Re: [Freedos-user] Freedos V2.0 - when will it be available?

[Aitor Santamaría]

+1   to this idea


On 9 January 2013 at 20:54, Jim Hall  wrote:

> >> A hypervisor that can run dosbox and make modern hardware work
> >> with old dos programs anyone?  How about dosbox running on a Pentium 133
> >> or a Pentium 166 machine with 16 megs of ram?
> >
> > Insufficient demand to justify the effort.
>
>
> There may not be a lot of demand, but I see it as an interesting hack
> for someone to try.
>
> Actually, I proposed something like that a few years ago: create a
> custom Linux "spin" (mini-distribution) that boots a minimal
> environment, and starts up DOSEmu on virtual console 1, immediately
> booting a copy of FreeDOS. Maybe you can even provide the option to
> start additional DOSEmu+FreeDOS instances on the other virtual
> consoles, just by connecting to them and "logging in" (probably by
> pressing Enter).
> http://www.freedos.org/jhall/blog/?id=20090422-143518
>
> I don't know if it's possible to run multiple console DOSEmu instances
> on the same box, since I've only ever tried to run one (and XDOSEmu at
> that). Yes, that's overkill for booting DOS on a modern computer, but
> an interesting idea.
>
>
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Re: [Freedos-user] Freedos V2.0 - when will it be available?

[christian . imhorst]

Hi Alain,

sorry for my late response. I downloaded your VM on the day you talked about it 
here on this list and tested it in VirtualBox. 

I found it really interesting. Thank you very much for your work. Lubuntu 
started very fast and the integration of Dosemu and FreeDOS looks interesting. 
Do you have any notices or tutorial how you adept your Lubuntu for your special 
distro?

I have a similar project but I use a dual boot FreeDOS  and TinyCore Linux and 
in TinyCore I use Dosbox to get access to the FreeDOS  partition.

After I saw your version I am thinking about to change TinyCore with your 
adepted Lubuntu. But I am not sure about the Linux kernel in Lubuntu because 
Canonical thinks about to use a 64 bit kernel only in the near future and some 
current  kernel had problems with non PAE CPUs. Maybe Debian or a derivat like 
Knoppix is the better choice? But how I said I am not sure.

And sometimes I am thinking about using a different OS than Linux,  maybe 
FreeBSD with FreeDOS? ;-)
Or ReactOS and FreeDOS, so FreeDOS can support ReactOS where it has problems 
and ReactOS can use 32bit hardware on the installed computer, if the Windows 
driver is working.

We will see.

Best regards
Christian  
 

Am Mi. Dez. 30 19:33:39 2015 GMT+0100 schrieb Alain Mouette:
> ???
> I just made this experimental in a VirtualBox VM and it arouse no 
> interest here...
> 
> Alain
> 
> On 30-12-2015 14:47, Aitor Santamaría wrote:
> > +1   to this idea
> >
> >
> > On 9 January 2013 at 20:54, Jim Hall  > > wrote:
> >
> > >> A hypervisor that can run dosbox and make modern hardware work
> > >> with old dos programs anyone?  How about dosbox running on a
> > Pentium 133
> > >> or a Pentium 166 machine with 16 megs of ram?
> > >
> > > Insufficient demand to justify the effort.
> >
> >
> > There may not be a lot of demand, but I see it as an interesting hack
> > for someone to try.
> >
> > Actually, I proposed something like that a few years ago: create a
> > custom Linux "spin" (mini-distribution) that boots a minimal
> > environment, and starts up DOSEmu on virtual console 1, immediately
> > booting a copy of FreeDOS. Maybe you can even provide the option to
> > start additional DOSEmu+FreeDOS instances on the other virtual
> > consoles, just by connecting to them and "logging in" (probably by
> > pressing Enter).
> > http://www.freedos.org/jhall/blog/?id=20090422-143518
> >
> > I don't know if it's possible to run multiple console DOSEmu instances
> > on the same box, since I've only ever tried to run one (and XDOSEmu at
> > that). Yes, that's overkill for booting DOS on a modern computer, but
> > an interesting idea.
> >
> > 
> > --
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> >
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>

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Re: [Freedos-user] Freedos V2.0 - when will it be available?

[David C. Kerber]

DOS apps will run under Win7 32-bit, but not 64-bit.
 

 -Original Message-
 From: dmccunney [mailto:dennis.mccun...@gmail.com] 
 Sent: Thursday, January 10, 2013 11:37 AM
 To: Discussion and general questions about FreeDOS.
 Subject: Re: [Freedos-user] Freedos V2.0 - when will it be available?
 
 On Thu, Jan 10, 2013 at 8:29 AM, Rugxulo rugx...@gmail.com wrote:
  On Thu, Jan 10, 2013 at 12:10 AM, dmccunney 
 dennis.mccun...@gmail.com wrote:
 
  Like I said, Win2k / XP aren't that bad, though they have 
 quite a few
  catches and omissions. It gets worse later on, but it depends on
  whether you think the tradeoff is worth it (or have the time,
  patience, knowledge, desire to bother trying to install older stuff
  and accept incomplete functionality).
 
 XP works fine here.  2K works fine on an older box that doesn't have
 the RAM to properly run XP.  I avoided Vista, but Win7 works well on
 the SOs laptop.
 
 The issues here haven't been whether something runs - it's been UI
 changes, and figuring out where MS put a particular function in the
 new version, because you don't get to it like you did before.
 
 (DOS apps don't run at all under Win7, unless you use a VM, but I
 found a version that does of the only DOS app the SO used - a DOS port
 of the old Unix game Larn.)
 
  I din't care about DOS compatibility - the DOS stuff I used all ran
  fine in an NTVDM.
 
  Trust me, it's not as perfect as it seems, though yes, for what it
  does, it does fairly well.
 
 I didn't say it was perfect.  I said it worked for me.
 
  Like I said elsewhere, it ran all the DOS stuff *I* used with no
  problem so I essentially didn't *care*.
 
  That's more of a coincidence (or your minimal needs) than a true
  testament to compatibility. Simply put, most people didn't care
  anymore or preferred heavier APIs, but having an incomplete /
  half-broken subsystem doesn't help them stay firm either.
 
 Yes.  So?
 
 I freely admit NTVDM and DOS compatibility leave somewhat to be
 desired, and there will be stuff that doesn't run or will have
 problems.
 
 I don't care, because it works for what I do with it.
 
  Granted, perhaps DOS native binaries aren't the easiest or greatest
  things to lug around for ages, but I don't know of a true 
 universal
  solution. Scripts? (Lua?) Bytecode? (Inferno?) We probably shouldn't
  have separate binaries for every single x86 OS, but for some people,
  source compatibility is good enough. Too bad they make so many
  horrible assumptions in the process.
 
 There's no such thing as a true universal solution.  (But then, how
 many folks *need* one?  Most folks either just run one platform, or
 don't *expect* to have the same programs available everywhere.  The
 folks most interested will be *developers* trying to target multiple
 platforms.)
 
 The closest is a Write once, run anywhere solution like Java.  Code
 is compiled to a tokenized binary targeted at an arbitrary virtual
 machine implemented by the Java runtime.  If there *is* a Java runtime
 for what you have, the code will run on it.  Java runtimes exist for
 almost everything.  (You still have to be aware of various issues -
 it's possible to write non-portable code in Java.)
 
 You lug about DOS native binaries and deal with compatibility issues
 because you either haven't found anything else that will do the same
 job, or there is something but you would rather deal with the issues
 than switch.
 
 One interesting trend is wider use of scripting, because current
 hardware can run script languages fast enough to make them competitive
 with other languages.  I'm seeing an increasing amount of stuff
 written in Python, which is available for Windows, Linux, and OS/X,
 using widget libraries like Qt so it largely looks and acts the same
 on any supported platform.
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Re: [Freedos-user] Freedos V2.0 - when will it be available?

[Louis Santillan]

On Thu, Jan 10, 2013 at 7:45 PM, Rugxulo rugx...@gmail.com wrote:

 Just to be clear, I am thinking of FreeDOS here, so this isn't all
 meant to be totally off-topic. IMHO, FreeDOS 2.0 should have more
 compilers and interpreters, and I've weakly tried over the past few
 months to carefully add a few to iBiblio. Yes, interpreters are often
 (but not always) slower, but they are easier to use, and many times
 speed isn't relevant (unless done across heavy data or very
 frequently).

 For interpreters, (in lieu of only using DEBUG + QBASIC clones) I
 would suggest BWBasic, Lua, Regina REXX, AWK, or something similar for
 BASE for FreeDOS 2.0. (Or maybe Pascal-S or P5, but I'm not sure how
 well accepted those would be, maybe too limited.) Oh, and also maybe
 something related to ever-popular C:  EiC, PicoC, CINT [not built yet
 / untested], etc. (Perl and Python are too big, but perhaps we can use
 older Perl 5.005 or such.)

 And I've gotten Ruby 1.8.7 to build, and now that it's an ISO
 standard, maybe somebody would care, but dunno, who knows.   :-)


A long time back, FreeDOS community fought hard against having a default
compiler or assembler (this was around the time of the freeware TC 1.01
release).  Back then however, many of the tools were specific to one C
compiler/Assembler or another, and ports to open source equivalents  the
open compilers/assemblers were still catching up.  One problem almost all
of them had was building the FD kernel.

Personally, I've always liked MicroC and DJGPP.  Maybe some creative use of
UPX would be helpful.

-L
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Re: [Freedos-user] Freedos V2.0 - when will it be available?

[Rugxulo]

Hi,

On Thu, Jan 10, 2013 at 12:10 AM, dmccunney dennis.mccun...@gmail.com wrote:

 I dual booted 98SE and 2K, but abandoned that when I went to a GB of RAM
 in the box, because 98SE refused to boot if it saw more than 512MB.
 (There turn out to be ways around that, but I had Win2K to the point
 where I simply didn't *need* Win98 anymore, so it went away.)

Yes, workarounds exist, something to do with cache size or whatever,
search BTTR's forum.

http://www.bttr-software.de/forum/board_entry.php?id=3667#p3667

Like I said, Win2k / XP aren't that bad, though they have quite a few
catches and omissions. It gets worse later on, but it depends on
whether you think the tradeoff is worth it (or have the time,
patience, knowledge, desire to bother trying to install older stuff
and accept incomplete functionality).

 I din't care about DOS compatibility - the DOS stuff I used all ran
 fine in an NTVDM.

Trust me, it's not as perfect as it seems, though yes, for what it
does, it does fairly well.

 Like I said elsewhere, it ran all the DOS stuff *I* used with no
 problem so I essentially didn't *care*.

That's more of a coincidence (or your minimal needs) than a true
testament to compatibility. Simply put, most people didn't care
anymore or preferred heavier APIs, but having an incomplete /
half-broken subsystem doesn't help them stay firm either.

Granted, perhaps DOS native binaries aren't the easiest or greatest
things to lug around for ages, but I don't know of a true universal
solution. Scripts? (Lua?) Bytecode? (Inferno?) We probably shouldn't
have separate binaries for every single x86 OS, but for some people,
source compatibility is good enough. Too bad they make so many
horrible assumptions in the process.

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Re: [Freedos-user] Freedos V2.0 - when will it be available?

[KOS]

Scrupts... it seems to me more like a java approach, with the engine
running on each machine/platform and the code (scripts) to be universal

Konstantinos Giannopoulos (SV3ORA)
Computer and Telecommunications Engineer
Director of the Greek Microwave Group (www.microwave.gr)


2013/1/10 Rugxulo rugx...@gmail.com

 Hi,

 On Thu, Jan 10, 2013 at 12:10 AM, dmccunney dennis.mccun...@gmail.com
 wrote:
 
  I dual booted 98SE and 2K, but abandoned that when I went to a GB of RAM
  in the box, because 98SE refused to boot if it saw more than 512MB.
  (There turn out to be ways around that, but I had Win2K to the point
  where I simply didn't *need* Win98 anymore, so it went away.)

