Re: [Freedos-user] AUTO SHIFT keyboard on DOS??
> It has been a very long time. But, if I recall correctly, I’m fairly sure > you > can programmatically change the LEDs as well. But, I don’t recall the > details. But, I might have code sitting around somewhere that has that > functionality. The LED status is contained in the BIOS Data Area (BDA), but it is not always correctly synced with the actual LEDs, especially in some Virtual Machines. I also have problems with my USB keyboard drivers maintaining this synchronization. Simply setting the LED on (or off) in the BDA doesn't guarantee that the correct signal gets sent to the keyboard to control the LED (if the keyboard even has LEDs, which modern keyboards often don't, especially if they're wireless). > However excluding CAPS LOCK LED, I don’t think I’ve had a keyboard with > the > other LEDs for a very long time. No real way for me to test that at present. FWIW, I'm working on a TSR called LOCKEYS that displays the status of the Lock Keys (Shift, Num, and Scroll) and also the INSert status, on the screen. It's basically ready to go, but I still have some tweaks to do. But I can send a "pre-release" copy to anybody who wants a copy right now. At first I thought what I should do with it is have it mimic the LED status in the BDA, but that turned out to be very problematic (especially in VMs). So I have it mimic the Lock key status in the BDA instead (what the BIOS and therefore what most DOS programs think the Lock Key status is, not necessarily what the LEDs think it is). I also added the INSert status to the display since that is useful to know and not always obvious in all situations. ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] AUTO SHIFT keyboard on DOS??
> is it possible in DOS (using BIOS?) to implement a tsr or so which allows the > following: > > holding a key longer to return a SHIFT-key on screen? > > Example: > > press key »a« and HOLD the key for e.g. 500 milliseconds, > => print shift-a = »A« on screen. You might be able to do something similar with my SCANCODE program, which allows you to change one key or key combination into another series of keystrokes. Unfortunately, it doesn't respond to how long you press a key down before releasing it. But I think you could program it to treat some other (innocuous) key, like ScrollLock or Right-Control or something, as a "sticky shift" key that is released when you press another key after it. I haven't actually tried, but I think SCANCODE is flexible enough to do that. This option requires pressing two keys instead just pressing and holding one, though. I think your idea of pressing holding down the "a" key to capitalize it instead of holding it down and getting two (or more) a's is going to be more problematic than helpful. ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] what cd rom drivers does freedos use?
> The comparability issue is not in vied_cdd.sys > It is in the dectalk drivers itself. > I have the hardware driver for my cd and DVD rom drives, when > vide_cdd.sys is run, it references the hardware drive in its command. I looked up a little bit about DECtalk. It looks like the earlier versions used a serial port but the later versions plugged directly into an ISA slot. I assume you have one of the later versions? I can't imagine how one that works with a serial port would have a hardware compatibility issue. Hardware compatibility issues are usually either with Interrupt (IRQ) or I/O port conflicts, but IDE/ATAPI was such a widespread standard that it's hard to imagine how DECtalk would have a conflict with those. Does the information you've found give any indication as to what the conflict might actually be? -- Bret Johnson It's oft been said that the Devil is in the Details. I disagree completely. I say God is in the Details -- the Devil is in the Fluff. ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] what cd rom drivers does freedos use?
> The driver providing an issue is one called vide_cdd I found this reference to the file: https://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/VIDE-CDD.SYS It doesn't mention any compatibility issues, but does say it's very small compared to most other drivers which may be why it has problems (there might be something missing that needs to be in there). It also seems to indicate it's a "generic" IDE driver so should work with many CD drives. > Do you know of a comparative substitute? I think I would try OAKCDROM.SYS. I see it referenced a lot as a good driver that works with many IDE CD drives. I just looked and the one I use on my desktop computer is called AOATAPI.SYS, but I don't remember how I came to use that one -- I set it up a long time ago and my memory is not that good. I think you should be able to search the Internet and find a way to download both of those. I rarely use CDs myself, but am adding support for USB CD/DVD drives to my USB drivers. > Would that substitute have to work with only specific cdrom or > dvdrom drives? I think either OAKCDROM or AOATAPI should work with most CD/DVD drives. As I stated earlier, very early CD drives were proprietary and needed hardware-specific drivers, but after IDE & ATAPI became popular things became pretty standardized and generic drivers will work with most hardware. ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] what cd rom drivers does freedos use?
