[Freedos-user] I have no Sound in VMWARE
Hi, If i use FreeDos in VMWARE i get no Sound. Wich Drivers i have to install? I set the OS to MS-DOS. Best regards, Eric ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Talking FreeDOS vm
Hi, i.m allso blind. And use FreeDos with Asap. Your idea could be interesting for someone who don’t know howto Setup a Screenreader without assestive guide. Best regards from Eric Gesendet von Mail für Windows 10 Von: Joseph Norton Gesendet: Freitag, 14. Juni 2019 19:17 An: freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net Betreff: [Freedos-user] Talking FreeDOS vm Hi listers: I am a blind user playing around with FreeDOS using a virtual machine under VMWare Player. A while back, one of us set up a preconfigured DOSBox setup called “Talking DOSBox”. I was thinking of putting together a similar virtual machine based on a FreeDOS installation for others to play with, which would include the ASAP screen reader as well as the free version of JAWS for DOS. I could throw some things in there like what is included with the Talking DOSBox setup. It could be preconfigured, and all the user would have to do is install VMWare Player, a program called “com0com” and a virtual Braille ‘n Speak driver which would use either the SAPI voice or the ESpeak voice for speech. I have permission from Larry Skutchan to include ASAP in there, and the JAWS for DOS program was released as freeware back in 1999. I just wonder if the FreeDOS folks would have a problem with my doing this. Any thoughts? Thanks! Sent from Mail for Windows 10 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] Freedos and Realtec soundchips
Hi, Freedos runs pritty well on modern devices. But are there any Drivers for the generic realtec soundchips? I that is not the case, is there a Kind of soundcards wich can be used as well under FreeDOS as under Windows 10? Eric ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Freedos and Realtec soundchips
I allready have 2 virtual machines running MS DOS and FreeDOS Eric Von: Eric Auer Gesendet: Freitag, 27. März 2020 23:41 An: freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net Betreff: Re: [Freedos-user] Freedos and Realtec soundchips Hi Eric ;-) > Freedos runs pretty well on modern devices. But are there any > drivers for the generic realtek soundchips? I that is not the > case, is there a kind of soundcards wich can be used as well > under FreeDOS as under Windows 10? You probably refer to AC97 or HDA compatible sound hardware. Some newer media players for DOS support various chips in this category, but old games do not. You can not modify the old game usually and DOS does not have drivers for sound: The driver is part of the game. If you want to use an old game with sound on modern hardware, you usually need to use DOS inside a virtual machine which simulates an old sound card such as SoundBlaster. There are both general virtual machines and DOS specific ones. An example of the latter is DOSEMU2 (most distros still use the older DOSEMU branch) for Linux :-) If you only have Windows 10, then have a look at DOSBOX which simulates part of an old PC and simulates DOS itself, but you can also install more of FreeDOS in it. Or try a generic VM such as VMWare, VirtualBox, Bochs, QEMU. Have fun :-) Cheers, Eric PS: Win10 does not support ancient soundcards which DOS games did. ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Freedos and Realtec soundchips
But thank you for this Information! ☺ Eric Von: Eric Auer Gesendet: Freitag, 27. März 2020 23:41 An: freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net Betreff: Re: [Freedos-user] Freedos and Realtec soundchips Hi Eric ;-) > Freedos runs pretty well on modern devices. But are there any > drivers for the generic realtek soundchips? I that is not the > case, is there a kind of soundcards wich can be used as well > under FreeDOS as under Windows 10? You probably refer to AC97 or HDA compatible sound hardware. Some newer media players for DOS support various chips in this category, but old games do not. You can not modify the old game usually and DOS does not have drivers for sound: The driver is part of the game. If you want to use an old game with sound on modern hardware, you usually need to use DOS inside a virtual machine which simulates an old sound card such as SoundBlaster. There are both general virtual machines and DOS specific ones. An example of the latter is DOSEMU2 (most distros still use the older DOSEMU branch) for Linux :-) If you only have Windows 10, then have a look at DOSBOX which simulates part of an old PC and simulates DOS itself, but you can also install more of FreeDOS in it. Or try a generic VM such as VMWare, VirtualBox, Bochs, QEMU. Have fun :-) Cheers, Eric PS: Win10 does not support ancient soundcards which DOS games did. ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Videos about FreeDOS
i know the channel because i'm alls.o a member of the Macebook group. Am 20.09.2021 01:40 schrieb Jim Hall :Hi everyone! We have a YouTube channel to demonstrate FreeDOS and to show off cool DOS programs that you can run on FreeDOS. I usually upload new videos every week - although I haven't posted in a few weeks because of other commitments that are completely sucking my time. New videos should be coming soon. Here are some FreeDOS videos that you might like to watch: Demonstration of the PsychDOS "desktop" running on FreeDOS. This is a completely text-mode "desktop" for DOS, with a bunch of bundled applications: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQCiZtnJekU Using GNU CHCP to change the DOS font: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4bHLI4O33Y Playing the DOS game "Acronia" - a 2D sidescroller shooter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aq3y616Rp34 Playing "Little Willy" - a 2D platformer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qs83FbNAplk And I sometimes post programming videos. This is sort of an extension of the "Writing FreeDOS Programs in C" video series that I recorded last summer, to teach an introduction to C programming: (these are usually very simple programs, good for learning C) Writing a program to generate characters by ASCII code: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TP4SW8GvmKg Writing a random number generator program: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArIZDtVicek Writing a simple chess board user interface: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPX50QJe4YM Writing an "Extended ASCII" table demonstration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NufalotCh7E You can also subscribe to the YouTube channel, and you'll get updates when new videos get posted. Jim ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] DOS on VM ?
On Saturday 23 September 2006 21:22, Marcel Tschudin wrote: > After the hint on Microsoft I tried to install their Virtual Server 2005, > but it refuses an installation on Windows XP Home edition... > > Now I'm on the page of VMware and wonder what would be more appropriate for > my application, the VMware Player or the VMware Server? > > Framework was great, you know its still being sold and developed right? Id > > > love a copy of the current version, but its not worth spending the $ at > > this > > stage of the game for the use id have. > > Yes, since years I was waiting to pay less than $499.-- for a newer > version. Had recently several mails with them to find out whether their > isn't a possibility of a less expensive version for private users, but no > luck. > > As a side note, at one point i think i had Framework running on XP. I dont > > > remember if i did anything special to get it to work but i dont think so. > > I was able to use it until Windows 98. With XP I didn't have a chance so > far, even setting the program option to Windows 95 didn't help. It really > would be a great help to know how it could be made run on XP. The whole > exercise with a VM is only for this one single reason. > > Marcel I'd recommend the free 30 day trial version of the VM workstation, which includes the VMWare player. During the trial period, you can create virtual machines, and once the trial period ends, you can continue to use the VM player to run the machines. There are specific recommendations regarding running virtual dos machines, specifically with respect to CPU utilization, and they have a program dosidle at VMWare's site that you should install so you don't use up all your CPU time of the host machine. There are some other programs, notably dosemu and dosbox, that are available in BSD and linux but I don't know if they have Windows versions. - Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT & business topics through brief surveys -- and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.php&p=sourceforge&CID=DEVDEV ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] DOS on VM ?
On Sunday 24 September 2006 12:01, you wrote: > I ended up now exactly where I expected to encounter the problem: > > 1) Downloaded VMware Workstation (one of all the propositions) > > 2) Downloaded fdbasecd.iso > > 3) Started to create a new VM (thought 1GB should be enough for a DOS > application). Here now the problems: > > a) The workstation indicates a warning that the VMware tools are not > installed. > > b) The new VM couldn't find the OS, i.e. the ISO-file. > > Who of you is familiar with VMware? Your help is very much appreciated. > Thank you. > > Marcel Don't worry about the VMtools - those are tools that would affect your screen resolution if you had a GUI (which DOS doesn't). VMWare doesn't have VMTools for DOS anyway. Rather than installing from the iso image, you can burn a regular CD from the iso image and then try the install. Here is a freeware CD burning program for creating CD's from iso images: http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/utilities.html. The program is the BurnCDCC one. Make the install CD, then put it into drive. Start the VM machine (if it is not the 1st time for the VMWare image you are creating, you need to change the boot options on the virtual machine by pressing F2) and it should install like on a regular PC. Once you get things installed, remember the DOSidle program from VMWare's website. Otherwise you will dramatically slow down the host machine, even if you only allocate minimal RAM to the guest OS. Hope this helps. Eric - Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT & business topics through brief surveys -- and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.php&p=sourceforge&CID=DEVDEV ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] FreeDOS install on 2nd hard drive
I have two hard drives. The first (HDA) looks like this: HDA1: Dell rescue (FAT) HDA2: WinXP HDA3: Windows swap The second look like this: HDB1: Spare 1.4 GB HDB2: NetBSD HDB3: Kubuntu HDB5: Linux swap HDB6: Linux /boot HDB7: NTFS drive (D:) HDB8: Shared FAT partition (M:) HDB9: Linux /home I'd like to put FreeDOS on HDB1, but wanted to know if that was possible. When I boot using a DOS bootable floppy, HDA1 shows up as C:, HDB8 shows up as D:. If I install FreeDOS, will it be able to use C:? Also, will FreeDOS mess up my drive lettering in XP? I boot using Grub and have read the previous recent posts about booting FreeDOS with Grub, so I think I should be OK. - SF.Net email is sponsored by: Check out the new SourceForge.net Marketplace. It's the best place to buy or sell services for just about anything Open Source. http://sourceforge.net/services/buy/index.php ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] Display size
I have a Sony Vaio PCG-C!VN laptop, which has a 1024x480 screen size. I'd like to install FreeDOS on it, but the display is such that it leaves large amounts of unused black space on both sides of the screen. Is there a way to set the display so that I can use the entire screen? - This SF.Net email is sponsored by the Moblin Your Move Developer's challenge Build the coolest Linux based applications with Moblin SDK & win great prizes Grand prize is a trip for two to an Open Source event anywhere in the world http://moblin-contest.org/redirect.php?banner_id=100&url=/___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Display size
Thanks all for the assistance. I tried using mode. I still get a little more than an inch on each side, and when I tried the settings, the fonts on the programs I am using were all messed up (Quattro Pro and MS Works). I'll look into some of the svga/vga options and report back in a few days. --- On Tue, 8/19/08, Eric Auer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: From: Eric Auer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: [Freedos-user] Display size To: freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net Date: Tuesday, August 19, 2008, 11:31 PM Hi Wolfram, > If you are into experimenting a bit, try SVGATEXTMODE. It can give very > unusual textmodes. Drawback is, considering your hardware, I guess you > must find the correct values on your own. > > www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/util/user/svgatextmode_1_9_16rc1-dos.tgz There was also some version called STM which is more tuned towards DOS than plain DJGPP svgatextmode port I believe, but I forgot the details. However, here is your MODE sequence: MODE co80 MODE con lines=43 MODE con lines=14 This selects 80x25 720x400 9x16 mode, then switches to EGA ???x350 resolution and finally switches to ?x14 font which means that you get 25 lines in (roughly) 350 pixels. If the X resolution stays at 720 (it might switch to 640, not sure) then you end up with 720x350 (with 9x14 style font) resolution suitable for 2:1 wide screen :-). Actually in DOSEMU there even is a VESA text mode with 132x60 with 8x8 font using 1056x480 pixels: mode con lines=60 cols=132 and then mode con lines=16 gives you 132x30 with 8x16 font there... However 1056 pixels is just a bit too much to fit the 1024x480 Vaio. Still you could start at the 132x30 SVGATextMode parameters to derive a new 128x30 or 112x30 set of parameters for SVGATextMode (non VESA). Eric - This SF.Net email is sponsored by the Moblin Your Move Developer's challenge Build the coolest Linux based applications with Moblin SDK & win great prizes Grand prize is a trip for two to an Open Source event anywhere in the world http://moblin-contest.org/redirect.php?banner_id=100&url=/ ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user - This SF.Net email is sponsored by the Moblin Your Move Developer's challenge Build the coolest Linux based applications with Moblin SDK & win great prizes Grand prize is a trip for two to an Open Source event anywhere in the world http://moblin-contest.org/redirect.php?banner_id=100&url=/___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Updated Antivirus for dos
I concur about the commercial virus scanners. I repaired someones XP system yesterday. Commercial scanners detected 2 rootkits, 6 viruses and 2 trojans. I ran ClamWin and it missed all of these. I like ClamAV because of its low overhead. F-Prot would still work on older viruses floating around out there and since its non-resident its not a bad secondary scanner. If its a dual boot machine, you can scan the DOS partition with a Windows, Linux or BSD virus scanning utility from within the other operating system. If it only runs DOS but has enough memory, you can try scanning with a live Linux security CD (check distrowatch.com). --- On Wed, 12/3/08, Michael Reichenbach <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > From: Michael Reichenbach <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Subject: Re: [Freedos-user] Updated Antivirus for dos > To: freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net > Date: Wednesday, December 3, 2008, 3:11 PM > Eric Auer schrieb: > > Hi! > > > >> Antivirus for DOS is good like Antivirus for *any > barely used OS*, > >> because the barely used OS isn't target for > viruses. > > > > True, although you get the same effectivity by booting > > a known-clean readonly CD/DVD with any OS at all for > > your antivirus work :-). > > Yes, because no virus can be in RAM. (besides BIOS viruses > if this isn't > a myth) > > Unknown (or self made ;)) operating systems have also still > a small > advantage over the random operating system: while scanning > (reading > files from harddisk) there can be no exploits attacking the > scan engine > or the disk access driver. Ok, that's pretty paranoid > thought because > such techniques are not yet seen in the wild. > > > I think Avira free-av.de has a DOS boot disk > > with free-for-private-use NTFS drivers somewhere, too. > > http://www.unet.univie.ac.at/~a0503736/php/drdoswiki/index.php?n=Main.NTFS > > > Did you already try ClamAV for DOS? > > I tested ClamAV for Windows. It's a nice project, worth > to observe, no > damage if using it. But for serious scanning with good > results the > commercial vendors are still much better. > > - > This SF.Net email is sponsored by the Moblin Your Move > Developer's challenge > Build the coolest Linux based applications with Moblin SDK > & win great prizes > Grand prize is a trip for two to an Open Source event > anywhere in the world > http://moblin-contest.org/redirect.php?banner_id=100&url=/ > ___ > Freedos-user mailing list > Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user - This SF.Net email is sponsored by the Moblin Your Move Developer's challenge Build the coolest Linux based applications with Moblin SDK & win great prizes Grand prize is a trip for two to an Open Source event anywhere in the world http://moblin-contest.org/redirect.php?banner_id=100&url=/ ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] command line sector read and write tool?
There is a dos-based commercial forensic tool called safeback that you could purchase. Alternatively, you could search for a dos port of dd, or use a Linux or BSD based live CD or floppy and use the dd command. There are a few very small linux distros that fit on a floppy and run on the types of older hardware that DOS runs on, such as basiclinux, tomsrbt, hal91, or injector linux (which I personally like and can be found at http://injector.sourceforge.net/). --- On Wed, 12/10/08, Michael Reichenbach <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > From: Michael Reichenbach <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Subject: [Freedos-user] command line sector read and write tool? > To: freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net > Date: Wednesday, December 10, 2008, 8:58 PM > Is there a command line tool to read a sector from harddisk, > store it > somewhere and write it back later? > > -- > SF.Net email is Sponsored by MIX09, March 18-20, 2009 in > Las Vegas, Nevada. > The future of the web can't happen without you. Join > us at MIX09 to help > pave the way to the Next Web now. Learn more and register > at > http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;208669438;13503038;i?http://2009.visitmix.com/ > ___ > Freedos-user mailing list > Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user -- SF.Net email is Sponsored by MIX09, March 18-20, 2009 in Las Vegas, Nevada. The future of the web can't happen without you. Join us at MIX09 to help pave the way to the Next Web now. Learn more and register at http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;208669438;13503038;i?http://2009.visitmix.com/ ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] Installing FreeDOS without the boot loader?
Is it possible to install FreeDOS 1.0 on a Windows 95/98 machine without it installing the boot loader into the Windows 98 partition? I have an old laptop with Windows 98 and Linux. I use Grub to multiboot, so I don't need the FreeDOS boot loader, and don't want to interfere with the Win98 partition. I realize (1) Win98 has its own DOS, I just want to play with FreeDOS, and (2) I could just sys the FreeDOS partition, but I'd rather use the FreeDOS installer if possible. Thanks. -- ThinkGeek and WIRED's GeekDad team up for the Ultimate GeekDad Father's Day Giveaway. ONE MASSIVE PRIZE to the lucky parental unit. See the prize list and enter to win: http://p.sf.net/sfu/thinkgeek-promo ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] FreePOS point of sale software for DOS / XP
Hi, hidden inside a thread on FreeDOS devel you can now find an announcement of "free" (up to 2 POS terminals per location (e.g. restaurant) are free) Point Of Sale software. I think you should call it shareware. Anyway, it has some interesting features and works in FreeDOS and in WinXP. You can get the software on http://www.positive-feedback.net/ and you can find 14 competitors in the http://freshmeat.net/browse/79/ category "office/b'ness / fin. / point-of-sale". Best known is probably the Compiere project. The category has 88 entries but only 14 contain the word "point-of-sale" ;-). Most relevant are probably: FreeMercator JavaPOS and Quick Order, both Java, WITS, using a PHP/SQL server, RedPOS for Linux or Win32 and many Linux POS packages: nTPV, TkKasse, BananaPos, L'anePOS, RAA. And of course there is Compiere: ERP / CRM, including POS. As it is server / client and wants an Oracle DB, and the clients need Java and at least 128 MB RAM, it definitely does not target DOS users ;-). Some of the Linux POS packages will probably run on pretty simple PCs, though. Please add your collected "nice POS for DOS" links to this thread. Thanks. Eric --- This SF.Net email is sponsored by Oracle Space Sweepstakes Want to be the first software developer in space? Enter now for the Oracle Space Sweepstakes! http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=7412&alloc_id=16344&op=click ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] FAT32 undelete experiences?
