Re: [Freedos-user] QuickView 2.60 with MP4 support released

[Eric Auer]

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



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Re: [Freedos-user] adding drivers, autoexec.bat, config.sys to bootable CD

[Eric Auer]

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



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Re: [Freedos-user] Quickview ver 2.60

[Eric Auer]

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



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Re: [Freedos-user] Quickview ver 2.60

[Eric Auer]

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


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[Freedos-user] FAT format process - was: Re: Quickview ver 2.60

[Eric Auer]

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




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Re: [Freedos-user] [Freedos-devel] FreeDOS 1.2 and 2.0 roadmap discussion

[Eric Auer]

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

[Eric Auer]

(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
> 
> 




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Re: [Freedos-user] USB to serial adapters and soundcard emulation on FreeDOS

[Eric Auer]

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



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[Freedos-user] DOS Linux dual boot with FreeDOS replacing MS DOS 6.22

[Eric Auer]

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


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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS 2.0 GUI?

[Eric Auer]

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




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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS 2.0 GUI?

[Eric Auer]

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


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Re: [Freedos-user] HTML5/Javascript/Flash (was: Re: Quickview ver 2.60)

[Eric Auer]

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



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Re: [Freedos-user] HTML5/Javascript/Flash (was: Re: Quickview ver 2.60)

[Eric Auer]

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



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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS install aborted into VirtualBox - Help please

[Eric Auer]

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


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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS program/beginner's problems

[Eric Auer]

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

[Eric Auer]

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



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Re: [Freedos-user] Rom-dos

[Eric Auer]

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


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Re: [Freedos-user] Installation Error

[Eric Auer]

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

[Eric Auer]

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



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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS Edit maximum file size

[Eric Auer]

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




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[Freedos-user] new uide version? details?

[Eric Auer]

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


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Re: [Freedos-user] RAM size

[Eric Auer]

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?



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Re: [Freedos-user] RAM size

[Eric Auer]

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



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Re: [Freedos-user] dos usb driver!

[Eric Auer]

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



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[Freedos-user] new free unified closed source caching disk and optical drivers by Jack

[Eric Auer]

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


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Re: [Freedos-user] iBiblio's Apache no longer provides directory listings

[Eric Auer]

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



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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS wishlist

[Eric Auer]

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.




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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS wishlist - soundcards

[Eric Auer]

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


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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS wishlist

[Eric Auer]

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.



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Re: [Freedos-user] displays GRUB on startup

[Eric Auer]

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



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Re: [Freedos-user] Drivers or tips for 3 ISA sound cards?

[Eric Auer]

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



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Re: [Freedos-user] Drivers or tips for 3 ISA sound cards?

[Eric Auer]

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


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Re: [Freedos-user] Drivers or tips for 3 ISA sound cards?

[Eric Auer]

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



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Re: [Freedos-user] DOS printing

[Eric Auer]

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



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Re: [Freedos-user] Getting any CD player to work

[Eric Auer]

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



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Re: [Freedos-user] Vertical lines/bands in LCD display but OK on CRT

[Eric Auer]

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?




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Re: [Freedos-user] Vertical lines/bands in LCD display but OK on CRT

[Eric Auer]

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?



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Re: [Freedos-user] Getting any CD player to work

[Eric Auer]

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.


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Re: [Freedos-user] Vertical lines/bands in LCD display but OK on CRT

[Eric Auer]

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



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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS diskette cache

[Eric Auer]

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





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Re: [Freedos-user] XIDE Updated; UIDE Support TERMINATED!

[Eric Auer]

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


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Re: [Freedos-user] Doom unstable with LBACACHE or RDISK

[Eric Auer]

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.



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Re: [Freedos-user] [solved] Doom unstable with LBACACHE or RDISK

[Eric Auer]

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



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Re: [Freedos-user] [solved] Doom unstable with LBACACHE or RDISK

[Eric Auer]

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



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Re: [Freedos-user] [solved] Doom unstable with LBACACHE or RDISK

[Eric Auer]

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



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Re: [Freedos-user] Help with installing FreeDOS on second partition

[Eric Auer]

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



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Re: [Freedos-user] Help with installing FreeDOS on second partition

[Eric Auer]

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



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Re: [Freedos-user] Help with installing FreeDOS on second partition

[Eric Auer]

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



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[Freedos-user] metados networked freedos distro by rugxulo available

[Eric Auer]

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)



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Re: [Freedos-user] entering into the command-line as fast as possible

[Eric Auer]

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



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Re: [Freedos-user] trouble printing in clipper when using freedos

[Eric Auer]

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.



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Re: [Freedos-user] trouble printing in clipper when using freedos

[Eric Auer]

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.



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Re: [Freedos-user] JEMMEX - NTSTS network problem (NETBios over TCP/IP)

[Eric Auer]

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").

...



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Re: [Freedos-user] trouble printing in clipper when using freedos

[Eric Auer]

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



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Re: [Freedos-user] Can I write .iso files to CD from FreeDOS ?

[Eric Auer]

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



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Re: [Freedos-user] need a large file editor for dos

[Eric Auer]

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



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Re: [Freedos-user] trouble printing in clipper when using freedos

[Eric Auer]

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



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Re: [Freedos-user] trouble printing in clipper when using freedos

[Eric Auer]

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...



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Re: [Freedos-user] Sound or Internet - Which would you rather have?

[Eric Auer]

> 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



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Re: [Freedos-user] Sound or Internet - Which would you rather have?

[Eric Auer]

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



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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS running on Linux

[Eric Auer]

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



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Re: [Freedos-user] FDNPKG v0.99.3

[Eric Auer]

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



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[Freedos-user] improved driver plans from Jack

[Eric Auer]

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.


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[Freedos-user] FreeDOS MODE updates (and DOSEMU2) - known bugs, anybody?

[Eric Auer]

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


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Re: [Freedos-user] Does FreeDOS boot/work under UEFI?

[Eric Auer]

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



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[Freedos-user] BIOS with broken UDMA needs DOS disk driver loaded before JEMMEX

[Eric Auer]

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.


