Re: [Freedos-user] Is Windows 3.1 worth it and wordprocessing?
There's several editors with source, and several more that are still being supported (qedit and vedit for 2) any number of the source ones could easily be taken and included into freedos. One I particularly liked was called Great Little Word Processor (glwp) and came with pascal source. It was written in turbo pascal 3.0, and I make a couple half-hearted attempts from time to time to get it ported to pascal 4+, but never invested any real effort in the process. However, if this could be done, it might make a nice starting point for a wordstar compatible editor to be included with freedos. I suppose I could dig out my copy and begin anew the hacking process to see if I can get it to compile under fpc, this would make it usable on all sorts of operating systems, not just freedos. -- This SF.net email is sponsored by: High Quality Requirements in a Collaborative Environment. Download a free trial of Rational Requirements Composer Now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/www-ibm-com ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] was: Windows 3.1 - Pending kernel patches 2037/2038
Christian Masloch schreef: Since disassembling MS-DOS is considered legal by UDOS and RBIL authors (and these sources are considered legal by all members of the FreeDOS project) I think there's no problem using some DLL examination tool. Regards, Christian I hope you have heared about the term clean room implementation where one team does the research and writes a specification, and another team writes an implementation based on the specification. That way you never violate anyone's copyright, patents etc. Reverse engineering is considered illegal in many countries (DMCA anyone, US folks?). I assume RBIL forms the specification of interfaces, upon which you can build an implementation if you want. Any claim (even without proof) by anyone that FreeDOS is based on infringing Microsoft copyrights can be enough to shut down this entire project, so please keep away from it. ReactOS has had a huge audit because of these copyright infringement claims (which were false, but enough verbosity to taint the project in online media occasionally). I guess the only allowed tools are debuggers for virtual machines, and general debuggers like SoftIce, just to see how software *interacts* with Microsoft copyrighted products. As for running Windows 3.1 on FreeDOS, it's possible. Jeremy Davis managed to do so once a few years ago. Seems like his FDOS.ORG website has expired by now though. Requirements: * kernel 2037, specific compiled flavour of it though * Share, specific compiled flavour. Not sure if it's the FreeDOS one, or the one by Michael Devore, or Japheth, or whoever. * MS memory drivers I think (HIMEM) * FAT16 Your best best would be a MSDOS 6.22 system (only FAT16 support) with Windows 3.1, then add FreeDOS to it (KERNEL, SHARE). Not quite sure if 386-enhanced mode worked, or only standard mode. Speaking of ReactOS, I think they have dropped their 486-compatibility, but still that OS should work on anything which is i80586-compatible (or newer/later). Recent fixes have brought the memory consumption back to about 32MB. -- This SF.net email is sponsored by: High Quality Requirements in a Collaborative Environment. Download a free trial of Rational Requirements Composer Now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/www-ibm-com ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] was: Windows 3.1 - Pending kernel patches 2037/2038
Bernd Blaauw wrote: Christian Masloch schreef: Since disassembling MS-DOS is considered legal by UDOS and RBIL authors (and these sources are considered legal by all members of the FreeDOS project) I think there's no problem using some DLL examination tool. Regards, Christian I hope you have heared about the term clean room implementation where one team does the research and writes a specification, and another team writes an implementation based on the specification. That way you never violate anyone's copyright, patents etc. Reverse engineering is considered illegal in many countries (DMCA anyone, US folks?). I assume RBIL forms the specification of interfaces, upon which you can build an implementation if you want. I'm not talking about disassembling the code. I talking about finding out what the methods are. Visual Studio does it to do intellisence etc. And I believe the tool was provided by Visual C++ 6. I don't want the code for the functions/methods. Just what methods there are and what the parameters are. I can write the internal code myself. I guess the only allowed tools are debuggers for virtual machines, and general debuggers like SoftIce, just to see how software *interacts* with Microsoft copyrighted products. As for running Windows 3.1 on FreeDOS, it's possible. Jeremy Davis managed to do so once a few years ago. Seems like his FDOS.ORG website has expired by now though. Requirements: * kernel 2037, specific compiled flavour of it though * Share, specific compiled flavour. Not sure if it's the FreeDOS one, or the one by Michael Devore, or Japheth, or whoever. * MS memory drivers I think (HIMEM) * FAT16 I would prefer to keep the environments separate. For comparisons etc. I have already gotten the dual boot MSDOS\FreeDos working (just looking on a linux desktop that the laptop will run) Speaking of ReactOS, I think they have dropped their 486-compatibility, but still that OS should work on anything which is i80586-compatible (or newer/later). Recent fixes have brought the memory consumption back to about 32MB. I am hoping that the 486 16bit code will be available in older versions of the source code. I am thinking though it it may be easier to make a 32 bit app that looks like Win 3.x that can run 16 and 32 bit applications. Than to make a complete clone. -- This SF.net email is sponsored by: High Quality Requirements in a Collaborative Environment. Download a free trial of Rational Requirements Composer Now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/www-ibm-com ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] FDUPDATEing 1.0?
Is it still possible to use FDUPDATE on FreeDOS 1.0 or to upgrade 1.0 to 1.1? I think FDUPDATE detects when you're running 1.0 and won't update, but I'm not sure how it does this. -maybeway36 -- This SF.net email is sponsored by: High Quality Requirements in a Collaborative Environment. Download a free trial of Rational Requirements Composer Now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/www-ibm-com ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] was: Windows 3.1 - Pending kernel patches 2037/2038
On Apr 13, 2009, at 11:29 AM, Adam Norton wrote: Also I remember from my pre dot net days using a program which would inspect a dll and identify all the public methods/functions that it has. Would this be considered legal? If so anyone remember what that program is/was? I used it at a client site to integrate with a 3rd party DLL and application. Any thoughts, advice, windows 3.1 programming SDK, documentation would most helpful. If you aren't opposed to spend a little money, you can go to http://www.powerbasic.com. They still sell (and support) a 16-bit version of their powerbasic for windows, that works with windows 3.x. It also has a program that does what you ask for in identifying all the functions of a dll (at least the ones that can be called by other programs) I don't have my pc in front of me (on the macbook at the moment) so can't get it's exact name, but it works fairly well. I don't remember how much the 16-bit windows version is, (they call it pb/dll or something similar) but I do own a copy, and would be happy to help however I can when you get into working on this clone. (perhaps starting with gem and adding winapis to it would be easier, that way it could run both win and gem programss, but it may be more trouble than it's worth, no idea how much trouble something like that would actually be. -- This SF.net email is sponsored by: High Quality Requirements in a Collaborative Environment. Download a free trial of Rational Requirements Composer Now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/www-ibm-com ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