Hi, has anybody tested those 2 (Win32) free undelete tools? http://www.pcinspector.de/download.htm#file_recovery (this homepage somehow takes a lot of bandwidth to open, not good with modem) http://www.pcinspector.de/ - can even find files by scanning for typical file headers if no metadata (directories, FATs) is left intact... (by Convar) http://www.woundedmoon.org/win32/driverescue19d.html (undelete for FAT12, FAT16, FAT32 and a bit of NTFS, for Win32, freeware) Eric PS: Convar also has "smart recovery" - same undelete idea, but optimized for flash disks and similar stuff to get back lost image files. --- This SF.Net email is sponsored by Oracle Space Sweepstakes Want to be the first software developer in space? Enter now for the Oracle Space Sweepstakes! http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=7412&alloc_id=16344&op=click ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] Re: Writing to NTFS filesystems
Hi Jim, > I have been using FreeDOS as a platform for a battery of human > performance tests for a few years... as the tests take > over system interrupts and do not work properly in a DOS window. Yes, nice, huh? :-). But that is a problem of DOS *window*, not of the brand of DOS. MS DOS would have worked, too, but only outside a window. I hope you already enjoy TSC / RDTSC based super precision timing for your tests and DJGPP GNU C to bypass all memory limits of classic DOS programs? :-) > However, it is becoming more difficult to maintain this as there are > hardly any PCs with VFAT partitions anymore. I have managed to keep up > so far by producing a bootable CD-ROM and writing the data to a > diskette... There are several solutions for your problem. If you know that your program will not crash, then you can store your data on RAMDISK and, after the experiment, use a DOS FTP or SCP (e.g. ssh2dos / sshdos) client to upload the data to a server. You can also store the data on USB, but drivers (BIOS drivers or DOS drivers) will usually be quite slow and the USB stack running in the background could mess up your performance test timing - I recommend to avoid USB mice and keyboards for the same reason, by the way. Of course you can again store the data on RAMDISK and load the USB drivers AFTER the test... > What I am wondering is if FreeDOS has developed the > capability to write to NTFS filesystems... There are drivers for NTFS, like NTFS4DOS, but many are either read- only or non-free. However, check our link collection on freedos.org, as far as I remember there are now even free (for personal use?) drivers which can write NTFS. However, NTFS is very complex and you probably get the same timing problems as with USB flash memory sticks. As you will probably want to run several test on the same PC, the very best solution will be to create a FAT16 or FAT32 partition on the test PC for DOS. You can do that after resizing NTFS partitions if you do not want to delete Win completely: The free NTFSRESIZE tool is part of many Linux based rescue / install CD-ROMs and of modern Linux install CD-ROMs. Eric PS: You can even do dual VGA display with DOS ;-). --- This SF.Net email is sponsored by Oracle Space Sweepstakes Want to be the first software developer in space? Enter now for the Oracle Space Sweepstakes! http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=7412&alloc_id=16344&op=click ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] Re: Re: text editor's and mem command
Hi all, as the "editors on old PCs" topic still has some attention: My spin-off variant EDIT 0.7c works properly on 8086 / 8088 (PC-XT) computers, even with 84-key keyboard. Hint hint ;-). http://www.coli.uni-sb.de/~eric/stuff/soft/by-others/edit07c.zip Aitor has asked (when 0.7b came out) whether there would be a place to download the D-FLAT library (the underlying windowing and "Text-GUI" (TUI) toolkit of EDIT). Patric has found good old DFLAT 20 still online. Public domain by Dr Dobbs: http://www.programmersheaven.com/search/download.asp?FileID=15308 You can also download the tuned-for-EDIT-0.7c version of DFLAT simply by downloading EDIT 0.7c, of course :-). Eric PS: I recently tried to test the file manager of ReactOS (WinNT clone, open source), the ROS Explorer, but had to find that it contained CMOV (PentiumPro/newer) and therefore would not run on my "ancient" 500 MHz PC. So far for classic-PC compatibility. The author could give me a 486 compatible version but the default down- load version is Pentium4 (!) optimized... --- This SF.Net email is sponsored by Oracle Space Sweepstakes Want to be the first software developer in space? Enter now for the Oracle Space Sweepstakes! http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=7412&alloc_id=16344&op=click ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] Announce: FDAPM 2005 May 23
Hi, I have uploaded an update for FDAPM: Version 2005 May 23 (as suggested by Martin S., I renamed everything in my download area from name-daymonthyear.zip to name-yearmonthday.zip, I hope you like the new style... but do not ask me to use numeric months instead of named months right now, I deliberately use names to avoid ambiguities...) :-). The new version explicitly stops the floppy motor before entering any of the standby variants (standby, suspend, flush, speed0...) and fixes an old bug which made the idle time percentage display tend to show nonsense values. The internal POWER interface to select which of the 4 hooked interrupts may trigger CPU sleep during idleness is now supported. Not that I would know ANY software which uses it, but it might be nice for debugging in cases where FDAPM causes unwanted slowdowns (you can now disable any of the sleep handler groups at runtime for testing, but have to use DEBUG for that unless somebody writes a nice user interface)... Syntax errors are now flagged as such and the SPEEDn option family has a new function: SPEED9 just reads out your current ACPI CPU throttle / duty cycle setting without changing it. Note that some BIOSes boot up with reserved settings which can cause displays like "0/8 of maximum speed detected" (while you are actually running at 8/8 speed, in other words at full normal speed). By the way, as the TSC (see RDTSC command which is not supported in DEBUG yet but has opcode 0f 31 ;-)) count keeps running while the CPU is periodically halted in "throttled mode", I could find out that my mainboard decides 16k times per second whether the CPU should be running or stopped. Quite often but not as smooth as I had expected. So if your mainboard uses similar clocks, you may want to combine ACPI throttle with other slowdown methods like disabling L1 cache to smoothly slow down your super-fast PC until your DOS games work okay :-). Note that ACPI throttling can also reduce power consumption a lot. When you are just idling at the DOS prompt and FDAPM APMDOS is in resident mode (only 1kB TSR size), the CPU will be in low power mode most of the time anyway, but you can do most of your everyday DOS work with a forced maximum throttle of 50 or even 25% of your normal CPU speed without noticeable problems, saving probably 30-75% of the CPU energy. Most CPUs consume very little power in halted / low power idle state, and with the SPEEDn option you force the CPU into that state for a certain percentage of all "mainboard timeslices" :-). The SPEED0 (halt system CPU until power or standby button pressed) function now explicitly enables the button and explicitly states that the PC is not yet waking up. This should solve two problems: First, if the button was not properly enabled, pressing the power button only turned your PC off instead of waking it up, and if the waking-up flag was not properly cleared, the PC could wake up again at once. Both made the SPEED0 function not very useful in previous versions. Should be a lot better with the new FDAPM version. Finally, the VGAON / VGAOFF functions now check if you actually have a VGA or at least EGA graphics card and whether you are running mono mode. Enjoy, and please report problems. If you have ACPI problems, please use the SPEED9 option to get some status information and/or use PCISLEEP ... and be warned that SPEEDn can guess / force values to get control over CPU duty cycle settings. Many BIOSes report wrong values here, but it CAN happen that they do so intentionally, because the BIOS can use duty cycle throttling as automatic "cooling" method when overheating is detected. So you might want to use SPEED9 to check current speed before you use SPEEDn to set a new speed. Raising the speed to higher-than- current values can override some BIOS decision, so do it at your own risk. You can get the new FDAPM at http://www.coli.uni-sb.de/~eric/stuff/soft/fdapm-2005may23.zip Thanks for testing :-). Eric PS: I got reports that QEMU can miss keyboard IRQs when FDAPM APMDOS is used with EMM386. If you have QEMU and/or have TASM (to compile modified test versions of EMM386) please contact me. Even if you do not want to compile things, you can still help with other testing. --- This SF.Net email is sponsored by Oracle Space Sweepstakes Want to be the first software developer in space? Enter now for the Oracle Space Sweepstakes! http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=7412&alloc_id=16344&op=click ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] re: "Datalight Makes Industry-Leading ROM-DOS Free to Single Users"
Hi, I browsed the Datalight ROM-DOS site a bit... - you gotta register to get the single user version (free) - ROM-DOS requires 186+ CPU. If you want it in ROM: It takes 60-90k. - included drivers: ansi ata display, vdisk, stackdev, print, power, mscdex, himem, emm386, keyb. - included tools: attrib backup chkdsk choice COMM command (with help) COMPRESS deltree DISK2IMG diskcomp diskcopy DUMP exe2bin fdisk find format label mem mode more move NED (editor) print REMDISK REMQUIT REMSERV restore RSZ SERLINK SERSERV share smartdrv sort subst sys tree TRANSFER xcopy. - included extra files: ega/ega3 CPI, keyboard/keybrd2 sys, country sys. > http://datalight.com/products/romdos/productdetails_su.php Thanks for telling us about those interesting news :-). ROM-DOS comes in 2 variants: With and without FAT32 support. You can even get a SDK with sources and TCP/IP stack. Some unknown file meanings: ata -> cdrom?, compress -> like LZSS?, remdisk/remquit/remserv and serlink/serserv -> network/link cable drive letters like FileMaven/Laplink/InterLnk?, rsz/disk2img/dump -> ROM related?, comm/transfer -> serial link stuff? stackdev -> ???. Eric --- This SF.Net email is sponsored by Yahoo. Introducing Yahoo! Search Developer Network - Create apps using Yahoo! Search APIs Find out how you can build Yahoo! directly into your own Applications - visit http://developer.yahoo.net/?fr=offad-ysdn-ostg-q22005 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] Details about Datalight ROM-DOS
Hi, Lucho gave me some extra information about ROM-DOS. You can get the single-user private use version after registration for free now: http://datalight.com/products/romdos/productdetails_su.php There are FAT32 and classic versions. If you store them in ROM, they take 60-90k. You need 186+ CPU (for himem: 286, for emm386: 386). The SDK with driver (not kernel!) sources and TCP/IP is 1250 bucks! So back to the free parts: - included extra files: ega/ega3 CPI, keyboard/keybrd2 sys, country sys. - included drivers: ansi, ata (CF and PCMCIA drives), vdisk (ramdisk), stackdev (stacks=...), print (print queue), power (energy saving), mscdex (cdrom highlevel: looks like they do not include cdrom lowlevel drivers), himem (XMS/HMA), emm386 (EMS/UMB), keyb (keyboard), share (file locking / sharing). - included tools: attrib backup chkdsk choice command (with help system) deltree diskcomp diskcopy exe2bin fdisk find format label mem mode move restore smartdrv sort subst sys tree xcopy are all DOS classics. - included other tools: comm (terminal), rsz (z-modem file transfer), compress (pack kernel for ROM), disk2img / dump (ROM related, I think), transfer (file transfer?), ned (editor?), remserv/remquit/remdisk (remote system), serlink/serserv (serial link). So if you compare to FreeDOS with FileMaven for the serial link and ROMOS for the ROM stuff and my Terminal, we have less "remote" stuff and no Z- modem software (which one would you recommend?). We have no PCMCIA/CF/ATA driver either (how big is the ROM-DOS one, by the way?) and our PRINT is quite outdated. On the other hand, our POWER (FDAPM) is quite good ;-). Next question would be comparing the file sizes of the tools and drivers and the memory footprint of the kernel and drivers. Happy testing and comparing! Eric PS: How about their mscdex/smartdrv/vdisk/mode compared to shsucdx/lba- cache/xmsdsk (or tdsk)/mode? Experiences? --- This SF.Net email is sponsored by Yahoo. Introducing Yahoo! Search Developer Network - Create apps using Yahoo! Search APIs Find out how you can build Yahoo! directly into your own Applications - visit http://developer.yahoo.net/?fr=offad-ysdn-ostg-q22005 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] re: debian sarge+dosemu+freedos
Hi, so you want to format a real diskette from within dosemu? Or just a disk image which you later copy to a real diskette with the Linux "dd" tool? The latter might work better. You tried to create 3 diskettes with Compaq deskpro tools and got error 207h or 519 (both are the same value). > C:\>format a: > Unknown error. Error code: 519 > D:\DOSEMU\F10VP\SDOS>bootsec.exe /W /F:bootdsk3 /D:A: > bootsec: could not perform WRITE operation. rc = 207H This error code means: You tried to access a drive in classic "drive with at most 64k sectors" style (drive is at most 32 MB) and DOS replied "you have to use DOS 3.31/newer style". Your Compaq tools do not support that, it seems, at least not for diskette. Your tools are right: Diskettes are smaller than 32 MB, so they should accept the small-style call. Please try if this happens with some recent kernel version. For example, download the 8086- compatible (386-optimized is less stable!) OpenWatcom-compiled FreeDOS cvs stable kernel from http://fdos.org/kernel/ and the classic kernel version 2035a from: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=5109 DOSEMU kernel installation is easy, just replace kernel.sys by the new version in the directory or the diskimage or partition which has the role of C: drive for your DOSEMU. Let us know if the problem still happens with 2035a kernel or cvs stable kernel, or maybe both, or if the problem got solved by updating the kernel. Then we will either fix the kernel or tell the Debian people that they use an old FreeDOS version :-). Eric --- This SF.Net email is sponsored by Yahoo. Introducing Yahoo! Search Developer Network - Create apps using Yahoo! Search APIs Find out how you can build Yahoo! directly into your own Applications - visit http://developer.yahoo.net/?fr=offad-ysdn-ostg-q22005 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] re: Re: FreeDos Boot disk
Hi Mark, Mans, as far as I understand, LASTDRIVE is the only problem. > I can think of two simple things. First, try adding the line > LASTDRIVE=Y > to your config.sys file. Or to your fdconfig.sys file if you use that instead. FreeDOS will first look for fdconfig.sys and use config.sys only if there is no fdconfig.sys - useful on dual-boot systems. > In autoexec.bat, you should have a line > for the CDROM driver. Mine is: > mscdex.exe /D:MSCD001 /L:R Mark, MSCDEX, for FreeDOS? We have SHSUCDX! It is small (in RAM and on disk) and flexible :-)). Read the docs for SHSUCDX command line option syntax, but it is quite similar to MSCDEX syntax. > (config.sys contains > device=oakcdrom.sys /D:MSCD001) Well, FreeDOS does have ATAPICDD, a generic driver, but I must say that ATAPICDD is far too SLOW and UNRELIABLE (it sometimes fails to detect that a read error has happened), so OAKCDROM is okay at the moment until ATAPICDD gets better. However, what is much more useful is Acer VIDE-CDD 2.14 (you can get it as "real mode CD-ROM driver" from their homepage). Very small, quite fast, works with basically all IDE/ATAPI CD-ROM drives. For SCSI drives, you would get drivers from the SCSI controller vendor, e.g. Adaptec has a nice collection on their page. > the "/L:R" sets the CD drive letter to "R". If you have set it > to something like "E", the third partition on the hard drive would > also be "E" and you might have a problem. I think that Mans did not use the /L option. He probably allowed SHSUCDX to select a drive letter itself, but there were just not enough drive letters left over. Using LASTDRIVE=Y will help :-). Eric --- This SF.Net email is sponsored by Yahoo. Introducing Yahoo! Search Developer Network - Create apps using Yahoo! Search APIs Find out how you can build Yahoo! directly into your own Applications - visit http://developer.yahoo.net/?fr=offad-ysdn-ostg-q22005 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] re: Re: So where are the programs?
