Hi!
Time for another collection of news from BTTR :-) First some non-news: The CSM BIOS for EFI machines thread fell silent: https://www.bttr-software.de/forum/board_entry.php?id=22628&page=0&order=time&category=0 Maybe somebody has heard about new ideas on this topic? Now for the actual news: https://www.bttr-software.de/forum/board_entry.php?id=22909&page=0&order=time&category=0 JEMM386 version 5.86 fixes a SBLive driver compatibility regression by re-introducing some explicit support for them. Japheth writes:
[...] this is what I have found out about the SB emulation drivers: - they need an XMS block with a physical address below 0x400000. - they expect the EMM to have mapped this block "identical" ( physical == linear address ). - they disable paging temporarily (I assume that's the easiest way to modify page tables of the EMM - which is needed to store the synthesizer data ) - they modify the EMM's IDT entries 0x01, 0x02 and 0x67 ( SBINIT.COM also 0x03 ) - they grab the EMM's last 3 GDT entries. - they don't touch the IO permission bitmap - the SB and DMA ports a trapped by hardware ( with the help of INT 0x02 [NMI] ). This must be supported by the MB chipset! - they use IO watchpoints to trap PIC ports 0x20 and 0xA0. Hence the drivers need at least a Pentium. - the modified IDT vector 0x67 enables the driver to intercept int 67h, ax=DE01h and ax=DE0C. This makes it possible to intrude into any VCPI client's address space and IDT.
The thread also discusses how to make best use of VSBHDA / VSBHDASF, where the latter is a version with added sound font support :-) Next topic: https://www.bttr-software.de/forum/forum_entry.php?id=22936 "swap42 – map host directories to a raw hdd image (Emulation)" which might be useful for Linux Qemu / PCem users who, unlike DOSEMU2 users cannot simply map a Linux directory to a drive. Instead, SWAP42 creates a CHS HDD FAT16 image filled with the contents of a Linux directory, to make it easy to use in disk image based emulators. You can also trigger updates on the fly. A new version of ASTRA Advanced System Information Tool is out: https://www.bttr-software.de/forum/forum_entry.php?id=22937
ASTRA 7.22 beta features the following news: - Added detailed information about the VIA PLE133/KLE133 chipset (supported and current memory types and clocks, memory controller mode, timings, etc.) - Added chipset detection for old AMI BIOS motherboards - Added BIOS ID string detection for old monochrome AMI Plus BIOS (string like ENET-1107-040990-KH) - Added detection of the Intel Pentium III Xbox Edition processor - Added database information about motherboard Socket Type, Form Factor, Memory Slots, Maximum Memory Amount, Expansion Slots - Added detection of the AMI keyboard controller revision - Fixed detection of double-sided SIMM memory modules on the Intel 430 chipset - Some minor bugs fixed - Updated the program database ASTRA 7.22 beta download link: http://www.sysinfolab.com/files/beta/astrabet.zip
Finally, while we already do mention the new DOjS version, the sourceforge news item does not yet mention the DOStodon use for accessing Mastodon: https://www.bttr-software.de/forum/forum_entry.php?id=22949
DOjS v1.14.0 and DOStodon based on that (Announce) posted by SuperIlu Homepage, Berlin, Germany, 22.11.2025, 17:22 I did finally release a new version of DOjS: https://github.com/SuperIlu/DOjS/releases/tag/v1.140 # Version 1.14.0 (Up the grade) / November 22th, 2025 * fixed error message for library loading in win32 * fixed SQLite3 database opening in win32 * return empty object from GetNetworkInterfaces() on win32 * fixed curl on win32 * updated zip to 0.3.5 * Patched `3rdparty\allegro-4.2.2-xc-master\src\bmp.c` to support all BMP formats mentioned in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMP_file_format#Bitmap_file_header (backport from allegro5). * improved documentation * Updated to mbedTLS 3.6.5 * Updated cURL to 8.17.0 * Updated tiff to 4.7.1 * Updated pl_mpeg * Updated nanoSVG * Updated libpng to 1.6.50 * Updated jasper to 4.2.8 * Updated AnimatedGIF to 2.2.0 * Moved mbedTLS config out of the source tree * Added MMSynth plugin based on https://github.com/simap/MicroModSynth * Added smaker-plugin based on https://libsmacker.sourceforge.net/ * Added EXIF plugin based on https://github.com/libexif/libexif * Added cRSID plugin based on https://github.com/dashodanger/libcRSID * Added more examples/tests * Added my VCFe talk slides from May, 2025 --- Javascript on MS-DOS? Try DOjS https://github.com/SuperIlu/DOjS Fediverse: @[email protected]
Enjoy those new DOS things and have a nice early December :-) Cheers, Eric _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
