Jim: I appreciate this reply most of all! If Linus Torvalds had given up after trying to get his first operating system kernel going, where would we all be? lol
I've written several compilers, designed and built an operating system for a military computer, maintained real-time operating systems, fixed problems occuring with flight software on Spacelab/Shuttle missions, etc, etc, and still there are those who think I'm an old fool and even dare to question my integrity. That always gets my dander up. There's no fool like an old fool. I have a very strong interest in DOS, including historical versions like the early versions of PC-DOS, MS-DOS, DR-DOS, and the older CP/M, CP/M 386, MP/M, etc. Go read the Wikipedia article about Dr. Gary Kildall and you'll know where I'm coming from. At the time Bill Gates was not quite yet on his way to making his first billion, I was dreaming of building a better operating system, and I came up with the name DORIS, from an old Jim Croce song called Bad, Bad, Leroy Brown. lol I have programmed an IBM 360 machine in assembler, and I learned to program on such dinosaurs as a CDC 6600, if you remember those, the same kind of machines Niklaus Wirth used for some of his pioneering work in Pascal, Modula-2, and other programming languages. I was programming in PL/I and Fortran, as well as HP Basic before many of the people here were even born. I guess you could say that makes me a dinosaur, but it also gives me a perspective that others might not share. I was working on building a PL/M compiler a few nights ago, using the Fortran source from the Intel PL/M compiler built by Dr. Gary Killdall, founder of Digital Research, inventor of CP/M, DR-DOS, etc. I ended up running the code through f2c, the Windows version, and getting out a mess of C code which looked pretty horrific. After that I decided I'd see if I could locate a C compiler like gcc to use, and I ended up downloading and installing a whole mess of tools, from Cygwin. Some people will probably take issue with that, but I ended up learning about the newest GNAT Ada compiler releases, which include a package called Ada.Directories, which allows Ada programs to do things like listing the contents of a directory (folder). Then I discovered an Ada package called Interfaces.C_Streams which allows Ada programs to read and write files, including "fseek", a function that is notably lacking in Ada as it stands. My goal in all of this is to figure out how to build a file system, and I don't want to simply use someone else's file system, unless that is the right answer. Is DOS-C the right choice? I know there's a book out called the FreeDOS kernel, or something like that. I want to understand the file systems and at least ATTEMPT to write my own, if only as a learning experience. I know it's a tough job, and a lot of people would just give up in the face of such odds, but I don't like to give up on my dreams and my cherished ideas. I dream of a future where we have computers like the one in 2001, A Space Odyssey, HAL9000. And I also dream of things much more advanced than HAL, and hope that some of my ideas will someday pan out. I've been fascinated by computers and space exploration for just about all of my life, since the days of the Mercury 7. Ok, I know this isn't exactly about FreeDOS, but it is to some extent. When I told my son I was planning to build an operating system, he suggested Damn Small Linux, and told me I could boot from my flash drive. I only have one 256 MB flash drive. My son has at least five or six of the, of varying sizes up to 1 GB, one of them that says HAL 9000 on it, from some geeks.com website. It was one of the items on his wishlist for Christmas. So my son is very interested in my project, and has made several helpful suggestions, including telling me about VMWARE, Virtual PC 2007, etc. And he doesn't yet know how to program. I wish I had had computers available to me like Bill Gates did as a kid. Perhaps I'd have been the one to sell my operating system to IBM instead of Bill Gates. Believe it or not, I was very interested in building an OS back in 1978, when I got my Northstar and found out it was running Northstar DOS instead of CP/M, whcih was an option. I now have a Northstar emulator and the real thing is in storage (the museum of ancient computing). But let me also give some credit to the man who invented Minix, which was used as a starting point for Linux, for without Andrew Tannenbaum, we probably wouldn't have Linux. I love Linux, by the way, but Microsoft has a certain way of keeping my attention. I'm interested in setting up a Vista system. In fact, I would love to have enough PCs to run all my favorite systems, but the best I can do now is partitioning my hard drive and doing the multi-boot thing, and running under emulators. I have 6 PCs capable of running Windows 98 SE or above, and I'm using 2 of them right now. All are capable machines and could be used to run FreeDOS. I just haven't decided yet if I want to dedicate a machine to FreeDOS, but I think my old Gateway 2000 733 MHz Pentium III with 256 MB of memory will be fine for running FreeDOS and doing some developmental testing. BTW, my job on Spacelab was as a TESTER, but I quickly got into programming the computers and writing test software applications, and later got into working with the operating system itself. I even worked on some software written in C on a GRID Compass laptop, that was used to control the Tethered Satellite, built in Italy. My job was to reverse engineer the C software and write documentation pleasing to NASA, and I produced a huge document in a matter of