Hi Marshall, Bernd, here my opinion: > > Can it run on the internet?
DOS was never meant for that but you can use it for that if you are an experienced user and know how to install the drivers. The Arachne web browser itself is easy to use, though. > > Is it fast? It boots very fast because DOS does not have many features. Programs run fast because in DOS only very few things are happening in the background. But of course it only runs DOS programs. Disk operations can be much faster in a 32bit O/S compared to DOS, even if you load the UDMA driver by Lucho (because an O/S like Windows or Linux can dynamically allocate large amounts of disk buffers / cache memory and uses complex algorithms to use those buffers in optimized way). But DOS should FEEL fast and respond directly to most commands. > > Will it find my hardware? FreeDOS will boot from your harddisk unless your BIOS is broken. It will "find" the graphics card and screen, simply because it uses "available in all models" screen resolutions. You can manually select other resolutions or refresh rates but this will in SOME cases mean that you have to install drivers for that manually. FreeDOS will also find your diskette drive unless you have an USB drive with bad BIOS support. Things like USB disks / memory sticks / diskette drives / CD-ROM drives might work only if you boot from them. USB mouse and keyboard should be supported when the BIOS supports "legacy support" for them. FreeDOS does NOT contain ANY USB DRIVERS itself and you will have a hard time to find DOS drivers for any USB device unless there is BIOS support for that device. External and internal modems which connect to / like serial ports are fine, but USB modems or internal "Winmodems" will NOT work. Network will only work if you know how to install the drivers (form many standard network cards DOS drivers should exist, though) and if your internet provider does not insist on using some new protocols which DOS does not support yet. And it will NOT be easy to install. Standard internal CD-ROM drives should work, but you should know how to configure them properly and which drivers should be used. I do NOT recommend to use ATAPICDD. It is only for the case that no other driver can be found and is e.g. very slow. But it is quite "one size fits all". Sound will work if and only if it is SoundBlaster compatible or ships with DOS drivers, generally speaking. Sound drivers are not part of the O/S in DOS, but rather part of those programs which use sound directly. Only very few programs support e.g. AC97 compatible sound even if it is not SoundBlaster compatible. If that sounds scary for you, then FreeDOS is not good for you. Try PC DOS or some other DOS which supports at least SOME of the hardware which FreeDOS does not support. Or try a real 32bit O/S, of course. On the other hand, if you only want to play your old DOS games and either have a SoundBlaster compatible sound card or are even happy with the internal speaker of your PC for sound, FreeDOS will work just fine for you. All relevant devices (harddisk, graphics card, mouse, keyboard, diskette, screen...) have good compatibility modes which are used e.g. by the BIOS. As you will have noticed, you can use all those devices even in BIOS SETUP without ever having to install drivers for them. The other game-relevant devices like sound or joystick will work if SoundBlaster compatible or shipped with DOS drivers. MenuetOS is certainly not the only O/S which fits on a single floppy. You can use FreeDOS ODIN, Linux (e.g. TomsRBT), QNX (an OS optimized for timing-critical things, with networking support), ... but you must know that you will not get any fancy user interface / GUI with those tiny one-floppy installs. > > I have a extra hard drive, I was thinking about putting your O/S on it. > > is it secure? No, FreeDOS is certainly not secure. It does not protect you from crashes or viruses in any way. This is basically true for any DOS. But today, most viruses will only get you if you connect to the internet anyway. FreeDOS might have problems to boot from the extra drive, unless you use a boot manager / menu which can handle this situation. It will read the configuration from C:, no matter on which drive letter you install FreeDOS. However, FreeDOS does not mess a lot with other operating systems, so you should not experience great problems. If you have another FAT based O/S on the same computer, make sure that you understand how to install and configure FreeDOS BEFORE trying to install it on harddisk. Otherwise you might end up REPLACING your other O/S with FreeDOS. Using FreeDOS from floppy without installing it on harddisk is of course much safer. Conclusion: FreeDOS is certainly NOT simple and NOT an alternative for the typical Windows XP user for anything. If you want an easy to use O/S, use Linux or Windows, and select a version of it which suits your taste and is easy to install. On the other hand, FreeDOS is a quite GOOD version of DOS for those who want to use DOS and have some experience with DOS. It is not compatible to Windows 3 for any serious use of Windows 3, though. Please tell me what exactly you expect from an O/S and I can tell you what O/S can do that for you and whether FreeDOS would be interesting for you. Eric. ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by Sleepycat Software Learn developer strategies Cisco, Motorola, Ericsson & Lucent use to deliver higher performing products faster, at low TCO. http://www.sleepycat.com/telcomwpreg.php?From=osdnemail3 _______________________________________________ Freedos-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
