Hi!
> (Eric replied to me off-list about the "Installing FreeDOS 1.3 RC4" > video, but this is probably interesting to other FreeDOS users, so I'm > replying to the list) Okay for me. Instead of making small remarks off-list, I can do a more verbose review here. I hope nobody gets bored :-) > The error you're referring to at time index 0:58 in the video is > because the disk image is entirely blank. The disk has not been > partitioned yet, so there's no partition table. The error is: > >> - InitDiskillegal partition table - drive 00 sector 0 >> illegal partition table - drive 00 sector 0 >> illegal partition table - drive 00 sector 0 >> illegal partition table - drive 00 sector 0 That does NOT seem correct as a warning about a MBR full of 0 bytes, as filesystem type 0 stands for empty partitions. But maybe your MBR was not full of 0 bytes? Or maybe I have misunderstood something here? >> - InitDiskWARNING: using suspect partition Pri:1 FS 06: with calculated >> values 1014-15-63 instead of 1015-15-63 That EITHER means the used version of FDISK disagrees with itself by 1 cylinder between CHS and LBA values OR there is a bug in the kernel interpreting the values? If FDISK caused this, do the recent Tom/Japheth bugfixes solve it? > ..but this doesn't impede running FreeDOS afterwards. It could cause other problems when several partitions are used. >> there should be an easy upgrade from other >> dos, without fdisk and format, which does >> not destroy all your already present data. As in not having to use a relatively hidden advanced installer mode. Just something like "Install to C:\freedos", possibly hidden if no working C: is found and possibly changing to "Overwrite C:\freedos" if the directory is found to already be there. Also because you want to be able to upgrade older FreeDOS to newer FreeDOS without losing all your data :-o And no, this should not analyze which files and packages etc. you already have. It is okay to be not perfect when overwriting, still a lot better than formatting. > ... about using the Advanced Setup: > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxo0wPJgIm8 Will check that out, thanks. >> reboot should not use warmboot, but coldboot. The reason is that colder boots are more reliable. There also is hotboot, which is just reloading DOS and barely ever works. So I recommend that the installer uses coldboot to be on the safe side. >> the installer should probably tell you for >> each reboot from which medium you should >> boot next. > Like, a message printed after "Your computer should now reboot"? A Linux installer would say something like "Please remove the CD from your drive and then press enter to reboot the installed system and run some final install steps" In the FreeDOS case, you have to boot the CD twice (reboot after fdisk to format) before 3. booting the installed system, so the installer should tell that it expects the user to boot the CD (or USB) again. >> hopefully the bugs in the default config >> and autoexec will be fixed, too. > Can you be more specific? See my 2021-05-03 mail on freedos-devel, "Distro autoexec/config wishes for 1.3rc4" where I try to review the templates used on https://github.com/shidel/FDI/ but note that the templates do not really make it easy to see what the installed configs are going to be on a particular system. The main replies to this thread up to and including 2021-05-06 are interesting to read as well. After that, the topic is shifting to RBIL. > [and then I think you commented on some of the YouTube comments:] > >>> 1:17: Should be "Deutsch" instead of "Deutsche". >>> the first means "German", the latter "Germans" >> > This is a comment from YouTube user lucius1976. Exactly. It was one of the comments you had not yet answered on your youtube channel. > On YouTube, I answered with this: > >> DOS applications support sound, not DOS itself. And AC97 sound >> hardware dates from 1997, when game companies weren't writing DOS >> games anymore. AC97 is a different interface than SoundBlaster, >> the most common sound card in the DOS era. >> >> I believe TEMU (Tandy Emulator) has a Virtual >> SoundBlaster ("VSB") and you might try that. Link to GitHub is >> https://github.com/volkertb/temu-vsb While Volkert has a great collection of code about DOS sound issues, have you checked whether TEMU actually already provides some practical help to DOS users, as opposed to DOS developers, in particular with AC97/HDA hardware and games which expect SB16? > This question about sound comes up from time to time Exactly. And I usually answer that you can play media files with MPXPLAY on HDA and AC97. As you recommend MPLAYER and Open Cubic Player, I assume those also work with modern sound chips? Then we should include at least one of them in the "full" set of the CD/USB. I also answer that most old games for DOS have built-in drivers which only support ISA or compatible sound cards such as Sound Blaster and that while some PCI cards do claim to have some DOS support, only older mainboards with DDMA or similar actually support that. Using the cards on newer mainboards may still give you partial functionality, maybe "Adlib or OPL3 FM sound, no IRQ" or something like that. So I usually conclude by saying that if you want universal sound for DOS games, your best option is to run DOS inside some emulator inside another OS which has native support for your sound :-) For that, I generally recommend DOSEMU2 or DOSBOX, while configuring them to use a more complete FreeDOS instead of their built-in small DOS editions. Note that DOSEMU2 is missing good PC speaker support at the moment. The good thing about those two emulators is that you have trivially easy access to the files seen by DOS apps from your Windows or Linux host system. Using emulators which simulate a complete, but empty PC such as VirtualBox or QEMU or Bochs has the disadvantage of having to process disk images to get in touch with the files seen by DOS. We have VMSMOUNT to solve this for VMWare, but VMWare is no open source. Maybe I have missed some easy method for accessing DOS drives of VirtualBox, QEMU or Bochs? Also, such emulators may not be particularily good at emulating OLD hardware compatible with DOS apps, such as a Sound Blaster for games. Maybe it would be good to have a comparison of such ins and outs, maybe per simulation topic (e.g. VGA, SB16, drive access) for all the 6 emulator options mentioned in this mail? Regards, Eric _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
