OS that
is close to the same price.  However, if your piece of equipment
is worth $30k-$100k or more and comparable machines cost all of
that, and replacing the computer alone involves expensive and
difficult re-engineering, you can't just replace at that point.

If you can for a reasonable cost repair the machine, you do.
If you can't repair and replacements aren't available, that's
not good for business and getting stuff done.  A business can
fail because a company cannot repair/replace their capital
equipment.  Obviously, I don't want my brother's business to 
fail.  Fixing this 20 year old machine till it works has been
a painfully long and painfully expensive process, his focus 
now is understandably getting a circuit into production so 
he can recoup the repair costs and then some.  When he is
solidly in the black, he can buy a second machine or replace
the unit he has depending on what he needs and what the 
condition of this machine is in the future.  I hope and pray
that nothing breaks between now and say 2-3 years from now.

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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS wishlist and feature requests

[Mercury Thirteen via Freedos-user]

I think I see what happened here.

Back when Eric originally posted that here was a new version, I built it and 
posted it here. Today, I assumed (mistakenly) the author had made no changes in 
the mean time, so I downloaded his current source and packaged it with the 
binary I built a week (or whatever) ago. Oops.

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‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐
On Monday, March 23, 2020 5:06 PM, Mateusz Viste mate...@viste.fr wrote:

> On 23/03/2020 21:47, Mercury Thirteen via Freedos-user wrote:
>
>> I noticed that, but the driver itself reports it is 3.34.
>
> In the source code I have seen "3.35", though:
> VERSIONSTR equ <'3.35'>
> DRIVER_VER equ 300h+35
>
>> have two 3.34 versions: one from 2015 and one from 2020. The new 2020
>> version should have been bumped to 3.35, but it was kept at 3.34 for
>> some reason.
>
> Probably because Japheth did not work on the 2015 version, but forked
> off an older version, meaning his version is not an incremental update
> of the 2015 3.34... So there are effectively two different branches now.
> Mateusz
>
>> ‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐
>> On Monday, March 23, 2020 4:40 PM, Mateusz Viste mate...@viste.fr
>> mailto:mate...@viste.fr wrote:
>>
>> On 23/03/2020 21:30, Mercury Thirteen via Freedos-user wrote:
>>
>> Also, the packaged version of HIMEMX is done and can be found here
>> http://mercurycoding.com/downloads/DOS/HIMEMX.zip. Hopefully I
>> didn't
>> miss anything!
>>
>> There is a version mismatch between the lsm (3.34) and the actual driver
>> (3.35).
>> Mateusz
>> Freedos-user mailing list
>> Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
>> 
>> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
>>
>> Freedos-user mailing list
>> Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
>> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
>
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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS wishlist and feature requests

[Mateusz Viste]

On 23/03/2020 21:47, Mercury Thirteen via Freedos-user wrote:

I noticed that, but the driver itself reports it is 3.34.


In the source code I have seen "3.35", though:

VERSIONSTR  equ <'3.35'>
DRIVER_VER  equ 300h+35

have two 3.34 versions: one from 2015 and one from 2020. The new 2020 
version should have been bumped to 3.35, but it was kept at 3.34 for 
some reason.


Probably because Japheth did not work on the 2015 version, but forked 
off an older version, meaning his version is not an incremental update 
of the 2015 3.34... So there are effectively two different branches now.


Mateusz





‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐
On Monday, March 23, 2020 4:40 PM, Mateusz Viste mate...@viste.fr 
 wrote:


On 23/03/2020 21:30, Mercury Thirteen via Freedos-user wrote:

Also, the packaged version of HIMEMX is done and can be found here
http://mercurycoding.com/downloads/DOS/HIMEMX.zip. Hopefully I
didn't
miss anything!

There is a version mismatch between the lsm (3.34) and the actual driver
(3.35).
Mateusz
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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS wishlist and feature requests

[Eric Auer]

> I noticed that, but the driver itself reports it is 3.34. Basically
> we have two 3.34 versions: one from 2015 and one from 2020. The new
> 2020 version should have been bumped to 3.35, but it was kept at 3.34
> for some reason. Yay, clarity! lol
> 
> It seems the 3.35 version mentioned in readme.txt hasn't been
> released yet.