Karen: Do you know which of the two CD-ROM drivers you are having trouble with? It takes two drivers to install a CD in DOS. One is the hardware-specific driver that may come with the CD hardware itself, but there are also several of them (like OAKCDROM.SYS) that will work with different hardware if they are "standard" enough (early CD hardware was not standard at all). The "output" of this driver is a character device that has a name, and all this driver does is provide access to the sectors on the disk -- it doesn't actually "understand" what the data is (e.g., whether it is a music CD or a data CD or something else). The second driver is usually MSCDEX, but there are also several clones of MSCDEX (e.g., SHSUCDX and NWCDEX). That driver "interfaces" with the first driver (you must tell MSCDEX what the name of the first driver is) and the "output" is a drive letter (a block device instead of a character device) that DOS can use (like D:) to access the files. Just like with floppies and hard drives where you can have different kinds of formatting (FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, exFAT, NTFS, HPFS, etc.), you can also have different kinds of formatting on CDs, DVDs, and BDs. The second driver is the one that needs to "understand" the different kinds of formatting to be able to turn it into a drive letter. ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] What DOS programs represent the 1980s and early 90s ?
> I did not catch how to do LPT interrupt, real and protected mode. It > would be a great help if there is an example. > I work with watcom and realized it, but only once, then the ISR is > never called again. > May be LPT is not very often used. It would help to know exactly what you're trying to accomplish. In DOS you normally don't need to access the parallel port at the hardware (IRQ) level since the BIOS functions (INT 17h) normally work really well. If you're wanting to do something other than print (e.g., using any of the IEEE 1284 protocols including bi-directional, ECP, and EPP or downloading the printer identification data), then you might need to access the IRQ or at least manipulate the I/O port(s) directly. ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] What DOS programs represent the 1980s and early 90s ?
> I'm thinking about doing a video that shows how to do real work on > DOS. I sometimes see comments on YouTube with people asking "could > you really do *work* with DOS?" And the answer is of course you can, > that happened every day. > > So I'm collecting a list of things you'd do in the 80s and 90s with > DOS to do work. Sure, I'll put a game it two in there, but I'm > focusing on getting work done. > > What programs or types of programs would you like to see? In the early 80's, I worked in an Engineering department where a bunch of us shared a single XT-class computer. The main applications we used at the time were PC-Write (an early word processor) and Lotus 1-2-3. We also had a secretary in the front of the office that used an IBM word processor (I think it was called DisplayWrite, but I don't remember for sure) to write "official" reports. I do remember it used EBCDIC instead of ASCII. And back in those days everything was transferred back and forth with floppies. Later on everybody ended up getting their own networked computer on their desk. We still mostly used PC-Write and Lotus 1-2-3, but we sometimes used other programs also. The Company used an IBM mainframe for all the central services, and one of the main applications everybody used was a DOS program called Extra! by AttachMate which gave us access to the mainframe from our PCs. One of the big projects I worked on was working with the mainframe programmers to create a database to keep track of some of the Engineering systems we worked on. While the mainframe did a good job of maintaining the data, the only kinds of reports you could run from the mainframe were the "canned" reports which would be printed on paper. I often needed to create special/custom reports or use special filters on the data. I figured out ways to manipulate Extra! or DOS to extract the data I needed so I could manipulate it to get what I wanted. That need was the main reason I ending up writing the first version of my PRTSCR TSR program, which essentially does a "screen scrape" of the text on the DOS terminal and sends it to a file instead of to a printer. Another early TSR program I worked on was JOYKEYS, which turns joystick movements and button presses into keystrokes. At the time I had some joysticks on my computer at home and thought a joystick might be useful as an input device for lots of different programs besides games. It was a similar situation with my MOUSKEYS program, which turns mouse movements and button presses into keystrokes. This allows you to use a mouse with almost any DOS program even if it wasn't originally designed to use a mouse. Of course, using either a joystick or a mouse in a program that wasn't originally designed to use them as an input device has a lot of limitations that a fully-integrated implementation could overcome, but can still be useful in certain situations. ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Codepage and keyboard setting for Czech language
FYI, in MS-DOS divided the Internationalization aspect into four different subcategories: Keyboard Layout, Code Page, Country, and Language (which also includes dialects). While they all overlap and inter-relate to some degree, they are distinct and are all handled separately. The more "modern" operating systems also have the same issues but handle it differently than MS-DOS did/does, in part because of limited resources (like hard drive and memory space). ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS or DOS based mail clients
My understanding is that there are two major differences between POP and IMAP. The first is that POP only allows one-way communication (downloading from the server to the client) so there is no synchronization mechanism. If you download the same e-mail to multiple devices, each one can be set up differently (specifically in terms of folders). When you want to send mail, you must use a different protocol (SMTP). The second difference is that IMAP is designed to be used in a client-server configuration where the e-mails stay stored on the server and are never actually downloaded (at least not permanently) to the client. That allows access to the same e-mail account from multiple devices and there is only one "real" copy of the e-mail (stored on the server). Programs like MS Outlook can store a local cached version of the e-mail, and there can be a lot of complication involved in making sure the cache stays synchronized with reality (what's on the server is "reality"). There are advantages and disadvantages to each approach. ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Epson dot matrix printer emulator?
