Re: [Freedos-user] LBA And FreeDOS.
It's really too bad, though, that MS won't make it official and release the MS-DOS source as public domain, or at least one of the various open-source licenses. Surely you JEST!, my friend [are joking]! Gates Co. are charter members of the U.S.A.'s All we want is MONEY! brotherhood! -- Sponsored by Intel(R) XDK Develop, test and display web and hybrid apps with a single code base. Download it for free now! http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=111408631iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS FDNPKG 16 bit port and other package system improvements
Hi, On Fri, Dec 6, 2013 at 11:43 AM, sparky4 insano sparky44...@gmail.com wrote: I really wish there was a 16 bit port of fdnpkg! but it is quite difficult to port it over These are just .ZIPs with a special layout, so it's not like you can't manually install them. Besides, most DOS programs don't have lots of dependencies, so it's much less critical. I also wish the developers of Free Open Source Software for DOS would at least make a FreeDOS package of their stuff and put it in the repository!! Such as what exactly? If you have a specific request or two, feel free to ask (but don't get your hopes up, most people are too busy or indifferent, sadly). I'm the worst at focusing on a specific task, but admittedly, you can't do everything at once, you have to narrow your view for a bit, just to keep things simpler and manageable. So it's unlikely that everything (BASE, NET, UTIL) will all be updated at once. But little by little Speaking of which i want to update a bunch of the packages in the repository! Talk to Mateusz. Or tell me specifically which ones are outdated and need replacing, and I'll update them on iBiblio for you / us. Anybody else wanting to directly help should probably email Jim Hall privately. http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distributions/1.1/repos/ (Just for example, /devel/djgpp-obj.zip is ObjC, but it's GCC 4.7.1, after their transition to using G++, and honestly I don't think it works at all. But I chickened out and didn't email Mateusz recently. Maybe now's a good time to mention it, but I don't really know ObjC, and the examples I tested were minimal. Andris of DJGPP didn't seem to know either.) also DOSFSCK for DOS port is quite outdated... Just to let you know... Dunno, in the few times I used it, it worked okay. What specifically does it not do? What is latest / better? -- Sponsored by Intel(R) XDK Develop, test and display web and hybrid apps with a single code base. Download it for free now! http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=111408631iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] LBA And FreeDOS.
Hi, On Thu, Dec 5, 2013 at 2:50 PM, Jack gykazequ...@earthlink.net wrote: Note on the FreeDOS main page that there are comments about FreeDOS offering LBA large-disk capability (48-bit disk addressing, not 24- bit CHS), which MS-DOS did not have, and which the main page says was unavailable except with DOS Windows. NOT quite true! FreeDOS lets you access FAT32 file systems and use large disk support (LBA) — a feature not available in MS-DOS, and only included in Windows 95 and newer. From having written and tested UIDE, I know that LZ-DOS and Wengier Wu's V7.10 MS-DOS both use LBA disk addressing. Luchezar Georgiev offered his multi-DOS boot diskette, which has an LZ-DOS option. Presumably Bulgaria and China (and others) have laxer laws than the U.S. (which enforces copyright until 70 years after owner's death). LZ-DOS is really V7.10 MS-DOS as a VER command will show. Also, Wengier Wu of the China DOS Union offered a full MS-DOS V7.10 system, with the complete set of MS-DOS utilities plus a good system-installation scheme. There may also be others. Yes, AFAIK, LZ-DOS is just a compressed MS-DOS kernel (LZ for Lempel-Ziv, I suppose). But it's probably not legal to download by U.S. residents. But just for clarity, ver is part of the shell, and if the shell is clueless, it might just assume one particular DOS. I've never tried, but I'm pretty sure using the DR-DOS COMMAND.COM would always say DR-DOS 7.03 even atop MS-DOS or FreeDOS kernels or similar. IIRC, set VER=3 would make it even say DR-DOS 3.03! So this is not entirely conclusive. Presumably you'd have to find explicit bugs or features in a particular kernel in order to truly identify it (esp. if it is compressed and hacked with internal strings modified). For trivia's sake, this is why most of us never knew that ArrowSoft Assembler 2.00 was really MASM 4.0 in disguise. I believe Lucho's or Wengier's V7.1 MS-DOS systems can still be down- loaded from Internet sources. They are NOT bundled with Win/95 or any other DOS Windows system. Lucho's and Wengier's systems provide an independent V7.1 MS-DOS, which is still very useful. Of course we all know that Win9x came with MS-DOS bundled. That was by design. It was also by design that Win95's GUI portion was not separate, i.e. even though PC-DOS and DR-DOS could run Win 3.1 just fine, they could not (easily, directly) run Win95. I'm