Hi Eric, > On Jul 5, 2020, at 7:23 AM, Eric Auer <[email protected]> wrote: > > > Hi! Looking at the 720k boot disk for the installer, > I noticed that FDISKPT.INI and FDISK.INI are quite > large as the former contains many "definitions" of > unknown partition types and the latter contains only > comments and the end of file marker, so I suggest to > reduce the comments (mention that the full version is > in a zip package) and omit all unknown lines in the > partition type list (test how fdisk deals with it). > > The partition type list can also do without the last > and longest column, if that is okay for fdisk: You > could truncate it or keep only a important comments, > of course testing whether fdisk is happy. > > In total, you could save 20 to 30 kB.
I’ll have to look into possibly have the RBE (Release Build Environment) strip out the un-needed comments. > I notice that your 720k floppy contains THREE kernel > files and only TWO of them differ from each other, > which makes it very easy to save 44 kB :-) Mostly, that was to just simplify some stuff in the Floppy Edition Installer. Plans are to eventually remove the duplicate 8086 version of the Kernel. > You also have TWO versions of FDISK, although only > one of them is used unless some manual intervention > takes place, I believe. Again 36 or 39 kB to save. There was originally a reason for having both. Having to do with different bugs between the versions. But eventually, I ended up just using 121 in the installer. So, I will probably remove 131 from the boot floppy. If I recall correctly, under some circumstances 121 puts error messages on the screen that cannot be silenced. As for 131, it reports failure sometimes when trying to activate a partition. So, the installer was using 131 and falling back to 121 when 131 failed. However after some more updates to V8Power Tools, I was able to work around the issues with 121 (mostly) and just ended up put using it. So like you suggest, there really is no need for 131 to be present on the diskette anymore. > Several of the V... tools can be UPXed, saving space. Maybe. The full set of V8Power Tools is not present. Only those needed by the Floppy Edition installer. However, I don’t know how much space it would/could save. I’ve never tried to UPX them. > You may want to use a more lightweight COUNTRY file > (actually your 001,858 country line barely needs it) > and some smaller alternative for FC. > > What is the purpose of the large slicer tool? That is the utility I wrote to make the 8086 Floppy Edition practical. At under 28k (UPX’d) I wouldn’t say it is that is that big. Especially considering what it does. It is a tag & group based multi-language, file archival, disk spanning, program and package installer hybrid thingy that is designed to run on an 8086/8088 with almost no RAM. It is not a file compression program. Although, future versions may support compression. It has very different goals from programs like zip/unzip (which is enormous and won’t run on an 8086 anyway). Also, being tag & group based it reduces a lot of overhead the installer would require for a different 8086 compatible archiver. > The saved space could be used to add drivers and tools: > > Tools could include for example UNZIP and FIND and GREP, > DEBUG, WHICHFAT, MORE / MORESYS / PG, EDIT / TED3, MODE, > CHKDSK and (if 386+ target audience) DOSFSCK with CWSDPMI. > > Drivers could include HIMEM and UIDE, but only when you > have a boot choice between 8086 compatible and 386+ mode. > Drivers can also include UDVD2, SHSUCDX and SHSUCDHD, > MKEYB, CTMOUSE etc. It is not a recovery disk. Other than FDAPM, there are no tools provided that are not used to either BOOT or INSTALL present. Nor do I think any extra utilities that require more than a 8086 should be present on the diskette image. It is not difficult for an end-user to add additional drivers and such. For individuals who may have a CD/DVD drive, they should probably be using the LiveCD or LegacyCD to install. The Floppy Edition installs a very bare-bones FreeDOS. > I would not LOAD EMM386 while installing: It is too little > "one size fits all" for that and users can still work on > their EMM386 configuration AFTER installing. For the greatest compatibility, no drivers are loaded. > Regards, Eric :-) Thanks, Jerome _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