Hi Mark is actually write when he writes: > > <http://www.freedos.org/freedos/files/>. of 2004-12-01, but it doesn't > > contain programs like lynx (oe emacs, or anything other than base), > as implied at http://www.freedos.org/freedos/software/ > > What gives? Is there supposed to be a different CD for this, or are we > > supposed to download this stuff individually? There SHOULD be a "full" CD with base AND the other categories, but we would need helpers: To be included on the CD and to work with the auto- mated install process, the programs have to be packaged in ZIP files with some predefined directory structure. The few people (mainly Bernd with a bit of help from Jeremy) who are preparing the CD-ROMs do not have enough time to include all programs on a "full" CD, so at the moment, the "mini" install is "all base binaries" and "full" is just a misleading name for "all base binaries and all base source codes". Any help would be welcome. The last CD-ROM which had ALL categories was beta 8, which is years old. You can of course install beta 9 service release 1 and then take the other programs from a beta 8 CD, but it is probably better to download the programs which you want separately, e.g. SETEDIT editor, OpenWatcom C/C++ and Arachne internet suite (www/mail/ftp). Eric PS to Arkady about FREEVER: Freever can do much more than CALLVER. The problem is that the FREEVER sources got lost, but I have hopes that somebody still has at least a binary. After all, even RBIL describes it! FREEVER is a full clone of SETVER, while CALLVER just sets the reported DOS version and then invokes a new shell instance to run one program. --- This SF.Net email is sponsored by Yahoo. Introducing Yahoo! Search Developer Network - Create apps using Yahoo! Search APIs Find out how you can build Yahoo! directly into your own Applications - visit http://developer.yahoo.net/?fr=offad-ysdn-ostg-q22005 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] re: Re: com2exe
Hi! > JAS> Arkady's com2exe program is often mentioned in this list. > JAS> Where can it be found ? > It included into CuteMouse package... Some nice other tools: - exe2bin can convert EXE to COM if the initial CS / IP / stack values are suitable and the file is at most 64 kB in RAM size. - exe2bin SHOULD be able to convert EXE to ROM images. Does any- body know the official MS exe2bin syntax for this? - exeflat (which is included in the kernel source download) can convert EXE to ROM images. The syntax is, basically: exeflat [load segment] [exe file] [image file] but you should read the exeflat help for details: There are a kernel-specific UPX option and options to inform exeflat of any number of "expected" relocation segments. For "unexpected" relocations, exeflat will produce a log on the screen. Eric PS: Would be cool if somebody could add exeflat functionality to exe2bin! PPS: About "laplink/interlnk" question, does FileMaven (free file manager with serial / parallel link cable file transfer support) use the laplink style cable pin assignments? FileMaven is quite nice, and probably more what laplink users want. RIFS seems to be something else, somehow... > I believe RIFS (remote installable filesystem) uses the laplink style > parallel cable connection. However, I found its serial connection to be > a more stable... --- This SF.Net email is sponsored by: NEC IT Guy Games. How far can you shotput a projector? How fast can you ride your desk chair down the office luge track? If you want to score the big prize, get to know the little guy. Play to win an NEC 61" plasma display: http://www.necitguy.com/?r=20 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] re: Re: FREEVER
Hi Mike, > > http://www.coli.uni-sb.de/~eric/stuff/soft/specials/callver.zip > There does not appear to be any documentation with this program. However, > I assume that it either only works with FreeDOS... > I attempted to use it under Win98SE DOS... > CALLVER 6.22 > It always gives "Incorrect DOS Version,"... This is because CALLVER, to be able to run BAT files, works in the following steps: set the specified dos version run a new shell (as defined by comspec variable, usually command.com) run in the new shell exit the new shell stop modifying the dos version done Because the Win98 command.com does not accept any other DOS versions than 7.xx, things did not work for you... As a solution, either set COMSPEC to point to another command.com (e.g. the FreeDOS one) or let somebody improve CALLVER! The latter would be something like "search the program in PATH and if it is not a BAT file, skip all the "new shell" stuff, as it is not needed for COM and EXE files anyway. While I wrote the original CALLVER, I do not really have time for the described modification soon, so maybe somebody else can help out? Callver is written in NASM assembly language. Eric --- This SF.Net email is sponsored by: NEC IT Guy Games. How far can you shotput a projector? How fast can you ride your desk chair down the office luge track? If you want to score the big prize, get to know the little guy. Play to win an NEC 61" plasma display: http://www.necitguy.com/?r=20 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] XDMA, SHSUCDX and other split-version programs
Hi! > I think XDMA belongs in "Util" since it doesn't try to duplicate > functionality in MS-DOS. We made an exception with UDMA and UDMA2, > though .. and I guess I'm open to discussion about moving XDMA into > "Base" as well. I think neither belongs to BASE. Instead, it would be very good to stop doing mini-distros which contain only BASE all the time. People who want other categories still have to download every single package or have to use beta 8 (!). If this turns out to be not possible (not enough people who have time to ZIP up packages in FreeDOS directory structure to make them ready for inclusion in the distro), I would STILL not make *DMA drivers BASE, but just include them anyway ;-). I mean: Have at least a "BASE plus the most useful packages of the other categories" distro in that case. Finally, as far as I understand, the Jack-versions are not overly great anyway: Jack started UDMA, and Lucho worked (together with Jack, I guess) on UDMA2, which has priority on being not only small but also reliable. XDMA seems to be just a stripped down version of UDMA with LESS sanity checks. Nothing that I would recommend to use. About the Jack-version of SHSUCDX: Jason has completely stuffed his SHSUCDX with macros, which means that you need a new and 32bit version of NASM to compile it at all (16bit has not enough RAM...) and that you have to use -O3 or better -O9 optimize option for NASM, because non-optimizing NASM mode gets so confused by the macros that you get a broken (double size) binary. As Jason thinks it is still okay that way, but Jack does not, Jack created a SHSUCDX version by just resolving and removing ALL macros (as far as I understand). Apart from that, both versions are very similar. The Jason-version has some unused buffers in the TSR, which Jack optimized away, but that is more or less the only problem with the Jason-binary. Source- wise, the Jack-version is hard to read because of the complete removal of macros (automatic resolving, I assume) and the Jason- version is hard to read because of the heavy use of macros. So I personally would not recommend XDMA, and I have problems to decide whether the Jack- or the Jason-SHSUCDX is the better one. More talking about split programs, by the way: EDIT 0.7c should be better than 0.82 in most aspects at the moment, please let me know if EDIT 0.7c is worse than 0.82 in any important way... MEM 1.7 beta is better than 1.6 as far as I can tell, and MEMA by Arkady is mostly different but neither better nor worse than MEM, but this is better explained by Arkady. I most probably have overlooked some bugs or features in either of the MEMs. Finally, HIMEM versus FD*XMS*: This is simple, HIMEM is better and only HIMEM supports EMS/XMS memory pool sharing (as does e.g. MS HIMEM, it is only that FD*XMS* saves a bit of space by not having the support). So you would ONLY want to use FD*XMS* if you either have a 286 (FDXMS286) or want to show some radical style by mixing drivers without reason ;-). And, by the way, it is GOOD that only FDXMS286 supports 286. The overhead / development work to get some combined driver "from 286 to 4 GBytes" would certainly not be worth the effort given the lack of living 286 PCs today. Eric PS: News about old PCs, somebody wrote a BIOS for his Sanyo PC (only contains a boot loader and floppy read drivers in the normal "BIOS"), recompiled the kernel (DOS_PSP setting, SYS load segment option and EXEFLAT load segment option were enough :-)) for the 1000:0 load location (after the Tandy-style paged graphics RAM) and is now able to boot FreeDOS instead of MS DOS 2.11. Does not run very well yet, though. Incomplete BIOS and maybe some load seg problems. --- SF.Net email is sponsored by: Discover Easy Linux Migration Strategies from IBM. Find simple to follow Roadmaps, straightforward articles, informative Webcasts and more! Get everything you need to get up to speed, fast. http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=7477&alloc_id=16492&op=click ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] Announce: LBAcache 2005jun19 - locking XMS now
Hi, news for Arachne users: http://www.coli.uni-sb.de/~eric/stuff/soft/lbacache-2005jun19.zip is the first LBAcache which LOCKs the used XMS handle. Arachne users sometimes need this if they use the xswap feature: If xswap moves XMS data to disk while LBAcache uses the same XMS driver to cache disk data of the same disk, you get a spooky circular dependency. The same can happen with Windows 3.xx, but only if you use 386 mode or DOS boxes (which use dswap/wswap helpers), neither of which works yet in FreeDOS anyway... So basically the LBAcache update only improves things if you use Arachne or are using the cache with a fully Win3.x compatible kernel or with some environment where swap-RAM-to-disk gets spooky in combination with cache-disk- in-RAM. I assume that LBAcache still behaves like the 2004sep22 version in all aspects apart from XMS locking, but please test this yourself :-). Technical background: If you LOCK an XMS handle, the XMS driver, e.g. HIMEM, tells you a fixed memory address for the handle and, and this is the point which is useful for us, makes sure that the handle exists completely in actual RAM and is never swapped to disk. Enjoy... Eric --- SF.Net email is sponsored by: Discover Easy Linux Migration Strategies from IBM. Find simple to follow Roadmaps, straightforward articles, informative Webcasts and more! Get everything you need to get up to speed, fast. http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=7477&alloc_id=16492&op=click ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] re: How to setup UMB?
Hi, the problem turned out to be easy to solve: > > > DOS=HIGH, UMB, NOAUTO > > that must be > > DOS=HIGH,UMB > > without spaces and without NOAUTO > > > device=c:\freedos\bin\emm386.exe I=B000-B7FF SB > > that must be > > device=c:\freedos\bin\emm386.exe X=TEST SB VDS Far too many people try I=... when they should be using X=TEST. I recommend to remove examples of I=... from our sample (or even worse: default?) configurations to avoid bad I=... inspiration. Eric --- SF.Net email is sponsored by: Discover Easy Linux Migration Strategies from IBM. Find simple to follow Roadmaps, straightforward articles, informative Webcasts and more! Get everything you need to get up to speed, fast. http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=7477&alloc_id=16492&op=click ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] re: HIMEM versus FDXMS
Hi! > Other than support for memory pool sharing, what are the advantages > of HIMEM over FDXMS ? HIMEM supports more methods to control the A20, so it supports more PCs. Plus HIMEM has several command line configuration possibilities more. > If I use XMS but not EMS, I can save some bytes in UMB (real-mode UMB) by > using FDXMS instead of HIMEM... How big is that difference at the moment? > I would add, also to have different drivers for up to 64 MB and more than > 64 MB physical RAM. HIMEM supports all sizes of RAM already, but is limited to 386 and newer CPU. For FD*XMS*, you have one "up to 64MB" version and one "unlimited" version, and the "up to 64MB" version is smaller on disk and in RAM. You also have a third version, FDXMS286. This works on 286 CPU and is limited to 64 MB (on 286 even 16 MB) RAM. Eric PS: Supporting memory pool sharing means that you have to follow the MS style handle table data format in the "up to 4 GB" variant. Both FD*XMS* family and the Deskwork.de variant of FD HIMEM save some DOS RAM by not supporting memory pool sharing that way. --- SF.Net email is sponsored by: Discover Easy Linux Migration Strategies from IBM. Find simple to follow Roadmaps, straightforward articles, informative Webcasts and more! Get everything you need to get up to speed, fast. http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=7477&alloc_id=16492&op=click ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] re: Re: Bootable DOS CD
Hi, I think the boot.cat file must NOT be empty. It is as needed as a boot sector for a bootable diskette. Without proper boot.catalog, the CD will not be bootable. You can find a 2048 byte boot.catalog file in the root directory of the FreeDOS beta 9 sr 1 ISO image. The ISO image has some more boot-related stuff in the isolinux directory. The files in isolinux/data are probably the files which are actually used during booting: Info texts, MEMDISK, a logo, and a 360k disk image. Eric ... > > mkisofs -b image/boot.img -c boot.cat -A FreeDOS \ > > -o /mnt/dos/mycdimag -P 'My DOS CD' \ > > -p C_Spitzer -r -V DOSCD -v . > > cdrecord -v dev=/dev/hdc mycdimag > > Note that I have left a lot of things that are specific to my system > > like /dev/hdc is the CD burner and /dev/hda1 is my DOS partition. ... > I did figure out one trick there must be a file called boot.cat or > whatever after "-c". So I created a one byte file and mkisofs worked. > ... > Perhaps the solution is a drive switch allowing me to choose between > cdrom, cdrw and both. Is there such a thing? No, you can boot a bootable CD-R or CD-RW in any drive which can read the disk (e.g. CD-ROM drive, CD writer, DVD drives...). But you have to do follow the ISOLINUX install instructions, otherwise it will not boot. Or, if you prefer, the "create bootable CD with plain diskette image without ISOLINUX" instructions, but it is better to use ISOLINUX, as some BIOSes have broken plain-diskette-image support. The mkisofs parameters used to create the beta9sr1 ISO seem to have been: -q -l -N -duplicates-once -boot-info-table -iso-level 4 -no-emul-boot -b isolinux/isolinux.bin -p Jeremy Davis -publisher FreeDOS - www.freedos.org -A FreeDOS beta9 Distribution -V FDOS_BETA9 -o fdbootcd.iso C:\minicd4\ (note that there must be '' around multi-word things on the actual command line, e.g. -p 'Jeremy Davis'...) Note that using -c boot.cat means that you ARE using ElTorito boot style and that you are NOT using plain-diskette-image boot style. According to mkisofs (creates ISO images) help, the boot.cat file is created by mkisofs itself, so you do not have to provide it?? On the other hand, the file at the -b option CAN, it seems, also be a plain diskette image. It is the -no-emul-boot option which tells mkisofs that the -b file is NOT a diskette image. The -boot-info-table means that 56 bytes from offset 8 of the -b file will be updated to match the layout of the particular ISO file which you are creating. The -l -N options are there to allow other filename style than 8.3 plus version numbers, I wonder why they are used. For the BOOTABLE property, only the -boot-info-table -no-emul-boot -b isolinux/isolinux.bin is needed. You can get isolinux as part of the syslinux package, but if you have Linux, you probably already have isolinux somewhere. The isolinux.bin file will look for an isolinux.cfg file in the same directory. For everything else, read the docs or look at the beta9sr1 iso image. Eric --- SF.Net email is sponsored by: Discover Easy Linux Migration Strategies from IBM. Find simple to follow Roadmaps, straightforward articles, informative Webcasts and more! Get everything you need to get up to speed, fast. http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=7477&alloc_id=16492&op=click ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] QuickView 2.60 with MP4 support released
Hi Mateusz, DOSers, > I noticed that QV got some interesting support for external sound > drivers. This looks really nice, I'm wondering whether it would make > sense to design such an "official" API for newly created (and/or > newly-ported) apps... How about the VESA audio API? Rarely supported by actual audio/video card BIOSes but that is no reason to avoid it as common API for drivers ;-) RBIL calls it "VESA VBE/AI" and the AI stands for audio interface in this context. That would be int 10, ax=4f13 bx=0 to 6 - unfortunately, RBIL details are not very complete, but maybe you find other information about this or other existing APIs. I also remember that there were some driver frameworks at least shared by SEVERAL games, maybe not many, but still a starting point to "use something proven". Maybe Rugxulo can dig up details from the list archive, I am sure this topic has been pondered before, probably also in context of AC97 (or HDA) soundcards and the lack of drivers for them for old games. Regards, Eric -- Download BIRT iHub F-Type - The Free Enterprise-Grade BIRT Server from Actuate! Instantly Supercharge Your Business Reports and Dashboards with Interactivity, Sharing, Native Excel Exports, App Integration & more Get technology previously reserved for billion-dollar corporations, FREE http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=157005751&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] adding drivers, autoexec.bat, config.sys to bootable CD
Hi John, > I can see and modify the files in the ISO image used to create a bootable CD > for > FreeDOS, but how and where do I add autoexec.bat and config.sys files to the > image and thus the bootable CD -- and where would I put the associated files > (like SomeDriver.sys)? Because DOS cannot (yet) boot from ISO9660 disks such as the bootable CD, there is a compressed boot FLOPPY image on the ISO which is booted via MEMDISK which is a bootable ramdisk that can be booted from CD in the same way that Linux can be booted from CD. So if you want to change boot files such as autoexec, you would have to modify the contents of that virtual floppy. I think tools for opening and editing floppy images are available for free for most operating systems :-) DOS boots, then loads CD drivers, then uses the other DOS things that you can readily see on the bootable CD :-) Regards, Eric -- Download BIRT iHub F-Type - The Free Enterprise-Grade BIRT Server from Actuate! Instantly Supercharge Your Business Reports and Dashboards with Interactivity, Sharing, Native Excel Exports, App Integration & more Get technology previously reserved for billion-dollar corporations, FREE http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=157005751&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Quickview ver 2.60
Hi Dale, > I can think of only 2 ways an engineer can get those speeds out of a > serial device. A very fast clock or big external buffers. I think DOS > could handle a fast clock but if they use buffers; DOS may not know > how to use them like windows or Linux. I never used SATA so I can't > say. You would be in good position to know. This is done by hardware and BIOS, so there is no need for DOS to take any effort with it :-) Also, SATA uses low voltage differential signals, allowing indeed very fast serial transmission of bits. All done in hardware. And for SD cards in DOS, you typically have them in USB readers, which are in turn supported by the BIOS, which supports generic USB disk-like media such as USB sticks and USB harddisks and cardreaders. Cheers, Eric -- Download BIRT iHub F-Type - The Free Enterprise-Grade BIRT Server from Actuate! Instantly Supercharge Your Business Reports and Dashboards with Interactivity, Sharing, Native Excel Exports, App Integration & more Get technology previously reserved for billion-dollar corporations, FREE http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=164703151&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Quickview ver 2.60
Hi! > The DOS format utility is kind of an anachronism at this point. Usually it > takes a long time to format a partition because it's iterating through > every sector of the disk. It's completely unnecessary these days. All it > really needs to do is write a boot sector, FAT, and root directory. That is why FORMAT has options for QUICK format, which does exactly that: Write only the FAT, root dir and boot sector. Optionally, that combines with making a backup of those areas near the end of the disk, allowing a later UNFORMAT. But of course quick format is quickest without that backup step ;-) Of course both do not work with never-yet-formatted floppies. Eric -- Download BIRT iHub F-Type - The Free Enterprise-Grade BIRT Server from Actuate! Instantly Supercharge Your Business Reports and Dashboards with Interactivity, Sharing, Native Excel Exports, App Integration & more Get technology previously reserved for billion-dollar corporations, FREE http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=164703151&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] FAT format process - was: Re: Quickview ver 2.60
Hi again, > When formatting a harddisk partition (or flash or whatever the actual > medium is), MS FORMAT relies on a correct boot sector already having been > created by FDISK. I discovered this not long ago when I tried to resize a > partition by tweaking the MBR with a sector editor. You cannot resize a FAT filesystem by just changing the partitions: The boot sector describes the size of FAT and filesystem. DOS needs that even when you change partition sizes later. However, it should be sufficient to zap the boot sector before formating to new size. Or start but then abort a non-quick format :-) Or, maybe better, use tools to truly resize the filesystem. With smart algorithms, this can get away with editing only the FAT and directory data in some cases. > had to change the size in the partition's boot sector as well. And this is > just to perform a slow format. As for quick format, it doesn't work unless > the partition has previously been slow-formatted to create a valid FAT. This limitation should not be present in FreeDOS: Default there is for harddisks to do a quick format, either with or without saving "unformat" data depending on whether there already was a filesystem. > This behavior makes sense in the context of FAT16 where the disk is > checked for bad clusters which can then be marked in the FAT. In the > context of FAT32, not so much... In FreeDOS, even slow format defaults to NOT check for bad clusters for harddisks, unless you explicitly use the /U option. Even then, you can abort the wipe / surface check process half-way. FORMAT will still be complete then, just without the rest of the wipe and check. The fastest mode in FreeDOS FORMAT is /Q /U which explicitly does not try to save unformat data. It just creates empty FAT, boot and root. Regards, Eric -- Download BIRT iHub F-Type - The Free Enterprise-Grade BIRT Server from Actuate! Instantly Supercharge Your Business Reports and Dashboards with Interactivity, Sharing, Native Excel Exports, App Integration & more Get technology previously reserved for billion-dollar corporations, FREE http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=164703151&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] [Freedos-devel] FreeDOS 1.2 and 2.0 roadmap discussion
Hi Tom, others,
>> Now the new multi-TB hard drives have 4096-byte physical sectors,
>> at least some of them try to act as if sector size were 512 bytes.
>
> virtually ALL disks act as having 512 byte sectors, even if they have
> internally 4096 byte ('advanced format').
...
> only recently 4kn drives became available
> Seagate Enterprise Capacity 3.5 HDD 4Kn 6TB, SATA 6Gb/s (ST6000NM0004)
> Toshiba MG04ACA500A
The newest 8 TB (!) HGST drives are produced in 4 variants now:
SAS or SATA, both available with 512 or 4096 bytes per sector.
http://www.hgst.com/hard-drives/enterprise-hard-drives/enterprise-sas-drives/ultrastar-he8
A 10 TB variant is on the way, as far as I remember. But as said
by Tom, you are rarely forced to use 4k sectors unless you want.
>> So any modern OS needs to support at least 4096-byte sectors.
> it certainly doesn't hurt, but this is not urgent
For modern hard- and software, 4k sectors can be nice.