pretty sure it's well-established that MS wanted to control the standard and focus more on their own proprietary Win32 APIs than on older, compatible APIs (e.g. DOS, that was fully supported by various competitors, e.g. IBM, DR/Novell/Caldera). So DOS was only there until they could replace it, e.g. XP [NT]. Although even XP will die soon (no more security fixes after April, MSVC doesn't target it anymore, etc.), but I doubt they'll ever give it away! BTW, you can still make a DOS floppy in modern Windows via Explorer [embedded inside DISKCOPY.DLL]. I tested this a few weeks ago atop Win7 64-bit with my USB floppy drive. It's basically MS-DOS 8.00 (from WinME), but it has no SYS.COM, so you can't install to hard drive. Pundits can say, as they wish, that V6.22 MS-DOS is the last true DOS officially released by Microsoft, and that there may be licensing issues over using V7.0+ MS-DOS. But, Microsoft has never gone-after V7.0+ MS-DOS providers, like I doubt they ever will. DOS is dead! has been their position since at least 1995 (maybe even 1987, as that was when they began writing Windows/NT). I and others who work with V7.0+ MS-DOS should have few worries about it, 18 or 26 years later. I would not trust never gone after as a reliable source. We don't know who they've gone after, and certainly the U.S. is a fiercely litigious society. It's not worth the risk. And I seriously seriously doubt that anybody would sympathize with us if we did. It's safer to just search eBay or old shops than download illegally. I believe the FreeDOS main page should be made a bit more ACCURATE! Just use the free DOS, i.e. FreeDOS. Don't waste time with MS-DOS. Yes, I realize that's a bit biased. I'm not saying all the other DOSes aren't good. Some have different advantages, weaknesses, bugs, etc. Honestly, just use whatever you want to use, whatever works! I know plenty of people still prefer MS-DOS (or DR-DOS) over FreeDOS. But outside of explicit permission, you can't freely download, modify, or redistribute any DOS besides FreeDOS. This is its whole reason for existing. (Though I don't advocate anyone write software that only runs on FreeDOS, that is not universally helpful.) -- Sponsored by Intel(R) XDK Develop, test and display web and hybrid apps with a single code base. Download it for free now! http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=111408631iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk ___ Freedos-user mailing list
Re: [Freedos-user] LBA And FreeDOS.
Hi, On Fri, Dec 6, 2013 at 11:08 AM, Jack gykazequ...@earthlink.net wrote: Wengier Wu's MS-DOS 7 variant has a licensing issue ... So what??, as I noted in my prior post. At least 18 years have gone by since Gates Co. declared DOS is dead!, and no lawyers I know of have EVER gone-after any V7.10 users and providers! I'm only halfway joking, but how many lawyers do you know of, exactly?? So your experience is limited, like most of us. Absence of proof is not proof. Like I said, China probably has different laws, so there's less of a risk to them than us. Just because it isn't sold directly anymore isn't enough of a reason. That's not how copyright works. I don't know who came up with the current scheme. Certainly it will change a billion more times because nobody is ever happy, but as is, it's certainly not giving us a lot of leeway. I am not recommending that FreeDOS advertise or support ANY other DOS variants -- I am simply saying that V7.10 MS-DOS is in fact still available, as at-least the website I note above should prove to you. Not a reliable source. The built-in DOS floppy image I mentioned earlier, even in modern Windows, is a more official source. But that's (AFAIK) only available to current Windows licensees, so you can't redistribute it. -- Sponsored by Intel(R) XDK Develop, test and display web and hybrid apps with a single code base. Download it for free now! http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=111408631iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] LBA And FreeDOS.
Hi, (yet another inane response from me) On Fri, Dec 6, 2013 at 11:13 AM, Jack gykazequ...@earthlink.net wrote: It's really too bad, though, that MS won't make it official and release the MS-DOS source as public domain, or at least one of the various open-source licenses. How would that be better than what we already have with FreeDOS? The kernel and BASE are already GPL or similar open source, but we still don't get jack squat help from any other free/libre groups. They don't care at all, they're too busy chasing whatever other goals. A free/libre license isn't enough to attract volunteers. Surely you JEST!, my friend [are joking]! Gates Co. are charter members of the U.S.A.'s All we want is MONEY! brotherhood! If all they wanted was money, they'd still sell it. Maybe it's still on MSDN, I have no idea. -- Sponsored by Intel(R) XDK Develop, test and display web and hybrid apps with a single code base. Download it for free now! http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=111408631iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