 Yes, workarounds exist, something to do with cache size or whatever,
 search BTTR's forum.

 http://www.bttr-software.de/forum/board_entry.php?id=3667#p3667

 Like I said, Win2k / XP aren't that bad, though they have quite a few
 catches and omissions. It gets worse later on, but it depends on
 whether you think the tradeoff is worth it (or have the time,
 patience, knowledge, desire to bother trying to install older stuff
 and accept incomplete functionality).

  I din't care about DOS compatibility - the DOS stuff I used all ran
  fine in an NTVDM.

 Trust me, it's not as perfect as it seems, though yes, for what it
 does, it does fairly well.

  Like I said elsewhere, it ran all the DOS stuff *I* used with no
  problem so I essentially didn't *care*.

 That's more of a coincidence (or your minimal needs) than a true
 testament to compatibility. Simply put, most people didn't care
 anymore or preferred heavier APIs, but having an incomplete /
 half-broken subsystem doesn't help them stay firm either.

 Granted, perhaps DOS native binaries aren't the easiest or greatest
 things to lug around for ages, but I don't know of a true universal
 solution. Scripts? (Lua?) Bytecode? (Inferno?) We probably shouldn't
 have separate binaries for every single x86 OS, but for some people,
 source compatibility is good enough. Too bad they make so many
 horrible assumptions in the process.


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Re: [Freedos-user] Freedos V2.0 - when will it be available?

[bruce.bowman tds.net]

DEBUG scripts? Wow. I miss those. The poor man's assembler.

I dropped my PC Magazine subscription when it went all Windows, back
in the late 90s.

This *is* the FreeDOS list, right? Haven't seen a post about that in awhile.

Bruce


On Thu, Jan 10, 2013 at 1:03 AM, Louis Santillan lpsan...@gmail.com wrote:
 There's always DEBUG  QBASIC. :D  Remember when magazines used to actually
 post DEBUG  QBASIC scripts.

 -L


 On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 9:54 PM, dmccunney dennis.mccun...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Thu, Jan 10, 2013 at 12:45 AM, Rugxulo rugx...@gmail.com wrote:
  On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 8:06 PM, dmccunney dennis.mccun...@gmail.com
  wrote:
  On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 8:35 PM, Ralf A. Quint free...@gmx.net wrote:
  At 05:12 PM 1/9/2013, Louis Santillan wrote:
 An interesting historical note, early versions of the FreeDOS kernel
 (DOS-C kernel) were portable to the 68k architecture. See

  (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Villanihttp://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Villani).
 
  Well, you noticed that in that reference, it also clearly states:
  This move to a completely different target platform, while losing
  binary compatibility with existing applications,...
 
  Which is your fundamental problem.  Even if you move DOS to a new
  architecture, what do you run under it on that platform?  There isn't
  anything, and there isn't a lot you can do with DOS all by itself.
 
  You'd have to port stuff to it. The easiest would be strictly
  conformant ANSI C stuff (or similar), just a recompile away. If you
  add a POSIX layer (like many do, and even PatV briefly considered for
  future endeavors), you get that too. So you could recompile things
  like gcc, vi, sed, awk, etc. Other older legacy stuff would have to
  run under an emulator (a la AROS).

  It's not as useless or impossible as it seems, but then again, I don't
  expect this to happen (any time soon or if ever ...). Just use Li^H^H
  ... POSIX (sigh).

 Neither useless nor impossible, but who will bother?  There are simply
 too few folks with a need for it.  It might happen a bit like Unix
 did, where some of the commands were programmers at Bell Labs
 scratching personal itches because *they* wanted a tool that did that
 and could create one.

 But while you can arguably do useful work (if you're a programmer, at
 least) on a bare bones Unix system with the standard utilities but
 *no* third party apps, DOS isn't in the same league.  What can you do
 with *only* DOS and *no* apps?  Not enough.
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Re: [Freedos-user] Freedos V2.0 - when will it be available?

[David C. Kerber]

 

 -Original Message-
 From: Rugxulo [mailto:rugx...@gmail.com] 
 Sent: Thursday, January 10, 2013 12:54 AM
 To: Discussion and general questions about FreeDOS.
 Subject: Re: [Freedos-user] Freedos V2.0 - when will it be available?
 
 Hi,
 
 On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 1:49 PM, dmccunney 
 dennis.mccun...@gmail.com wrote:
  On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 2:36 PM, David C. Kerber
  dker...@warrenrogersassociates.com wrote:
  From: dmccunney [mailto:dennis.mccun...@gmail.com]
  On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 11:13 AM, Rugxulo 
 rugx...@gmail.com wrote:
 
   I thought WinME removed the real mode bootup, hence lower
  compatibility?
 
  Don't have it and haven't used it, so don't know.  Everything I've
  heard indicates it should have been called Win98 Third 
 Edition. I'm
  pretty sure there was still DOS underneath like in ME.  
 Removing the
  real mode loader didn't occur till NT.
 
  Win NT4 significantly pre-dated Win 98; it came out in 
 about '96.  Many people feel WinME was one of the worst 
 pieces of software ever written, while 98SE was very good.  
 Win2k was the best, IMO.
 
 I don't know about that. Win2k was more stable, but it was also
 bigger, slower, and had worse DOS compatibility. And lots of bugs. But
 it was better for Win32 stuff, esp. Unicode. Yet barely anything still
 supports it nowadays. I'm surprised (but glad) people still target XP
 (which is both slightly better and worse than 2k in various ways).

Win2K was dramatically faster than any Win9x OS for 32-bit software, though 
probably slower for 16-bit windows apps (though I hardly ever used any of 
them).  It was very fast for straight DOS apps like dBASE, but I never ran any 
controlled benchmarks against 9x on those.


 
  I ran NT4 back then, but as a server OS in a computer room.  It was
  not an end-user product.  It took Win2K for sufficient compatibility
  (like the ability to use FAT32) to make it a usable end user OS.
 
 NT 4.0 didn't support DOS LFNs (int 21h, 71xxh) nor FAT32. Though I
 don't see how that's a huge deal breaker, no worse than all the other
 compatibility problems forced on us. Also, FAT32 isn't supported very
 much anymore, esp. Vista on up can't boot from it, so I'm not sure
 support for it is here for much longer. (With exFAT and ReFS, who
 knows?)
 
  98SE was certainly an improvement over prior Win9X 
 releases.  I ran it
  longer than I really wanted because I was waiting for drivers for
  peripherals I used to arrive.  When I finally had them all, 
 I switched
  to 2K in a heartbeat.   Despite my best efforts, 98SE reached the
  point where I was rebooting multiple times per day to be able to get
  things done.  Win2K just ran, and got rebooted only if I installed
  software that required it or I was fiddling with hardware.
 
 Yes, it's more stable, but it doesn't run a lot of DOS stuff nearly as
 well as 9x. Granted, it was good enough for most things (more or
 less), but that support only got worse and worse, esp. with Vista. I
 don't know, some people don't mind recompiling all their apps (or just
 use popular GNU utils that are ported everywhere), but it seems
 unnecessary. We shouldn't have so much deprecation every few years. (I
 don't care how old or uncool, it just works, so why break it?)
 
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Re: [Freedos-user] Freedos V2.0 - when will it be available?

[dmccunney]

On Thu, Jan 10, 2013 at 8:29 AM, Rugxulo rugx...@gmail.com wrote:
 On Thu, Jan 10, 2013 at 12:10 AM, dmccunney dennis.mccun...@gmail.com wrote:

 Like I said, Win2k / XP aren't that bad, though they have quite a few
 catches and omissions. It gets worse later on, but it depends on
 whether you think the tradeoff is worth it (or have the time,
 patience, knowledge, desire to bother trying to install older stuff
 and accept incomplete functionality).

XP works fine here.  2K works fine on an older box that doesn't have
the RAM to properly run XP.  I avoided Vista, but Win7 works well on
the SOs laptop.

The issues here haven't been whether something runs - it's been UI
changes, and figuring out where MS put a particular function in the
new version, because you don't get to it like you did before.

(DOS apps don't run at all under Win7, unless you use a VM, but I
found a version that does of the only DOS app the SO used - a DOS port
of the old Unix game Larn.)

 I din't care about DOS compatibility - the DOS stuff I used all ran
 fine in an NTVDM.

 Trust me, it's not as perfect as it seems, though yes, for what it
 does, it does fairly well.

I didn't say it was perfect.  I said it worked for me.

 Like I said elsewhere, it ran all the DOS stuff *I* used with no
 problem so I essentially didn't *care*.

 That's more of a coincidence (or your minimal needs) than a true
 testament to compatibility. Simply put, most people didn't care
 anymore or preferred heavier APIs, but having an incomplete /
 half-broken subsystem doesn't help them stay firm either.

Yes.  So?

I freely admit NTVDM and DOS compatibility leave somewhat to be
desired, and there will be stuff that doesn't run or will have
problems.

I don't care, because it works for what I do with it.

 Granted, perhaps DOS native binaries aren't the easiest or greatest
 things to lug around for ages, but I don't know of a true universal
 solution. Scripts? (Lua?) Bytecode? (Inferno?) We probably shouldn't
 have separate binaries for every single x86 OS, but for some people,
 source compatibility is good enough. Too bad they make so many
 horrible assumptions in the process.

There's no such thing as a true universal solution.  (But then, how
many folks *need* one?  Most folks either just run one platform, or
don't *expect* to have the same programs available everywhere.  The
folks most interested will be *developers* trying to target multiple
platforms.)

The closest is a Write once, run anywhere solution like Java.  Code
is compiled to a tokenized binary targeted at an arbitrary virtual
machine implemented by the Java runtime.  If there *is* a Java runtime
for what you have, the code will run on it.  Java runtimes exist for
almost everything.  (You still have to be aware of various issues -
it's possible to write non-portable code in Java.)

You lug about DOS native binaries and deal with compatibility issues
because you either haven't found anything else that will do the same
job, or there is something but you would rather deal with the issues
than switch.

One interesting trend is wider use of scripting, because current
hardware can run script languages fast enough to make them competitive
with other languages.  I'm seeing an increasing amount of stuff
written in Python, which is available for Windows, Linux, and OS/X,
using widget libraries like Qt so it largely looks and acts the same
on any supported platform.
__
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Re: [Freedos-user] Freedos V2.0 - when will it be available?

[Jim Hall]

 This *is* the FreeDOS list, right? Haven't seen a post about that in awhile.



Yes, and this discussion threat has gone *way* off topic.


-jh

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Re: [Freedos-user] Freedos V2.0 - when will it be available?

[Marcos Favero Florence de Barros]

  This *is* the FreeDOS list, right? Haven't seen a post about that in awhile.

 Yes, and this discussion threat has gone *way* off topic.

Alright, point conceded.

However:

I am glad that this discussion did take place. It showed us how
insanely complex things have become. This is relevant not only
in relation to computers, but to life in general.

This kind of discussion has to happen *somewhere*. I don't see
it happening much in government, or in academia, still less in
the business environment.

So I think it was appropriate that it happened in the FreeDOS
list. And I hope that similar discussions also happen among
other groups having the required technical expertise combined
with a critical sense.

The philosophically inclined love the notion of simplicity, but
most of them (myself included) would also like to live with
modern comforts, so the question is: where to draw the line? For
that fine distinction, it is not enough to be lofty-minded; we
desperately need the contribution of the technically
knowledgeable. They have a better chance of getting it right
than the pure idealists.

To draw a parallel with another field, I like the suggestion of
an important environmental thinker, Professor Herman Daly, that
the scale (total size) of the economy should be decided by the
scientific community. Other things can (and should) be left for
governments or market forces to decide, but not this one -- it
requires technical knowledge.

