[Freedos-user] New FreeDOSers Bi-monthly Reminder
/* This is an automated message sent out on the 1st of each month. It is automagically downloaded from http://www.freedos.org/freedos/lists/remind.txt */ MONTHLY REMINDER FOR THE FREEDOS MAILING LIST Hi! If you are a new reader of freedos-devel (or the other FreeDOS lists) then, welcome! If you have already been a list member for some time, then you can skip this as you probably are familiar with its content anyway. We have only a few rules for posting to the FreeDOS Mailing list: 1. Please don't swear. We don't want this mailing list to become what USENET usually is. 2. Don't post off-topic. Remember, we set up this mailing list to discuss FreeDOS issues. 3. No flame wars. If you feel really strongly against what someone has said, send a private email. It would also be nice to send only plain text email messages, rather than messages formatted in html or MIME encapsulation. This makes it easier for everyone to read your posts. Above all, html files are real killers for those who read with speech. Also provide a bit of context for your reply. Don't be afraid to cite the text or conversation you are replying to. At the same time, you should be careful not to cite the whole conversation - just the relavent bits. The FreeDOS Project aims to create a free implementation of MS-DOS. DOS is a popular system, and there is plenty of hardware out there that supports DOS. The official home of the FreeDOS Project is: http://www.freedos.org Visit the FreeDOS Documentation Project (FD-DOC) at fd-doc.sourceforge.net to learn how to use FreeDOS. Would you like to contribute to the FreeDOS Project? Jim Hall has started a Contribution HOWTO, as a place to start. Look for it at the FD-DOC web site. Report problems to the bug database at http://www.freedos.org/bugs. Many programs have already been written for the FreeDOS Project. You can see which ones by looking at the Maintainers List, which is at http://www.freedos.org/freedos/software. The Base list shows the FreeDOS programs that reproduce the functionality of MS-DOS. Yes, some still need to be written. If you would like to find some of the other web sites that apply to FreeDOS, you may want to check out the FreeDOS web ring at http://www.freedos.org/freedos/webring. Thanks for taking an interest in FreeDOS! --- -jh --- SF.Net email is sponsored by: Discover Easy Linux Migration Strategies from IBM. Find simple to follow Roadmaps, straightforward articles, informative Webcasts and more! Get everything you need to get up to speed, fast. http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=7477alloc_id=16492op=click ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] BIOS, SCSI, 8Gb and TUNS
At 01:08 AM 7/31/2005 +0100, Gerry Hickman wrote: Oh good grief. EMM386 doesn't have the code or capability to mess with disk partitions. Period. But if drive geometry is being misreported or misunderstood under EMM386 with VDS (which appears to be the case), then my guess is that it would be dangerous to run any kind of disk tool while the system is in that state? Even writing a file to a disk could cause corruption. In the same way that a keyboard driver could be dangerous to run with a disk tool if there were a bug in it, or if it caused a normally hidden bug in the disk tool to activate. DOS system code is wide open to corruption from any driver or application, a situation generally regarded as one of its biggest faults. Without a system which displays the symptoms -- which I don't have -- it's almost impossible for me to say what's going on. Likeliest candidate for causing the problem is that there is still a conflict with some SCSI interfaces and an active VDS (4bh) interrupt. We know that at least one SCSI spec directly conflicted with VDS. However, other candidates cannot be ruled out, or even marginalized. --- SF.Net email is sponsored by: Discover Easy Linux Migration Strategies from IBM. Find simple to follow Roadmaps, straightforward articles, informative Webcasts and more! Get everything you need to get up to speed, fast. http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=7477alloc_id=16492op=click ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] VOL Command hangs HP Pavilion with EMM386
