[Freedos-devel] Kickstarter project for FreeDOS 2.0
Chelson Aitcheson has just started an independent Kickstarter project to fund development for FreeDOS-32, in support of a FreeDOS 2.0 distribution. I will also post a note about this on the FreeDOS website, but I wanted to share a link here for those who wanted to contribute. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1597889412/freedos-20-32-bit The Kickstarter aims to raise $2,500 by Thursday, January 29 2015. Chelson's goal is to hire public developers through freelancer.com to improve FreeDOS-32. If FreeDOS-32 can be significantly improved, Chelson hopes it will become part of mainline FreeDOS. I'll add that I haven't used FreeDOS-32 but if it supports classic DOS programs on modern systems while adding new and useful features, I would support that kernel update in FreeDOS 2.0. -- Dive into the World of Parallel Programming! The Go Parallel Website, sponsored by Intel and developed in partnership with Slashdot Media, is your hub for all things parallel software development, from weekly thought leadership blogs to news, videos, case studies, tutorials and more. Take a look and join the conversation now. http://goparallel.sourceforge.net___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
[Freedos-devel] Working on FreeDOS 1.2
Harold (AKA Mercury Thirteen) and I have been discussing creating a FreeDOS 1.2 distribution. He's volunteered to put together the new distribution. I thought we should share that with freedos-devel to see if anyone else wants to help with this! FreeDOS 1.2 is planned to be a refresh to FreeDOS 1.1, using updated packages, although it will also use a new version of the installer and a simplified install process. My thoughts for the simpler installation process: 1. *Boot the FreeDOS Install CDROM.* This is basically a live FreeDOS, which happens to boot into an automated install process. - If you Exit the process at any time, you go back to a DOS prompt. (This is useful for people who just want to run FreeDOS from CD without installing it.) 2. *Does the C: drive exist?* - If not, prompt the user to run FDISK. Reboot to re-read the partition table. 3. *Is the C: drive usable?* - If not, prompt the user to run FORMAT. 4. *Start the INSTALL program.* - This installs everything, using the new install program. 5. *Run SYS to make the C: drive bootable.* 6. *Do any follow-up steps* (such as creating a default CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT, set language, etc). 7. *Done* I had started work on the new install program a while back, but stopped development before it was fully ready. The latest code is in SVN on our SourceForge project. I'll see if I can update it for FreeDOS 1.2, although helpers are welcome! If you would like to help put together the FreeDOS 1.2 distribution, please email Harold at Mercury Thirteen mercury0x0...@gmail.com -- Dive into the World of Parallel Programming! The Go Parallel Website, sponsored by Intel and developed in partnership with Slashdot Media, is your hub for all things parallel software development, from weekly thought leadership blogs to news, videos, case studies, tutorials and more. Take a look and join the conversation now. http://goparallel.sourceforge.net___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] Working on FreeDOS 1.2
I agree that a better installer is needed (the one in 1.1 seemed to be slow and generated broken AUTOEXEC.BAT files for non-US(?) keyboard layouts). I think we should adapt FDNPKG so it can be compiled with Open Watcom and use mTCP so it can be 8086-compatible. After installation, it could immediately update packages if newer versions are available. It would be also very cool if we could have some kind of autodetection of network cards and install a driver automatically (and generate WATTCP and mTCP configuration files?). Packet drivers are the easiest to install (we'd probably only need a table of PCI IDs - any volunteers? - and the driver filenames associated with them), but ODI and NDIS drivers might require some more work. And finally, it would be nice if my Slovene translations (not 100% complete yet though) could be included in the distribution. :) -- Dive into the World of Parallel Programming! The Go Parallel Website, sponsored by Intel and developed in partnership with Slashdot Media, is your hub for all things parallel software development, from weekly thought leadership blogs to news, videos, case studies, tutorials and more. Take a look and join the conversation now. http://goparallel.sourceforge.net ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] Working on FreeDOS 1.2
On Wednesday, December 31, 2014, Matej Horvat matej.hor...@guest.arnes.si wrote: (...) And finally, it would be nice if my Slovene translations (not 100% complete yet though) could be included in the distribution. :) Hi Matej It's usually best to send translations of program strings (i.e. KITTEN or CATS) to the program maintainers so they can be included in the next release. If there isn't an active maintainer, or you aren't getting a response from the maintainer, email those KITTEN files to me and I can do a one-off update of those programs with your Slovene translations. Jim -- Dive into the World of Parallel Programming! The Go Parallel Website, sponsored by Intel and developed in partnership with Slashdot Media, is your hub for all things parallel software development, from weekly thought leadership blogs to news, videos, case studies, tutorials and more. Take a look and join the conversation now. http://goparallel.sourceforge.net___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] Working on FreeDOS 1.2
I was actually working on a feature like this for my GUI so that it could automatically load drivers, which does a simple scan of the PCI bus and reports the devices it finds. There is already a list of PCI device IDs available at pcidatabase.com, which may be useful to us. I could extract my PCI scanner routines into their own application which performs the lookup and DEVLOADs the appropriate drivers. -- Dive into the World of Parallel Programming! The Go Parallel Website, sponsored by Intel and developed in partnership with Slashdot Media, is your hub for all things parallel software development, from weekly thought leadership blogs to news, videos, case studies, tutorials and more. Take a look and join the conversation now. http://goparallel.sourceforge.net___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] Working on FreeDOS 1.2
Hi all, The latest Slovene translations of everything are available here (with many other translations): http://freedoslocal.sourceforge.net/ I appeal to anyone having any translation updates to send them to me, so I will add them there. I can also provide svn rights to whoever would like to work on translating parts of FreeDOS. All translations shall be submitted in UTF8, the freedos localization project handles the conversion to whatever the final encoding should be. cheers, Mateusz On 12/31/2014 06:29 PM, Jim Hall wrote: On Wednesday, December 31, 2014, Matej Horvat matej.hor...@guest.arnes.si mailto:matej.hor...@guest.arnes.si wrote: (...) And finally, it would be nice if my Slovene translations (not 100% complete yet though) could be included in the distribution. :) Hi Matej It's usually best to send translations of program strings (i.e. KITTEN or CATS) to the program maintainers so they can be included in the next release. If there isn't an active maintainer, or you aren't getting a response from the maintainer, email those KITTEN files to me and I can do a one-off update of those programs with your Slovene translations. Jim -- Dive into the World of Parallel Programming! The Go Parallel Website, sponsored by Intel and developed in partnership with Slashdot Media, is your hub for all things parallel software development, from weekly thought leadership blogs to news, videos, case studies, tutorials and more. Take a look and join the conversation now. http://goparallel.sourceforge.net ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel -- Dive into the World of Parallel Programming! The Go Parallel Website, sponsored by Intel and developed in partnership with Slashdot Media, is your hub for all things parallel software development, from weekly thought leadership blogs to news, videos, case studies, tutorials and more. Take a look and join the conversation now. http://goparallel.sourceforge.net ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] Working on FreeDOS 1.2
