Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS 1.2 Preview 11

[Jerome Shidel]

Hello Don,

> On Feb 3, 2016, at 1:47 PM, Don Flowers  wrote:
> 
> Day after observation: I am getting an A: drive redirect when I try to copy 
> files by "COPY" command. One file will copy to the desired directory and then 
> it  searches for the A: drive. Would this be a glitch from the installer?
> 

I'm not sure exactly what you mean.

Is this the installed system, or when booted from floppy or USB image?

Also, is this what you mean?

cd c:
copy myfile.txt fdos\myfile.txt
copy myfile2.txt fdos\myfile2.txt
INSERT DISK IN DRIVE A:

Or do you mean something else entirely?

Jerome

Sent from my iPhone, ignore bad sentence structures, grammatical errors and 
incorrect spell-corrected words.


--
Site24x7 APM Insight: Get Deep Visibility into Application Performance
APM + Mobile APM + RUM: Monitor 3 App instances at just $35/Month
Monitor end-to-end web transactions and take corrective actions now
Troubleshoot faster and improve end-user experience. Signup Now!
http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=272487151&iu=/4140
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS 1.2 Preview 11

[Jerome Shidel]

Hello Don,

> On Feb 3, 2016, at 6:50 PM, Don Flowers  wrote:
> 
> It's the installed system - what was happening  was 
> I would type: "COPY *.ZIP  C:\DOWNLOAD\ZIP"
> One file would copy to c:\download\zip, then the a: drive would  click and I 
> got the ever annoying "error copying to a: drive abort retry ignore?"; I 
> could ignore and it would stop but the copy processed stopped as well. If I 
> repeat the process I get a clean copy of all files. 
> I solved the problem by rearranging the autoexec paths (FDAUTO for me :^) and 
> setting an absolute path for C:\;C:\FDOS;C:\FDOS\BIN
> 
> 
> 

Interesting, if changing the chaning them path variable order fixed the issue. 
It would not be a bug or other issue in the installer.

Thanks for the update.

Jerome

> 
> 
>> On Wed, Feb 3, 2016 at 5:21 PM, Jerome Shidel  wrote:
>> Hello Don,
>> 
>> > On Feb 3, 2016, at 1:47 PM, Don Flowers  wrote:
>> >
>> > Day after observation: I am getting an A: drive redirect when I try to 
>> > copy files by "COPY" command. One file will copy to the desired directory 
>> > and then it  searches for the A: drive. Would this be a glitch from the 
>> > installer?
>> >
>> 
>> I'm not sure exactly what you mean.
>> 
>> Is this the installed system, or when booted from floppy or USB image?
>> 
>> Also, is this what you mean?
>> 
>> cd c:
>> copy myfile.txt fdos\myfile.txt
>> copy myfile2.txt fdos\myfile2.txt
>> INSERT DISK IN DRIVE A:
>> 
>> Or do you mean something else entirely?
>> 
>> Jerome
>> 
>> Sent from my iPhone, ignore bad sentence structures, grammatical errors and 
>> incorrect spell-corrected words.
>> 
>> 
>> --
>> Site24x7 APM Insight: Get Deep Visibility into Application Performance
>> APM + Mobile APM + RUM: Monitor 3 App instances at just $35/Month
>> Monitor end-to-end web transactions and take corrective actions now
>> Troubleshoot faster and improve end-user experience. Signup Now!
>> http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=272487151&iu=/4140
>> ___
>> Freedos-user mailing list
>> Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
>> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
> 
> --
> Site24x7 APM Insight: Get Deep Visibility into Application Performance
> APM + Mobile APM + RUM: Monitor 3 App instances at just $35/Month
> Monitor end-to-end web transactions and take corrective actions now
> Troubleshoot faster and improve end-user experience. Signup Now!
> http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=272487151&iu=/4140
> ___
> Freedos-user mailing list
> Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
--
Site24x7 APM Insight: Get Deep Visibility into Application Performance
APM + Mobile APM + RUM: Monitor 3 App instances at just $35/Month
Monitor end-to-end web transactions and take corrective actions now
Troubleshoot faster and improve end-user experience. Signup Now!
http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=272487151&iu=/4140___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS 1.2+ Preview 12 - Now with Dimples

[Jerome Shidel]

> On Feb 13, 2016, at 6:19 PM, Don Flowers  wrote:
> 
> I booted from the CD not USB , but my extreme test machine has 3 hard drives 
> wth various "C" drives among them. Even with XOSL hiding partitions, I think 
> the installer may not be prepared for setting drives beyond "D;" 
> "lastdrive=Z" notwithstanding. 

If the installer is run in advanced mode, you can specify what drive you want 
it to install FreeDOS. Advanced mode can be entered 2 ways. Either by using 
"setup adv" from the command line or by pressing CTRL+C when it is waiting for 
user input. As long as dos can see a drive, it should be able to install to it. 
However, you would still need to know if you want it to go on E: F: X: or 
wherever. My only concern is SYS transfer of system files messing up your boot 
code. 

> 
> Your rewrite should do the trick.

We will keep our fingers crossed. The installer works great. It's just getting 
the installers loader to setup an environment for it to run under that is 
compatible with all of the bizarre system configurations it may encounter. :-)

Hopefully have preview 13 out in a couple days (as free time permits).

> --
> Site24x7 APM Insight: Get Deep Visibility into Application Performance
> APM + Mobile APM + RUM: Monitor 3 App instances at just $35/Month
> Monitor end-to-end web transactions and take corrective actions now
> Troubleshoot faster and improve end-user experience. Signup Now!
> http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=272487151&iu=/4140
> ___
> Freedos-user mailing list
> Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

--
Site24x7 APM Insight: Get Deep Visibility into Application Performance
APM + Mobile APM + RUM: Monitor 3 App instances at just $35/Month
Monitor end-to-end web transactions and take corrective actions now
Troubleshoot faster and improve end-user experience. Signup Now!
http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=272487151&iu=/4140
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS 1.2+ Preview 12 - Now with Dimples

[Jerome Shidel]

Hello Loius,

> On Feb 22, 2016, at 4:04 AM, Louis Santillan  wrote:
> 
> So I did my testing.  I guess I misremembered.  MS-DOS 6.22 [0]
> handles the MBR that same way as FDI [1] does. :/  Shame, but I think
> this is one place where FDI could do better.
> 
> 
> [0] https://youtu.be/etnVOlW23XE
> [1] https://youtu.be/zKcCVZH7q3s

This is a known problem that has been undergoing consideration on how best to 
resolve the issue. The SYS command used by the installer does not force an 
overwrite of the old boot code in the MBR. This would damage the boot loader of 
a multi boot system. However, this seems to cause at least as many problems as 
it solves.

At present, the current thinking is to backup the MBR and push a new one 
regardless of the current MBR.

> 
>> On Fri, Feb 19, 2016 at 3:43 PM, Jerome E. Shidel Jr.  
>> wrote:
>> There are a lot of major internal changes in 13. no sense testing 12.
>> 
>> Anyhow 13, floppy an 32mb slim usb images are up. it will be about an hour
>> for the 512mb image. Internet is very slow where I am at right now.
>> 
>> http://up.lod.bz/FDI
>> 
>> 
>> On Feb 19, 2016, at 1:51 PM, Louis Santillan  wrote:
>> 
>> Hey all,
>> 
>> I plan to do another test run with the hardware I have.  1.2p12 or 13,
>> which ever is available.
>> 
>> On Sat, Feb 13, 2016 at 3:46 PM, Jerome Shidel  wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> On Feb 13, 2016, at 6:19 PM, Don Flowers  wrote:
>> 
>> I booted from the CD not USB , but my extreme test machine has 3 hard drives
>> wth various "C" drives among them. Even with XOSL hiding partitions, I think
>> the installer may not be prepared for setting drives beyond "D;"
>> "lastdrive=Z" notwithstanding.
>> 
>> 
>> If the installer is run in advanced mode, you can specify what drive you
>> want it to install FreeDOS. Advanced mode can be entered 2 ways. Either by
>> using "setup adv" from the command line or by pressing CTRL+C when it is
>> waiting for user input. As long as dos can see a drive, it should be able to
>> install to it. However, you would still need to know if you want it to go on
> 

--
Site24x7 APM Insight: Get Deep Visibility into Application Performance
APM + Mobile APM + RUM: Monitor 3 App instances at just $35/Month
Monitor end-to-end web transactions and take corrective actions now
Troubleshoot faster and improve end-user experience. Signup Now!
http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=272487151&iu=/4140
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS 1.2+ Preview 12 - Now with Dimples

[Jerome Shidel]

> On Feb 23, 2016, at 3:47 PM, Eric Auer  wrote:
> 
> 
> Hi Jerome,
> 
>>> - user has another OS and DOS must not kill the boot menu without asking
>>> 
>>> - user made a virtual computer for DOS, the disk contains nothing at all
>> 
>> - user has some old hardware they want to install and play with a newer DOS.
>> 
>>> In the second case, it is good to automatically make a MBR from scratch.
>>> In the first case, it would be a disaster for those who want dual boot.
>> 
>> In the third case, neither solution works. MBR not blank and MBR needs 
>> overwritten.
>> User is angry to not have w working computer. Leaves and never comes back.
> 
> I beg to differ. Simply ASK the user whether they want to install the
> special FreeDOS MBR and mention that this is not normally required but
> if booting fails, it helps.
> 
> Because if you have some old computer which already has DOS or maybe
> Win95 on it, SYS will be enough to install FreeDOS, without MBR zap.
> 
> Again, there ARE situations where you want a fresh MBR, but those are
> neither autodetectable nor the universal solution to installation :-)

I agree that regardless of what is in the MBR. You cannot detect if you should 
update it.

> 
> The exception is the "MBR is totally empty" case of freshly made virtual
> computers and sometimes freshly bought unformatted storage media. Those
> can be autodetected, if you want an extra bit of convenicence. Because
> it would be totally okay to tell the user in such situations that they
> most probably WANT a fresh MBR instead of 512 NULL-bytes. Still I would
> ask them for confirmation before I proceed at that point of install, to
> be extra polite :-)

The MBR section of the boot sector may be empty. As things change, it may not 
be devoid of boot code. Any changes to a non blank boot sector involves risk. 
Once, drive is partitioned, it is no longer blank. Then on reboot to reload the 
tables. Since your actions are lost on reboot, you no longer know if it is safe 
to write the code.

So, it is never risk free.

> 
>> My understanding is that Jim wants a quick, easy, and friendly install 
>> process.
> 
> Destroying all my data is NOT friendly... I might even sue FreeDOS
> for not having warned me. After all, it comes from a country known
> for warning labels saying "do not dry your pet in this microwave".
> 

Why not? :-)

> There is a limit in how easy the install should be. Shooting in my
> own foot by simply booting some USB stick is definitely too easy.
> As said, make it ASK. I am perfectly fine with OFFERING to zap MBR.
> 

No matter which way it does it, it will upset at least 1 person.

So, I think this is one of the things Jim will have to decide and we all will 
just have live with his choice.


> Cheers, Eric ;-)
> 

Jerome

(Humm, microwave my cat. Humm)

> 
> 
> --
> Site24x7 APM Insight: Get Deep Visibility into Application Performance
> APM + Mobile APM + RUM: Monitor 3 App instances at just $35/Month
> Monitor end-to-end web transactions and take corrective actions now
> Troubleshoot faster and improve end-user experience. Signup Now!
> http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=272487151&iu=/4140
> ___
> Freedos-user mailing list
> Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
> 

--
Site24x7 APM Insight: Get Deep Visibility into Application Performance
APM + Mobile APM + RUM: Monitor 3 App instances at just $35/Month
Monitor end-to-end web transactions and take corrective actions now
Troubleshoot faster and improve end-user experience. Signup Now!
http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=272487151&iu=/4140
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS Installer Preview 14 - The Final Chapter.

[Jerome Shidel]

Hello Don


> On Mar 8, 2016, at 1:17 PM, Don Flowers  wrote:
> 
> Just did an install on my multiple Hard drive/multiple DOS/FreeDOS DC5700. I 
> used the advanced option and have nothing bad to report (except that *#$% 
> "Error reading from drive A: DOS area drive not ready Abort Ignore Retry 
> Fail?" on mulitple file copy. Tried adding \ to destination directory to no 
> avail. I'll be REMming the DOSLFN option as before.

To clarify, do you get this error while running the installer or after FreeDOS 
has been installed and you reboot? Or both?



> 
>> On Mon, Mar 7, 2016 at 3:27 PM, Don Flowers  wrote:
>> Anxious to test and report back.
>> 
>>> On Mon, Mar 7, 2016 at 1:49 PM, Louis Santillan  wrote:
>>> I'll do some more testing tonight or tomorrow night.
>>> 
 On Sun, Mar 6, 2016 at 9:58 AM, Jerome E. Shidel Jr.  
 wrote:
 Hello All,
 
 The wholesome and awesome goodness of the FreeDOS Installer Preview 14 is 
 now available. P14 contains many improvements over P13 including 
 auto-partitioning (when obvious), fixed FDIMPLES bug, MBR updating and 
 many many more enhancements.
 
 http://up.lod.bz/FDI
 
 I also ran an tested one of the USB stick images on a ancient Acer Netbook 
 with a empty SSD drive.
 
 WARNING: If you don’t want your MBR updated, you will need to switch into 
 advanced mode no later than the Welcome to FreeDOS message.
 
 Except for any bug fixes, this is the final FDI Preview release until the 
 FreeDOS 1.2 Beta. Mostly, that should only be
 a fine-tuning of included packages.
 
 Thanks again, Jerome
 
 
 --
 ___
 Freedos-user mailing list
 Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
 https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
>>> 
>>> 
>>> --
>>> Transform Data into Opportunity.
>>> Accelerate data analysis in your applications with
>>> Intel Data Analytics Acceleration Library.
>>> Click to learn more.
>>> http://makebettercode.com/inteldaal-eval
>>> ___
>>> Freedos-user mailing list
>>> Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
>>> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
> 
> --
> Transform Data into Opportunity.
> Accelerate data analysis in your applications with
> Intel Data Analytics Acceleration Library.
> Click to learn more.
> http://makebettercode.com/inteldaal-eval
> ___
> Freedos-user mailing list
> Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
--
Transform Data into Opportunity.
Accelerate data analysis in your applications with
Intel Data Analytics Acceleration Library.
Click to learn more.
http://makebettercode.com/inteldaal-eval___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS Installer Preview 14 - The Final Chapter.

[Jerome Shidel]

Hello Don,

> Jerome, this is not an installer issue, it occurs following an otherwise 
> successful install and reboot. I think it is a DOSLFN/Memory Management/SHELL 
> issue. It's a bug that has been around for a long time and the only way I 
> have gotten rid of it is to forgo DOSLFN.
> 
> On another note, I am in need of a generic DOS program installer, V8 looks 
> like what I want, perhaps after FD 1.2 is released you could contribute such 
> a tool to the repo?

V8 is included in the FDI Preview development builds and will ship with FreeDOS 
1.2. It is also available on the FreeDOS repo. However, the latest version is 
always available on http://up.lod.bz 

A little bit of back story on the birth of V8Power Tools. Basically, Jim wanted 
the FreeDOS installer to be a batch file that used utilities that were nicer 
than using the standard choice command. So, hum a set of utilities that can be 
used from any batch file to create a fairly nice UI. Ones that are not to 
difficult to use. Require no hard drive space for storing data. Use no ram for 
storage. So, I gave it some thought and figured sure I can do that. So, V8 was 
born to make a nicer batch file interface. 

Everything in FDI that the user sees and interacts with is powered by V8. 
Except FDIMPLES. V8 could do the detailed package selection stuff in advanced 
mode. But, it was quicker and easier just to build a program to modify a 
package list and give it back to FDI. Everything else including package list 
processing, custom theming, multi-language support and the rest is done through 
batch logic, V8 and a couple other command line tools. 

vecho is really nice for doing multicolored text output. Things like "vecho 
/fRed this is red /FGray and /Fyellow this is yellow."

A lot of things can been accomplished with the V8 toolset. For example. I use 
it as the backbone for building the Preview releases. With one command 'mkFDI 
all', a very complex 15 minute long process starts building a release from 
scratch. Takes the raw source files and repo cd packages to make the boot 
floppy and both USB images. 
Parsing package lists, pulling data from index files. It's probably more 
complex than the actual installer. But, it is not as flexible as FDI. 

Anyhow, a general program installer? Won't a zip package that is compatible 
with FDNPKG and FDINST be sufficient?  

Jerome
--
Transform Data into Opportunity.
Accelerate data analysis in your applications with
Intel Data Analytics Acceleration Library.
Click to learn more.
http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=278785111&iu=/4140
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS 1.2 BETA, Coming soon--ish.

[Jerome Shidel]

Hello Eric,

> please explain what goes wrong with Dosbox, Freecom and V8:

Basically, the current DOSBox doesn't really support Stdin/out I/O redirection. 
It mostly seems to work once FreeCOM is loaded. However, testing if input is 
waiting on Stdin, it always replies yes when the data is piped into the 
program. Even when there is no input or the end of input has been reached. So, 
using the Stdin functions under DOSBox for piped data result in infinite 
garbage input. I don't think it happens when Stdin is not redirected and 
keyboard input is used. 

> By the way, why is SYS skipped in dosbox?

If using the default host shared filesystem, it is neither needed nor will work 
correctly. If you are booting an image instead, I think it would work, but it 
is a bit of a pain to use DOSBox this way. I think anyone who might be 
installing FreeDOS into DOSBox is just doing so for the extra functionality and 
not to be running true FreeDOS machine. I could be completely wrong on that. 
But, it seems reasonable to me.

Thanks, Jerome

Sent from my iPhone, ignore bad sentence structures, grammatical errors and 
incorrect spell-corrected words.
--
Transform Data into Opportunity.
Accelerate data analysis in your applications with
Intel Data Analytics Acceleration Library.
Click to learn more.
http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=278785351&iu=/4140
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

[Freedos-user] DOSBox I/O issue follow-up

[Jerome Shidel]

Hello Eric (and anyone else who is interested),

Here is a little proof-of-concept demonstration of the issue regarding I/O 
redirection in DOSBox.

; begin example code

; NASM 2.11.08 for DOS
; Jerome Shidel, Public Domain.

use16

cpu 8086

org 0x100

StdPassThru:
mov ah, 0x0b; DOS Check Standard Input Status
int 0x21
cmp al, 0x00; 0x00 = no character available, 0xff = present.
je  NoInput
mov ah, 0x08; DOS Get character from STDIN, no echo. AL = Character
int 0x21
mov ah, 0x02; DOS Write DL character to STDOUT.
mov dl, al
int 0x21
jmp StdPassThru

NoInput:
mov ax, 0x4c00  ; DOS Terminate, no error code
int 0x21

; end example code

Compile with nasm PASSTHRU.ASM -fbin -o PASSTHRU.COM

Run in default DOSBox:

type passthru.asm | passthru.com
Result garbage line of text.

Run under FreeCOM shell inside DOSBox

C:\FDOS\BIN\command.com
type passthru.asm | passthru.com

result: .Text scrolls by, then infinite number of blank characters and 
occasional 
control characters.

Run on real (or virtual machine of) FreeDOS, MS-DOS, PC-DOS….

text of PASSTHRU.ASM is output and program terminates.

Thanks, Jerome
--
Transform Data into Opportunity.
Accelerate data analysis in your applications with
Intel Data Analytics Acceleration Library.
Click to learn more.
http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=278785351&iu=/4140___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Boot FreeDOS (Black screen/blinking cursor)

[Jerome Shidel]

Hello Matthew, 

Try using FreeDOS 1.2 Installer Preview Release 15 (FDI). http://up.lod.bz/FDI

Use either the SLIM or full USB images. SLIM  contains BASE and FULL installs 
and is under 32MB. The Full USB image contains those plus about 450MB of extra 
packages that are not automatically installed.

Easy to put its image on a flash drive using Linux, Mac or UNIX basis system. 
On Linux, just plug in a USB stick and locate its device name. Something like 
/dev/sdg. Then just use something like:

sudo dd if=FDI-USB.img of=/dev/sdg

dd is a little slow but works fine. This is also how you would create it on a 
Mac. However, on a Mac, you need to first unmount (not eject) the media, then 
use the command line version of diskUtils to find the device name. 

Anyhow, assuming your machine will boot the new USB stick, you need not do an 
install. Simply select your language, then at the Welcome to FDI screen, select 
quit to DOS. You are now running a basic lite and slightly limited version of 
FreeDOS 1.2. 

I hope this helps.
Jerome

Sent from my iPhone, ignore bad sentence structures, grammatical errors and 
incorrect spell-corrected words.
--
Transform Data into Opportunity.
Accelerate data analysis in your applications with
Intel Data Analytics Acceleration Library.
Click to learn more.
http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=278785471&iu=/4140
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] FDI Preview 15, update 2

[Jerome Shidel]

> On Apr 10, 2016, at 12:59 PM, Don Flowers  wrote:
> 
> I just tried an install with FDI-SLiM.img from my GRUB2 boot menu and it was 
> super fast. I forgot to go to the advanced menu (maybe the final should have 
> the options following the language menu?); so my GRUB got wiped but SUPER 
> GRUB DISC fixed that pronto.
> Very cool to do it this way.

:-) FDI normal mode install is definitely quick and easy.  On reasonable 
hardware or a quick VM, it can be under a minute. 

Update on QEMU support.

Well, I had a few minutes today to add some CPU detection to V8. Unfortunately, 
qemu is detected as 486 not 386. So, I will have to figure out a way to 
directly detect it. 

--
Find and fix application performance issues faster with Applications Manager
Applications Manager provides deep performance insights into multiple tiers of
your business applications. It resolves application problems quickly and
reduces your MTTR. Get your free trial! http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/
gampad/clk?id=1444514301&iu=/ca-pub-7940484522588532
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] FDI Preview 15, update 2

[Jerome Shidel]

> On Apr 10, 2016, at 12:59 PM, Don Flowers  wrote:
> 
> I just tried an install with FDI-SLiM.img from my GRUB2 boot menu and it was 
> super fast. I forgot to go to the advanced menu (maybe the final should have 
> the options following the language menu?); so my GRUB got wiped but SUPER 
> GRUB DISC fixed that pronto.
> Very cool to do it this way.

Oh, you can switch into advanced mode at the language screen as well.

Actually, into and out of advanced mode anytime FDI is waiting for you to 
choose something. 