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[Freedos-user] UltraDMA warning corrected

[Eric Auer]

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 will NOT load if another "XMS manager" driver is loaded!   If
XMGR is present, only JEMM386 or another "non-XMS" EMM driver can be
used.   XMGR + JEMM386 solves the problem of FreeDOS permitting only
one upper-memory "provider, in this case JEMM386.   UMBPCI + JEMM386
may not be used together, on FreeDOS.   That is why I suggested this
CONFIG.SYS "sc

Re: [Freedos-user] UltraDMA warning corrected

[Eric Auer]

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
>  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



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Re: [Freedos-user] chkdsk for fat32!

[Eric Auer]

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



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Re: [Freedos-user] Problems with installation

[Eric Auer]

Hi Francisco,

> When I attempt to start the FreeDOS using VirtualBox, I get the following DOS 
> screen:
> It says:

> JemmEx v5.75 [05/21/11]
> System memory found at c900-dfff, region might be in use

This may mean that JEMMEX has doubts about whether that area
is suitable for use as UMB area. You could exclude the area,
to be on the safe side. Or even skip loading JEMMEX completely
and load only some XMS and HMA driver instead, such as HIMEM.

You can also load neither HIMEM nor JEMMEX, but then you will
not be able to use XMS or HMA. Less DOS memory will be free.

If you only skip JEMMEX but load HIMEM, you will not have EMS
or UMB memory. Most software for DOS is happy with XMS, so it
does not need EMS, but without UMB, you can not load drivers
and other resident software outside the first 640 kB of memory
so you will have a bit less DOS memory free.

> JemmEx loaded
> Kernel: allocated 46 Diskbuffers = 24472 Bytes in HMA

At this moment, HMA becomes available and the FreeDOS kernel
starts to use it. You probably mention the message because
that is exactly the moment when DOS hangs in your VirtualBox?

It is possible that trying to use HMA, XMS or UMB, some driver
or the kernel accidentally got in conflict with memory used by
your VirtualBox BIOS or virtual hardware for something else,
causing a crash. Your JemmEx message warns about such a risk.

It also is possible that "A20 switching" of your JEMMEX caused
problems by either crashing or having no effect, but as it has
various A20 styles available, you could try non-default styles.

Please read the documentation of JEMMEX and edit your config
sys (or fdconfig sys) file to use more "cautious" options for
JEMMEX. Alternatively, simply skip loading JEMMEX completely,
for example using the usual F5 or F8 hotkeys or, if you have
a menu defined in your (fd)config sys file, by selecting one
of the boot configs which use other drivers than JEMMEX :-)

> Any help would be appreciated.Thanks

It is possible that changing the type of virtual harddisk, USB
or network controller or virtual A20 hardware can help, too! :-)

Regards, Eric

PS: You have not specified where the "FreeDOS 1.1 VDI" VM image
came from and which versions of what and which configs it uses.



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Re: [Freedos-user] improved driver plans from Jack

[Eric Auer]

Hi! It turns out that this 12/2015 list topic needs an update:

> Jack mentions that he improves the closed-source versions of
> his drivers, XHDD and XDVD2, by adding smart read-ahead...

Jack did some experiments with read-ahead in December, but
the performance improvements were smaller than expected. So
he will NOT release an updated version with read-ahead now!

Eric



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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS 1.2 Preview 11

[Eric Auer]

Hi Don et al,

> USB installer is a different matter.
> First, please disable BELL on lbacache - it wreaks havoc on my wifes's
> hearing aid.

Wait, that is pretty serious! Only really important cache errors beep:

- impossible CHS geometry or cylinder in CHS access
- unsupported and rather exotic INT13 disk BIOS calls
- disk write errors and disk read errors
- XMS driver errors (for example HIMEM A20 errors)
- disk calls recursively doing other disk calls

Please let me know which errors happen on your system.

> Second on my Compaq Armada 1750 USB is only bootable by PLOP boot manager
> and thus it a C: drive- this causes write protection on the USB (as it
> should) with installer "confused" about how to handle the "ABORT, RETRY,
> IGNORE error. Installation failed.

That might mean that PLOP itself is more or less a "bootable read
only USB stick driver", which is quite unusual. Maybe the USB DOS
installer tries to write to the stick! That would be unnecessary,
if you ask me: It is much faster to write to a small ramdisk - the
installer should only need small amounts of writing apart from the
writes to the target disk. It should have minimal usage of pipelines
because in DOS, those work with temp files: dir | more basically is
"dir > tempfile" followed by "more < tempfile". Luckily, command.com
respects the TEMP or TMP variable setting for selecting temp dirs :-)

If the beeps are due to write failure, then the installer will fail
as well, because it probably relies on being able to put temp files
in the stick. As said, it SHOULD not rely on that anyway, IMHO...

Regards, Eric



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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS 1.2 Preview 11

[Eric Auer]

Hi!

>> Wait, that is pretty serious! Only really important cache errors beep:

...

> Hopefully, it is just from attempted writing of temp files to the locked USB 
> stick.

Well that is still serious. Even if you do something as harmless as

copy STUFF SOMEWHERE | more

you would still end up 1. not seeing the output of "copy" and
possibly even 2. block the "copy" process by stalling the pipe.

In short, please use a ramdisk for all your pipe and temp work :-)

PS: More is a good example where pipes can be avoided, with help
of my moresys driver ;-)

> If the there is no beeping, when he boots the Floppy Install and
> he only gets it when using the USB stick, It would probably be
> due to the Read only USB stick. 
> 
> The floppy version, does not write to the floppy and at startup
> checks to see if there is a writable drive C:. If so, it will try to 
> configure a TEMP directory and see if it can import language
> and DOSDIR settings...

It should probably not do that on C: but on the user-selected target
drive, to avoid unwanted changes to C: ... In addition it should not
use C: so early anyway: Maybe it needs to be formatted first.

> If it cannot find C: or C: is not writable,
> it will bypass the importing of settings.

Importing of settings?

> the floppy will postpone setting up a TEMP directory ...

No need to postpone with a ramdisk ;-)

>   Sees C:
> 
>   Tries to configure the TEMP dir on C: (succeeds as 
>   C:\FDSETUP\TEMP exists on image)

Hehe bad test ;-)

>   Attempts to import settings from C: (fails)
> 
>   Keeps C: as target drive and temp dir on C:
> 
>   Serious and repeated failures beyond this point. (fails, and 
>   probable set /p system crash)
> 
> I have some ideas on how to resolve this issue. So, when
> I get the time. I will take care of this compatibility issue.