Correct, but then there has to be more testing first anyway ;-)
Which I think would be easier with a nice package available...



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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS wishlist and feature requests

[Mercury Thirteen via Freedos-user]

I noticed that, but the driver itself reports it is 3.34. Basically we have two 
3.34 versions: one from 2015 and one from 2020. The new 2020 version should 
have been bumped to 3.35, but it was kept at 3.34 for some reason. Yay, 
clarity! lol

It seems the 3.35 version mentioned in readme.txt hasn't been released yet.

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‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐
On Monday, March 23, 2020 4:40 PM, Mateusz Viste mate...@viste.fr wrote:

> On 23/03/2020 21:30, Mercury Thirteen via Freedos-user wrote:
>
>> Also, the packaged version of HIMEMX is done and can be found here
>> http://mercurycoding.com/downloads/DOS/HIMEMX.zip. Hopefully I didn't
>> miss anything!
>
> There is a version mismatch between the lsm (3.34) and the actual driver
> (3.35).
> Mateusz
> Freedos-user mailing list
> Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user___
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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS wishlist and feature requests

[Mateusz Viste]

On 23/03/2020 21:30, Mercury Thirteen via Freedos-user wrote:
Also, the packaged version of HIMEMX is done and can be found here 
. Hopefully I didn't 
miss anything!


There is a version mismatch between the lsm (3.34) and the actual driver 
(3.35).


Mateusz


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[Freedos-user] Freedos 1.3 on a zip disk...

[michael]

I set up a bootable image of Freedos 1.3 on a zip 750mb disk!

I did so by copying the FDOS directory without copying the packages directory.

Interestingly, I have fdnpkg.exe on the zip disk.

Of course fdnpkg.exe checkupdates doesn't work right if there is no packages 
directory.

It would be nice to be able to identify installed programs that were not 
installed by package and install the package over them.

If there's no package for a program that is installed, it would be nice to be 
able to identify it for removal.

This is sort of the reverse of package management. Tell me what's on the system 
that was not put there by package management, find
out if there's a package for it, install the package over it, and flag anything 
that's left in any directory except perhaps for stuff under
directory foo. In my case foo is a directory called XP_PIECES. A poor name 
choice as there is stuff for Windows 98 and Freedos as
well in there.

This reverse package management doesn't really really exist in Linux either :-( 
For anyone who has installed a program to Linux using
a tarball instead of an rpm or deb (not Slackware ;-)), you understand what I"m 
talking about.

 -- Michael C. Robinson
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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS wishlist and feature requests

[Mercury Thirteen via Freedos-user]

Thank you! This explains why my searching got me nowhere lol

Also, the packaged version of HIMEMX is done and can be found 
[here](http://mercurycoding.com/downloads/DOS/HIMEMX.zip). Hopefully I didn't 
miss anything!

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‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐
On Monday, March 23, 2020 4:21 PM, Eric Auer e.a...@jpberlin.de wrote:

> Hi Mercury,
>
>> Where would one find the most recent UHDD sources?
>
> They can be found in
>
>> ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/dos/cdrom/uide/drivers-2019-03-31.zip
>
> which alas is a VERY generic name to google for...
> The zip contains:
> readme.txt, uhdd.asm and uhdd sys 2019-04-02
> cc, rdisk, rdiskon, udvd2, uide,
> xmgr all asm & sys 2015-03-05.
> As far as I remember, a 2017-10-30 update of xmgr
> should be available - somewhere else on ibiblio.
> Also, separate uide and udvd2 packages should be
> in the FreeDOS 1.3 repositories already, but have
> a look whether they are up to date.
> udvd2 is a driver for SATA and ATAPI CD/DVD drives
> uhdd is a disk cache and UDMA driver
> uide combines basic features of udvd2 and uhdd for
> those who want to create very small boot disks.
> rdisk is a FAT16 ramdisk (2 MB to 2 GB size)
> xmgr is a himem style memory manager
> Unlike most CD/DVD drivers which need special CD
> caches such as cdrcache, udvd2 can automatically
> use the cache provided by uhdd if both are used.
> Note that the readme describes ALL drivers, so you
> could put copies in each package. Having separate
> packages helps users to find and install individual
> components, whereas the "drivers.zip" is something
> only insiders would suspect to contain all this ;-)
> Regards, Eric
> Freedos-user mailing list
> Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user___
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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS wishlist and feature requests

[Eric Auer]

Hi Michael,

I see what a SMD pick and place machine does, yes :-)

So basically there are two apps, one for DOS and one
for Windows, and you would prefer them to run on some
still supported DOS and Windows (or Wine). What are
the issues with this at the moment? I do not expect
you to have Q-Soft sources, so porting would not be
an option, only making FreeDOS and Wine or ReactOS
more compatible to Q-Soft.