However, you need to be in advanced mode when you continue from the welcome 
screen. Otherwise, it assumes the default answers to a question like target 
directory, drive, MBR, formatting  And you'll really only get the option to 
do detailed package selection. Oh, and maybe zip backup if a OS was detected.

Jerome

--
Find and fix application performance issues faster with Applications Manager
Applications Manager provides deep performance insights into multiple tiers of
your business applications. It resolves application problems quickly and
reduces your MTTR. Get your free trial! http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/
gampad/clk?id=1444514301&iu=/ca-pub-7940484522588532
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] FDI Preview 15, Update 3

[Jerome Shidel]

On Apr 16, 2016, at 7:45 PM, Jim Hall  wrote:

> 
> Putting on my "technical editor" hat, I'm suggesting these fixes and edits 
> for 1.2-pre16. I know these may seem like trivial edits, but I think they 
> make the installer more professional.
> 
> 
> 1. Lists should be introduced either with a question or a colon. I prefer a 
> question. I've included these edits below.
> 
> 2. List entries should either have a period at the end of each option, or it 
> should not. For the installer, I prefer no period. I've included these edits 
> below. You already use sentence case, which is good.
> 
> 3. I prefer that the word "FreeDOS" not be written in red. In many cultures, 
> red is a warning color. Please use blue or bright white instead of red for 
> the word "FreeDOS" and the "1.2-pre15" label.
> 
> 4. Similarly, let's avoid red for other text, if they aren't error messages. 
> The drive letter and package currently being installed both appear in red. 
> For consistency with the colors used in the quickformat output, let's use 
> cyan or bright white for this text.
> 
> 5. The title bar should say "FreeDOS 1.2-pre15 Install" (not "…Installer")
> 
> 6. When prompting for the language, instead of this:
> 
> Please select you language.
> 
> ..the installer should ask:
> 
> What is your preferred language?
> 
> 
> 7. When asking if the user really wants to proceed, please remove the periods 
> at the end of each option.
> 
> 8. When asking to partition the target drive, please remove the periods at 
> the end of each option. Also, there's a typo in the "Yes" option. It should 
> read:
> 
> Yes - Partition drive C:
> 
> 9. When prompting to reboot the computer after running FDISK, please remove 
> the periods at the end of each option.
> 
> 10. When prompting to format the hard drive, please remove the periods at the 
> end of each option.
> 
> 11. When asking what packages to install, please remove the periods at the 
> end of each option.
> 
> 12. At the prompt before starting the install process, please remove the 
> periods at the end of each option.
> 
> 13. When prompting to reboot the computer after the installation, please 
> remove the periods at the end of each option.
> 
> 14. The installer asks "do you wish" in some places and "do you want" in 
> other places. Let's use "do you want" throughout, for consistency. (For 
> example, "Do you want to format your drive?")
> 
> 
> Also:
> Is it possible to remove the patterned background, and just use a plain blue 
> background instead? I think this would look better.
> 

Hello Jim,

All are very easy to do.  FDI is completely themed. 

The Red is just the Highlight Color I picked for a high contrast to the Light 
Gray dialog box. I don't think Cyan or White will have a high enough contrast. 
How about just  plain Blue?

Get rid of the periods. Period! :-) All text is in a "Language" file. So, easy 
to remove and make adjustments.

Textured background. Easy, just a theme option. 

There are some minor issues with the installed config.sys file. 

1) Default Option 1 is not compatible with VirtualBox. Reorder, Remove or 
Ignore issue?

2) 4DOS is always shown as a boot option. At present, 4DOS is not installed 
with BASE. It is only installed with ALL. Always Remove, Remove if not 
installed, Always install, Ignore issue?

Thanks, Jerome

Sent from my iPhone, ignore bad sentence structures, grammatical errors and 
incorrect spell-corrected words.--
Find and fix application performance issues faster with Applications Manager
Applications Manager provides deep performance insights into multiple tiers of
your business applications. It resolves application problems quickly and
reduces your MTTR. Get your free trial!
https://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/clk/302982198;130105516;z___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] FDI Preview 15, Update 3

[Jerome Shidel]

> On Apr 17, 2016, at 8:46 PM, Jim Hall  wrote:
> 
> Hi Jerome
> 
> I'll email you offlist with a screenshot of the "Partitioner" typo.

Ah, that was an old typo I corrected a little while back. It occurred when I 
reworded that option from "Launch Partitioner..." to "Partition(er) ..." 

I though I updated the language file in the build process. But, I guess I 
forgot when I pushed Update 3. 

Basically, I have the source files on a Mac that I edit and push to github. 
Then I must copy those to a floppy image for the FreeDOS virtual machine build 
environment. Then boot using previous FDI boot floppy image. Quit installer to 
DOS and run the build batch from the other floppy image. Creating the new 
installer images. I don't always replace all of the files on the source file 
floppy image. 

So, it had been corrected. But, I guess it wasn't in the preview release. 

That explains our confusion on the typo. :-)

Thanks, Jerome

--
Find and fix application performance issues faster with Applications Manager
Applications Manager provides deep performance insights into multiple tiers of
your business applications. It resolves application problems quickly and
reduces your MTTR. Get your free trial!
https://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/clk/302982198;130105516;z
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS 1.2 - Preview 16

[Jerome Shidel]

> On Apr 19, 2016, at 11:47 AM, Jim Hall  wrote:
> 
>> On Tue, Apr 19, 2016 at 9:28 AM, Jerome E. Shidel Jr.  
>> wrote:
>> 
>> Hello All,
>> 
>> At present there are two USB of FDI, 32MB and 512MB.
>> 
>> Who would like the 512MB version expanded to 2GB in Preview 16?
>> 
>> This would not effect the download size or installed software.
>> 
>> However, it would require a 2GB USB drive instead of only 512MB.
>> 
>> The only benefit I see in doing this would be to allow the user
>> to stick a whole lot of other stuff on their USB stick.
> 
> 
> Maybe I don't understand the question, but why would the size expand
> to 2GB if you aren't increasing the download size or installed
> software? I think you are talking about the install image being 2GB
> instead of 512MB, with the remainder left as "writable" space.

That's about the size of it. :-)

The only benefit would be having a bunch of free writable space that the user 
can put whatever they wish into.

Personally, I think the CONs of forcing a larger Media requirement outweigh the 
bonus of the free space. 

But, it has been requested. So, I figured I would throw the question out to the 
users group and see what they thought.

> 
> For putting the image on a USB fob drive, wouldn't you use Live USB
> Creator or some similar tool anyway, so the 2GB thing doesn't matter?
> Live USB Creator allows you to set aside extra space on the target fob
> drive as writable space. 

Technically, the FDI install media is a live FreeDOS version. It just doesn't 
have any extra software installed.

Thanks, Jerome

--
Find and fix application performance issues faster with Applications Manager
Applications Manager provides deep performance insights into multiple tiers of
your business applications. It resolves application problems quickly and
reduces your MTTR. Get your free trial!
https://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/clk/302982198;130105516;z
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] FDI Preview 15, Update 3

[Jerome Shidel]

Hello,

> On Apr 22, 2016, at 6:02 AM, Mateusz Viste  wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I tested FDI, and - in general - it looks really awesome. I list below 
> all my remarks.
> 
> *** 1st Screen ***
> "Please select you language." - this should be "youR language"

This has already been changed to different wording in (not yet released) 
Preview 16

> the language names that change when I pass on them are quite... 
> confusing. maybe it's just me, but I'd really prefer to have each 
> language written statically (in its own language ideally), ie. 
> "English", "Espanol", "Francais", "Deutsche", etc...
> 
> *** 2nd screen ***
> "Welcome to the installation program for FreeDOS 1.2-pre15."
> 
> I think it would sound better as:
> "Welcome to the FreeDOS 1.2-pre15 installation program"

I had the same thought. Discussed with Jim and changed the wording in Preview 
16.

> Then: "If you choose to install this (...)" sounds a little diminishing 
> to FreeDOS. Something like "If you choose to install it (...)" might 
> sound better

It is the disclaimer Jim wanted. He may be fine with changing it.

> In multiple choices, each choice is ended with a dot ("No - Return to 
> DOS.") - it looks weird, doesn't it?

Jim didn't like that either. Already changed for 16.

> *** 3rd screen ***
> "Yes - Partitioner drive C:." should read "Yes - Partition the C: drive"

This actually was fixed in P15. In P14 I added some automatic partitioning in 
normal mode and changed the wording. I forgot to pull the (er). I don't usually 
replace on all the files on the build floppy image with the github sources on 
my HD. I had forgot to update the language files in 15. Oops.

> Then the computer reboots, and I land back on the "Please select your 
> language". It's quite confusing. "intuitively", the naive user in me was 
> expecting the installation to continue from the point it stopped (ie. 
> after partitionning).

Did it not prompt for a reboot after selections partition?

Anyway, I should probably put a screen in there that says it is doing it after 
the question and before the reboot prompt.

> 
> I understand why this happens, but other users might not. A short 
> explanation screen after or before the partitioning process would be 
> nice, for example: "Once your drive is partioned, the computer will be 
> rebooted and the installation process should start again from the 
> beginning."
> 
> *** freezing ***
> After my C: drive being partitioned, the installer restarted and 
> formatted the drive. Then, it displayed a message "Gathering some 
> information to prepare for the installation."
> note 1: the message should end with 3 dots "installation...", since it's 
> something "in progress"

Sure.

> note 2: my installation stopped there, since this screen never went 
> away. tested on VirtualBox with 8M of RAM and a 256M virtual drive. I 
> used all_cd.iso for the installation ("FreeDOS 1.2-pre15"), with the FDI 
> bootdisk downloaded from your website.

Humm, does it exhibit the same behavior when just booted from the floppy image? 
It has to be one of three issues. I will try to do some more testing in that 
section.

> *** general note ***
> I like the "patterned" background screen very much (I think there was 
> some debate about that on the list recently).

Me too. But, Jim wants plain blue. So, 16 uses that. Easy to change in theme 
file though.

> cheers,
> Mateusz
> 

Thanks Jerome

Sent from my iPhone, ignore bad sentence structures, grammatical errors and 
incorrect spell-corrected words.



--
Find and fix application performance issues faster with Applications Manager
Applications Manager provides deep performance insights into multiple tiers of
your business applications. It resolves application problems quickly and
reduces your MTTR. Get your free trial!
https://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/clk/302982198;130105516;z
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] FDI Preview 16

[Jerome Shidel]

Hello Don,

> On Apr 30, 2016, at 5:52 AM, Don Flowers  wrote:
> 
> Thanks Jerome,
> Will be testing this weekend with feedback on Monday.

:-)

> 
> I just have to add this today about PGME - I have several vintage Menu 
> systems, but what you have done here is really an awesome addition to FreeDOS 
> - thank you for your contribution to the FreeDOS project.
> 

Thank you. Although I haven't updated it in months, there are some additional 
things I still plan to do to PGME. I guess with the name PGM "Eternity" it 
won't every be completely finished. :)

Thanks, Jerome

--
Find and fix application performance issues faster with Applications Manager
Applications Manager provides deep performance insights into multiple tiers of
your business applications. It resolves application problems quickly and
reduces your MTTR. Get your free trial!
https://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/clk/302982198;130105516;z
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS 1.2 needs you

[Jerome Shidel]

> So you just want us to weed out the license-incompatible ones??

That is only part of what is needed.
Some packages have wrong or old license information. For example, some have 
switched from GPL to BSD. Others, are listed as GPL, but are actually GPLv2. 
And so on. 

>> base\ctmouse
> 
> Needs (easy) workaround for closed-source COM2EXE build utility. (I
> just made a debug script to create the specific .EXE header.)
> 
>> base\jemm
> 
> Need to remove JLOAD.EXE and *.JLM.


--
Find and fix application performance issues faster with Applications Manager
Applications Manager provides deep performance insights into multiple tiers of
your business applications. It resolves application problems quickly and
reduces your MTTR. Get your free trial!
https://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/clk/302982198;130105516;z
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS 1.2 - Preview 17

[Jerome Shidel]

> On May 15, 2016, at 4:19 PM, Rugxulo  wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> On Sun, May 15, 2016 at 10:24 AM, Jerome E. Shidel Jr.
>  wrote:
>> 
>> On May 11, 2016, at 11:11 PM, perditi...@gmail.com wrote:
>> [..]
>> 
>> Kernel update is forthcoming.
>> I still need to run some tests and make 386+ builds, but updated
>> packages will be available at
>> http://www.fdos.org/kernel/release/LATEST/fdpkg/ and release builds
>> uploaded to SF.
>> 
>> Jeremy
>> 
>> 
>> I just realized it was available.
>> 
>> So, even though I pushed FDI Preview 18 last night…
>> 
>> I took a few seconds, and Preview 19 is now out the door. It uses and
>> installs 2042.
> 
> Uh, it doesn't work. Any attempt to download the 2042 files from
> SF.net fails with an error message.
> 

I had no problem downloading them from the provided link. Also, put them into 
FDI - P19 that I released earlier today.

;Sent from my iPhone, ignore bad sentence structures, grammatical errors and 
incorrect spell-corrected words. 

--
Mobile security can be enabling, not merely restricting. Employees who
bring their own devices (BYOD) to work are irked by the imposition of MDM
restrictions. Mobile Device Manager Plus allows you to control only the
apps on BYO-devices by containerizing them, leaving personal data untouched!
https://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/clk/304595813;131938128;j
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Games

[Jerome Shidel]

> On Jun 20, 2016, at 3:04 PM, userbeit...@abwesend.de wrote:
> 
> Why?
> Every emulator or VM I know about will quickly install any operating 
> system from a virtual CD-ROM. So if you just assign the FreeDOS-ISO as 
> the virtual ATAPI-CDROM you will very easily install it to the virtual 
> Hard Disk Drive, which will be either .VHD, .VHDX (Virtual PC and 
> Hyper-V), .VMDK (VMware), .QCOW (QEMU) or .VDI (VirtualBox). Or any 
> other format.
> 
> A prepared installation will not help alot, aside from you not being 
> completely aware, which installation was used (full installation, 
> partial installation, which packages).

Well, yes and no.

Using FDI (the new FreeDOS Installer) to install the v1.2 preview versions 
takes under most 60 seconds in most VMs.

There are odd compatibility issues from VM to VM. The installer compensates for 
most of these by tweaking the installed config files.

But, for some users getting a pre setup VM that booted to a menu of Games and 
other cool freebies.  

> 
> Also, for each emulator or VM you will require different hardware 
> drivers (for the virtual hardware) and integration drivers (for guest 
> integration).
> 
> Therefor I would suggest to better add an installation package for 
> FreeDOS as a guest operating system under various emulators and VMs. A 
> user could then just install FreeDOS and select "guest drivers and 
> tools" as an additional package, which would then ask "a) Virtual PC, b) 
> Hyper-V, c) VMware, d) VirtualBox, e) QEMU" and install+setup the 
> required stuff for you.
> 

V8Power Tools (used by FDI for a lot of its magic) already detects several 
different virtual machine platforms. This was needed to prevent problems with 
several drivers used by FDI and to aid in configuring the installed system on 
specific VMs. It also can detect some other and unknown VMs. But, for the 
installer, that is not useful. 

If there are drivers for a QEMU, VirtualBox or VMWare that can be included with 
FreeDOS without violating and licensing restrictions, it is possible to just 
have them installed normally. Or, throw up a prompt when one of those VMs  are 
detected.

> 
> I write this because this is my experience. Installing an OS on a 
> virtual PC is easy, getting the drivers set up sometimes is hard work, 
> because you have to find those drivers first. Including them as an 
> installation package would be sufficiently easy for uses IMHO. Just my 2¢.
> 
> Cheers,
> userbeitrag

Yes, finding, installing and configuring DOS drivers is not for the faint of 
heart.

Jerome

Sent from my iPhone, ignore bad sentence structures, grammatical errors and 
incorrect spell-corrected words. 

--
What NetFlow Analyzer can do for you? Monitors network bandwidth and traffic
patterns at an interface-level. Reveals which users, apps, and protocols are 
consuming the most bandwidth. Provides multi-vendor support for NetFlow, 
J-Flow, sFlow and other flows. Make informed decisions using capacity planning
reports. http://sdm.link/zohomanageengine
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Which freedos on 486

[Jerome Shidel]

Did you change the installed config?

It uses himemx as well.

Sent from my iPhone, ignore bad sentence structures, grammatical errors and 
incorrect spell-corrected words. 

> On Jul 18, 2016, at 3:46 PM, Dimitris Zilaskos  wrote:
> 
> Thank you all for your suggestions. What I have tried so far:
> 
>* Getting rid of himemx: this works - the boot process continues and the 
> installer tries to start. However the floppy drive works continuously like 
> mad, screen updates are slow, and I the installation appears to be stuck in 
> the 'Gathering information..' stage forever
>* Replacing himemx with XMGR.SYS /T0 (kudos to Jack): Boot process 
> continues, everything is light speed fast compared to just getting rid of 
> himemx.
>* Although installation of 1.2 finishes successfully, system fails to 
> boot, hangs right after BIOS system summary is displayed.
>* sys c: does not help
>* UDVD2 is able to detect the CDROM connected to the SB16 IDE interface. 
> Unfortunately only the CDROM drive that was supplied with sound card appears 
> to work there (MATSHITA CR-581-M), connecting other CDROMs that can actually 
> read modern CD-R causes the system to get stuck after memory test. So I have 
> to use a 1998 HITACHI CDR-8435 attached to the secondary VESA Local Bus IDE 
> for the installation. UDVD2 reports the SB16 CDROM drive in IDE1 - I would 
> expect that to be IDE2 for tertiary IDE so I may need to play with jumpers.
> 
> I will try to sort out why the boot loader fails.
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> Dimitris
> 
> 
>> On Mon, Jul 18, 2016 at 5:04 PM, Don Flowers  wrote:
>> Your driver is the problem this might be a case for the XCDROM.SYS driver 
>> combined with SHCDX86.COM - A quick way to find out download this file 
>> https://sourceforge.net/projects/xosl-ow/files/xosl-ow116/BootMedia/BootFloppy/
>> and see if you have clean drive access.
>> 
>> 
>>> On Mon, Jul 18, 2016 at 9:02 AM, Dimitris Zilaskos  
>>> wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>> 
>>> Thanks for the followup. Hitting F8 reveals HIMEMX triggering this problem: 
>>> https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2zW1ur6Z_WeSWtGNXN0NmxxaU0
>>> 
>>> ​​I have observed that the gibberish stops given sufficient time: 
>>> https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2zW1ur6Z_WeVjVMalF6M2YtMTA
>>> 
>>> Let me know what else I can try - I will recheck the floppies for starters 
>>> in case they went bad and check the rest of your suggestions.
>>> 
>>> Best regards,
>>> 
>>> Dimitris
>>> 
>>> 
 On Mon, Jul 18, 2016 at 1:02 PM, Jerome E. Shidel Jr.  
 wrote:
 
> On Jul 18, 2016, at 7:51 AM, Dimitris Zilaskos  
> wrote:
> I have tried it please see the output attached. This is endlessly 
> scrolling after drives are detected. 
> 
> https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2zW1ur6Z_WeY2tOSXpNT2g3NUJWMWx6bFZlSFBjamE3VEFr
 Unfortunately, that isn’t very helpful.
 
 When you boot the floppy, can you press F8 to walk through the startup?  
 What item in the configuration
 causes it to crash?
 
 Jerome
 
 --
 What NetFlow Analyzer can do for you? Monitors network bandwidth and 
 traffic
 patterns at an interface-level. Reveals which users, apps, and protocols 
 are
 consuming the most bandwidth. Provides multi-vendor support for NetFlow,
 J-Flow, sFlow and other flows. Make informed decisions using capacity 
 planning
 reports.http://sdm.link/zohodev2dev
 ___
 Freedos-user mailing list
 Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
 https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
>>> 
>>> 
>>> --
>>> What NetFlow Analyzer can do for you? Monitors network bandwidth and traffic
>>> patterns at an interface-level. Reveals which users, apps, and protocols are
>>> consuming the most bandwidth. Provides multi-vendor support for NetFlow,
>>> J-Flow, sFlow and other flows. Make informed decisions using capacity 
>>> planning
>>> reports.http://sdm.link/zohodev2dev
>>> ___
>>> Freedos-user mailing list
>>> Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
>>> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
>> 
>> 
>> --
>> What NetFlow Analyzer can do for you? Monitors network bandwidth and traffic
>> patterns at an interface-level. Reveals which users, apps, and protocols are
>> consuming the most bandwidth. Provides multi-vendor support for NetFlow,
>> J-Flow, sFlow and other flows. Make informed decisions using capacity 
>> planning
>> reports.http://sdm.link/zohodev2dev
>> ___
>> Freedos-user mailing list
>> Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
>> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
> 
> -

Re: [Freedos-user] Which freedos on 486

[Jerome Shidel]

> On Jul 18, 2016, at 6:52 PM, Dimitris Zilaskos  wrote:
> 
> Dear Jerome,
> 
> From what I can tell I never get past the boot loader to be struck by himemx.
> 

Ok try this:

Boot your modified FDI floppy.
It should detect FreeDOS has been already installed and go straight to the 
command prompt.

Run "MBRZAP"
This will launch a special part of FDI in advanced mode to force update your 
MBR with the FreeDOS boot loader.

---
During investigations of systems that had boot loader issues not being updated, 
I discovered that there is no way to force the sys command to updated the MBR. 
Sometimes, it just won't do it regardless of what you tell it to do. It can be 
forced using fdisk. 

There is another possible issue. Your MBR may be fine. However, FDI may have 
not been able to identify the drive or partition that FreeDOS was installed 
onto. You should run fdisk and verify that the FreeDOS partition is set as 
ACTIVE.

Jerome

Sent from my iPhone, ignore bad sentence structures, grammatical errors and 
incorrect spell-corrected words. 

