[Freedos-user] FreeDOS 1.3 RC5 error when installing

[Pyros]

http://www.bttr-software.de/forum/img/uploaded/image24.jpg

while installing freedos 1.3 rc5 i get the error that you see in the image.
Now this is not your modern pc it's from the win 98/me days as it does have
isa slots and has an SB16 with attached wave blaster. It is a pentium
machine if that helps.


Virus-free.
www.avg.com

<#DAB4FAD8-2DD7-40BB-A1B8-4E2AA1F9FDF2>
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[Freedos-user] Message delivered

[Jose Senna]

 My message appeared on the list afer all.
 I shall thank Jim Hall and the others at
Sourceforge who solved this problem.



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[Freedos-user] Video complains that DOS should not be mantained

[Jose Senna]

Liam Proven said:
> There were DOS email and chat and FTP
> clients; that stuff's fairly easy.

Were is the right word. Most email
servers nowadays require TLS, which
is not available in DOS email clients.
There are few remaining FTP servers,
and I cannot tell how many also need
TLS.
I never used chat.


PS - I sent a copy directly to Liam Proven because the mail
filter at Sourceforge will probably reject this message.


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Re: [Freedos-user] Video complains that DOS should not be maintained

[Aitor Santamaría]

Plain right!
A LiLO that loads a small Linux distro which is multi-consoled, text-only,
and whose unique Shell is DOSEMU.
That would make it too, without the pain of writing VxDs, Linux will do the
job :)

Aitor


On Mon, 27 Dec 2021 at 18:58, tom ehlert  wrote:

>
> > Well, as said above, this has precisely been proved to be extracted
> > from Windows and used for stand-alone DOS environment. Just because
> > it is called VMM32.VXD (and not the original DOS386.EXE name), and
> > has been sold just with Windows, and not DOS, does not mean it is an
> un-dettachable part of Windows.
> > To the same extent that if HIMEM hadn't ever been sold with MS-DOS,
> > does not mean it is not an extension of DOS.
>
> the easiest way to have a multitasking 'DOS' is LiLo.
>
> Tom
>
>
>
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Re: [Freedos-user] Video complains that DOS should not be maintained

[tom ehlert]

> Well, as said above, this has precisely been proved to be extracted
> from Windows and used for stand-alone DOS environment. Just because
> it is called VMM32.VXD (and not the original DOS386.EXE name), and
> has been sold just with Windows, and not DOS, does not mean it is an 
> un-dettachable part of Windows. 
> To the same extent that if HIMEM hadn't ever been sold with MS-DOS,
> does not mean it is not an extension of DOS.

the easiest way to have a multitasking 'DOS' is LiLo.

Tom



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Re: [Freedos-user] Video complains that DOS should not be maintained

[Aitor Santamaría]

Hi,

On Mon, 27 Dec 2021 at 14:36, Liam Proven  wrote:

> On Sun, 26 Dec 2021 at 22:19, Aitor Santamaría  wrote:
> >
>
> > Why DOS386.EXE (later renamed to VMM32.VXD) would run "on top" of DOS
> and not be DOS itself, the natural way DOS adapts to a 386?
> > Just because, for commercial reasons, Microsoft never sold this DOS
> unbundled from their GUI, I don't see this to be part of Windows, but DOS.
>
> This is a red herring. It isn't what you think it is. It's not a
> multitasking add-on for DOS; it's a component of Windows.
>

I disagree.
In "Undercover Windows 95"  the author shows how you can rename COMMAND.COM
into KRNL386.EXE and actually have a DOS (not windows) with preemptive
multitasking and virtual memory. If I recall correctly, he builds a DOS
program that uses XMS to get memory, and DOS386 (or VMM32 if you like)
manages to give it more memory than the actual physical RAM memory the
machine had.
Not GUI (Windows) at all, just pure DOS.


> Windows has DOS multitasking long before Windows 3. There was a
> special 386 edition of Windows 2.01 that also could multitask DOS
> apps:
> http://oldcomputermuseum.com/os/windows_386_v2.10.html
>
> I think this is what I am talking about.


> > (and if it isn't, where is the technical limit? EMM386.EXE is more alike
> to VMM32.VXD than to MSDOS.SYS)
>
> But this is still Windows and not DOS. You are again confusing product
> lines.
>
> No, DOS multitasking was not some separate function that could be
> extracted from Windows and made stand-alone. It was an integral part
> of Windows right back to Windows/386. Windows 3 did not introduce
>

Well, as said above, this has precisely been proved to be extracted from
Windows and used for stand-alone DOS environment. Just because it is called
VMM32.VXD (and not the original DOS386.EXE name), and has been sold just
with Windows, and not DOS, does not mean it is an un-dettachable part of
Windows.
To the same extent that if HIMEM hadn't ever been sold with MS-DOS, does
not mean it is not an extension of DOS.