On Wed, Dec 31, 2014 at 8:54 AM, Matej Horvat matej.hor...@guest.arnes.si wrote: [SNIP] I agree that a better installer is needed (the one in 1.1 seemed to be slow and generated broken AUTOEXEC.BAT files for non-US(?) keyboard layouts). I think we should adapt FDNPKG so it can be compiled with Open Watcom and use mTCP so it can be 8086-compatible. After installation, it could immediately update packages if newer versions are available. I like the idea of standardizing on mTCP, especially if the openssl and ssh/sftp packages could be made to depend on it. However believe that the code hasn't yet been ported to djgpp or Watcom 32-bit so that would be an impediment to my ssl interests. It would be also very cool if we could have some kind of autodetection of network cards and install a driver automatically (and generate WATTCP and mTCP configuration files?). Packet drivers are the easiest to install (we'd probably only need a table of PCI IDs - any volunteers? - and the driver filenames associated with them), but ODI and NDIS drivers might require some more work. [SNIP] Dunfield Potthast already have PCI bus/NIC sniffers [0][1] and a collections of NIC packet drivers as well [2][3]. [0] http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/dos/pcinic.zip [1] http://www.georgpotthast.de/sioux/pktdrv/nicscan.zip [2] http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/dos/pktdrv.zip [3] http://www.georgpotthast.de/sioux/packet.htm -- Dive into the World of Parallel Programming! The Go Parallel Website, sponsored by Intel and developed in partnership with Slashdot Media, is your hub for all things parallel software development, from weekly thought leadership blogs to news, videos, case studies, tutorials and more. Take a look and join the conversation now. http://goparallel.sourceforge.net ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] Working on FreeDOS 1.2
FDNPKG: I can help you with the changes to FDNPKG to allow it to compile under Open Watcom and to use mTCP. I would certainly like to see more people using mTCP to build their applications. However, is moving to mTCP going to improve FDNPKG enough to make it worth the effort? (That is just something to think about. I can tell you about what I think the advantages of Open Watcom and mTCP are offline.) Hardware support and installers: This is just some food for thought ... There are a lot of old systems running around. FreeDOS should be able to run on anything from an XT all of the way up to a modern PCI system, assuming the BIOS is reasonable. (And one day I'll add PCjr support.) An installer can certainly be PCI aware. But assuming PCI or doing something that makes the installer unusable on an earlier system would be a regression. I think that you can assume that a CD-ROM is present. But you should not assume that a machine is capable of booting from a CD-ROM. We should support installing from CD-ROM, but be careful to ensure that booting from CD-ROM is not a requirement. I think a reasonably good installer would have the following form: - A bootable CD-ROM image for machines that support it. - A bootable floppy image with enough support to load the CD-ROM device driver for machines that have CD-ROM, but can not boot from it. - Instructions for how to create boot media and diskettes for machines that do not have CD-ROM. This may assume that the user doing the install has access to an already installed FreeDOS. (It would be nice if FreeDOS provided official images, but your typical hobbyist with an XT can follow directions.) What is the timeframe for a 1.2 release? I would like to make some additions to mTCP before another FreeDOS release goes out into the wild. I was thinking of a utility to make it easier to configure mTCP and diagnose packet driver problems. I also have the HTTP server, which is not open source yet but could be if there was sufficient interest. Mike -- Dive into the World of Parallel Programming! The Go Parallel Website, sponsored by Intel and developed in partnership with Slashdot Media, is your hub for all things parallel software development, from weekly thought leadership blogs to news, videos, case studies, tutorials and more. Take a look and join the conversation now. http://goparallel.sourceforge.net___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] Working on FreeDOS 1.2
Another thing we could do, in the same vein as the suggestions by Matej, would be to make an app store of sorts which would function as a package manager. When run, this program would search the user's hard drive to see what components are installed, determine their version and see if there is an update available, download said updates using mTCP calls and update items as necessary. Or, maybe I'm going too ambitious here and we should leave the fancier features to FreeDOS 2.0? -- Dive into the World of Parallel Programming! The Go Parallel Website, sponsored by Intel and developed in partnership with Slashdot Media, is your hub for all things parallel software development, from weekly thought leadership blogs to news, videos, case studies, tutorials and more. Take a look and join the conversation now. http://goparallel.sourceforge.net___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
[Freedos-devel] Kickstarter project for FreeDOS 2.0
I'm curious what the specific uses are being proposed for FreeDOS-32 ? The kickstarter site mentions supporting DJGPP compiled programs which use DPMI. This is already supported in FreeDOS. It further mentions hard real time and threading. There are already user-space threading packages available ( freebie: Erick Engelke's ERTOS) for FreeDOS. What is it that the developers of this project want to do that can't be done with FreeDOS or other existing OS ? -- Dive into the World of Parallel Programming! The Go Parallel Website, sponsored by Intel and developed in partnership with Slashdot Media, is your hub for all things parallel software development, from weekly thought leadership blogs to news, videos, case studies, tutorials and more. Take a look and join the conversation now. http://goparallel.sourceforge.net___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] Working on FreeDOS 1.2
On 12/31/2014 08:02 PM, Mercury Thirteen wrote: Another thing we could do, in the same vein as the suggestions by Matej, would be to make an app store of sorts which would function as a package manager. When run, this program would search the user's hard drive to see what components are installed, determine their version and see if there is an update available, That's exactly what FDNPKG is for. download said updates using mTCP calls Not gonna happen until mTCP becomes 32bit-friendly. Mateusz -- Dive into the World of Parallel Programming! The Go Parallel Website, sponsored by Intel and developed in partnership with Slashdot Media, is your hub for all things parallel software development, from weekly thought leadership blogs to news, videos, case studies, tutorials and more. Take a look and join the conversation now. http://goparallel.sourceforge.net ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] Project 16
