Re: [Freedos-user] Need your comments about the FreeDOS site
Another late comment: - When anouncing a bugfix release of something that hasn't been fully announced recently, write 1 or 2 sentences about what it actually is, before discussing the improvements. Example: WCD 5.2.0 Erwin Waterlander has released wcd 5.2.0. The new option '-I' (ignore diacritics) is available for DOS for a limited set of code pages. The 16bit version is now built with OpenWatcom. Support for Borland has been dropped. Most other changes were done for Unicode support, which is not available in the DOS versions. Find it at http://waterlan.home.xs4all.nl/ has absolutely no info about what the thingie is after all ;-) -- How fast is your code? 3 out of 4 devs don\\\'t know how their code performs in production. Find out how slow your code is with AppDynamics Lite. http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;262219672;13503038;z? http://info.appdynamics.com/FreeJavaPerformanceDownload.html ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Need your comments about the FreeDOS site
Example: WCD 5.2.0 Erwin Waterlander has released wcd 5.2.0. [...] has absolutely no info about what the thingie is after all ;-) I agree. Hmm... I think to vaguely remember what /this/ WCD was, but it's still not as clear as it could be. In general, maybe append a short description of what something is to the first sentence, or where appropriate expand acronyms or such. Regards, Chris -- How fast is your code? 3 out of 4 devs don\\\'t know how their code performs in production. Find out how slow your code is with AppDynamics Lite. http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;262219672;13503038;z? http://info.appdynamics.com/FreeJavaPerformanceDownload.html ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Need your comments about the FreeDOS site
Agreed, we can be better with the news items. I think some of the more recent posts have been improving along these lines, though. But as we post new news items, we'll try to provide a bit of context for what the program does. Our news item about WCD 5.2.2 at least explained the WCD name as Wherever Change Directory. But it needs more definition to what WCD *does*: 9/4/12 Erwin Waterlander released WCD 5.2.2 - Wherever Change Directory. Most noticeable is the automatic wildcard expansion is turned off for all DOS and Windows versions. This saves some unexpected behaviour. Support for the Open Watom C compiler has been improved a lot. You can use Watcom now to build all DOS and Windows versions and do installation and create packages, and you can also to build wcd for OS/2 with Open Watcom. Download from http://waterlan.home.xs4all.nl/ The update on Zerofill is better, and provides an explanation to what the program does for you: 9/9/12 Javier has released a minor update to his Zerofill program, which writes zeros on the empty disk space for the selected drive. This helps virtual machine and disk compression programs to compact the volume, and so in reducing its disk usage. Version 1.02 has some code cleanup. Also, the Zerofill webpage has moved to http://nikkhokkho.sourceforge.net/static.php?page=ZEROFILL On Wed, Sep 26, 2012 at 11:05 AM, C. Masloch c...@bttr-software.de wrote: Example: WCD 5.2.0 Erwin Waterlander has released wcd 5.2.0. [...] has absolutely no info about what the thingie is after all ;-) I agree. Hmm... I think to vaguely remember what /this/ WCD was, but it's still not as clear as it could be. In general, maybe append a short description of what something is to the first sentence, or where appropriate expand acronyms or such. Regards, Chris -- How fast is your code? 3 out of 4 devs don\\\'t know how their code performs in production. Find out how slow your code is with AppDynamics Lite. http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;262219672;13503038;z? http://info.appdynamics.com/FreeJavaPerformanceDownload.html ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Need your comments about the FreeDOS site
On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 5:28 PM, Aitor Santamaría aitor...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Jim As you see, I am a bit delayed with mail. The site looks very nice and neat now!!! I was just wandering, whatever happened to those old technotes (usually text or mail exceprts) that there used to be? The technotes and newsitems have been renamed to tech items and news items, and are supposed to be available under the Technotes link on the orange bar. However, I just noticed that the display isn't working for these. I wonder when that broke. You can't see any of the links under http://www.freedos.org/technotes/technote/ for example. Sorry about that. I'll have to fix that. -jh -- How fast is your code? 3 out of 4 devs don\\\'t know how their code performs in production. Find out how slow your code is with AppDynamics Lite. http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;262219672;13503038;z? http://info.appdynamics.com/FreeJavaPerformanceDownload.html ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] false info on the freedos home page?
