Re: [Freedos-user] running windows 3.1
Hi, On Sat, Jan 4, 2014 at 6:57 PM, Eric Auer e.a...@jpberlin.de wrote: Also, the PCI SoundBlaster cards in fact are not hardware compatible to SoundBlaster but come with some driver to create a virtual SB16, as mentioned. That driver is picky with EMM386, for example JEMM386 had a special option to enable compatibility tricks just for that driver :-p Just for the record, although I know it's been mentioned before, I guess here you're not referring to the erstwhile I/O port redirection via EMM386 that allows some sound emulation. I'm not aware of anyone using this with JEMM386 specifically (thus SoftMPU, mentioned below, still relies on MS-DOS and its proprietary EMM386), but just FYI (since it is GPL): http://www.bttr-software.de/forum/board_entry.php?id=12742#p12742 -- CenturyLink Cloud: The Leader in Enterprise Cloud Services. Learn Why More Businesses Are Choosing CenturyLink Cloud For Critical Workloads, Development Environments Everything In Between. Get a Quote or Start a Free Trial Today. http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=119420431iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] running windows 3.1
Hi Rugxulo, mcelhanon, guys, The only technical document I know of about this is here, but I'm not sure it'll directly help you: http://ericauer.cosmodata.virtuaserver.com.br/soft/specials/win3.x-dosext-freedos-notes.txt That is so old, I would guess we have already implemented most of the relevant calls... Maybe you can grep in the FreeDOS kernel sources... Note that mcelhanon also has a point - the Deskwork website had some document about how to let Win 3 run with more RAM, but in the long run it is probably easier to hide the extra RAM by telling HIMEM / EMM386 or similar drivers to touch at most a certain amount. We had options for that at some point, because some old games had similar problems. Also, the PCI SoundBlaster cards in fact are not hardware compatible to SoundBlaster but come with some driver to create a virtual SB16, as mentioned. That driver is picky with EMM386, for example JEMM386 had a special option to enable compatibility tricks just for that driver :-p In any case, to run Win 3.x in 386 enhanced mode, you must NOT load EMM386-style drivers (no JEMMEX either) unless those implement special functions to let Windows take over with the driver built into that. So you do not need DOS EMM386 drivers that badly while Windows runs using 386enh mode anyway, bad luck for UMB - unless you use non-EMM drivers to provide UMB, no idea if those would work with 386enh Windows... It is easy to guess that only Microsoft EMM386 and a few big commercial EMM386 drivers took the effort to implement those GEMMIS functions, only Windows 386enh mode uses them after all. Regards, Eric -- Rapidly troubleshoot problems before they affect your business. Most IT organizations don't have a clear picture of how application performance affects their revenue. With AppDynamics, you get 100% visibility into your Java,.NET, PHP application. Start your 15-day FREE TRIAL of AppDynamics Pro! http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=84349831iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] running windows 3.1
On 12/27/13, Michael Robinson plu...@robinson-west.com wrote: On Fri, 2013-12-27 at 10:40 -0500, James Crawford wrote: Hey Guys, I have a Pentium 3 running Freedos alone. I tried to load Win 3.1 and got the error : Win 3.1 will not run in protected mode. I understand that the command.com runs in protected mode. Do I have to change this permanently to run Windows. How do I get Windows to work? Thanks! Jim Crawford I have Windows 3.1 working on a Pentium 3 running freedos 1.1. I think I'm using Jemmex for the memory manager and I believe I'm running it in 386 enhanced mode. That said, I get a memory manager crash when I exit Windows 3.1 and I notice that Loderunner for whatever reason crashes before I reach the first level with bombs. Too bad I can't get sound in Windows 3.1. I have a Soundblaster 16, but it's the PCI version that only comes with an expanded memory dos driver, a Windows 9x driver, and XP drivers. I wish there was a 100% compatible replacement for Windows 3.1 that is free. There is a lot of software that requires Windows 3.1. ReactOS is an attempt to clone Windows NT and support Windows software designed for at least Windows XP. Developers are trying to crank out a 0.4 release, the last release was 0.3.15 back in September. See http://www.reactos.org. I wonder if someone could debug what is causing Windows 3.1 running on freedos to crash and develop workarounds? In other news, ReactOS is gaining an emulated dos environment of it's own. Very recent development, so don't expect the environment to be stable. -- Rapidly troubleshoot problems before they affect your business. Most IT organizations don't have a clear picture of how application performance affects their revenue. With AppDynamics, you get 100% visibility into your Java,.NET, PHP application. Start your 15-day FREE TRIAL of AppDynamics Pro! http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=84349831iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user As far as getting the PCI SB16 to run in Win3.1: The DOS driver is really just an emulator/controller that sets up the PCI Plug-N-Play SB16 to show fixed address, IRQ, and DMA settings for the real SoundBlaster drivers that are in any non-Plug-N-Play DOS program that uses sound. I don't know why the Win3.1 SB16 driver that is available on many different Internet sites (it is mostly used for running Win3.1 in virtual PC software) wouldn't interface with that same emulator/controller. In other words, if you can play something like DOOM with full sound by merely setting the DOOM