yup thats it~ -- View this message in context: http://freedos.10956.n7.nabble.com/Project-16-tp21479p21517.html Sent from the FreeDOS - Dev mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- Dive into the World of Parallel Programming! The Go Parallel Website, sponsored by Intel and developed in partnership with Slashdot Media, is your hub for all things parallel software development, from weekly thought leadership blogs to news, videos, case studies, tutorials and more. Take a look and join the conversation now. http://goparallel.sourceforge.net ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] Working on FreeDOS 1.2
Dunfield Potthast already have PCI bus/NIC sniffers [0][1] and a collections of NIC packet drivers as well Georg has some useful stuff there, but the bus scanner isn't (currently, at least) open source software and couldn't be included in FreeDOS. -- Dive into the World of Parallel Programming! The Go Parallel Website, sponsored by Intel and developed in partnership with Slashdot Media, is your hub for all things parallel software development, from weekly thought leadership blogs to news, videos, case studies, tutorials and more. Take a look and join the conversation now. http://goparallel.sourceforge.net___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] Kickstarter project for FreeDOS 2.0
I am a little skeptical about the prospects for success on this project. The FreeDOS roadmap ( http://www.freedos.org/wiki/index.php/FreeDOS_Road_Map ) is out of date and short on details. I would like to see a broad discussion on the roadmap, get consensus and have it updated. Anything that uses the name FreeDOS should be reserved for the classic 16 bit operating system. A new project that uses a fundamentally different kernel should not just have a different version number; it's a different OS. I would expect them to call it FreeDOS-32 v1.0 or something like that, not FreeDOS v2.0. You should do this to preserve your trademark protections too. Trying to find somebody on freelancer.com to do work on FreeDOS-32 is going to fail. It's just not going to happen. The crowd-sourcing programming sites attract people who are very optimized to do a specific piece of work, such as making a new web site using a particular framework. Operating system skills and DOS skills are not going to be available, and nobody is going to want to trudge up the learning curve for a very limited duration gig. FreeDOS contributors are hobbyists - they do it because they are interested. There is no financial incentive to work on it and the knowledge is esoteric and not in demand. It's not a good candidate for outsourcing. The Kickstarter project may prove me wrong. I am interested to see if it does. But at a minimum please consider throwing that project back in its own namespace and not polluting FreeDOS. Mike On Wed, Dec 31, 2014 at 8:12 AM, Jim Hall jh...@freedos.org wrote: Chelson Aitcheson has just started an independent Kickstarter project to fund development for FreeDOS-32, in support of a FreeDOS 2.0 distribution. I will also post a note about this on the FreeDOS website, but I wanted to share a link here for those who wanted to contribute. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1597889412/freedos-20-32-bit The Kickstarter aims to raise $2,500 by Thursday, January 29 2015. Chelson's goal is to hire public developers through freelancer.com to improve FreeDOS-32. If FreeDOS-32 can be significantly improved, Chelson hopes it will become part of mainline FreeDOS. I'll add that I haven't used FreeDOS-32 but if it supports classic DOS programs on modern systems while adding new and useful features, I would support that kernel update in FreeDOS 2.0. -- Dive into the World of Parallel Programming! The Go Parallel Website, sponsored by Intel and developed in partnership with Slashdot Media, is your hub for all things parallel software development, from weekly thought leadership blogs to news, videos, case studies, tutorials and more. Take a look and join the conversation now. http://goparallel.sourceforge.net ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel -- Dive into the World of Parallel Programming! The Go Parallel Website, sponsored by Intel and developed in partnership with Slashdot Media, is your hub for all things parallel software development, from weekly thought leadership blogs to news, videos, case studies, tutorials and more. Take a look and join the conversation now. http://goparallel.sourceforge.net___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] Working on FreeDOS 1.2
As much as I like my 16 bit machines, I'm open to making mTCP 32 bit friendly. The code is very careful with data types - I never use int when the number of bits matters. The trouble spots are going to be the IP checksum routine which is hand-optimized assembly, my time of day code which looks at BIOS ticks, and some bits of ASM I have sprinkled in the applications to avoid using the Watcom runtime equivalents. But the base library code itself reasonably clean. If somebody has a good FAQ or how to get started that introduces me to 32 bit DOS extenders I'm willing to do the work. 32 bit would improve the code generation quite a bit and make it even faster. On Wed, Dec 31, 2014 at 11:04 AM, Mateusz Viste mate...@viste.fr wrote: On 12/31/2014 08:02 PM, Mercury Thirteen wrote: Another thing we could do, in the same vein as the suggestions by Matej, would be to make an app store of sorts which would function as a package manager. When run, this program would search the user's hard drive to see what components are installed, determine their version and see if there is an update available, That's exactly what FDNPKG is for. download said updates using mTCP calls Not gonna happen until mTCP becomes 32bit-friendly. Mateusz -- Dive into the World of Parallel Programming! The Go Parallel Website, sponsored by Intel and developed in partnership with Slashdot Media, is your hub for all things parallel software development, from weekly thought leadership blogs to news, videos, case studies, tutorials and more. Take a look and join the conversation now. http://goparallel.sourceforge.net ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel -- Dive into the World of Parallel Programming! The Go Parallel Website, sponsored by Intel and developed in partnership with Slashdot Media, is your hub for all things parallel software development, from weekly thought leadership blogs to news, videos, case studies, tutorials and more. Take a look and join the conversation now. http://goparallel.sourceforge.net___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] Kickstarter project for FreeDOS 2.0
I have nothing against the project at all (it would be awesome to have a DOS with 32 bit speed) but I have to say I agree with Mike - the two projects should keep separate names. FreeDOS should remain an enhanced clone of MS-DOS since anything which takes it into the 32 bit realm would, in my mind, qualify it as its own project and therefore merit its own name. -- Dive into the World of Parallel Programming! The Go Parallel Website, sponsored by Intel and developed in partnership with Slashdot Media, is your hub for all things parallel software development, from weekly thought leadership blogs to news, videos, case studies, tutorials and more. Take a look and join the conversation now. http://goparallel.sourceforge.net___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] Working on FreeDOS 1.2