Thanks! Cheers, Eric




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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS 1.2 Preview 11

[Eric Auer]

Hi!

>> Well that is still serious. Even if you do something as harmless as
>>
>> copy STUFF SOMEWHERE | more
>>
>> you would still end up 1. not seeing the output of "copy" and
>> possibly even 2. block the "copy" process by stalling the pipe.
>>
>> In short, please use a ramdisk for all your pipe and temp work :-)
> 
> Yeah, probably not going to do that. It adds to much complication 
> to the installer startup. It would need to be very small and that
> may risk package installation failure later on with fdinst.

That is exactly why I recommend using a ramdisk: Without ramdisk,
everything sent through pipes goes to a digital black hole when
the install disk is not writeable, risking plenty of side effects.

For piping stuff, a tiny ramdisk will be enough. If you assume that
a computer which can boot from CD / DVD / USB has, say, at least 16
MB RAM (yes youngsters, not 16 GB ;-)) then you could use 4 for the
cache and 1 for the ramdisk and have 10 left for installer / unzip
32 bit activities still. So a bit of a ramdisk is totally harmless!

By the way, how about creating a 600 MB RAMDISK (no joke) whenever
the installer detects 1 GB or more RAM? That would allow users to
do a full install to the ramdisk, effectively using your installer
stick as a "LIVE CD" without install and without rebooting :-)

> if a user did not boot the install media and just runs it from
> the command line, a pre-existing ramdisk may cause issues or be 
> forcefully unloaded. It is also an additional driver to load.

Ramdisks are pretty compatible and I see no reason why loading more
than one of them would cause any troubles. Also, my suggestion was
to load a ramdisk in CONFIG & AUTOEXEC. Everybody who manually wants
to start the installer from the command line of their existing DOS
or Windows can be expected to know what they do, so I agree to not
bother those by loading DRIVERS as side effect of installer start.

Maybe this is a good topic for review! As the moment, which steps
do you take in CONFIG / AUTOEXEC and which steps, apart from the
scripted invocation of (after optional fdisk and format) the DOS
package manager and the creation of a target config and autoexec,
are taken by the installer itself? Thanks for giving an overview!

> There is an easy way around the issue. I will probably just have the 
> installer test if C: is the USB stick prior to activating the TEMP 
> directory. 

That will not work with PLOP, nor will it work with "booting from
a harddisk image on CD or DVD", as those are all write-protected
simulations of a C: harddisk as far as my intuition tells me that.

> The batch file based FDI installer would not be very good without any 
> pipes. It would have almost no flexibility at all. Would only have
> hard coded package lists and would not be able to dynamically 
> create customized system configuration files. 

You can do a lot with errorlevels and you can select packages AFTER
selecting the target drive: By definition, as soon as the user has
selected (and maybe formatted) a target drive, you can write it :-)

> At startup, it only uses C: if C: exists and is formatted. If those conditions
> are met, It will check for system config files and import settings if they 
> exist.

As explained, that is not sufficient to know whether it is writeable.

>> Importing of settings?
> 
> Language settings, DOS Installation directory \FDOS \FREEDOS \OS
> or whatever.

How does it try to grab those? If there already is FreeDOS on the
target disk anyway, I suggest to NOT overwrite the autoexec nor
the config by default: Instead, give the user a fresh example for
those, in separate files. That way, the user can decide how they
want to combine old and new config. Pre-existing DOS installs do
almost ALWAYS have hand-made config changes and you would destroy
those by "importing" the old into a freshly auto-created new set.

Even if the pre-existing DOS install was created by some automated
install tool and has barely been modified by the user later, your
installer would still have to have knowledge about all installers
which could have been used for the previously existing version, to
know how and which information could be extracted from old configs.

Regards, Eric



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Re: [Freedos-user] INTERLINK

[Eric Auer]

Hi!

> Just want to know if FreeDOS can run interlink.exe and intersrv.exe
> If FreeDOS is compatible with interlink, then what steps should follow?

As far as I remember, those provide sector based connection of FAT
partitions through a serial or printer port cable: As long as your
sector size is 512 bytes, that should probably work. Note that you
only have those tools if you already own MS DOS anyway and that the
tools only support FAT16 and maybe FAT12, but not FAT32. You could
also use the drive-over-cable feature in the free FileMaven (FM3)
file manager instead of using interlnk and intersvr. The latter two
require at least MS DOS 3.0 and 2.11, respectively, according to MS
KB item 502282 on the support.microsoft.com website - should be ok.

For more modern connectivity, you could also use FTP, SCP (see SSH)
and SMB (using the DOS port of smbclient) or of course solutions on
the basis of (HTTP or not-too-new-HTTPS) websites. However, all of
those have in common that you use a client tool rather than making
one drive on one computer visible as an actual drive on the other.

For making drives directly visible, the modern solution would be to
run DOS in a virtual environment: There is a DOS driver for client
drives in VMware http://www.freedos.org/software/?prog=vmsmount and
if you use the DOSEMU or DOSBOX environments, making host directories
visible as drives visible from DOS is even a built-in feature which
does not require any additional drivers on the DOS side :-)

FileMaven 3.5a is closed source freeware with laplink style transfer
and support for ZIP and others: http://www.briggsoft.com/fmdos.htm

Cheers, Eric



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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS 1.2+ Preview 12 - Now with Dimples

[Eric Auer]

Hi Don, to make a PESSIMISTIC GUESS about the following:

> Downloaded and burned to CD.
> Lots of "Error writing to drive A: DOS area write protection violation
> attempted" errors. Is there reason I am getting this?

Yes. Apparently version 1.2pre12 still tries to use pipelines, which
in DOS always means using temp files, without setting the temp dir
to a location on ramdisk or (if available) on your target harddisk?

This also means that all data sent through pipelines will be lost.

OPTIMISTICALLY, you MIGHT "simply" be suffering from a bug in how
the DOSLFN driver interacts with the install process. It seems to
cause A: access instead of access to the proper selected drive in
certain situations, but you and Rugxulo know more about this than
I, at this point ;-) You could try to skip loading that driver :-)

I am sure that Jerome & Rugxulo can give better, informed answers.