> Cheers,
> 
> Dimitris
> 
>> On Mon, Jul 18, 2016 at 10:49 PM, Jerome Shidel  wrote:
>> Did you change the installed config?
>> 
>> It uses himemx as well.
>> 
>> Sent from my iPhone, ignore bad sentence structures, grammatical errors and 
>> incorrect spell-corrected words. 
>> 
>>> On Jul 18, 2016, at 3:46 PM, Dimitris Zilaskos  wrote:
>>> 
>>> Thank you all for your suggestions. What I have tried so far:
>>> 
>>>* Getting rid of himemx: this works - the boot process continues and the 
>>> installer tries to start. However the floppy drive works continuously like 
>>> mad, screen updates are slow, and I the installation appears to be stuck in 
>>> the 'Gathering information..' stage forever
>>>* Replacing himemx with XMGR.SYS /T0 (kudos to Jack): Boot process 
>>> continues, everything is light speed fast compared to just getting rid of 
>>> himemx.
>>>* Although installation of 1.2 finishes successfully, system fails to 
>>> boot, hangs right after BIOS system summary is displayed.
>>>* sys c: does not help
>>>* UDVD2 is able to detect the CDROM connected to the SB16 IDE interface. 
>>> Unfortunately only the CDROM drive that was supplied with sound card 
>>> appears to work there (MATSHITA CR-581-M), connecting other CDROMs that can 
>>> actually read modern CD-R causes the system to get stuck after memory test. 
>>> So I have to use a 1998 HITACHI CDR-8435 attached to the secondary VESA 
>>> Local Bus IDE for the installation. UDVD2 reports the SB16 CDROM drive in 
>>> IDE1 - I would expect that to be IDE2 for tertiary IDE so I may need to 
>>> play with jumpers.
>>> 
>>> I will try to sort out why the boot loader fails.
>>> 
>>> Thanks!
>>> 
>>> Dimitris
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> On Mon, Jul 18, 2016 at 5:04 PM, Don Flowers  wrote:
>>>> Your driver is the problem this might be a case for the XCDROM.SYS driver 
>>>> combined with SHCDX86.COM - A quick way to find out download this file 
>>>> https://sourceforge.net/projects/xosl-ow/files/xosl-ow116/BootMedia/BootFloppy/
>>>> and see if you have clean drive access.
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>>> On Mon, Jul 18, 2016 at 9:02 AM, Dimitris Zilaskos  
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>> Hi,
>>>>> 
>>>>> Thanks for the followup. Hitting F8 reveals HIMEMX triggering this 
>>>>> problem: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2zW1ur6Z_WeSWtGNXN0NmxxaU0
>>>>> 
>>>>> ​​I have observed that the gibberish stops given sufficient time: 
>>>>> https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2zW1ur6Z_WeVjVMalF6M2YtMTA
>>>>> 
>>>>> Let me know what else I can try - I will recheck the floppies for 
>>>>> starters in case they went bad and check the rest of your suggestions.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Best regards,
>>>>> 
>>>>> Dimitris
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>>> On Mon, Jul 18, 2016 at 1:02 PM, Jerome E. Shidel Jr. 
>>>>>>  wrote:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> On Jul 18, 2016, at 7:51 AM, Dimitris Zilaskos  
>>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>> I have tried it please see the output attached. This is endlessly 
>>>>>>> scrolling after drives are detected. 
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2

Re: [Freedos-user] freedos 1.2 archivers

[Jerome Shidel]

Hello,

> On Aug 16, 2016, at 11:38 AM, Dimitris Zilaskos  wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I did a full freedos 1.2 installation but not all archivers were installed. 
> While I got them from the CD eventually from the ARCHIVERS directory I was 
> wondering if that is supposed to happen.
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> Dimitris

Yes, for now.

There is roughly 400mb in about 100 packages that are included on the 1.2 cd 
and large USB stick versions that are included but not installed. At present 
they are considered extra/bonus packages.

Jerome

--
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] freedos 1.2 archivers

[Jerome Shidel]

If you run the installer in advanced mode, you can add them at installation by 
using detailed package selection.

You can switch the installer into Advanced mode at any point it is waiting on 
user input. For example, the installer runs in Normal mode when you boot. You 
continue through all the prompts until you reach the "BASE or ALL/FULL" package 
selection. Press CTRL+C, then select "Switch to Advanced mode" it will then 
return you back to the package set selection but now "Detailed selections" will 
be available. 

If you run the installer from the command prompt, you can start it in advanced 
mode by using "SETUP adv"

There are many things the installer does (or tries to do) automatically in 
Normal mode. But in Advanced mode, nearly all of those decisions are left to 
the user.

Also, if you use FDIMPLES (installed with FULL/ALL), you can browse through and 
select packages to be installed. Similar to using some Linux package browsing 
systems like Yast. FDIMPLES does not do networking at present. So, you will 
need to have you CD inserted. 

Jerome

> On Aug 16, 2016, at 7:01 PM, Dimitris Zilaskos  wrote:
> 
> Ok thanks. Would be awesome to have an option to get them installed.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Dimitris
> 
>> On Tue, Aug 16, 2016 at 5:52 PM, Jerome Shidel  wrote:
>> Hello,
>> 
>> > On Aug 16, 2016, at 11:38 AM, Dimitris Zilaskos  
>> > wrote:
>> >
>> > Hi,
>> >
>> > I did a full freedos 1.2 installation but not all archivers were 
>> > installed. While I got them from the CD eventually from the ARCHIVERS 
>> > directory I was wondering if that is supposed to happen.
>> >
>> > Best regards,
>> >
>> > Dimitris
>> 
>> Yes, for now.
>> 
>> There is roughly 400mb in about 100 packages that are included on the 1.2 cd 
>> and large USB stick versions that are included but not installed. At present 
>> they are considered extra/bonus packages.
>> 
>> Jerome
>> 
>> --
>> ___
>> Freedos-user mailing list
>> Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
>> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
> 
> --
> ___
> Freedos-user mailing list
> Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
--
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] freedos 1.2 archivers

[Jerome Shidel]

> On Aug 18, 2016, at 6:46 PM, Dimitris Zilaskos  wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> Thank you for the advice. I tried FDIMPLES, seem to show everything 
> installed, but for some reason p7zip is missing from its list.

You sure. It should be listed between LZOP and  TAR. But, you need to scroll 
down to see it.

> 
> Best regards,
> 
> Dimitris
> 
>> On Wed, Aug 17, 2016 at 12:25 AM, Jerome Shidel  wrote:
>> If you run the installer in advanced mode, you can add them at installation 
>> by using detailed package selection.
>> 
>> You can switch the installer into Advanced mode at any point it is waiting 
>> on user input. For example, the installer runs in Normal mode when you boot. 
>> You continue through all the prompts until you reach the "BASE or ALL/FULL" 
>> package selection. Press CTRL+C, then select "Switch to Advanced mode" it 
>> will then return you back to the package set selection but now "Detailed 
>> selections" will be available. 
>> 
>> If you run the installer from the command prompt, you can start it in 
>> advanced mode by using "SETUP adv"
>> 
>> There are many things the installer does (or tries to do) automatically in 
>> Normal mode. But in Advanced mode, nearly all of those decisions are left to 
>> the user.
>> 
>> Also, if you use FDIMPLES (installed with FULL/ALL), you can browse through 
>> and select packages to be installed. Similar to using some Linux package 
>> browsing systems like Yast. FDIMPLES does not do networking at present. So, 
>> you will need to have you CD inserted. 
>> 
>> Jerome
>> 
>>> On Aug 16, 2016, at 7:01 PM, Dimitris Zilaskos  wrote:
>>> 
>>> Ok thanks. Would be awesome to have an option to get them installed.
>>> 
>>> Cheers,
>>> 
>>> Dimitris
>>> 
>>>> On Tue, Aug 16, 2016 at 5:52 PM, Jerome Shidel  wrote:
>>>> Hello,
>>>> 
>>>> > On Aug 16, 2016, at 11:38 AM, Dimitris Zilaskos  
>>>> > wrote:
>>>> >
>>>> > Hi,
>>>> >
>>>> > I did a full freedos 1.2 installation but not all archivers were 
>>>> > installed. While I got them from the CD eventually from the ARCHIVERS 
>>>> > directory I was wondering if that is supposed to happen.
>>>> >
>>>> > Best regards,
>>>> >
>>>> > Dimitris
>>>> 
>>>> Yes, for now.
>>>> 
>>>> There is roughly 400mb in about 100 packages that are included on the 1.2 
>>>> cd and large USB stick versions that are included but not installed. At 
>>>> present they are considered extra/bonus packages.
>>>> 
>>>> Jerome
>>>> 
>>>> --
>>>> ___
>>>> Freedos-user mailing list
>>>> Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
>>>> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
>>> 
>>> --
>>> ___
>>> Freedos-user mailing list
>>> Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
>>> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
>> 
>> --
>> 
>> ___
>> Freedos-user mailing list
>> Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
>> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
> 
> --
> ___
> Freedos-user mailing list
> Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
--
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Simple guide for networking FreeDOS 1.2 in a VirtualBox VM ?

[Jerome Shidel]

> On Dec 25, 2016, at 4:57 PM, William Dudley  wrote:
> 
> Is there a simple guide for networking FreeDOS 1.2 in a VirtualBox VM ?

No guide needed under VirtualBox

Install the FDNET package and reboot.

If you downloaded a CD version and did a FULL (not BASE) install, just:

1) boot the VM
2) attach the FreeDOS 1.2 CD
3) run FDIMPLES
4) Select FDNET under the networking group and pick OK.
5) reboot.

Done.


--
Developer Access Program for Intel Xeon Phi Processors
Access to Intel Xeon Phi processor-based developer platforms.
With one year of Intel Parallel Studio XE.
Training and support from Colfax.
Order your platform today.http://sdm.link/intel
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Simple guide for networking FreeDOS 1.2 in a VirtualBox VM ?

[Jerome Shidel]

Made a quick YouTube video of doing a VirtualBox install and how to add 
networking support.

https://youtu.be/k0sP1VAo0D8
--
Developer Access Program for Intel Xeon Phi Processors
Access to Intel Xeon Phi processor-based developer platforms.
With one year of Intel Parallel Studio XE.
Training and support from Colfax.
Order your platform today.http://sdm.link/intel
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Simple guide for networking FreeDOS 1.2 in a VirtualBox VM ?

[Jerome Shidel]

William, 

> On Dec 26, 2016, at 12:16 PM, William Dudley  wrote:
> 
> Jerome,
> 
> Thanks, that was useful.  It would be better if it also discussed the settings
> needed in VirtualBox.  I figured it out eventually but it took me a bit of 
> googling
> to figure out.
> 
> Bill Dudley

I’m glad you found it useful. 

When it comes to settings, I’ve mostly just be using the ones that VirtualBox 
defaults to when installing DOS.

Jerome
--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most 
engaging tech sites, SlashDot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

[Freedos-user] FreeDOS 1.2 and DOSBox

[Jerome Shidel]

How can I add the power of FreeDOS to my DOSBox? 

Well, here you go. Keep all of the flexibility that DOSBox provides. Yet, add 
the power of the FreeDOS Command Shell and other FreeDOS utilities. The FreeDOS 
installer supports DOSBox. Please note, this is not a pure OS install. But, a 
special way the installer handles DOSBox. The FreeDOS kernel is not loaded. 
This allows the host system to interact with the DOSBox filesystem and behave 
more like a normal DOSBox install.

https://youtu.be/NmLjVYqF3zg--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most 
engaging tech sites, SlashDot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Freedos 1.2 and kolibri os dualboot

[Jerome Shidel]

> On Dec 27, 2016, at 8:00 AM, Wolfgang ANdreas Heisele  wrote:
> 
> Hi,
>  
> I am new to freedos and got to this mailing list through this youtube video:

Welcome.

>  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0sP1VAo0D8
>  
> Where I wrote the follwing question:
>  
> Nice video.

:-)

> I got that far, but I was really looking into whether one could use freedos 
> to format a harddisc and put freedos and kolibri os alongside. Got into some 
> problems with the last part. First kolibrios.org download is 7z format so I 
> got to download and install 7zip but it complained about wrong format.

There is also a version of 7zip on the FreeDOS 1.2 Release. It is not on the 
LITE version and is not installed automatically with either LITE/FULL package 
set. However you can easily install it using FDIMPLES. 

> Than I realized that freedos as dos only supports 32bit fat not vfat which 
> would be needed to put the kolibrios folder on and to boot the kolibrios.img. 
> Is there a disc formating tool for freedos which supports making partitions 
> with that kind of format and would it than be possible to copy over the 
> kolibrios folder?

There are a couple of partition utilities. And a version of good old fdisk is 
provided. It can create partitions for FreeDOS larger than 2GB. 

> Final goal would be to make a how to get freedos onto a blank system format 
> and install it download latest kolibri os version and get it to boot from the 
> harddisc (not from the disc image) and use a partition with the rest off the 
> kolibri os applications on it.
>  
> I am active on kolibrios.org a small assembler written os. It is not a final 
> product and therefore has no installer yet. One can use the disc image to 
> boot from or (the better option) make a bootable partition and put the 
> kolibrios.img and the extra applications into a kolibrios folder. Over the 
> years this was the main thing newbies complained about. That is why I am 
> searching for a way to to use some third party software to make a easier 
> howto.

Sounds like a good idea. In my opinion, many new users just give up and move on 
when they run into issues.

> I got to the point where I can run freedos and than encountered the problem 
> that I could not unzip the latest kolibri os 7z file with the needed files. I 
> than realized that dos does not support the bigger partition size than 2000 
> MBs and the greater letter count than 8.3.

FreeDOS does support larger partition sizes. However, the if the FreeDOS 
installer needs to partition the drive and can do it safely without user 
interaction, it auto-partitions the drive using fdisk. When fdisk automatically 
partitions, it just creates 2GB partitions. Probably for backwards 
compatibility.

FreeDOS also has a couple packages that provided Long File Name support. DOSLFN 
and LFNDOS. 

> Is there a way to partition a second hdd partition like e.g. windows xp would 
> do (vfat) from within freedos and get the files from the 7zip onto that. 
> Booting the kolibrios.img should be possible with syslinux memdisk or the dos 
> bootloader from kolibri os.
>  
> Anyway, great work you did on freedos! Getting it up and running with network 
> support in virtualbox was easy!

Thank you--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most 
engaging tech sites, SlashDot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Preload and start installer from installation target?

[Jerome Shidel]

> On Dec 30, 2016, at 11:44 AM, userbeit...@abwesend.de wrote:
> 
> Hi, fellow FreeDOS users! I need your help.
> 
> 
> I have an original Intel 80486 with 50 MHz that I want to try FreeDOS 
> on. I still haven't found the time so far an my first attempt came to an 
> early halt because I couldn't get an installation media to start on this 
> machine.
> 
> 
> *) The 486-PC doesn't have a CD-ROM drive.
> 
> *) The 486-PC doesn't have USB.
> 
> *) I cannot easily create a 3.5 inch boot floppy to use it in the 486-PC.
> 
> 
> What I can do thou is plug the IDE HDD into another PC and pre-load 
> FreeDOS there. Then, connecting the IDE HDD inside the 486-PC, FreeDOS 
> should start.
> 
> 
> The Question:
> 
> 1) Does the installer check the hardware and make choices? If so, this 
> would be totally wrong since I will be preloading it on a very different PC.

Yes a little. Only to compensate for the different quirks in the common vm 
platforms. 
So, if you install to real hardware then stick the drive in the old machine, 
you will be fine.

> 2) Can I install something like the installation environment itself?

Yes.

If you have a spare drive laying around, you can just copy the intire 
filesystem from one of the USB images to the root of that drive. Boot your old 
Dos, switch to drive D: and run setup.bat

This is how the DOSBox install works. Albeit it detects DOSBox and customized 
the install process somewhat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmLjVYqF3zg&sns=em

> 3) The outcome should be that it boots on the 486-PC and starts the 
> installer from there, to create all necessary CONFIG.SYS and 
> AUTOEXEC.BAT entries and to select the software to be installed. The 
> installer files may remain as capacity is not a factor on this HDD anyhow.
> 
> 
> Has this been done before? And how would I do it?
> 
> Help highly appreciated!
> 
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> userbeitrag.
> 
> 
> --
> Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most 
> engaging tech sites, SlashDot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
> ___
> Freedos-user mailing list
> Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user


--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most 
engaging tech sites, SlashDot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Freedos 1.2 Syslinux kernel.sys not found

[Jerome Shidel]

> On Jan 2, 2017, at 2:18 AM, Wolfgang ANdreas Heisele  wrote:
> 
> I have made a small video to show my issue with freedos 1.2 and syslinux. 
> After installing it freedos does not boot because it is looking for 
> kernel.sys in c:\fdos\bin\ were there is no such file. Also it seems to be 
> only looking for files in c:\ and kernl386.sys renamed and copied to c:\ is 
> not fully working. Please, watch the video and tell me what or where 
> kernel.sys should be.
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FH0pMANR5ZU
> 
> Otherwise booting into kolibri os works like a charme with this method!

Nice video. :-)

KERNEL: By default, the C:\KERNEL.SYS is the booted kernel for FreeDOS 1.2. It 
is 386 version and is the same as the C:\FDOS\BIN\KERNL386.SYS that gets 
installed during the installation process. 

FDIMPLES: When you launch FDIMPLES, it searches for any of the FreeDOS 1.2 
install media, repository CD-ROMs and local package directories. If it cannot 
find any of these package sources, it just continues without them. Any packages 
that are installed and not included in one of those package sources are grouped 
together in a “! Installed” category. This behavior allows the user to browse 
their installed packages and remove items without bothering to mount their 
package source media. 

In the future, the plan is for FDIMPLES to also be able to pull packages from 
multiple online repositories. Instead of being limited to a single repository, 
this would allow for users to connect to other repositories that could even 
include closed source software. 

Hope that helps a little,

Jerome
--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most 
engaging tech sites, SlashDot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] HIMEMX.EXE - Invalid Opcode

[Jerome Shidel]

> On Jan 4, 2017, at 9:16 AM, Tony Richardson  wrote:
> 
> I am having exactly the same problem (Invalid Opcode at HIMEMX line) with a 
> laptop from the same era.  FreeDOS 1.1 installed without problems.  I was 
> using the 1.2 standard CD.  I plan to try the 1.2 legacy CD tonight to see if 
> that makes a difference.  (Is there a description of the differences between 
> the standard and legacy installation CDs somewhere?)
> 
> Tony

Yes. I've gone into the details in the FreeDOS-devel list and on Facebook 
previously. But, don't think I've described it here.

Basically, the CD images are identical and install the exact same version of 
FreeDOS. However, there is one major difference. The use different booting 
methods. The Legacy (LGCY) version uses the original El Torito bootable CD 
specification. To boot this CD, the system BIOS loads a image file from the CD 
and uses it to emulate a floppy disk and boots it. The normal FD12CD.iso is 
handled differently. It boots a binary image file for ISOLINUX, this in turn 
uses memdisk to load and emulate a floppy for booting. 

Some systems behave erratically with one or the other method. For example, the 
LGCY disc will appear to function correctly under VirtualBox. But, when any 
program then access the data portion of the disc, the system freezes. 
VirtualBox requires the FD12CD. But, some users have reported that method did 
not work on their hardware and the LGCY version worked fine. These two methods 
are mutually exclusive and cannot be combined without breaking system 
compatibility with machines that only support the original specification. So, 
both versions are required for maximum compatibility.

By all rights, any computer that supports booting from CD, should work with the 
LGCY version. But, that is not the case. It may be the result of BIOS vendors 
not fully testing their compatibility with the ancient CD boot spec. But, it 
could be elsewhere. 

--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most 
engaging tech sites, SlashDot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Freedos 1.2 font with 4k monitor

[Jerome Shidel]

> On Jan 5, 2017, at 8:30 PM, Ralf Quint  wrote:
> 
>> On 1/5/2017 5:24 PM, Gordon wrote:
>> That's what I was wondering -- can you install a larger font to get
>> larger characters, or will the window still be the same size so you just
>> get less lines and characters per line?
> That font being used is still a matter of your host environment, and as 
> far as the number of lines is concerned, unless you play with VGA 
> register level functions, it's 40x25,80x25 or 80x43 for an EGA 
> compatible video adapter or 80x50 for a VGA adapter. You need to realize 
> that DOS is plain text base, it just displays characters the way the 
> video adapter does. And DOS does not have any direct functions to change 
> that...

You are correct. DOS really has nothing to do with the font.

However, in DOS you can use tools to load a custom font. Many systems support 
running fonts that can range from 8x8 to 8x26 pixels. So, the number of lines 
of text can range from about 15 to 50. There is some stuff the BIOS can do to 
provide things like a 9x16 font. But those are really just playing games with a 
8x16 character.

Anyhow, you can use custom font tools to run the larger (or smaller) fonts. 
These will not change the size of the screen. They will just effect the height 
of the character and how many lines of text you get. That can be useful as well 
though.

If you install the extra package PGME (Program Manager Eternity) that is 
included on the 1.2 CD and Big USB image, you can easily play with bigger fonts 
in text mode. PGME is a dos menu system and program launcher. It has built in 
support for using custom fonts and one of its default menus includes viewing 
its documentation using a BIG (8x26) font. Included with PGME is the "Eternity 
Font Designer" to create and modify the type of fonts used by PGME. There are 
also command line utilities to convert to and from plain raster fonts (like 
those in the GNU Fonts package) to the format used by PGME. There are also 
tools to load the fonts from the command line or even turn them into 
stand-alone TSR programs.

--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most 
engaging tech sites, SlashDot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS Install

[Jerome Shidel]

Also, try to just install BASE and not FULL. You can install the other packages 
after the install completes. 


> On Jan 10, 2017, at 4:59 PM, Ira Minor  wrote:
> 
> Try using the Legacy Installer CD rather than the Standard one.
> 
> Ira
> 
> irami...@gmail.com  805-212-0588
> 
>> On Tue, Jan 10, 2017 at 1:10 PM, Lawrence Dionne  
>> wrote:
>> I have an old Dell computer: Intel Celeron processor 700Mhz CPU 320MB RAM
>> 
>> I thought it would make a nice machine for installin and runnin FreeDOS, but 
>> here is the issue:
>> 
>> "freedos invalid opcode at 0FAE 1068 0046 0001 0002  0200   0183 
>>  4200 0001"
>> 
>> I boot the CD, choose "Install to hard drive" and after some text I get a 
>> constantly scrollin message.
>> 
>> I was able to get it to install, at least partially by the following 
>> procedure:
>> 
>> Start the CD then after choosing install to hard drive, I press F8 to choose 
>> the config.sys settings.
>> 
>> Once I skip the "himemx.sys" item, it will install, at least partially.  I 
>> stops at the 4DOS packages.
>> 
>> Does anyone know of a fix for this?  Is the computer too 'Old' for FreeDOS?
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> --
>> Developer Access Program for Intel Xeon Phi Processors
>> Access to Intel Xeon Phi processor-based developer platforms.
>> With one year of Intel Parallel Studio XE.
>> Training and support from Colfax.
>> Order your platform today. http://sdm.link/xeonphi
>> ___
>> Freedos-user mailing list
>> Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
>> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
>> 
> 
> --
> Developer Access Program for Intel Xeon Phi Processors
> Access to Intel Xeon Phi processor-based developer platforms.
> With one year of Intel Parallel Studio XE.
> Training and support from Colfax.
> Order your platform today. http://sdm.link/xeonphi
> ___
> Freedos-user mailing list
> Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
--
Developer Access Program for Intel Xeon Phi Processors
Access to Intel Xeon Phi processor-based developer platforms.
With one year of Intel Parallel Studio XE.
Training and support from Colfax.
Order your platform today. http://sdm.link/xeonphi___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Fw: Freedos 1.2 Network with fix ip

[Jerome Shidel]

Rugxulo is correct.