So far as a tutorial, I'm afraid nothing jumps to mind. However, in my tests I found that the DOS4GW extender which ships with Watcom is the fastest. -- Dive into the World of Parallel Programming! The Go Parallel Website, sponsored by Intel and developed in partnership with Slashdot Media, is your hub for all things parallel software development, from weekly thought leadership blogs to news, videos, case studies, tutorials and more. Take a look and join the conversation now. http://goparallel.sourceforge.net___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] Working on FreeDOS 1.2
Aha, and here I thought I was being original lol The version of FreeDOS I use for development is a premade image with VirtualBox networking already set up. It doesn't include your software, so I guess its existence slipped my mind. Sorry about that. On Wed, Dec 31, 2014 at 2:04 PM, Mateusz Viste mate...@viste.fr wrote: On 12/31/2014 08:02 PM, Mercury Thirteen wrote: Another thing we could do, in the same vein as the suggestions by Matej, would be to make an app store of sorts which would function as a package manager. When run, this program would search the user's hard drive to see what components are installed, determine their version and see if there is an update available, That's exactly what FDNPKG is for. download said updates using mTCP calls Not gonna happen until mTCP becomes 32bit-friendly. Mateusz -- Dive into the World of Parallel Programming! The Go Parallel Website, sponsored by Intel and developed in partnership with Slashdot Media, is your hub for all things parallel software development, from weekly thought leadership blogs to news, videos, case studies, tutorials and more. Take a look and join the conversation now. http://goparallel.sourceforge.net ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel -- Dive into the World of Parallel Programming! The Go Parallel Website, sponsored by Intel and developed in partnership with Slashdot Media, is your hub for all things parallel software development, from weekly thought leadership blogs to news, videos, case studies, tutorials and more. Take a look and join the conversation now. http://goparallel.sourceforge.net___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] Working on FreeDOS 1.2
i made a custom version of fdpkg that simply updates the directory creating mechanics of it i wish it has mtcp support so we can have a 16 bit answer to fdnpkg -- View this message in context: http://freedos.10956.n7.nabble.com/Working-on-FreeDOS-1-2-tp21507p21524.html Sent from the FreeDOS - Dev mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- Dive into the World of Parallel Programming! The Go Parallel Website, sponsored by Intel and developed in partnership with Slashdot Media, is your hub for all things parallel software development, from weekly thought leadership blogs to news, videos, case studies, tutorials and more. Take a look and join the conversation now. http://goparallel.sourceforge.net ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] Working on FreeDOS 1.2
As the old year is passing and you mention FDNPKG I would like to point to my website at https://www.lazybrowndog.net/freedos/virtualbox2/ I worked on the website in September but wasn't able to polish it as much as I hoped for. I would like to add another image for networking with ms client. And a howto. Then it will replace my old resource for Vbox freedos. But anyone, who is interested in checking out FDNPKG may just install the freedos 1.1plus image... Best wishes and the best start to the new year! Cheers Ulrich Am 31.12.2014 um 20:04 schrieb Mateusz Viste mate...@viste.fr: On 12/31/2014 08:02 PM, Mercury Thirteen wrote: Another thing we could do, in the same vein as the suggestions by Matej, would be to make an app store of sorts which would function as a package manager. When run, this program would search the user's hard drive to see what components are installed, determine their version and see if there is an update available, That's exactly what FDNPKG is for. download said updates using mTCP calls Not gonna happen until mTCP becomes 32bit-friendly. Mateusz -- Dive into the World of Parallel Programming! The Go Parallel Website, sponsored by Intel and developed in partnership with Slashdot Media, is your hub for all things parallel software development, from weekly thought leadership blogs to news, videos, case studies, tutorials and more. Take a look and join the conversation now. http://goparallel.sourceforge.net ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel -- Dive into the World of Parallel Programming! The Go Parallel Website, sponsored by Intel and developed in partnership with Slashdot Media, is your hub for all things parallel software development, from weekly thought leadership blogs to news, videos, case studies, tutorials and more. Take a look and join the conversation now. http://goparallel.sourceforge.net ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] Working on FreeDOS 1.2
On 12/31/2014 08:17 PM, Michael Brutman wrote: As much as I like my 16 bit machines, I'm open to making mTCP 32 bit friendly. That would be great! When it happens, I will be happy to port my DOS networking software to mTCP (that is, the FDNPKG package manager and my gopher client Gopherus). cheers, Mateusz -- Dive into the World of Parallel Programming! The Go Parallel Website, sponsored by Intel and developed in partnership with Slashdot Media, is your hub for all things parallel software development, from weekly thought leadership blogs to news, videos, case studies, tutorials and more. Take a look and join the conversation now. http://goparallel.sourceforge.net ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] Working on FreeDOS 1.2
Jim, will your installer still need the .LSM files?If so, do you need them for each .EXE or just for each package? -- Dive into the World of Parallel Programming! The Go Parallel Website, sponsored by Intel and developed in partnership with Slashdot Media, is your hub for all things parallel software development, from weekly thought leadership blogs to news, videos, case studies, tutorials and more. Take a look and join the conversation now. http://goparallel.sourceforge.net___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] Kickstarter project for FreeDOS 2.0