Another idea from the environmentalist camp is the concept of
intermediate technology from E. F. Schumacher, the author of
Small is Beautiful. Back in the 1960's he would point out
something we always knew but love to forget: for the vast
majority of problems the appropriate technology is one of an
intermediate level of complexity. It helps explain why I use
FreeDOS.

So this is what I'm driving at. Nowadays, people holding
technical expertise have increased responsibilities (as compared
to, say, 100 or 200 years ago). This is simply because we are in
a technological age. Even when we believe to be engaged in a
purely technical discussion, we come across important
implications. My feeling is that we should rise to the occasion
and include them in the discussion, instead of leaving them for
others. And who would these others be, anyway?

To sum up: I think the thread was very good, because people were
examining past mistakes and learning from them. What could be
more laudable? It is our only hope of improving the world. But
then, it had to end at some point, so Jim is right too :-)

Congratulations to us all.

Sincerely,

Marcos


--
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Campinas, Brazil



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Re: [Freedos-user] Freedos V2.0 - when will it be available?

[rbens...@bigpond.net.au]

Gee. All these emails and I was only looking for a log in screen. LOL

Sent from my HTC One XL on the Telstra 4G network

- Reply message -
From: Marcos Favero Florence de Barros fav...@mpcnet.com.br
To: freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
Subject: [Freedos-user] Freedos V2.0 - when will it be available?
Date: Fri, Jan 11, 2013 10:50 AM


  This *is* the FreeDOS list, right? Haven't seen a post about that in awhile.

 Yes, and this discussion threat has gone *way* off topic.

Alright, point conceded.

However:

I am glad that this discussion did take place. It showed us how
insanely complex things have become. This is relevant not only
in relation to computers, but to life in general.

This kind of discussion has to happen *somewhere*. I don't see
it happening much in government, or in academia, still less in
the business environment.

So I think it was appropriate that it happened in the FreeDOS
list. And I hope that similar discussions also happen among
other groups having the required technical expertise combined
with a critical sense.

The philosophically inclined love the notion of simplicity, but
most of them (myself included) would also like to live with
modern comforts, so the question is: where to draw the line? For
that fine distinction, it is not enough to be lofty-minded; we
desperately need the contribution of the technically
knowledgeable. They have a better chance of getting it right
than the pure idealists.

To draw a parallel with another field, I like the suggestion of
an important environmental thinker, Professor Herman Daly, that
the scale (total size) of the economy should be decided by the
scientific community. Other things can (and should) be left for
governments or market forces to decide, but not this one -- it
requires technical knowledge.

Another idea from the environmentalist camp is the concept of
intermediate technology from E. F. Schumacher, the author of
Small is Beautiful. Back in the 1960's he would point out
something we always knew but love to forget: for the vast
majority of problems the appropriate technology is one of an
intermediate level of complexity. It helps explain why I use
FreeDOS.

So this is what I'm driving at. Nowadays, people holding
technical expertise have increased responsibilities (as compared
to, say, 100 or 200 years ago). This is simply because we are in
a technological age. Even when we believe to be engaged in a
purely technical discussion, we come across important
implications. My feeling is that we should rise to the occasion
and include them in the discussion, instead of leaving them for
others. And who would these others be, anyway?

To sum up: I think the thread was very good, because people were
examining past mistakes and learning from them. What could be
more laudable? It is our only hope of improving the world. But
then, it had to end at some point, so Jim is right too :-)

Congratulations to us all.

Sincerely,

Marcos


--
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Campinas, Brazil



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Re: [Freedos-user] Freedos V2.0 - when will it be available?

[Rugxulo]

Hi,

On Thu, Jan 10, 2013 at 10:37 AM, dmccunney dennis.mccun...@gmail.com wrote:
 On Thu, Jan 10, 2013 at 8:29 AM, Rugxulo rugx...@gmail.com wrote:
 On Thu, Jan 10, 2013 at 12:10 AM, dmccunney dennis.mccun...@gmail.com 
 wrote:

 (DOS apps don't run at all under Win7, unless you use a VM, but I
 found a version that does of the only DOS app the SO used - a DOS port
 of the old Unix game Larn.)

I haven't really used Win7 32-bit at all, but I assume NTVDM still
(barely) works, last I heard. Though you can always run DOSBox
instead. Anyways, Larn can't be hard to find (or port or recompile)
since even NetBSD has it. Using OpenWatcom would maybe be best, IMHO,
but I haven't tried. (Or RSXNTDJ, if you're willing to dig up old
semi-bitrotted stuff, heh.)

 Granted, perhaps DOS native binaries aren't the easiest or greatest
 things to lug around for ages, but I don't know of a true universal
 solution. Scripts? (Lua?) Bytecode? (Inferno?) We probably shouldn't
 have separate binaries for every single x86 OS, but for some people,
 source compatibility is good enough. Too bad they make so many
 horrible assumptions in the process.

 There's no such thing as a true universal solution.  (But then, how
 many folks *need* one?  Most folks either just run one platform, or
 don't *expect* to have the same programs available everywhere.  The
 folks most interested will be *developers* trying to target multiple
 platforms.)

Developers are fairly close-minded. They don't usually target anybody
outside of the big three, which usually means POSIX + Windows. And
these days they get more kicks out of having ten bazillion ports to
Linux (IA-32 or x64) than others. I'm just saying, if you want to run
it on any sane box, you're stuck with modern Windows (XP or newer,
usually automatic installers, which I hate) or building your own. For
any third party OS, it's much harder to get things running due to too
many requirements or bad assumptions. (Even OpenBSD is feeling some of
this pain, and they are much closer to the norm than we are.)

 The closest is a Write once, run anywhere solution like Java.  Code
 is compiled to a tokenized binary targeted at an arbitrary virtual
 machine implemented by the Java runtime.  If there *is* a Java runtime
 for what you have, the code will run on it.  Java runtimes exist for
 almost everything.  (You still have to be aware of various issues -
 it's possible to write non-portable code in Java.)

Almost everything? Not so much. Sure, I heard eCS (OS/2) updated
their Java a while back, but usually it seems Java doesn't run on most
OSes that aren't top tier (not counting very old or deprecated
versions which can't be found). In other words, it works where things
are big and popular and well-supported, not so much anywhere else.

In my opinion, Java has a few advantages that make it so popular
(though it's basically tied with C, which is more ubiquitous but has
less features):

* lots of features (objects, generics, exceptions, garbage collection,
threads, networking, GUI)
* semi-portable open source
* semi-portable byte code
* JIT for speeding up the bytecode

Now, lots of languages have bytecode, even languages that work well in
DOS, so that idea for portability isn't so far-fetched or unique to
Java. (And I think Java inherited the idea from the Pascal P-machine.)

Having a JIT is rarer, esp. for DOS. You could argue it's not needed,
esp. if only talking about speed, but who knows. Anyways, it's things
like this which make native compilation more popular than
interpreters. This is one of the reasons why Ruby 1.9.x is preferred
over (slower) 1.8.x. Also, this is probably? why Google spent time on
Go instead of Python (and they basically abandoned Unladen Swallow).
Python is popular but has a reputation for being slow.

Anyways, back to JIT, I don't know the answer. Lua-JIT exists, but
I've never tried in DOS. I know Lua mostly works, though, which is
good. (BTW, _PIL3_ was just published.) But like I said, there is no
standard, so it's slightly tricky (esp. since most people assume it
has add-ons, e.g. LuaPOSIX or LuaFS or whatever.)

 One interesting trend is wider use of scripting, because current
 hardware can run script languages fast enough to make them competitive
 with other languages.  I'm seeing an increasing amount of stuff
 written in Python, which is available for Windows, Linux, and OS/X,
 using widget libraries like Qt so it largely looks and acts the same
 on any supported platform.

Just to be clear, I am thinking of FreeDOS here, so this isn't all
meant to be totally off-topic. IMHO, FreeDOS 2.0 should have more
compilers and interpreters, and I've weakly tried over the past few
months to carefully add a few to iBiblio. Yes, interpreters are often
(but not always) slower, but they are easier to use, and many times
speed isn't relevant (unless done across heavy data or very
frequently).

For interpreters, (in lieu of only using DEBUG + QBASIC clones) I
would suggest BWBasic, Lua, 

Re: [Freedos-user] Freedos V2.0 - when will it be available?

[KOS]

Developers are fairly close-minded. They don't usually target anybody
outside of the big three, which usually means POSIX + Windows. And
these days they get more kicks out of having ten bazillion ports to
Linux (IA-32 or x64) than others.

This is because they are mostly constrained by the companies they work.
Time is limited so using stuff that everyone does to create their  programs
speeds up implementation time (maybe).
If you leave a developer free (I prefer the word programmer instead), I
would bet he would have gone towards the simplest way to solve his problem,
unless he has not got any knowledge about the hardware.
Thinking about real hardware no one could expect better performance from
the huge libraries. Yes, using these speeds up your work (or you get much
more time searching and finding what they do to use them), but what about
performance?
Simple is rugged, reliable and bugs can be easily corrected. Although
simple is sometimes a pain in the @$$ to write, like assembler based
software.

Konstantinos Giannopoulos (SV3ORA)
Computer and Telecommunications Engineer
Director of the Greek Microwave Group (www.microwave.gr)


2013/1/11 Rugxulo rugx...@gmail.com

 Hi,

 On Thu, Jan 10, 2013 at 10:37 AM, dmccunney dennis.mccun...@gmail.com
 wrote:
  On Thu, Jan 10, 2013 at 8:29 AM, Rugxulo rugx...@gmail.com wrote:
  On Thu, Jan 10, 2013 at 12:10 AM, dmccunney dennis.mccun...@gmail.com
 wrote:
 
  (DOS apps don't run at all under Win7, unless you use a VM, but I
  found a version that does of the only DOS app the SO used - a DOS port
  of the old Unix game Larn.)

 I haven't really used Win7 32-bit at all, but I assume NTVDM still
 (barely) works, last I heard. Though you can always run DOSBox
 instead. Anyways, Larn can't be hard to find (or port or recompile)
 since even NetBSD has it. Using OpenWatcom would maybe be best, IMHO,
 but I haven't tried. (Or RSXNTDJ, if you're willing to dig up old
 semi-bitrotted stuff, heh.)

  Granted, perhaps DOS native binaries aren't the easiest or greatest
  things to lug around for ages, but I don't know of a true universal
  solution. Scripts? (Lua?) Bytecode? (Inferno?) We probably shouldn't
  have separate binaries for every single x86 OS, but for some people,
  source compatibility is good enough. Too bad they make so many
  horrible assumptions in the process.
 
  There's no such thing as a true universal solution.  (But then, how
  many folks *need* one?  Most folks either just run one platform, or
  don't *expect* to have the same programs available everywhere.  The
  folks most interested will be *developers* trying to target multiple
  platforms.)

 Developers are fairly close-minded. They don't usually target anybody
 outside of the big three, which usually means POSIX + Windows. And
 these days they get more kicks out of having ten bazillion ports to
 Linux (IA-32 or x64) than others. I'm just saying, if you want to run
 it on any sane box, you're stuck with modern Windows (XP or newer,
 usually automatic installers, which I hate) or building your own. For
 any third party OS, it's much harder to get things running due to too
 many requirements or bad assumptions. (Even OpenBSD is feeling some of
 this pain, and they are much closer to the norm than we are.)

  The closest is a Write once, run anywhere solution like Java.  Code
  is compiled to a tokenized binary targeted at an arbitrary virtual
  machine implemented by the Java runtime.  If there *is* a Java runtime
  for what you have, the code will run on it.  Java runtimes exist for
  almost everything.  (You still have to be aware of various issues -
  it's possible to write non-portable code in Java.)