Even then it will be tricky to replace broken hardware
in the machine itself, as you say it is very ISA oriented.

You could allegedly use a virtual machine to redirect
I/O to something PCI, but that would be less real-time
to say the least.

I expect the GUI part and the machine part to communicate
over a network, so I hope the GUI is much less hardware
specific. Yet you say ReactOS is no option even there?
You seem to be closely watching the ReactOS progress.
Eric




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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS wishlist and feature requests

[Eric Auer]

Hi Mercury,

> Where would one find the most recent UHDD sources?

They can be found in

> ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/dos/cdrom/uide/drivers-2019-03-31.zip

which alas is a VERY generic name to google for...

The zip contains:

readme.txt, uhdd.asm and uhdd sys 2019-04-02

cc, rdisk, rdiskon, udvd2, uide,
xmgr all asm & sys 2015-03-05.

As far as I remember, a 2017-10-30 update of xmgr
should be available - somewhere else on ibiblio.

Also, separate uide and udvd2 packages should be
in the FreeDOS 1.3 repositories already, but have
a look whether they are up to date.

udvd2 is a driver for SATA and ATAPI CD/DVD drives
uhdd is a disk cache and UDMA driver

uide combines basic features of udvd2 and uhdd for
those who want to create very small boot disks.

rdisk is a FAT16 ramdisk (2 MB to 2 GB size)

xmgr is a himem style memory manager

Unlike most CD/DVD drivers which need special CD
caches such as cdrcache, udvd2 can automatically
use the cache provided by uhdd if both are used.

Note that the readme describes ALL drivers, so you
could put copies in each package. Having separate
packages helps users to find and install individual
components, whereas the "drivers.zip" is something
only insiders would suspect to contain all this ;-)

Regards, Eric



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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS wishlist and feature requests

[michael]

Q-Soft originally created by Tyco is a real time system targeted at MS-DOS and 
a GUI system targeted at Windows 98SE/Windows Millenium.

PPM owns Q-Soft now and has a Windows 7 replacement and a completely reworked 
pick and place machine.

If you know what surface mount electronics are you are well on your way to 
understanding what the Quad QSP-2 is.

The Tyco machine is 20 year old technology, but the system is worth $30k+.  Why 
are there two computers?  Windows 98 
is not a real time system and the Tyco real time head uses a ton of ISA cards.  
Getting SBCs, industrial single board
computers, that are 20 years old and in good working condition is neither easy 
nor cheap these days.  Supporting 
Windows 98se which is abandonware is not easy, and no you can't get the source 
for 98se nor can you use it without a 
key.  MSDOS 6.22 is closed source, not supported, and you are supposed to use a 
licensed copy even though you cannot
buy one anymore.  Microsoft could come after you for using MS-DOS that you 
didn't purchase from them, same for Windows
98SE.

If you have a broken down Tyco QSP-2 and you are rich, go ahead and buy PPM's 
QSP-2.  Thing is, I'm not that impressed 
with PPM's system and I'm not happy with Windows 7.  It's a decent system, but 
I'd rather run ReactOS when it stabilizes.

ReactOS by the way is of no value if you are trying to fix a Tyco QSP-2 and it 
is stalled in development at the moment.
They have 16 or more major blockers to the next release where the next release 
isn't even a beta.  They are hurting
in the area of programming a new memory manager.  Their memory manager must be 
completely rewritten and replaced.  Few
programmers can do this and even fewer of the ones who can if any are working 
on ReactOS.  ReactOS 0.4.13 is heavily delayed, and it's not even going to be a 
beta that is suitable for everyday use, let alone a pounded out gold release.
Freedos could replace MS-DOS for the real time side of a Tyco QSP-2 but without 
hacking, an NT style Windows will never
replace the GUI side of a Tyco QSP-2.