On Wed, Dec 31, 2014 at 1:27 PM, Mercury Thirteen mercury0x0...@gmail.com wrote: I have nothing against the project at all (it would be awesome to have a DOS with 32 bit speed) but I have to say I agree with Mike - the two projects should keep separate names. FreeDOS should remain an enhanced clone of MS-DOS since anything which takes it into the 32 bit realm would, in my mind, qualify it as its own project and therefore merit its own name. I agree FreeDOS is an enhanced clone of MS-DOS But for a moment, let's look at the history of DOS. Microsoft introduced MSDOS in 1981, based on Seattle Computing's QDOS. Microsoft made improvements and enhancements to MSDOS over the years, adding new functionality and modernizing the interface, but always maintaining application compatibility - because *APPLICATION COMPATIBILITY IS 100% IMPORTANT*. MSDOS 2 added directory support, and I think it was MSDOS 3 that added CDROM support. MSDOS 4 had multitasking, but that was taken out before MSDOS 4.01. Microsoft re-wrote MSDOS for version 5 in 1991, and added neat features like a task switcher. MSDOS 6 in 1993 was basically an enhanced version of MSDOS, plus a few modern utilities. In 1994, FreeDOS aimed to create a free, compatible alternative to MSDOS. And I believe we met that goal in version 1.0 several years ago. We've even extended the feature set (read: utilities) from MSDOS 6. But FreeDOS is still - essentially and most importantly - an enhanced clone of the old MSDOS. FreeDOS 1.2 and 2.0 need to remain DOS. There are certain core things that define DOS. We're small, we run everywhere, we use FAT, we run DOS applications. That last point is most important, because *APPLICATION COMPATIBILITY IS 100% IMPORTANT*. And FreeDOS supports three kinds of users: people who want to run classic DOS games, people who need to run legacy business applications, people who use FreeDOS in embedded systems. FreeDOS 1.2 and 2.0 need to meet all three of those users. Sure, MSDOS is now a reference platform (i.e. not changing) but DOS isn't static. We shouldn't be afraid to modernize FreeDOS in ways that don't break application compatibility. We need to be really careful in doing that. Minimally, applications written for MSDOS should still run under whatever FreeDOS 2.0 becomes. That's because *APPLICATION COMPATIBILITY IS 100% IMPORTANT*. I think if DOS applications break in this FreeDOS-32 kernel, we can't use it. End of story. Aside from that, we are free to make changes that modernize FreeDOS. In short, I envision FreeDOS 2.0 as being a more modern version based on FreeDOS 1.x. FreeDOS-32 has been around a long time (since 2000) but they haven't released anything to date. I was in occasional email contact with one or two of the developers at the time, and I know they suffered poor project stability. They completely started over more than once. They decided to create their own filesystem (LEAN) which I still believe was a mistake. They threw out a lot of code and re-wrote from scratch. The FreeDOS-32 project went idle in 2005 without having ever released a version of their kernel to try out. So I've never tried it. Looking at their explore list on their front page, I've always known FreeDOS-32 was VERY unfinished. But the concept of a 32-bit FreeDOS kernel was interesting. Their goals were lofty, but sometimes you need lofty goals to do something new. It was an interesting project to watch. So I am interested today to see if this kickstarter project can take up the FreeDOS-32 code base and make something of it. But I'm cautious. As they make progress, I will watch for application compatibility, because *APPLICATION COMPATIBILITY IS 100% IMPORTANT*. What I don't want to see is someone create a FreeDOS-32 that's basically a custom operating system kernel that does something completely different from DOS and provides a compatibility shell to run classic DOS apps. Because we have that now. It's called Linux + DOSEMU to run DOS programs. I do that all the time today. And I like it, but I don't fool myself into thinking Linux + DOSEMU is still DOS because it isn't. jh -- Dive into the World of Parallel Programming! The Go Parallel Website, sponsored by Intel and developed in partnership with Slashdot Media, is your hub for all things parallel software development, from weekly thought leadership blogs to news, videos, case studies, tutorials and more. Take a look and join the conversation now. http://goparallel.sourceforge.net___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
[Freedos-devel] FreeDOS 1.2 and 2.0 roadmap discussion
Mike pointed out that the FreeDOS Road Map http://www.freedos.org/wiki/index.php/FreeDOS_Road_Map (wiki) is out of date and short on details and suggested a broad discussion on the road map, get consensus and have it updated. I figured we should start a separate discussion thread about that. First, a little history on the road map: When I started FreeDOS in 1994, the goal was to create a free version of DOS, compatible with MS-DOS. (original PD-DOS announcement https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.os.msdos.apps/oQmT4ETcSzU/O1HR8PE2u-EJ) (original Free-DOS manifesto https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.os.msdos.apps/W6MuhF__R9s/MgdzBrlanTwJ ) That aim remained essentially the same for a long time. And I believe we met that with version 1.0 a few years ago. FreeDOS 1.1 was an update to FreeDOS 1.0, so things didn't really change there. In 2009 http://www.freedos.org/jhall/blog/?id=20090511-192954, I briefly stepped away from FreeDOS to focus on a graduate program (I ended up changing jobs instead, and didn't do the M.S. program until a few years later). During that time, Pat Villani stepped in as project coordinator. Pat wanted to do something to spur development, so in 2010 http://www.freedos.org/wiki/index.php?title=FreeDOS_Road_Mapoldid=845 he wrote the first version of the FreeDOS Road Map (see old version http://www.freedos.org/wiki/index.php?title=FreeDOS_Road_Mapoldid=845). In 2011 http://www.freedos.org/jhall/blog/?id=20110502-164858, Pat's health was getting worse, so I came back as project coordinator. Nothing had been done on the road map, so I replaced it with a copy/paste from a blog post I had written earlier (see blog post http://www.freedos.org/jhall/blog/?id=20110502-164858) until I could go back and update it for real later on. A few days ago, Harold (aka Mercury Thirteen) mentioned the road map on the wiki. I realized I never updated the road map, so I tacked a THIS PAGE IS OUT OF DATE notice at the top of the wiki entry. More recently, Chelson announced on our Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/freedos/ his kickstarter project to fund development of FreeDOS-32, with the hope that this kernel could be part of FreeDOS 2.0. I shared his announcement on the website and on freedos-devel this morning. I think that brings us to this discussion. :-) *My thoughts on FreeDOS 1.2 and FreeDOS 2.0:* I think the next distribution will be FreeDOS 1.2 because I want to reserve 2.0 for a major shift in how FreeDOS software is organized and what we include. I'm currently looking at the packages we list on the Software List, so maybe we'll get to 2.0 soon - but I think it's safe to assume the next FreeDOS distribution will be 1.2 and the one after that would be 2.0. *My thoughts on FreeDOS 1.2:* FreeDOS 1.2 is basically an update from FreeDOS 1.1. The biggest change is probably the installer: It should be very simple, very straightforward. FreeDOS isn't very big or complex, so it doesn't make sense to have a lot of install options. The current install process (FreeDOS 1.1) has a lot of steps to it. I think we could simplify this a bit. I'm not sure about the full steps for the install process, but to brainstorm something, here's a sketched out plan: 1. *Boot the FreeDOS Install CDROM.* This is basically a live FreeDOS, which happens to boot into an automated install process. - If you Exit the process at any time, you go back to a DOS prompt. (This is useful for people who just want to run FreeDOS from CD without installing it.) 2. *Does the C: drive exist?* - If not, prompt the user to run FDISK. Reboot to re-read the partition table. 3. *Is the C: drive usable?* - If not, prompt the user to run FORMAT. 4. *Start the INSTALL program.* 5. *Run SYS to make the C: drive bootable.* 6. *Do any follow-up steps* (such as creating a default CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT, set language, etc). 7. *Done* *My thoughts on FreeDOS 2.0:* I'd like to see a modernized version of DOS. This might be as ambitious as Marc Perkel mentioned in his 1991 letter to his Novell bosses about a modern DOS, which he called NovOS (read NovOS letter http://Marc Perkel). Or it could be something less ambitious, basically a modernization of the FreeDOS userspace (utilities, etc) while keeping the original DOS kernel. I haven't used FreeDOS-32 but if it supports classic DOS programs on modern systems, while adding new and useful features, I would support using that kernel in FreeDOS 2.0. (I said this on Facebook, too https://www.facebook.com/groups/freedos/permalink/10152599941377887/?comment_id=10152600011617887offset=0total_comments=27.) Above all, application compatibility is 100% important. FreeDOS 2.0 needs to run applications written for MS-DOS. Thoughts? -- Dive into the World of Parallel Programming! The Go Parallel Website, sponsored by Intel and developed in partnership with Slashdot Media, is your hub for all
