At 09:37 AM 8/21/2006 +0200, Norbert Remmel wrote: >During testing I discovered a bug concerning STR-ALT-DEL usage. >When pressing these keys, freedos crashes with invalid opcode outputting >some memory addresses and registers. >As I remember this wasn't like this using earlier versions of >himem/emm386 but I didn't test so far.
Okay, here's where we have a fundamental conflict. It's also causing problems with FDAPM and WARMBOOT options, perhaps other FDAPM options. It is the difference between ALTBOOT and NOALTBOOT options in EMM386. ALTBOOT was the default prior to 2.25 for a while, and NOALTBOOT is the new default, and was the original default when EMM386 was first written up to an unknown version. The problem is that EMM386 no longer hooks and processes the keyboard keys by default to try and force a proper reboot through direct keyboard port access. It leaves things to the default ROM/BIOS reboot code. The keyboard hook happens when ALTBOOT option is active. Some environments and applications can have the machine state set so that a normal ROM/BIOS reboot doesn't work, which is why there is such a thing as ALTBOOT. Unfortunately, a lot of things fail to work, or fail to work correctly if ALTBOOT is active, which is why it was changed to not the default setting in 2.25. Here's a breakdown of the pros and cons: ALTBOOT active positives: All FDAPM options related to rebooting and power-off should work. Some applications may not properly reboot when you press Ctrl-Alt-Del if ALTBOOT is not present. ALTBOOT active negatives: Qemu has an almost unusable keyboard due to frequent loss of status keys, plus missing and doubled keys. VMware is reported to have keyboard or other failure. Ensemble with GEOS will simply lockup during start if ALTBOOT is active -- GEOS doesn't like things hooking and messing with the keyboard interrupt. There are reports from other users that there are additional applications which do not like the keyboard hooked and (pre-)processed this way, but I don't know the exact applications. So here's where we're at: I can either make some environments work properly (or at all) by leaving ALTBOOT as optional as in version 2.25. That means those who are having problems with FDAPM or Ctrl-Alt-Del need to specify ALTBOOT as an option with EMM386. OR, I can switch ALTBOOT back as the default, and Qemu, VMware, and Ensemble users will have to know to specify the option to make their machines work properly. It's not an easy decision, but personally, I think we're better off getting people booted up and running properly as a default (NOALTBOOT), and then telling them if they have problems with FDAPM or Ctrl-Alt-Del to specify ALTBOOT as an EMM386 option. But maybe I'm wrong, if someone can convince me otherwise. Obviously the best solution would be for everything to work under one option, but I don't see that happening unless someone can come up with a good workaround really soon (I wouldn't count on this, but it could happen). Even MS-DOS EMM386 does not use its own ALTBOOT by default, but warns that it may be necessary or desirable for some environments. [technical follow-ups to freedos-devel] ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Using Tomcat but need to do more? Need to support web services, security? Get stuff done quickly with pre-integrated technology to make your job easier Download IBM WebSphere Application Server v.1.0.1 based on Apache Geronimo http://sel.as-us.falkag.net/sel?cmd=lnk&kid=120709&bid=263057&dat=121642 _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
