On 17 November 2017 at 16:44, geneb via cctalk <cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: > > Liam, if you need me to I can build a full distro of OpenDOS 7 - I've got a > machine that I can build the original sources on.
Thanks! For now, I'm trying to avoid building anything. I believe that the build process is horribly complex -- I can find the link to a description of the horrors somewhere. Something like 9 different compilers are apparently used. So I hope not to need that, but appreciate the offer! What I am planning to do is combine the released boot files for PC-DOS 7.1 and DR-DOS 7.01-8, both with FAT32 and LBA support, with the rest of the released OSes of both, to make something as complete as possible. My plan is then to add on top of that a graphical shell -- DOSSHELL for PC DOS, ViewMax for DR DOS. And then add some useful shareware/freeware utilities and apps, to make a complete useful working environment, for example able to boot off a USB stick for a distraction-free, non-Internet-capable, writing tool. There seems to be considerable interest in such things these days, and of course, the problem with apps that provide distraction-free clean-screen writing/editing environments is that you can always just switch apps to something else. I have DESQview and DESQview/X running in a VM, but not on bare metal. QEMM seems to have problems on 21st century PC hardware, which is perhaps unsurprising. On one of my own Lenovo notebooks, I have a bootable partition with PC DOS 7.01, MS Word 6, WordPerfect 6.2, Norton Utilities and some other tools. With power management, but not networking or anything. This works for me, but they can't be distributed; they're licensed tools. MS Word 5.5 is a free download, though. I was planning to add tools such as PC Write, PC Outline, As-Easy-As, WordPerfect Editor, a Norton Commander clone -- stuff that _is_ distributable. I also need to add a current DOS antivirus, unfortunately. I think there still are some. The theory is to produce something functionally rich that runs in a VM -- because then I know the hardware environment and can configure things for it. And something much less functionally-rich that can boot and run off a USB stick on almost any hardware. DR-DOS should be re-distributable. PC DOS, I fear not, at least not fully legitimately. But my download diskette image contains nothing that IBM itself currently does not offer for free unrestricted download. I'm hoping that the company will tolerate that, at least. -- Liam Proven • Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk • Google Mail/Talk/Plus: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/Facebook/Flickr: lproven • Skype/LinkedIn/AIM/Yahoo: liamproven UK: +44 7939-087884 • ČR/WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal: +420 702 829 053