At 03:38 AM 7/30/2005 +, Mark Bailey wrote: I see no difference at all with that version, either with the development kernel/command.com or the stable kernel/ command.com. Specifically, with device=a:\himem.exe device=a:\emm386.exe x=test memcheck vds vol c: hangs. Remove vds, it works normally. (development) Alright, one more time. I rewrote the VDS routines such that any reserved function which was unused (0, 1, 0dh-0ffh) no longer returns an error code, but simply sets carry flag and chains to old INT 4bh handler. That may get around a SCSI conflict. Or not. In addition, I cleaned up slightly naughty code which re-enabled interrupts when returning from the VDS call. Theoretically, the VDS interrupt might have been called with hardware interrupts disabled for good reason. Will these revisions change anything? Don't know, but it's the best I can do without a misbehaving machine here to test. Hopefully no new error was introduced. Those with VDS-unhappy machines will need to try it out and report back results. To test this version of EMM386, amble over to ftp.devoresoftware.com\downloads\emm386 and download emmhorse.zip. As before, unofficial release, no exterior version change, no EXE compression. --- SF.Net email is sponsored by: Discover Easy Linux Migration Strategies from IBM. Find simple to follow Roadmaps, straightforward articles, informative Webcasts and more! Get everything you need to get up to speed, fast. http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=7477alloc_id=16492op=click ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] re: More FreeDOS FDISK tests - failure is repeatable
On Sun, 31 Jul 2005 17:40:56 +0100, you wrote: Hi Gerry, GUI (the current version should be UI) Sorry, UI Never mind. Yes, I'm not against the UI, I'm just saying I've never needed it and (in my opinion) it's actually less confusing to use commands only. Because you're not novice :-) 2) Jeremy's patched 1.2.1-k, it kills two of my PC's MBR, now I've to rebuild everything from scratch Yeeeouch! I delete it immediately, horrible 3) Jeremy's 1.3.0 beta, which never runs on my PC with Error 0 reading sector 0x3f He remove the binary from his website Sorry, I should have made it clear I've only ever used 1.3.0 beta included in FreeDOS Beta9SR1. I think you'll find the 1.3.0 beta will run fine on the IBM eServer you are testing. I'm not sure your 1.3.0 beta is the same as mine or not, but I'm sure the FDISK have many hidden problems The Error 0 reading sector 0x3f, are you sure that sector is not damaged? What is the PC and drive spec? If you type FDISK /STATUS does it also give this error? No. Using FDISK 1.2.1 everything works. FDISK /STATUS only shows a bunch of message in 1.3.0 beta. Try different PC and the XEON server, same error. Rgds, Johnson. --- SF.Net email is sponsored by: Discover Easy Linux Migration Strategies from IBM. Find simple to follow Roadmaps, straightforward articles, informative Webcasts and more! Get everything you need to get up to speed, fast. http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=7477alloc_id=16492op=click ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Hard disk drivers
On Sun, 31 Jul 2005 21:40:40 +0100, you wrote: Hi, I'm currently writing a project in C using djgpp that runs in DOS and hopefully soon in FreeDOS. I notice that hard disk access is poor (noisy and frantic, as it is when booting into Windows safe mode). FreeDOS is DOS compatible, of course not 100% but most of the program works. It's because the UltraDMA mode disabled in BIOS, download UDMA2 from FreeDOS.org and try. Is disk access better under FreeDOS than MS-DOS, and are there any decent drivers or config tweaks you could point me toward, please? As a newbie, any hints and tips would be greatly appreciated. The FreeDOS kernel and command.com was smaller, and boot a lot faster than MS-DOS. The only tweak maybe in FDCONFIG.SYS (you can use CONFIG.SYS also): BUFFERS=-1 will use 6 buffers, otherwise it consume 29 buffers whatever the number is, why? Have to ask the developers ;-) Many thanks in advance, You're welcome. Rgds, Johnson. --- SF.Net email is sponsored by: Discover Easy Linux Migration Strategies from IBM. Find simple to follow Roadmaps, straightforward articles, informative Webcasts and more! Get everything you need to get up to speed, fast. http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=7477alloc_id=16492op=click ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Hard disk drivers - UltraDMA