 Almost everything? Not so much. Sure, I heard eCS (OS/2) updated
 their Java a while back, but usually it seems Java doesn't run on most
 OSes that aren't top tier (not counting very old or deprecated
 versions which can't be found). In other words, it works where things
 are big and popular and well-supported, not so much anywhere else.

 In my opinion, Java has a few advantages that make it so popular
 (though it's basically tied with C, which is more ubiquitous but has
 less features):

 * lots of features (objects, generics, exceptions, garbage collection,
 threads, networking, GUI)
 * semi-portable open source
 * semi-portable byte code
 * JIT for speeding up the bytecode

 Now, lots of languages have bytecode, even languages that work well in
 DOS, so that idea for portability isn't so far-fetched or unique to
 Java. (And I think Java inherited the idea from the Pascal P-machine.)

 Having a JIT is rarer, esp. for DOS. You could argue it's not needed,
 esp. if only talking about speed, but who knows. Anyways, it's things
 like this which make native compilation more popular than
 interpreters. This is one of the reasons why Ruby 1.9.x is preferred
 over (slower) 1.8.x. Also, this is probably? why Google spent time on
 Go instead of Python (and they basically abandoned Unladen Swallow).
 

Re: [Freedos-user] Freedos V2.0 - when will it be available?

[dmccunney]

On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 2:32 AM, Michael Robinson
plu...@robinson-west.com wrote:

 A protected mode dos like the one under Windows 9x and Windows ME
 could be interesting and would justifiably deserve a different name
 like Freedos-32.  The problem with a dos environment is that there
 isn't an operating system taking care of all the hardware and
 providing standard calls to use it.  Most sound card support
 involved adding to your program in most likely a spaghetti fashion
 calls to a third party driver, closed source of course.  Windows 98
 may have had multitasking, but if that is true, it was more than
 just a single thread dos system.

I wouldn't call that a protected mode DOS.  Win98/ME used DOS as a
real mode loader for Windows.  The protected mode portions were in the
Windows code, and once Windows was loaded, DOS was out of the loop.

 Gates made some very bad
 assumptions that crippled dos back in the day.  Assumption one,
 nobody will ever need more than 640k of memory for executable
 programs and drivers...  I imagine that other bad assumptions
 were made as well.

That wasn't a Gates decision, it was an IBM decision.  The 8088 CPU
used by the original PC had a one megabyte address space.  IBM chose
to reserve the memory above 640K for system level functions, and
confine user programs to the area below that.  Gates was writing to
IBM specs.

Given that you have a megabyte available, total, and some *will* need
to be reserved for the system, where *do* you draw the line?

 Actually, there is OS/2 which was supposed to be the competitor to
 Windows 9x and I'll bet that IBM is willing to release source code
 to it.  Maybe the freedos community should get it's hands on OS/2
 and develop it further.

If IBM is willing to release code, that's news to me.  The folks at
Stardock, who make the Window Blinds skinning utility, began under
OS/2, and tried to acquire the rights to it when IBM ceased
development.  IBM wasn't selling.  You can still get OS/2 from an
outfit called eComstation:
http://www.ecomstation.com/product_info.phtml

 What I'd like to see at this point is a focus on debugging and a focus
 on deploying Freedos via a rom chip.  It should be possible to get write
 once 1 meg+ memory chips now.  Why not install the freedos kernel,
 command.com, etcetera on such a chip?  If you can't overwrite the
 operating system executable, security is enormously improved.  For low
 power embedded processors that are say only 8 bit, freedos may be very
 useful.

You would do better to start with DR-DOS, which originated to serve
requests from Digital Research customers who wanted a ROMmable version
of DOS.  At the time, MS-DOS was not architected to allow the
separation of code and data putting DOS into ROM would require.
Selling DR-DOS over the counter was a later move.

 A hypervisor that can run dosbox and make modern hardware work
 with old dos programs anyone?  How about dosbox running on a Pentium 133
 or a Pentium 166 machine with 16 megs of ram?

Insufficient demand to justify the effort.
__
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Re: [Freedos-user] Freedos V2.0 - when will it be available?

[Rugxulo]

Hi,

On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 1:32 AM, Michael Robinson
plu...@robinson-west.com wrote:

 There are some programs that require Windows 3.1 or 3.11 which can run
 on top of Freedos, but more work on compatibility would not hurt.

While I agree in theory, there just aren't enough skilled developers
for that. Besides, Win16 is very old by now (and non-free in any
sense). Just getting it to work on semi-modern machines would probably
be a chore as it probably chokes on big RAM, etc. I'm not sure there
is any advantage there. I guess it depends on how important certain
old Win16 apps are to you (or others). Personally, I think it makes
more sense to recompile stuff from scratch (via OpenWatcom or DJGPP)
or use Japheth's HX, if possible, but YMMV.

BTW, both DOSEMU (presumably using MS-DOS or DR-DOS) and the DOSBox
emulator claim the ability to run Win16 fully.

 ReactOS may fill the niche of Windows replacement eventually, but not
 for a while most likely.  Worse, for Windows programs that expect there
 to be dos underneath, enough said.

Dunno. It used to support some minor bits of DOS calls, but I'm not
sure if they nowadays have transitioned totally to using DOSBox
emulator or not (which is what I vaguely heard).

 A protected mode dos like the one under Windows 9x and Windows ME
 could be interesting and would justifiably deserve a different name
 like Freedos-32.  The problem with a dos environment is that there
 isn't an operating system taking care of all the hardware and
 providing standard calls to use it.  Most sound card support
 involved adding to your program in most likely a spaghetti fashion
 calls to a third party driver, closed source of course.

Still, having support for OSS or ALSA or similar could be good for
certain apps if recompiled, at least in theory. Yes, legacy apps would
have to be patched or disassembled / rebuilt from scratch, but that's
unavoidable. Better to just setup a good foundation for the future
than worry about the impossible. (Though obviously DOSEMU and DOSBox
work without any of that manual headache.)

 For low power embedded processors that are say only 8 bit, freedos may be very
 useful.  A hypervisor that can run dosbox and make modern hardware work
 with old dos programs anyone?  How about dosbox running on a Pentium 133
 or a Pentium 166 machine with 16 megs of ram?

Most embedded processors (that are still actively produced) are
32-bit. Anyways, I don't think FreeDOS qualifies, at least not for
8-bit (AVR??) ones.

DOSBox is an emulator (using SDL), not a hypervisor, as it runs atop
various host cpus that are not x86 compatible. Even on x86, you don't
need VT-X, but you do need a relatively fast cpu as it's fairly slow
as molasses just to get native 486 speeds. DOSEMU (on 386) uses V86
mode, hence it's much faster.

DOSBox could probably technically run on a P166, but it'd be way way
way too slow. Actually, the default setup of DOSBox uses 16 MB of
emulated RAM, so I don't see how running it on a machine with only 16
MB would work well. (And don't forget the overhyped adage: RAM is
cheap. So you'll not find lots of machines with that low amount
anymore.) It would probably swap to death unless you were running very
simple things. Same with BOCHS or QEMU, might work (with swap) but
would be incredibly slow.

FreeBSD's upcoming 10.0 release is working on their own hypervisor
(for now, FreeBSD host and target only) called bhyve, so that might
prove interesting, if curious (though it assumes advance Intel-only
VT-X, e.g. EPT, for now):   http://www.bhyve.org/

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Re: [Freedos-user] Freedos V2.0 - when will it be available?

[Rugxulo]

Hi,

On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 3:38 AM, dmccunney dennis.mccun...@gmail.com wrote:
 On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 2:32 AM, Michael Robinson
 plu...@robinson-west.com wrote:

 A protected mode dos like the one under Windows 9x and Windows ME
 could be interesting and would justifiably deserve a different name

 I wouldn't call that a protected mode DOS.  Win98/ME used DOS as a
 real mode loader for Windows.  The protected mode portions were in the
 Windows code, and once Windows was loaded, DOS was out of the loop.

I thought WinME removed the real mode bootup, hence lower compatibility?

Anyways, sure it preempted various DOS things, but other parts were
still used behind the scenes. It probably just switched modes a lot
(similar to DOS extenders). Indeed, I don't think it would run without
DOS, even if you did manage (somehow) to bootup without it.

 Gates made some very bad assumptions ... nobody will ever
 need more than 640k of memory for executable programs
 and drivers...

 That wasn't a Gates decision, it was an IBM decision.  The 8088 CPU
 used by the original PC had a one megabyte address space.

Rumor is that IBM wanted 512 kb limit but MS complained! So we should
be grateful!  ;-)

Tim Paterson successfully used the full MB of RAM on his original 8088
clones. Even MS had some of those machines for a long time so that
they could link the[ir] linker.

Besides, you could still use more (kinda sorta) via EMS. It was many
years before extended RAM was cheap and common enough for software to
be useful over 1 MB.

BTW, yes, vanilla MZ .EXE files are limited to approx. 640 kb, but
obviously various DOS extenders have worked around that by manually
loading the images themselves (via stub), hence why we have various 10
MB .EXEs in DJGPP ports (just FYI).

 Given that you have a megabyte available, total, and some *will* need
 to be reserved for the system, where *do* you draw the line?

Tegra 2 reserved part of its total RAM (address space) for the
graphics. A lot of other integrated chips / SoCs or whatever do too.
This is also why XP (32-bit) allegedly can only use 3.1 GB of RAM.
There are always hardcoded limits in everything, it's unavoidable.

 Actually, there is OS/2 which was supposed to be the competitor to
 Windows 9x and I'll bet that IBM is willing to release source code
 to it.  Maybe the freedos community should get it's hands on OS/2
 and develop it further.

 If IBM is willing to release code, that's news to me.

No, they've said at least twice, very openly, that they will never do
so. Besides, lots of the code is copyrighted by MS still (due to the
1.x co-development), so that makes it all the more complicated. IBM
just suggests people migrate to Linux and/or Java these days.

 You can still get OS/2 from an outfit called eComstation:
 http://www.ecomstation.com/product_info.phtml

Yes, it sells a 5-pack of licenses for [EDIT] $149 USD or such. Not
sure how well the DOS support still works, but I think it claims to
have semi-recent Firefox, OpenOffice, Java, etc. Though I would be
skeptical that it wouldn't boot properly, honestly, but hopefully
they've fixed most of that in their [EDIT] 2.1 release.

 A hypervisor that can run dosbox and make modern hardware work
 with old dos programs anyone?  How about dosbox running on a Pentium 133
 or a Pentium 166 machine with 16 megs of ram?

 Insufficient demand to justify the effort.

Not enough developers. Too many differing machines. Besides,
hypervisors usually require VT-X these days (which means select cpus
after 2006). Probably easier (so to speak!) to just fix VBox or QEMU
(or KVM) instead. (Too many competing technologies, things change too
fast, not enough stability, blah )

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Re: [Freedos-user] Freedos V2.0 - when will it be available?

[Rugxulo]

Hi,

On Jan 9, 2013 11:06 AM, dmccunney dennis.mccun...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 11:13 AM, Rugxulo rugx...@gmail.com wrote:
  I thought WinME removed the real mode bootup, hence lower compatibility?
 I'm
 pretty sure there was still DOS underneath like in ME.  Removing the
 real mode loader didn't occur till NT.

I don't know the details, they just somehow made it slightly worse for
faster bootup (or so I thought).

 The question is what DOS actually did under it.  Memory
 and process management would all be on the Win side.  DOS might get
 involved in file system access, but I'm not sure I see why.  The same
 sort of thing could be done native from Windows instead of passed
 through DOS.

For whatever reason, probably legacy, it was heavily reliant upon DOS
stuff, even if a big chunk was rewritten. I don't think it was as separated
as implied.

  Besides, you could still use more (kinda sorta) via EMS. It was many
  years before extended RAM was cheap and common enough for software to
  be useful over 1 MB.

 EMS used a 64KB page frame located in the block between 640K and 1MB,
 and paged memory above 1MB into it for use.