In 1.2, the AUTOEXEC.BAT checks for the existence of the %DOSDIR%\BIN\fdnet.bat 
file. If it is found, it is run to attempt to automatically start networking. 

The fdnet.bat and the %DOSDIR%\NETWORK directory provide all of the required 
programs and files to get networking support up and running on several 
platforms and virtual machines. These are only installed when the user installs 
the FDNET package. It is not installed automatically with either the BASE or 
FULL package sets.

Also, those programs and the core of the network startup process are directly 
ported from Rugxulo's MetaDOS project. The fdnet.bat is only a wrapper to that 
startup process. 

Jerome

--
Developer Access Program for Intel Xeon Phi Processors
Access to Intel Xeon Phi processor-based developer platforms.
With one year of Intel Parallel Studio XE.
Training and support from Colfax.
Order your platform today. http://sdm.link/xeonphi
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] freedos 1.2 LSM files without CR

[Jerome Shidel]

Eric, You and Tom are correct. But, so is Rugxulo.

Is it a problem?

As far as I know, only three programs every touch the LSM files. FDNPKG, FDINST 
and
FDIMPLES.  Other than install and remove, I don’t think FDNPKG & FDINST do 
anything
with them. FDIMPLES uses them along with other files and data to create the 
listings,
groups, installed state, upgrade state, blah blah blah.  But, it does not care 
which type of
line endings the file uses. 

As a side note on this issue, there are many dos2unix programs out there. But, 
last time I
checked (many years ago) very few unix2dos versions. But alas, this is not an 
issue either.
Just pipe a file through the V8Power Tools “vstr” program. It cares not what 
style file uses 
but outputs CRLF. It does not use any I/O buffering. So, it is not super fast. 
But, it can also 
strip out blank lines, pull indentation, do simple search and replace, change 
case, etc. But, 
a simple make into DOS line endings is as easy as “type oldfile.lsm | vstr 
>newfile.lsm” 

Jerome
--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, SlashDot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] freedos 1.2 LSM files without CR

[Jerome Shidel]

Rugxulo,

It is even worse than you suggested for Turbo Pascal compiled programs for LF 
only files.  The entire built-in text I/O system can't go anywhere near such 
files. If it does, you end up with an infinite display loop crash. 




--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, SlashDot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] freedo

[Jerome Shidel]

Tom, 

> what purpose is SHARE supposed to have?
> SHARE is useful when the machine is running as a server, or with
> windows (or any other multitasking OS).
> 
> don't install this.

You are probably correct that it should load it by default.

I rem’d it out for future releases.

Jerome
--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, SlashDot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] freedo

[Jerome Shidel]

Hello again,

I do agree that it makes little sense to automatically load SHARE with boot 
config option 2. After all, no other boot option starts SHARE. Also, only a 
couple situations require its use. 

Mostly, those would be running a multitasking system like Windows or exporting 
network filesystems. 

Either of these options will most likely require some hand tuning of the system 
configuration. So, leaving it in there but commented out is probably the best 
solution. A user will see it with customizing their configuration and enable it 
manually.

I don't think that going down the CHOICE route is how this should be handled. 
Would you want to encounter the following when performing an installation?

Do you want to load DOSLFN? yes/no
If no, Do you want to load LFNDOS?
Do you want to load FreeDOS High, UMB?
How many files do you want to support opening at once?
Do you want to enable hard drive caching?
Do you want to enable floppy caching?
Do you want ..
Do you want to load SHARE?
Do you want ...

:-)

I think it is much easier and less annoying to just hand edit the configuration 
afterwards. 

Jerome



--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, SlashDot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] verification checksums should be served over https

[Jerome Shidel]

> On Jan 14, 2017, at 2:21 PM, shaclacroi  wrote:
> 
> The download page links to checksums at 
> http://www.freedos.org/download/verify.txt -- but since this page isn't 
> available over https, there's no way to confirm the validity of the 
> checksums, since the page could be intercepted and modified by a 
> man-in-the-middle attacker 
> (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man-in-the-middle_attack).
>  
> As free secure https certficates are now offered by Let's Encrypt 
> (https://letsencrypt.org/), it may be advisable to get https set up for 
> www.freedos.org.
>  
> Alternatively, as I see your hosted on Amazon Web Services, if you're using 
> Elastic Load Balancing or Amazon CloudFront, Amazon's Certificate Manager 
> also offers free https certificates.
>  
> Let me know if I can be of any help.

If you are still concerned that your download might have been compromised by a 
MIM, you can get copies of the MD5 & SHA256 hash values or even the download 
the entire release media from my server https://fd.lod.bz  
. At present, it contains a mirror of the FreeDOS releases and a FreeDOS 
compatible software repository. The repo contains all the packages that shipped 
with FreeDOS 1.0 through 1.2, the official repository and a couple other free 
software packages that are not in the official repo. 

Jerome

--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, SlashDot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS 1.2 & VirtualBox: Wiki updated

[Jerome Shidel]

> On Feb 1, 2017, at 11:53 AM, Ulrich Hansen  wrote:
> 
> I have updated the pages at:
> 
> http://wiki.freedos.org/wiki/index.php/VirtualBox 
> 
Looks pretty good. :-)

Just one minor note you may wish to add. FDIMPLES is only installed with the 
FULL (+SOURCES) package set. It came kind of late during the development of the 
Installer (FDI). So, I really had not had much feed back on it. But, since 
everybody seems to love it, I think I may be able to talk Jim into including it 
in base for the next release. 

As a side not, FDIMPLES does not actually do the package installs. It uses 
FDINST (part of FDNPKG) to perform that task. Future versions, may or may not 
use it.

Some of the future plans for FDIMPLES include:

Networking support (through external utilities, like wget and curl)
Multiple repository support, local media, multiple online sources.
Package versioning support like the new online repositories.
Package integrity verification. (Checksum checking and such)
Multi-language support for buttons and things.
Mouse support.
Some other stuff.

Things you may not already know that FDIMPLES already does now.

Can perform a package update from a REPO CD.
(Download REPO CD, run “FDIMPLES /UPDATE”, wait to load, then just 
select OK)

Can permanently modify BASE and FULL package sets on the USB stick 
media.
(Boot USB stick, quit to command line, run "FDIMPLES /CONFIG”)

Can save and load package set customizations.  (see in program help “h”)
(Make changes like normal, press w. It will create a changes only file)

:-)

Jerome--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, SlashDot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] questions on FreeDOS

[Jerome Shidel]

> Secondly, although this isn't super helpful advice (and yet
> freedos.org does imply gaming), I don't think VirtualBox is ideal for
> games. It just lacks some compatibility that some games need. Maybe
> it'll work for some of your use cases, but normally it is suggested to
> use (non-FreeDOS) DOSBox emulator instead, which has much better sound
> and graphics support and can dynamically adjust cycles (among other
> things).

You can get all the features of DOSBox and still get most of the benefits of 
FreeDOS by installing it into DOSBox. The FreeDOS 1.2 installer does this hybrid
install in DOSBox automatically (mostly).  See https://youtu.be/NmLjVYqF3zg

:-)

Jerome


--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, SlashDot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Bug? Confusing boot options in FreeDOS 1.2

[Jerome Shidel]

Bug? Not really.
Is it correct? Not even close.

You are correct that there are at least a couple issues with the FDCONFIG.SYS 
and AUTOEXEC.BAT file. 

Also, #2 should not say EMM386 when it uses JEMM386. 

The current 1.2 config files are based on a clean install of 1.1 into VMware 
Fusion. Then a some things were added, moved, changed and removed. There was 
very little feedback on them during the testing phase. So, it is good that they 
start to get some attention. They can use a lot of improvement.




--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, SlashDot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Rolling up from 1.1?

[Jerome Shidel]

> On Feb 8, 2017, at 4:57 PM, David McMackins  wrote:
> 
> Call me a noob, but is there a preferred way to upgrade from FreeDOS 1.1
> to 1.2 while keeping configurations intact? I haven't personally loaded
> the new installer yet, but I wanted to check before I tried, since my
> FreeDOS installation is on real hardware.

As with any OS update, it is always a good idea for you to manually backup your 
system and important files first.

That being said...

Make sure you have lots of free drive space.

The installer will make a copy of your config files and old DOS directory (if 
it will conflict with the new install). It will then, clean out the old DOS 
directory, only keeping non-conflicting package data files. Then it will do the 
install. 

Since the installer makes a backup of all that stuff, You can copy back any 
files you may need.




--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, SlashDot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Rolling up from 1.1?

[Jerome Shidel]

Also, if you run the installer in advanced mode. 

You can choose not to replace your config files, use zip to backup and other 
stuff. But, generally I recommend just running the install in normal mode.

If you quit the installer and run it as "setup adv" , it will run in advanced 
mode. You can also switch in/out of advanced mode at any question prompt, by 
pressing CTRL+C instead of selecting an option. 

--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, SlashDot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Borland Pascal unhandled exception...

[Jerome Shidel]

FYI, there is a typographical error with option 2. It says EMM386. But, it uses 
JEMM386.

> On Feb 10, 2017, at 1:57 PM, Eric Auer  wrote:
> 
> 
> Hi Geneb, about your Borland Pascal 7 Problem in FreeDOS 1.2:
> 
>> When I run "bp" which is the protected mode compiler, I get this:
>> 
>> Unhandled exception 000E at 0020 A19E ErrCode 0002.
> 
> Looking at older FreeDOS-user discussions, people suggested
> using HDPMI16 or DOS32A, for example in resident mode, to
> work around issues with the protected mode enviroment used
> by BP (and Jazz Jackrabbit). Another suggestion was to use
> the HIMEMX /X2MAX32 option or the JEMMEX MAX=32000 MIN=32000
> settings, so this could also be a problem caused by having
> more than 16, 32 or 64 MB RAM available and / or visible,
> which the old BP may not be used to...
> 
>> if I let it boot using the default boot option, bp would 
>> fail, but not if I used "option 2".
>> 
>> Option 1 (the default) is:
>> Load FreeDOS with JEMMEX, no EMS (most UMBs), max RAM free
>> 
>> Option 2 is:
>> Load FreeDOS with EMM386 (Expanded Memory) and SHARE loaded.
> 
> Well in that case, as things do work with EMM386 but not with
> JEMMEX, the obvious solution is to use EMM386 for your PC :-)
> 
> Which version of HIMEM do you use in option 2 with EMM386? And
> how well does BP work with only HIMEM/HIMEMX, without EMM386/
> JEMMEX?
> 
> Note that JEMMEX combines HIMEM and EMM386 into a single DOS
> driver, which keeps more RAM free but which is "more exotic".
> 
> Cheers, Eric
> 
> http://freedos.10956.n7.nabble.com/Unhandled-exception-000E-td22996.html
> also mentions UIDE settings as a possible place for RAM tuning.
> 
> 
> 
> --
> Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
> engaging tech sites, SlashDot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
> ___
> Freedos-user mailing list
> Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user


--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, SlashDot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Creating a DOS bootable USB drive

[Jerome Shidel]

> On Feb 26, 2017, at 5:34 PM, Rugxulo  wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> On Sun, Feb 26, 2017 at 8:10 AM, Wolfram Volpi  wrote:
>> 
>> I am new to FreeDOS and could use your help.
>> I am trying to create a DOS bootable USB drive in for a BIOS update.
>> I have done the following twice, with the same result each time.
>> 
>> 1) Use GParted to partition USB drive and set boot flag.
>> 
>> 2) Use UNetbootin to install FreeDOS on partitioned USB drive.
>> 
>> Operating system: Fedora 25, Linux kernel 4.8, Gnome 3.22.2
>> 
>> USB flash drive: 1.0 GB Drive VBTM Store 'n' Go
>> 
>> What else can I try?
> 
> Some USB drives don't boot, or maybe yours is defective, so you may be
> forced to use a different one.
> 
> Normally I'd suggest RUFUS, but that's Windows only:
> 
> http://rufus.akeo.ie/
> 
> For Linux, try reading Joe Linoff's method of installing:
> 
> http://joelinoff.com/blog/?p=431

On Linux, Unix, BSD and Mac systems, you can just use the ‘dd’ command. 

For example, your usb flash drive is known to the system as /dev/sdf and you 
want to put FD12FULL.img on there.

Simply running: ‘dd if=FD12FULL.img of=/dev/sdf’ as superuser will do the 
trick. It will take a little while and would be faster if you add block sizes 
and counts. But, it will work file without them. The FreeDOS 1.2 USB stick 
images have a built in partition table. So, make sure you write to the device 
(like sdf) an not a partition (like sdf0). Also, MAKE SURE OF YOUR TARGET 
DEVICE!. If you target your the drive with your linux install, you will DESTROY 
all of the data there. 

There are only a couple drawbacks to using dd. It is slow. Unless you know how 
to poll it, you get no progress report. It will create the partition at the 
same size as in the image file (the whole disk won’t be in that partition). You 
must be careful when specifying the target device.

Oh, also make sure the USB drive is not mounted when you write to it with dd.

Jerome



--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, SlashDot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Creating a DOS bootable USB drive

[Jerome Shidel]

Some Windows users like using utilities like Rufus ( https://rufus.akeo.ie ) to 
create their bootable USB media. But, as a non-Windows user, I don’t know much 
about it.
--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] boot floppy disk image too big for a disk

[Jerome Shidel]

A 1.44MB 3.5” DS HD floppy disk is 1,474,560 bytes when formatted. (2MB 
unformatted)

It used 512 byte sectors, 18 sectors per track, 80 tracks per side and is/was a 
two sided media.

512 * 18 * 80 * 2 = 1474560 / 1024 = 1.44MB floppy.

More information on this can be found at 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_floppy_disk_formats

Also, on Mac, Unix and Linux dd will write the disk image fine with a command 
like:

sudo dd if=FD12FLOPPY.img of=/dev/fd0

(or similar)

As a side note, PC-DOS 7 used oddly formatted diskettes for its install media. 
These provided a capacity lager than 1.44MB on its 3.5” install media. This was 
good to reduce the number of diskettes required. But, it made it more difficult 
to clone the original floppy disks for backup purposes. Also, it was not 100% 
compatible with all floppy drives and could cause other headaches as well.

Jerome
--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] boot floppy disk image too big for a disk

[Jerome Shidel]

> On Mar 23, 2017, at 11:56 PM, Felix Miata  wrote:
> 
> I just looked inside http://www.freedos.org/download/download/FD12FLOPPY.zip 
> "boot floppy", and a 3.5" 1.44M floppy. My floppy has 1457664 total bytes, 
> 2847 
> 512 byte sectors. The image downloaded is 1474560 bytes, so the downloaded 
> image 
> would not fit here either.

I see where the confusion may be coming from.

After formatting a floppy image using FreeDOS, it states:

1,474,560 bytes total disk space (disk size)
1,456,664 bytes available on disk (free clusters)

It would appear that the number 1457664 is the usable empty free space on the 
disk once it has been low level formatted and then formatted with the standard 
DOS file system. So, you probably do have a correct sized floppy diskette. 
However, you will need to use the appropriate tool to place the floppy image 
file onto the diskette. Other messages in this thread mention programs like 
rawrite & dd. These all work very well for this task.

Jerome 
--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] boot floppy disk image too big for a disk

[Jerome Shidel]

> On Mar 24, 2017, at 6:15 PM, Dennis Fenton  wrote:
> 
> The 486 that I plan to use FreeDOS on currently‎ has MS-DOS 6.22 as its only 
> OS. My plan is to completely replace it but keep all my installed programs. 
> The SCSI drivers are all in C:\SCSI and I notice FreeDOS has its own 
> equivalent of MSCDEX.EXE.
> 

Ok, this is my advice.

First backup:
Create a MS-DOS boot floppy as a backup. That way if things go sideways you 
have a working boot disk with your needed drivers.

Next Test:
Without messing around with the FreeDOS install floppy, just boot it. It should 
work fine up to the "Gathering information" message. Then it would give you an 
error stating it cannot find the packages. You can then quit to The command 
prompt and look around. If you see drive C:, then let's try the "not booted 
upgrade" (NBU) install method or two drive (DOSBox) method.

Install:
The two drive method has you copy the contents of the CD to a separate drive. 
Then boot/run the FreeDOS setup program.

The NBU method may be easiest for you. Basically, you just boot the system like 
normal. Then insert the floppy and CD. Go to drive A: and run "Setup". Make 
sure you let it backup your current OS! You may want to clean as much as 
possible out of your existing config.sys and autoexec.bat before using the 
upgrade method. That way there are fewer chances of a conflict occurring.

Note:
The NBU method is not an "official" way of installing an OS. It may fail 
horribly. That being said, I did what I could to get it to function properly. 
And, it worked fine in the limited testing I did with NBU installs. 

Jerome

> Sent from my BlackBerry 10 smartphone on the Bell network.
>   Original Message  
> From: Eric Auer
> Sent: Friday, March 24, 2017 4:33 PM
> To: freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
> Reply To: Discussion and general questions about FreeDOS.
> Subject: Re: [Freedos-user] boot floppy disk image too big for a disk
> 
> 
> Hi Dennis,
> 
>> I downloaded and installed WinImage 9.0 on my win98 computer. It has a
>> floppy drive. I successfully wrote the img file to a floppy.
>> Another issue occurred to me. My cd-rom drive is a SCSI external type.
> 
> That might be a problem, depending on your SCSI controller
> and whether it has good BIOS support etc etc. I assume you
> refer to the CD-ROM of the PC where you want to install DOS?
> 
> By the way, does that PC also have another operating system?
> Do you want to replace that by DOS? Or install both side by
> side as "dual boot"? The latter requires special steps, the
> former can mean that current disk contents get overwritten.
> 
>> The new boot floppy has an fdconfig.sys and an autoexec‎.bat file. I'm 
>> thinking 
>> I need to add lines to both to recognize the SCSI drive when it boots.
> 
> If you have good DOS drivers for the drive and know how to
> configure them, then you can do that. If you plan to install
> DOS on a computer where you already have or can install some
> operating system with easy internet, then I would recommend
> another method: Copy the ISO file of FreeDOS to a FAT drive
> on the PC where you want to install DOS and then "mount" it
> as if it would be the CD of FreeDOS :-) If the boot floppy
> has no automatic support for that, then I am sure that some
> extra explanation of this trick could be given by Rugxulo or
> Jerome, with examples of what to put where in fdconfig and
> autoexec on the boot floppy :-)
> 
> The idea is that you need no hardware specific drivers at all
> to open the ISO if you already have it on the future DOS PC,
> so you avoid all worries about SCSI and CDROM drivers then.
> 
> You still do need that special ISO driver, of course, but as
> that is not specific to certain hardware, it is easy to use.
> 
> Cheers, Eric
> 
> 
> 
> --
> Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
> engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
> ___
> Freedos-user mailing list
> Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
> 
> --
> Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
> engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
> ___
> Freedos-user mailing list
> Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user


--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] boot floppy disk image too big for a disk

[Jerome Shidel]

> On Mar 24, 2017, at 6:40 PM, Eric Auer  wrote:
> 
> 
> Hi Dennis,
> 
>> The 486 that I plan to use FreeDOS on currently‎ has MS-DOS 6.22 as
>> its only OS. My plan is to completely replace it but keep all my
>> installed programs. The SCSI drivers are all in C:\SCSI and I notice
>> FreeDOS has its own equivalent of MSCDEX.EXE.
> 
> Well in that case, you can simply use the existing DOS SCSI
> and CDROM drivers :-) You can even keep MSCDEX until you get
> used to SHSUCDX later... And you can use your existing lines
> from autoexec and config for the autoexec and (fd-) config
> of FreeDOS. Only if you were using the MS DOS config sys
> MENU system, you will have to change some things - syntax
> for menus works in a different way in FreeDOS.

I'd advise just plugging in his needed lines into the new configuration files. 
But, what ever is easiest.

> 
> Maybe Jerome and Rugxulo can give some hints about how to
> tell the installer to only install FreeDOS to the existing
> C: drive of your MS DOS PC without damaging other programs

If his old MS-DOS install is not under the FDOS\ directory (unless changed in 
advanced mode), it will just ignore it. That goes for other directories as 
well. If the existing target directory (Like FDOS\) for the OS already exists, 
it will be backed up and the cleaned out. 

> Even then, it is always very good to have a backup of all
> files before updating. So if anything goes wrong, you can
> use the backups to repair the damage :-)

Yes, always backup! 

Jerome

--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Without DVD-ROM, USB working... install it from the HD?

[Jerome Shidel]

> On Mar 25, 2017, at 5:00 PM, Aleksei Ivan  wrote:
> 
> My USB ports are NOT working too. I have only to work with a installation 
> partition on this netbook.
> 

Well, it is always tricky to install an OS to a computer with a single drive, 
no USB, no CD, no Floppy. It is very difficult to boot anything other than the 
installed OS.

So, your only viable option is to remove the drive from the Netbook and plug it 
into another PC. 

Since, you don't want to do that multiple times, I recommend the following.

Manually partition the drive as C: (1-2GB) and D: (1GB). Install FreeDOS using 
the other machine to Drive C:. Then copy the entire contents of either the Big 
USB stick or CD to drive D:. 

This way all of the games and packages that don't get installed with BASE or 
FULL will be easily accessible on Drive D:.

Reinsert Drive back in netbook.

All done. Unlike Windows and some other OS releases, nothing will prevent you 
from moving the installed OS from one machine to another.

