[Freedos-user] Problem installing FreeDOS together with Win98SE using metakern
Hello all, I tried to install FreeDOS 1.0 on the same partition (C:) as Win98SE using metakern, but ran into the following problem. Here's what I did: 0. Installed FreeDOS on C: 1. With Win98SE active, I booted from win98 cd and typed: sys c: fdisk /mbr (Using the Windows versions of sys and fdisk) to restore the Windows boot sector. 2. Checked that, indeed, that worked and Win98 booted instead of FreeDOS. 3. Dumped the boot sector with two programms: bootmgr and fdisk (included with FreeDOS): a) bmWin98SE.bot b) fdWin98SE.bot Upon that I compared these files using the cmp utility and they turned to be different! 4. Then I booted from the FreeDOS cd and followed the instruc- tions for metakern: a) copy /b metakern.bin + metaboot.bot + bmWin98SE.bot metakern.sys b) SYS C: c) SYS C: /K metakern.sys 5. After reboot the metakern showed something like this: Bootsectors: 1. FreeDOS (chained to kernel .sys!) 2. Unknown operating system Pressing 1 booted FreeDOS, but #2 invoked the same menu: Booting sector 2... kick and the metakern menu appeared again. 6. Then I replaced bmWin98SE.bot with fdWin98SE.bot (as in step 4) and tried again. This time the second bootsector wasn't listed at all! Now I have no idea of how to make it work... Please, help. Thanks in advance, Anton - Check out the new SourceForge.net Marketplace. It's the best place to buy or sell services for just about anything Open Source. http://sourceforge.net/services/buy/index.php ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Problem installing FreeDOS together with Win98SE using metakern
Hi again! Dear, Bernd, everything had been fine (paths and filesizes) but one thing: fdisk and bootmgr were returning wrong bootsector dumps! I got it back to Win98SE, and invoked bootfix. Unfortunately, bootfix returns everything in a text (ascii) format, so I had to use FreePascal (from the FreeDOS distro!) to write a little program that read the bootfix's output, parsed it and outputted the binary bootsector image to another file. Then I did everything as before and it worked (from the second attempt for some reason, maybe I had made a typo somewhere). .. I had spend quite a lot of time trying to figure out what was wrong, so I think this tip (to use nothing else than bootfix to get the bootsector) should be incorporated into the FreeDOS installer's howto and/or metakern's manual. .. And bootfix should be endowed with an option to output the bootsector in the plain binary format. Many, many thanks Anton - Check out the new SourceForge.net Marketplace. It's the best place to buy or sell services for just about anything Open Source. http://sourceforge.net/services/buy/index.php ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Problem installing FreeDOS together with Win98SE using metakern
Hi again, Robert I know my problem was confusion between MBR and the boot sector. But anyway, fdisk and bootmgr should return the same data... Anton - Check out the new SourceForge.net Marketplace. It's the best place to buy or sell services for just about anything Open Source. http://sourceforge.net/services/buy/index.php ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Problem installing FreeDOS together with Win98SEusing metakern
All right. To your judgement is presented a patch for the metakern manual that I think will make things clearer for unexperienced users. Hope it sounds OK: The best way to install FreeDOS on a common partition with another OS would be to make a dump of its bootsector before it is has been replaced by FreeDOS. OtherWise you'll have to restore the original bootsector (using that OS's boot CD/disk) first, then dump it (thus you may dump the bootsectors of up to three OSes), restore FreeDOS via booting from a FreeDOS CD (floppy disk) and invoking sys c: from the root of the RAM drive (floppy disk), where the system files are located). If you don't know how to store a bootsector in a file, one method is to use oscheck. The following command will write the bootsector into the file bootsect.bin, which you can rename to whatever you want. c:\bimg\OSCHECK /S c: Oschek can be downloaded from here: www.coli.uni-sb.de/~eric/stuff/soft/specials/boot-sector-save-n-analyze-oscheck.zip When you have got the bootsector images, proceed to installation. You'll need: 1. metakern.bin (comes with matakern) 2. metaboot.bot (comes with metakern) 3. your bootsector dumps (say, they are os1.bot, os2.bot and os3.bot and are located in c:\bsimng) Assuming matakern.bin and metaboot.bot being in c:\fdos\bin, 1. c:\cd \bsimg 2. Create a new kernel: c:\bimg\copy /b \fdos\bin\metakern.bin + \fdos\bin\metaboot.bot + os1.bot + os2.bot + os3.bot c:\metakern.sys 3. c:\bimg\cd .. 4. Install the new kernel: c:\sys c: /K metakern.sys - Check out the new SourceForge.net Marketplace. It's the best place to buy or sell services for just about anything Open Source. http://sourceforge.net/services/buy/index.php ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] mpxplay + via onboard soundcard