ReactOS was Freewin95 at first, but when Microsoft abandoned dos based Windows, 
the ReactOS project did as well.
There are probably more systems than just the Tyco QSP-2 that rely on Windows 
9x and MSDOS that are not cheap systems
where you cannot simply drop in NT without heavily re-engineering the system.

 Michael Robinson


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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS wishlist and feature requests

[Eric Auer]

Hi Michael, long mail ahead ;-)

Please do not mix long file names and FAT32: The former can
even be used on FAT12 floppy. In FreeDOS, you have to load
a LFN driver TSR to use it, but I think most of command.com
already is LFN-aware. You may have to set some shell options
in your startup files (config, autoexec).

The question is which other apps need LFN support: As mentioned
earlier, it would be possible to create a TSR (similar to SETVER
in MS DOS) which knows which apps are LFN-aware and replaced LFN
file and directory names in command line options by their short
counterparts in the background for everything else. See that
bunnyhop "c:\forest level\" fictional old game example :-)

In which situations is FAT32 not stable? And which tools lack
support for it yet? You probably know my point of view regarding
CHKDSK: Because FAT32 partitions have way more metadata, CHKDSK
(8086 compatible) did not get support for it, but you can use
DOSFSCK (ported from Linux, needs 386 and enough free RAM) to
check your FAT32 partitions. For defrag, I believe there were
some initial steps towards FAT32 support, but it was long ago.

Of course dosfsck does not look like scandisk, if style matters.
The look and feel libraries of defrag or edit could be used, or
probably something again ported from Linux, to stay in 32 bit C.

Which other disk tools need more FAT32 support?

> Highest priority is memory management

In which sense?

> followed by FAT32 support improvements

See above.

> and then improvements to out of the box tools for everything
> from filesystem tools to something like what MSD provided.

Let us know how you like hwinfo, nssi and informer :-)
Which other tools should be improved (or added)?

> Anti virus is very important, maybe some improvements
> to clamav are in order.

While it would be possible to port a newer clamav version to
DOS, it is horribly bloated even on more powerful systems. My
assumption is that new viruses for DOS are rare, so I would
prefer something stripped down towards that virus ecosystem.

You may also want to have a look at my old FDSHIELD which is
vaguely similar to VSAFE but does not try to detect specific
virus "brands" at all: It just detects, blocks and alerts on
generic virus like activity, with simple command line options.

> A stretch goal is to make Freedos Windows compatible, at
> least 3.1 and 3.11.  To a certain degree 3.1 works now, but 
> does enhanced mode work and could 3.1 / 3.11 be replaced by
> an open source alternative on top of Freedos?

I remember that you needed a lot of creativity to make Windows
3.1 386enh mode or Windows for Workgroups 3.11 in normal, non-
safe mode work on FreeDOS, but I think some people did get it
to work. Also, when you run Windows in FreeDOS in for example
DOSEMU, the improved DPMI host of DOSEMU helps you. That said,
you could try using DPMIONE, HDPMI or similar on raw hardware
and maybe use 386SWAT to debug problems ;-)

Regarding your other question: The standard answer is ReactOS
which originally was meant to be a Windows NT (in 1996 started
even as FreeWin95) alternative and actually did get updates in
2019 and now supports a few popular Linux filesystems, too. A
common platform are virtual computers, but by now it should be
working on reasonably widespread real hardware and apparently
it is realistic enough to let MS Office 2010 run? Parts of the
code co-evolve with Wine, but to be honest, if you want to use
Windows software on a modern PC, Wine in Linux will often be
sufficient anyway. ReactOS needs 96 and recommends 256 MB RAM,
according to Wikipedia.

Another way to run Windows software in DOS is Japeth's HX RT,
which you could compare to an extremely extended DPMI extender
including implementations of many popular Windows API calls:

> https://www.japheth.de/HX.html

> https://www.japheth.de/dwnload4.html

This lets you run non-fancy Windows programs directly from the
DOS prompt, for example compilers (non-graphical) or graphical
apps which only use SDL or similar very compatible frameworks,
such as QEMU or DOSBOX. Run virtual PC & DOS inside DOS! :-)

Note that only half a dozen of the most basic Windows DLL are
emulated, so do not expect to run Chrome on DOS with HX GUI.