I vaguely thought EMS 4.0 didn't need a page frame? (Where's Eric to
explain all this when you need him? Heh,)

 I also had a freeware utility that could grab up to 96K of unused
 video memory above 540K and map that to DOS.  I had 64K available,
 because I used a Hercules card, so DOS booting thinking I had 704K.

I think some people (rarely) use unused VGA RAM for extra conv. memory with
cmdline apps. Though these days it's uncommon to see a huge need (esp.
since lots of stuff is 32-bit pmode only, whether necessary or not).

 On my desktop, I have 4GB RAM, but XP can only use about 3.2MB of it.
 I found a freeware RAMdisk driver that can use the RAM XP can't see,
 and have a 763MB RAMdisk seen as Z:, with a compressed NTFS file
 system.  I do things like run Firefox from it.

Very clever. I never found a reliable RAM disk for Windows. Everything I
ever saw sounded buggy, at best. Not sure why it didn't come standard (and
the old SDK example doesn't count).

  You can still get OS/2 from an outfit called eComstation:
  http://www.ecomstation.com/product_info.phtml
 
  Yes, it sells a 5-pack of licenses for [EDIT] $149 USD or such. Not
  sure how well the DOS support still works, but I think it claims to
  have semi-recent Firefox, OpenOffice, Java, etc. Though I would be
  skeptical that it wouldn't boot properly, honestly, but hopefully
  they've fixed most of that in their [EDIT] 2.1 release.

 I don't see why DOS support shouldn't still work.

Me either, but some people are busy, lazy, dumb, indifferent, etc. (cough,
NTVDM, cough).

 The Firefox port is
 third-party - Mozilla officially supports Windows, OS/X and Linux -
 but the underlying code was designed to be portable.  For that matter,
 I believe there are still people doing VMS ports.

I don't think portable is the right word here. All modern software, for
whatever trendy (but insane) reason refuses to play nice outside of their
own niche. Usually that means (at best) the big three, even if sometimes
they (falsely) hide behind standards (e.g. POSIX). They can't even reliably
stick to anything, it's always a constant upgrade, very frustrating.
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Re: [Freedos-user] Freedos V2.0 - when will it be available?

[dmccunney]

On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 12:43 PM, Rugxulo rugx...@gmail.com wrote:
 On Jan 9, 2013 11:06 AM, dmccunney dennis.mccun...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 11:13 AM, Rugxulo rugx...@gmail.com wrote:
  I thought WinME removed the real mode bootup, hence lower compatibility?
 I'm pretty sure there was still DOS underneath like in ME.  Removing the
 real mode loader didn't occur till NT.

 I don't know the details, they just somehow made it slightly worse for
 faster bootup (or so I thought).

That might have been on the Windows side.  DOS was being used to boot
Windows, so...

 The question is what DOS actually did under it.  Memory
 and process management would all be on the Win side.  DOS might get
 involved in file system access, but I'm not sure I see why.  The same
 sort of thing could be done native from Windows instead of passed
 through DOS.

 For whatever reason, probably legacy, it was heavily reliant upon DOS stuff,
 even if a big chunk was rewritten. I don't think it was as separated as
 implied.

shrug  Unclear.  But since the longer term goal was to get DOS out
of the picture, assume it did as little as possible, and once Windows
was up, everything what done by it.

  Besides, you could still use more (kinda sorta) via EMS. It was many
  years before extended RAM was cheap and common enough for software to
  be useful over 1 MB.

 EMS used a 64KB page frame located in the block between 640K and 1MB,
 and paged memory above 1MB into it for use.

 I vaguely thought EMS 4.0 didn't need a page frame? (Where's Eric to explain
 all this when you need him? Heh,)

I don't recall.  But the underlying issue is how you access stuff
above 1MB RAM on a CPU with a 1MB address space.  For the CPU to see
it, it must be in the 0K - 1MB range, and that mandates copying it
from RAM above 1MB into that range.  This means you need a defined
area in the 640-1MB range were it will be copied, and will mean you'll
have to page stuff into it in chunks that will fit in that area.
Sounds like a page frame to me.

 I also had a freeware utility that could grab up to 96K of unused
 video memory above 540K and map that to DOS.  I had 64K available,
 because I used a Hercules card, so DOS booting thinking I had 704K.

 I think some people (rarely) use unused VGA RAM for extra conv. memory with
 cmdline apps. Though these days it's uncommon to see a huge need (esp. since
 lots of stuff is 32-bit pmode only, whether necessary or not).

These days, I assume no one does it, as there is no need.  We don't
have the hardware imposed limitations that created the whole notion of
conventional vs extended memory.

 On my desktop, I have 4GB RAM, but XP can only use about 3.2MB of it.
 I found a freeware RAMdisk driver that can use the RAM XP can't see,
 and have a 763MB RAMdisk seen as Z:, with a compressed NTFS file
 system.  I do things like run Firefox from it.

 Very clever. I never found a reliable RAM disk for Windows. Everything I
 ever saw sounded buggy, at best. Not sure why it didn't come standard (and
 the old SDK example doesn't count).

It didn't come standard because most folks would not understand it or
use it.  It would have been a support nightmare for little perceivable
benefit.

In my case, it was handy.  The first iteration was telling Firefox to
put it's cache there (which you can do in about:config.)  The second
iteration was putting Firefox there.  The third iteration was putting
the Firefox profile there.  The end result was *very* quick.

I had batch files run on startup and shutdown, triggered from Group
Policy Manager, which could hook into the events.  Firefox and the
profile(s) to be used were stored on the hard drive in zip archive.
On boot, they were extracted to the RAMdrive.  On shutdown, what was
on the RAMdrive was zipped back to disk, with the last zip file
renamed as a backup copy.  (It was faster to extract from zip/store to
zip than to do file copy to/from.)

I extended it so that I had Firefox, Aurora, and Nightly, plus
Thunderbird and SeaMoney runnable that way, because I had the space to
do it.  The batch files had logic to let me pass a command line parm
to specify exactly which product I wanted to unzip/zip, so that I
could run them from a command line, too.

At the moment, I'm posting from an Acer netbook that has 1.5GB RAM, so
I created a 128MB RAMdrive, and just run Aurora from it.

The Acer runs XP Home, which doesn't have Group Policy Manager, but I
found an old freeware utility that could hook the shutdown event, and
use it to trigger that batch file.  The startup batch file is simply
an entry in the All Users StartUp area.

One minor annoyance: the old freeware utility doesn't distinguish
between Shutdown and Logoff, and makes Shutdown/Restart a two step
process, because it logs me off and I must shutdown/restart from
there.

I found another utility that may address that, but haven't played with it yet.

  You can still get OS/2 from an outfit called eComstation:
  

Re: [Freedos-user] Freedos V2.0 - when will it be available?

[David C. Kerber]

 

 -Original Message-
 From: dmccunney [mailto:dennis.mccun...@gmail.com] 
 Sent: Wednesday, January 09, 2013 12:05 PM
 To: Discussion and general questions about FreeDOS.
 Subject: Re: [Freedos-user] Freedos V2.0 - when will it be available?
 
 On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 11:13 AM, Rugxulo rugx...@gmail.com wrote:
  On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 3:38 AM, dmccunney 
 dennis.mccun...@gmail.com wrote:
  On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 2:32 AM, Michael Robinson
  plu...@robinson-west.com wrote:
 
  A protected mode dos like the one under Windows 9x and Windows ME
  could be interesting and would justifiably deserve a 
 different name
 
  I wouldn't call that a protected mode DOS.  Win98/ME 
 used DOS as a
  real mode loader for Windows.  The protected mode portions 
 were in the
  Windows code, and once Windows was loaded, DOS was out of the loop.
 
  I thought WinME removed the real mode bootup, hence lower 
 compatibility?
 
 Don't have it and haven't used it, so don't know.  Everything I've
 heard indicates it should have been called Win98 Third Edition. I'm
 pretty sure there was still DOS underneath like in ME.  Removing the
 real mode loader didn't occur till NT.

Win NT4 significantly pre-dated Win 98; it came out in about '96.  Many people 
feel WinME was one of the worst pieces of software ever written, while 98SE was 
very good.  Win2k was the best, IMO.


 
  Anyways, sure it preempted various DOS things, but other parts were
  still used behind the scenes. It probably just switched modes a lot
  (similar to DOS extenders). Indeed, I don't think it would 
 run without
  DOS, even if you did manage (somehow) to bootup without it.
 
 Might not, but the question is what DOS actually did under it.  Memory
 and process management would all be on the Win side.  DOS might get
 involved in file system access, but I'm not sure I see why.  The same
 sort of thing could be done native from Windows instead of passed
 through DOS.
 
  Gates made some very bad assumptions ... nobody will ever
  need more than 640k of memory for executable programs
  and drivers...
 
  That wasn't a Gates decision, it was an IBM decision.  The 8088 CPU
  used by the original PC had a one megabyte address space.
 
  Rumor is that IBM wanted 512 kb limit but MS complained! So 
 we should
  be grateful!  ;-)
 
 snort
 
  Tim Paterson successfully used the full MB of RAM on his 
 original 8088
  clones. Even MS had some of those machines for a long time so that
  they could link the[ir] linker.
 
  Besides, you could still use more (kinda sorta) via EMS. It was many
  years before extended RAM was cheap and common enough for 
 software to
  be useful over 1 MB.
 
 EMS used a 64KB page frame located in the block between 640K and 1MB,
 and paged memory above 1MB into it for use.  My old XT clone had an
 AST 6Pak card with 1MB EMS.  I used the AST drivers to create a 512KB
 RAMdisk and a 256KB disk cache.  AUTOEXEC.BAT loaded a few constantly
 used things to the RAMdisk and made the RAMdisk first in the %PATH%,
 and things that could be told where to create temp files were pointed
 there.  Sped things up a treat.
 
 I also had a freeware utility that could grab up to 96K of unused
 video memory above 540K and map that to DOS.  I had 64K available,
 because I used a Hercules card, so DOS booting thinking I had 704K.
 
  Given that you have a megabyte available, total, and some 
 *will* need
  to be reserved for the system, where *do* you draw the line?
 
  Tegra 2 reserved part of its total RAM (address space) for the
  graphics. A lot of other integrated chips / SoCs or whatever do too.
 
 Yeah, but they're all 32 bit processors, which is a whole 
 different thing,
 
  This is also why XP (32-bit) allegedly can only use 3.1 GB of RAM.
 
 Not just allegedly.  See Mark Russinovitch's explanation of the
 underlying issues in his blog series:
 http://blogs.technet.com/b/markrussinovich/archive/2008/07/21/
 3092070.aspx
 
 On my desktop, I have 4GB RAM, but XP can only use about 3.2MB of it.
 I found a freeware RAMdisk driver that can use the RAM XP can't see,
 and have a 763MB RAMdisk seen as Z:, with a compressed NTFS file
 system.  I do things like run Firefox from it.
 
  There are always hardcoded limits in everything, it's unavoidable.
 
 The question is where they are.
 
  Actually, there is OS/2 which was supposed to be the competitor to
  Windows 9x and I'll bet that IBM is willing to release source code
  to it.  Maybe the freedos community should get it's hands on OS/2
  and develop it further.
 
  If IBM is willing to release code, that's news to me.
 
  No, they've said at least twice, very openly, that they 
 will never do
  so. Besides, lots of the code is copyrighted by MS still (due to the
  1.x co-development), so that makes it all the more complicated. IBM
  just suggests people migrate to Linux and/or Java these days.
 
 It would be lovely if they did open source it, but stuff like MS's
 participation in the original development

Re: [Freedos-user] Freedos V2.0 - when will it be available?