>> There really needs to be GPT support with hard drives that would have
>> 4096-byte sectors.
> wrong. GPT is needed for drives with more then 4G sectors, which is
> disk size 2TB for 512 sector size, and 16 TB for 4K sectorsize.
Depends: I would assume that Windows 7 and up use GPT on fresh
installs even for disks of for example only 100 GB capacity. It
is more flexible to use GPT. So DOS should at least be aware of
GPT in the sense of not damaging existing GPT without some extra
warning in FDISK, for example. Being able to find FAT partitions
in GPT and actually use them would be very nice for DOS, maybe
even combined with the ability to boot from them.
>> Next step up from 4096 bytes could be 8k, 16k ...
> this will most likely never happen.
I agree. Using GPT completely side-steps the problem of having
too many sectors on a disk. Also, 4096 bytes happens to be the
page size of common processors and flash storage, so there is
not much reason to have "atomic storage units" larger than 4k.
Of course it is often faster to transfer multiple sectors in a
single I/O step, but I would not make those sectors bigger...
Regards, Eric
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Re: [Freedos-user] USB to serial adapters and soundcard emulation on FreeDOS
(forwarding from Guillem) In response to Eric, I have tried DOSemu and I did manage to get the serial ports to work. I had a few problems with it, though. Neither the PC speaker or the Sound Blaster worked. To be honest I’m not sure if the netbook I was running it on has a PC speaker anyways. Another one of my problems with DOSemu is that, for some reason, when i tried to use my DOS screenreader's review mode, the either the emulator or the reader crashed. I can’t get out of review mode and my only way out is by exiting the emulator. I could of course use terminal or dumb mode but those don’t like some of the games I’ve tried, such as Eamon Deluxe. My most stable alternative right now is my Windows 3.1 VMWare virtual machine, which actually works pretty well both in DOS and Windows mode, except for the sound blaster which only works inside Windows. I might postpone the dualboot until a better alternative is available since I don’t think I’ll purchase a new laptop just for this. Thank you. > On 11 Jan 2015, at 22:19, Eric Auer wrote: > > > Hi Guillem, > > for another solution of your screen reader problem, you could > use Linux (for which free screen readers and Braille drivers, > both serial and USB are available) and run your old DOS tools > in Dosemu or Dosbox inside Linux. That will emulate a classic > Sound Blaster for DOS, no matter what your actual hardware is > using for the sound. Would that be an option for you? > > Regards, Eric > > -- New Year. New Location. New Benefits. New Data Center in Ashburn, VA. GigeNET is offering a free month of service with a new server in Ashburn. Choose from 2 high performing configs, both with 100TB of bandwidth. Higher redundancy.Lower latency.Increased capacity.Completely compliant. vanity: www.gigenet.com ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] USB to serial adapters and soundcard emulation on FreeDOS
Hi Guillem, > In response to Eric, I have tried DOSemu and I did manage to get the > serial ports to work. I had a few problems with it, though. Neither the > PC speaker or the Sound Blaster worked. To be honest I’m not sure if the > netbook I was running it on has a PC speaker anyways. Normally, Dosemu uses the soundcard of your PC, not the built-in speaker, and emulates a Sound Blaster for DOS. > Another one of my problems with DOSemu is that, for some reason, when i > tried to use my DOS screenreader's review mode, the either the emulator > or the reader crashed. I can’t get out of review mode and my only way > out is by exiting the emulator. I could of course use terminal or dumb > mode but those don’t like some of the games I’ve tried, such as Eamon > Deluxe. My suggestion was to use not a screen reader for DOS, but to use a screen reader for Linux. When you then run a DOS game in dosemu, the screen reader should be able to read that, too. It can help to use the text-only mode of dosemu, which is admittedly less cool than the graphical xdosemu. > My most stable alternative right now is my Windows 3.1 VMWare virtual > machine, which actually works pretty well both in DOS and Windows mode, Interesting idea! > except for the sound blaster which only works inside Windows. I might > postpone the dualboot until a better alternative is available since I > don’t think I’ll purchase a new laptop just for this. The so-called Sound Blaster PCI and Sound Blaster Live came with their own DOS software which emulates a Sound Blaster: Despite the name, those PCI sound cards actually have more AC97 style hardware, so their DOS support only works through their DOS TSR "driver" which seems to work quite okay once you get it to work... Of course this does not help you for a laptop, as you cannot exchange the soundcard there. Also, I am not aware of DOS SoundBlaster emulation drivers for USB sound sticks. Beyond the suggested dosemu and dosbox trick. Regards, Eric -- New Year. New Location. New Benefits. New Data Center in Ashburn, VA. GigeNET is offering a free month of service with a new server in Ashburn. Choose from 2 high performing configs, both with 100TB of bandwidth. Higher redundancy.Lower latency.Increased capacity.Completely compliant. www.gigenet.com ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] DOS Linux dual boot with FreeDOS replacing MS DOS 6.22
Hi Javier, your question is not related to "USB to serial adapters and soundcard emulation on FreeDOS", so please start a new topic instead of replying to Guillem's thread next time, thank you! So here we are... You wrote: Hola: A. Necesito hacer un disco multi-partición, que por lo menos contenga una partición con el equivalente de MSDOS 6.22, y una partición de Linux. Me puede ayudar? Gracias, Javier De La Rosa Perigaultx Translation: You have to make a dual-boot system with Linux and a DOS which can replace MS DOS 6.22 ... Your guess is correct that you can do that with FreeDOS :-) Please use Linux tools such as gparted to make a FAT16 or FAT32 partition of at least a few 100 MegaBytes. There is more DOS software than you think, so you do not want to run out of space. Then boot FreeDOS from CD (you can download ISO images) and install to that partition. Making things dual-boot is a bit hard to explain, but if you are lucky, Linux will automatically add DOS to the boot menu when you run the GRUB script "update-grub" there, as root, for example in Ubuntu Linux. You may have to take care to NOT let DOS take over the boot menu, but if it happens, you can boot Linux from CD or USB stick where you usually have some sort of repair non-booting Linux menu item. The "BASE" set of packages in the FreeDOS distro on CD contains the equivalent of most of what you know from MS DOS. Everything in other categories outside "BASE" is extra :-) What exactly do you plan to do with DOS? If you want to run the 386 mode of Windows 3, or Windows for Workgroups 3.11, FreeDOS and EMM386 / HIMEM can be hard to get to work. Almost everything else should work as good as with MS DOS. Note that sometimes old DOS software gets confused if there is too much RAM or disk or CPU speed, but at least for FreeDOS, things should work fine. Note: Make sure to NOT use GPT partitioning in Linux, but use a classical MBR partitioning scheme! Otherwise, DOS will not yet be able to use your FAT partition as C: drive... Regards, Eric -- New Year. New Location. New Benefits. New Data Center in Ashburn, VA. GigeNET is offering a free month of service with a new server in Ashburn. Choose from 2 high performing configs, both with 100TB of bandwidth. Higher redundancy.Lower latency.Increased capacity.Completely compliant. http://p.sf.net/sfu/gigenet ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS 2.0 GUI?
Hi Don, > Is anyone working on a functional GUI for FreeDOS? I currently use Windows > 3.1 as I do consider it to be a gui and not an operating system and it is > about 90 percent functional. It would be nice to have a completely open > source OS though. Windows is much more than a GUI. There are also 1000s of programs which need Windows (even Windows 3) to function. If you would make a new GUI for DOS, it would not allow you to keep using all those Windows programs. There are several free open source GUIs for DOS, but you only get a small number of programs for them. There is a free open version of GEM for DOS. Some classic programs for GEM can still be used with that. There also are some new free programs for GEM... The other open source GUIs for DOS usually start out as graphical file managers with a menu to run programs, so eventually you get a notepad, clock, calculator, agenda and a few simple games for them. Some may even support a bit of web browsing or email, but they all do not get that huge number of programs available as Windows. On the other hand, there are some free open clones of Windows itself: ReactOS is a complete operating system which runs Windows software and Wine is a software for Linux which lets you run Windows software directly in Linux :-) The support for DOS software is quite limited in both, but of course you can use DOSBOX or DOSEMU in the Windows or Linux versions in ReactOS and pure Linux and run your DOS software in those special "DOS boxes". Regards, Eric -- New Year. New Location. New Benefits. New Data Center in Ashburn, VA. GigeNET is offering a free month of service with a new server in Ashburn. Choose from 2 high performing configs, both with 100TB of bandwidth. Higher redundancy.Lower latency.Increased capacity.Completely compliant. http://p.sf.net/sfu/gigenet ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS 2.0 GUI?
Hi Thomas, > There was, many years ago, a port of X Window from Unix to DOS, known > as X-Appeal. > > One could download a crippled version or pay $199 for the full, > working (?) version. > > I never tried it. Old versions of SuSE Linux came with some X server for DOS. However, that only allowed you to display the graphical user interface screen: The actual graphical apps (the X clients) had to run on a Linux or Unix server elsewhere, as DOS was neither multitasking nor had any X client apps ported to it. The same problem existed for X servers for Windows, while on BSD Unix based MacOS versions, you could also run versions of your client software ported to MacOS, as you could guess. I may have missed some other possibilities, but that was what my interpretation of X for DOS and Windows possibilities was. Regards, Eric -- New Year. New Location. New Benefits. New Data Center in Ashburn, VA. GigeNET is offering a free month of service with a new server in Ashburn. Choose from 2 high performing configs, both with 100TB of bandwidth. Higher redundancy.Lower latency.Increased capacity.Completely compliant. http://p.sf.net/sfu/gigenet ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] HTML5/Javascript/Flash (was: Re: Quickview ver 2.60)
Hi Dennis, >> 2). >> http://youtube-eng.blogspot.nl/2015/01/youtube-now-defaults-to-html5_27.html Very nice :-) > I infer that you need a relatively current browser. Yes, and those video codec libraries are not small at all. So even if you would add just enough HTML5 to a DOS browser to display youtube, it would add a lot of complexity... > The biggest use case for Flash has been video, which historically > has been presented on the web as SWF objects. You can also make a fancy GUI for your website in Flash. I remember websites with keen designers which would show one big box of Flash and if you had no Flash, you basically saw nothing of the page. Luckily this fashion has gone away and Flash indeed is mostly for video (and animated ads?) today. One of the reasons for this is that you can do a lot with Javascript today. There are many nice libraries written in Javascript that help you to make a website with a nice GUI. There are even cross-compilers which compile for example C code into Javascript. Probably into a small virtual machine written in Javascript plus bytecode for that ;-) So an interesting question is: Which DOS browsers have any Javascript support? With CSS? Enough to display animated menus or enough to process those Javascript libraries? Also, I remember somebody in BTTR mentioning a tool which analyzes youtube HTML to find the direct URL of the video to be played. That sounds like a reasonable way to watch youtube video in DOS on occasion. Details? Instructions? I remember that when I use too many script, ad and gimmick blockers on Linux, using a download helper plugin to find the video URL and watching that in VLC is sometimes faster than having to unblock bells & whistles in my browser ;-) Regards, Eric -- Dive into the World of Parallel Programming. The Go Parallel Website, sponsored by Intel and developed in partnership with Slashdot Media, is your hub for all things parallel software development, from weekly thought leadership blogs to news, videos, case studies, tutorials and more. Take a look and join the conversation now. http://goparallel.sourceforge.net/ ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] HTML5/Javascript/Flash (was: Re: Quickview ver 2.60)
Hi Dennis, > I have an assortment of sites bookmarked that make effective use of > Flash, but Flash is an option, and they can be used without it. > (The sites are art, design, and fashion sites... Please give some example what they do with flash. Do they use it for example for their image galleries? For navigation? Other...? Note that "in the old days", people just used Javascript for the odd "click here, unfold that menu there" code snippet, which did not need much of a library. Now people indeed use it for a lot heavier tasks, probably thanks to faster network and computers, often to the point of having a full GUI toolkit library in JS. Examples of C cross-compiled to JS go up to complete virtual PC, for example for running DOS in a browser window. For playing video in DOS, mpxplay and similar players using for example ported ffmpeg libraries can be used, quite versatile. Regards, Eric -- Dive into the World of Parallel Programming. The Go Parallel Website, sponsored by Intel and developed in partnership with Slashdot Media, is your hub for all things parallel software development, from weekly thought leadership blogs to news, videos, case studies, tutorials and more. Take a look and join the conversation now. http://goparallel.sourceforge.net/ ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS install aborted into VirtualBox - Help please
Hi Knute, > Can you help, please?... I finally installed FreeDOS into VirtualBox, > except at the very end of the install instead of the window where the > instructions say "Now we boot FreeDOS in our virtual machine" (select > "1")... instead of that the DOS window says "Bad or missing Command > Interpreter: C:\FDOS\BIN\command.com ... Have you tried to boot with fewer drivers? Use the F5 or F8 hotkeys when the kernel loads to skip all or selected drivers. Or, if that works as expected, just use the menu provided by FreeDOS config sys: It is possible that your EMS/UMB/XMS/HMA memory driver or disk cache get confused which could make DOS disconnect from your virtual disk. Of course it is also possible that you just have some failure in installing all necessary boot files. Boot from the install CD or ISO and look if you have command.com in c:\fdos\bin\ as expected. Which version of FreeDOS were you installing from? One of the CD ISO images, I assume? By making the ISO visible as a virtualbox virtual CD? Or by burning it to real CD or DVD first? The latter should not be necessary, I am just trying to gather more details. Regards, Eric -- Dive into the World of Parallel Programming. The Go Parallel Website, sponsored by Intel and developed in partnership with Slashdot Media, is your hub for all things parallel software development, from weekly thought leadership blogs to news, videos, case studies, tutorials and more. Take a look and join the conversation now. http://goparallel.sourceforge.net/ ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS program/beginner's problems
Hi Franta,
> struct dosemu_detect {
> char magic[8];
> unsigned char ver[4];
> };
> static struct dosemu_detect far *p = (void far*) 0xF000FFE0;
Note that the way how you create far pointers can differ
between compilers. In particular, with any 32 bit memory
model, things would look quite differently. Just saying.
> char magicexp[]="$DOSEMU$"; // expected string when on DOSEMU
>
> if (strcmp(p->magic, magicexp)) // p->magic == "$DOSEMU$" ?
You cannot strcmp this because the string is no C style
string with a NUL character at the end. You could use
strncmp(string1, string2, 8) to compare only the first
eight bytes, which will probably work fine for you :-)
Eric
> (I'm using tiny memory model and link .COM instead of .EXE, for
> minimalize program size)
PS: I do not know if int 0xe6 is really deprecated. Anybody?
> (and curiously, in referenced thread deprecated method Int 0xE6 AH=0
> still /after ~17 years/ is supported and seems be working well)
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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS program/beginner's problems
Hi Franta, > I got the impression that string declared as > > char mystring[]="$DOSEMU$"; > > is in memory stored as null-terminated string. This does not help you: The OTHER string STARTS with "$DOSEMU$", but is NOT null terminated, so both strings still differ. Unless you explicitly say you only want to compare the first 8 bytes. In short, you still have to use strncmp() here. Eric -- Dive into the World of Parallel Programming. The Go Parallel Website, sponsored by Intel and developed in partnership with Slashdot Media, is your hub for all things parallel software development, from weekly thought leadership blogs to news, videos, case studies, tutorials and more. Take a look and join the conversation now. http://goparallel.sourceforge.net/ ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Rom-dos
Hi Darrin, > Hi all, Is there a way of creating a rom version of free-dos? I have > several XT class boards I'd like to make use of without having to > rely on other media Actually RayeR has already done that, although not for XT class :-) http://www.rayer.g6.cz/romos/romose.htm Note that CPU-power-wise there is not that much making-use-of for XT mainboards. However, you could always put RomOS in some EPROM on some ISA network card for your mainboards - or do a net boot! Cheers, Eric -- Dive into the World of Parallel Programming. The Go Parallel Website, sponsored by Intel and developed in partnership with Slashdot Media, is your hub for all things parallel software development, from weekly thought leadership blogs to news, videos, case studies, tutorials and more. Take a look and join the conversation now. http://goparallel.sourceforge.net/ ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Installation Error
Hi!
> MD5 is okay and I burnt it with the slowest speed setting (1x).
> Still the same. From the complete base package not a single one could be
> installed ("There were 68 errors and 0 non-fatal warnings.").
If I have to guess: Maybe the installer is on the
virtual floppy drive and the CD-ROM driver does
not recognize your drive? Do you see any FreeDOS
content on the D: or E: drives? In general, there
should be an area with lots of ZIP files with the
packages on your CD: If the installer has issues,
try telling it where the zips are, or if all else
fails, just unzip the files to the freedos dir on
your target disk (e.g. DOS partition on harddisk)
as unzipping is the main install step anyway. You
will still miss the other installer details done
with the ZIPs, but you will have the contents :-)
Eric
PS: Try setting the controller to which your CD/DVD
or BluRay drive is connected to non-AHCI/non-RAID,
using your BIOS CMOS setup.
> Despite of the failed installation the harddisk seems to be bootable
> because it complains: "Loading FreeDOS No KERNEL SYS"
> I guess I just have to put the right files into the proper folder (C:\FDOS)?
> But which files do I have to copy from the CD? The files from the
> E:\FREEDOS\PACKAGES folder? Unzip them onto the HD?