>  I really like FLTK for example and seem to be remember a
> freedos spin that used FLTK to provide a gui.

Yes, that was a very nice project by Georg Potthast :-)

> https://code.google.com/archive/p/nanox-microwindows-nxlib-fltk-for-dos/downloads

> https://sourceforge.net/projects/fltk-dos/

It has a desktop with icons and Win95 style start menu, the
Dillo web browser, FlWriter text editor, FlMail client, the
sprsht spreadsheet and other things.

>  The system was roughly comparable to Windows 3.1.

Not really.

> I'll port Tyco's Q-Soft to Freedos for the real
> time system and Linux for the gui ;-)  Maybe I
> can run the program in Linux using WINE...

What is Q-Soft, which OS does it run on and why
would you port 1 half to DOS and 1 half to 

Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS wishlist and feature requests

[Mercury Thirteen via Freedos-user]

Where would one find the most recent UHDD sources?

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‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐
On Monday, March 23, 2020 2:33 PM, Eric Auer e.a...@jpberlin.de wrote:

> Hi Mercury,
>
>> "Creating packages for FreeDOS software that are not packaged yet."
>> ... any "top requests" as it were?
>
> If you ask me: UHDD (only UIDE and UDVD2 listed yet?) and the
> new HIMEMX version by Japheth, as discussed here recently :-)
> HIMEMX should get some tests in particular by users of either
> ancient or very modern computers and that would get easier if
> a package would be available :-) Background: Japheth has added
> his own advanced parsing for int 15.e820 results (different
> from the old Pemberton fork) and uses a special sequence of
> "mov cr0,eax; jz $ + 2", maybe for CPU compatibility reasons.
> Japheth drops int 15.8a calls: Very few old computers worked
> better with those calls, but the Pemberton fork failed to do
> sufficient checks whether the call actually is supported, so
> that forked version was worse for various modern computers.
> Thank you :-) Eric
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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS wishlist and feature requests

[michael]

Hello:

I seem to recall that long filename support could use some work and out of the 
box Freedos doesn't support them.

As far as memory management, any improvements in that area are highly welcome 
as that is probably the most important
foundational improvement that could be made.

FAT32 support puts freedos above MS-DOS 6.22.  There could be some improvement 
though.  Long filename support needs 
to be stable, but this isn't what I would call a highest priority issue.  There 
is a lot of work making FAT32 more
stable and making sure everything from checkdisk to defrag works with Fat32 
volumes.  A scandisk clone would be nice.

Highest priority is memory management followed by FAT32 support improvements 
and then improvements to out of the box
tools for everything from filesystem tools to something like what MSD provided. 
 And yes, I'm meaning to check out 
hwinfo.  Anti virus is very important, maybe some improvements to clamav are in 
order.

A stretch goal is to make Freedos Windows compatible, at least 3.1 and 3.11.  
To a certain degree 3.1 works now, but 
does enhanced mode work and could 3.1/3.11 be replaced by an open source 
alternative on top of Freedos?  I really like
FLTK for example and seem to be remember a freedos spin that used FLTK to 
provide a gui.  The system was roughly comparable to Windows 3.1.

Given I have the time and the necessary info, I'll port Tyco's Q-Soft to 
Freedos for the real time system and Linux 
for the gui ;-)  Maybe I can run the program in Linux using WINE, worth a try 
at least.

It would be awesome if open source modern video support existed so you can do 
higher resolution in say FLTK 
or Windows 3.x.  Start with PCI and then move on to PCI express.

A revival of the open source implementation of the IPX protocol would be 
awesome.  It would make a lot of old dos games work and an IPX/IP gateway could 
be a Linux server where the Linux server could handle security (anti virus 
squid proxy anyone).