[dmccunney]

On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 2:36 PM, David C. Kerber
dker...@warrenrogersassociates.com wrote:
 From: dmccunney [mailto:dennis.mccun...@gmail.com]
 On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 11:13 AM, Rugxulo rugx...@gmail.com wrote:

  I thought WinME removed the real mode bootup, hence lower
 compatibility?

 Don't have it and haven't used it, so don't know.  Everything I've
 heard indicates it should have been called Win98 Third Edition. I'm
 pretty sure there was still DOS underneath like in ME.  Removing the
 real mode loader didn't occur till NT.

 Win NT4 significantly pre-dated Win 98; it came out in about '96.  Many 
 people feel WinME was one of the worst pieces of software ever written, while 
 98SE was very good.  Win2k was the best, IMO.

I ran NT4 back then, but as a server OS in a computer room.  It was
not an end-user product.  It took Win2K for sufficient compatibility
(like the ability to use FAT32) to make it a usable end user OS.

98SE was certainly an improvement over prior Win9X releases.  I ran it
longer than I really wanted because I was waiting for drivers for
peripherals I used to arrive.  When I finally had them all, I switched
to 2K in a heartbeat.   Despite my best efforts, 98SE reached the
point where I was rebooting multiple times per day to be able to get
things done.  Win2K just ran, and got rebooted only if I installed
software that required it or I was fiddling with hardware.
__
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Re: [Freedos-user] Freedos V2.0 - when will it be available?

[Jim Hall]

 A hypervisor that can run dosbox and make modern hardware work
 with old dos programs anyone?  How about dosbox running on a Pentium 133
 or a Pentium 166 machine with 16 megs of ram?

 Insufficient demand to justify the effort.


There may not be a lot of demand, but I see it as an interesting hack
for someone to try.

Actually, I proposed something like that a few years ago: create a
custom Linux spin (mini-distribution) that boots a minimal
environment, and starts up DOSEmu on virtual console 1, immediately
booting a copy of FreeDOS. Maybe you can even provide the option to
start additional DOSEmu+FreeDOS instances on the other virtual
consoles, just by connecting to them and logging in (probably by
pressing Enter).
http://www.freedos.org/jhall/blog/?id=20090422-143518

I don't know if it's possible to run multiple console DOSEmu instances
on the same box, since I've only ever tried to run one (and XDOSEmu at
that). Yes, that's overkill for booting DOS on a modern computer, but
an interesting idea.

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Re: [Freedos-user] Freedos V2.0 - when will it be available?

[dmccunney]

On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 1:43 PM, dmccunney dennis.mccun...@gmail.com wrote:
 On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 12:43 PM, Rugxulo rugx...@gmail.com wrote:
 On Jan 9, 2013 11:06 AM, dmccunney dennis.mccun...@gmail.com wrote:
 On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 11:13 AM, Rugxulo rugx...@gmail.com wrote:

 At the moment, I'm posting from an Acer netbook that has 1.5GB RAM, so
 I created a 128MB RAMdrive, and just run Aurora from it.

 The Acer runs XP Home, which doesn't have Group Policy Manager, but I
 found an old freeware utility that could hook the shutdown event, and
 use it to trigger that batch file.  The startup batch file is simply
 an entry in the All Users StartUp area.

 One minor annoyance: the old freeware utility doesn't distinguish
 between Shutdown and Logoff, and makes Shutdown/Restart a two step
 process, because it logs me off and I must shutdown/restart from
 there.

 I found another utility that may address that, but haven't played with it yet.

And I just did, and it does what I want.  It's newgina, from
http://wwwthep.physik.uni-mainz.de/~frink/newgina_pre09/readme.html

The software was intended to address annoyances with NT4:

This GINA brings new functionality to Windows NT which many users
complained is missing:

get rid of Ctrl-Alt-Del prior to logging on
prevent password protected screen savers
run a script at system shutdown
run a script at logoff

Item 3 was my use case.

It serves as a wrapper around Winlogon. The docs are paranoid about
what can happen if there's a problem, so I created a Restore Point and
held off till a project I was doing on the machine was complete.  The
software is 14 years old, intended for NT4, and it wasn't clear it
would work as desired under XP Home.  As it happens, it works fine,
and lets me hook and run a script on shutdown, which is distinguishes
from logoff.  In this case, the script zips the Firefox instance from
the ramdisk back to the hard drive if I shutdown/restart.

The other utility is now out of the loop, for a 2MB save in resident programs.

The ramdisk software, by the was, is Romex V-Suite:
http://www.romexsoftware.com/en-us/vsuite-ramdisk/

I use the freeware version, which does everything I need, but more
powerful payware versions are available.  They also offer a beta of a
smart cache utility that can extend Windows RAM cache, and use the
memory between 3.2 and 4GB 32bit Windows can't address to hold it.
Alas, it can't be used *with* the ramdisk, though the website claims
that a future goal.

Under Win9X, I had a commercial package including a dynamic ramdisk
that could grow/shrink as usage demanded.  Something like that that
could share memory with a cache and use the memory Windows can't might
be sweet.
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Re: [Freedos-user] Freedos V2.0 - when will it be available?

[Michael Robinson]

 Most embedded processors (that are still actively produced) are
 32-bit. Anyways, I don't think FreeDOS qualifies, at least not for
 8-bit (AVR??) ones.

PIC16F505, PIC16F1938...  these are microchip baseline 8 bit
microprocessors intended for embedded use.  Yes microchip offers
32 bit processors, but one often doesn't need them unless USB or
ethernet is required for the application at hand.

It would be interesting to port Freedos to something other than the
ia32 architecture.


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Re: [Freedos-user] Freedos V2.0 - when will it be available?

[Louis Santillan]

An interesting historical note, early versions of the FreeDOS kernel (DOS-C
kernel) were portable to the 68k architecture. See (
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Villani).

-L

On Wednesday, January 9, 2013, Ralf A. Quint wrote:

 At 04:15 PM 1/9/2013, Michael Robinson wrote:
   Most embedded processors (that are still actively produced) are
   32-bit. Anyways, I don't think FreeDOS qualifies, at least not for
   8-bit (AVR??) ones.
 
 PIC16F505, PIC16F1938...  these are microchip baseline 8 bit
 microprocessors intended for embedded use.  Yes microchip offers
 32 bit processors, but one often doesn't need them unless USB or
 ethernet is required for the application at hand.
 
 It would be interesting to port Freedos to something other than the
 ia32 architecture.

 And what you are going to do with such a port?

 Sorry, if you (try to) port FreeDOS to anything other than x86, you
 simply don't have DOS anymore.

 Beside that those micro controllers won't run much more than very
 task specific software, mainly due to very limited stack and RAM
 space on those chips, certainly not on any of the 8 bit ones.
 A PIC16F505 has 1024 12bit words (1.5KByte) of program (flash)
 memory and a full 72 bytes of RAM. And a PIC16F1938, though it has a
 full 28KByte of program (flash) memory, it still has only 1024 bytes of
 RAM.

 Good luck trying to run anything that would even remotely resemble
 DOS (as in MS/PC/DR/FreeDOS) on it...

 Ralf



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Re: [Freedos-user] Freedos V2.0 - when will it be available?

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 05:12 PM 1/9/2013, Louis Santillan wrote:
An interesting historical note, early versions of the FreeDOS kernel 
(DOS-C kernel) were portable to the 68k architecture. See 
(http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Villanihttp://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Villani).

Well, you noticed that in that reference, it also clearly states: 
This move to a completely different target platform, while losing 
binary compatibility with existing applications,...

Ralf 


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Re: [Freedos-user] Freedos V2.0 - when will it be available?

[dmccunney]

On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 8:35 PM, Ralf A. Quint free...@gmx.net wrote:
 At 05:12 PM 1/9/2013, Louis Santillan wrote:
An interesting historical note, early versions of the FreeDOS kernel
(DOS-C kernel) were portable to the 68k architecture. See
(http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Villanihttp://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Villani).

 Well, you noticed that in that reference, it also clearly states:
 This move to a completely different target platform, while losing
 binary compatibility with existing applications,...

Which is your fundamental problem.  Even if you move DOS to a new
architecture, what do you run under it on that platform?  There isn't
anything, and there isn't a lot you can do with DOS all by itself.

 Ralf
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Re: [Freedos-user] Freedos V2.0 - when will it be available?

[Rugxulo]

Hi,

On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 12:43 PM, dmccunney dennis.mccun...@gmail.com wrote:

 EMS used a 64KB page frame located in the block between 640K and 1MB,
 and paged memory above 1MB into it for use.

 I vaguely thought EMS 4.0 didn't need a page frame? (Where's Eric to explain
 all this when you need him? Heh,)

 I don't recall.  But the underlying issue is how you access stuff
 above 1MB RAM on a CPU with a 1MB address space.  For the CPU to see
 it, it must be in the 0K - 1MB range, and that mandates copying it
 from RAM above 1MB into that range.  This means you need a defined
 area in the 640-1MB range were it will be copied, and will mean you'll
 have to page stuff into it in chunks that will fit in that area.
 Sounds like a page frame to me.

Dunno. Perhaps the pages could be smaller (VCPI? 4 kb?) instead of 16
kb. I haven't really done a lot of EMS programming, to say the least.
(This is why I would rather someone like Eric Auer or Japheth explain
it, but it's not really crucial.)

 It didn't come standard because most folks would not understand it or
 use it.  It would have been a support nightmare for little perceivable
 benefit.

I would almost agree, except DOS has had VDISK for years and years.
And I don't remember it being such an alleged support nightmare. But
probably some shmo said, Windows is fast enough (ugh).

 And NTVDM has worked fine here, but I'm strictly doing character mode
 stuff.  I don't care about DOS games using graphics, and didn't play
 them when I used DOS.

I don't claim to know the details. All I know is that some apps had
very annoying bugs that weren't present (not to mention some missing
functionality). Not everything was able to be recompiled or updated
like DJGPP (and thus 2.03p2 or newer is recommended), so it's running
into a brick wall expecting certain things to work. I don't think
they're totally incompetent, they just don't care. It's just sad when
they basically drop support for anything legacy. I'm sorry,
controlling the standard may look good on paper for running a
company, but it's just too destructive for my tastes.

We really really really shouldn't have to recompile simple ANSI C
apps 10 bazillion times because of OS changes. (I guess the unofficial
workaround [since everyone refuses to get along] is to use portable
scripts, e.g. Lua. Though even that has minor issues due to lack of
standards. And even standards are often ignored.)

 The Firefox port is
 third-party - Mozilla officially supports Windows, OS/X and Linux -
 but the underlying code was designed to be portable.  For that matter,
 I believe there are still people doing VMS ports.

 I don't think portable is the right word here. All modern software, for
 whatever trendy (but insane) reason refuses to play nice outside of their
 own niche. Usually that means (at best) the big three, even if sometimes
 they (falsely) hide behind standards (e.g. POSIX). They can't even reliably
 stick to anything, it's always a constant upgrade, very frustrating.

 Netscape made strenuous efforts to make the core Mozilla code
 portable.  It's written in C++, so that meant Just because you can do
 it in MS Visual C++, don't assume it works elsewhere

That was in 1998 or such. Back then they forbade developers from using
templates! Nowadays they can't even barely keep up with what's going
on. They dropped Win9x in 2006. They don't officially support anything
outside of the big three, and even Firefox for Windows still isn't
officially available as 64-bit (probably due to LLP64). Of course,
being one of the most complicated pieces of crap^H^H^H^H ... software
in the world probably doesn't help. (A web browser is 100x more
difficult than it used to be ten years ago.)

I'm not really knocking them, just annoyed that portability seems to
be achieved so easily for popular platforms, but for others, people
pretend they can't even test or write a simple makefile, sheesh. It's
just a mess, and I can't help but feel it's arbitrary, not technical,
limitations.

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Re: [Freedos-user] Freedos V2.0 - when will it be available?

