Re: [Freedos-user] FSF
I don't know why we're still arguing about this. It's been established fact for *ages* that cooperation with RMS is impossible: http://www.jwz.org/hacks/why-cooperation-with-rms-is-impossible.mp3 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] OT: FM vs Wave Table
Let's replace things in the context: we were talking about playing MIDI files. MIDI is inherently about using 'traditional' instruments, and designed on synth hardware (most of the time from Roland) that provides a full-blown orchestra on a chip. Therefore playing MIDI on anything that doesn't provide a guitar, an oboe, piano and what not, will simply sound poor. The problem with this line of argument is that FM is quite capable of providing a wide variety of sounds, including passable mimicries of many traditional instruments. (The simplified two-operator FM in PC sound cards significantly less so than, say, the DX7, but still.) The problem is that very few people who put together General MIDI patch sets for FM sound cards actually knew how to create good FM sounds - it takes a lot of learning, and most of them didn't bother. (Demosceners did a much better job overall, but they never bothered with MIDI because they were all used to custom tracker-style formats.) So the vast majority of MIDI playback on FM is using extremely amateur patch sets that make everything sound like a collage of farts, nose honking, and scraping metal, when there's really no reason it couldn't have sounded at least as good as the MT-32. But of course it doesn't mean FM is poor by nature - I totally agree it can be used for really nice tunes. I even heard very nice music coming out of my Famicom 25 years ago. But this doesn't mean FM (or the Famicom) won't sound poor when trying to play actual MIDI data. Ah, the Famicom wasn't FM. (Well, Konami did release one game - LaGrange Point - with a modified OPLL chip in the cartridge but other than that.) It was just simple waveforms, not even filtered like the SID. -- ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] OT: FM vs Wave Table
The problem with this line of argument is that FM is quite capable of providing a wide variety of sounds, including passable mimicries of many traditional instruments. (The simplified two-operator FM in PC sound cards significantly less so than, say, the DX7, but still.) Indeed you're right: I was actually referring to AdLib (OPL-2/3) - but of course more advanced FM-synthesizers - operated by skilled people - would offer amazing results. Well, thanks to emulation we can examine them (in a way): http://bristol.sourceforge.net/ Heck, you can examine them hands-on, if you like - the DX7 was one of the best-selling keyboards of all time, and you can get 'em used dirt-cheap ;) They're built like tanks, too, and a pleasure to play. -- ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] New standard FreeDOS text editor - what it should be (voting)?
The FreeDOS EDIT clone is perfectly sufficient for basic editing purposes. The one thing it could really use is optimization - partly for performance (it's rather balky on my 10MHz 286, where EDIT is perfectly fine,) but mostly for memory usage (it's about the same size as the whole QBASIC package which *included* MS-DOS EDIT in it!) Beyond that, no fancy features are needed, IMHO. -- Master Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL, ASP.NET, C# 2012, HTML5, CSS, MVC, Windows 8 Apps, JavaScript and much more. Keep your skills current with LearnDevNow - 3,200 step-by-step video tutorials by Microsoft MVPs and experts. ON SALE this month only -- learn more at: http://p.sf.net/sfu/learnnow-d2d ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Sound Blaster 16 issues...
From: Rugxulo rugx...@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Freedos-user] Sound Blaster 16 issues... Hi, Are you running latest FreeDOS kernel and HIMEMX + JEMM386? (Somehow I doubt it.) Try upgrading a few of your system files and try again. Else try booting a somewhat cleaner config without a lot of extra TSRs and drivers. You'll have to give more details, though, for further guesses. That helped; I updated the kernel and installed JEMMEX in place of HIMEM.EXE and EMM386.EXE. CTSB16.SYS now loads without issue. SBCD.SYS still crashes, however; JEMM seems to be catching some kind of protection fault. Here's the output, now that it politely prints one message instead of perpetually scrolling up the screen ;) JemmEx: exception 0D occured at CS:EIP=09DE:0001, ERRC= SS:ESP=09DE:2CE8 EBP=F8002D02 EFL=00033286 CR0=8013 CR2= EAX= EBX=99FF ECX= EDX=09DE ESI=01709087 EDI=000A9087 DS=9DC6 ES=9DC6 FS=C81F GS=09DE [CS:IP]=00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 Press ESC to abort program It goes on to produce an indefinite number of further errors, the only difference being that EFL increments by random amounts and [CS:IP] now contains FF FF FF FF 00 C8 51 11. Not sure what all of that is relevant, but unless someone can tell me how to get a core dump in the middle of the boot process, that's all I can offer at the moment. From: Eric Auer e.a...@jpberlin.de Subject: Re: [Freedos-user] Sound Blaster 16 issues... That is odd... ATAPI CDROM should be very similar to any IDE as far as I remember, so I am not sure whether it is truly not possible to run them on your old main IDE controller... Of course soundcard CDROM tended to so somewhat incompatible so I would not expect those to run with any other controller. Yeah, that's the problem. According to everything I've read, it's not a standard IDE interface, it only works with SB16. I could just track down a separate controller and a newer CD-ROM, I suppose, but I'd prefer to work with what I have for the moment. -- All the data continuously generated in your IT infrastructure contains a definitive record of customers, application performance, security threats, fraudulent activity and more. Splunk takes this data and makes sense of it. Business sense. IT sense. Common sense. http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-d2dcopy1 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] Sound Blaster 16 issues...
I've got an ISA SB16 on a 486 box I've installed FreeDOS on. I had trouble installing the driver software to begin with, as the installer didn't want to run until I booted into MS-DOS 6.22. Now it's installed, enough that games can recognize and use the hardware. However, I'm still running into some trouble with it. CTSB16.SYS and SBCD.SYS both have DEVICE lines in FDCONFIG.SYS, which I copied over from the CONFIG.SYS created by the installer, as does CTMMSYS.SYS. However, while CTMMSYS works without issue, CTSB16 and SBCD both crash during boot. This is a bit of a problem, as without these I can't use the companion CD-ROM drive (and I don't have an IDE controller capable of driving a newer CD-ROM on hand.) SBCD gives me Invalid Opcode error messages, like some of the other utilities did until I ran them under MS-DOS. CTSB16, on the other hand, goes insane and prints screenfuls of gibberish. I've got them both commented out for now, but that still leaves me with no CD access. Does anybody have any idea what, if anything, can be done to get these working on FreeDOS? Or should I just settle for finding a separate CD-ROM drive and controller? -- All the data continuously generated in your IT infrastructure contains a definitive record of customers, application performance, security threats, fraudulent activity and more. Splunk takes this data and makes sense of it. Business sense. IT sense. Common sense. http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-d2dcopy1 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] Installation difficulties...
Okay. I would really like to use FreeDOS, preferrably the full-install CD, and definitely with USB disk support. Problem is, the NIC in the computer I want to install it on (a 3Com 3C595-TX) does not appear to be recognized by either the default packet driver or the manufacturer's DOS driver, unless it requires some fiddling with the PCI arguments (which are, frankly, over my head.) And a large portion of the packages, including some absolutely critical ones like the USB mass storage driver, seem to rely on the installer's ability to use wget to download the latest version off the Internet. Is there a way around this problem, or am I SOL without a more commonly-supported network card? -- Apps built with the Adobe(R) Flex(R) framework and Flex Builder(TM) are powering Web 2.0 with engaging, cross-platform capabilities. Quickly and easily build your RIAs with Flex Builder, the Eclipse(TM)based development software that enables intelligent coding and step-through debugging. Download the free 60 day trial. http://p.sf.net/sfu/www-adobe-com___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