 -- Michael C. Robinson

March 23, 2020 1:33 PM, "Eric Auer"  wrote:

> Hi Mercury,
> 
>> "Creating packages for FreeDOS software that are not packaged yet."
>> 
>> ... any "top requests" as it were?
> 
> If you ask me: UHDD (only UIDE and UDVD2 listed yet?) and the
> new HIMEMX version by Japheth, as discussed here recently :-)
> 
> HIMEMX should get some tests in particular by users of either
> ancient or very modern computers and that would get easier if
> a package would be available :-) Background: Japheth has added
> his own advanced parsing for int 15.e820 results (different
> from the old Pemberton fork) and uses a special sequence of
> "mov cr0,eax; jz $ + 2", maybe for CPU compatibility reasons.
> 
> Japheth drops int 15.8a calls: Very few old computers worked
> better with those calls, but the Pemberton fork failed to do
> sufficient checks whether the call actually is supported, so
> that forked version was worse for various modern computers.
> 
> Thank you :-) Eric
> 
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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS wishlist and feature requests

[Mercury Thirteen via Freedos-user]

Cool, thanks for the info!

Not that I'm promising anything given my schedule, but maybe I'll be able to 
throw something together in my limited spare time. Shouldn't be too hard to get 
the others together since I already built HIMEMX from Japheth's new sources.

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‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐
On Monday, March 23, 2020 2:33 PM, Eric Auer e.a...@jpberlin.de wrote:

> Hi Mercury,
>
>> "Creating packages for FreeDOS software that are not packaged yet."
>> ... any "top requests" as it were?
>
> If you ask me: UHDD (only UIDE and UDVD2 listed yet?) and the
> new HIMEMX version by Japheth, as discussed here recently :-)
> HIMEMX should get some tests in particular by users of either
> ancient or very modern computers and that would get easier if
> a package would be available :-) Background: Japheth has added
> his own advanced parsing for int 15.e820 results (different
> from the old Pemberton fork) and uses a special sequence of
> "mov cr0,eax; jz $ + 2", maybe for CPU compatibility reasons.
> Japheth drops int 15.8a calls: Very few old computers worked
> better with those calls, but the Pemberton fork failed to do
> sufficient checks whether the call actually is supported, so
> that forked version was worse for various modern computers.
> Thank you :-) Eric
> Freedos-user mailing list
> Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user___
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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS wishlist and feature requests

[Eric Auer]

Hi Mercury,

> "Creating packages for FreeDOS software that are not packaged yet."
> 
> ... any "top requests" as it were?

If you ask me: UHDD (only UIDE and UDVD2 listed yet?) and the
new HIMEMX version by Japheth, as discussed here recently :-)

HIMEMX should get some tests in particular by users of either
ancient or very modern computers and that would get easier if
a package would be available :-) Background: Japheth has added
his own advanced parsing for int 15.e820 results (different
from the old Pemberton fork) and uses a special sequence of
"mov cr0,eax; jz $ + 2", maybe for CPU compatibility reasons.

Japheth drops int 15.8a calls: Very few old computers worked
better with those calls, but the Pemberton fork failed to do
sufficient checks whether the call actually is supported, so
that forked version was worse for various modern computers.

Thank you :-) Eric



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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS wishlist and feature requests

[Mercury Thirteen via Freedos-user]

Point #2 on the wishlist states:

"Creating packages for FreeDOS software that are not packaged yet."

Do we have a list of this software, partial or otherwise? Or any "top requests" 
as it were?

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‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐
On Monday, March 23, 2020 9:31 AM, Eric Auer e.a...@jpberlin.de wrote:

> Hi everybody, it seems that
> https://sourceforge.net/p/freedos/feature-requests/
> has not been updated for a while: A few wishes seem
> to no longer apply or would be easy to cover with
> current distros.
> On the other hand, the wishlist still is a classic ;-)
>
>> http://wiki.freedos.org/wiki/index.php/(Free)DOS_development_wishlist
>
> Regards, Eric
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[Freedos-user] FreeDOS wishlist and feature requests

[Eric Auer]

Hi everybody, it seems that

https://sourceforge.net/p/freedos/feature-requests/

has not been updated for a while: A few wishes seem
to no longer apply or would be easy to cover with
current distros.

On the other hand, the wishlist still is a classic ;-)

> http://wiki.freedos.org/wiki/index.php/(Free)DOS_development_wishlist

Regards, Eric



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Re: [Freedos-user] Freedos 1.3 RC2...

[Rugxulo]

Hi,

On Sun, Mar 22, 2020 at 5:46 PM Eric Auer  wrote:
>
> what are the pros and cons of Links2, Dillo, Dillo Plus?

Links2 is much newer, so presumably (main version, not "lite") has
better SSL and graphics mode support. Probably much faster, too.


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