Re: [Freedos-devel] Working on FreeDOS 1.2
On Wed, Dec 31, 2014 at 3:16 PM, Mercury Thirteen mercury0x0...@gmail.com wrote: Jim, will your installer still need the .LSM files?If so, do you need them for each .EXE or just for each package? The LSM needs to be present (it goes in APPINFO, I think) but the new installer doesn't read LSM files. It just reads a list of package files that need to be installed, and installs them. -- Dive into the World of Parallel Programming! The Go Parallel Website, sponsored by Intel and developed in partnership with Slashdot Media, is your hub for all things parallel software development, from weekly thought leadership blogs to news, videos, case studies, tutorials and more. Take a look and join the conversation now. http://goparallel.sourceforge.net___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] drives.exe
On Linux DOSemu, DRIVES doesn't report any disks at all. I just get Detected drives: 0 Here's a screenshot: http://www.freedos.org/jhall/temp/dosemu-drives-screenshot.png But from FreeDOS, I have C:, D:, E:, and Z: drives. DOSemu version 1.4.0.8 - 18.20131022git.fc20 on Fedora 21. I'm using your latest drives.zip release. (Just a suggestion, but you might include a version number in the zip filename, like drives10.zip or drives11.zip, etc., so people know what version to download.) -- Dive into the World of Parallel Programming! The Go Parallel Website, sponsored by Intel and developed in partnership with Slashdot Media, is your hub for all things parallel software development, from weekly thought leadership blogs to news, videos, case studies, tutorials and more. Take a look and join the conversation now. http://goparallel.sourceforge.net___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] Kickstarter project for FreeDOS 2.0
On 12/31/2014 10:40 AM, Michael Brutman wrote: I am a little skeptical about the prospects for success on this project. The FreeDOS roadmap ( http://www.freedos.org/wiki/index.php/FreeDOS_Road_Map ) is out of date and short on details. I would like to see a broad discussion on the roadmap, get consensus and have it updated. Anything that uses the name FreeDOS should be reserved for the classic 16 bit operating system. A new project that uses a fundamentally different kernel should not just have a different version number; it's a different OS. I would expect them to call it FreeDOS-32 v1.0 or something like that, not FreeDOS v2.0. You should do this to preserve your trademark protections too. Trying to find somebody on freelancer.com http://freelancer.com to do work on FreeDOS-32 is going to fail. It's just not going to happen. The crowd-sourcing programming sites attract people who are very optimized to do a specific piece of work, such as making a new web site using a particular framework. Operating system skills and DOS skills are not going to be available, and nobody is going to want to trudge up the learning curve for a very limited duration gig. FreeDOS contributors are hobbyists - they do it because they are interested. There is no financial incentive to work on it and the knowledge is esoteric and not in demand. It's not a good candidate for outsourcing. The Kickstarter project may prove me wrong. I am interested to see if it does. But at a minimum please consider throwing that project back in its own namespace and not polluting FreeDOS. Mike On Wed, Dec 31, 2014 at 8:12 AM, Jim Hall jh...@freedos.org mailto:jh...@freedos.org wrote: Chelson Aitcheson has just started an independent Kickstarter project to fund development for FreeDOS-32, in support of a FreeDOS 2.0 distribution. I will also post a note about this on the FreeDOS website, but I wanted to share a link here for those who wanted to contribute. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1597889412/freedos-20-32-bit The Kickstarter aims to raise $2,500 by Thursday, January 29 2015. Chelson's goal is to hire public developers through freelancer.com http://freelancer.com to improve FreeDOS-32. If FreeDOS-32 can be significantly improved, Chelson hopes it will become part of mainline FreeDOS. I'll add that I haven't used FreeDOS-32 but if it supports classic DOS programs on modern systems while adding new and useful features, I would support that kernel update in FreeDOS 2.0. +1 Anything 32 bit, unless it would refer to a DOSExtender, for which there are now at least a couple Open Source one, simply is not DOS anymore. And certainly nothing that would be able to run classic DOS programs. A better spend time (and money?) would be to convince someone at the SeaBIOS project to help providing an (U)EFI boot stub, upon which a classic 16bit FreeDOS then could boot just like in the old days on the newest systems... Ralf --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. http://www.avast.com -- Dive into the World of Parallel Programming! The Go Parallel Website, sponsored by Intel and developed in partnership with Slashdot Media, is your hub for all things parallel software development, from weekly thought leadership blogs to news, videos, case studies, tutorials and more. Take a look and join the conversation now. http://goparallel.sourceforge.net___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] Kickstarter project for FreeDOS 2.0
On 12/31/2014 1:48 PM, Jim Hall wrote: FreeDOS-32 has been around a long time (since 2000) but they haven't released anything to date. I was in occasional email contact with one or two of the developers at the time, and I know they suffered poor project stability. They completely started over more than once. They decided to create their own filesystem (LEAN) which I still believe was a mistake. They threw out a lot of code and re-wrote from scratch. The FreeDOS-32 project went idle in 2005 without having ever released a version of their kernel to try out. So I've never tried it. Looking at their explore list on their front page, I've always known FreeDOS-32 was VERY unfinished. But the concept of a 32-bit FreeDOS kernel was interesting. Their goals were lofty, but sometimes you need lofty goals to do something new. It was an interesting project to watch. So I am interested today to see if this kickstarter project can take up the FreeDOS-32 code base and make something of it. But I'm cautious. As they make progress, I will watch for application compatibility, because *APPLICATION COMPATIBILITY IS 100% IMPORTANT*. What I don't want to see is someone create a FreeDOS-32 that's basically a custom operating system kernel that does something completely different from DOS and provides a compatibility shell to run classic DOS apps. Because we have that now. It's called Linux + DOSEMU to run DOS programs. I do that all the time today. And I like it, but I don't fool myself into thinking Linux + DOSEMU is still DOS because it isn't. FreeDOS-32 was born dead IMHO. You simply can't not do what they had in mind and still be 100% application compatible. That's why they had to start over and over again, without really getting anywhere. And you won't find anyone writing any new software for it that fills all the needs purposes of (still) existing 16bit DOS software. Any such effort is better spend on producing user applications for Linux. And that $2500 Kickstarter goal won't buy you even one month of developer time. And one has to be smoking some really bad stuff to think that such a project could be done in such short period of time anyway... Ralf --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. http://www.avast.com -- Dive into the World of Parallel Programming! The Go Parallel Website, sponsored by Intel and developed in partnership with Slashdot Media, is your hub for all things parallel software development, from weekly thought leadership blogs to news, videos, case studies, tutorials and more. Take a look and join the conversation now. http://goparallel.sourceforge.net___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] Kickstarter project for FreeDOS 2.0