Jerome




> 
>> On Sat, Mar 25, 2017 at 5:53 PM, Jim Hall  wrote:
>> On Sat, Mar 25, 2017 at 2:35 PM, Aleksei Ivan  wrote:
>> >
>> > I have a netbook without DVD-ROM, USB working, and, obliviously. no FLOPPY 
>> > DISK to install it. Is there any way to do it from the HD?
>> > Tks
>> 
>> 
>> If your computer doesn't have a CDROM drive, use the USB fob drive
>> installer. Write this to a USB fob drive and boot it to start the
>> install. The "Full" and "Lite" versions install the same FreeDOS, but
>> the "Lite" installer does not contain some extra bonus software
>> packages.
>> 
>> You can find links to these installers on this page:
>> http://www.freedos.org/download/
>> 
>> --
>> Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
>> engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
>> ___
>> Freedos-user mailing list
>> Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
>> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
> 
> --
> Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
> engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
> ___
> Freedos-user mailing list
> Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] bsum - compute BSD checksums of your files

[Jerome Shidel]

Less than 256 bytes of code.

Over 2 Megabytes of controversy.

Shame on you Mateusz!

:-)

All joking aside, from what I gather, your bsum is only meant to verify local 
files were copied correctly from one machine to another. Most forms of 
checksums should be sufficient for that task. 

Sure a collision is possible. More bits in the checksum reduces the 
possibility. But even with a SHA 256 hash, the chance of accidental collision 
is so remote as to be zero. It is still theoretically possible.

How sure do you need to be? Well, you could be absolutely sure by coping them 
over then back. Then doing a byte level comparison between the original and the 
copy of a copy.  But why? Now as for a man in the middle of your two 
machines... Even that check could be thwarted by a crafty attacker. 

So, I assume that the checking done by you bsum is the exact level of certainty 
you desire. Sure enough.

Jerome

--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

[Freedos-user] FreeDOS 1.

[JEROME SHIDEL]

From: Jerome Shidel 


--===3627758014655191521==
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
boundary="Apple-Mail=_694DF3F7-CA05-4DC5-A5F1-E105DCA460A1"


--Apple-Mail=_694DF3F7-CA05-4DC5-A5F1-E105DCA460A1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
Content-Type: text/plain;
charset=us-ascii

How can I add the power of FreeDOS to my DOSBox?

Well, here you go. Keep all of the flexibility that DOSBox provides. Yet, add
the power of the FreeDOS Command Shell and other FreeDOS utilities. The FreeDOS
installer supports DOSBox. Please note, this is not a pure OS install. But, a
special way the installer handles DOSBox. The FreeDOS kernel is not loaded.
This allows the host system to interact with the DOSBox filesystem and behave
more like a normal DOSBox install.

https://youtu.be/NmLjVYqF3zg
--Apple-Mail=_694DF3F7-CA05-4DC5-A5F1-E105DCA460A1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
Content-Type: text/html;
charset=us-ascii

How can I add
the power of FreeDOS to my DOSBox? Well, here you go. Keep all of the flexibility that DOSBox
provides. Yet, add the power of the FreeDOS Command Shell and other FreeDOS
utilities. The FreeDOS installer supports DOSBox. Please note, this is not a
pure OS install. But, a special way the installer handles DOSBox. The FreeDOS
kernel is not loaded. This allows the host system to interact with the DOSBox
filesystem and behave more like a normal DOSBox
install.https://youtu.be/NmLjVYqF3zg";
class="">https://youtu.be/NmLjVYqF3zg
--Apple-Mail=_694DF3F7-CA05-4DC5-A5F1-E105DCA460A1--


--===3627758014655191521==
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Disposition: inline

--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, SlashDot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
--===3627758014655191521==
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Disposition: inline

___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

--===3627758014655191521==--

--- Internet Rex 2.29
 * Origin: capcity2.synchro.net - 502/875-8938 (1:2320/105.99)

---
 * BgNet 1.0b12 = CCO * KY/US * 502/875-8938 * capcity2.synchro.net
--- Synchronet 3.15a-Linux ListGate 1.3
 *  Capitol City Online - Frankfort, KY - telnet://capitolcityonline.net


--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Simple

[JEROME SHIDEL]

From: Jerome Shidel 


> On Dec 25, 2016, at 4:57 PM, William Dudley  wrote:
>
> Is there a simple guide for networking FreeDOS 1.2 in a VirtualBox VM ?

No guide needed under VirtualBox

Install the FDNET package and reboot.

If you downloaded a CD version and did a FULL (not BASE) install, just:

1) boot the VM
2) attach the FreeDOS 1.2 CD
3) run FDIMPLES
4) Select FDNET under the networking group and pick OK.
5) reboot.

Done.


--
Developer Access Program for Intel Xeon Phi Processors
Access to Intel Xeon Phi processor-based developer platforms.
With one year of Intel Parallel Studio XE.
Training and support from Colfax.
Order your platform today.http://sdm.link/intel
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

--- Internet Rex 2.29
 * Origin: capcity2.synchro.net - 502/875-8938 (1:2320/105.99)

---
 * BgNet 1.0b12 = CCO * KY/US * 502/875-8938 * capcity2.synchro.net
--- Synchronet 3.15a-Linux ListGate 1.3
 *  Capitol City Online - Frankfort, KY - telnet://capitolcityonline.net


--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Simple

[JEROME SHIDEL]

From: Jerome Shidel 


William,

> On Dec 26, 2016, at 12:16 PM, William Dudley  wrote:
>
> Jerome,
>
> Thanks, that was useful.  It would be better if it also discussed the
settings
> needed in VirtualBox.  I figured it out eventually but it took me a bit of
googling
> to figure out.
>
> Bill Dudley

IrCOm glad you found it useful.

When it comes to settings, IrCOve mostly just be using the ones that
VirtualBox defaults to when installing DOS.

Jerome
--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, SlashDot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

--- Internet Rex 2.29
 * Origin: capcity2.synchro.net - 502/875-8938 (1:2320/105.99)

---
 * BgNet 1.0b12 = CCO * KY/US * 502/875-8938 * capcity2.synchro.net
--- Synchronet 3.15a-Linux ListGate 1.3
 *  Capitol City Online - Frankfort, KY - telnet://capitolcityonline.net


--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Freedo

[JEROME SHIDEL]

From: Jerome Shidel 


--===4678110451875621953==
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
boundary=Apple-Mail-01C479F5-70E1-4B79-8E97-33E3574504EF
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit


--Apple-Mail-01C479F5-70E1-4B79-8E97-33E3574504EF
Content-Type: text/plain;
charset=utf-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable



> On Dec 27, 2016, at 8:00 AM, Wolfgang ANdreas Heisele 
wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I am new to freedos and got to this mailing list through this youtube video:

Welcome.

>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0sP1VAo0D8
>
> Where I wrote the follwing question:
>
> Nice video.

:-)

> I got that far, but I was really looking into whether one could use freedos
to format a harddisc and put freedos and kolibri os alongside. Got into some
problems with the last part. First kolibrios.org download is 7z format so I got
to download and install 7zip but it complained about wrong format.

There is also a version of 7zip on the FreeDOS 1.2 Release. It is not on the
LITE version and is not installed automatically with either LITE/FULL package
set. However you can easily install it using FDIMPLES.

> Than I realized that freedos as dos only supports 32bit fat not vfat which
would be needed to put the kolibrios folder on and to boot the kolibrios.img.
Is there a disc formating tool for freedos which supports making partitions
with that kind of format and would it than be possible to copy over the
kolibrios folder?

There are a couple of partition utilities. And a version of good old fdisk is
provided. It can create partitions for FreeDOS larger than 2GB.

> Final goal would be to make a how to get freedos onto a blank system format
and install it download latest kolibri os version and get it to boot from the
harddisc (not from the disc image) and use a partition with the rest off the
kolibri os applications on it.N++
>
> I am active on kolibrios.org a small assembler written os. It is not a final
product and therefore has no installer yet. One can use the disc image to boot
from or (the better option) make a bootable partition and put the kolibrios.img
and the extra applications into a kolibrios folder. Over the years this was the
main thing newbies complained about. That is why I am searching for a way to to
use some third party software to make a easier howto.

Sounds like a good idea. In my opinion, many new users just give up and move
on when they run into issues.

> I got to the point where I can run freedos and than encountered the problem
that I could not unzip the latest kolibri os 7z file with the needed files. I
than realized that dos does not support the bigger partition size than 2000 MBs
and the greater letter count than 8.3.

FreeDOS does support larger partition sizes. However, the if the FreeDOS
installer needs to partition the drive and can do it safely without user
interaction, it auto-partitions the drive using fdisk. When fdisk automatically
partitions, it just creates 2GB partitions. Probably for backwards
compatibility.

FreeDOS also has a couple packages that provided Long File Name support.
DOSLFN and LFNDOS.

> Is there a way to partition a second hdd partition like e.g. windows xp
would do (vfat) from within freedos and get the files from the 7zip onto that.
Booting the kolibrios.img should be possible with syslinux memdisk or the dos
bootloader from kolibri os.
>
> Anyway, great work you did on freedos! Getting it up and running with
network support in virtualbox was easy!

Thank you
--Apple-Mail-01C479F5-70E1-4B79-8E97-33E3574504EF
Content-Type: text/html;
charset=utf-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

On
Dec 27, 2016, at 8:00 AM, Wolfgang ANdreas Heisele <mailto:aheis...@web.de";>aheis...@web.de>
wrote:Hi,

 

I am new to freedos and got to this mailing list through this youtube
video:Welcome.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0sP1VAo0D8";>https://www.youtube.com/watch
v=k0sP1VAo0D8

 

Where I wrote the follwing question:

 

Nice
video.:-) I
got that far, but I was really looking into whether one could use freedos to
format a harddisc and put freedos and kolibri os alongside. Got into some
problems with the last part. First http://kolibrios.org"; href="http://kolibrios.org";>kolibrios.org
download is 7z format so I got to download and install 7zip but it complained
about wrong format. There is
also a version of 7zip on the FreeDOS 1.2 Release. It is not on the LITE
version and is not installed automatically with either LITE/FULL package set.
However you can easily install it using FDIMPLES. Than
I realized that freedos as dos only supports 32bit fat not vfat which would be
needed to put the kolibrios folder on and to boot the kolibrios.img. Is there a
disc formating tool for freedos which supports making partitions with that kind
of format and would it than be possible to copy over the kolibrios folder?
There are a couple of
partition util

Re: [Freedos-user] Preloa

[JEROME SHIDEL]

From: Jerome Shidel 



> On Dec 30, 2016, at 11:44 AM, userbeit...@abwesend.de wrote:
>
> Hi, fellow FreeDOS users! I need your help.
>
>
> I have an original Intel 80486 with 50 MHz that I want to try FreeDOS
> on. I still haven't found the time so far an my first attempt came to an
> early halt because I couldn't get an installation media to start on this
> machine.
>
>
> *) The 486-PC doesn't have a CD-ROM drive.
>
> *) The 486-PC doesn't have USB.
>
> *) I cannot easily create a 3.5 inch boot floppy to use it in the 486-PC.
>
>
> What I can do thou is plug the IDE HDD into another PC and pre-load
> FreeDOS there. Then, connecting the IDE HDD inside the 486-PC, FreeDOS
> should start.
>
>
> The Question:
>
> 1) Does the installer check the hardware and make choices? If so, this
> would be totally wrong since I will be preloading it on a very different PC.

Yes a little. Only to compensate for the different quirks in the common vm
platforms.
So, if you install to real hardware then stick the drive in the old machine,
you will be fine.

> 2) Can I install something like the installation environment itself?

Yes.

If you have a spare drive laying around, you can just copy the intire
filesystem from one of the USB images to the root of that drive. Boot your old
Dos, switch to drive D: and run setup.bat

This is how the DOSBox install works. Albeit it detects DOSBox and customized
the install process somewhat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmLjVYqF3zg&sns=em

> 3) The outcome should be that it boots on the 486-PC and starts the
> installer from there, to create all necessary CONFIG.SYS and
> AUTOEXEC.BAT entries and to select the software to be installed. The
> installer files may remain as capacity is not a factor on this HDD anyhow.
>
>
> Has this been done before? And how would I do it?
>
> Help highly appreciated!
>
>
> Thanks,
>
> userbeitrag.
>
>
>
--
> Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
> engaging tech sites, SlashDot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
> ___
> Freedos-user mailing list
> Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user


--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, SlashDot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

--- Internet Rex 2.29
 * Origin: capcity2.synchro.net - 502/875-8938 (1:2320/105.99)

---
 * BgNet 1.0b12 = CCO * KY/US * 502/875-8938 * capcity2.synchro.net
--- Synchronet 3.15a-Linux ListGate 1.3
 *  Capitol City Online - Frankfort, KY - telnet://capitolcityonline.net


--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] freedo

[JEROME SHIDEL]

From: Jerome Shidel 


--===1406060891714862554==
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
boundary=Apple-Mail-AAB90C07-F217-4621-8717-43EBF48E8C21
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit


--Apple-Mail-AAB90C07-F217-4621-8717-43EBF48E8C21
Content-Type: text/plain;
charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable



> On Aug 18, 2016, at 6:46 PM, Dimitris Zilaskos  wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> Thank you for the advice. I tried FDIMPLES, seem to show everything
installed, but for some reason p7zip is missing from its list.

You sure. It should be listed between LZOP and  TAR. But, you need to scroll
down to see it.

>
> Best regards,
>
> Dimitris
>
>> On Wed, Aug 17, 2016 at 12:25 AM, Jerome Shidel  wrote:
>> If you run the installer in advanced mode, you can add them at installation
by using detailed package selection.
>>
>> You can switch the installer into Advanced mode at any point it is waiting
on user input. For example, the installer runs in Normal mode when you boot.
You continue through all the prompts until you reach the "BASE or ALL/FULL"
package selection. Press CTRL+C, then select "Switch to Advanced mode" it will
then return you back to the package set selection but now "Detailed selections"
will be available.
>>
>> If you run the installer from the command prompt, you can start it in
advanced mode by using "SETUP adv"
>>
>> There are many things the installer does (or tries to do) automatically in
Normal mode. But in Advanced mode, nearly all of those decisions are left to
the user.
>>
>> Also, if you use FDIMPLES (installed with FULL/ALL), you can browse through
and select packages to be installed. Similar to using some Linux package
browsing systems like Yast. FDIMPLES does not do networking at present. So, you
will need to have you CD inserted.
>>
>> Jerome
>>
>>> On Aug 16, 2016, at 7:01 PM, Dimitris Zilaskos 
wrote:
>>>
>>> Ok thanks. Would be awesome to have an option to get them installed.
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>>
>>> Dimitris
>>>
>>>> On Tue, Aug 16, 2016 at 5:52 PM, Jerome Shidel  wrote:
>>>> Hello,
>>>>
>>>> > On Aug 16, 2016, at 11:38 AM, Dimitris Zilaskos 
wrote:
>>>> >
>>>> > Hi,
>>>> >
>>>> > I did a full freedos 1.2 installation but not all archivers were
installed. While I got them from the CD eventually from the ARCHIVERS directory
I was wondering if that is supposed to happen.
>>>> >
>>>> > Best regards,
>>>> >
>>>> > Dimitris
>>>>
>>>> Yes, for now.
>>>>
>>>> There is roughly 400mb in about 100 packages that are included on the 1.2
cd and large USB stick versions that are included but not installed. At present
they are considered extra/bonus packages.
>>>>
>>>> Jerome
>>>>
>>>>
--
>>>> ___
>>>> Freedos-user mailing list
>>>> Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
>>>> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
>>>
>>>
--
>>> ___
>>> Freedos-user mailing list
>>> Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
>>> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
>>
>>
--
>>
>> ___
>> Freedos-user mailing list
>> Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
>> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
>
>
--
> ___
> Freedos-user mailing list
> Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

--Apple-Mail-AAB90C07-F217-4621-8717-43EBF48E8C21
Content-Type: text/html;
charset=utf-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

On
Aug 18, 2016, at 6:46 PM, Dimitris Zilaskos <mailto:dimitr...@gmail.com";>dimitr...@gmail.com>
wrote:Hi,Thank you for the advice. I tried FDIMPLES,
seem to show everything installed, but for some reason p7zip is missing from
its list.You sure. It should
be listed between LZOP and  TAR. But, you need to scroll down to see
it.Best
regards,DimitrisOn Wed, Aug 17, 2016 at 12:25
AM, Jerome Shidel <mailto:jer...@shidel.net";
target="_bla

Re: [Freedos-user] freedo

[JEROME SHIDEL]

From: Jerome Shidel 

Hello,

> On Aug 16, 2016, at 11:38 AM, Dimitris Zilaskos  wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I did a full freedos 1.2 installation but not all archivers were installed.
While I got them from the CD eventually from the ARCHIVERS directory I was
wondering if that is supposed to happen.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Dimitris

Yes, for now.

There is roughly 400mb in about 100 packages that are included on the 1.2 cd
and large USB stick versions that are included but not installed. At present
they are considered extra/bonus packages.

Jerome

--
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

--- Internet Rex 2.29
 * Origin: capcity2.synchro.net - 502/875-8938 (1:2320/105.99)

---
 * BgNet 1.0b12 = CCO * KY/US * 502/875-8938 * capcity2.synchro.net
--- Synchronet 3.15a-Linux ListGate 1.3
 *  Capitol City Online - Frankfort, KY - telnet://capitolcityonline.net


--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] HIMEMX

[JEROME SHIDEL]

From: Jerome Shidel 



> On Jan 4, 2017, at 9:16 AM, Tony Richardson 
wrote:
>
> I am having exactly the same problem (Invalid Opcode at HIMEMX line) with a
laptop from the same era.  FreeDOS 1.1 installed without problems.  I was using
the 1.2 standard CD.  I plan to try the 1.2 legacy CD tonight to see if that
makes a difference.  (Is there a description of the differences between the
standard and legacy installation CDs somewhere?)
>
> Tony

Yes. I've gone into the details in the FreeDOS-devel list and on Facebook
previously. But, don't think I've described it here.

Basically, the CD images are identical and install the exact same version of
FreeDOS. However, there is one major difference. The use different booting
methods. The Legacy (LGCY) version uses the original El Torito bootable CD
specification. To boot this CD, the system BIOS loads a image file from the CD
and uses it to emulate a floppy disk and boots it. The normal FD12CD.iso is
handled differently. It boots a binary image file for ISOLINUX, this in turn
uses memdisk to load and emulate a floppy for booting.

Some systems behave erratically with one or the other method. For example, the
LGCY disc will appear to function correctly under VirtualBox. But, when any
program then access the data portion of the disc, the system freezes.
VirtualBox requires the FD12CD. But, some users have reported that method did
not work on their hardware and the LGCY version worked fine. These two methods
are mutually exclusive and cannot be combined without breaking system
compatibility with machines that only support the original specification. So,
both versions are required for maximum compatibility.

By all rights, any computer that supports booting from CD, should work with
the LGCY version. But, that is not the case. It may be the result of BIOS
vendors not fully testing their compatibility with the ancient CD boot spec.
But, it could be elsewhere.

--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, SlashDot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

--- Internet Rex 2.29
 * Origin: capcity2.synchro.net - 502/875-8938 (1:2320/105.99)

---
 * BgNet 1.0b12 = CCO * KY/US * 502/875-8938 * capcity2.synchro.net
--- Synchronet 3.15a-Linux ListGate 1.3
 *  Capitol City Online - Frankfort, KY - telnet://capitolcityonline.net


--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Freedo

[JEROME SHIDEL]

From: Jerome Shidel 



> On Jan 2, 2017, at 2:18 AM, Wolfgang ANdreas Heisele 
wrote:
>
> I have made a small video to show my issue with freedos 1.2 and syslinux.
After installing it freedos does not boot because it is looking for kernel.sys
in c:\fdos\bin\ were there is no such file. Also it seems to be only looking
for files in c:\ and kernl386.sys renamed and copied to c:\ is not fully
working. Please, watch the video and tell me what or where kernel.sys should
be.
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FH0pMANR5ZU
>
> Otherwise booting into kolibri os works like a charme with this method!

Nice video. :-)

KERNEL: By default, the C:\KERNEL.SYS is the booted kernel for FreeDOS 1.2. It
is 386 version and is the same as the C:\FDOS\BIN\KERNL386.SYS that gets
installed during the installation process.

FDIMPLES: When you launch FDIMPLES, it searches for any of the FreeDOS 1.2
install media, repository CD-ROMs and local package directories. If it cannot
find any of these package sources, it just continues without them. Any packages
that are installed and not included in one of those package sources are grouped
together in a rCL! InstalledrCY category. This behavior allows the user to
browse their installed packages and remove items without bothering to mount
their package source media.

In the future, the plan is for FDIMPLES to also be able to pull packages from
multiple online repositories. Instead of being limited to a single repository,
this would allow for users to connect to other repositories that could even
include closed source software.

Hope that helps a little,

Jerome
--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, SlashDot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

--- Internet Rex 2.29
 * Origin: capcity2.synchro.net - 502/875-8938 (1:2320/105.99)

---
 * BgNet 1.0b12 = CCO * KY/US * 502/875-8938 * capcity2.synchro.net
--- Synchronet 3.15a-Linux ListGate 1.3
 *  Capitol City Online - Frankfort, KY - telnet://capitolcityonline.net


--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Freedo

[JEROME SHIDEL]

From: Jerome Shidel 



> On Jan 5, 2017, at 8:30 PM, Ralf Quint  wrote:
>
>> On 1/5/2017 5:24 PM, Gordon wrote:
>> That's what I was wondering -- can you install a larger font to get
>> larger characters, or will the window still be the same size so you just
>> get less lines and characters per line?
> That font being used is still a matter of your host environment, and as
> far as the number of lines is concerned, unless you play with VGA
> register level functions, it's 40x25,80x25 or 80x43 for an EGA
> compatible video adapter or 80x50 for a VGA adapter. You need to realize
> that DOS is plain text base, it just displays characters the way the
> video adapter does. And DOS does not have any direct functions to change
> that...

You are correct. DOS really has nothing to do with the font.

However, in DOS you can use tools to load a custom font. Many systems support
running fonts that can range from 8x8 to 8x26 pixels. So, the number of lines
of text can range from about 15 to 50. There is some stuff the BIOS can do to
provide things like a 9x16 font. But those are really just playing games with a
8x16 character.

Anyhow, you can use custom font tools to run the larger (or smaller) fonts.
These will not change the size of the screen. They will just effect the height
of the character and how many lines of text you get. That can be useful as well
though.

