Thanks for figuring out how to build this at least in some way, and sharing the results of that work, Rodrigo!
It's unfortunate to read that you discovered binary blobs in the code base that are apparently needed to build 386MAX. Could anybody here maybe shed some light on the feasibility of replacing these blobs with open-source alternatives, or barring that, a legally sound way of reverse-engineering them? The Windows compatibility is exactly the feature that made 386MAX so interesting in the first place. On Mon, Mar 20, 2023 at 5:14 AM Rodrigo Morette <rmore...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hey all, > > I have been playing around with these sources, a minimal "working" build > is possible with 386MAX.SYS and 386MAX.VXD. > > But there is a problem who inviabilizes an OSS build: 386MAX.VXD > statically link 3 proprietary objects who seems to be from a development > kit made by Microsoft: LOADHI.OBJ, INSTINIT.OBJ and INSTSWAP.OBJ. A quick > search shows these files are related to EMM386, looks like the Windows > compatibility comes from these libraries. > > There are also some files from Windows DDK in the include directories. > > I plan to keep my attempt to rebuild MAX just for fun as it cannot be > considered reliable for any major OSS project... I left the sources (no > proprietary files included) for this minimal build with the serial code > verification disabled here: https://github.com/rmorette/MAX > > Rodrigo. > > On Tue, Mar 7, 2023 at 6:56 PM Volkert via Freedos-devel < > freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net> wrote: > >> >> >> On Mon, Mar 6, 2023 at 7:45 PM Bret Johnson <bretj...@juno.com> wrote: >> >>> >>> Or just take some of the important stuff that Bob Smith and Qualitas >>> discovered about Windows/GEMMIS/EMM386 and import it into something like >>> JEMM. There's some knowledge embedded in 386MAX about what MS did that you >>> will never directly get out of MS. >> >> >> I already opened a ticket for this on GitHub >> <https://github.com/Baron-von-Riedesel/Jemm/issues/5> a few years ago, >> but Japheth (a.k.a. Baron-von-Riedesel on GitHub) has expressed >> reluctance to implement this functionality in Jemm, unfortunately. >> >> By the way, DOSBox already has an open-source GEMMIS implementation >> <https://sourceforge.net/p/dosbox/code-0/2601/>, which would likely be >> easier to port to Jemm than any of the 386MAX sources. >> >> I was hoping that 386MAX could ship with FreeDOS as an alternative EMM >> manager because there appeared to be no near-term prospect of having GEMMIS >> support (and thus Windows 3.x 386 Enhanced mode compatibility) added to >> Jemm. Also, since 386MAX implements the same port trapping API as that of >> Microsoft EMM386, I was hoping that it would offer compatibility with >> certain drivers and emulators such as SoftMPU, which don't work with Jemm. >> >> At least there's some encouraging news on that front, in the form of a >> Jemm Loadable Module that adds support for QPI (QEMM's port trapping API), >> or a subset of it. Baron-von-Riedesel recently developed that module, so >> crazii's recently developed Sound Blaster emulator called SBEMU >> <http://gitlab.com/crazii/SBEMU> (also a very promising project for >> FreeDOS!) can work with Jemm. >> >> So GEMMIS support appears to be the one missing feature that would make >> Jemm a complete replacement for all the known EMM managers of old (EMM386, >> QEMM, 386MAX). >> >> But perhaps if someone creates a pull request for adding GEMMIS support >> to Jemm, Japheth might be persuaded to merge it. (Although he has expressed >> skepticism towards that as well.) >> _______________________________________________ >> Freedos-devel mailing list >> Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net >> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel >> > _______________________________________________ > Freedos-devel mailing list > Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel >
_______________________________________________ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