FreeDOS-32 was born dead IMHO. You simply can't not do what they had in mind and still be 100% application compatible. That's why they had to start over and over again, without really getting anywhere. And you won't find anyone writing any new software for it that fills all the needs purposes of (still) existing 16bit DOS software. Any such effort is better spend on producing user applications for Linux. And that $2500 Kickstarter goal won't buy you even one month of developer time. And one has to be smoking some really bad stuff to think that such a project could be done in such short period of time anyway... It's not my kickstarter project, but I'll watch and see what happens. I agree that FreeDOS-32 is a tough prospect. As you can guess from my other post, I'm very concerned that they can maintain any application compatibility while adding modern hardware support. If they can't keep compatibility, it's a dead end. But if they can, it's worth looking at. Even NovOS (also another post) was a tough sell to Novell, because it hoped to provide backwards compatibility while offering a whole new API to do new stuff. It sounds great until you try to do it. -- Dive into the World of Parallel Programming! The Go Parallel Website, sponsored by Intel and developed in partnership with Slashdot Media, is your hub for all things parallel software development, from weekly thought leadership blogs to news, videos, case studies, tutorials and more. Take a look and join the conversation now. http://goparallel.sourceforge.net___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] FreeDOS 1.2 and 2.0 roadmap discussion
Looks like I forgot to make the read NovOS letter into a link, so here is the URL: http://www.ctyme.com/dri2.htm On Wed, Dec 31, 2014 at 4:51 PM, Jim Hall jh...@freedos.org wrote: Mike pointed out that the FreeDOS Road Map http://www.freedos.org/wiki/index.php/FreeDOS_Road_Map (wiki) is out of date and short on details and suggested a broad discussion on the road map, get consensus and have it updated. I figured we should start a separate discussion thread about that. First, a little history on the road map: When I started FreeDOS in 1994, the goal was to create a free version of DOS, compatible with MS-DOS. (original PD-DOS announcement https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.os.msdos.apps/oQmT4ETcSzU/O1HR8PE2u-EJ) (original Free-DOS manifesto https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.os.msdos.apps/W6MuhF__R9s/MgdzBrlanTwJ ) That aim remained essentially the same for a long time. And I believe we met that with version 1.0 a few years ago. FreeDOS 1.1 was an update to FreeDOS 1.0, so things didn't really change there. In 2009 http://www.freedos.org/jhall/blog/?id=20090511-192954, I briefly stepped away from FreeDOS to focus on a graduate program (I ended up changing jobs instead, and didn't do the M.S. program until a few years later). During that time, Pat Villani stepped in as project coordinator. Pat wanted to do something to spur development, so in 2010 http://www.freedos.org/wiki/index.php?title=FreeDOS_Road_Mapoldid=845 he wrote the first version of the FreeDOS Road Map (see old version http://www.freedos.org/wiki/index.php?title=FreeDOS_Road_Mapoldid=845). In 2011 http://www.freedos.org/jhall/blog/?id=20110502-164858, Pat's health was getting worse, so I came back as project coordinator. Nothing had been done on the road map, so I replaced it with a copy/paste from a blog post I had written earlier (see blog post http://www.freedos.org/jhall/blog/?id=20110502-164858) until I could go back and update it for real later on. A few days ago, Harold (aka Mercury Thirteen) mentioned the road map on the wiki. I realized I never updated the road map, so I tacked a THIS PAGE IS OUT OF DATE notice at the top of the wiki entry. More recently, Chelson announced on our Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/freedos/ his kickstarter project to fund development of FreeDOS-32, with the hope that this kernel could be part of FreeDOS 2.0. I shared his announcement on the website and on freedos-devel this morning. I think that brings us to this discussion. :-) *My thoughts on FreeDOS 1.2 and FreeDOS 2.0:* I think the next distribution will be FreeDOS 1.2 because I want to reserve 2.0 for a major shift in how FreeDOS software is organized and what we include. I'm currently looking at the packages we list on the Software List, so maybe we'll get to 2.0 soon - but I think it's safe to assume the next FreeDOS distribution will be 1.2 and the one after that would be 2.0. *My thoughts on FreeDOS 1.2:* FreeDOS 1.2 is basically an update from FreeDOS 1.1. The biggest change is probably the installer: It should be very simple, very straightforward. FreeDOS isn't very big or complex, so it doesn't make sense to have a lot of install options. The current install process (FreeDOS 1.1) has a lot of steps to it. I think we could simplify this a bit. I'm not sure about the full steps for the install process, but to brainstorm something, here's a sketched out plan: 1. *Boot the FreeDOS Install CDROM.* This is basically a live FreeDOS, which happens to boot into an automated install process. - If you Exit the process at any time, you go back to a DOS prompt. (This is useful for people who just want to run FreeDOS from CD without installing it.) 2. *Does the C: drive exist?* - If not, prompt the user to run FDISK. Reboot to re-read the partition table. 3. *Is the C: drive usable?* - If not, prompt the user to run FORMAT. 4. *Start the INSTALL program.* 5. *Run SYS to make the C: drive bootable.* 6. *Do any follow-up steps* (such as creating a default CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT, set language, etc). 7. *Done* *My thoughts on FreeDOS 2.0:* I'd like to see a modernized version of DOS. This might be as ambitious as Marc Perkel mentioned in his 1991 letter to his Novell bosses about a modern DOS, which he called NovOS (read NovOS letter). Or it could be something less ambitious, basically a modernization of the FreeDOS userspace (utilities, etc) while keeping the original DOS kernel. I haven't used FreeDOS-32 but if it supports classic DOS programs on modern systems, while adding new and useful features, I would support using that kernel in FreeDOS 2.0. (I said this on Facebook, too https://www.facebook.com/groups/freedos/permalink/10152599941377887/?comment_id=10152600011617887offset=0total_comments=27.) Above all, application compatibility is 100% important. FreeDOS 2.0 needs to run applications written for MS-DOS.