If you install the extra package PGME (Program Manager Eternity) that is
included on the 1.2 CD and Big USB image, you can easily play with bigger fonts
in text mode. PGME is a dos menu system and program launcher. It has built in
support for using custom fonts and one of its default menus includes viewing
its documentation using a BIG (8x26) font. Included with PGME is the "Eternity
Font Designer" to create and modify the type of fonts used by PGME. There are
also command line utilities to convert to and from plain raster fonts (like
those in the GNU Fonts package) to the format used by PGME. There are also
tools to load the fonts from the command line or even turn them into
stand-alone TSR programs.

--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, SlashDot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

--- Internet Rex 2.29
 * Origin: capcity2.synchro.net - 502/875-8938 (1:2320/105.99)

---
 * BgNet 1.0b12 = CCO * KY/US * 502/875-8938 * capcity2.synchro.net
--- Synchronet 3.15a-Linux ListGate 1.3
 *  Capitol City Online - Frankfort, KY - telnet://capitolcityonline.net


--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDO

[JEROME SHIDEL]

From: Jerome Shidel 


--===04976675438==
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
boundary=Apple-Mail-635D6F99-3AC3-4209-A289-0E2838A15E36
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit


--Apple-Mail-635D6F99-3AC3-4209-A289-0E2838A15E36
Content-Type: text/plain;
charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

Also, try to just install BASE and not FULL. You can install the other
packages after the install completes.


> On Jan 10, 2017, at 4:59 PM, Ira Minor  wrote:
>
> Try using the Legacy Installer CD rather than the Standard one.
>
> Ira
>
> irami...@gmail.com  805-212-0588
>
>> On Tue, Jan 10, 2017 at 1:10 PM, Lawrence Dionne 
wrote:
>> I have an old Dell computer: Intel Celeron processor 700Mhz CPU 320MB RAM
>>
>> I thought it would make a nice machine for installin and runnin FreeDOS,
but here is the issue:
>>
>> "freedos invalid opcode at 0FAE 1068 0046 0001 0002  0200  
0183  4200 0001"
>>
>> I boot the CD, choose "Install to hard drive" and after some text I get a
constantly scrollin message.
>>
>> I was able to get it to install, at least partially by the following
procedure:
>>
>> Start the CD then after choosing install to hard drive, I press F8 to
choose the config.sys settings.
>>
>> Once I skip the "himemx.sys" item, it will install, at least partially.  I
stops at the 4DOS packages.
>>
>> Does anyone know of a fix for this?  Is the computer too 'Old' for FreeDOS?
>>
>>
>>
>>
--
>> Developer Access Program for Intel Xeon Phi Processors
>> Access to Intel Xeon Phi processor-based developer platforms.
>> With one year of Intel Parallel Studio XE.
>> Training and support from Colfax.
>> Order your platform today. http://sdm.link/xeonphi
>> ___
>> Freedos-user mailing list
>> Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
>> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
>>
>
>
--
> Developer Access Program for Intel Xeon Phi Processors
> Access to Intel Xeon Phi processor-based developer platforms.
> With one year of Intel Parallel Studio XE.
> Training and support from Colfax.
> Order your platform today. http://sdm.link/xeonphi
> ___
> Freedos-user mailing list
> Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

--Apple-Mail-635D6F99-3AC3-4209-A289-0E2838A15E36
Content-Type: text/html;
charset=utf-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

Also, try to just
install BASE and not FULL. You can install the other packages after the install
completes. On Jan 10, 2017, at 4:59 PM, Ira
Minor <mailto:ira.mi...@gmail.com";>ira.mi...@gmail.com>
wrote:Try
using the Legacy Installer CD rather than the Standard one.Iramailto:irami...@gmail.com"; target="_blank">irami...@gmail.com
 805-212-0588
On Tue, Jan 10, 2017 at 1:10 PM, Lawrence Dionne
<mailto:codehunte...@gmail.com";
target="_blank">codehunte...@gmail.com> wrote:I have an
old Dell computer: Intel Celeron processor 700Mhz CPU 320MB RAMI
thought it would make a nice machine for installin and runnin FreeDOS, but here
is the issue:"freedos invalid opcode at 0FAE 1068 0046 0001 0002 
0200   0183  4200 0001"I boot the CD, choose "Install
to hard drive" and after some text I get a constantly scrollin
message.I was able to get it to install, at least partially by
the following procedure:Start the CD then after choosing install
to hard drive, I press F8 to choose the config.sys settings.Once
I skip the "himemx.sys" item, it will install, at least partially.  I
stops at the 4DOS packages.Does anyone know of a fix for
this?  Is the computer too 'Old' for FreeDOS?
-

Developer Access Program for Intel Xeon Phi Processors
Access to Intel Xeon Phi processor-based developer platforms.
With one year of Intel Parallel Studio XE.
Training and support from Colfax.
Order your platform today. http://sdm.link/xeonphi"; rel="noreferrer"
target="_blank">http://sdm.link/xeonphi___
Freedos-user mailing list
mailto:Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net";>Freedos-user@lists.sourcef
rge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user";
rel="noreferrer"
target="_blank">https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

---

Re: [Freedos-user] Fw: Fr

[JEROME SHIDEL]

From: Jerome Shidel 

Rugxulo is correct.

In 1.2, the AUTOEXEC.BAT checks for the existence of the
%DOSDIR%\BIN\fdnet.bat file. If it is found, it is run to attempt to
automatically start networking.

The fdnet.bat and the %DOSDIR%\NETWORK directory provide all of the required
programs and files to get networking support up and running on several
platforms and virtual machines. These are only installed when the user installs
the FDNET package. It is not installed automatically with either the BASE or
FULL package sets.

Also, those programs and the core of the network startup process are directly
ported from Rugxulo's MetaDOS project. The fdnet.bat is only a wrapper to that
startup process.

Jerome

--
Developer Access Program for Intel Xeon Phi Processors
Access to Intel Xeon Phi processor-based developer platforms.
With one year of Intel Parallel Studio XE.
Training and support from Colfax.
Order your platform today. http://sdm.link/xeonphi
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

--- Internet Rex 2.29
 * Origin: capcity2.synchro.net - 502/875-8938 (1:2320/105.99)

---
 * BgNet 1.0b12 = CCO * KY/US * 502/875-8938 * capcity2.synchro.net
--- Synchronet 3.15a-Linux ListGate 1.3
 *  Capitol City Online - Frankfort, KY - telnet://capitolcityonline.net


--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] freedo

[Jerome Shidel]

From: Jerome Shidel 


Tom,

> what purpose is SHARE supposed to have?
> SHARE is useful when the machine is running as a server, or with
> windows (or any other multitasking OS).
>
> don't install this.

You are probably correct that it should load it by default.

I remrCOd it out for future releases.

Jerome
--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, SlashDot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

--- Internet Rex 2.29
 * Origin: capcity2.synchro.net - 502/875-8938 (276:10/901)
--- Synchronet 3.15a-Linux ListGate 1.3
 *  Capitol City Online - Frankfort, KY - telnet://capitolcityonline.net


--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] freedo

[Jerome Shidel]

From: Jerome Shidel 

Hello again,

I do agree that it makes little sense to automatically load SHARE with boot
config option 2. After all, no other boot option starts SHARE. Also, only a
couple situations require its use.

Mostly, those would be running a multitasking system like Windows or exporting
network filesystems.

Either of these options will most likely require some hand tuning of the system
configuration. So, leaving it in there but commented out is probably the best
solution. A user will see it with customizing their configuration and enable it
manually.

I don't think that going down the CHOICE route is how this should be handled.
Would you want to encounter the following when performing an installation?

Do you want to load DOSLFN? yes/no
If no, Do you want to load LFNDOS?
Do you want to load FreeDOS High, UMB?
How many files do you want to support opening at once?
Do you want to enable hard drive caching?
Do you want to enable floppy caching?
Do you want ..
Do you want to load SHARE?
Do you want ...

:-)

I think it is much easier and less annoying to just hand edit the configuration
afterwards.

Jerome



--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, SlashDot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

--- Internet Rex 2.29
 * Origin: capcity2.synchro.net - 502/875-8938 (276:10/901)
--- Synchronet 3.15a-Linux ListGate 1.3
 *  Capitol City Online - Frankfort, KY - telnet://capitolcityonline.net


--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS 1.2 & VirtualBox: Wiki updated

[Jerome Shidel]

From: Jerome Shidel 


--===5847317860452605132==
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
boundary="Apple-Mail=_B924DA31-FBBB-4AFA-85AE-D232B1D3B9C3"


--Apple-Mail=_B924DA31-FBBB-4AFA-85AE-D232B1D3B9C3
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
Content-Type: text/plain;
charset=utf-8


> On Feb 1, 2017, at 11:53 AM, Ulrich Hansen  wrote:
>
> I have updated the pages at:
>
> http://wiki.freedos.org/wiki/index.php/VirtualBox
<http://wiki.freedos.org/wiki/index.php/VirtualBox>
Looks pretty good. :-)

Just one minor note you may wish to add. FDIMPLES is only installed with the
FULL (+SOURCES) package set. It came kind of late during the development of the
Installer (FDI). So, I really had not had much feed back on it. But, since
everybody seems to love it, I think I may be able to talk Jim into including it
in base for the next release.

As a side not, FDIMPLES does not actually do the package installs. It uses
FDINST (part of FDNPKG) to perform that task. Future versions, may or may not
use it.

Some of the future plans for FDIMPLES include:

Networking support (through external utilities, like wget and curl)
Multiple repository support, local media, multiple online sources.
Package versioning support like the new online repositories.
Package integrity verification. (Checksum checking and such)
Multi-language support for buttons and things.
Mouse support.
Some other stuff.

Things you may not already know that FDIMPLES already does now.

Can perform a package update from a REPO CD.
(Download REPO CD, run rCLFDIMPLES /UPDATErCY, wait to load, then just 
select
OK)

Can permanently modify BASE and FULL package sets on the USB stick 
media.
(Boot USB stick, quit to command line, run "FDIMPLES /CONFIGrCY)

Can save and load package set customizations.  (see in program help 
rCLhrCY)
(Make changes like normal, press w. It will create a changes only file)

:-)

Jerome
--Apple-Mail=_B924DA31-FBBB-4AFA-85AE-D232B1D3B9C3
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
Content-Type: text/html;
charset=utf-8

On Feb 1, 2017, at
11:53 AM, Ulrich Hansen <mailto:my.gr...@mailbox.org";
class="">my.gr...@mailbox.org> wrote:I
have updated the pages at:http://wiki.freedos.org/wiki/index.php/VirtualBox";
class="">http://wiki.freedos.org/wiki/index.php/VirtualBoxLooks pretty good. :-)Just one minor note you may wish to add. FDIMPLES is only 
installed with the FULL (+SOURCES) package set. It came kind of late during the 
development of the Installer (FDI). So, I really had not had much feed back on 
it. But, since everybody seems to love it, I think I may be able to talk Jim 
into including it in base for the next release. As a side not, FDIMPLES does not actually do the package 
installs. It uses FDINST (part of FDNPKG) to perform that task. Future 
versions, may or may not use it.Some of the 
future plans for FDIMPLES include: Networking support 
(through external utilities, like wget and curl)Multiple repository support, 
local media, multiple online sources.   Package versioning support like the new 
online repositories. Package integrity verification. (Checksum 
checking and such) Multi-language support for buttons and 
things.   
Mouse support.   Some other stuff.Things you may not already know that FDIMPLES already does 
now.  Can perform a package update from a REPO 
CD. 
(Download REPO CD, run rC
LFDIMPLES /UPDATErCY, wait to load, then just select OK)   
 Can permanently modify BASE and FULL package sets on the USB stick 
media.
(Boot USB stick, quit to command line, run "FDIMPLES 
/CONFIGrCY) 
 
Can save and load package set customizations.  (see in program 
help rCLhrCY)   
(Make changes like normal, press w. It will create a changes only 
file):-)Jerome
--Apple-Mail=_B924DA31-FBBB-4AFA-85AE-D232B1D3B9C3--


--===5847317860452605132==
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Disposition: inline

--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, SlashDot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
--===5847317860452605132==
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Disposition: inline

___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

--===5847317860452605132==--

--- Internet Rex 2.29
 * Origin: capcity2.synchro.net - 502/875-8938 (276:10/901)
--- Synchronet 3.15a-Linux ListGate 1.3
 *  Capitol City Online - Frankfort, KY - telnet://capitolcityonline.net


---

Re: [Freedos-user] verification checksums should be served overhttps

[Jerome Shidel]

From: Jerome Shidel 


--===7100588076500674313==
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
boundary="Apple-Mail=_C7C56578-944A-4209-8A1B-F1845F831DBE"


--Apple-Mail=_C7C56578-944A-4209-8A1B-F1845F831DBE
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
Content-Type: text/plain;
charset=us-ascii


> On Jan 14, 2017, at 2:21 PM, shaclacroi  wrote:
>
> The download page links to checksums at
http://www.freedos.org/download/verify.txt -- but since this page isn't
available over https, there's no way to confirm the validity of the checksums,
since the page could be intercepted and modified by a man-in-the-middle
attacker (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man-in-the-middle_attack).
>
> As free secure https certficates are now offered by Let's Encrypt
(https://letsencrypt.org/), it may be advisable to get https set up for
www.freedos.org.
>
> Alternatively, as I see your hosted on Amazon Web Services, if you're using
Elastic Load Balancing or Amazon CloudFront, Amazon's Certificate Manager also
offers free https certificates.
>
> Let me know if I can be of any help.

If you are still concerned that your download might have been compromised by a
MIM, you can get copies of the MD5 & SHA256 hash values or even the download
the entire release media from my server https://fd.lod.bz <https://fd.lod.bz/>
.. At present, it contains a mirror of the FreeDOS releases and a FreeDOS
compatible software repository. The repo contains all the packages that shipped
with FreeDOS 1.0 through 1.2, the official repository and a couple other free
software packages that are not in the official repo.

Jerome


--Apple-Mail=_C7C56578-944A-4209-8A1B-F1845F831DBE
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
Content-Type: text/html;
charset=us-ascii

On Jan 14, 2017,
at 2:21 PM, shaclacroi <mailto:shaclac...@fastservice.com";
class="">shaclac...@fastservice.com> wrote:The
download page links to checksums at http://www.freedos.org/download/verify.txt"; 
class="">http://www.freedos.org/download/verify.txt -- but since this page 
isn't available over https, there's no way to confirm the validity of the 
checksums, since the page could be intercepted and modified by a 
man-in-the-middle attacker (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man-in-the-middle_attack"; 
class="">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man-in-the-middle_attack).

 

As free secure https certficates are now offered by Let's Encrypt
(https://letsencrypt.org/"; class="">https://letsencrypt.org/), it
may be advisable to get https set up for http://www.freedos.org";
class="">www.freedos.org.

 

Alternatively, as I see your hosted on Amazon Web Services, if
you're using Elastic Load Balancing or Amazon CloudFront, Amazon's Certificate
Manager also offers free https certificates.

 

Let me know if I can be of any
help.If you are
still concerned that your download might have been compromised by a MIM, you
can get copies of the MD5 & SHA256 hash values or even the download the
entire release media from my server https://fd.lod.bz";
class="">https://fd.lod.bz . At present, it contains a mirror of the
FreeDOS releases and a FreeDOS compatible software repository. The repo
contains all the packages that shipped with FreeDOS 1.0 through 1.2, the
official repository and a couple other free software packages that are not in
the official repo. Jerome
--Apple-Mail=_C7C56578-944A-4209-8A1B-F1845F831DBE--


--===7100588076500674313==
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Disposition: inline

--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, SlashDot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
--===7100588076500674313==
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Disposition: inline

___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

--===7100588076500674313==--

--- Internet Rex 2.29
 * Origin: capcity2.synchro.net - 502/875-8938 (276:10/901)
--- Synchronet 3.15a-Linux ListGate 1.3
 *  Capitol City Online - Frankfort, KY - telnet://capitolcityonline.net


--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Rolling up from 1.1?

[Jerome Shidel]

From: Jerome Shidel 



> On Feb 8, 2017, at 4:57 PM, David McMackins  wrote:
>
> Call me a noob, but is there a preferred way to upgrade from FreeDOS 1.1
> to 1.2 while keeping configurations intact? I haven't personally loaded
> the new installer yet, but I wanted to check before I tried, since my
> FreeDOS installation is on real hardware.

As with any OS update, it is always a good idea for you to manually backup your
system and important files first.

That being said...

Make sure you have lots of free drive space.

The installer will make a copy of your config files and old DOS directory (if
it will conflict with the new install). It will then, clean out the old DOS
directory, only keeping non-conflicting package data files. Then it will do the
install.

Since the installer makes a backup of all that stuff, You can copy back any
files you may need.




--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, SlashDot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

--- Internet Rex 2.29
 * Origin: capcity2.synchro.net - 502/875-8938 (276:10/901)
--- Synchronet 3.15a-Linux ListGate 1.3
 *  Capitol City Online - Frankfort, KY - telnet://capitolcityonline.net


--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Bug? Confusing boot options in FreeDOS 1.2

[Jerome Shidel]

From: Jerome Shidel 

Bug? Not really.
Is it correct? Not even close.

You are correct that there are at least a couple issues with the FDCONFIG.SYS
and AUTOEXEC.BAT file.

Also, #2 should not say EMM386 when it uses JEMM386.

The current 1.2 config files are based on a clean install of 1.1 into VMware
Fusion. Then a some things were added, moved, changed and removed. There was
very little feedback on them during the testing phase. So, it is good that they
start to get some attention. They can use a lot of improvement.




--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, SlashDot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

--- Internet Rex 2.29
 * Origin: capcity2.synchro.net - 502/875-8938 (276:10/901)
--- Synchronet 3.15a-Linux ListGate 1.3
 *  Capitol City Online - Frankfort, KY - telnet://capitolcityonline.net


--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Rolling up from 1.1?

[Jerome Shidel]

From: Jerome Shidel 

Also, if you run the installer in advanced mode.

You can choose not to replace your config files, use zip to backup and other
stuff. But, generally I recommend just running the install in normal mode.

If you quit the installer and run it as "setup adv" , it will run in advanced
mode. You can also switch in/out of advanced mode at any question prompt, by
pressing CTRL+C instead of selecting an option.

--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, SlashDot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

--- Internet Rex 2.29
 * Origin: capcity2.synchro.net - 502/875-8938 (276:10/901)
--- Synchronet 3.15a-Linux ListGate 1.3
 *  Capitol City Online - Frankfort, KY - telnet://capitolcityonline.net


--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Borland Pascal unhandled exception...

[Jerome Shidel]

From: Jerome Shidel 

FYI, there is a typographical error with option 2. It says EMM386. But, it uses
JEMM386.

> On Feb 10, 2017, at 1:57 PM, Eric Auer  wrote:
>
>
> Hi Geneb, about your Borland Pascal 7 Problem in FreeDOS 1.2:
>
>> When I run "bp" which is the protected mode compiler, I get this:
>>
>> Unhandled exception 000E at 0020 A19E ErrCode 0002.
>
> Looking at older FreeDOS-user discussions, people suggested
> using HDPMI16 or DOS32A, for example in resident mode, to
> work around issues with the protected mode enviroment used
> by BP (and Jazz Jackrabbit). Another suggestion was to use
> the HIMEMX /X2MAX32 option or the JEMMEX MAX=32000 MIN=32000
> settings, so this could also be a problem caused by having
> more than 16, 32 or 64 MB RAM available and / or visible,
> which the old BP may not be used to...
>
>> if I let it boot using the default boot option, bp would
>> fail, but not if I used "option 2".
>>
>> Option 1 (the default) is:
>> Load FreeDOS with JEMMEX, no EMS (most UMBs), max RAM free
>>
>> Option 2 is:
>> Load FreeDOS with EMM386 (Expanded Memory) and SHARE loaded.
>
> Well in that case, as things do work with EMM386 but not with
> JEMMEX, the obvious solution is to use EMM386 for your PC :-)
>
> Which version of HIMEM do you use in option 2 with EMM386? And
> how well does BP work with only HIMEM/HIMEMX, without EMM386/
> JEMMEX?
>
> Note that JEMMEX combines HIMEM and EMM386 into a single DOS
> driver, which keeps more RAM free but which is "more exotic".
>
> Cheers, Eric
>
> http://freedos.10956.n7.nabble.com/Unhandled-exception-000E-td22996.html
> also mentions UIDE settings as a possible place for RAM tuning.
>
>
>
> --
> Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
> engaging tech sites, SlashDot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
> ___
> Freedos-user mailing list
> Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user


--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, SlashDot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

--- Internet Rex 2.29
 * Origin: capcity2.synchro.net - 502/875-8938 (276:10/901)
--- Synchronet 3.15a-Linux ListGate 1.3
 *  Capitol City Online - Frankfort, KY - telnet://capitolcityonline.net


--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Creating a DOS bootable USB drive

[Jerome Shidel]

From: Jerome Shidel 



> On Feb 26, 2017, at 5:34 PM, Rugxulo  wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> On Sun, Feb 26, 2017 at 8:10 AM, Wolfram Volpi  wrote:
>>
>> I am new to FreeDOS and could use your help.
>> I am trying to create a DOS bootable USB drive in for a BIOS update.
>> I have done the following twice, with the same result each time.
>>
>> 1) Use GParted to partition USB drive and set boot flag.
>>
>> 2) Use UNetbootin to install FreeDOS on partitioned USB drive.
>>
>> Operating system: Fedora 25, Linux kernel 4.8, Gnome 3.22.2
>>
>> USB flash drive: 1.0 GB Drive VBTM Store 'n' Go
>>
>> What else can I try?
>
> Some USB drives don't boot, or maybe yours is defective, so you may be
> forced to use a different one.
>
> Normally I'd suggest RUFUS, but that's Windows only:
>
> http://rufus.akeo.ie/
>
> For Linux, try reading Joe Linoff's method of installing:
>
> http://joelinoff.com/blog/?p=431

On Linux, Unix, BSD and Mac systems, you can just use the rCyddrCO command.

For example, your usb flash drive is known to the system as /dev/sdf and you
want to put FD12FULL.img on there.

Simply running: rCydd if=FD12FULL.img of=/dev/sdfrCO as superuser will do the
trick. It will take a little while and would be faster if you add block sizes
and counts. But, it will work file without them. The FreeDOS 1.2 USB stick
images have a built in partition table. So, make sure you write to the device
(like sdf) an not a partition (like sdf0). Also, MAKE SURE OF YOUR TARGET
DEVICE!. If you target your the drive with your linux install, you will DESTROY
all of the data there.