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Re: [Freedos-user] Installation Error
Hi Mike, > I simply took another PC, now it works. Got freedos on the hd. > > Only thing that would be neat is USB mouse support. Read about USBMOUSE and > added > dos=high > device=himem.exe > device=usbaspi.sys > device=di1000dd.sys > to FDCONFIG.SYS - unfortunatelly without success. > > Is a special driver for that 25pin serial interface necessary? That usbaspi is for usb disks / usb sticks / cd / dvd di1000dd is also for usb disks / usb sticks, I think. For cd / dvd, you would also need additional drivers. And as Rugxulo said, the above may have license issues. Usbmouse sounds like one of Bret Johnson's drivers: Read the manual, you probably have to load his USB core driver before the mouse one. Maybe you also have to load ctmouse after usbmouse as a third step. Note that often the BIOS (if you enable USB legacy support in the CMOS setup) already makes your USB mouse look (towards DOS) as if it would be a PS/2 mouse, which you can use with ctmouse (try 1.9, 2.0 or 2.1, if one version fails, another one may work) without having to load any USB drivers :-) What do you mean by 25 pin serial interface, do you have an old 9/25 pin COM port mouse somewhere, not just USB? Regards, Eric -- Dive into the World of Parallel Programming The Go Parallel Website, sponsored by Intel and developed in partnership with Slashdot Media, is your hub for all things parallel software development, from weekly thought leadership blogs to news, videos, case studies, tutorials and more. Take a look and join the conversation now. http://goparallel.sourceforge.net/ ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS Edit maximum file size
Hi Dosgeek! > This is my number one request for FreeDOS 1.2/2/0. > > Can we PLEASE increase the FreeDOS edit capacity to at least match the > capacity MS-DOS edit? I get so aggravated trying to open included .txt files > with various DOS programs only to find that the file exceeds the capacity of > FreeDOS edit. But what IS the maximum file size in MS DOS EDIT? I just tried with FreeDOS EDIT while I had 626 kB DOS memory free: The limit per file seems to be exactly 64000 bytes, but you can open several of those as long as you have enough memory. Of course there are many other editors in our distro which you can use as alternative editors at any time: http://www.freedos.org/software/?cat=edit For example SETEDIT and TDE let you edit files which are several megabytes big and Blocek and Mined even support Unicode! Also, SETEDIT and TDE look similar enough to MS DOS EDIT, so you can enjoy them all :-) (Rugxulo: Please mirror blocek 1.4b, small fix :-)) So why so many editors? FreeDOS EDIT works on 8086, if you can find any of those in your museum. It is also a demo use for a nice user interface toolkit, which you could also use to program other tools. It has a calendar and an ASCII table. Just a nice small multi-file text editor as default FreeDOS editor :-) With TDE, SETEDIT or the Unicode editors, you get a lot more power. They work on any 386 or newer PC, in the Unicode case any 386 with VGA or better graphics. Cheers, Eric -- Dive into the World of Parallel Programming The Go Parallel Website, sponsored by Intel and developed in partnership with Slashdot Media, is your hub for all things parallel software development, from weekly thought leadership blogs to news, videos, case studies, tutorials and more. Take a look and join the conversation now. http://goparallel.sourceforge.net/ ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] new uide version? details?
Hi, looking at http://www.bttr-software.de/forum/forum_entry.php?id=14140 there is a recent version of Jack's UIDE and other drivers at > http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/dos/ellis/drivers-2015-03-05.zip and even newer, from today, in dropbox on > http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/15785527/drivers.zip but due to some Sourceforge / Opera incompatibility, Jack can not announce it here himself? What is new in which zip? Regards, Eric -- Dive into the World of Parallel Programming The Go Parallel Website, sponsored by Intel and developed in partnership with Slashdot Media, is your hub for all things parallel software development, from weekly thought leadership blogs to news, videos, case studies, tutorials and more. Take a look and join the conversation now. http://goparallel.sourceforge.net/ ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] RAM size
Hi! If I have to guess, the latter (a DPMI call, I think) deliberately returns at most 2 GB to avoid sign overflows with software which uses 32 bit signed computation of how much memory it has :-) Maybe DOS32A has an option to let you disable that limiting if you dare. Or try HDPMI32 or CWSDPMI in various version or other DPMI drivers? And, if I may be curious, what program are you writing which will enjoy having more than 2 GB of RAM in DOS? Regards, Eric :-) > Why mem.exe returns "Total memory" 3 612 188K but EAX=500h/int 31h > (and EAX=0xff90/int 21h by DOS32A) returns 2 096 601K only? Alex PS: You probably have 4 GB, of which some is not useable because for example your graphics card reserves areas? -- Dive into the World of Parallel Programming The Go Parallel Website, sponsored by Intel and developed in partnership with Slashdot Media, is your hub for all things parallel software development, from weekly thought leadership blogs to news, videos, case studies, tutorials and more. Take a look and join the conversation now. http://goparallel.sourceforge.net/ ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] RAM size
Hi, replying to myself based on comments by Navis, with some interesting points about using 2 GB to 4 GB of RAM with DPMI based DOS extenders... :-) > Hi! If I have to guess, the latter (a DPMI call, I think) > deliberately returns at most 2 GB to avoid sign overflows > with software which uses 32 bit signed computation of how > much memory it has :-) Maybe DOS32A has an option to let Of course YOUR software can be safe, but DOS32A is the same for all users, so it probably just tries to avoid any risks. http://www.delorie.com/djgpp/doc/dpmi/api/310500.html tells me that "-1" (or 4 GB - 1 byte) is an placeholder in size info: Some software might simply treat any value which is negative as a placeholder, so DOS32A might not want to show any values larger than 2 GB... > you disable that limiting if you dare. Or try HDPMI32 or > CWSDPMI in various version or other DPMI drivers? And, if Instead of DOS32A, you can also use other "DPMI" software, typically by loading it before starting your own program, or by connecting it instead of DOS32A to your program. It could be some tool with "stub" in the name which does it. http://homer.rice.edu/~sandmann/cwsdpmi/index.html http://web.archive.org/web/20140904175113/http://www.japheth.de/HX.html (HX DOS extender: can run simple Windows software in DOS, and comes with a tool called HDPMI which provides DPMI...) http://www.sudleyplace.com/dpmione/ See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOS32A http://dos32a.narechk.net/manual/html/tech/8.htm This says that DOS/32 can allocate *at most 2 GB of RAM* by using XMS 3.0 compatible drivers to allocate memory, but only 256 MB from VCPI (EMM386) so then it will try to get the remaining memory from XMS 3.0 :-) http://dos32a.narechk.net/content/technical.html This says that via int 15h allocation, the limit still is 2 GB, so at least with DOS32A, you only get 2 GB. http://osdir.com/ml/emulators.freedos.general/2005-04/msg00086.html Says that the CWSDPMI at the time also had a 2 GB limit, but that DPMIONE can use more than 3 GB: However, this only worked if no EMM386 was used at the same time :-) You will still have to take care to not run out of any other resources before you have 3 GB used, e.g. handles. > I may be curious, what program are you writing which will > enjoy having more than 2 GB of RAM in DOS? You wrote: "Special very long chain data only", but what is it? > PS: You probably have 4 GB, of which some is not useable > because for example your graphics card reserves areas? It can still be reserved as I/O space for disk controllers, network, for ACPI or BIOS functions, and so on. You could ask http://www.delorie.com/djgpp/doc/rbinter/id/50/17.html (int 15.e820) to get a list of which area is for what :-) Regards, Eric -- Dive into the World of Parallel Programming The Go Parallel Website, sponsored by Intel and developed in partnership with Slashdot Media, is your hub for all things parallel software development, from weekly thought leadership blogs to news, videos, case studies, tutorials and more. Take a look and join the conversation now. http://goparallel.sourceforge.net/ ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] dos usb driver!
Hi Karen, > What discouraged me from using freedos was > first the "for legacy games use only," suggestion on the site, That probably was a while ago: Now I would say this is more the target audience of dosbox, in particular for Windows. > and second, the lack of attention to native things like USB and > networking. A classic for networking is the realtek rtl8139 chipset: If you find no DOS driver for your new network chip, you can always plug a PCI network card with that classic chip. When some modern (gigabit-) network chip is not supported in DOS, all DOS versions are affected, not only FreeDOS. > Dos is stable, I have been running the package I referenced for many > years, have found packages like ssh2dos for my networking, and now a fine > dos usb browser that works. I have been wondering if ssh2dos still is useful - I guess it only supports older protocols and algorithms. I remember Jack complaining that even the browsers of older Windows (!) versions do not support TLS: So as SSL 3 is being phased out for being old and insecure, he can no longer use HTTPS web. I can imagine that ssh2dos and web browsers for DOS have the problem in even more severe ways. > i use dos exclusively daily for all my computing. > and still sometimes get the sense here that freedos does not take itself > seriously enough for me to consider it for my professional needs. For you yes: The problem is that people often ask questions like "why is there no LibreOffice and Firefox for DOS". You know that there are none. They do not, they think there can be a professional DOS which basically is like Win or Linux, just "better" in some unknown, magical DOS way. For people who really need DOS, freedos is a very nice DOS. Regards, Eric -- Dive into the World of Parallel Programming The Go Parallel Website, sponsored by Intel and developed in partnership with Slashdot Media, is your hub for all things parallel software development, from weekly thought leadership blogs to news, videos, case studies, tutorials and more. Take a look and join the conversation now. http://goparallel.sourceforge.net/ ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] new free unified closed source caching disk and optical drivers by Jack
Hi FreeDOS people (and happy easter weekend :-)), there are new, alas closed source, drivers from Jack at: http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/15785527/drivers.zip The new XIDE driver combines UIDE, UHDD and UDVD2. XIDE requires XMS for 2 reasons: 1. Almost everybody can use XMS drivers. 2. Performance would be bad without XMS, while people use Jack's drivers exactly because of the performance gains! The driver supports both disks and optical drives and does caching. If you want, you can still disable the caching for individual drives. As the XIDE driver is closed source, it is not mirrored on Ibiblio, but some users may still want to install it and share their experiences on this DOS mailing list :-) Cheers, Eric -- Dive into the World of Parallel Programming The Go Parallel Website, sponsored by Intel and developed in partnership with Slashdot Media, is your hub for all things parallel software development, from weekly thought leadership blogs to news, videos, case studies, tutorials and more. Take a look and join the conversation now. http://goparallel.sourceforge.net/ ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] iBiblio's Apache no longer provides directory listings
Hi Mateusz, others, > This is known issue, that has been extensively discussed on the list... > http://www.mail-archive.com/freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net/msg15773.html Well if they think making directory listings on the fly takes too much CPU, we could make index.html files for OUR dirs, if we have lists of files, for example via FTP. Maybe somebody has a tool for this? I remember that making index.html for a local directory is not too painful with a bit of scripting, but never tried FTP :-) The idea is to upload fresh html files manually whenever contents of directories change. This will also allow FreeDOS branding :-) Regards, Eric -- One dashboard for servers and applications across Physical-Virtual-Cloud Widest out-of-the-box monitoring support with 50+ applications Performance metrics, stats and reports that give you Actionable Insights Deep dive visibility with transaction tracing using APM Insight. http://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/clk/290420510;117567292;y ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS wishlist
Dario, > Intel core DUO2 T6570@2,1Ghz 2,1Ghz RAM 2GB SO-DIMM S-ATA2 HDD 320Gb ? > > Windows 7 Ultimate vers. 6.1.7601Satellite Pro Series.. Toshiba. > > It´s great! Sorry! well, what are you trying to tell us with all those VERY short mails, that you add to much longer other mails? Please write in a way that can be understood, this is not Twitter but actual email here... ;-) Do you mean that your computer has 2 GB RAM and you want to use the 386enh mode of Windows 3 on that? In that case, I have to disappoint you: Windows 3.1 supports at most 256 MB RAM in the default config. By changing several system.ini settings, you reduce the risk for conflicts about EMS, UMB and disk I/O, which could already be a problem above 64 MB RAM. The settings below are for the [386Enh] section: VirtualHDIrq=OFF 32BitDiskAccess=OFF SystemRomBreakpoint=OFF EMMExclude=A000-EFFF ... remove the device=vshare.386 line as well ... NoEmmDriver=ON DMABufferSize=128 PageOverCommit=1 WinExclusive=1 XlatBufferSize=128 PageBuffers=32 MaxBPs=768 FileSysChange=OFF The reduced overcommit allows Windows to use more than 256 MB RAM, by disabling large swap pondering. Just having an actually small swap is not enough. The above is from recommendations for "deskwork", a Windows style GUI for DOS with some deskwork-specific software and a distinctive star trek TNG style look. That also suggests in win.ini, in the [windows] part: DefaultQueueSize=16 (for improved speed). Cheers, Eric PS: Even with the settings above, Win 3.1 crashes if it notices that you actually have more than 1 GB RAM. It may be possible to hide the rest via HIMEM options. -- One dashboard for servers and applications across Physical-Virtual-Cloud Widest out-of-the-box monitoring support with 50+ applications Performance metrics, stats and reports that give you Actionable Insights Deep dive visibility with transaction tracing using APM Insight. http://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/clk/290420510;117567292;y ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS wishlist - soundcards
Hi, just a semi-automatic reply for this classic topic ;-) >> Is there any way to make some kind of driver that would sit between >> the application and the actual soundcard (in my case a realtek) and >> forward what the app is trying to send to the soundblaster to the >> realtek the right way? > > Yes and no. Yes, because that's possible in theory - but it requires > to capture ports on which usually the SB card sits, and this requires > to put the CPU in v86 mode (hence EMM386 is mandatory). And not > everyone is a fan of v86, or EMM386. Secondly, even though it is > possible this way, it will work only for realmode applications (since > v86 mode is an emulation of a 8086...), so it's quite limited > anyway. It can also work with EMM386 compatible protected mode software. The commercial driver of "Sound Blaster Live" and SB PCI does it that way and the minimal and unstable open source "VSB" virtual sound blaster does the same: It only emulates SB1, not SB16, as far as I remember. Also, it only outputs the sound to internal beeper or parallel port D/A converter (Covox) but you could improve it to be SB16 emulation with AC97 and HDA output, if you are good at hardware programming and able to port ALSA or OSS drivers for AC97 and HDA. The latter has been done before for MPXPLAY for DOS, I believe. Just trying to remind that solving the soundcard issue IS in theory feasible :-) > Ultimately, SB is a "standard" that is tied to hardware, so it will > die sooner or later. The long-term solution here would be to have a > universal sound API, and that's all what VESA/AI is about. A combination of the two would be possible: Make VESA/AI drivers for modern soundcards and a virtual SB16 which outputs the sound via any VESA/AI driver, to make old games that only know SB16, no AI, happy. Games which require SB16 but are not EMM386 compatible will still be out of luck, but you can run those in "entire virtual PC" context as long as that simulates SB16. Think about QEMU, VirtualBox, VMWare, Bochs and similar. With Linux and Windows as host operating system. By the way: There recently was a big security hole in the "floppy" of several open source virtual PC solutions, please update if you are using those on servers. Or at least disable the virtual floppy. Cheers, Eric -- One dashboard for servers and applications across Physical-Virtual-Cloud Widest out-of-the-box monitoring support with 50+ applications Performance metrics, stats and reports that give you Actionable Insights Deep dive visibility with transaction tracing using APM Insight. http://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/clk/290420510;117567292;y ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS wishlist
Hi Mateusz, as far as I know, UIDE now supports harddisk and CDROM/DVD/BD with IDE and SATA controllers, but not in AHCI mode*. Also, I am not aware of any other DOS AHCI driver. What you can do is using the BIOS as driver: This is normal for harddisks, but only works for CD/DVD when you boot from them (ElTorito mode). If your computer has only UEFI without BIOS compatibility, you can not use DOS at all anyway. You can still load a module for UEFI to add BIOS support, but that is probably too complicated for normal users. I would like to know how the status is there. I doubt that Jack is interested in GCDROM feedback, as he has even made the newest members of the UIDE family closed source. Another interesting thing that I have seen earlier in this thread is that using a mobile phone as USB serial port modem does not work yet, or at least not well. This would be worth investigating further. Bret probably could help with USB :-) Regards, Eric * sometimes you can switch to classic SATA mode in your CMOS BIOS setup, but AHCI is faster, as it allows NCQ and other things for multi thread friendly I/O, so it is often default. -- One dashboard for servers and applications across Physical-Virtual-Cloud Widest out-of-the-box monitoring support with 50+ applications Performance metrics, stats and reports that give you Actionable Insights Deep dive visibility with transaction tracing using APM Insight. http://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/clk/290420510;117567292;y ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] displays GRUB on startup
Guys, >> I took a look, and the capacitors seemed to be fine. > > Including power supply? Mains caps in a power supply in the 230 Volt AC part of the world can be charged with 300 - 400 Volts and considerable capacity, even a while after you unplug things. You do NOT want to mess with those unless you are an expert. > http://www.mcmelectronics.com/product/72-9912 is typically $99 in their sale > catalogs, worth the price if you find yourself trying to fix electronics more > often than rarely. Better multimeters also have simple capacity measurement functionality for less money. Caps from the bad caps era indeed also often have bulges, which you see without any measurement. For proper measurement, you would often have to disconnect the cap first. My last 2 experiences with bad caps were the following: * newer graphics card, some caps visibly blown, tried to replace caps but caps of better quality were mechanically too large, while too simple caps were why it was broken. * a LED lamp, one cap visibly bulged, replacing that was easy, but only reduced the problem, not solved it. However, with your Pentium 4 MAINBOARD, chances are a bit better - cap technology has improved since then, so replacement caps of better quality (low ESR, 105C temp range) should fit the same mechanical size. Yet mainboards often have multi layer PCB and lots of tiny features, so you still have to be experienced to get them soldered properly :-) Sorry about the off-topic ;-) Regards, Eric -- ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Drivers or tips for 3 ISA sound cards?
Hi! > What I need for my Dell is a sound blaster pro driver that works on > an ESS chip without windows being there. Windows turns the chip on > somehow. The programs are for DOS running under windows. None of the > drivers are for dos alone, even if they claim to be. Add windows to > the background and they work but who wants that. There are many different ESS chips, so more information is needed: http://support.toshiba.com/support/viewContentDetail?contentId=107869 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ensoniq_AudioPCI http://www.daqarta.com/ess.htm What would also help is a tool to detect I/O base, IRQ and DMA details without hanging. No matter which card you have, often one or several of those aspects go wrong. In particular with PCI cards trying to be compatible to ISA SoundBlaster standards of any type, failing DMA and mis-routed IRQ signals are a common source of havoc. In some cases, it even is a hardware problem (a new mainboard cannot make PCI stuff look sufficiently ISA compatible any more). With SB Live, SB PCI and the ESS Ensoniq Audio PCI, the SoundBlaster compatibility even is a completely fake driver generated virtual hardware experience in the first place. Regards, Eric -- ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Drivers or tips for 3 ISA sound cards?
