Hi Charles, welcome to FreeDOS!
> Should I use Borland C or Turbo C++ or what. What version? http://www.freedos.org/contribute/ recommends OpenWatcom C. I suggest any current version, but preferably the DOS one. You can use Borland / Turbo if you happen to have it or if you want to compile things from our distro which use it at the moment, but in the long run, we want to use only free compilers such as OpenWatcom :-) For 32 bit protected mode apps, you can also use DJGPP (GNU C++/C for DOS, helps with ports) for gigabytes RAM. People are even doing some proof of concept stuff with more than 3-4 GB RAM, 64 bit addresses or multiple cores: https://github.com/Baron-von-Riedesel/HimemSX/blob/master/XMS35.txt https://www.codeproject.com/Articles/894522/The-Low-Level-M3ss-DOS-Multicore-Mode-Interface A more "generally nice" and less "futuristic" thing would be to add GPT partition scheme support to our kernel :-) Note that those who use GPT often use EFI/UEFI, but it is possible to load a CSM to get BIOS services again, at least in theory. Some how-to for that would be useful to have. A thread on the BTTR forum suggests to support llseek and larger file and cluster sizes: EDR-DOS already has this, so if FreeDOS follows, it should be in compatible ways. > I want to write code that will work on the oldest systems You can compile for 16 bit real mode targets in OpenWatcom, but depending on what your apps do, you can easily require 386, protected mode and a few megabytes of RAM without shame. For example nobody needs FAT32 DEFRAG or MP4 players on PC-XT although you could, in theory... You should probably only code on your Windows 10 machine if your DOS apps are text-only and you can be sure that you do not accidentally rely on any Windows features while testing them. It would be better to at least run a virtual system with DOS for the testing, or for example DOSEMU2 or DOSBOX. Like that, you can use editors and compilers for Windows and immediately test the result in a virtual DOS. Of course this may not be sufficient to develop and test hardware drivers. About the Chiron Electronic Medical Records in Australia: What is the problem? Their Chiron license expired? Or their MS-DOS? You can probably run Chiron on FreeDOS in the latter case, even on new hardware. I do not know what the pros and cons would be of a migration to Mastercare Epas. In general, DOS systems tend to be less vulnerable to online hacks because the are offline, although it is possible to run a DOS based server. Regards, Eric PS: Regarding your USB boot problem, if Ubuntu can boot, but a Rufus-made FreeDOS stick can not, you may have to enable some type of legacy OS support for booting the non-UEFI/-EFI FreeDOS. _______________________________________________ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