Hello, I tried playing some music with mpxplay and couldn't. I enabled AC97 in BIOS and launched mpxplay with -scs VIA option, and it did procuce sound, but it was faltering and CPU Load (reported by mpxplay) swung between 12% and 279% outrageneously. My card, accoring to mpxplay -sct command is VT82C686 and my CPU is Celeron 766, so no idea what may be wrong. Any help will be appreciated! Anton - Check out the new SourceForge.net Marketplace. It's the best place to buy or sell services for just about anything Open Source. http://sourceforge.net/services/buy/index.php ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] mpxplay + via onboard soundcard
Hello, Eric you may have to set the BIOS option to AC97 on/off or SB16 legacy support on/off or both, and you may have to use the VIAAUDIO.COM tool (see my other mail) to un-mute the VIA. Yes, I enabled onboard audio (otherwise there's be no sound at all...) and also Legacy audio support. Whether I use viaudio.com or not doesn't affect the way mpxplay works with the VIA option... If your sound has speed troubles - on a Celeron 766 - then try if it helps to disable your (onboard) network card or disable your USB simulates PS2 BIOS USB keyboard/mouse support. Those can eat lots of CPU time. That's the only remaining hypothesis, and I'll check it this evening. However, in SB Pro mode (with SB emulation enabled in BIOS), mpxplay detects SB Pro and pretends to play at about 6-11% CPU load. But with no actual sound. I have tried loading emm386 with SB option to no effect... Thanks for helping, Anton - Check out the new SourceForge.net Marketplace. It's the best place to buy or sell services for just about anything Open Source. http://sourceforge.net/services/buy/index.php ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] mpxplay + via onboard soundcard
Bad news: Now I have tried turning off everything connected with USB and booting without emm386. It didn't help. And viaudio.com (not viaaudio...) doesn't un-mute my card when I run mpxplay in the -scs SBP mode. Also overclocking my processor to 855 MHz (for plain .wav files) helped only a bit, but the sound still stammers. Is there an analytical way to figure out where the bottleneck is? :( Anton - Check out the new SourceForge.net Marketplace. It's the best place to buy or sell services for just about anything Open Source. http://sourceforge.net/services/buy/index.php ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] mpxplay + via onboard soundcard
Hi everybody and thanks for the feedback. After futher experiments I fixed the problem by changing mpxplay's buffering mode to that defined by the -bp key. And then it started to work in the -scs VIA mode. No sound in the SPB mode though. Same with QuickView: pretends to be playing but actually silent. Changing SBPro emultaion settings in BIOS didn't help. Anton - Check out the new SourceForge.net Marketplace. It's the best place to buy or sell services for just about anything Open Source. http://sourceforge.net/services/buy/index.php ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] DOS ASM resources
Santiago Almenara: > What book or webpage do you recommend to learn some DOS > assembler? At https://freeshell.de/~antonius/file_host/MSDOSASM.zip I have some books that you may find of use: 1. Advanced MS-DOS Programming, by Ray Duncan 2. Programmer's Technical Reference for MSDOS and the IBM PC by Dave Williams, 3. The Art of Assembly Language Programming, by James F. Peters 4. Peter Norton's Assembly Language Book for the IBM PC Also I highly recommend Michael Abrash's Black Book of VGA programming, which is available in many versions from different sources, e.g.: https://archive.org/details/gpbb20/gpbb0/ ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Installing GRUB
Tony Richardson: > I wanted to use GRUB to boot FreeDOS. (I wanted to use it > so that I could dual-boot FreeDOS and RTEMS, but others > may have different reasons.) It is a relatively short > procedure so I thought I would contribute it to the > mailing list in case others might be interested. It is not the best place for such persistent information. Can you please share it on the FreeDos WIKI, and perhaps refer to that article from the FAQ? ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] dosbox-x update available
Wengier Wu: > Yes, most 32-bit Windows builds of DOSBox-X can run on > Windows XP. DOSBox-X also has DOS builds for running in > DOS itself (so that you can emulate a different DOS system > for example). As happy user of Windows XP, and am very glad that you keep support of this last sane version Windows. I hope the pixel-perfect mode that I implemented still works, in spite of the difficulties I had in reconciling it with the GUI configurator. ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] One use case for FreeDos
Anton Shepelev: > Jim Hall: > > > No ChatGPT assistant/coauthor. > > "Doesn't have ChatGPT or a co-author tool" is actually not > a problem for a professional writer. It can actually be a > bonus. :-) Yes, but the temptation to use such a tool is great, and the commerical pressure quite strong. I for one want pure human art, and now there is no way to make sure a novel, digital image, music track, or movie is AI-free. ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] One use case for FreeDos
Dan Schmidt: > Now, I might have gone with WordPerfect 6 instead of > WordStar 4, but the idea itself is solid: A computer that > you just use for writing, sans distractions. No YouTube, > no Email, no Facebook -- you sit -- you write. I mean, > it's hard to argue it didn't work well for this guy! No ChatGPT assistant/coauthor. ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