Hi Dale and Don, > I have a Compaq Armada (Laptop) with a ESS1869 - I tried every > SB/ESS driver I could find then by chance I loaded DOSSOUND and it > worked. For my modern desktops with the oldest PCI cards (mostly ESS > or Yamaha) I can only get sound through the internal speaker, but > MPXPLAY & QView work through the lineout - I think any successful > configuration will be a compromise. What exactly is DOSSOUND and what does it do? And for Dale: It is important to know what card and chip exactly causes the trouble. ESS made many of them. I agree that you might find the solution in some "turn chip on" tool, but that, too, will depend on which chip and card exactly you have. If your card is ISA with plug and play support, you may need the general (Intel?) plug and play drivers for DOS to activate and configure the plug and play things it at boot :-) Back in ISA days, PnP simply meant "auto-select non-colliding I/O port bases, IRQ etc.". Cheers, Eric -- ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Drivers or tips for 3 ISA sound cards?
Hi again, > http://www.georgpotthast.de/dossound/ Thanks, interesting :-) > For the Dell sound, its a chip soldered on the main board. You could check with PCISLEEP for DOS or LSPCI for Linux or any similar tool for Windows what chip it is. The DOSSOUND website says, it is a WAV player for some AC97 sound chips, so I guess loading it does not help DOS games which expect SoundBlasters? I remember that I have a small tool for some VIA mainboard chip which claims to support SoundBlaster: The tool just activates that mode. However, only the official DOS driver also has some software simulation of Adlib / OPL3 which you can load as TSR. By using the activation tool, you only get basic SB D/A output. > DOSSound currently supports the following AC'97 controllers: > > Intel ICH-ICH7 and compatible (not ICH8-ICH10) > VIA 82686, 8233, 8235 and 8237 > SIS 7012 controller > > untested: > AMD 768, 8111 > nVidia NForce 1-3 > > High Definition Audio controllers are currently not supported. By the way: > I think it works like these stupid win printers; it waits for > windows to start it up. After all dos is dead isn't it - ha. > I will have to search for this dossound. It might be the answer. That is not the only problem. Winmodems and Win GDI printers etc. often do not support "normal" command languages. Instead, there is only a proprietary interface to some low level device. In the Winmodem case, this is often a simple "soundcard". All the smart things to turn data into tones and back have to be done by some Windows (or Linux) driver, so just starting Windows is not enough to "activate" the modem for DOS. For printers, your mileage may vary - they may at least support plain text but that might indeed depend on some Windows driver "activating" the printer at boot. Regards, Eric -- ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] DOS printing
Hi! > This question interests me too, as I just bought a new HL-5470DW printer > today to replace a Canon that provided no emulation of any kind. The new > provides Epson FX, IBM Proprinter and PCL6 emulations in addition to > Brother's own language, but neither parallel port nor serial port Quite multilingual :-) > connectivity. In Linux I'll be using it via IP, but it would be nice to be > able to use it directly from a DOS boot somehow to print old WP and > spreadsheet files with embedded Epson FX printer control codes. I can only guess that there are network printer drivers or at least netcat for DOS. In some cases, you can also use a browser to config printers which provide a web interface, sometimes also allowing to upload and print files. I guess IPP is a popular print protocol now. Regards, Eric -- ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Getting any CD player to work
Hi! > With cdrom2ui, I ran these two commands: >> CDROM2 PLAY01 < F: > >> CDROM PLAY01 < F: > > > In both cases it responded "Error reading from drive F: data area: > drive not ready." Only the larger CDROM2 tool supports audio commands and you have to omit the < >, so the proper command would be: "CDROM2 PLAY01 F:" However, this only tells the drive to use the built-in audio playing function which modern drives might lack. The sound gets output to the headphone jack of your CD drive (if it has the connector) and the output for 3- or 4-pin cables to your soundcard or mainboard (if it has that). If you use the latter output, you also have to have a cable connected and the volume control on your soundcard properly set. Last but not least, not all drivers of CD/DVD/BluRay drives might support audio commands. The alternative way is to read out the raw audio data and then either store that as WAV, convert it to OGG or MP3, or play it directly. I think this is now the more common way of accessing audio on CD via a PC :-) Regards, Eric -- ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Vertical lines/bands in LCD display but OK on CRT
Hi! If you are sure that this is not an issue of your VGA or HDMI or DVI cable to the monitor, then I assume that what you are seeing is an artifact of your screen trying to zoom from the default resolution of DOS text mode to the native resolution of the screen. You could use the MODE tool of DOS to try other resolutions such as 80x30 VESA text mode. I good mode is probably some mode with a simple fractional ratio between resolution: E.g. 9x16 font, 80x25 text is 720x400 pixel which for 1920x1080 screens is a zoom factor of 8/3 horizontal or 2.7 vertical, your screen might either zoom everything by a factor of 8/3 (2.66) or zoom independently in X and Y direction, giving a slight distortion. As 8/3 and 2.7 are not integer values, you will get a regular pattern of zoom artifacts. Some monitors are better than others in making those artifacts bearable. Regards, Eric > With FreeDOS 1.1 installed directly on real hardware, and testing with > two different LCD monitors and at least half a dozen different video > cards, I find that in every case there are vertical bands or fat lines > across the screen, visible as fuzziness on the black & white display > during boot, and then very noticeable in Edit. > > But with every one of those cards, the display is crystal-clear on a CRT. > > Can someone explain why, and if I can fix that via an adjustment on the > LCD monitor or by running some driver? -- ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Vertical lines/bands in LCD display but OK on CRT
Hi John, > Though I cited Edit, and the mode suggestion might improve that, I > imagine that the improvement would be lost if I started a game or > anything else that runs in a graphical mode. As long as the game lets you make a CHOICE between several resolutions, you will again have the possibility to select ANY resolution that does look nice when zoomed to the native resolution of your LCD screen :-) > In the meantime, I found this very dense thread on vogons.org: > http://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=18933 Well that is mostly about REFRESH rates - which makes a difference in CRT screens because of the flicker. But for LCD, you do not have that issue anyway. On LCD, faster refresh rate only means faster reaction times, which is sometimes nice for fast games. Also, when watching a video, it is good if the refresh rate is a multiple of the frame rate of the video (e.g. 25 frames per second video & 50, 75, 100 Hz screen refresh rate instead of 60, while 30 fps video looks better on 60 Hz). Again, regarding the zoom issue, LCD screens differ in the quality in which they manage to make odd RESOLUTIONS look smooth. Assuming that your screen has 1920x1080 native resolution, which is common today, 640 width should zoom fine. On 1920x1200 screens, 640x400 should look quite nice. As there are no popular 640x360 DOS text resolutions, you could use 640x350 on your 1920x1080 screen as long as you can select aspect ration preserving zoom. In other words, you should simply let the screen put black bars on top and bottom and let it zoom 640x350 to 1920x1050. Each DOS pixel will then be 3x3 screen pixels, which is an integer size, thereby avoiding zoom artifacts. You could also try to reach 1280x1024 if you can tell your screen to NOT do any zooming: This will have small black bars on top and bottom but unfortunately the bars on the left and right will be quite large. Using that with a text font is probably 160x64 chars at 8x16 font... For 1920x1200 screens, an obvious choice could be 1600x1200. Outside of text modes (which look okay in wide screen) most DOS games will be limited to 4:3 aspect ratio graphics resolutions, so you might often have to live with wide empty bars on the left and right. But that is still better than distorting everything if you would select stretch- to-fill-whole-screen for such modes. Note that 320x200 might actually look good when stretched to 16:9 AND it is again zoom friendly using 4x4 screen pixels for each DOS game pixel on 1920x1200 screens :-) As you see, 16:10 screens (1920x1200) are simply cooler than 16:9 ones (1920x1080) even though the latter are better for watching videos ;-) Long story short, try 640x400, 640x350, 320x200, 1280x1024, 1600x1200, depending on which screen you have and what your games and editors do support. It sometimes takes some playing with the possibilities to get a nice resolution. Do not forget to also use the buttons on your LCD screen itself, it often lets you select one of several zoom settings. Cheers, Eric PS: DOS will often use the DEFAULT BIOS text mode of 720x400, but as 720 is a weird fraction of 1920, this might look less smooth... There even are funky mode setting tools for DOS, too, so in theory, a text mode of 106x67 characters, 9x16 font, padded to 1920x1080 may be fun? Or alternatively 120x67 characters with 8x16 font, tastes differ :-) QUESTION: Can anybody recommend such a tool? Does the mode look good? -- ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Getting any CD player to work
Hi John, http://www.bttr-software.de/forum/forum_entry.php?id=14268 mentions a new version of the closed source variant of Jack's drivers, but it sounds as if that mainly has been tested with modern drives, suspecting that your drive uses outdated audio command dialects. In any case, maybe the update helps you? :-) Regards, Eric >> It could be an incorrect or buggy driver, dunno. The only way to know >> would be to try something else. But I'm not sure of a "good" >> alternative. I don't even know where to (reliably) find such old DOS >> drivers. > > That seems to have been the case. In my post that followed the one you > replied to, I noted that I successfully replaced uide.sys with a Lite-on > driver to get audio CD working. -- ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Vertical lines/bands in LCD display but OK on CRT
Hi John, > ... Does "mode con lines=34" require anything besides VESA support? I > concluded from my reading that it did not need DISPLAY.SYS or [ANSI] Here is a quick trick with mode: MODE CON LINES=1 (or any other weird value) lists possible values in the error message. MODE CON LINES=30 does not directly work in DOSEMU either but MODE CON LINES=60 does work in DOSEMU, because 80x60 mode with 8x8 font is a VESA mode which is supported by many graphics cards. You can then use a SECOND invocation of MODE to switch to 80x30 mode, using: MODE CON LINES=16 That does not actually select 16 lines: The values 8, 14 and 16 are interpreted as you wanting a FONT which is 8, 14 or 16 tall. Which, starting from the 80x60 mode at 8x8 font that is supported, sends you into 80x30 mode at 8x16 font even though the mode itself is not directly offered by the DOSEMU VGA/VESA/VBE BIOS as a text mode. It is often possible to start with an existing mode and then change to another font with FreeDOS MODE... :-) Note that both the 80x60 and 80x30 modes described here use 640x480 pixels in DOSEMU and will have the same resolution on your actual graphics card as well. A zoom factor of 1.6 to reach the physical resolution of your old LCD screen may or may not look smooth, but at least the zoom factor is the same horizontally and vertically. Cheers, Eric -- ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS diskette cache
Hi guys, >> Typical error occurs following format: >> Drive_IO(WRITE 9, count 1 ) [FAT12/16] [drive A:] >> >> Critical error during DOS disk access >> DOS driver error (hex) : 08 >>Description: sector not found >> Progam terminated. >> [Error 136] >> C:\> If the floppy was not formatted before and you do not want to rely on automatic detection of that, you may want to explicitly request low level formatting with FORMAT A: /U See also FORMAT /z:longhelp for various other hints. Cheers, Eric -- ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] XIDE Updated; UIDE Support TERMINATED!
Hi Thomas, > Sad to see UIDE/XIDE switching to closed-source, undermining my > interest in FreeDOS for anything beyond low-level access to hardware > and spreadsheets with Quattro Pro 5 for DOS (already migrating to > Gnumeric). > > This is the first I've heard about any feud between Rugxulo and Jack > Ellis. I don't intend to get involved in any family feuds! Well Jack usually has clear plans and opinions, even if they clash with strong wrong-doers: E.g. Sourceforge dropping most SSL compatibility with older browsers - instead of grudgingly using another browser, he rather avoids SF. And at some point, Rugxulo got fed up with discussions. And judging by Rugxulo's posts on this list and on BTTR, this has somewhat escalated. However, both men are still helpful for uninvolved people... > I was never able to read a CD or DVD on new computer, SATA drive; > all I'd get was the title, but file directory never showed. If you got the title but no content, maybe they were UDF rather than ISO9660 formatted. Normal MSCDEX style drivers such as our SHSUCDX do not support that, but I guess there are experimental drivers for UDF content :-) Note that this is UIDE-unrelated. > If something like UIDE/XIDE were switched to closed-source in Linux, > BSD or Haiku, there'd be many other developers to fill in the gap ... or of course just start with an older still open source UIDE and help by maintaining your own open source branch. This will be lower quality than XIDE, but if you need open source, XIDE might not be an option for you. > I might also say that if Net-Tamer > (http://www.nettamer.net/tamer.html) were released to open-source > instead of languishing with no further update since 1999, there might > have been potential for development and improvement... Possible. Luckily there are a few more modern open source browsers which have been ported to DOS now :-) > Switching from MBR partitioning to GPT means I can install FreeDOS > only to USB stick, and pretty much prevents anything serious with > ReactOS. In particular for ReactOS, I would say that adding GPT support is supposed to be no real problem. Even for DOS I am optimistic. But maybe ReactOS considers itself to be unstable and therefore does deliberately avoid being too "brave" in harddisk access? It might be designed more for being tested and less for taking the risky (?) step of interacting with your other operating systems & user data. Regards, Eric -- ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Doom unstable with LBACACHE or RDISK
Hi Mateusz, > After some investigations, I pin-pointed the problem to this: > > If I load any of these TSRs: LBACACHE, RDISK, then Doom either freezes > at start, or make the computer reboot. If I have to guess: RDISK, LBACACHE and DOOM may all cause the A20 to toggle as a side effect of doing protected mode stuff (even if it is only accessing XMS) and USB emulation of PS/2 and keyboard controllers, or injection of events to the actual controllers, in BIOSes may have bad stability as well. You could try other A20 methods or configure your EMS and/or XMS drivers differently, maybe even towards A20 being locked to the "modern" state. Or you could try some other DOS extender than the one which is default for DOOM. The latter can also help if things are generally less stable due to issues with UMB, XMS 2 versus 3 or having large RAM amounts in the first place. For example DOS32A as a modern replacement of DOS4GW :-) Cheers, Eric PS: FreeCOM and kernel also affect A20 by using XMS swap and the high memory area (HMA). You can try a non-XMS-swap version of FreeCOM and/or tell the kernel to use no HMA. -- Monitor 25 network devices or servers for free with OpManager! OpManager is web-based network management software that monitors network devices and physical & virtual servers, alerts via email & sms for fault. Monitor 25 devices for free with no restriction. Download now http://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/clk/292181274;119417398;o ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] [solved] Doom unstable with LBACACHE or RDISK
Hi guys, > Limiting LBACACHE to 4MiB is a price to pay also, but I can live with that. That leads to the question if Jack's cache works better, but to be honest, I like the method of using DOS32A a lot more: It works stable with modern hardware and any cache size, as far as I understand your earlier tests. Cheers, Eric -- Monitor 25 network devices or servers for free with OpManager! OpManager is web-based network management software that monitors network devices and physical & virtual servers, alerts via email & sms for fault. Monitor 25 devices for free with no restriction. Download now http://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/clk/292181274;119417398;o ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] [solved] Doom unstable with LBACACHE or RDISK
Hi Mateusz, > - I don't like the idea of having fragmented XMS memory Indeed. See below... > - UIDE seems to interact with my soundcard - when UIDE is loaded, I > loose FM music in Wolfenstein 3D Strange. > - UIDE is not open-source anymore, while LBACACHE is both open-source > and still (somewhat?) maintained Well XIDE is not open source and UIDE is not maintained, but there have been no updates for LBACACHE for several years :-p While the most recent open source UIDE is only 3 months old. UIDE and XIDE might differ quite a bit, too. You could take a recent UIDE version and start maintaining it if you prefer. Some people see XIDE as closed source continuation of UIDE, I see it as closed fork, but it could be a rather different implementation of ideas known from UIDE and no actual fork. > The final clue is to remember that some applications need "low" XMS > memory, so for such applications one should always try to load resident > XMS stuff somewhere else. For my personal situation, the winning duo is > LBACACHE with a small cache (not more than 4MB, and some hopes that > maybe in some utopian future LBACACHE will gain a /T option?) + SHSURDRV /T. As mentioned earlier, all those tricks are just working around annoying limitations of the totally outdated DOS extender used by DOOM. The better solution is to replace that: Use DOS32A or load a resident instance of CWSDPMI while playing DOOM :-) The old (DOS4GW or similar) DOS extender used by DOOM might be designed with 286 or 386 or XMS 2 in mind, lacking imagination that usable RAM could exist beyond the first 16 or 64 MB... ;-) Cheers, Eric -- Monitor 25 network devices or servers for free with OpManager! OpManager is web-based network management software that monitors network devices and physical & virtual servers, alerts via email & sms for fault. Monitor 25 devices for free with no restriction. Download now http://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/clk/292181274;119417398;o ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] [solved] Doom unstable with LBACACHE or RDISK
Hi Mateusz, > Actually, by taking a closer look I did find the function 0Ch from both > the XMS 2.0 and 3.0 standards. This function returns the physical > address (called "base address" for the occasion) of the allocated XMS > block as a 32bits integer. > > Now, I could imagine an application (like DOS4GW) that gets such address > and puts it into a 24bit field. Such behaviour would effectively limit > an application to being able to use only the lowest 15MB of the XMS memory. Wikipedia says: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOS/4G * DOOM was the first game to make dos/4g or dos/4gw popular * it was limited to 64 MB of memory So I can imagine that Doom uses a really old version of dos/4gw, which is even more likely to have issues with "too much RAM" ;-) "We expect to be updating the DOS extender to use the extended XMS and VCPI calls that allow access to greater than 64MB" That sounds as if it is in any case limited to XMS 2. Have you made some comparisons between XMS-only and EMM386-style behaviour of DOOM? http://www.tenberry.com/dos4g/rn4g.html Version 2.01 (1996) mentions some fixes for systems with above 64 MB of memory and even for properly supporting 64 MB in the first place. I repeat my advice of using DOS32A instead of working around DOS/4G. DOS32A is free open source while DOS/4G came in version 1.97 with old Watcom compilers while 2.01 was only available as paid update: http://www.tenberry.com/dos4g/watcom/prices.html Which version does your copy of DOOM use? Cheers, Eric -- Monitor 25 network devices or servers for free with OpManager! OpManager is web-based network management software that monitors network devices and physical & virtual servers, alerts via email & sms for fault. Monitor 25 devices for free with no restriction. Download now http://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/clk/292181274;119417398;o ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Help with installing FreeDOS on second partition