There are only a couple drawbacks to using dd. It is slow. Unless you know how
to poll it, you get no progress report. It will create the partition at the
same size as in the image file (the whole disk wonrCOt be in that partition).
You must be careful when specifying the target device.

Oh, also make sure the USB drive is not mounted when you write to it with dd.

Jerome



--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, SlashDot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

--- Internet Rex 2.29
 * Origin: capcity2.synchro.net - 502/875-8938 (276:10/901)
--- Synchronet 3.15a-Linux ListGate 1.3
 *  Capitol City Online - Frankfort, KY - telnet://capitolcityonline.net


--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Creating a DOS bootable USB drive

[Jerome Shidel]

From: Jerome Shidel 


Some Windows users like using utilities like Rufus ( https://rufus.akeo.ie ) to
create their bootable USB media. But, as a non-Windows user, I donrCOt know
much about it.
--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

--- Internet Rex 2.29
 * Origin: capcity2.synchro.net - 502/875-8938 (276:10/901)
--- Synchronet 3.15a-Linux ListGate 1.3
 *  Capitol City Online - Frankfort, KY - telnet://capitolcityonline.net


--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] boot floppy disk image too big for a disk

[Jerome Shidel]

From: Jerome Shidel 


> On Mar 23, 2017, at 11:56 PM, Felix Miata  wrote:
>
> I just looked inside http://www.freedos.org/download/download/FD12FLOPPY.zip
> "boot floppy", and a 3.5" 1.44M floppy. My floppy has 1457664 total bytes,
2847
> 512 byte sectors. The image downloaded is 1474560 bytes, so the downloaded
image
> would not fit here either.

I see where the confusion may be coming from.

After formatting a floppy image using FreeDOS, it states:

1,474,560 bytes total disk space (disk size)
1,456,664 bytes available on disk (free clusters)

It would appear that the number 1457664 is the usable empty free space on the
disk once it has been low level formatted and then formatted with the standard
DOS file system. So, you probably do have a correct sized floppy diskette.
However, you will need to use the appropriate tool to place the floppy image
file onto the diskette. Other messages in this thread mention programs like
rawrite & dd. These all work very well for this task.

Jerome
--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

--- Internet Rex 2.29
 * Origin: capcity2.synchro.net - 502/875-8938 (276:10/901)
--- Synchronet 3.15a-Linux ListGate 1.3
 *  Capitol City Online - Frankfort, KY - telnet://capitolcityonline.net


--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] boot floppy disk image too big for a disk

[Jerome Shidel]

From: Jerome Shidel 


A 1.44MB 3.5rCY DS HD floppy disk is 1,474,560 bytes when formatted. (2MB
unformatted)

It used 512 byte sectors, 18 sectors per track, 80 tracks per side and is/was a
two sided media.

512 * 18 * 80 * 2 = 1474560 / 1024 = 1.44MB floppy.

More information on this can be found at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_floppy_disk_formats

Also, on Mac, Unix and Linux dd will write the disk image fine with a command
like:

sudo dd if=FD12FLOPPY.img of=/dev/fd0

(or similar)

As a side note, PC-DOS 7 used oddly formatted diskettes for its install media.
These provided a capacity lager than 1.44MB on its 3.5rCY install media. This
was good to reduce the number of diskettes required. But, it made it more
difficult to clone the original floppy disks for backup purposes. Also, it was
not 100% compatible with all floppy drives and could cause other headaches as
well.

Jerome
--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

--- Internet Rex 2.29
 * Origin: capcity2.synchro.net - 502/875-8938 (276:10/901)
--- Synchronet 3.15a-Linux ListGate 1.3
 *  Capitol City Online - Frankfort, KY - telnet://capitolcityonline.net


--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] boot floppy disk image too big for a disk

[Jerome Shidel]

From: Jerome Shidel 




> On Mar 24, 2017, at 6:15 PM, Dennis Fenton  wrote:
>
> The 486 that I plan to use FreeDOS on currentlyrCA has MS-DOS 6.22 as its
only OS. My plan is to completely replace it but keep all my installed
programs. The SCSI drivers are all in C:\SCSI and I notice FreeDOS has its own
equivalent of MSCDEX.EXE.
>

Ok, this is my advice.

First backup:
Create a MS-DOS boot floppy as a backup. That way if things go sideways you
have a working boot disk with your needed drivers.

Next Test:
Without messing around with the FreeDOS install floppy, just boot it. It should
work fine up to the "Gathering information" message. Then it would give you an
error stating it cannot find the packages. You can then quit to The command
prompt and look around. If you see drive C:, then let's try the "not booted
upgrade" (NBU) install method or two drive (DOSBox) method.

Install:
The two drive method has you copy the contents of the CD to a separate drive.
Then boot/run the FreeDOS setup program.

The NBU method may be easiest for you. Basically, you just boot the system like
normal. Then insert the floppy and CD. Go to drive A: and run "Setup". Make
sure you let it backup your current OS! You may want to clean as much as
possible out of your existing config.sys and autoexec.bat before using the
upgrade method. That way there are fewer chances of a conflict occurring.

Note:
The NBU method is not an "official" way of installing an OS. It may fail
horribly. That being said, I did what I could to get it to function properly.
And, it worked fine in the limited testing I did with NBU installs.

Jerome

> Sent from my BlackBerry 10 smartphone on the Bell network.
>   Original Message
> From: Eric Auer
> Sent: Friday, March 24, 2017 4:33 PM
> To: freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
> Reply To: Discussion and general questions about FreeDOS.
> Subject: Re: [Freedos-user] boot floppy disk image too big for a disk
>
>
> Hi Dennis,
>
>> I downloaded and installed WinImage 9.0 on my win98 computer. It has a
>> floppy drive. I successfully wrote the img file to a floppy.
>> Another issue occurred to me. My cd-rom drive is a SCSI external type.
>
> That might be a problem, depending on your SCSI controller
> and whether it has good BIOS support etc etc. I assume you
> refer to the CD-ROM of the PC where you want to install DOS?
>
> By the way, does that PC also have another operating system?
> Do you want to replace that by DOS? Or install both side by
> side as "dual boot"? The latter requires special steps, the
> former can mean that current disk contents get overwritten.
>
>> The new boot floppy has an fdconfig.sys and an autoexecrCA.bat file. I'm
thinking
>> I need to add lines to both to recognize the SCSI drive when it boots.
>
> If you have good DOS drivers for the drive and know how to
> configure them, then you can do that. If you plan to install
> DOS on a computer where you already have or can install some
> operating system with easy internet, then I would recommend
> another method: Copy the ISO file of FreeDOS to a FAT drive
> on the PC where you want to install DOS and then "mount" it
> as if it would be the CD of FreeDOS :-) If the boot floppy
> has no automatic support for that, then I am sure that some
> extra explanation of this trick could be given by Rugxulo or
> Jerome, with examples of what to put where in fdconfig and
> autoexec on the boot floppy :-)
>
> The idea is that you need no hardware specific drivers at all
> to open the ISO if you already have it on the future DOS PC,
> so you avoid all worries about SCSI and CDROM drivers then.
>
> You still do need that special ISO driver, of course, but as
> that is not specific to certain hardware, it is easy to use.
>
> Cheers, Eric
>
>
>
> --
> Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
> engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
> ___
> Freedos-user mailing list
> Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
>
> --
> Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
> engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
> ___
> Freedos-user mailing list
> Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user


--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
e

Re: [Freedos-user] Without DVD-ROM, USB working... install it from the

[Jerome Shidel]

From: Jerome Shidel 


--===0102739976113590580==
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
boundary=Apple-Mail-1ED041EA-CFF0-4522-832C-BB10496C594B
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit


--Apple-Mail-1ED041EA-CFF0-4522-832C-BB10496C594B
Content-Type: text/plain;
charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable



> On Mar 25, 2017, at 5:00 PM, Aleksei Ivan  wrote:
>
> My USB ports are NOT working too. I have only to work with a installation
partition on this netbook.
>

Well, it is always tricky to install an OS to a computer with a single drive,
no USB, no CD, no Floppy. It is very difficult to boot anything other than the
installed OS.

So, your only viable option is to remove the drive from the Netbook and plug it
into another PC.

Since, you don't want to do that multiple times, I recommend the following.

Manually partition the drive as C: (1-2GB) and D: (1GB). Install FreeDOS using
the other machine to Drive C:. Then copy the entire contents of either the Big
USB stick or CD to drive D:.

This way all of the games and packages that don't get installed with BASE or
FULL will be easily accessible on Drive D:.

Reinsert Drive back in netbook.

All done. Unlike Windows and some other OS releases, nothing will prevent you
from moving the installed OS from one machine to another.

Jerome




>
>> On Sat, Mar 25, 2017 at 5:53 PM, Jim Hall  wrote:
>> On Sat, Mar 25, 2017 at 2:35 PM, Aleksei Ivan  wrote:
>> >
>> > I have a netbook without DVD-ROM, USB working, and, obliviously. no FLOPPY
DISK to install it. Is there any way to do it from the HD?
>> > Tks
>>
>>
>> If your computer doesn't have a CDROM drive, use the USB fob drive
>> installer. Write this to a USB fob drive and boot it to start the
>> install. The "Full" and "Lite" versions install the same FreeDOS, but
>> the "Lite" installer does not contain some extra bonus software
>> packages.
>>
>> You can find links to these installers on this page:
>> http://www.freedos.org/download/
>>
>> --
>> Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
>> engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
>> ___
>> Freedos-user mailing list
>> Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
>> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
>
> --
> Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
> engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
> ___
> Freedos-user mailing list
> Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

--Apple-Mail-1ED041EA-CFF0-4522-832C-BB10496C594B
Content-Type: text/html;
charset=utf-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

On
Mar 25, 2017, at 5:00 PM, Aleksei Ivan <mailto:aleksei@gmail.com";>aleksei@gmail.com>
wrote:My USB
ports are NOT working too. I have only to work with a installation partition on
this 
netbook.Well, 
it is always tricky to install an OS to a computer with a single drive, no USB, 
no CD, no Floppy. It is very difficult to boot anything other than the 
installed OS.So, your only viable option is to remove 
the drive from the Netbook and plug it into another 
PC. Since, you don't want to do that multiple 
times, I recommend the following.Manually partition 
the drive as C: (1-2GB) and D: (1GB). Install FreeDOS using the other machine 
to Drive C:. Then copy the entire contents of either the Big USB stick or CD to 
drive D:. This way all of the games and packages 
that don't get installed with BASE or FULL will be easily accessible on Drive 
D:.Reinsert Drive back in 
netbook.All done. Unlike Windows and some other OS 
releases, nothing will prevent
 you from moving the installed OS from one machine to 
another.JeromeOn Sat, 
Mar 25, 2017 at 5:53 PM, Jim Hall <mailto:jh...@freedos.org"; 
target="_blank">jh...@freedos.org> wrote:On Sat, Mar 25, 2017 at 2:35 PM, Aleksei 
Ivan <mailto:aleksei@gmail.com";>aleksei@gmail.com> 
wrote:
>
> I have a netbook without DVD-ROM, USB working, and, obliviously. no FLOPPY
DISK to install it. Is there any way to do it from the HD?
> Tks


If your computer doesn't have a CDROM drive, use the USB fob drive
installer. Write this to a USB fob drive and boot it to start the
install. The "Full" and "Lite" versions install the same FreeDOS, but
the "Lite" installer does not contain some extra bonus software
packages.

You can find links to these installers

Re: [Freedos-user] boot floppy disk image too big for a disk

[Jerome Shidel]

From: Jerome Shidel 




> On Mar 24, 2017, at 6:40 PM, Eric Auer  wrote:
>
>
> Hi Dennis,
>
>> The 486 that I plan to use FreeDOS on currentlyrCA has MS-DOS 6.22 as
>> its only OS. My plan is to completely replace it but keep all my
>> installed programs. The SCSI drivers are all in C:\SCSI and I notice
>> FreeDOS has its own equivalent of MSCDEX.EXE.
>
> Well in that case, you can simply use the existing DOS SCSI
> and CDROM drivers :-) You can even keep MSCDEX until you get
> used to SHSUCDX later... And you can use your existing lines
> from autoexec and config for the autoexec and (fd-) config
> of FreeDOS. Only if you were using the MS DOS config sys
> MENU system, you will have to change some things - syntax
> for menus works in a different way in FreeDOS.

I'd advise just plugging in his needed lines into the new configuration files.
But, what ever is easiest.

>
> Maybe Jerome and Rugxulo can give some hints about how to
> tell the installer to only install FreeDOS to the existing
> C: drive of your MS DOS PC without damaging other programs

If his old MS-DOS install is not under the FDOS\ directory (unless changed in
advanced mode), it will just ignore it. That goes for other directories as
well. If the existing target directory (Like FDOS\) for the OS already exists,
it will be backed up and the cleaned out.

> Even then, it is always very good to have a backup of all
> files before updating. So if anything goes wrong, you can
> use the backups to repair the damage :-)

Yes, always backup!

Jerome

--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

--- Internet Rex 2.29
 * Origin: capcity2.synchro.net - 502/875-8938 (276:10/901)
--- Synchronet 3.15a-Linux ListGate 1.3
 *  Capitol City Online - Frankfort, KY - telnet://capitolcityonline.net


--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] bsum - compute BSD checksums of your files

[Jerome Shidel]

From: Jerome Shidel 

Less than 256 bytes of code.

Over 2 Megabytes of controversy.

Shame on you Mateusz!

:-)

All joking aside, from what I gather, your bsum is only meant to verify local
files were copied correctly from one machine to another. Most forms of
checksums should be sufficient for that task.

Sure a collision is possible. More bits in the checksum reduces the
possibility. But even with a SHA 256 hash, the chance of accidental collision
is so remote as to be zero. It is still theoretically possible.

How sure do you need to be? Well, you could be absolutely sure by coping them
over then back. Then doing a byte level comparison between the original and the
copy of a copy.  But why? Now as for a man in the middle of your two
machines... Even that check could be thwarted by a crafty attacker.

So, I assume that the checking done by you bsum is the exact level of certainty
you desire. Sure enough.

Jerome

--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

--- Internet Rex 2.29
 * Origin: capcity2.synchro.net - 502/875-8938 (276:10/901)
--- Synchronet 3.15a-Linux ListGate 1.3
 *  Capitol City Online - Frankfort, KY - telnet://capitolcityonline.net


--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] overflooded by old emails

[Jerome Shidel]

> On May 7, 2017, at 10:43 AM, Jim Hall  wrote:
> 
> Some email address was playing back old messages, don't know why. I 
> unsubscribed the email address from the list.

Well, here is my guess on the event.

There are many sites that mirror the FreeDOS mailing list archives. The easiest 
way to perform that task is to just subscribe to the list and let SF send the 
server any updates. Many of the messages in the mini-flood have truncated 
subject lines. So, my guess is the server had an and error that caused its 
cache to be dumped into postfix (or other mail client) and off they went. 
Possibly caused by an attempted hack of the afflicted server. 

Or, bug in SF mailing list. 

But, that is all just speculation. Since it was such a short lived flood and 
wasn't one of my servers, I'm not concerned enough to dig through my email 
archive to compare the headers with the recent messages to see if I learn 
anything from them.

> 
> Has it happened in the last 4 hours?

Think there was just that one single flood of about 320 messages early this 
morning.

> The list admin interface kind of sucks from a phone, so I didn't see a way to 
> block/ban the address in addition to unsubscribing. I can ban the address if 
> it happens again.
> 
>> On May 7, 2017 9:05 AM, "Jiri Wackermann"  wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> Yes, it has happened, and mysteriously, it happens again.
>> I cleaned up my Inbox and now the pest is back.
>> Really annoying.
>> 
>> Jiri
>> 
>> >> Has it happened to anybody else?
>> >>
>> >> Thanks
>> >>
>> >> Wesley Parish
>> 
>> --
>> Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
>> engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
>> ___
>> Freedos-user mailing list
>> Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
>> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
> --
> Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
> engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
> ___
> Freedos-user mailing list
> Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] overflooded by old emails

[Jerome Shidel]

> On May 7, 2017, at 2:11 PM, cc...@iglou.com wrote:
> 
> Close, I think it was a configuration error on my part.  I changed e-mail
> address to one on my own server and the messages burped from my new one. 
> Sorry for the error.

I can't speak for everyone else. But, as for me, no big deal. It is the most 
excitement the list has seen in a couple days. :-)

--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

[Freedos-user] FreeDOS Software Repositories Update.

[Jerome Shidel]

Hello again everyone,

I just finished adding some new stuff to the fdrepo.sh Software Repository 
Management Utility. 

These new features added support for automatic RSS feed creation and updating. 

It automatically adds any new or updated packages into the feed.

The Official software repository feed is automatically updated daily and is 
available at:

http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distributions/1.2/repos/pkg-html/rss.xml
 


Also, as I have mentioned before, I have a separate un-official FreeDOS 
repository on one of my servers
at https://fd.lod.bz  . For various reasons, it contains a 
couple more packages than are located on the Official 
Repository. Although packages are not updated to frequently, my server updates 
it’s html pages and feed hourly when
changes are detected. You could also subscribe to its “update” feed at:

https://fd.lod.bz/repos/current/pkg-html/rss.xml 


Jerome


--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS Software Repositories Update

[Jerome Shidel]

I just weeded out a couple of packages that showed up in the RSS feed that had 
not been updated in a while. The showed up because they had recently had some 
METADATA corrections. Now that most of the packages should have correct 
METADATA, this type of corrections should be rare going forward. I probably 
won’t bother to manually remove them in the future. At present, the feed shows 
packages updated since the release of FreeDOS 1.2. I figure that is a good 
starting point. 

If you are unfamiliar with using RSS, my recommendation is using Mozilla 
Firefox. It does a pretty nice job of dealing with these types of RSS feeds. 
You even have two different ways of using them. 

First, you can just view the XML file. It will give you a nicely formatted page 
with links and such. 

Second, you can subscribe to a feed as “Live Bookmarks”. This will provide you 
with a bookmark menu item that updates with the new packages. Clicking on the 
link will take you to page on the server. 

Unfortunately, Google Chrome no longer supports RSS feeds. However, along with 
Firefox and Safari, there are many Readers and Podcast downloaders that do a 
pretty nice job.

Once again the here are the links to the package update feeds: 

Official FreeDOS Repository Server: 
http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distributions/1.2/repos/pkg-html/rss.xml
 


My LOD.BZ Server: https://fd.lod.bz/repos/current/pkg-html/rss.xml 


Jerome--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] (sort of) new user with boot issues

[Jerome Shidel]

Hi Curtis,

Since you are using a multi-boot system, there is something you will probably 
want to NOT do during the installation of FreeDOS 1.2. You won't want to the 
boot sector overwritten. So, be sure to run the installer in Advanced Mode and 
tell it not to do it. It makes a backup of the current one you could restore. 
But, why go through the extra headaches. You can enter advanced mode two ways. 
Exit installer and relaunch as "setup adv" or at any time the installer is 
waiting for you to press a key, press CTRL+C and switch to/from advanced mode.

As for your grub chainload question, I can't be of much help there. I haven't 
done any multi-boot  stuff in years. All my machines are either dedicated Macs 
or Linux Boxes. Some virtual machines. But, no multi-boot.

I do recall someone recently posted some detailed information on doing that in 
this or the devel group. 

> On Jun 20, 2017, at 6:32 PM, Curtis R Anderson via Freedos-user 
>  wrote:
> 
> I haven't used FreeDOS since I had an old IBM ThinkPad laptop and I needed a 
> DOS based solution to set up the hibernate space. It worked perfectly for 
> that, although not all features were ever made to work. The laptop was 
> retired years ago from hard use.
> 
> So, I have a need to run a DOS based utility to flash a SCSI card BIOS. I 
> guess that eliminates the use of an emulator under Linux because of the 
> security risks of that from a non-root user.
> 
> I can't boot from a USB-based mass storage device with this desktop's BIOS. 
> No option is provided for it in the BIOS menu. My floppy drive died years ago 
> and was retired, so that option is out as well.
> 
> My hard drives are 2TB and 3TB, respectively. The "legacy" CD-ROM complained 
> about my "Drive is too large to handle" and said something about the first 
> 8GB being usable. Is it possible for me to move around my Linux partitions, 
> time-consuming but trivial, to open up space below 8GB and hope grub can find 
> the GPT based partition that I set aside for the purpose?
> 
> And even then, exactly what is the grub syntax for the FreeDOS partition and 
> the "chainloader" command? "+1" doesn't work, even with the "--force" switch. 
> Is there a magical file that I can use with the "chainloader" command that 
> I'm missing?
> 
> If I have that "chainloader" command, I can also use grub to boot FreeDOS 
> from the USB mass storage device by clever use of the "drivemap" command.
> 
> (Another problem with this is Google yields 8 year old answers with "grub 
> legacy" syntax.)
> 
> 
> --
> Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
> engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
> ___
> Freedos-user mailing list
> Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user


--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

[Freedos-user] V8Power Tools

[Jerome Shidel]

Hello all,

Just wanted to let you know I added a new feature to the VFDUTIL.COM utility in 
V8PT yesterday.

Basically, it will search the system PATH directories for a given filespec and 
output all matching files. If it is not found, there is no output and it 
terminates with an errorlevel. 

This is similar to some Linux commands. But, does have some different behavior. 
It excepts wild cards. You can chain multiple searches (stops after first no 
match found). It does not search the current working directory unless it is in 
the PATH variable. 

Can be useful to find files and/or see if a file is in the PATH spec. 

It is the /s switch. There is a quite version using /t that doesn't display the 
matching files.

Examples:

vfdutil /s command.com /s *.bat

vfdutil /t wcc.exe /t wlink.exe
if errorlevel 1 goto OWNotInPath

;^)



--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

[Freedos-user] V8Power Tools -- Update

[Jerome Shidel]

Hello all,

I just released an update to V8Power Tools. 
It has some general improvements to a couple tools. 

Also, it includes a brand new utility called veach. 

veach can be used for processing lists of items or commands. 

