Hi,
On Sat, Jun 18, 2016 at 4:00 AM, Brandon Taylor <donnie126_2...@hotmail.com>
wrote:
>
> As much as I hate to concede, I must. I have found a critical passage on
the FreeDOS website
> which, in my eyes, discourages further experimentation:
How did it discourage anybody? By giving them total freedom??
> “FreeDOS is a complete operating system. If you choose to install this on
your computer,
> you may overwrite the operating system you have now (for example,
Windows.) If this is not
> what you intend, please stop now.”
In case it hasn't already been made obvious, this is a warning for
inexperienced users who (surprise!) would rather NOT wipe out their
existing OS and data if all they want to do is play around and experiment
with DOS.
Perhaps it needs to mention that VMs (e.g. QEMU) are a much safer
alternative.
> It seems, in making FreeDOS, the developers have decided to stay true to
the original nature
> of the earliest days of DOS. 640KB was all the memory anyone ever needed,
DOS liked to be
> the ONLY operating system on any given PC, and multi-booting wasn't even
heard of.
Sure, multi-booting is still somewhat rare, mostly because it's dangerous
and nobody "needs" DOS as much as they used to (or nowadays even frown upon
it).
But there's an entire category just for multi-booting ("BOOT"):
http://www.freedos.org/software/?cat=boot
But, as Eric already mentioned, 640 kb is only for IBM PCs running
8088/8086. Anything like 286 (max 16 MB ftw!) can run XMSv2 or DPMI 0.9 and
386 can run XMSv3 and DPMI 1.0. (Although almost all DPMI stuff is 386+.)
While you may not get full "4 GB" of RAM on 386+, you can usually get up to
2 GB, comfortably. That is well supported by many tools (e.g. OpenWatcom,
DJGPP, FreeBASIC, Free Pascal).
> Anyway, Dennis, although plugging a different SourceForge project, is
essentially correct.
> DOSBox always played my games without problems, and, as the old adage
goes,
> “If it ain't broke, don't fix it.”
DOSBox is "only" for games, nothing else. That was their entire goal. It's
not a "real" DOS and was never meant to boot on native hardware. Heck, to
stay portable, they refused to add any x86 extensions, so it's slow as
molasses! (A "fast 486" isn't very fast, IMHO.)
> So anyway, thus ends my brief and unsuccessful foray into FreeDOS.
DOS is not for the faint-hearted! If you don't already know it and like it,
it's not going to do what you want. Honestly, it's an uphill battle (maybe
impossible task) to keep supporting it in such a hostile tech world that
doesn't care one whit about legacy anymore.
I hate to be cynical, but it just goes to show you that nothing stays
popular forever. Even if you get "better", nobody cares, it's "too old" or
"doesn't burn DVDs" or whatnot. You can't win for trying.
Why try at all? Nobody will care in a few years, and it'll all be obsolete
in lieu of newer trendy stuff. Ungrateful world. :-(
> Sent from my Windows 10 phone
Ah, the true problem presents itself. ;-)
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