Hi Marlon, >> Why that old one? A quick double-check online shows "fd11src.iso" as newest: >> >> http://www.freedos.org/download/ >> >>> mount it on a virtual drive, installed it in the second partition... > Anyway, I've managed to install and boot from freedos using the tips here: > http://marc.herbert.free.fr/linux/freedos_no_removable.html > bin\sys F: C:\FDOSBOOT.BIN BOOTONLY > > copy BIN\KERNEL32.SYS F:\KERNEL.SYS Well you did not put any config.sys or autoexec.bat in the root directory - this is why DOS asks you for date and time. If you do not have any config, those actions are default. > What does "bin\sys F: C:\FDOSBOOT.BIN BOOTONLY" do? I get an error or > something from it, forgot what it was. It puts a boot sector in a boot sector file without copying the kernel, as you do that separately in the next command. Not sure why you did it that way. > I sort of understand this: copy BIN\KERNEL32.SYS F:\KERNEL.SYS The kernel to boot is always named kernel.sys, you probably have several kernels in the BIN directory and copied the one named kernel32.sys as the one for your F: drive. > I also don't understand "makecmd" and I think it also gave me an error > message. I've managed to put command.com on the root directory, though. If I have to guess, it might create a command.com in one of the supported languages for you. As you say that it failed, I guess you manually copied the English command.com instead. > 1. When I boot into FreeDOS, it almost always asks me to enter the date and > time. Is this normal? See above. > 2. I can run an old Clipper program but the program has to be in the same > drive/partition as FreeDOS; I cannot access other drive/partition when I'm > in FreeDOS. Is this normal? This might be not normal. DOS only supports FAT partitions, so if your other partitions are NTFS or Linux, it is normal that DOS can not access them without additional drivers. > 3. When I'm using the Clipper program, I can print just fine. But I cannot > enter data. I get the DOS ERROR 4, something like that. When running the > Clipper program in command prompt in Windows 7 and I get the DOS ERROR 4, > all I have to do is edit the autoexec.nt and config.nt in windows\system32. > What would be the equivalent of that in FreeDOS? I do not know what error 4 is and you have not explained in which way you edit the *.nt files. What do you add, remove or change in those files? You can do the same in DOS, but I think you do not have any config yet - see question 1. Note that the drive which is "F:" while you installed DOS, if I understand your mail correctly, probably is drive "C:" when you boot DOS. As you also seem to have Windows 7 on the same computer, I guess that your Windows partitions are all NTFS. Regards, Eric -- ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Help with installing FreeDOS on second partition
Hi Marlon, > I edit autoexec.nt with Windows Notepad and insert this line at the very > top: > SET CLIPPER=F99 You can also type that command at the prompt before running Clipper. Of course it would be easier if you put the line in the autoexec.bat file of your DOS ;-) If the F99 is related to the FILES=99 setting, it is probably not useful to set "clipper" but not "files"? > I edit config.nt with Windows Notepad as well and insert this at the very > top too: > FILES=99 There are tools to raise FILES after boot, but the recommended way is to put the setting properly in your DOS config.sys file instead. I generally recommend to have proper configuration for your DOS installation: Without those two config files (config.sys and autoexec.bat) you will have to confirm date and time at each boot and DOS will perform at a very mediocre level compared to what it can do, in particular on modern hardware. Maybe somebody could cite their own (preferably both SIMPLE and efficient) config.sys and autoexec.bat in FreeDOS as example configs for you on this list here? By the way, have you tried running your Clipper software in the more modern clone Harbour? See our software info: http://www.freedos.org/software/?prog=xharbour Regards, Eric -- ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Help with installing FreeDOS on second partition
Hi :-) >> Thanks guys! Sorry for the late response, and Eric I will consider the >> xharbour, thank you! > > I never used it, but that old XHarbour is (AFAIK) abandoned (for DOS) > and somewhat hard to use (and IIRC needs a C compiler for backend). > Don't pin too many hopes on it. Well Clipper has been abandoned since 1997, while the most recent updates of Harbour were in 2011 and there is xHarbour: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_%28programming_language%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XHarbour https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harbour_compiler Even more fresh is the commercial implementation FlagShip: http://www.fship.com/ As Clipper is a programming language, it is not overly surprising that you have to know about compiling. On the other hand, there are people who think MS Access is a database and who think that SQL programming is complicated... ;-) Cheers, Eric -- ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] metados networked freedos distro by rugxulo available
Hi Rugxulo, FreeDOS users, forwarding something interesting from the forum from you ;-) http://www.bttr-software.de/forum/forum_entry.php?id=14456 Cheers, Eric MetaDOS 0.2 (network-aware floppy .img, 100% open source) (Announce) posted by Rugxulo(R) Homepage E-mail, Usono, 15.09.2015, 02:14 Since someone was asking about packet drivers under QEMU on the freedos-user mailing list, I decided to finally just upload MetaDOS 0.2 for them/us. It's far from perfect, somewhat simplistic and rough around the edges, but (for now) it's better than nothing. http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distributions/unofficial/metados/ It's only default a 600 kb .ZIP (with 3 MB .7z for full sources). You can see a listing of the .img contents here. Features: * simple floppy .img (minimal tools, XMS only, customizable RAM disk size) * but a full HD install is still possible (fdisk, format, sys, bootmgr, xwcopy) * custom FD 2041 kernel, easy to rebuild (minor patches for OLB [Eric Auer] and ctime [Matej Horvat]) * networking enabled by default for QEMU or VBox (NE2000 or PCNET), e.g. FTP (or optionally Wget or Links2, if needed) * "fetch" to grab various files (e.g. FD "BASE" or "UTIL") * "stubs" (to fill in gaps dynamically at runtime) * "tests" (to prove that everything works as intended) * "binhack" for (legally) patching binary files when needed * "extras" that aren't crucial but still interesting * isolation of certain settings, thus %BOOT%, %RAMDRIVE%, %EDITOR% are easily changeable (so booting USB on my old P4 as "c:" via PLoP boot manager floppy still works even if USB is forced read-only) -- ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] entering into the command-line as fast as possible
Hi Joe, the difference is that you use some INSTALL disk with FreeDOS. You want to use a BOOT disk instead :-) That gives you all the software on the boot disk, without having to install first and without having to abort the install... You can try metados or brezel or similar floppy distros. If you do not have a floppy drive, you can simply use a floppy to make a bootable CD or DVD, at least with the free Linux k3b burning software this is easy, so I assume with whatever CD burning tool you have it should also be easy: Take a floppy image and tell a CD burning tool to use that to make the CD bootable :-) Bonus: After booting from the INSTALL CD, you can of course go and abort the install process, for example by pressing CTRL-C at the right moment or by pressing F5 during boot. However, it is likely that the install CD has fewer software ready to use (as you skip the actual install) compared to a simple boot CD. In short, what you want is a boot floppy, floppy distro or live CD, but you can also use a boot floppy or floppy distro to make a boot CD and you can use the install CD as minimalist boot CD. Cheers, Eric www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distributions/unofficial/ contains metados and several other older distros. https://sites.google.com/site/rugxulo/ contains the classic ruffidea distro (1-3 disks of 1.44 MB each or my variant with the first 2 disks in a single 2.88 MB image, which you can use for bootable CD or DVD on most computers...) as well as "bare dos" which is what the name suggests. PS: Are my old config.sys and autoexec.bat examples still useful? http://ericauer.cosmodata.virtuaserver.com.br/soft/specials/freedos-config.txt -- Monitor Your Dynamic Infrastructure at Any Scale With Datadog! Get real-time metrics from all of your servers, apps and tools in one place. SourceForge users - Click here to start your Free Trial of Datadog now! http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=241902991&iu=/4140 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] trouble printing in clipper when using freedos
Hi Marlon, > I have a desktop computer with a motherboard that has a built-in parallel > port. When I boot into FreeDOS and run an old Clipper program, the program > can print just fine, without editing any system files. It just works. > > I have another desktop computer in which the parallel port is an expansion, > not built-in with the motherboard. Upon printing using Clipper program, I > get: > Error: Term/0 > Quit / Retry > Something like that. It cannot print. > > I wonder if this is the answer: > http://help.fdos.org/en/hhstndrd/base/printer.htm > If it is, please help. I don't quite get it. You do not normally need this extra tool for printer spooling. You can try MODE LPT1 RETRY=P (for infinite) or RETRY=N (none), but I think this is also not what you want. You can compare the MODE LPT1 /STATUS output between your two computers. It also is possible that your expansion board is configured as LPT2 or LPT3 instead of LPT1, but you can probably edit that with jumpers or using the BIOS / CMOS setup. Also, I think that the latter might be the answer to your problem. If you cannot tell Clipper or DOS which printer port settings should be used for the expansion, go to the BIOS setup and configure it there :-) Regards, Eric PS: You can indeed try using newer FreeDOS kernel, MODE or other tools, but printer port access is rather low level so it should not depend much on help from DOS. It is more about configuration. > When running the Clipper program in Windows 7 via command prompt, I can > print. However, I had to go to Control panel, View devices and printers, > right-click the printer (epson LX310) , Printer properties, Ports tab, > Enable bidirectional support and enable printer pooling, checked LPT1, > LPT2, and LPT3. That made it possible for me to print in Clipper program. http://www.epson.com.ph/epson_philippines/printers_and_all_in_ones/dot_matrix/product.page?product_name=Epson_LX-310 http://www.epson.com.ph/resource/philippines/product_brochures/dot_matrix/LX-310.pdf The printer uses ESC/P and supports IBM PPDS, so it is DOS style :-) You can also connect it through USB and serial port, but of course that depends on BIOS or at least DOS providing USB printer support. -- ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] trouble printing in clipper when using freedos
Hi! The fact that your PCI card also contains 2 serial ports does not influence which of LPT1, LPT2 or LPT3 it provides. However, you already have a printer port on your mainboard, it seems from your BIOS settings. You could either connect the printer there or disable THAT port in your BIOS setup, to make the I/O range used by LPT1 free for your PCI card. You can also use some TSR or tweak your 40:xx BIOS data to swap LPT1 and LPT3 with each other, but I do not know if a SIMPLE method for that exists. So disabling your onboard mainboard printer port is probably the easier way to let the PCI expansion card take the LPT1 slot without having to mess with more or less weird PCI configuration tools. Cheers, Eric PS: CMOS used to be the place where BIOS stores config data so I sort of use BIOS setup and CMOS setup as synonyms now. -- ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] JEMMEX - NTSTS network problem (NETBios over TCP/IP)
Hi Luca, based on the earlier communication on sourceforge that you quote, mainly with Anthony Williams / Rugxulo, I agree that you should try using some JEMMEX options like X=TEST or I=TEST. Actually JEMMEX has lots of options, some of which differ from what you are used to from HIMEM and EMM386, so check the readme. As you say that you have used MS DOS on the same computer before, you could use MEM (with various options) to see where MS EMM386 puts the UMB - maybe JEMMEX is too optimistic and puts UMB where the network card needs I/O buffers. Then you can exclude that area with suitable JEMMEX options. Also, not all drivers work well when loaded into UMB, so try loading NTSTS as DEVICE instead of as DEVICEHIGH :-) Plus, as Rugxulo already said, you can load HIMEMX and JEMM386 separately instead of loading the combined single JEMMEX driver. There are even a few other alternatives for HIMEMX to try out. Last but not least, you could try STACKSHIGH or larger stacks, but putting stacks HIGH might have side effects itself as well. Regards, Eric ... > DEVICE=C:\locale\JEMMEX.EXE > DOS=HIGH,UMB > DEVICEHIGH=C:\NET\PROTMAN.DOS /i:C:\NET > DEVICEHIGH=C:\NET\DLSHELP.SYS > DEVICEHIGH=C:\NET\e100b.dos > DEVICEHIGH=C:\NET\NTSTS.DOS > > BUFFERS=15,0 > FILES=60 > LASTDRIVE=Z > FCBS=4,0 > STACKS=9,256 > > When the config arrives to the DEVICEHIGH=C:\NET\NTSTS.DOS it crashes > immediately, or trying with various JEMMEX configurations i obtained that > upper memory is not enough... ... > JEMMEX is basically just HIMEMX and JEMM386 combined. I see that you're > trying to use UMBs, presumably because whatever needs lots of low > (conventional) memory to be free. So you're sure that HIMEMX alone wouldn't > work?? I would also personally recommend HIMEMX + JEMM386, just in case (and > read the docs, you may have to add things like "X=TEST I=TEST"). ... -- ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] trouble printing in clipper when using freedos
Hi Marlon / Kaye, to use DEBUG to change what is LPT1, you put the I/O port at some memory location (378 for LPT1, 278 for LPT2, 3bc for LPT3) which you can do for example like this: debug d 40:08 l 6 This shows you the current settings, e.g. 78 03 78 02 00 00 if you have LPT1 and LPT2 installed but not LPT3. a 40:08 This starts a session of "enter assembly code"... dw 278 dw 378 You leave the edit session by entering an empty line, now you get a "-" prompt again. Check the results: d 40:08 l 6 Now it shows 78 02 78 03 00 00, swapping LPT1 and LPT2. q You leave DEBUG with the command "q". You can automate the whole thing by making a text file with the commands which you want to type, then doing "DEBUG < myfile.txt". Instead of the "a" command you can also use the "e" command, to enter raw bytes of data, but I find "a" easier to read, because you want to enter words and not just bytes here... You quoted some BIOS settings about printer ports and those looked as if you had some mainboard printer port in addition to the one on PCI expansion card. Maybe you would need some cable to connect a printer port socket to the mainboard to actually use it, if it is not already soldered to the board. Alledgedly, you can also change your BIOS settings or use a DOS PnP software to configure printer ports and select if a port is LPT1, 2 or 3 in a more user-friendly way than DEBUG. You do NOT need to do anything with the serial ports for it. > 1. Is it or is it not possible to install freedos in a partition > of a hard drive by using a flash drive (instead of a CD)? You can do that, but you first have to install DOS to that flash drive then. Out of the box, flash drives are not usually set to be bootable and they are not always DOS-formatted. However, most computers have no problem to boot from flash drives or SD cards, so there is no general problem that would be in your way. When you have booted from SD or USB, the BIOS makes that visible (often as harddisk, sometimes as floppy) to DOS, so you do not need DOS drivers for SD or USB at that moment. You will have to manually check which disk is which, because as said, your flash storage might be treated as harddisk then. After installing DOS to your hard drive and booting that, your BIOS will probably no longer see the need to make USB drives visible to you, so after the install, you may need DOS USB drivers to access USB drives. > Earlier today I've made a bootable freedos flashdrive using UNETBOOTIN. > ... isn't it suppose to be the same as burning the .iso image onto a CD Not necessarily. USB sticks come in various sizes and are usually already formatted. When burning a CD, you turn it from blank to having a fixed content. UNETBOOTIN probably takes some effort to get you from a variable start state on your USB stick to bootable with DOS state :-) > I'm not sure but the installation looked like it went well, but I > can't boot from it, even if I ran the postinst.bat file. Maybe you accidentally installed TO the USB stick? See above. > 2. If LPT1 is hard coded into the clipper program, can the autoexec.bat in > freedos be edited in such a way as to somehow redirect the printer to LPT1? No, but it can automatically invoke tools which do that for you. In the worst case, that would be calling DEBUG with a text file. But you can probably find more convenient tools to do the same. > 3. A little bit unrelated but I hope you can answer: A dual boot > computer, Windows and a Linux Distro. In Windows, the printer is LPT1. In > Linux distro, it is LPT0. This is an actual thing (our office computer). You mean lp0, not LPT0. Windows and Linux use different ways to give names to printer ports. But you can of probably configure your DOSBOX (or probably better: Use DOSEMU) to gather data that DOS sends to LPT1 and forward it to the Linux printer driver, a file or directly to the physical printer port. Read the docs :-) Cheers, Eric -- ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Can I write .iso files to CD from FreeDOS ?
Hi George, > If I already have a .ISO file is there a way to write it to CD in a DOS > only computer ? While DOS based CD burning software exists, it is probably easier to use the SHSUCD driver family to "mount" the ISO, so you can use it in DOS without having to burn a CD :-) Eric -- ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] need a large file editor for dos
Hi John, if you have a 386 or newer CPU, it is best to use editors which make use of that to easily process huge files :-) http://setedit.sourceforge.net/#features An alternative might be TDE. See our DOS editor ideas on: http://www.freedos.org/software/?cat=edit Things mentioned on our software list can often be installed using FDNPKG and Mateusz' web repository for added comfort. Cheers, Eric > I am looking for a dos editor that can handle large files. Wordstar > will work in the non-document mode but it truncate files if there is an > ascii 26 (end of file) character. I would like the wordstar key commands -- ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] trouble printing in clipper when using freedos
Hi Marlon, > Hi, I boot freedos (which is installed in a partition of the hard drive). > I type debug, then I type d 40:8 > > The first line looks like this: ... 0040: [8 not displayed bytes] then ... > -78 03 00 00 00 00 C0 9E This means that you have only one printer port: 378. The other two ports are 0 (not installed) and after that, you get data which is not related to printers. So in short, on the actual hardware, there is only one printer port and it already is LPT1 anyway :-) Please check again if that port is actually on your mainboard, connected to some 2 x 13 pin header where you can connect a "proper" printer port on a bracket. If the port is the one on your PCI extension card, I see no reason why Clipper should have problems to use that. If it is not the PCI card one, then the card is probably not active: It might "think" that you should use the already existing port on your mainboard. You may use PCI PnP config tools to change the "thinking". Regards, Eric -- ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] trouble printing in clipper when using freedos
Hi Ralf and Marlon, to fill in on the historical details: >>> The first line looks like this: >> ... 0040: [8 not displayed bytes] then ... >> >>> -78 03 00 00 00 00 C0 9E >> This means that you have only one printer port: 378. >> The other two ports are 0 (not installed) and after >> that, you get data which is not related to printers. On computers older than PS/2, the last 2 bytes may have been printer related, but on "newer" computers, which includes all computers which have PCI slots at all, the value is the location of the BIOS data area (in this case short before the end of the first 640k of memory) and is not printer related any more :-) I see a few possibilities: Port 378 is on the mainboard and the PCI card does not have the printer port active, port 378 is on the PCI card but the BIOS does not use it because there was no printer port without that card or the PCI card printer port is active but on some non- standard I/O base... My preferred theory is still that there WOULD be some possibility to connect a slot bracket on the mainboard but have a look at your manual and BIOS setup to check. Regards, Eric PS Marlon: Is there data of other operating systems on your Clipper computer? Or are you building that from scratch? You want to avoid breaking existing files... -- ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Sound or Internet - Which would you rather have?