SoundBlaster driver to use Address 220, IRQ 5, and DMA 1, the Win3.1 driver should work the same way (I don't really know if that's true, but I would try it anyway). As for having a stable Win3.1 environment, I just go ahead and use MS-DOS when I want to fool around with something in Win3.1 and use FreeDOS for doing things FreeDOS has been developed to do. MS is known to put subtle bits of code in their products to try and keep customers as MicroSoft centric as possible. I doubt there would ever be enough free development effort available to successfully produce a 100% compatible clone of any MS operating systems. Very few people have that much free time in their lives (at least, not those that have a life...) That being said, I do know that one of the things that might be causing stability problems is how Win3.1 grabs as much memory as it can when it goes into enhanced mode. Remember, Win3.1 was designed back when the average new high-end PC only had maybe 4 MB of total memory available. MS wanted it to run well on such machines and one of the tricks they used was to grab any kilobytes of ram available in the upper and high memory areas. Those particular memory addresses are used in special ways in the DOS environment and the FreeDOS memory managers operate in strictly standardized and documented ways while MS did not. Maybe if you used exclude statements in the SYSTEM.INI file to force Windows to stay away from those areas some of these stability problems might go away. Just an idea. -- Rapidly troubleshoot problems before they affect your business. Most IT organizations don't have a clear picture of how application performance affects their revenue. With AppDynamics, you get 100% visibility into your Java,.NET, PHP application. Start your 15-day FREE TRIAL of AppDynamics Pro! http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=84349831iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] running windows 3.1
Hi, On Fri, Dec 27, 2013 at 9:40 AM, James Crawford jrc...@embarqmail.com wrote: I have a Pentium 3 running Freedos alone. I tried to load Win 3.1 and got the error : Win 3.1 will not run in protected mode. I understand that the command.com runs in protected mode. Do I have to change this permanently to run Windows. How do I get Windows to work? No, the shell (COMMAND.COM) runs in low RAM / real mode (optionally compiled to use some XMS for swapping). Presumably this means it's getting confused because you have EMM386 (V86 mode) loaded. AFAIK, Win 3.x only works in standard (286) mode with FreeDOS due to some undocumented methods that Windows used to access the DOS internals. But Win 3.x fully works in DR-DOS, for example (and allegedly faster than even MS-DOS). I don't know if those undocumented features were ever publicized. Probably nobody here cared enough to debug it fully. Later Win95 was for (bundled) MS-DOS only. I know some people claimed that DOSBox (with its own different fake DOS) can run Win 3.x too, but I guess it's unlikely you'll want to install a different OS (but Kolibri is very very lean and maybe? boots off FAT32) just for that emulator. It honestly might be easier to just find an old copy of Win95 on eBay or wherever and use that instead. http://wiki.kolibrios.org/wiki/DosBox The only technical document I know of about this is here, but I'm not sure it'll directly help you: http://ericauer.cosmodata.virtuaserver.com.br/soft/specials/win3.x-dosext-freedos-notes.txt -- Rapidly troubleshoot problems before they affect your business. Most IT organizations don't have a clear picture of how application performance affects their revenue. With AppDynamics, you get 100% visibility into your Java,.NET, PHP application. Start your 15-day FREE TRIAL of AppDynamics Pro! http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=84349831iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] running windows 3.1
On Fri, 2013-12-27 at 10:40 -0500, James Crawford wrote: Hey Guys, I have a Pentium 3 running Freedos alone. I tried to load Win 3.1 and got the error : Win 3.1 will not run in protected mode. I understand that the command.com runs in protected mode. Do I have to change this permanently to run Windows. How do I get Windows to work? Thanks! Jim Crawford I have Windows 3.1 working on a Pentium 3 running freedos 1.1. I think I'm using Jemmex for the memory manager and I believe I'm running it in 386 enhanced mode. That said, I get a memory manager crash when I exit Windows 3.1 and I notice that Loderunner for whatever reason crashes before I reach the first level with bombs. Too bad I can't get sound in Windows 3.1. I have a Soundblaster 16, but it's the PCI version that only comes with an expanded memory dos driver, a Windows 9x driver, and XP drivers. I wish there was a 100% compatible replacement for Windows 3.1 that is free. There is a lot of software that requires Windows 3.1. ReactOS is an attempt to clone Windows NT and support Windows software designed for at least Windows XP. Developers are trying to crank out a 0.4 release, the last release was 0.3.15 back in September. See http://www.reactos.org. I wonder if someone could debug what is causing Windows 3.1 running on freedos to crash and develop workarounds? In other news, ReactOS is gaining an emulated dos environment of it's own. Very recent development, so don't expect the environment to be stable. -- Rapidly troubleshoot problems before they affect your business. Most IT organizations don't have a clear picture of how application performance affects their revenue. With AppDynamics, you get 100% visibility into your Java,.NET, PHP application. Start your 15-day FREE TRIAL of AppDynamics Pro! http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=84349831iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