"Guessful" regards, Eric

PS: I suspected that LFN issue to be findfirst/findnext/findclose
related, but it could also be something totally different, such as
a bug in LFN support of command.com itself or in using LH w/o UMB.



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[Freedos-user] HX DOS extender with AC97 and HDA soundcard support

[Eric Auer]

Forwarding from: www.bttr-software.de/forum/forum_entry.php?id=14645

HX DOS Extender 2.17+ with modern sound card support (Announce)

posted by Wengier, 16.02.2016, 22:33

As many of you already know, HX DOS Extender, the best DOS extender out
there is no longer maintained by Japheth. One major issue that HX 2.17
(the last version by Japheth) exists is that it only supports a
SBpro/SB16 card. More recently however, Ruslan Starodubov, the author of
modern sound cards support for QuickView Pro 2.60, has decided to update
HX 2.17 to support these modern sound cards such as AC97 and Intel HDA
too. Yesterday he released HX 2.17+, which currently features
experimental support for Intel HDA sound cards. The download page is at:

http://sound-dos.ucoz.ru/

Please note that this is a very important milestone in the history of
DOS, as the vast majority of DOS sound apps/games out there (except
certain programs such as QV 2.60 and MPXPLAY) currently don't support
modern sound cards such as AC97/HDA directly, and there is no SB16
emulation driver available for these modern sound cards; however, since
DOSBox (the best DOS emulator) provides good SB16 emulation and we are
able to run DOSBox under HX DOS Extender, and so if HX DOS Extender
supports modern sound cards like HDA, then all DOS sound apps/games that
work in DOSBox would be able to play sound through DOSBox's SB16
emulation of these sound cards under HX DOS Extender. This is
functionally pretty much like a SB16 emulation driver for modern sound
cards in real DOS. Once we are able to get sound cards like AC97/HDA to
work reliably with HX, then the no sound issue with the majority of DOS
sound apps/games will be completed resolved by the SB16 emulation of
these sound cards within HX+DOSBox in real DOS. So please don't hesitate
to test your HDA sound cards under HX 2.17+ now and report any issues
encountered. In case you want to try a recent DOSBox build that run
under HX, you can try the one built with MinGW below with long filename,
mouse copy/paste and DBCS support:

http://bit.ly/1laDvGX

Download both HX and DOSBox, then make sure DOSLFN is loaded and run
DOSBox with "dpmild32 -g dosbox.exe". In my experiences it currently
works best with Japheth's HX 2.16, which is still accessible from the
page below (download both HXRT and HXGUI packages). When using with HX
2.17 or 2.17+, you might need to replace its VESA32.DLL file with the
one from HX 2.16.

http://web.archive.org/web/20140904175113/http://www.japheth.de/HX.html

Wengier


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Re: [Freedos-user] HX DOS extender with AC97 and HDA soundcard support

[Eric Auer]

> Just for clarification, does this only work with programs loaded
> inside dosbox inside HX, or is there any way to get it to work under
> DOS directly, with HX loaded but without DOSbox? I'm still thinking
> of dualbooting one of my machines with DOS but I need some way of
> doing either USB serial port emulation or modern soundcard support
> for speech synthesis.

I do not know, please check the website or try to find out. If it
works in dosbox, it already is quite nice, but of course it would
be even better if it also worked for old DOS programs.

Eric


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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS 1.2+ Preview 12 - Now with Dimples

[Eric Auer]

Hi Louis and Jerome,

as advanced user, I am against installers zapping my MBR without
even looking at it. I would need a bootable CD to repair my boot
menu, or would need to know how to do that with DOS. Enough users
neither have boot repair CD prepared nor know how to use DOS tool
methods for restoring a backup of their MBR.

As mentioned probably a few weeks ago, please overwrite the MBR
ONLY if it was empty... By EMPTY, I mean no code present at all.
Which is the state that you will probably see when you bought an
empty harddisk or made a new virtual computer to install DOS on.

You can mention in the readme that users can issue [some command]
at the DOS prompt after booting from the CD to overwrite the MBR.
That will allow them to do that at their own risk IF they want.

You could even add a dialog to ask the user whether they want to
overwrite their MBR, but this includes the risk that people would
say yes without careful thinking. Also, as said, this should ONLY
be required if the MBR was empty before. So I suggest to grab and
backup a copy of the MBR first. Second, check if it had boot code
and only third, only if not, write the boot code which was missing.

Thanks! Regards, Eric

>> This is a known problem that has been undergoing consideration on
>> how best to resolve the issue. The SYS command used by the
>> installer does not force an overwrite of the old boot code in the
>> MBR. This would damage the boot loader of a multi boot system.
>> However, this seems to cause at least as many problems as it
>> solves.
>> 
>> At present, the current thinking is to backup the MBR and push a
>> new one regardless of the current MBR.
> 
> The advanced user in me likes this.But, is there an easy way for 
> the advanced user to re-install the backed up MBR?  To me, this 
> creates an additional liability that FD should be prepared/able to 
> solve.
> 
> I advocate for FDI to Prompt, backup MBR, and then overwrite.


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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS 1.2+ Preview 12 - Now with Dimples

[Eric Auer]

Hi!

> Matuesz, I actually went and tested this.  MS-DOS 6.22 [0]
> handles the MBR that same way as FDI [1] does. :/  Both leave a broken
> MBR, one that cannot boot into the newly installed DOS.

Ouch. Note that MS DOS is from the time where nobody had any
other operating system previously installed. FreeDOS has TWO
new (and frequently happening!) situations to deal with:

- user has another OS and DOS must not kill the boot menu without asking

- user made a virtual computer for DOS, the disk contains nothing at all

In the second case, it is good to automatically make a MBR from scratch.
In the first case, it would be a disaster for those who want dual boot.

>> Naturally, an appropriately big warning must be presented before doing
>> so, and if the user knows he has some tricky configuration (multi-boot),
>> he should be able to select an option "leave my MBR alone please, I will
>> take care of it myself".
> 
> YES!

 +1

Cheers, Eric



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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS 1.2+ Preview 12 - Now with Dimples

[Eric Auer]

Hi Jerome,

>> - user has another OS and DOS must not kill the boot menu without asking
>>
>> - user made a virtual computer for DOS, the disk contains nothing at all
> 
> - user has some old hardware they want to install and play with a newer DOS.
> 
>> In the second case, it is good to automatically make a MBR from scratch.
>> In the first case, it would be a disaster for those who want dual boot.
> 
> In the third case, neither solution works. MBR not blank and MBR needs 
> overwritten.
> User is angry to not have w working computer. Leaves and never comes back.