I don't know of a DOS program to do specifically what you're asking. But this reminds me of the old commercial DOS program called SIDEWAYS that was designed to take text-based printer output from Lotus 123 and print it sideways (commonly called Landscape mode nowadays). I think it also worked with other types of programs too (like word processors). I know that's not exactly what you're looking for, but maybe it will trigger something in someone's memory (like maybe a shareware/freeware "clone" of SIDEWAYS or something)? As suggested, if you're running in a VM you can probably just print the output and have the Host OS capture it and convert it to PDF or EPS or something instead of actually sending it to a printer, but I'm not sure that's exactly what you're looking for either. ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] piping .BATs (input and output)
> What I'm wondering is if the following (piping into a .BAT) is > considered acceptable or "standard" for DOS. > > "prog1.exe | %COMSPEC% /c work.bat | %COMSPEC% /c fixups.bat > some.txt" > > Does that work like I'd expect? (Seems to ... barely.) Is it rare? > Is it buggy? Is there a better way? Though I don't know for sure, I have a couple of thoughts. First of all, what you're doing isn't really piping into a batch file. You're piping into %COMSPEC% which is then, at least in a sense, running the batch file sort of like a subroutine. I would be very surprised if all the varied %COMSPEC%'s would be consistent in how they handle that. I do know that in a "regular" program there are three different places from where you can normally gather input parameters: the command-line (which is stored in the PSP or, in certain cases, the CMDLINE environment variable), various environment variables, and the input pipe (through an INT 21h call). Those come from three very different places, and the program needs to decide in which order they will be processed. Most programs I've seen don't even bother looking at the possibility of an input pipe and usually assume everything comes from the command-line via the PSP. ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Some USB-Stick problems
> Next problem: I tried to get printer support via USB (currently they > use classic LPT, but those printers get very rare). Indeed they are. And many modern printers use protocols that aren't compatible with old DOS programs. > But as soon as I load the basic USBUHCI driver, the USB-stick is no > more available, due to reinitialization of the hardware, it seems. > Is there a way to keep the USBdrive as C: available and get printer > support? Just loading USBPRINT (from Bret Johnson) doesn't get a > connection to the printer. According to the specs, you have six USB ports (using a VIA chipset) which means you have 3 UHCI host controllers (each one controls 2 ports). If you load USBUHCI (or preferably USBUHCIL) with no options, it will install itself to control the first one it finds (called Index 0). That must be the one you have your disk plugged into since your disk stops working. What you need to do is install USBUHCIL for /Index:1 or /Index:2. You'll need to experiment to figure out which physical ports are associated with which host controller index. Since you're booting from USB, you're going to need to make sure the printer is plugged into a port from a different host controller than the boot disk is. USBPRINT is only compatible with USBUHCIL, not with the BIOS. You must install USBUHCIL for the host controller index that controls the port you want to plug the printer into, and then install USBPRINT. That should let you use a USB printer (or an old LPT printer and a USB-to-LPT adapter cable) as if it were an LPT printer. You may also need to provide some command-line options to USBPRINT to make sure it virtualizes the correct printer port (I assume you'll want it to be LPT1). ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Sved, yet another text editor
> Because I felt that the world needed another DOS text editor, I have > spent past month's evenings on a new project named SVED. > SVED (short for "the SvarDOS editor") is designed for basic editing > of configuration files and such. It is NOT meant to be a full- > featured text editor. On the pro side, it has a low memory footprint > and is only a couple kilobytes big, which makes it a good fit for > bootdisks or systems with extremely limited resources. > > - runs comfortably on a 8086-class PC with 256 KiB of RAM > - auto-detects color and monochrome video modes > - supports unusual text modes like 80x43, 80x50, 40x25... > - multilingual UI > - only 7 KiB of disk footprint > - screen estate dedicated to text (no stupid frames, menus and such) > - loads files larger than 64 KiB > - no line length limit > - can load up to 10 files simultaneously > - handles CR/LF and LF line endings and can convert between them Does it have copy/cut/paste functionality? ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