[Rugxulo]

Hi,

On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 1:54 PM, Jim Hall jh...@freedos.org wrote:

 A hypervisor that can run dosbox and make modern hardware work
 with old dos programs anyone?  How about dosbox running on a Pentium 133
 or a Pentium 166 machine with 16 megs of ram?

 Insufficient demand to justify the effort.

 I don't know if it's possible to run multiple console DOSEmu instances
 on the same box, since I've only ever tried to run one (and XDOSEmu at
 that). Yes, that's overkill for booting DOS on a modern computer, but
 an interesting idea.

It's not overkill, it can give you working sound and networking (and
even graphics) if not available natively, not to mention LFNs out of
the box (and actually works with DJGPP Bash ./configure unlike
otherwise, for whatever reason). There will be some overhead, yes, but
no worse than NTVDM, which is widely accepted.

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Re: [Freedos-user] Freedos V2.0 - when will it be available?

[Rugxulo]

Hi,

On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 8:06 PM, dmccunney dennis.mccun...@gmail.com wrote:
 On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 8:35 PM, Ralf A. Quint free...@gmx.net wrote:
 At 05:12 PM 1/9/2013, Louis Santillan wrote:
An interesting historical note, early versions of the FreeDOS kernel
(DOS-C kernel) were portable to the 68k architecture. See
(http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Villanihttp://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Villani).

 Well, you noticed that in that reference, it also clearly states:
 This move to a completely different target platform, while losing
 binary compatibility with existing applications,...

 Which is your fundamental problem.  Even if you move DOS to a new
 architecture, what do you run under it on that platform?  There isn't
 anything, and there isn't a lot you can do with DOS all by itself.

You'd have to port stuff to it. The easiest would be strictly
conformant ANSI C stuff (or similar), just a recompile away. If you
add a POSIX layer (like many do, and even PatV briefly considered for
future endeavors), you get that too. So you could recompile things
like gcc, vi, sed, awk, etc. Other older legacy stuff would have to
run under an emulator (a la AROS).

It's not as useless or impossible as it seems, but then again, I don't
expect this to happen (any time soon or if ever ...). Just use Li^H^H
... POSIX (sigh).

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Re: [Freedos-user] Freedos V2.0 - when will it be available?

[dmccunney]

On Thu, Jan 10, 2013 at 12:45 AM, Rugxulo rugx...@gmail.com wrote:
 On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 8:06 PM, dmccunney dennis.mccun...@gmail.com wrote:
 On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 8:35 PM, Ralf A. Quint free...@gmx.net wrote:
 At 05:12 PM 1/9/2013, Louis Santillan wrote:
An interesting historical note, early versions of the FreeDOS kernel
(DOS-C kernel) were portable to the 68k architecture. See
(http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Villanihttp://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Villani).

 Well, you noticed that in that reference, it also clearly states:
 This move to a completely different target platform, while losing
 binary compatibility with existing applications,...

 Which is your fundamental problem.  Even if you move DOS to a new
 architecture, what do you run under it on that platform?  There isn't
 anything, and there isn't a lot you can do with DOS all by itself.

 You'd have to port stuff to it. The easiest would be strictly
 conformant ANSI C stuff (or similar), just a recompile away. If you
 add a POSIX layer (like many do, and even PatV briefly considered for
 future endeavors), you get that too. So you could recompile things
 like gcc, vi, sed, awk, etc. Other older legacy stuff would have to
 run under an emulator (a la AROS).

 It's not as useless or impossible as it seems, but then again, I don't
 expect this to happen (any time soon or if ever ...). Just use Li^H^H
 ... POSIX (sigh).

Neither useless nor impossible, but who will bother?  There are simply
too few folks with a need for it.  It might happen a bit like Unix
did, where some of the commands were programmers at Bell Labs
scratching personal itches because *they* wanted a tool that did that
and could create one.

But while you can arguably do useful work (if you're a programmer, at
least) on a bare bones Unix system with the standard utilities but
*no* third party apps, DOS isn't in the same league.  What can you do
with *only* DOS and *no* apps?  Not enough.
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Re: [Freedos-user] Freedos V2.0 - when will it be available?

[Louis Santillan]

There's always DEBUG  QBASIC. :D  Remember when magazines used to actually
post DEBUG  QBASIC scripts.

-L


On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 9:54 PM, dmccunney dennis.mccun...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Thu, Jan 10, 2013 at 12:45 AM, Rugxulo rugx...@gmail.com wrote:
  On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 8:06 PM, dmccunney dennis.mccun...@gmail.com
 wrote:
  On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 8:35 PM, Ralf A. Quint free...@gmx.net wrote:
  At 05:12 PM 1/9/2013, Louis Santillan wrote:
 An interesting historical note, early versions of the FreeDOS kernel
 (DOS-C kernel) were portable to the 68k architecture. See
 (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Villani
 http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Villani).
 
  Well, you noticed that in that reference, it also clearly states:
  This move to a completely different target platform, while losing
  binary compatibility with existing applications,...
 
  Which is your fundamental problem.  Even if you move DOS to a new
  architecture, what do you run under it on that platform?  There isn't
  anything, and there isn't a lot you can do with DOS all by itself.
 
  You'd have to port stuff to it. The easiest would be strictly
  conformant ANSI C stuff (or similar), just a recompile away. If you
  add a POSIX layer (like many do, and even PatV briefly considered for
  future endeavors), you get that too. So you could recompile things
  like gcc, vi, sed, awk, etc. Other older legacy stuff would have to
  run under an emulator (a la AROS).

  It's not as useless or impossible as it seems, but then again, I don't
  expect this to happen (any time soon or if ever ...). Just use Li^H^H
  ... POSIX (sigh).

 Neither useless nor impossible, but who will bother?  There are simply
 too few folks with a need for it.  It might happen a bit like Unix
 did, where some of the commands were programmers at Bell Labs
 scratching personal itches because *they* wanted a tool that did that
 and could create one.

 But while you can arguably do useful work (if you're a programmer, at
 least) on a bare bones Unix system with the standard utilities but
 *no* third party apps, DOS isn't in the same league.  What can you do
 with *only* DOS and *no* apps?  Not enough.
 __
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 https://plus.google.com/u/0/105128793974319004519


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Re: [Freedos-user] Freedos V2.0 - when will it be available?

[dmccunney]

On Thu, Jan 10, 2013 at 12:53 AM, Rugxulo rugx...@gmail.com wrote:
 On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 1:49 PM, dmccunney dennis.mccun...@gmail.com wrote:
 On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 2:36 PM, David C. Kerber
 dker...@warrenrogersassociates.com wrote:
 From: dmccunney [mailto:dennis.mccun...@gmail.com]
 On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 11:13 AM, Rugxulo rugx...@gmail.com wrote:

  I thought WinME removed the real mode bootup, hence lower
 compatibility?

 Don't have it and haven't used it, so don't know.  Everything I've
 heard indicates it should have been called Win98 Third Edition. I'm
 pretty sure there was still DOS underneath like in ME.  Removing the
 real mode loader didn't occur till NT.

 Win NT4 significantly pre-dated Win 98; it came out in about '96.  Many 
 people feel WinME was one of the worst pieces of software ever written, 
 while 98SE was very good.  Win2k was the best, IMO.

 I don't know about that. Win2k was more stable, but it was also
 bigger, slower, and had worse DOS compatibility. And lots of bugs. But
 it was better for Win32 stuff, esp. Unicode. Yet barely anything still
 supports it nowadays. I'm surprised (but glad) people still target XP
 (which is both slightly better and worse than 2k in various ways).

If you had the hardware, it was quick enough.  Windows likes RAM.  I
dual booted 98SE and 2K, but abandoned that when I went to a GB of RAM
in the box, because 98SE refused to boot if it saw more than 512MB.
(There turn out to be ways around that, but I had Win2K to the point
where I simply didn't *need* Win98 anymore, so it went away.)

I din't care about DOS compatibility - the DOS stuff I used all ran
fine in an NTVDM.

 I ran NT4 back then, but as a server OS in a computer room.  It was
 not an end-user product.  It took Win2K for sufficient compatibility
 (like the ability to use FAT32) to make it a usable end user OS.

 NT 4.0 didn't support DOS LFNs (int 21h, 71xxh) nor FAT32. Though I
 don't see how that's a huge deal breaker, no worse than all the other
 compatibility problems forced on us. Also, FAT32 isn't supported very
 much anymore, esp. Vista on up can't boot from it, so I'm not sure
 support for it is here for much longer. (With exFAT and ReFS, who
 knows?)

I don't care about FAT32 support for the most part.  It's still
supported for read/write because every Flash drive in creation uses
FAT16 or FAT32, but how often do you need to boot from it?  Here, the
answer is never.

On NT, I can't imagine using anything save NTFS.  I've seen complaints
that FAT32 is faster, but NTFS is far more robust.  I've had file
system problems I used CHKDSK /F on.  On NTFS, CHKDSK fixed the
problems, located the orphaned files, and put them back where they
belonged under their correct names.  On FAT16/32, I'd get a
FILE000.CHK directory with a boatload of file fragments that were fun
to identify and mostly just had to be deleted, and might well still
have a mess that required reinstalling some apps to fix.  The only
time I've seen NTFS have a real problem was if a directory entry
happened to be on a bad block, and even that was relatively easy to
fix.

 98SE was certainly an improvement over prior Win9X releases.  I ran it
 longer than I really wanted because I was waiting for drivers for
 peripherals I used to arrive.  When I finally had them all, I switched
 to 2K in a heartbeat.   Despite my best efforts, 98SE reached the
 point where I was rebooting multiple times per day to be able to get
 things done.  Win2K just ran, and got rebooted only if I installed
 software that required it or I was fiddling with hardware.

 Yes, it's more stable, but it doesn't run a lot of DOS stuff nearly as
 well as 9x. Granted, it was good enough for most things (more or
 less), but that support only got worse and worse, esp. with Vista. I
 don't know, some people don't mind recompiling all their apps (or just
 use popular GNU utils that are ported everywhere), but it seems
 unnecessary. We shouldn't have so much deprecation every few years. (I
 don't care how old or uncool, it just works, so why break it?)

Like I said elsewhere, it ran all the DOS stuff *I* used with no
problem so I essentially didn't *care*.
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Re: [Freedos-user] Freedos V2.0 - when will it be available?

[Bernd Blaauw]

Op 8-1-2013 15:38, KOS schreef:
 Hello there, do you know when V2.0 of freedos will be available?


I'm not sure there's going to be a V2.0 sometime soon, be there FreeDOS 
roadmaps or not. I'm still quitely working on version 1.2 of the FreeDOS 
distribution whenever I find spare time.

Is there anything that you need but find lacking sofar in the 1.0 and 
1.1 releases? Or for that matter in the core components like the kernel 
and shell?

Bernd

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Re: [Freedos-user] Freedos V2.0 - when will it be available?

[KOS]

No currently there is not something because I have not managed to
install it yet, since I cannot make the bootloader work. After
installing everything, the bootloader does not give me the right
options like shown here
http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/freedos/index.php?title=VirtualBox_-_Chapter_5
(I am installing it on a real machine not a VM).

I like that dos is still developed by you and I hope I could help
somehow one day (being a programmer)


2013/1/8, Bernd Blaauw bbla...@home.nl:
 Op 8-1-2013 15:38, KOS schreef:
 Hello there, do you know when V2.0 of freedos will be available?


 I'm not sure there's going to be a V2.0 sometime soon, be there FreeDOS
 roadmaps or not. I'm still quitely working on version 1.2 of the FreeDOS
 distribution whenever I find spare time.

 Is there anything that you need but find lacking sofar in the 1.0 and
 1.1 releases? Or for that matter in the core components like the kernel
 and shell?

 Bernd

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Computer and Telecommunications Engineer
Director of the Greek Microwave Group (www.microwave.gr)

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Re: [Freedos-user] Freedos V2.0 - when will it be available?

