> -----Original Message----- > From: dmccunney [mailto:dennis.mccun...@gmail.com] > Sent: Wednesday, January 09, 2013 12:05 PM > To: Discussion and general questions about FreeDOS. > Subject: Re: [Freedos-user] Freedos V2.0 - when will it be available? > > On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 11:13 AM, Rugxulo <rugx...@gmail.com> wrote: > > On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 3:38 AM, dmccunney > <dennis.mccun...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 2:32 AM, Michael Robinson > >> <plu...@robinson-west.com> wrote: > >> > >>> A protected mode dos like the one under Windows 9x and Windows ME > >>> could be interesting and would justifiably deserve a > different name > >> > >> I wouldn't call that a "protected mode DOS". Win98/ME > used DOS as a > >> real mode loader for Windows. The protected mode portions > were in the > >> Windows code, and once Windows was loaded, DOS was out of the loop. > > > > I thought WinME removed the real mode bootup, hence lower > compatibility? > > Don't have it and haven't used it, so don't know. Everything I've > heard indicates it should have been called Win98 Third Edition. I'm > pretty sure there was still DOS underneath like in ME. Removing the > real mode loader didn't occur till NT.
Win NT4 significantly pre-dated Win 98; it came out in about '96. Many people feel WinME was one of the worst pieces of software ever written, while 98SE was very good. Win2k was the best, IMO. > > > Anyways, sure it preempted various DOS things, but other parts were > > still used behind the scenes. It probably just switched modes a lot > > (similar to DOS extenders). Indeed, I don't think it would > run without > > DOS, even if you did manage (somehow) to bootup without it. > > Might not, but the question is what DOS actually did under it. Memory > and process management would all be on the Win side. DOS might get > involved in file system access, but I'm not sure I see why. The same > sort of thing could be done native from Windows instead of passed > through DOS. > > >>> Gates made some very bad assumptions ... nobody will ever > >>> need more than 640k of memory for executable programs > >>> and drivers... > >> > >> That wasn't a Gates decision, it was an IBM decision. The 8088 CPU > >> used by the original PC had a one megabyte address space. > > > > Rumor is that IBM wanted 512 kb limit but MS complained! So > we should > > be grateful! ;-) > > <snort> > > > Tim Paterson successfully used the full MB of RAM on his > original 8088 > > clones. Even MS had some of those machines for a long time so that > > they could "link the[ir] linker". > > > > Besides, you could still use more (kinda sorta) via EMS. It was many > > years before extended RAM was cheap and common enough for > software to > > be useful over 1 MB. > > EMS used a 64KB page frame located in the block between 640K and 1MB, > and paged memory above 1MB into it for use. My old XT clone had an > AST 6Pak card with 1MB EMS. I used the AST drivers to create a 512KB > RAMdisk and a 256KB disk cache. AUTOEXEC.BAT loaded a few constantly > used things to the RAMdisk and made the RAMdisk first in the %PATH%, > and things that could be told where to create temp files were pointed > there. Sped things up a treat. > > I also had a freeware utility that could grab up to 96K of unused > video memory above 540K and map that to DOS. I had 64K available, > because I used a Hercules card, so DOS booting thinking I had 704K. > > >> Given that you have a megabyte available, total, and some > *will* need > >> to be reserved for the system, where *do* you draw the line? > > > > Tegra 2 reserved part of its total RAM (address space) for the > > graphics. A lot of other integrated chips / SoCs or whatever do too. > > Yeah, but they're all 32 bit processors, which is a whole > different thing, > > > This is also why XP (32-bit) allegedly can only use 3.1 GB of RAM. > > Not just allegedly. See Mark Russinovitch's explanation of the > underlying issues in his blog series: > http://blogs.technet.com/b/markrussinovich/archive/2008/07/21/ > 3092070.aspx > > On my desktop, I have 4GB RAM, but XP can only use about 3.2MB of it. > I found a freeware RAMdisk driver that can use the RAM XP can't see, > and have a 763MB RAMdisk seen as Z:, with a compressed NTFS file > system. I do things like run Firefox from it. > > > There are always hardcoded limits in everything, it's unavoidable. > > The question is where they are. > > >>> Actually, there is OS/2 which was supposed to be the competitor to > >>> Windows 9x and I'll bet that IBM is willing to release source code > >>> to it. Maybe the freedos community should get it's hands on OS/2 > >>> and develop it further. > >> > >> If IBM is willing to release code, that's news to me. > > > > No, they've said at least twice, very openly, that they > will never do > > so. Besides, lots of the code is copyrighted by MS still (due to the > > 1.x co-development), so that makes it all the more complicated. IBM > > just suggests people migrate to Linux and/or Java these days. > > It would be lovely if they did open source it, but stuff like MS's > participation in the original development would make that difficult. > > >> You can still get OS/2 from an outfit called eComstation: > >> http://www.ecomstation.com/product_info.phtml > > > > Yes, it sells a 5-pack of licenses for [EDIT] $149 USD or such. Not > > sure how well the DOS support still works, but I think it claims to > > have semi-recent Firefox, OpenOffice, Java, etc. Though I would be > > skeptical that it wouldn't boot properly, honestly, but hopefully > > they've fixed most of that in their [EDIT] 2.1 release. > > I don't see why DOS support shouldn't still work. The Firefox port is > third-party - Mozilla officially supports Windows, OS/X and Linux - > but the underlying code was designed to be portable. For that matter, > I believe there are still people doing VMS ports. > ______ > Dennis > https://plus.google.com/u/0/105128793974319004519 > > -------------------------------------------------------------- > ---------------- > Master Java SE, Java EE, Eclipse, Spring, Hibernate, > JavaScript, jQuery > and much more. Keep your Java skills current with LearnJavaNow - > 200+ hours of step-by-step video tutorials by Java experts. > SALE $49.99 this month only -- learn more at: > http://p.sf.net/sfu/learnmore_122612 > _______________________________________________ > Freedos-user mailing list > Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Master Java SE, Java EE, Eclipse, Spring, Hibernate, JavaScript, jQuery and much more. Keep your Java skills current with LearnJavaNow - 200+ hours of step-by-step video tutorials by Java experts. SALE $49.99 this month only -- learn more at: http://p.sf.net/sfu/learnmore_122612 _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