Johnson Lam wrote: FreeDOS is DOS compatible, of course not 100% but most of the program works. Dear Johnson, Many thanks for your help. The good news is, yes, my program now runs successfully under FreeDOS. [noisy, frantic hard drive] is because the UltraDMA mode disabled in BIOS, download UDMA2 from FreeDOS.org and try. Alas, the old (pre-1997) machine I've set up with FreeDOS reports that my c:\ drive (in LBA mode) does not support ultraDMA, so udma2.sys wasn't loaded. Thanks all the same, Eric T. --- SF.Net email is sponsored by: Discover Easy Linux Migration Strategies from IBM. Find simple to follow Roadmaps, straightforward articles, informative Webcasts and more! Get everything you need to get up to speed, fast. http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=7477alloc_id=16492op=click ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Hard disk drivers
Eric T wrote: hard disk access is poor (noisy and frantic, as it is when booting into Windows safe mode). Bernd wrote: you could try how your project behaves on a ramdrive. :) Maybe selectively. Most of the output at the moment is going to a debug log file. But the project itself will use most of the available RAM on the machine. [ For what it's worth, the project is called guide (a slightly clumsy acronym for graphical user interface desktop environment). It looks like Seal has died a sad death, so I thought I'd develop my own from scratch. At the moment, I'm head-banging relatively trivial stuff like getting the system to recognize mouse events and respond to them; making sure the cursor stays in the same part of the system bar when a window's being dragged across the screen, and such.] a diskcache might work, like SMARTDRV or LBACACHE. Thanks indeed -- SMARTDRV works wonderfully. Now all I have to do is figure out how to call SMARTDRV /C when I shut down the project, from within a C program, to write to disk anything that's been cached. I've become so used to Windows and Microsoft's plonk and play software-writing packages :) Best Wishes, Eric T. --- SF.Net email is sponsored by: Discover Easy Linux Migration Strategies from IBM. Find simple to follow Roadmaps, straightforward articles, informative Webcasts and more! Get everything you need to get up to speed, fast. http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=7477alloc_id=16492op=click ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] BIOS, SCSI, 8Gb and TUNS
Hi Michael, My main point was that the FDISK bug may have been _triggered_ by EMM386 with VDS, and that if he hadn't been running EMM386 his FDISK tests would not have caused a bad partition table. You were saying this: Oh good grief. EMM386 doesn't have the code or capability to mess with disk partitions. Period. Hehe, so who knows:) Anyway, regarding the VDS and SCSI tests, I posted my findings and SysConfig earlier in this thread, and can also test the new EMM386 to see if there's any change. -- Gerry Hickman (London UK) --- SF.Net email is sponsored by: Discover Easy Linux Migration Strategies from IBM. Find simple to follow Roadmaps, straightforward articles, informative Webcasts and more! Get everything you need to get up to speed, fast. http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=7477alloc_id=16492op=click ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] EMM386 'horse' went wild
Hi, I tested EMM386 horse with VDS option, and on this system it's still total meltdown. All hard drive info misreported. Too scared to continue in case can't boot anymore. Asus A7V333 latest BIOS Adaptec 29160N SCSI host adapter with 2 x 36Gb drives FreeDOS Beta9sr1 except HIMEM64 3.10a and EMM386 horse FDISK and PQMAGIC claim there are no partitions defined and give totally crazy readings for physical disk sizes. FDCONFIG.SYS follows (look out for line wrap): ; rem FDXMS gives VDISK error on some soft reboots ; rem FDXMS gives warning about an interrupt not being supported by EMM386 ;device=special\fdxms.sys DEVICE=DRIVER\HIMEM.EXE /NOABOVE16 /X ; rem VDS option with EMM386 v2.03 corrupts everything ; rem TESTING VDS option with EMM386 horse DEVICE=TESTING\EMM386.EXE NOEMS VDS X=TEST /verbose ; rem UMBPCI found to be more stable for UMBs on every system tested ;device=other\umbpci.sys rem Load the SCSI for 29160N card, wait, we're using INT13 instead! ;device=other\aspi8u2.sys /d rem UDMA hard drives, don't have any non-SCSI drives in this system rem Why do some people run non-SCSI drives? ;DEVICE=DRIVER\UDMA2.SYS rem This is not open source! DEVICEhigh=OTHER\VIDE-CDD.SYS /D:FDCD rem This is Microsoft, yikes devicehigh=OTHER\ramdrive.sys 4096 512 1024 /e rem This is version from MSCLIENT 3.0, look out for version mismatch ;devicehigh=OTHER\ifshlp.sys rem lbacache tuns switch is needed for SCSI and UMBPCI rem but it doesn't seem to be needed on the 29360N card INSTALLhigh=DRIVER\LBACACHE.COM SHELL=COMMAND.COM A:\ /E:1024 /F /MSG /P=.