Aitor
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Re: [Freedos-user] Video complains that DOS should not be maintained

[Liam Proven]

On Sun, 26 Dec 2021 at 22:19, Aitor Santamaría  wrote:
>
> Why isn't multitasking just another feature that you "add" on top?

It was. There were multiple multitaskers for DOS, of which the best
was generally agreed to be DESQview.

The snag was the 640 kB memory limit. On an 8086 or 80286, all apps
had to fit into that 640 kB along with DOS and the multitasker itself.

You had about 500 kB to try to fit 2 apps side by side. Doesn't allow
much. The main use was that you could leave your work, open a DOS
prompt and format a floppy or move some files around or something.

DESQview/386 changed that. It ran in conjunction with the QEMM386
memory manager, ran an 80386 or higher in virtual 86 mode, so you
could use multiple megabytes of RAM to run many DOS programs side by
side. The slight snag was that you needed to load all your drivers
first -- CD, sound card, network, mouse, etc. Maybe network stack.
*Then* DESQview.

So your apps didn't get 640 kB each. They got whatever was left after
loading DESQview each: but 550 kB or so each was doable, and allowed a
lot of flexibility.

So, yes, this was 100% viable as an add-on, and TBH I do not really
understand why you would pick on a component of Windows as being
notable. This seems to me a bit like saying that one particular
building was significant, when what you're talking about is bricks.

The benefit of Windows 3 was that everyone got this functionality as
standard -- but that came at a very high price. You had to buy Windows
as well as DOS, then you needed a lot more RAM -- DESQview was useful
in 1MB and quite capable in 2MB, whereas Windows really wanted 4MB to
work well.

And Windows was not just big, it was also slow. DESQview imposed no
perceptible overhead, really. Windows made your whole PC slower
because it was a GUI for its own GUI apps that just happened to have
DOS multitasking as a bonus feature.

The one clever thing in Windows 3.x was the concept of the "system
VM". Windows had a special dedicated DOS box for running drivers and
things in, which meant it could load some of your network stack or
something in that VM via a special batch file that most people didn't
know about. This meant that you got a network redirector or whatever
available to Windows but it didn't take up memory in DOS boxes.

But Windows was not unique in adding multitasking.

MS had its own special MS-DOS 4 with multitasking, which was only
released via a few OEMs in Europe:
http://www.os2museum.com/wp/multitasking-ms-dos-4-0-lives/

... such as Goupil:
http://www.os2museum.com/wp/multitasking-ms-dos-4-0-goupil-oem/

This evolved into a pre-OS/2 prototype multitasking OS, MT-DOS or CP-DOS:
https://www.os2museum.com/wp/before-os2-was-os2/

> Why DOS386.EXE (later renamed to VMM32.VXD) would run "on top" of DOS and not 
> be DOS itself, the natural way DOS adapts to a 386?
> Just because, for commercial reasons, Microsoft never sold this DOS unbundled 
> from their GUI, I don't see this to be part of Windows, but DOS.

This is a red herring. It isn't what you think it is. It's not a
multitasking add-on for DOS; it's a component of Windows.

Windows has DOS multitasking long before Windows 3. There was a
special 386 edition of Windows 2.01 that also could multitask DOS
apps:
http://oldcomputermuseum.com/os/windows_386_v2.10.html

> (and if it isn't, where is the technical limit? EMM386.EXE is more alike to 
> VMM32.VXD than to MSDOS.SYS)

But this is still Windows and not DOS. You are again confusing product lines.

No, DOS multitasking was not some separate function that could be
extracted from Windows and made stand-alone. It was an integral part
of Windows right back to Windows/386. Windows 3 did not introduce
major new functionality: what it did was _combine_ Windows 2,
Windows/286 and Windows/386 into a single product that detected which
kind of computer you had and enabled the appropriate level of
functionality when you started the GUI.

But what you are getting wrong is that DOS multitasking was something
separate or additional. An entirely separate, unrelated line of MS
OSes included DOS multitasking, independently of and before Windows.
This shows that Microsoft was aware of the need and the abilities of
newer PCs.

IBM wrote PC DOS 4, not Microsoft. It's the only major version of DOS
that MS adapted from IBM rather than the other way round. The
worldwide retail MS-DOS 4 had no multitasking. IBM marketing didn't
want it and made other mistakes, such as restricting OS/2 1.x to the
80286, leaving it crippled and unable to use the hardware-assisted DOS
multitasking of the 386.

The problem here is that if you bolt multitasking right into the DOS
kernel, then programs that aren't compatible with multitasking, or
which need to interact with it (such as filesystem redirectors, needed
for networking and for CD-ROM drive support) need to be rewritten to
be multitasking-compatible.

A multitasking DOS is not and can't really be 100% compatible with all
DOS apps, and I think