Hi, On Mon, Nov 12, 2012 at 2:20 PM, Eric Auer <e.a...@jpberlin.de> wrote: > > Hi Karen, (Bob: please see below...) > > important snippet from > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DR-DOS#After_Novell > > Support for LBA and FAT32 originally was a DRFAT32 device driver,
Which wasn't included in DR-DOS 7.03 (at least not my version). I don't know if it's publicly available, but I didn't see it on drdos.com . Not sure why, but those tweaks are long gone, AFAICT. > so in old DR DOS, you first have to boot from a FAT16 partition > which is entirely in the first 8 GB of your disk and less than > 2 GB in size, I would assume. Also, FDISK may be limited, so you > better use something else than old DR DOS FDISK to partition... I know DR-DOS 7.03 had an improved FDISK, but how good is anyone's guess. I vaguely remember the changelog mentioning that it could at least detect other partitions better (e.g. FAT32), but I never extensively used it, so I dunno the details. > In DR DOS 7.04 and newer, things were getting better, but it is > unlikely that you have that version. I don't think anyone has it, it's not an official full release with all utils, only a few patches for a few minor things for OEMs, maybe only for rescue floppies or similar. > However, based on OpenDOS > 7.01 source code, EDR-DOS implemented a free kernel with FAT32 > and LBA support (version "DR DOS 7.01.08" of July 2011). This may be for non-commercial use only. > DR DOS 7.03 (from the year 1999!) is the most recent DR DOS. Yes, it's the same as Caldera DR-DOS 7.03 as it still says "Caldera". This is the full install with all utils. > I strongly recommend EDR DOS instead: > > http://www.drdosprojects.de/index.cgi/download.htm > (just get the binaries, otherwise you need source+patch+compiler) Honestly, with so many other things to play with, I've never even tried EDR-DOS (sorry, Udo!). Never had a huge urge nor need. But I think this is only kernel and shell, not all the assorted utils. > Note that EDR DOS comes with very little extra software - simply > use the extra software of another DOS like DR DOS or FreeDOS :-) Right. IIRC, he tweaked a very few FreeDOS system tools to work with EDR-DOS. I have them backed up somewhere. Would be interested to take a look at again, but it's probably low priority. :-/ > The last time that I saw such a jumper, it limited the > size to 32 GB to avoid crashes with broken BIOSes. Also, > some drives came with software to limit them to 128 GB > to avoid yet other compatibility issues. Unless you have > a VERY old BIOS (early 1990s) you do not need drivers: Just a side note: modern Windows (NT-based) won't format greater than 32 GB FAT32 partitions, officially due to speed reasons. Classic Windows (Win9x), IIRC, won't even work at all beyond 137 GB. > That said, a normal FreeDOS with FAT32 support can use > the first 2 TB of your disk as long as you use LBA FAT32 > type partitions. You can even make one partition of that > size if you do not want to use several drive letters... I know I've said this many times (sorry), but my current machine triple boots (Win7 64-bit, PuppyLinux 32-bit, FreeDOS 1.1-ish). The FAT32 partition is last and 4 GB in size (almost full too, oops! heheh). Though max filesize is still 2 GB (FreeDOS limitation), just FYI. > Using SSD is no problem for DOS at all, only the size > matters, the BIOS supports it all. If DOS would KNOW > that the disk is SSD, it could get a bit more speed. > Also, modern harddisk and SSD allow parallel access to > gain speed, but DOS is not multitasking things anyway. They keep having improvements in SSD, e.g. some new manufacturing process from Intel. I've never cared, honestly. People want fast bootups, but others say it doesn't matter (as they rarely boot from scratch). Try JEMM386 FASTBOOT. Well, FreeDOS already boots pretty fast (five seconds?). Good for when you only want to do simple calculations, benchmarks, compiling, or gaming or whatever. ;-) Win8 supposedly saves (hibernates?) the kernel for future quicker loading at bootup. Others (e.g. Fedora? default yet?) use systemd, which tries to parallelize various things and save some info, but it's not initv compatible, hence won't work except on Linux. Other people say use small SSD for OS install and regular HD for storing lots of big files of multimedia (movies, music). And even hybrid SSD / HD drives exist nowadays, I think. (Bernd, weren't you getting a USB drive pre-install of Windows?) As always, with more options for flexibility comes much more complexity, so YMMV. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Monitor your physical, virtual and cloud infrastructure from a single web console. Get in-depth insight into apps, servers, databases, vmware, SAP, cloud infrastructure, etc. Download 30-day Free Trial. Pricing starts from $795 for 25 servers or applications! http://p.sf.net/sfu/zoho_dev2dev_nov _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