\FREEDOS\FDAUTO.BAT DOSDATA=UMB DOS=high,UMB FILES=20 BUFFERS=20 LASTDRIVE=Z -- Gerry Hickman (London UK) --- SF.Net email is sponsored by: Discover Easy Linux Migration Strategies from IBM. Find simple to follow Roadmaps, straightforward articles, informative Webcasts and more! Get everything you need to get up to speed, fast. http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=7477alloc_id=16492op=click ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] VOL Command hangs HP Pavilion with EMM386
Hi Michael: No change with this version...system hangs on vol c: with VDS option, works without. Mark Bailey At 03:38 AM 7/30/2005 +, Mark Bailey wrote: I see no difference at all with that version, either with the development kernel/command.com or the stable kernel/ command.com. Specifically, with device=a:\himem.exe device=a:\emm386.exe x=test memcheck vds vol c: hangs. Remove vds, it works normally. (development) Alright, one more time. I rewrote the VDS routines such that any reserved function which was unused (0, 1, 0dh-0ffh) no longer returns an error code, but simply sets carry flag and chains to old INT 4bh handler. That may get around a SCSI conflict. Or not. In addition, I cleaned up slightly naughty code which re-enabled interrupts when returning from the VDS call. Theoretically, the VDS interrupt might have been called with hardware interrupts disabled for good reason. Will these revisions change anything? Don't know, but it's the best I can do without a misbehaving machine here to test. Hopefully no new error was introduced. Those with VDS-unhappy machines will need to try it out and report back results. To test this version of EMM386, amble over to ftp.devoresoftware.com\downloads\emm386 and download emmhorse.zip. As before, unofficial release, no exterior version change, no EXE compression. --- SF.Net email is sponsored by: Discover Easy Linux Migration Strategies from IBM. Find simple to follow Roadmaps, straightforward articles, informative Webcasts and more! Get everything you need to get up to speed, fast. http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=7477alloc_id=16492op=click ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user --- SF.Net email is sponsored by: Discover Easy Linux Migration Strategies from IBM. Find simple to follow Roadmaps, straightforward articles, informative Webcasts and more! Get everything you need to get up to speed, fast. http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=7477alloc_id=16492op=click ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] re: Hard disk drivers
Hi Eric, please do not use HTML mail. Use plain text instead. Thanks... I'm currently writing a project in C using djgpp that runs in DOS... hard disk access is poor (noisy and frantic, as... Windows safe mode). Then you should indeed try the UDMA2 driver (only for PCI/newer systems, and UDMA probably has to be enabled in BIOS first, not supported in SCSI). This makes reads faster and allows writes to overlap with other work. The latter can improve the felt write speed a lot. In addition, you should load a cache. Of course I recommend lbacache :-). This does not support delayed writes, but on the other hand, things are safer that way. The cache can be up to 31 MB and you can cache up to 8 harddisks, each of up to 2048 GB (!) size... It will not make a real difference to use BUFFERS=-1, this only tells Free- DOS do not use free HMA space for BUFFERS - use as few as possible buffers instead, which means slightly less overhead (because you already have lba- cache, the BUFFERs are not really needed anyway). However, unless your CPU is really slow, having the default number of BUFFERS (e.g. no setting in config sys) is always okay. Do not forget to load HIMEM and use DOS=HIGH in your config sys. Best performance is probably WITHOUT EMM386. Basically depends on the tradeoff between EMM386 gives you fast UMBs and EMM386 puts the system into protected mode and has to create a simulated real mode environment for DOS, which causes overhead. Main use of UMBs is to load TSRs and drivers high, to have more RAM free (with DOS=UMB line added to enable UMB usage). EMM386 also provides several other functions, but UMB memory is the one which