six weeks, to meet a deadline. The guys who built the software were basically hackers, and did such a lousy job on the documentation that NASA rejected their design document, which was filled with almost illegible flowcharts, automatically generated by some sort of tool. NASA flatly rejected that attempt, and I ended up getting stuck with the job. I ended up documenting the C code using PSEUDO-Code, which was similar to the C code, but a lot more readable. I didn't get much personal recognition for that effort, but I did get an award later, and NASA accepted my document, which was nearly a foot thick. I remember learning the innards of several brands of copying machines, as we stayed up all night long running off copies to meet the delivery deadline. And this was back when Microsoft Word was relatively primitive!!! I remember the AGONY of using Word to produce documents hundreds of pages long, on an old slow PC that most people would now put out on the curb. BTW, I get some of my best Pentium III systems from other people's upgrades, either very cheap at thrift stores, or right off the curb!! I've got dozens of old computers I've collected and most of them will at least boot into 95, 98, ME, or 2000. I have two very old Intergraph machines, TDZ-3, etc, and they used to be considered top of the line, back when their graphics cards could cost $7,000 each, and a system fully configured might cost $20,000, or even $40,000. Now they aren't worth a plugged nickel. I should find some blogspace! lol Sorry for the lenght of this, but I did want to say, that if Wilbur and Orville had given up someone else would have come along and invented airplanes. And if it weren't Dr. Gary Kildall, or Bill Gates, it might have been me, or someone else. My son may be the next Bill Gates, or may turn out to be an unemployable hacker. Who knows? One thing I don't understand about these forums is their rudeness, their insistence on staying exactly on topic, their telling you not to waste words saying "Thank you", or expressing gratitude for any scrap of help provided. That goes against my way of thinking and against free speech. if I'm going to be told what I can and cannot say, I'll have to find another forum. This is still America, after all, even after the Patriot Act went into force. At least we still have some FREEdom with FreeDOS. Actually I kind of liked CP/M, but never liked the name PIP. Copy was a much more sensible name and the guy given credit for that is the one who built QDOS, the Quick and Dirty Clone of CP/M, which Bill Gates purchased from him for $50,000, non-exclusive rights, and adapted to make MS-DOS. Bill Gates also hired that guy to work for him at some point. I kind of wish Bill would hire me and put me in charge of SOFTWARE TESTING, something I do know how to do pretty well. I've done that all my life. I spend a lot of my time in the DEBUGGER, tracing through the code, finding and eliminating obscure bugs. Right now I'm working on my universal language translator project, recently revived. I'm converting the Delphi 3.0 Pascal code to GNAT Ada, and having a blast doing it. I write about my activities at my personal operating systems research message group, http://group.msn.com/TheDORISOSGroup in case you get a hankering to learn more details about my projects, of which I have several going, including the language translator, the operating system, various compilers, etc. Right now I'm the only member, and it will probably stay that way, but hope springs eternal. I do have two other members, but one was "hired" to do my graphics, due to her talent for PSP, art, etc and the other joined out of curiosity, two of my friends. Sincerely, Brent D. Martin Jim Hall-2 wrote: > > Wow. I'm always amazed at how people can get so worked up over their > favorite this-or-that, and call people a "fool" for using something > else that they prefer. But you are not foolish if you prefer Virtual > PC - it's a tool, not a religion. I use VMWare for some things, > DOSEmu for others. I use what does the job best, for whatever job I'm > doing. > > And may I also remind others on this list that if I had gotten emails > in 1994 telling me what I fool I was "for daring to dream of building > my own operating system", that FreeDOS would probably not have gotten > off the ground. > > > > On 3/19/07, BrentMartin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> >> [...] I've been reluctant to post since getting several private emails >> berating me for using Microsoft Virtual PC, telling me what a fool I am >> for >> daring to dream of building my own operating system, telling me my >> chances >> of success are vitually nill, that it will take me years to learn a >> language >> like C++, and that most operating systems end up requiring the use of >> more >> than one language. > [...] > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT > Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share > your > opinions on IT & business topics through brief surveys-and earn cash > http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.php&p=sourceforge&CID=DEVDEV > _______________________________________________ > Freedos-user mailing list > Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user > > -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Is-there-any-way-I-can-stop-getting-these-messages--tf3404426.html#a9554876 Sent from the FreeDOS - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT & business topics through brief surveys-and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.php&p=sourceforge&CID=DEVDEV _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