> I like having the option to use FDNPKG direct from ibiblio, and connecting > to FreeDOS via Dillodos, but I also like sound for my mplayer and mpxplay > and few vintage arcade games. Thoughts? Add a PCI network card with an old chipset, same for sound. For network, Realtek 8139 is classic, although tastes differ. A few PCI sound cards come with various means of emulating ISA sound blaster, but those often fail (IRQ, DMA, both...) on modern mainboards. Some (e.g. SB Live / SB PCI) even come with virtualizing drivers for DOS. Of course mplayer/mpxplay support some half-new chipsets directly, so if you have no need for game sound, I suggest a cheap PCI or PCIe soundcard with a chipset directly supported by mplayer or mpxplay :-) You can also try Covox (printer port) sound for games and try running DOS stuff in Dosemu or Dosbox in Linux or Windows... Cheers, Eric -- Presto, an open source distributed SQL query engine for big data, initially developed by Facebook, enables you to easily query your data on Hadoop in a more interactive manner. Teradata is also now providing full enterprise support for Presto. Download a free open source copy now. http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=250295911&iu=/4140 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Sound or Internet - Which would you rather have?
Hi! > Eric, I have bought 3 PCIe sound cards advertised as DOS/SB compatible > and none have worked. Perhaps we need a list of working PCIe cards? Modern mainboards fail to provide some aspects of ISA-awareness to make hardware emulation on PCI / PCIe cards work. However, you can try software emulation (SB PCI / SB Live style). Needs some special JEMM386 / JEMMEX option as far as I remember, read the JEMM docs :-) If you have games which use SoundBlaster without IRQ or DMA, e.g. by using only Adlib sound together with IRQ generated by the PC timer instead of by the soundcard, hardware emulation might work to some degree even on modern mainboards. Same for apps which do use DSP but without DMA, such as old MOD players which might use the PC timer for the timing and then only send the samples one by one to a target (Covox, PC speaker, SoundBlaster) of your choice. I know that this is not a very satisfying situation, but it can be interesting to play with this to find out what works and what not. For a general solution, your best chance is to run DOS in a VM or DOS-optimized VM such as DOSEMU or DOSBOX which simulate ISA SB16 hardware while forwarding the actual sound to the drivers of your host operating system (Linux or Windows), working with all cards. Cheers, Eric -- ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS running on Linux
Hi Jim, Alain, Georg et al, > I, for one, would be very interested to see a text-mode "small" Linux > that boots up an instance of DOSEMU instead of login on the first > available virtual terminal. (I'd put a regular Linux login on the > second VT.) For DOS purposes, I would prefer a graphical Linux. It does not have to have huge and/or proprietary 3d accel drivers, a basic VESA driver should be enough to have fun with DOS games and the SB16 emulation and other goodies of DOSEMU. Of course this could also be a "framebuffer console" Linux, but when I have Linux anyway, I want to be able to also have multiple windows. A simple Window Manager like XFCE or LXDE can do that :-) For example Kwort Linux runs xfce4 well (?) on 64 MB, while LXDE Lubuntu and XFCE Xubuntu recommend 256 or 512 MB RAM... LXDE.org calls 256 MB Pentium II moderate and 512 MB P3 fast. Other possible choices, inspired by the Wikipedia list of WM: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_X_window_managers http://windowmaker.org/themes.php (requirement info anybody?) http://www.fluxbox.org/screenshots/ (somewhat odd and basic?) Maybe too basic: Openbox w/o LXDE or www.joewing.net/projects/jwm/ I personally find XFCE more versatile but also heavier than LXDE: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/LowMemorySystems#Adding_a_window_manager Have not tested OpenBox, IceWM, Fluxbox or FVWM-Crystal yet, you? The old FVWM2 or FVWM95 might be enough, if you like config files. Cheers, Eric -- ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] FDNPKG v0.99.3
Hi Don, > 1) BIOS Set in IDE emulation - NO issues with FDNPKG. > 2) BIOS Set in Native SATA mode with AHCI.SYS, FDNPKG is prevented from > extracting the executable files. Perhaps a security feature of this PC No. AHCI / SATA is just the newer way of talking to various drives compared to IDE. If the AHCI driver for DOS has stability issues, you should simply disable it: DOS should still be able to access the harddisk using the BIOS anyway. For CD/DVD access, things are SUPPOSED to still work thanks to ElTorito boot CD/DVD support in the BIOS. However, if you use AHCI for CD/DVD and do NOT boot the PC from the DOS CD/DVD, you would have to use AHCI style drivers. Also, ElTorito support in some BIOS versions may have bugs, too. > 2) Create an ondisk REPO directory and copy the all_cd.iso repos to it Easier: Copy the single ISO file itself to harddisk and use that. We have DOS drivers which are able to simulate a CD/DVD directly from the ISO :-) > 3) Copy the all_cd.iso file to the hard drive and run SHUCDHD then install > from the hard drive iso file. This works very well and has the coolness Exactly :-) Cheers, Eric -- Go from Idea to Many App Stores Faster with Intel(R) XDK Give your users amazing mobile app experiences with Intel(R) XDK. Use one codebase in this all-in-one HTML5 development environment. Design, debug & build mobile apps & 2D/3D high-impact games for multiple OSs. http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=254741911&iu=/4140 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] improved driver plans from Jack
Hi DOS users, Jack mentions that he improves the closed-source versions of his drivers, XHDD and XDVD2, by adding smart read-ahead. The smart aspect is that they keep track of how large the CD or DVD in your drive is, to avoid doing read-ahead beyond the end... As with most improvements, this means performance is going to improve, depending on usage pattern! :-) The *old* UIDE driver variants are unmaintained now, but open source. The new feature is not available YET, but Jack already has asked Johnson and Khusraw for comments while he implements that - maybe some FreeDOS users have comments as well :-) Planned read-ahead size is 64 kB (32 sectors) in XDVD2 but only active if XHDD cache size is 60+ MB with 64 kB blocks as both drivers work together with a single combined cache. Regards, Eric PS: The above is of course a simplification of those topics. -- Go from Idea to Many App Stores Faster with Intel(R) XDK Give your users amazing mobile app experiences with Intel(R) XDK. Use one codebase in this all-in-one HTML5 development environment. Design, debug & build mobile apps & 2D/3D high-impact games for multiple OSs. http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=254741911&iu=/4140 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] FreeDOS MODE updates (and DOSEMU2) - known bugs, anybody?
Hi FreeDOS fans :-) Bob Ouellette has found a bug in how FreeDOS MODE in the 2005 version fails to correctly set the number of bits per "byte" for the serial port at lower to middle baud rates. A patched version seems to fix his issue, but maybe this is a good time to first patch other issues which have accumulated in the last ten (!) years before doing a new release. Please let me know if you know about fix-worthy smaller bugs with MODE 2005 :-) The bug is http://sourceforge.net/p/freedos/bugs/142/ and was caused by shifting some bits not far enough before a BIOS call. Cheers, Eric PS: For pre-testing, I used Stas' special DOSEMU version with improved sound & serial port simulation and various tweakings including DPMI from: https://github.com/stsp/dosemu2/releases -- ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Does FreeDOS boot/work under UEFI?
Hi! > Will FreeDOS 1.1 boot under UEFI? If not, is there a software layer > that can sit between UEFI and the OS to emulate a BIOS? > > 73 Matt Rienzo W9ERA B.S.E.E | B.S. Music Modern PC frequently have a BIOS with automatic choice between classic BIOS and modern UEFI boot... If your computer can ONLY boot from UEFI and no longer includes BIOS, you will first have to load BIOS modules from UEFI, maybe (for example) a SeaBIOS. If somebody has experience with this, it would be nice if they could share step by step instructions for SeaBIOS-ing to DOS :-) Cheers, Eric -- Site24x7 APM Insight: Get Deep Visibility into Application Performance APM + Mobile APM + RUM: Monitor 3 App instances at just $35/Month Monitor end-to-end web transactions and take corrective actions now Troubleshoot faster and improve end-user experience. Signup Now! http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=267308311&iu=/4140 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] BIOS with broken UDMA needs DOS disk driver loaded before JEMMEX
Dear DOS users, via the BTTR DOS forum and Jack I received the following warning: Some mainboards have a BIOS with faulty UDMA in V86 mode support! This CPU mode is used to run "DOS compatible" tasks in Windows or certain virtual environments such as Dosemu for Linux, but it is (importantly) also used by all EMM386-style DOS drivers, such as JEMMEX: With such drivers, the presence of EMS memory hardware is simulated by moving DOS into a V86 task. When the BIOS fails to support UDMA (memory block copy and block copy between memory and I/O devices) properly in V86, attempts to transfer disk data can fail or end up at the wrong places in RAM. DOS disk drivers could potentially test if your BIOS is buggy, but it will not always be possible to do that without causing a crash. In the BEST case, the driver could conclude that no UDMA will work. In the WORST case (!), the BIOS itself defaults to UDMA disk access and crashes as soon as you enter V86 mode. In that case, you will be FORCED to load a driver like XHDD or UIDE before loading JEMMEX to protect your BIOS from its own stupidity. Unfortunately, it is not unlikely at all that if you have a bug, you have it worst case! To avoid crashes, it is important to LOAD DISK DRIVERS BEFORE EMM (if your BIOS is affected by such bugs). For example, load XHDD in your boot process before you load JEMMEX. If you disk driver is using XMS (for example as cache) you can of course not use JEMMEX as your XMS driver, but have to load a separate XMS driver before the cache, as JEMMEX has to be loaded after the disk driver... Some drivers can use HMA space provided by XMS drivers (as HIMEM) if no UMB space (provided by EMM386 and similar) is available, but in general, many drivers only support UMB, so your amount of free DOS memory is reduced if you have to delay the loading of EMM386. Jack recommends to load HIMEMX then UIDE then JEMMEX: That way, the UIDE driver can use the HMA and HIMEMX + UIDE will use circa 3.5 kB of low DOS memory together. If you only load UIDE and then JEMMEX, UIDE would need 4.5 kB of low DOS memory and would miss early XMS. An even more advanced suggestion by Jack is to load XMGR /B instead of HIMEMX, then UIDE, then JEMMEX, then XMGR again, but without /B, which allows XMGR to regain 2 kB of memory as soon as JEMMEX is on. Note that FreeDOS by default does not give drivers access to HMA space at all inside config.sys, so you would have to delay those driver loads to autoexec - other DOS variants are more flexible. Regards, Eric PS: When you boot Windows or Linux, the protected mode disk drivers of the operating system are usually activated BEFORE any V86 tasks get the chance to try to access the disk. This is why the BIOS bug can go unnoticed - only DOS will suffer, other systems don't care. PPS: LOWDMA (ships with UMBPCI) and the TUNS option of LBACACHE are other examples of driver workarounds for BIOS and hardware problems. -- Site24x7 APM Insight: Get Deep Visibility into Application Performance APM + Mobile APM + RUM: Monitor 3 App instances at just $35/Month Monitor end-to-end web transactions and take corrective actions now Troubleshoot faster and improve end-user experience. Signup Now! http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=267308311&iu=/4140 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] UltraDMA warning corrected
Jack writes: Eric, Re: your FD-User post about "new BIOS" UltraDMA errors, the post has "just a few" ERRORS, which you need to correct: First, the title of your post, "BIOS with broken UDMA needs DOS disk driver loaded before JEMMEX", should be changed. Instead of saying "UDMA" that you and I understand, use the full word "UltraDMA" which many more people would more-immediately understand. Also, one does not need to load a DOS disk driver, which might be seen as "any" DOS driver.One must ABSOLUTELY load a DOS *ULTRADMA* disk driver, as this "new BIOS" problem applies only to UltraDMA done in "v86" mode! > Some mainboards have a BIOS with faulty UDMA in V86 mode support! Better to say "Some *new* mainboards have a BIOS with faulty support for UltraDMA in V86 mode". Better English; and again, you should replace "UDMA" with the full word "UltraDMA". > ... The presence of EMS memory hardware is simulated by moving > DOS into a V86 task. Absolutely NOT TRUE! "V86" mode was created by Intel to provide a way of (a) running 16-bit programs on 32-bit systems, (B) providing protection for the system from such programs. EMS hardware is NOT "simulated" but is REQUIRED to access extended memory, which is the "E" in EMS! > When the BIOS fails to support UDMA (memory block copy and block > copy between memory and I/O devices) properly in V86, attempts to > transfer disk data can fail or end up at the wrong places in RAM. NOT what Martin Rehak saw! He got "Cold" DOS disk ERRORS, when his system tried to do UltraDMA output using his new mainboard. He did NOT indicate what happened to his data, during such I-O transfers -- Martin got only disk I-O errors from his V6.22 SYSTEM! > DOS disk drivers could potentially test if your BIOS is buggy, but > it will not always be possible to do that without causing a crash. > In the BEST case, the driver could conclude that no UDMA will work. Given Martin's new mainboard, it will NEVER be possible to do such a test, I guarantee you! Also, if we limit "DOS disk drivers" to the ones I wrote, assuming "no UltraDMA will work" says the drivers MUST "call the BIOS" to do such I-O. My drivers were meant for UltraDMA and have no "PIO mode" code for disks (XDVD2 must have it for CD/DVD "audio" and other drive commands). Calling the BIOS on such a "new BIOS" mainboard WILL cause crashes, as the BIOS itself is a PROBLEM! > In the WORST case (!), the BIOS itself defaults to UDMA disk access > and crashes as soon as you enter V86 mode. In that case, you will > be FORCED to load a driver like XHDD or UIDE before loading JEMMEX > to protect your BIOS from its own stupidity ... Not the worst-case, but the EXPECTED case, as modern BIOS programs ALL use UltraDMA to improve speed! Also, unless you desire nasty words from my "good friends" Rugxulo and Hall, I would not mention XHDD, since it shall remain closed-source and thus unavailable for use within FreeDOS, also unavailable for archiving on SourceForge. > To avoid crashes, it is important to LOAD DISK DRIVERS BEFORE EMM > (if your BIOS is affected by such bugs). For example, load XHDD in > your boot process before you load JEMMEX. If you disk driver is > using XMS (for example as cache) you can of course not use JEMMEX > as your XMS driver, but have to load a separate XMS driver before > the cache, as JEMMEX has to be loaded after the disk driver... Likely a very "confusing" paragraph, for the average user! Again I would suggest NOT mentioning XHDD, as it shall never be any part of FreeDOS. Do try to write "simplified" English so more of your users will understand what is going on. I target "4th graders", which some view as insulting. But, I know doing so is NECESSARY! > Some drivers can use HMA space provided by XMS drivers (as HIMEM) if no UMB space (provided by EMM386 and similar) is available ... Never heard of any other DOS drivers loading in HMA, except my own. > Jack recommends to load HIMEMX then UIDE then JEMMEX: That way, the > UIDE driver can use the HMA and HIMEMX + UIDE will use circa 3.5 kB > of low DOS memory together. If you only load UIDE and then JEMMEX, > UIDE would need 4.5 kB of low DOS memory and would miss early XMS. All true, with V6.22 or V7.xx MS-DOS. NOT TRUE when using FreeDOS, since FreeDOS does not make any HMA available to CONFIG.SYS drivers! When using FreeDOS, there is NO SUCH THING as "early XMS"! > An even more advanced suggestion by Jack is to load XMGR /B instead > of HIMEMX, then UIDE, then JEMMEX, then XMGR again, but without /B, > which allows XMGR to regain 2 kB of memory as soon as JEMMEX is on. JEMMEX wi
Re: [Freedos-user] UltraDMA warning corrected
Hi Jim, > I am concerned by this statement from Jack's email: "Take a look at > the sources for Microsoft HIMEM or EMM386, as I have..." This is the > first I was aware that Jack had reviewed any source code from > Microsoft. ... > When Microsoft released the source code to an earlier version of > MS-DOS (March 2014) we mentioned it on our FreeDOS Technotes page > <http://www.freedos.org/technotes/> with a note that "If you download > and study the MS-DOS source code, you should not contribute code to > FreeDOS afterwards. We want to avoid any suggestion that FreeDOS has > been 'tainted' by this proprietary code." I have given the same > warning in other forums. ... > I see in the software list that we include these programs from Jack: > > BASE > UIDE > http://www.freedos.org/software/?prog=uide > * multi-purpose driver for UDMA, CD/DVD (IDE, no ASPI), disk caching > > BASE > XMGR > http://www.freedos.org/software/?prog=xmgr > * providing XMSv3 > > So we will now need to remove XMGR from the FreeDOS distribution. You mean because XMGR might be inspired by MS HIMEM? That risk is indeed plausible. Luckily MS never shipped anything similar to his UIDE drivers, so UIDE cannot be based on MS DOS source codes :-) Eric -- Site24x7 APM Insight: Get Deep Visibility into Application Performance APM + Mobile APM + RUM: Monitor 3 App instances at just $35/Month Monitor end-to-end web transactions and take corrective actions now Troubleshoot faster and improve end-user experience. Signup Now! http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=267308311&iu=/4140 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] chkdsk for fat32!
Hi Sparky, > Hey will the chkdsk for fat32 ever be made? ^^; It already exists as (a bit old) dosfstools port: http://www.freedos.org/software/?prog=dosfsck If you want dosfsck to either "look like chkdsk" or "work on 8086 and 80286" then please have a look at earlier threads about the issue: Looks do not have a priority but feel free to fork a chkdsk-style version if you think otherwise ;-) Dosfsck for 8086 would have serious performance issues because FAT32 are large data structures, also FAT32 disks often have many files and dirs while FAT16 allows only up to 64k files or dirs. A subset of the dosfsck features MIGHT work with suitable modifications in algorithms and memory management at reasonable speed on 8086. However, as far as I remember earlier discussions (please look them up in the freedos-user list archive), many nice and useful checks are either lost when only 1M RAM is available or become horribly slow. If the topic REALLY interests you, please start a NEW thread by citing the list of checks and their 8086 viability based on a summary of old threads. Eric -- Site24x7 APM Insight: Get Deep Visibility into Application Performance APM + Mobile APM + RUM: Monitor 3 App instances at just $35/Month Monitor end-to-end web transactions and take corrective actions now Troubleshoot faster and improve end-user experience. Signup Now! http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=267308311&iu=/4140 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
