Eric Auer wrote:
Hi, the sample GRUB configuration items are all quite interesting, but please fix the following line before making a technote of the HowTo:
DEVICE=C:\MSDOS\EMM386.EXE NOEMS I=B000-B7FF
Thanks for your response but I wonder if we are on the same page.
My purpose was to provide a visual template about how to make an MS-DOS config.sys menu system for the purpose of running GRUB for DOS.
The MS-DOS configuration specific examples are rather incidental to the purpose of the template. Except that I included some command examples as a visual aid. From this perspective I would have no objection of removing the include switch as it doesn't serve a purpose anyway.
But, the 'rant' as you call it poses some questions for me.
I learned the include switch more than ten years ago when running the MEMMAKER utility. I've used it consistently with the MS EMM386 for all these years for the purpose of making an extra 32 K UMB available.
Your email response was the first time I've read that it is not a good practice. I wonder why. But the reasons you state seem to be along the lines of it being experimental and make you referenced FreeDOS problems.
The config.sys template was very MS-DOS specific, nothing in particular about it would even work with FreeDOS as far as I can tell. Devices such as HIMEM.SYS and ANSI.SYS don't come with FreeDOS. The paths I referenced were C:\MSDOS\ as an additional hint that this is an MS-DOS configuration sample. Not to mention that FreeDOS uses a different menu system altogether.
I guess I have two questions:
1) Is it a bad practice to use the include monochrome area switch with MS-DOS and its EMM386?
2) Did it appear that I was suggesting how to configure FreeDOS?
Forcing EMM386 to place an overlay of UMBs over RAM of the graphics card, even if it is "only" mono text buffer RAM, is definitely not what you want to teach as good practices. It is highly experimental and we have enough problems with NORMAL use of FreeDOS already (e.g. CHKDSK only allowing a few known floppy formats for A:, refusing oversize formats and USB sticks with FAT16, or SYS/FORMAT having troubles with USB sticks.... uhm, sorry, my examples are a bit off-topic, and maybe booting from USB is NOT normal use of FreeDOS, but still we DO have enough problems left with normal use of FreeDOS, as can be seen in Bugzilla and the 1.0 TODO list ;-)).
Enough "ranting"... as said, the rest of the How-To is pretty nice.
Eric
Thanks
I wish GRUB for DOS would work with FreeDOS. The documentation I've read indicate there was a FreeDOS bug that no longer exists and that it SHOULD work.
Maybe someone will take some time and try it with FreeDOS as their mileage may vary.
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