Hi, On 11/20/10, Jim Lemon <j...@bitwrit.com.au> wrote: > On 11/20/2010 12:14 AM, Rugxulo wrote: >> ... >> What year and model and cpu? Just curious. And what exactly doesn't >> work, it won't turn on?? >> > DELL Latitude XP 475D > Plugged it in, hit the switch and nothing. No lights, no sound, nothing. > It has been going for years and I only kept it for the last year or two > to compile C programs under FreeDOS.
http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/dta/elektra/ At least yours lasted quite a while. My brother and I both had laptops overheat / die, and they were fairly new, circa 2007! > ver -r (or -R, despite the help info) gives > > FreeCom version 0.84 pre2 XMS_Swap [Aug 28 2006 00:29:00] That doesn't tell the kernel, so I'm blindly guessing you have to type (exactly): "ver /r". It should say "kernel 2036" or whatever somewhere. It basically calls this: http://fd-doc.sourceforge.net/faq/cgi-bin/viewfaq.cgi?faq=General_Information/557 "You can also get the version STRING with function int 21, AX=33ff, returns segment, offset in DX, AX." Be sure to test with 2038 kernel instead, and see if that helps: http://sourceforge.net/projects/freedos/files/Kernel/2038/kernel2038-fat32-binary.zip/download http://sourceforge.net/projects/freedos/files/Kernel/2038/kernel2038-source.zip/download > I'm pretty sure that it's the version because I had been compiling > various C programs in the Borland C IDE for years and as soon as I > upgraded, it stopped compiling. I just tried it again with a program > that I know would compile and got: > > Undefined symbol _EGA_VGA_driver in module STRZ2.C > > When it first happened, the "undefined symbol" would be whatever library > or object file was to be linked in first. I checked the paths, checked > that the libraries and object files were there, tried to manually > compile and link, tried stupid things like copying the object files into > the code directory, etc. It was then that I copied a minimal Borland C > setup to the old DELL that still had the previous FreeDOS version and > ... it worked! As I had to get the program compiled and was able to, I > didn't complain and thought that I would eventually be able to fix the > problem. Still don't know what Borland version you're using. I know that J. Hoffman uses BC31 without issues. But yours is a worrisome report, though. I can't verify it here since I don't have whatever compiler you're using. (FreeDOS really officially recommends OpenWatcom, but some of the utils still somewhat rely on [not really freeware anymore] Borland tools.) > My choices appear to be three: > > Downgrade to pre 1.0 FreeDOS and hope that I can once again do the > development work on this PC. This is the best option, as I don't do a > lot of this anymore, and I wouldn't have to change anything. If that's best for you, that's fine. But I would *love* to know what exact kernel and what exact compiler you're using first. ;-) > Move from Borland C to Watcom. I agree with your opinion about Watcom, > but I have an awful lot of code that depends upon Borland graphics > drivers (and probably a few other Borland things), and I don't want to > rewrite it. So it would be a worst case scenario. I would rather port > the whole thing to Linux and run it under Real Time Linux. Haven't heard from Blair in a long time, but he did whip this up (untested by me), so it might help: http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/devel/libs/tcc2wat/ But I agree, having to migrate code is a pain (even if unavoidable sometimes). > Fix whatever is going wrong with the present setup. The error messages, > as explained above, are those awful sort that say "X isn't there" and > when you look, X is there. My guess is that there was some subtle change > in a DOS or BIOS filesystem call between 0.9 and 1.0 and it broke the > ability of the Borland system to find objects to be linked. I've never had any similar problems with the (hardly) freeware tools, and I don't use pre-1.0 either. So it's possible that it's something specific to your setup (hopefully), but I don't ignore the chance it's a true bug. > Anyway, I'll try the first option now and let you know how I go. Thanks > for your interest, and of course the link to the old distribution. Hope we can sort this out so that others don't run into any unnecessary bugs. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Beautiful is writing same markup. Internet Explorer 9 supports standards for HTML5, CSS3, SVG 1.1, ECMAScript5, and DOM L2 & L3. Spend less time writing and rewriting code and more time creating great experiences on the web. Be a part of the beta today http://p.sf.net/sfu/msIE9-sfdev2dev _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