I beg to differ. Simply ASK the user whether they want to install the
special FreeDOS MBR and mention that this is not normally required but
if booting fails, it helps.

Because if you have some old computer which already has DOS or maybe
Win95 on it, SYS will be enough to install FreeDOS, without MBR zap.

Again, there ARE situations where you want a fresh MBR, but those are
neither autodetectable nor the universal solution to installation :-)

The exception is the "MBR is totally empty" case of freshly made virtual
computers and sometimes freshly bought unformatted storage media. Those
can be autodetected, if you want an extra bit of convenicence. Because
it would be totally okay to tell the user in such situations that they
most probably WANT a fresh MBR instead of 512 NULL-bytes. Still I would
ask them for confirmation before I proceed at that point of install, to
be extra polite :-)

> My understanding is that Jim wants a quick, easy, and friendly install 
> process.

Destroying all my data is NOT friendly... I might even sue FreeDOS
for not having warned me. After all, it comes from a country known
for warning labels saying "do not dry your pet in this microwave".

There is a limit in how easy the install should be. Shooting in my
own foot by simply booting some USB stick is definitely too easy.
As said, make it ASK. I am perfectly fine with OFFERING to zap MBR.

Cheers, Eric ;-)



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Re: [Freedos-user] State of native FD 1.1 programs support for FAT32?

[Eric Auer]

Hi John,

most DOS programs do not care at all what type of drive you use.

Only disk manipulation matters: For example CHKDSK does not, but
the alternative DOSFSCK does support fat32. Support in FORMAT &
FDISK is complete. Support in DEFRAG is very limited. What else
would you like to know about fat32? :-)

Eric

> I have been using 2GB FAT16 partitions because of my recollection that 
> some of the FreeDOS programs didn't support FAT32 properly. I'm sorry I 
> don't have notes on the particulars, just a recollection of my 
> conclusion from a dive into the question a long time ago.



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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS 1.2 BETA, Coming soon--ish.

[Eric Auer]

Hi Jerome,

please explain what goes wrong with Dosbox, Freecom and V8:

It might go wrong in the same way in other situations, so
it may be better to always use the safe Dosbox compatible
configuration. Is it about virtual drives? Dosemu and Qemu
also have features to simulate non-diskimage drives for DOS
as the recent kernel panic discussion about Qemu shows ;-)

I think for real drives and diskimage based simulations of
drives, risks are smaller. However, we had discussions about
unexpected errors when doslfn is loaded. Also worries me.

By the way, why is SYS skipped in dosbox?

Cheers, Eric



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Re: [Freedos-user] Printing in FreeDOS

[Eric Auer]

Hi Dosgeek,

> Just a quick poll to see how many users are actually running
> a printer in FreeDOS.

> What kind of printer are you using?
> Dot Matrix
> Ink Jet
> Laser 
> Other

> I have an Epson NOS LQ-2070 Dot Matrix (Parallel interface) on the way and 
> am anxious about the setup and the end result. I have 4 PCs running FreeDOS
> 2 of those are FreeDOS only machines; 1 of which will be a dedicated server.

That is a lot of DOS? Why several computers?

According to the manual of your printer:

https://files.support.epson.com/pdf/lq2070/lq2070u1.pdf

This 24 pin printer supports IBM and ESC/P2 commands and a number of DOS
codepages such as 437, 850, 860 and related. The first two should match
your most common BIOS and mode/display VGA fonts for USA and Europe :-)

I would suggest to use ESC/P2 configuration of your printer, because DOS
text related software may already know the escape codes for things such
as bold or italic printing. That makes it a bit easier for you to have a
bit of layout. Also, ESC/P2 is supported by our GRAPHICS TSR driver for
the graphical screenshot hotkey :-)

Finally, you will probably not need a print spooler TSR, but you should
make selections for buffer size and buffer waiting time in your printer
configuration (using buttons on the printer) according to your taste.

Cheers, Eric

PS: GRAPHICS also supports simple PostScript and HP PCL screenshots, but
you should avoid old dumb GDI laser and ink jet printers, as those would
require smart Windows or Linux drivers. I think most modern printers are
smart enough to understand PostScript, ESC/P2 or HP PCL anyway?



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Re: [Freedos-user] Drive Mapping SWSUBST

[Eric Auer]

Hi Dosgeek,

> I am working on a dedicated server. So far I have managed to successfully
> install WordPerfect Office LAN, my LAN PowerMenu and LAN version of Lotus
> 1-2-3 version 2.3. All programs are accessible to at least 2 client
> machines.

> SWSUBST F: C: is loaded during the autoexec & before STARTNET (for
> maintenance and installation of programs). I find myself occasionally
> accessing c: and causing a share lock, crash or something similar.

Note that SWSUBST has somewhat "strange" command line options, so
simply "SWSUBST F: C:" might do something else than what you want.

It is no exact clone of MS SUBST. Please read the manual carefully.

Also, if you have error messages about share, you may have to
load the SHARE driver TSR before using SWSUBST.

Cheers, Eric



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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS 1.2 - Preview 16

[Eric Auer]

Hi Jerome et al,

to add my vote: I agree that people rarely have sticks
smaller than 2 GB. So while we are not always using a
tool to put 500 MB of DOS data on sticks of arbitrary
size, keeping the free space accessible for DOS, it is
a good workaround to "ship" the FreeDOS USB stick image
as 2 GB FAT32 (preferred over FAT16 for that size in my
opinion) image which has 500 MB of data on it and is a
download of hopefully much less than 500 MB size :-)

Cheers, Eric


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[Freedos-user] Fwd: Original versions of DOS software (offering diskettes and manuals)

[Eric Auer]

Hi, here is some news from Bonnie: She cannot write to the list
at the moment, but she can read it. Please contact Bonnie Dalzell
using bdalzell at qis.net if you have questions. Additional info:

Bonnie does not have a floppy drive at the moment, so she can not
check or use the floppies. It would be cool if some place with a
FreeDOS club would be interested in the complete collection in a
single box for easier mailing. Or pick it up (Mid Atlantic region
in the United States of America) if you live nearby.