Here are a couple example usages:

You have a directory full of bitmaps you want to resize using some program 
called RESIZE.EXE…

veach /d *.bmp /x resize * /scale 50% 

You want to take a file that lists a bunch of stuff and sort then display those 
items with a count using VECHO.COM.

veach /f items.txt /s /x vecho “Item @ of # is *”

You want to the output of grep and display the STAT.EXE results for those items.

grep -iv “^IGNORE THIS” | veach /I /x stat *

You want to execute every BAT, EXE and COM program in a directory and ignore 
any errors they may have. :-)

veach /d *.exe /d *.com /d *.bat /s /c /x

You just want a sorted list of all the BAT, COM and EXE files in a directory

veach /d *.exe /d *.com /d *.bat /S /L

Basically, think of it this way. Everything after the /X switch is like you 
typed it into the command line. * is expanded to the list item, @ is expanded 
to the index and # is expanded to the count. if you provide nothing after /X, * 
is used (find and run this thing). Shell internals like type, dir, copy … are 
not supported at present and you would need to would need to place them in a 
batch file. Something like:

@ECHO OFF
del %1

veach /d *.* /x XDEL.BAT *

Now available through FNDPKG or download at

https://fd.lod.bz/repos/current/pkg-html/v8power.html
or
http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/repositories/latest/pkg-html/v8power.html

Jerome



--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] V8Power Tools -- Update

[Jerome Shidel]

Hello Paolo,

> On Aug 1, 2017, at 6:37 AM, Paolo Vincenzo Olivo  wrote:
> 
> Hi Jerome,
> I've just tried your veach.com utility and it looks like it shall really
> come in handy! I was missing a program capable of appending a command to a
> sorted list (like a  |   in Unix ) .
> Nice job, and thanks for your effort

Thank you.

Just like you, I would find myself either doing some things the long way because
there was just no easy way to do X on a list of things. Wether that list was 
some
generic things I wanted to run through a program or something more complex.

Besides, what other utility will let suicidally run every program in a 
directory with a 
simple “veach /d *.* /c /x”  command? :-)

I could have really used veach in FDI. But, I didn’t require it. With all the 
ASCIIZ
string juggling and parsing it would need to do, I procrastinated making it. 
But alas,
I finally got to it. 

Just a note on veach, I restricted its memory usage to 16KB maximum for the 
CODE + DATA + STACK. That leaves roughly 11K for list items. That should be 
plenty for most things. After all, a directory list would use 6-18 bytes per 
item. That 
would allow for approximately 625+ directory items before getting the “Out of 
Memory”
error. Since unused memory is freed, this would have no effect on the memory 
consumed by smaller lists. So, I may just increase the limit to 32 or 64K. 

At some point, I will probably add a /U switch to de-duplicate items. You could 
run
into duplicate items with a command like “veach /d *.bmp /d abc.* /x resize * 
/scale 50%”
If there was an abc.bmp, it would be shrunk twice.

Jerome
 
--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] V8Power Tools -- Update

[Jerome Shidel]

Hi Tom, 

> On Aug 1, 2017, at 10:27 AM, Tom Ehlert  wrote:
> 
> 
>>> Hi Jerome,
>>> I've just tried your veach.com utility and it looks like it shall really
>>> come in handy! I was missing a program capable of appending a command to a
>>> sorted list (like a  |   in Unix ) .
>>> Nice job, and thanks for your effort
> 
>> Thank you.
> 
>> Just like you, I would find myself either doing some things the long way 
>> because
>> there was just no easy way to do X on a list of things. Wether that list was 
>> some
>> generic things I wanted to run through a program or something more complex.
> 
>> Besides, what other utility will let suicidally run every program in a 
>> directory with a
>> simple “veach /d *.* /c /x”  command? :-)
> 
>> I could have really used veach in FDI. But, I didn’t require it. With all 
>> the ASCIIZ
>> string juggling and parsing it would need to do, I procrastinated making it. 
>> But alas,
>> I finally got to it.
> 
>veach /d *.bmp  /x resize * /scale 50%
> 
> is more or less the same as
> 
> FOR %i in (*.bmp) do resize %i /scale 50%
> 
> (use %%i when used in batch files)
> 
> from a batch file, FOR has also lower memory requirements although
> this is most likely irrelevant for FDI
> 
> unfortunately this turns up a bug in FOR:
> 
> 
>for %i in (*.*) do echo %i
> 
> works as expected, also echoing the command itself.
> 
>E:\FREEDOS\SRC>echo SOFTIC~1.IMA
>SOFTIC~1.IMA
> 
> however
> 
>for %i in (*.*) do @echo %i
> 
> E:\FREEDOS\SRC>@echo SOFTIC~1.IMA
> Bad command or filename - "@ECHO".
> 
> 
> bug report filed
> 
> Tom.
> 

Yep, however the FOR like stuff in veach was added to be mostly "feature 
complete"

The main need was for doing stuff like this:

veach /f base.lst /f extra.lst /s /x install.bat * @ #
(Why it should do uniques)

That would combine and sort two lists in files, then pass them each to 
install.bat with an index and count.

Or, take the output of grep and do the same: 

grep -iv "^;" stuff.lst | veach /I /S /X install.bat * @ #

Or combine stuff from the pipe and a file with /f & /i 

Or crazy things like

veach /d *.com /d *.exe /S /L | grep -iv ^D | veach /I /X showme @ # *

But again, FOR does have its advantages too. FOR really doesn't eat any RAM. It 
also can set ENV variables. Calling a BAT file over and over would be faster. 
And some other stuff.

You can accomplish the stuff veach provides in other ways. After all, FDI does 
some of that now. But, veach does seem to simplify a lot of it.

Jerome

> 
> --
> Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
> engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
> ___
> Freedos-user mailing list
> Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user


--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] upgrade my PC from FD 1.1 to FD 1.2

[Jerome Shidel]

Just replacing the COMMAND and SYS files won’t really give you 1.2. It would
just be 1.1 an upgraded kernel. Take a look at the software comparison chart
on the official FreeDOS software repository. 

http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/repositories/1.2/pkg-html/comparison.html
 


It shows what is included in 1.0, 1,1 and the 1.2 variations. Also, it shows the
versions that are on the repo. 

Since you probably don’t have a supported NIC in the dedicated machine,
you may even consider installing 1.2 via the repo CD. The CD image is built 
automatically daily, when a package is updated on the repo.

http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/repositories/1.2/ 


The FreeDOS 1.2 installer will backup your config files. Also, if the new 
system 
directory (C:\FDOS), already exists, it will also backup and replace it. So, 
make 
sure you have plenty of free disk space.

However, that assume everything works as designed and nothing goes wrong. 
I highly recommend you create your own backup of anything important.

The first step in that process would be to make a known good bootable backup.
Format a floppy and preform a sys transfer to that diskette. That way you can
easily boot that floppy and restore your kernel. I would also copy your current
autoexec.bat and config.sys to a directory on the floppy along with any drivers
you may require.

Also, please be sure you have good backups for any games you have. I wouldn’t
expect any serious problems. But, you never know. On top of that, a hard drive
can go bad or even completely fail without warning. 

Jerome


--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] (Upgrade FD 1.1 to FD 1.2) RE to Jerome on AUG 10, 2013

[Jerome Shidel]

> On Aug 10, 2017, at 11:17 AM, Pierre LaMontagne  wrote:
> 
> 
> /Jerome said:/
> 
> Take a look at the software comparison chart on the official FreeDOS software 
> repository.
> 
> I looked at the rather extensive chart (thanx, BTW.) I was hoping you could 
> clear-up a little bit of confusion on my part… The chart consists of several 
> columns which I understand clearly except for that last "FreeDOS" column. I'm 
> not sure what its significance is.Although, it's plain to see that it's not, 
> it seems to be the same as the previous column ("1.2-Extra".)
> 

When I moved to the new comparison chart format I didn't include a header 
paragraph to explain the different columns. I should probably add one.

Anyhow, the 1.0 & 1.1 columns are the packages (and versions) that "shipped" 
with those versions of FreeDOS. 

After that the columns have a slightly different meaning, 1.2 Base & 1.2 Full 
are the list the packages that are installed with those respective selections 
with any of the FreeDOS install mediums. The 1.2-Extra column lists the 
versions of additional packages that are included (but not installed) on all 
but the SLIM USB stick image.

The final column "FreeDOS" is poorly named. It is the latest versions of the 
packages available on the FreeDOS Software Repository. 

If you scroll down, you will see packages like Pacific-C, MinEd and Vim that 
have been added to the repo and were not included with FreeDOS 1.2. You will 
also see package like UPX, Free Pascal, FDNPKG and more that have received 
updates since 1.2.

I hope that clears it up for you.

As a side note, you can also subscribe to the package update RSS feed from the 
link on the bottom of main HTML index page of the repo.

http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/repositories/1.2/pkg-html/

The feed automatically updates during the night when packages have received 
updates or new ones were added. Package updates for the repo don't tend to 
occur often or on any kind of regular schedule. Without a network connected 
package manager (Packet driver + FDNPKG) on the FreeDOS PC, it can be tedious 
to check for updates. So, the RSS feed can be very useful for monitoring 
updates. Also, Firefox can even use the feed to create live bookmarks. 

:-)

--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] upgrade my PC from FD 1.1 to FD 1.2

[Jerome Shidel]

Hello, 

> On Aug 10, 2017, at 12:59 PM, Rugxulo  wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> On Wed, Aug 9, 2017 at 7:11 PM, Jerome Shidel  wrote:
>> 
>> Just replacing the COMMAND and SYS files won’t really give you 1.2. It would
>> just be 1.1 an upgraded kernel. Take a look at the software comparison chart
>> on the official FreeDOS software repository.
>> 
>> http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/repositories/1.2/pkg-html/comparison.html
> 
> Or you could just look closer at specific categories that are relevant
> to your usage:
> 
> http://www.freedos.org/software/
> 
> BASE, Archivers, Boot tools, Development, Editors, Emulators, Games,
> Networking, Sound, Utilities
> 
> (I know it's the same thing, but it's easier to me to only have to
> look in Sound for relevant sound/music tools than scroll through a
> list of hundreds of programs, even if sorted / ordered.)

Yep, it is the same thing. In fact, the links on that page point to the 
repository one step down from the main repository index page at:

http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/repositories/1.2/pkg-html/

Excluding any 3rd party charts and software repositories (like mine at
https://fd.lod.bz/repos/current/ ). As far as I know, the only place to see 
what package versions “shipped” with which version of FreeDOS is through
the comparison chart in the 1.2 repository.

> So, obviously, kernel and shell are supremely important, but the
> changes were minor (2040 -> 2042) or even non-existent (FreeCOM).
> 
> I wouldn't recommend to overload yourself with worries about updating
> literally everything. I dislike having a billion files that are all
> falsely considered "important".
> 
> I would suggest focusing only on your most commonly used utils and
> system drivers (e.g. JEMM).
> 
> Honestly, a lot of stuff hasn't seen major changes. And for things
> like compilers (e.g. FPC), the upgrade path is usually to delete and
> reinstall from scratch anyways.

Yep, glancing at the chart, only about 12 packages in BASE were updated 
in the years since the 1.1 release. 

(A little sarcastic) Its good there having only been few BASE updates. They 
are stable and bug free.

>> The first step in that process would be to make a known good bootable
>> backup. Format a floppy and preform a sys transfer to that diskette. That 
>> way you
>> can easily boot that floppy and restore your kernel. I would also copy your
>> current autoexec.bat and config.sys to a directory on the floppy along with 
>> any
>> drivers you may require.
> 
> Is this an ancient machine? Why can't he backup to USB jump drive
> instead? They certainly have higher capacity (and are dirt cheap
> nowadays). A good boot floppy can be useful, I'm not disagreeing.  ;-)
>  But overall it's a very limited medium for backups.

Good question. 

A USB bootable backup would be very nice. But, it could be difficult to make.
For instance, he may not be able to boot the internal drive and maintain 
access to a USB flash drive from DOS. If that is the case, he may be able 
to boot a copy of a 1.2 USB stick and convert it over to a copy of his 1.1
install. 

>> Also, please be sure you have good backups for any games you have. I
>> wouldn’t expect any serious problems. But, you never know. On top of that, a 
>> hard
>> drive can go bad or even completely fail without warning.
> 
> For proprietary games, yes, back them up. Even CD media is prone to
> failure these days. Otherwise, if the game is freeware, just backup
> config and save files (and maybe mods / add-ons), not the original
> data itself.

Yep, backup, backup, backup. 

Years ago, I imaged all of my DOS Floppies, CDs and DVDs. Those images
are backed up in several locations. Just like baby pictures, my old computer
software is impossible to replace. :-)






--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] upgrade my PC from FD 1.1 to FD 1.2 RE: to Rugxulo AUG 12, 2017

[Jerome Shidel]

> On Aug 12, 2017, at 7:32 PM, Pierre LaMontagne  wrote:
> 
> (I know it's the same thing, but it's easier to me to only have to look in 
> Sound for relevant sound/music tools than scroll through a list of hundreds 
> of programs, even if sorted / ordered.)
> 
> For me too, in fact I used that very same software listing that your link 
> provides to build my own repo on my mainWin 7 PC in hopes to transfer them 
> all to the FD PC via a USB Flash Drive.Now though, it looks like I'll have to 
> resort to using optical drives instead.

The comparison chart cane used for a complete listing of software. But, that is 
not its purpose. It is to see at a glance what changes have occurred from on 
version to the next. 

If you are just browsing packages. It is far better to look at the package 
“group” pages. Like the Utilities Group page,

http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/repositories/1.2/pkg-html/group-util.html

On that page, you even get to see brief descriptions for the packages.

> 
> So, obviously, kernel and shell are supremely important, but the changes were 
> minor (2040 -> 2042) or even non-existent (FreeCOM).
> 
> Sorry, but I don't know what you mean by(2040 -> 2042) …

Those are some FreeDOS kernel version numbers. The current version is 2042.

http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/repositories/1.2/pkg-html/kernel.html

> I wouldn't recommend to overload yourself with worries about updating 
> literally everything. I dislike having a billion files that are all falsely 
> considered "important".
> 
> I agree with that, trouble is, I'm not sure what's important or what may 
> become important eventually.So, for me, it's easier & quicker to just do it 
> all (I guess you could call that the "hoarder" approach):)
> 
> I would suggest focusing only on your most commonly used utils and system 
> drivers (e.g. JEMM).
> 
> That's basically what I did.'Fraid I don't even know what "JEMM" is.

http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/repositories/1.2/pkg-html/jemm.html

> 
> Honestly, a lot of stuff hasn't seen major changes.
> 
> That's what I've come to the conclusion of too, just wasn't sure if that was 
> the case given the amount of time that's occurred between my initial 1.1 
> install and now.
> 
> And for things like compilers (e.g. FPC), the upgrade path is usually to 
> delete and reinstall from scratch anyways.
> 
> Compilers?In an OS?Way beyond me!:)I thought compilers were only used in 
> programming languages, like Pascal, C++, assembly etc.… (???)

There are software development and programing language packages available. They 
are some of the tools that can be used to create
DOS software.

http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/repositories/1.2/pkg-html/group-devel.html

> 
> Yes, always have backups, if possible, but I don't think you need to backup 
> literally everything.
> 
> Well, I wanted to err on the side of caution (given my luck)so I tried to do 
> the FD install backup, but for some unknown reason, the backup failed, the 
> machine seemed to lock-up.Upon rebooting, I re-started the install W/O the 
> backup option & had success that way.

It may not have locked-up, the progress bar can stop for several minutes. It 
depends on how much data is being copied in each segment of the backup process. 
However, it may have. It is hard to say. The standard backup process in normal 
mode uses several xcopy and copy commands. There many different things that 
could cause an issue during the process.

> 
> I guess you could always cat or dd from atop *nix the relevant partition into 
> a .img file.
> 
> cat or dd ??Is that the same as "DIR"? (Sorry, you lost me here.)
> 

cat and dd are Unix, BSD, Linux and MAC command line utilities. (ports are 
probably available for windows as well).

dd can be easily used to copy a partition or whole drive to an image file. (or 
the other way around as well).

https://ss64.com/bash/dd.html

cat is generally used to send the contents of a file (or device) to stdout. 

https://ss64.com/bash/cat.html

> Or, for Windows, use something like this:
> 
> Thanx, I ended up using a different util though to produce a boot-able CD 
> from a FDOS 1.2 *.iso file.
> 
> take up a ton of space but are also quickly updated / obsoleted, so it's not 
> worth preserving them to backup, IMHO, without a good reason.)
> 
> Again, for me, difficult to determine what is & what's not important.Space, 
> for me, on that PC is not relevant.
> 
> Is this an ancient machine?
> 
> Not ancient, but old! It's a Pentium III/733mhz, Floppy drive, CD/DVD optical 
> drive, 30gb HD, 4gb RAM, AGP video card (not sure what speed & how much vid 
> RAM), & the USB ports (all 2 of 'em) aren't compatible, evidently, with my 
> other networked PCs (I think, but not sure, it's a USB 1.1 vs. a USB 2.0 
> issue. Or it could be FAT 16 vs FAT 32, again, not sure.For now though, while 
> I determine the issue, I'll be using the optica

Re: [Freedos-user] Some driver updates

[Jerome Shidel]

I gave a lot of thought to the issue of “Installed” and “required” free space 
for the batch based FDI in FreeDOS 1.2. With the amount of additional overhead 
and complexity it would require, I decided it was not worth the effort at 
present. 

Base size,
Base + sources size,
Full size,
Full+ sources size,
All package sizes (custom advanced mode)
All packages + sources sizes,
Temp storage requirements to expand largest installing package,
Temp storage for custom install lists,
Temp storage for custom autoexec and config file creation,
Size needed for copy style backup,
Size needed for advanced zip backup,
Size needed for MBR backup,
Size needed for config file backup,
Size of packages to be removed and upgraded,
a couple other minor things.

Basically, all of these would all need to be known and/or calculated before the 
installer could say “43.5mb of packages to install” requiring 87.2mb of free 
space.

Jerome




--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Some driver updates

[Jerome Shidel]

>> On Nov 7, 2017, at 12:20 PM, Robert Riebisch  wrote:
>> 
>> Hi Jerome,
>> 
>> I gave a lot of thought to the issue of “Installed” and “required” free 
>> space for the batch based FDI in FreeDOS 1.2. With the amount of additional 
>> overhead and complexity it would require, I decided it was not worth the 
>> effort at present. 
>> 
>> Base size,
>> Base + sources size,
>> Full size,
>> Full+ sources size,
>> All package sizes (custom advanced mode)
>> All packages + sources sizes,
> 
> Start with Base.

Can’t. If user is doing a custom install in advanced mode, not all of base may 
be included.

>> Temp storage requirements to expand largest installing package,
> 
> Difficult.
> 
>> Temp storage for custom install lists,
>> Temp storage for custom autoexec and config file creation,
> 
> Shouldn't take much.

Yes. But, everything counts.

> 
>> Size needed for copy style backup,
>> Size needed for advanced zip backup,
> 
> Means what?

Space required for the two different types of backups that FDI can create of a 
previous install.

No backup.
Simple xcopy to backup directory.
Archive Zip of prior install.

> 
>> Size needed for MBR backup,
>> Size needed for config file backup,
> 
> Shouldn't take much.

Correct, but if your going to calculate stuff, should be accurate.
> 
>> Size of packages to be removed and upgraded,
> 
> It's just "-", not "+" then. ;-)

Nope,

Prior package sizes are unknown. Would need to iterate through their file list 
and calculate how muck will be removed.

Let’s not forget about slack space either.

A 52byte file may use 512bytes on disk. So, just adding sizes is no good.

> 
>> a couple other minor things.
>> 
>> Basically, all of these would all need to be known and/or calculated before 
>> the installer could say “43.5mb of packages to install” requiring 87.2mb of 
>> free space.
> 
> Of course, uncompressed ZIP length should be calculated during ISO build
> at the latest, but not at runtime of the installer.

They already are. And are embedded in data files on the install Media.  
FDIMPLES uses that data in stand-alone mode to give a user a rough estimate of 
the installed size of a package.

> But what else is a computer for if not crunching numbers?
> 
> Robert Riebisch
> -- 
> +++ BTTR Software +++
>Home page:  http://www.bttr-software.de/
> DOS ain't dead:  http://www.bttr-software.de/forum/
> 
> --
> Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
> engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
> ___
> Freedos-user mailing list
> Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] freedos installation disk space requirements - was: Some driver updates

[Jerome Shidel]

I see a lot of  assume this, assume that, plus a little of roughly this... 

Maybe the installer should just assume FULL install + sources + (2x) old OS 
backup + 1-5MB  safety margin at startup. If there is not that much space, tell 
user the error and stop. Like several other dangerous things, the user could 
force an install in advanced mode.  

--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] freedos installation disk space requirements - was: Some driver updates

[Jerome Shidel]

> On Nov 8, 2017, at 2:40 PM, Eric Auer  wrote:
> 
> 
> Hi Jerome,
> 
>> Maybe the installer should just assume FULL install + sources
> 
> Not really. Almost nobody installs all sources at the same time
> and I would not even want the option in the installer: Instead,
> I prefer to have the option to install + PACKAGES with sources.
> Then I can unzip only those sources that I need, instead of all
> of them at the same time.
> 
> Also, I would hope that people understand that FULL will be 100s
> of MB while BASE gives you everything you loved in MS DOS times
> plus a lot more while still needing only a few dozen MB space :-)
> 
> In other words, I hope people will see that both FULL and BASE
> are nice choices. You could disable the FULL install and show a
> message why, if there is enough space for BASE but not for FULL.
> 
> You could do for example the following:
> 
> Calculate sizes of BASE and FULL and if you really think it will
> help the sizes of either with sources. In all cases, assume 32 kB
> cluster size to be on the safe side. In other words, round UP to
> multiples of 32 kB. Then add 5 MB safety margin. And if desired,
> 2x the size of the old OS directory if "backup old OS" is active.
> 
> If there is less space than calculated, warn the user that FreeDOS
> will probably not fit, but allow to continue nevertheless if the
> user decides to continue. If there is enough space, tell the user
> that the install will take circa PREDICTEDVALUE of FREESPACE and
> leave REMAININGVALUE or more free. Then the user can be happy to
> hear about the "or more" part :-)
> 
> Cheers, Eric

Or, just put a note on the download page saying it requires X mb free space for 
a full install and Y for only Base. Then let the user worry about the problem.

I don’t recall the poll numbers for use case. But, I have the impression that 
the majority of users are not installing onto an existing system with minimal 
free space. Mostly, they are installing into a virtual machine. Some are 
setting up legacy hardware on clean machines. 

I just don’t see it as a problem should take priority over other issues. Maybe 
I’m wrong. But, that’s my 2 cents worth.

:)

--
Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most
engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user