has most impact on everyday apps. Of course you HAVE to use EMM386 if you have apps which require e.g. EMS memory. PS: Seal dead? Probably, but you could get the sources of the last version to revive them instead of rewriting everything, I guess... SMARTDRV /C is only needed if you enable delayed writes. If you enable them, you should set SMARTDRV to write buffers before returning to prompt. Then you are safe as soon as your project returns to the prompt. You can also invoke FDAPM FLUSH to flush a number of the more common caches like SMARTDRV. PPS: Acrobat/DOS can do PDF 1.1-almost1.2? Indeed old. But most current are 1.4 / 1.5? I do not think so. My up-to-1.3 acroread/Linux displays all files so far. Probably some companies thinking it is new so everybody must use it to force all others to use it as well, without thinking about whether 1.4 / 1.5 actually has features which are useful in that context. Eric (And try caches of 8 MB first, biggest is not automatically best... if you use SCSI and loadhigh the cache, use TUNS. You often get a small speed gain if you use TUNW (option to lbacache). Only if your CPU is really fast or you want to get more effect from even small caches, add TUNA.) --- SF.Net email is sponsored by: Discover Easy Linux Migration Strategies from IBM. Find simple to follow Roadmaps, straightforward articles, informative Webcasts and more! Get everything you need to get up to speed, fast. http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=7477alloc_id=16492op=click ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Hard disk drivers - UltraDMA
On Mon, 1 Aug 2005 18:54:24 +0100, you wrote: Hi Eric T., Many thanks for your help. The good news is, yes, my program now runs successfully under FreeDOS. Good news, hope you enjoy the feeling. Alas, the old (pre-1997) machine I've set up with FreeDOS reports that my c:\ drive (in LBA mode) does not support ultraDMA, so udma2.sys wasn't loaded. Too bad, when you got a Pentium II and a not-so-old hard disk, you'll found UDMA very helpful. Rgds, Johnson. --- SF.Net email is sponsored by: Discover Easy Linux Migration Strategies from IBM. Find simple to follow Roadmaps, straightforward articles, informative Webcasts and more! Get everything you need to get up to speed, fast. http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=7477alloc_id=16492op=click ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS FDISK 1.2.1-k not working
On Mon, 01 Aug 2005 20:01:00 +0100, you wrote: Hi Gerry, OK, I think this is where we are going wrong on this list with the testing (me included). People are posting results without locking down versioning. I mean we are all running totoally different versions and then wonder why we get different results. I'm glad this one now starts to make sense. Regarding not being able to get 1.3.0 beta, surely it's included in the official Beta9sr1 release? I got only 1 CD-Writer in my office (notebook's docking station), and it's always taken by someone. That's why I usually download updated binary separately. Anyway, congrats on your new monster FreeDOS eServer! All we need now is comments from IBM:) Thank you again. Maybe IBM didn't mind installing FreeDOS, all we lack is application. Rgds, Johnson. --- SF.Net email is sponsored by: Discover Easy Linux Migration Strategies from IBM. Find simple to follow Roadmaps, straightforward articles, informative Webcasts and more! Get everything you need to get up to speed, fast. http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=7477alloc_id=16492op=click ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] EMM386 'horse' went wild
On Mon, 01 Aug 2005 23:02:59 +0100, you wrote: Hi, My painfully research result, may help you to optimize the CONFIG.SYS: rem Why do some people run non-SCSI drives? ;DEVICE=DRIVER\UDMA2.SYS Because SCSI means expensive!! rem This is not open source! DEVICEhigh=OTHER\VIDE-CDD.SYS /D:FDCD But efficient and FREE rem This is Microsoft, yikes devicehigh=OTHER\ramdrive.sys 4096 512 1024 /e If you hate M$, try the OpenSource Resizeable RAMDISK (SRDISK) BUFFERS=20 BUFFERS=-1 Rgds, Johnson. --- SF.Net email is sponsored by: Discover Easy Linux Migration Strategies from IBM. Find simple to follow Roadmaps, straightforward articles, informative Webcasts and more! Get everything you need to get up to speed, fast. http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=7477alloc_id=16492op=click ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