[Freedos-devel] FreeDOS / SeaBIOS on modern hardware
On Wed, Dec 31, 2014 at 03:50:09PM -0800, Ralf Quint wrote: A better spend time (and money?) would be to convince someone at the SeaBIOS project to help providing an (U)EFI boot stub, upon which a classic 16bit FreeDOS then could boot just like in the old days on the newest systems... FYI, there is a mechanism for UEFI systems to support 16bit code - it's called a Compatibility Support Module (CSM). SeaBIOS does support being compiled as a CSM and is known to work under a VM and I've been told it's been run on real hardware as well. I don't know if anyone has done that outside of a lab environment though. Most commercial UEFI installs I thought had a CSM, so I'm surprised that you're having problems booting DOS on them. Unrelated to UEFI, I regularly boot to FreeDOS on my chromebook and coreboot motherboard with SeaBIOS for testing purposes. I haven't seen any signs that modern hardware intrinsically can't handle freedos. -Kevin -- Dive into the World of Parallel Programming! The Go Parallel Website, sponsored by Intel and developed in partnership with Slashdot Media, is your hub for all things parallel software development, from weekly thought leadership blogs to news, videos, case studies, tutorials and more. Take a look and join the conversation now. http://goparallel.sourceforge.net ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] FreeDOS / SeaBIOS on modern hardware
On 12/31/2014 5:12 PM, Kevin O'Connor wrote: On Wed, Dec 31, 2014 at 03:50:09PM -0800, Ralf Quint wrote: A better spend time (and money?) would be to convince someone at the SeaBIOS project to help providing an (U)EFI boot stub, upon which a classic 16bit FreeDOS then could boot just like in the old days on the newest systems... FYI, there is a mechanism for UEFI systems to support 16bit code - it's called a Compatibility Support Module (CSM). SeaBIOS does support being compiled as a CSM and is known to work under a VM and I've been told it's been run on real hardware as well. I don't know if anyone has done that outside of a lab environment though. Most commercial UEFI installs I thought had a CSM, so I'm surprised that you're having problems booting DOS on them. Unrelated to UEFI, I regularly boot to FreeDOS on my chromebook and coreboot motherboard with SeaBIOS for testing purposes. I haven't seen any signs that modern hardware intrinsically can't handle freedos. I checked just about a week ago and there was very little info about booting DOS (or any other effected OS,beside Linux) using a SeaBIOS stub. Yes, some VM working was mentioned, but that is not what the issue is with running on a modern system. The last time I tried (with very little time due to work) a few month ago, the SeaBIOS stub would not come up properly, didn't get around to test with Windows 2000, which was the goal to get this working for a customer with a proprietary piece of software and non-cooperative state of the art hardware. Ended up buying and using a used Dell from eBay... But getting something along these lines working seamlessly for FreeDOS would be IMHO by far making more sense then all this 32bit (Free)DOS stuff... Ralf --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. http://www.avast.com -- Dive into the World of Parallel Programming! The Go Parallel Website, sponsored by Intel and developed in partnership with Slashdot Media, is your hub for all things parallel software development, from weekly thought leadership blogs to news, videos, case studies, tutorials and more. Take a look and join the conversation now. http://goparallel.sourceforge.net ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] Kickstarter project for FreeDOS 2.0
Somebody should talk to HP and see what FreeDOS 2.0 includes. They are already shipping machines that support it: http://h20564.www2.hp.com/hpsc/doc/public/display?docId=emr_na-c04027658DocLang=endocLocale=en_USjumpid=reg_r1002_usen_c-001_title_r0001 On a more serious note, somebody should try to correct them ... On Wed, Dec 31, 2014 at 4:27 PM, Ralf Quint freedos...@gmail.com wrote: On 12/31/2014 4:22 PM, Jim Hall wrote: It's not my kickstarter project, but I'll watch and see what happens. I agree that FreeDOS-32 is a tough prospect. As you can guess from my other post, I'm very concerned that they can maintain any application compatibility while adding modern hardware support. If they can't keep compatibility, it's a dead end. But if they can, it's worth looking at. Given that I am working/playing/programming with DOS since December 1981, I simply don't see how they can possibly achieve this, unless they produce their own reincarnation of something Linux-like and then provide a VM to run 16bit DOS. And in that case, you can use a VM on Linux to begin with. Or on Windows or OS/X, or any other OS that supports a VM... Even NovOS (also another post) was a tough sell to Novell, because it hoped to provide backwards compatibility while offering a whole new API to do new stuff. It sounds great until you try to do it. Well, 1991 would have been at a time well before Linux had gone mainstream and you could argue that the folks at Novell had already seen the writing on the wall... Ralf --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. http://www.avast.com -- Dive into the World of Parallel Programming! The Go Parallel Website, sponsored by Intel and developed in partnership with Slashdot Media, is your hub for all things parallel software development, from weekly thought leadership blogs to news, videos, case studies, tutorials and more. Take a look and join the conversation now. http://goparallel.sourceforge.net ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel -- Dive into the World of Parallel Programming! The Go Parallel Website, sponsored by Intel and developed in partnership with Slashdot Media, is your hub for all things parallel software development, from weekly thought leadership blogs to news, videos, case studies, tutorials and more. Take a look and join the conversation now. http://goparallel.sourceforge.net___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