Regards, Eric

PS: In related news, I have a few vaguely DOS compatible PCI sound
cards in Germany, if somebody wants to hack around with those ;-)

Bonnie Dalzell wrote:

> I am downsizing on stuff and I do have a lot of original disks and 
> manuals of DOS software as well as old windows 3 level stuff.
> 
> Do you know of anyone who would have a need for such ancient (but legal as
> it is original disks) material. It is available for the cost of shipping only.



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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS 1.2 needs you

[Eric Auer]

Hi!

> XMGR along with UIDE and several other packages have been dropped from 
> FreeDOS 1.2.
> 
> This was not my decision. But, I completely agree with the reasoning behind 
> their removal.

There were small doubts about XMGR being clean-room without MS HIMEM
contamination but no other packages from the same author had reasons
to drop them. I think there was a misunderstanding here. Also, both
the disk drivers and the ramdisk by that author are quite useful :-)

> These are still available on the ibiblio repository. So, if you really...

Regards, Eric



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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS 1.2 needs you

[Eric Auer]

Hi!

>> and my sound (Intel high-definition audio) has no DOS support from what
>> I read on this emailing list,
> 
> No universal or "good" support, but a very very few DOS apps do have
> (some) limited HDA support.

Which? Mpxplay, maybe a port of mplayer, experimental ports of
the HX DOS extender which can run simple Windows programs which
may include DOSBOX which could run some DOS games which might
help those to believe that you have SoundBlaster while DOSBOX
and HX play your sound via HDA? Which other DOS apps have HDA?

Cheers, Eric :-)

PS: Yes, you can also try DOSEMU, DOSBOX, QEMU and maybe some
other virtual PC for DOS games, if you have Windows or Linux.



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Re: [Freedos-user] PNP ISA network card locks during early boot with PS/2 mouse connected

[Eric Auer]

> Bottom line is that PnP doesn't work (properly) for ISA cards...

Indeed, back in the time PnP was only a nice idea. You needed that
ICU software and it still was more hassle than non-PnP ISA cards
where you would just set the jumpers manually but at least the
results were what you planned :-) For network, older PCI cards
can work quite okay in DOS, for example those with the RTL8139
chip, although their drivers often seem to be license-troubled:
Based on open source building blocks, yet without public source.

Regards, Eric



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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS 1.2 Package LSM Data Verification

[Eric Auer]

Hi!

In particular: Hi Rugxulo, hi Jim, hi Bret, hi Jerome ;-)

>> CRYNWR - Unknown License, Dropped.
> 
> Uh ... "most" of it should be (intentionally) GPL, but there are still
> some pieces (e.g. RTSPKT.COM) that aren't.

Would be good to have!

>> MPXPLAY - Unknown License, Dropped.
> 
> SF.net lists it as "Other License", which presumably means some kind
> of generic "open source". (Maybe it slipped through the cracks, who
> knows, but I just assume everybody knew what they were doing.)

Good question.

>> UTIL:
>>
>> 4DOS - Listed as Free, No Sources. Kept for now, may get Dropped?
> 
> https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/util/user/4dos/
> 
> 4dos800.zip's LICENSE.TXT seems to remind me of (derivative of) BSD 4-clause.

Thanks :-)

> http://www.freedos.org/software/?prog=4dos
> 
> "[modified MIT License that does not qualify as open source by OSI;
> non-commercial]"

Good enough for me, we are not the A Whole GNU DOS distro.

>> DOSLFN - Listed as GPL, No License Messages, Keep?
> 
> Debatable. Not honestly sure, which probably means we should be highly
> pessimistic.
> 
> http://adoxa.altervista.org/doslfn/index.html

If you really care, fix the license message? I assume it
simply did come with but did not display the license?

>> GCDROM - Listed as GPL, No Sources, Based on XCDROM, Removed.
> 
> http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/dos/cdrom/gcdrom/

Thanks!

>> MEMTEST - Listed as Freeware, Unknown License, No Sources, Dropped.
> 
> http://ericauer.cosmodata.virtuaserver.com.br/soft/specials/memteste.zip
> 
> But that only contains sources for "A loader for www.Memtest86.com images".
> Not sure what other pieces are needed (nor exactly which ones or how
> to find them).

This thing is ancient. I probably just assembled the loader to work
with some version of MEMTEST that I had around as a binary. As you
remember, MEMTEST is originally designed to be loaded by any boot
menu which can load a Linux kernel and boot menus do not ship with
Linux kernels either. As far as I remember, you simply had to do a
binary concatenation of the MEMTEST loader and the binary, so you
can ship them separately to be nice to the licenses. Note that I do
vaguely remember somebody mailing me years ago that my loader does
no longer support the newer versions of MEMTEST anyway. Which did
not have trivial reasons. Maybe an expert like Bret wants to check?

>> UIDE - Free for non-commercial, Removed.
> 
> Uh, no. AFAIK, none of his variations were ever "non-commercial only"
> (which would neither be "open source" [OSI] nor "Free" [FSF]).
> 
> "
>XMGR, RDISK, and UIDE are offered at no cost, "as is", "use at your own
>risk", and with NO warranties, not even the implied warranty of FITNESS
>for any particular purpose nor of MERCHANTABILITY!
> "
> 
> However, AFAIK, Jim (still) seems to think it would be better
> (overall) if we removed these. I don't personally know of any concrete
> legal reason to do so...

I would like to interpret that as "IF there would be drivers for
CD/DVD and UDMA with sufficient quality, THEN we would prefer to
use those instead of UIDE." However, there are none, so I would
really prefer to keep it! I would also prefer to keep RDISK, as
it is one of the smaller and better RAMDISK drivers. As Jack had
discussed possible (but very unlikely) contamination of XMGR by
him looking at Microsoft HIMEM sources, I agree that we can drop
XMGR. Note that he glanced at the sources AFTER his last update
to XMGR, so only future XMGR updates are actually at risk here.

Jim, are you okay with my interpretation of the current position?
I think it summarizes both off- as well as on-list conclusions.

, only some irrational rants and behavior from
> Jack himself.
> 
>> UMBPCI - Listed as free, No sources, Dropped.

