Hi Michael, sorry about covering so many topics in one mail :-) I tried to use paragraphs. Also, you are welcome to shorten quoted parts a lot when you write replies to my mail. Thanks :-)
> I'm thinking of modern video cards and multiple core processors. My modern video card works fine in DOS, but the Linux 3d driver is tens of megabytes so it is unlikely that any DOS game will contain support for 3d acceleration for this card. I think there were some ideas about DOS extenders for using multi core multithreading within DOS apps. The DOS kernel itself uses no heavy computations at all, so indeed it is also only interesting for apps to use multiple cores, if it is interesting for anything in DOS at all. > I would imagine that Freedos in 16 bit mode can't use multiple See above. > cores. One of the problems with DOS that I recall is a total > lack of hardware protection. This allowed direct hardware > access, which is fast. Unfortunately, accessing hardware directly > instead of through a well defined interface makes supporting that > software a nightmare. We see this "nightmare" in SoundBlaster support all the time. However, you cannot recompile old commercial games and you do see that modern software such as MPXPLAY does support modern soundcards in DOS. So yes, soundcard access in DOS was never meant to have easy to replace drivers and now this hurts us as modern hardware is no longer similar to old SoundBlaster. QUESTION: Was there any sort-of-common sort-of-pluggable DOS sound driver framework which was used by at least several of the more popular classic games? Then we could invent either a way to patch those games (on disk or in RAM) or maybe one could even write a (sort of) pluggable module which enables this family of games to use more modern soundcards, maybe to begin with a few more widespread AC97 chipsets or later HDA? > Is producing a 32 bit protected mode Freedos or even a 64 bit version > of Freedos dead? I'm thinking that Freedos should be able to support A FreeDOS FD32 project exists, but is not very active. Some time ago, it was a bit of a DOS where the kernel runs in protected mode and offers a built-in DPMI DOS extender API to have better performance compared to normal DOS where the overhead of calling the kernel from a stand-alone extender is a bit higher. It seems that in 2010, FD32 was active in a new direction, using a microkernel and modular design. A diagram on http://freedos-32.sourceforge.net/ shows that the current version lacks drivers for FAT, ISO9660, disks (IDE, CD/DVD...) and DPMI, it only has the kernel itself with memory management and a C library and the LEAN FD32- specific new filesystem which is a bit inspired by ext2. > multiple processing cores and other modern hardware. OpenGem should be Support for multiple cores would need the motivation of having anything which actually uses a lot of computation. I can boot Linux, lots of disk I/O and computation, in 20 seconds on new hardware - but DOS still boots much faster using only one single core in 16/32 bit mode of the same 64 bit computer because it is so small and simple :-) > upgraded to work on 32 or 64 bit systems. Another consideration, a 32 > bit or 64 bit variant of Freedos should protect the hardware. An open See above - it will not help you with old apps, but you could join FD32 to go the "DOS-like embedded system for modern hardware" path which is also sort of exciting ;-) > networking standard should exist in a 32 or 64 bit version of Freedos > supporting most of the popular network cards. A 32 or 64 bit Freedos We do have some cool developments in USB support for DOS recently, so yes, there can also be cool network drivers. > that can simulate a 16 bit DOS environment where there is standard well > supported virtual hardware is a thought. Think virtual printers for You clearly are a fan of FD32, enjoy :-) > WordPerfect 6.0 that the standard install disks provide drivers for. Interesting point... Drivers for markup escape sequences? Or drivers for printing any content but as raster graphics? The latter would also require a software such as an office app which also PROVIDES content in that form. On the other hand, software like GHOSTSCRIPT has been ported to FreeDOS already and that can print PS, PDF and other formats in a "convert to the native language of a printer" way which is already quite useful, at least as idea. Have not tested it. > On the subject of word processing, it would be nice if Freedos could > run a WordPerfect equivalent program that is licensed under the GPL. On the 14th, Marco mailed on this list that the Visicalc spreadsheet is now free for non-commercial use, see the web page: www.danbricklin.com/history/vclicense.htm :-) > I'm thinking the goal for protected mode Freedos that is 32 or 64 bit > should be providing a hypervisor to run multiple instances of 16 bit > Freedos or even Linux instances. I think 32/64 bit Freedos should be > the minimum that is needed to provide hardware protection, memory > management, etcetera. ...why on earth? If I wanted a complex system, I would run Linux, maybe a hypervisor with running one or more classic DOS instances in it, knowing that DOS is fast and simple. > After all, DOS systems are supposed to be simple, > light, and really fast. Exactly, so it should not turn into a "re-invented Linux" which "pretends to be simple" but stay actually simple. > Why Freedos? What are the defining reasons and goals for the coming 1.1 > release? Except for certain smart phones and other embedded computers, > does Freedos really have a niche anymore? Interestingly, QNX might have a new use for smartphones these days. However, DOS is great for running DOS apps, of which there are many. I personally also find it good that you can use e.g. DJGPP to compile apps written in GNU C to give them a new twist: The DJGPP version of a software has fast, direct hardware access and can use more than 3 GB of RAM, because DOS itself uses almost no RAM for itself. On the bad side, DOS does not give a lot of "service" compared to Windows or Linux so you have to do some things (e.g. soundcard I/O) yourself. Yet, at least Linux now makes it very easy to use MORE than 4 GB of RAM and with 4 GB of RAM for only 25 Euro, there is not much pain in Linux itself using even 100s of megabytes of it for the OS, so my "DJGPP and DOS are fun because you get all the hardware for yourself" are limited to the I/O advantage on REALLY modern hardware. Also, DJGPP DOS apps and/or a DPMI-ish DOS extender are not normally aware of multiple CPU cores, reducing the "all hardware for yourself" advantage in DOS further... I could say that DJGPP is very cool for HALF-modern PC. If you can tell me about use cases where lots of RAM and / or CPU time are good to have, we can start some thread about whether it is interesting to run such an app in a "DOS extender for VERY-modern hardware" and what the nature of that extender would be, maybe some DPMI or HXRT style thing with further extensions and maybe using a special extended HIMEM / EMM386 driver. Remember that for example the DR-DOS task swapper had some special EMM386 extensions to make it efficient (as far as I remember) as had other "multi taskers". > Syllable is it's own operating system, but could a 32 bit version of > Freedos or even a 64 bit version of Freedos run it under emulation? I think it does say something that most computer users have never heard about Syllable yet - a good idea with no apps for it just does not do it. Or am I FUD-ing? > OpenGL support would be nice, but a 32 bit GUI is needed for that. The GUI is not the point. If you had a DOS with a Gnome Compiz style eye candy desktop but still would only have software like Midnight Commander and Commander Keen for it, you would not gain much from the 3d enabled desktop. Maybe Deskwork - http://deskwork.de/FOTOS/ - shows you where this is leading: Fancy (a la Star Trek Next Gen) desktop, fancy file manager (for example with handling of EXIF image metadata afair) and control panel but not many new apps (more like "what would have been included if Windows 3 was invented again") included and all your existing apps will still run old DOS or Windows 3 style. http://deskwork.de/FOTOS/APPS.HTM Apps include (flight) maps, a web server, a media player in style of Windows Media Center, a CD writer, MOD player and editor and a number of things inspired by the 90s demo scene, e.g. 3d shaded polygon style molecule display or games :-) Deskwork is a shareware "OS" written in Pascal and ASM. It runs on top of DOS and combines with Win3(?). Native apps made for deskwork can use some OS-like extensions. Regards, Eric PS: I do think that ReactOS is a very nice idea. Maybe it lost some momentum now that Windows7 sucks much less than Vista, while ReactOS will even have a hard time to run Windows XP software. So maybe it has to orient to a more nostalgic audience which enjoys WinNT / Win2000 :) For even older Windows apps, DOS + HXRT are an option. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Get a FREE DOWNLOAD! and learn more about uberSVN rich system, user administration capabilities and model configuration. Take the hassle out of deploying and managing Subversion and the tools developers use with it. http://p.sf.net/sfu/wandisco-d2d-2 _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