[Bernd Blaauw]

Op 8-1-2013 20:22, KOS schreef:
 No currently there is not something because I have not managed to
 install it yet, since I cannot make the bootloader work. After
 installing everything, the bootloader does not give me the right
 options like shown here
 http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/freedos/index.php?title=VirtualBox_-_Chapter_5
 (I am installing it on a real machine not a VM).

Are the expected files present at C: ?
Next to whatever directory you installed FreeDOS to, you should have the 
following files:
C:\KERNEL.SYS
C:\COMMAND.COM
optional: C:\CONFIG.SYS (or FDCONFIG.SYS)
optional: C:\AUTOEXEC.BAT

If it's just the bootsector missing, then solving the issue is done by 
performing (from FreeDos directory or from bootdisk or CD) :

SYS C:

 I like that dos is still developed by you and I hope I could help
 somehow one day (being a programmer)

Sounds like an interesting option. I'd still recommend to use some 
virtual machine and develop your program there.

Bernd

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Re: [Freedos-user] Freedos V2.0 - when will it be available?

[KOS]

Yes the files are there, I have inserted the compact flash disk
(installing on an alix-1d) into a reader and they are there hidden as
they should be.

should I give SYS C: at the grub prompt?

I have developed XDOS http://www.microwave.gr/giannopk/xdos.htm a
collection of msdos 6.22 and a huge lot of applications. I have not
written a single line of code, this is just a collection of programs
about 2gb. I think it would be nice to share them with someone
developing freedos so that they are included in the next distro as
they are or just to give new ideas of what programs could be written.
I have spent about 3 months collecting these programs and make them work ok.
Please let me know if you are interested in seeing this stuff


2013/1/8, Bernd Blaauw bbla...@home.nl:
 Op 8-1-2013 20:22, KOS schreef:
 No currently there is not something because I have not managed to
 install it yet, since I cannot make the bootloader work. After
 installing everything, the bootloader does not give me the right
 options like shown here
 http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/freedos/index.php?title=VirtualBox_-_Chapter_5
 (I am installing it on a real machine not a VM).

 Are the expected files present at C: ?
 Next to whatever directory you installed FreeDOS to, you should have the
 following files:
 C:\KERNEL.SYS
 C:\COMMAND.COM
 optional: C:\CONFIG.SYS (or FDCONFIG.SYS)
 optional: C:\AUTOEXEC.BAT

 If it's just the bootsector missing, then solving the issue is done by
 performing (from FreeDos directory or from bootdisk or CD) :

 SYS C:

 I like that dos is still developed by you and I hope I could help
 somehow one day (being a programmer)

 Sounds like an interesting option. I'd still recommend to use some
 virtual machine and develop your program there.

 Bernd

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Re: [Freedos-user] Freedos V2.0 - when will it be available?

[Bernd Blaauw]

Op 8-1-2013 20:59, KOS schreef:
 should I give SYS C: at the grub prompt?

If you're able to reach DOS already, perform SYS C:
Alternatively, you'll have to search (Google should do the trick) how to 
chain from GRUB, GRUB2 or GRUB4DOS to KERNEL.SYS , skipping the entire 
bootsector thing.

If you can use your flashcard on a Windows machine, then RUFUS
[ http://rufus.akeo.ie/ ] should be able to make the storage card bootable.

 I have developed XDOS http://www.microwave.gr/giannopk/xdos.htm a
 collection of msdos 6.22 and a huge lot of applications. I have not
 written a single line of code, this is just a collection of programs
 about 2gb. I think it would be nice to share them with someone
 developing freedos so that they are included in the next distro as
 they are or just to give new ideas of what programs could be written.
 I have spent about 3 months collecting these programs and make them work ok.
 Please let me know if you are interested in seeing this stuff

I'd be interested. Assuming you can't make this available publicly 
anyway due to using MSDOS, uploading to a website isn't an option. 
However if you want, mail the entire thing to me in a compressed archive 
(renamed zipfile for example) at bbla...@gmail.com

Already been recently rewriting some distributions that use FreeDOS as 
those rely on ATAPI CD-drives while I use the ISOstick USB-device 
instead. So, it's worth looking at what people come up with before 
implementing things in a new FreeDOS distribution.

Bernd


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Re: [Freedos-user] Freedos V2.0 - when will it be available?

[Jeffrey]

KOS,

If you have installed grub, but it is not working, you can remove it 
with the command fdisk /mbr.  This will write the default mbr to the 
hard disk.  Then use sys c:

Jeffrey

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Re: [Freedos-user] Freedos V2.0 - when will it be available?

[Michael Robinson]

On Tue, 2013-01-08 at 18:46 +0100, Bernd Blaauw wrote:
 Op 8-1-2013 15:38, KOS schreef:
  Hello there, do you know when V2.0 of freedos will be available?
 
 
 I'm not sure there's going to be a V2.0 sometime soon, be there FreeDOS 
 roadmaps or not. I'm still quitely working on version 1.2 of the FreeDOS 
 distribution whenever I find spare time.
 
 Is there anything that you need but find lacking sofar in the 1.0 and 
 1.1 releases? Or for that matter in the core components like the kernel 
 and shell?
 
 Bernd

There are some programs that require Windows 3.1 or 3.11 which can run
on top of Freedos, but more work on compatibility would not hurt.

ReactOS may fill the niche of Windows replacement eventually, but not
for a while most likely.  Worse, for Windows programs that expect there
to be dos underneath, enough said.

A protected mode dos like the one under Windows 9x and Windows ME 
could be interesting and would justifiably deserve a different name 
like Freedos-32.  The problem with a dos environment is that there 
isn't an operating system taking care of all the hardware and 
providing standard calls to use it.  Most sound card support 
involved adding to your program in most likely a spaghetti fashion 
calls to a third party driver, closed source of course.  Windows 98 
may have had multitasking, but if that is true, it was more than 
just a single thread dos system.  Gates made some very bad 
assumptions that crippled dos back in the day.  Assumption one, 
nobody will ever need more than 640k of memory for executable 
programs and drivers...  I imagine that other bad assumptions 
were made as well.

Actually, there is OS/2 which was supposed to be the competitor to
Windows 9x and I'll bet that IBM is willing to release source code
to it.  Maybe the freedos community should get it's hands on OS/2
and develop it further.

Aside from taking bugs out of Freedos 1.1, I don't see any major 
changes that should be made.  Implementation of a Windows 9x clone 
is going to be too much work where there is the ReactOS project 
that gave up on trying to do that years ago.   I'm confident that
ReactOS will work better on old computers than XP does.  Granted,
ReactOS is at a very early alpha stage where it is somewhat futile 
to predict what the resource requirements will be when it 
stabilizes.

I like FLTK, I like opengem, I like some of the graphical user
interfaces I have seen that are free.  Problem though, graphical user
interfaces on top of dos are an afterthought even today.  There was no
planning when dos was initially invented that I know of for guis.  There
are plenty of MS Dos programs that aren't Windows compatible, because a
Windows compatible programming method wasn't employed.

What I'd like to see at this point is a focus on debugging and a focus
on deploying Freedos via a rom chip.  It should be possible to get write
once 1 meg+ memory chips now.  Why not install the freedos kernel,
command.com, etcetera on such a chip?  If you can't overwrite the
operating system executable, security is enormously improved.  For low
power embedded processors that are say only 8 bit, freedos may be very
useful.  A hypervisor that can run dosbox and make modern hardware work
with old dos programs anyone?  How about dosbox running on a Pentium 133
or a Pentium 166 machine with 16 megs of ram?


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Re: [Freedos-user] Freedos V2.0 - when will it be available?

[KOS]

Hm... I am a bit skeptic here. Think it the other way. Although we are
talking about a GUI here, a GUI is not new these days, in fact this is
mostly the rule. What is special about DOS (and bare unixes) TODAY
from the point of an average user, is that it is a command line tool
and that DOD is single tasking (there are ways to run mure than one
tasks though). I do not say that it is good or bad, but from the point
of the user interface, these are the main things that define this
system.

My personal approach, followed in XDOS, is that no GUI should be used.
Programs that have graphics can be run inside dos anyway. From the
other side a GUI approach has not be proven to be more stable than the
command line but it is faster. Is it...?
Try to use the well known commanders of the time. I personally use
Volkov commander, it really boosts up DOS using speed in a huge
amount, so that a GUI is no longer needed.

Using such a commander the only reason I can think of going on GUIs is
the feeling of multitasking. DOS has not been designed for multi
tasking, but there are some ways to overcome this. Maybe you could
investigate these ways in a future version.

2013/1/9, Michael Robinson plu...@robinson-west.com:
 On Tue, 2013-01-08 at 18:46 +0100, Bernd Blaauw wrote:
 Op 8-1-2013 15:38, KOS schreef:
  Hello there, do you know when V2.0 of freedos will be available?
 

 I'm not sure there's going to be a V2.0 sometime soon, be there FreeDOS
 roadmaps or not. I'm still quitely working on version 1.2 of the FreeDOS
 distribution whenever I find spare time.

 Is there anything that you need but find lacking sofar in the 1.0 and
 1.1 releases? Or for that matter in the core components like the kernel
 and shell?

 Bernd

 There are some programs that require Windows 3.1 or 3.11 which can run
 on top of Freedos, but more work on compatibility would not hurt.

 ReactOS may fill the niche of Windows replacement eventually, but not
 for a while most likely.  Worse, for Windows programs that expect there
 to be dos underneath, enough said.

 A protected mode dos like the one under Windows 9x and Windows ME
 could be interesting and would justifiably deserve a different name
 like Freedos-32.  The problem with a dos environment is that there
 isn't an operating system taking care of all the hardware and
 providing standard calls to use it.  Most sound card support
 involved adding to your program in most likely a spaghetti fashion
 calls to a third party driver, closed source of course.  Windows 98
 may have had multitasking, but if that is true, it was more than
 just a single thread dos system.  Gates made some very bad
 assumptions that crippled dos back in the day.  Assumption one,
 nobody will ever need more than 640k of memory for executable
 programs and drivers...  I imagine that other bad assumptions
 were made as well.

 Actually, there is OS/2 which was supposed to be the competitor to
 Windows 9x and I'll bet that IBM is willing to release source code
 to it.  Maybe the freedos community should get it's hands on OS/2
 and develop it further.

 Aside from taking bugs out of Freedos 1.1, I don't see any major
 changes that should be made.  Implementation of a Windows 9x clone
 is going to be too much work where there is the ReactOS project
 that gave up on trying to do that years ago.   I'm confident that
 ReactOS will work better on old computers than XP does.  Granted,
 ReactOS is at a very early alpha stage where it is somewhat futile
 to predict what the resource requirements will be when it
 stabilizes.

 I like FLTK, I like opengem, I like some of the graphical user
 interfaces I have seen that are free.  Problem though, graphical user
 interfaces on top of dos are an afterthought even today.  There was no
 planning when dos was initially invented that I know of for guis.  There
 are plenty of MS Dos programs that aren't Windows compatible, because a
 Windows compatible programming method wasn't employed.

 What I'd like to see at this point is a focus on debugging and a focus
 on deploying Freedos via a rom chip.  It should be possible to get write
 once 1 meg+ memory chips now.  Why not install the freedos kernel,
 command.com, etcetera on such a chip?  If you can't overwrite the
 operating system executable, security is enormously improved.  For low
 power embedded processors that are say only 8 bit, freedos may be very
 useful.  A hypervisor that can run dosbox and make modern hardware work
 with old dos programs anyone?  How about dosbox running on a Pentium 133
 or a Pentium 166 machine with 16 megs of ram?


 --
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 and much more. Keep your Java skills current with LearnJavaNow -
 200+ hours of step-by-step video tutorials by Java experts.
 SALE $49.99 this month only -- learn more at:
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