Hi Tom,
Jeremy shared https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35OQjLYdvJ0
He did so on freedos-devel in 2021. I have forwarded that post to the list again today, so you can read it yourself.
2021-07-24 to show that his patches support Win3 enhanced mode.
This shows to me that you didn't ever try to run Win3 yourself...
Win3 standard mode has been supported for a while. Long ago, I even ran it from a bootable USB stick. Which was horribly slow because apparently that BIOS legacy USB support was USB 1.1? I have indeed not tried 386enh mode in FreeDOS myself yet.
Uses both FreeCom and 4DOS command shells, but himem and emm386 from Windows
As Win3 came bundled with MS HIMEM and MS EMM386, people only need a compatible FreeDOS kernel to use Win3 in 386enh mode without needing MS DOS. Of course it would be interesting to have compatible open source HIMEM and EMM386 alternatives to better support newer hardware, but no big problem for now. The issue is that Win3 and WfW 3.11 in 386enh mode has to wrap both DOS and memory drivers into very custom bubble wrap or, in the case of EMM386, even completely take over memory management without the user noticing, before it can offer multiple concurrent DOS sessions inside Windows etc. DOS itself is not meant to be multitasked, but a reasonably sane API implemented by Jeremy in 2021 helps Windows to swap copies of relevant internal state variables to make it work. Similar problems arise with EMM386, which would have to get GEMMIS API support to work with 386enh Windows. Instead of swapping state, Windows uses GEMMIS to know enough about EMS and UMB state to throw EMM386 from the throne and proceed to manage memory itself for DOS stuff using it while Win3 runs. Thanks to Bob Smith's https://www.sudleyplace.com/ going open source with their great stuff, including 386SWAT and DPMIONE, you could now try to use Windows in 386enh mode with 386MAX instead of MS EMM386. I think it does support GEMMIS, but as you may have guessed, I have never tried to assemble 386MAX. Unfortunately, sudleyplace only offers pre-compiled binaries of 386swat, displib, dispobj, dpmione, mysweep, qlink, smbiosd, smbiosw, touch, 386id, cupid, dpci and memsize. NOT of 386max? https://github.com/sudleyplace/386MAX/tree/main/386MAX
It's also a "demonstration". Like "Hello World" in OS country.
That is why it would be important to offer binaries of the improved kernel for easy testing to a broad audience. Of course while telling them that those are for TESTING and without any warranty of being perfect already :-)
as a compromise, I suggest to post this kernel binary so this can be tested by others,
There have been updates after 2021, so I prefer a new binary.
and explaining the himem/emm386 issues.
See above. People owning Win3 already own MS EMM386 and HIMEM. Regards, Eric _______________________________________________ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