Background are requirements from hardware vendors that he must
not widely distribute sources which do stuff based on "private"
hardware specs, I believe? UMBPCI is kind of cool but it would
be okay to do what Linux does with Microsoft fonts: Offer some
package which helps the user to download them from the vendor,
after showing the appropriate licensing dialogue.
Regards, Eric




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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS 1.2 Package LSM Data Verification

[Eric Auer]

Hi Jerome,

> Mostly, I think your interpretation matches mine. However, when UIDE was
> used FDINST would throw random errors. Why? IDK. It was suggested that
> command line switches could be used to help correct the issue. However...

It would not be the first driver which is not always automatically
doing the right thing. However, DOS users are known to know what
they do, so you can include the driver in the distro. Simply drop
it from being part of the default config and autoexec :-) Same for
USB or network drivers. In FreeDOS 1.0, those would hang on some PC,
so it would have been better to not activate them by default. Still
it was good that they were included in the distro in general :-)

> Per a different suggestion, switched to using UDVD2 and the problems
> vanished. UDVD2 is by the same author...

Good point. UDVD2 is a good choice for those who want a CD/DVD driver
and need something newer than the latest open source version of XCDROM.

However, I would still include (but not default-activate) one of the
UIDE family drivers for those who want extra harddisk UDMA support.

Regards, Eric

PS: Why so many IBIBLIO files, how about Mateusz' updater repository?



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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS 1.2 Package LSM Data Verification

[Eric Auer]

I would like to agree with Tom: It is good that FreeDOS comes
with a nice collection of drivers for modern hardware! Those
times when a DOS driver was included when people bought their
CD drive have long passed. Also, there are no reasons to limit
our distro to those minimal features of a few MS DOS disks ;-)

>> an operating system without CDROM and network drivers doesn't sound
>> very useful to me, even if everything has the correct license. YMMV.
> 
> I think that the key is to perceive FreeDOS as a replacement to MSDOS, 
> nothing else (that is, "BASE")...

It is good to have a BASE download (probably with "live CD" or
"live USB stick" function, not requiring but allowing install
to other disks) if you want a basic no-nonsense system. Still
I would like to see drivers included even in such a download.

> But then, for actually useful (practical) stuff, one has to rely on a 
> FreeDOS distribution, like Svarog386, or collect the required "non-free" 
> bits by hand over the internet.

It also is good to have a FreeDOS distro which contains a pile
of nice useful free software, if possible fully open source. I
think IBIBLIO also requires open source for the file hosting.

I would NOT want the FreeDOS distro to be limited by extremely
specific license taste. As far as I am concerned, GPL 2 and 3,
MIT, Artistic license, BSD license, public domain etc. are all
perfectly fine for inclusion of packages in our normal distro.

> Otherwise I agree it can get a bit frustrating for actual users,
> and that's the reason I started Svarog386 in the first place.

Looking at your package listing, Svarog386 is quite nice, but we
should not give up the hope of having a nice plain FreeDOS distro.

Jerome, could you make a list of packages which existed in either
FreeDOS 1.0 or 1.1 but are not currently included in 1.2, along
with the reason for exclusion? I think we should indeed be a bit
more generous regarding inclusion of packages! Thanks :-)

Regards, Eric



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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS 1.2 Package LSM Data Verification

[Eric Auer]

Hi Jerome,

> Except for the following packages all other dropped and questionable
> packages are listed at the beginning of this thread. This list of

Please cite the beginning-of-this-thread snippet, it is a long thread.

> packages shipped with 1.1 and are not presently in 1.2. None of these
> packages are on the ibiblio repo for version 1.1 either.  I have not
> put any work into trying to include these packages as of yet.

Do you mean they were part of the 1.1 distro but not of the 1.1 repo?

> DOSUTIL, No sources present in package. Might be buried on repos

What is the content of that package?

> RIPCORD, FreeDOS release related program, Compatibility not tested.

Indeed probably specific to the 1.1 distro.

> SAMCFG, I don’t know if it is applicable anymore.

Sounds like a sample config, which could be useful to include.
Of course if you find some settings which are no longer valid
for updated drivers, it would be cool to update those, but I
would say that the 1.1 sample config should still be valid :-)

> SYSLNX There has to be a newer version, not in repo for 1.1.

Syslinux? That sounds pretty important.

> WATTCP, No Source files present

http://www.freedos.org/software/?prog=wattcp says that would
be the place to be. The wat2001b.zip indeed does have sources.

> CALLVER, FLASHR, SHIELD and UPX not in repo for 1.1

Maybe you mean FDSHIELD: www.freedos.org/software/?prog=fdshield
This does include sources.

http://ericauer.cosmodata.virtuaserver.com.br/soft/specials/ has
a copy of CALLVER 2007-aug19.zip which includes sourcs.

I am not sure what FLASHR is, maybe a tool to update firmware?

For UPX, the version with UPX-UCL library should be used, because
it has the more free/libre license compared to the UPX NRV default:
http://www.freedos.org/software/?prog=upx-ucl (a very nice tool!)

> Almost all of the dropped packages in the top of this thread, never
> shipped with FreeDOS. However, they are on the Repo for v1.1.

This probably means that they got added to the distro after 1.1, in
the hope that they will be included in the FreeDOS 1.2 distro. The
users were able to install through the repository in the meantime.

> FreeDOS 1.1 shipped with 80 packages total, 1.2 ships with 97 the
> slim USB and 232 on the big USB.

That is really cool, thanks :-)

By the way, it is good to have full 8.3 file names for packages now,
the "X" and "S" distinction in the repo makes it hard to find stuff
which normally has 8 char names but has to squeeze in the "X" suffix.

Regards, Eric



> Well, this was the complete list of packages included with FreeDOS
> 1.1, all 80 of them.

Base: Append Assign Attrib Cdrcach(e) Chkdsk Choice Command Comp
Cpidos Ctmouse Cwsdpmi Debug Defrag Deltree Devload Diskc(o)py
Display Dosfsck D(i)skcomp Edit Edlin Exe2bin Fasth(e)lp Fc Fdapm
Fdisk Fdpkg Fdupdat(e) Find Format Fourdos (4dos) F(d)xms286
Graphic(s) Help Himemx Infozip Install Jemmex Kernel Keyb Label
Lbacach(e) Localiz(e) Mem Mirror Mode More Move Mtcp Nansi Nlsfunc
Printq Print Recover Replace Ripcord Samcfg Share Shsucdx Sort
Subst Tree Uide Undel(ete) Unf(or)m(a)t Usbdos Xcopy Xmgr Dosutil

Boot: Sysl(i)n(u)x

GUI: Fdshell (?)

Net: Wattcp Wget

Util: Bootfix Callver Doslfn  Flashr Fdshield Upx Vmsmnt

> And here is the list of packages on the Large USB Stick.
> All, 232 of them.

[see original mail]


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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS 1.2 Package LSM Data Verification - UMBPCI

[Eric Auer]

Hi Don,

>> UMBPCI - Listed as free, No sources, Not Included.
> 
> http://www.uwe-sieber.de/umbpci_e.html
>   * Conditions and Download*
> The original version came from the german magazine c't
> , but there were several problems and no free
> updates. This version is based upon the source-code
>  published by c't in 1995 which
> supported only intel chipsets up to the 430FX.

The original version is totally ancient and only supports a rather
small set of older mainboards.

> It's Freeware.
> 
> Download:
> http://www.uwe-sieber.de/files/umbpci_e.zip
> 
> Source code (TASM 3.x) is available on request.
> 
> No one in the history of FreeDOS ever bothered to request this source code?

The problem is that - as far as I remember! - newer versions of UMBPCI
contain driver code for modern hardware which required the UMBPCI author
to agree to not make the details of the hardware totally public. So the
source code is available on request for individual UMBPCI users, not for
distribution to everybody who downloads our distro or repository. Please
correct me if I remember wrongly.

Regards, Eric



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Re: [Freedos-user] command / shell conflict

[Eric Auer]

Hi Don,

> How do I upload? It seems we still have a 40k limit on our posts.
> Mine is awaiting moderator approval

That will not happen. Do NOT send files to freedos-user, because
MANY MANY recipients will get the file while only a few need or
want the file! Instead, OFFER to send the file: People can then
say if they want a copy. For example Tom wants a copy. Email him
(t...@drivesnapshot.de) to ask if he wants it by email or by upload.

Thank you :-) And thank you for finding this reproduceable crash!

Cheers, Eric

> On Tue, Jun 7, 2016 at 9:35 AM, Don Flowers  wrote:
> 
>> Here is a disk  image DP23PROG.IMG
>>
>> hit enter when it asks for 2 & 3

...



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Re: [Freedos-user] command / shell conflict

[Eric Auer]

Hi Bret,

the problem of using but not reserving memory for the kernel in FreeDOS
sounds vaguely similar to the problem of HMA usage in DOS in general:

DOS installs trampoline handlers outside HMA which make sure that the
HMA is actually enabled before DOS calls code there. Maybe a similar
approach could be used for the unallocated FreeDOS memory?

It could check if the not-reserved temp data is still valid and if not,
avoid attempts to use it. Of course it would be better if FreeDOS could
behave and use MCB for that temp data in the first place, but I do not
know the ins and outs of why it does not or maybe can not do that now.

Also, this could be relevant for the way in which FreeCOM misbehaves by
using without allocating memory, if I understand the other mails well.

It should probably check if the data left in RAM is still valid and if
not, reload the (message string) data from disk or from XMS swap RAM?

Regards, Eric



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Re: [Freedos-user] command / shell conflict

[Eric Auer]

Hi Don,

you probably misunderstood me. I said that DOS in general has security
code in the kernel to make sure that the HMA is activated before parts
of the kernel which are stored in HMA get used. The security code itself
is kept outside the HMA... What exactly were you testing with FAT32 and
Compaq and FreeDOS and which test results and differences did you see or
expect in that testing now?

Regards, Eric


> I just tried this on Compaq DOS 5.0 with Compaq Himem only with no errors
> and no missing paths. So unless it's a FAT32 problem it must go back to
> FreeDOS somehow???


> On Wed, Jun 8, 2016 at 3:30 PM, Don Flowers  wrote:
>> I'm going to try a couple of things in DOS 5.0 and DOS 6.20, I'll be back.


>> On Wed, Jun 8, 2016 at 2:52 PM, Eric Auer  wrote: ...
>>> the problem of using but not reserving memory for the kernel in FreeDOS
>>> sounds vaguely similar to the problem of HMA usage in DOS in general:
>>>
>>> DOS installs trampoline handlers outside HMA which make sure that the
>>> HMA is actually enabled before DOS calls code there. Maybe a similar
>>> approach could be used for the unallocated FreeDOS memory?

...



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Re: [Freedos-user] Games

[Eric Auer]

Hi! As Rufus only gives you the minimal files to boot DOS at all,
you should probably download some additional drivers to play your
game. In particular, try HIMEM. However, your listing seems to be
incomplete - no kernel or command.com are shown, but obviously you
must have them, otherwise you could not have made the listing :-)

Eric

> http://www.freedos.org/software/?prog=himemx





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Re: [Freedos-user] Games - and DOS installation

[Eric Auer]

Hi guys,

> “FreeDOS is a complete operating system. If you choose to install
> this on your computer, you may overwrite the operating system you
> have now (for example, Windows.) If this is not what you intend,
> please stop now.”

That leads to the IMPORTANT questions:

* Is it easy enough to make a bootable USB stick with FreeDOS with
  plenty of software included which does NOT need to install to
  harddisk but can be used as "live" operating system boot disk?

* In particular, is there some sort of how-to for doing that? The
  installer may want to install DOS to RAMDISK for performance :-)

* Is it easy enough to make the decision whether or NOT you want
  to install to harddisk and whether or not you want to DESTROY
  your existing Windows / Linux install in the install process?

As much as it is "classic and straightforward" for installers to
just replace everything on a computer by DOS, as dangerous and
frightening it is for those who want no dedicated DOS-only PC.

I think this was part of the FreeDOS 1.2 discussion before, but
how about detection whether a harddisk is "totally" empty before
showing the question how to install? I agree that for people who
made a totally empty virtual PC image a minute before installing
FreeDOS, it would be easiest to just let the installer throw one
standard DOS partition on that "disk" without asking the user to
make many decisions on partitioning and formatting. But for the
users who do NOT have a dedicated harddisk for DOS, it is scary.

Cheers, Eric


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