Hi all, Sorry I've been away and missed this. I'm in grad school, which unfortunately takes up a lot of my available time. I'm going to skip the rest of the thread, and just mention I'm going to update the text in question with a statement like what Eric suggested. It still highlights the FreeDOS feature, and makes clear that this wasn't available in regular old MS-DOS. :-) -jh On Tue, Sep 18, 2012 at 2:32 AM, Eric Auer e.a...@jpberlin.de wrote: Hi! Maybe unlike the old ms dos, freedos lets you access fat 32 file systems could be extended into: unlike the old ms dos, freedos lets you access fat 32 file systems, a feature which ms only offered bundled with windows 95 and newer -- How fast is your code? 3 out of 4 devs don\\\'t know how their code performs in production. Find out how slow your code is with AppDynamics Lite. http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;262219672;13503038;z? http://info.appdynamics.com/FreeJavaPerformanceDownload.html ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS Boot Disc
Hi. This is a good idea. I'll link to the 1.0 boot floppy image, under the FreeDOS 1.0 section. http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distributions/1.0/fdboot.img On Tue, Sep 18, 2012 at 2:19 PM, Mateusz Viste mate...@viste-family.net wrote: On 09/18/2012 09:11 PM, Rugxulo wrote: 4). There ARE floppy images, as mentioned, just slightly moldy. Most of us make do with old stuff and manually install. :o) http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distributions/unofficial/balder/balder10.img http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distributions/unofficial/odin/odin060/fdodin06.8088.zip http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distributions/unofficial/floppy/img/base/install.img http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distributions/1.0/fdboot.img https://sites.google.com/site/rugxulo/BARE_DOS.ZIP?attredirects=0 Maybe it would be a good idea to take one of these, and put a link right on the FreeDOS website, in the download section at http://www.freedos.org/download/ with a little note 'if you need to bring alive an old and rusty pc with only a floppy drive onboard, take this 1.44M bootable image' ? Even if it's only for 0.0001% of the user base, it's still nice.. plus, the fact that there would a floppy image available for download is also a message 'FreeDOS cares about old systems'. just my $0.03. :) Mateusz -- How fast is your code? 3 out of 4 devs don\\\'t know how their code performs in production. Find out how slow your code is with AppDynamics Lite. http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;262219672;13503038;z? http://info.appdynamics.com/FreeJavaPerformanceDownload.html ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Boot floppy image files
On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 1:11 AM, nospam nos...@georgpotthast.de wrote: Rugxulo has made a single floppy FreeDOS image called BARE_DOS that works well: https://sites.google.com/site/rugxulo/ Georg FYI: I've also mirrored Rugxulo's BARE_DOS to http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distributions/unofficial/bare_dos/ I don't use a floppy drive anymore, so I can't say how well this works. Georg thinks it works well. If others think this is a good FreeDOS floppy mini-distro, I'll link to it from the Downloads page on www.freedos.org. -jh -- How fast is your code? 3 out of 4 devs don\\\'t know how their code performs in production. Find out how slow your code is with AppDynamics Lite. http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;262219672;13503038;z? http://info.appdynamics.com/FreeJavaPerformanceDownload.html ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Boot floppy image files
On Wed, 2012-09-26 at 17:22 -0500, Jim Hall wrote: The boot image I found didn't have CDROM drivers, but added them. I could just make an ISO of the floppies I ended up making, if you like. Rich... On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 1:11 AM, nospam nos...@georgpotthast.de wrote: Rugxulo has made a single floppy FreeDOS image called BARE_DOS that works well: https://sites.google.com/site/rugxulo/ Georg FYI: I've also mirrored Rugxulo's BARE_DOS to http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distributions/unofficial/bare_dos/ I don't use a floppy drive anymore, so I can't say how well this works. Georg thinks it works well. If others think this is a good FreeDOS floppy mini-distro, I'll link to it from the Downloads page on www.freedos.org. -jh -- How fast is your code? 3 out of 4 devs don\\\'t know how their code performs in production. Find out how slow your code is with AppDynamics Lite. http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;262219672;13503038;z? http://info.appdynamics.com/FreeJavaPerformanceDownload.html ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user -- How fast is your code? 3 out of 4 devs don\\\'t know how their code performs in production. Find out how slow your code is with AppDynamics Lite. http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;262219672;13503038;z? http://info.appdynamics.com/FreeJavaPerformanceDownload.html ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Boot floppy image files
Hi, On Wed, Sep 26, 2012 at 5:22 PM, Jim Hall jh...@freedos.org wrote: On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 1:11 AM, nospam nos...@georgpotthast.de wrote: Rugxulo has made a single floppy FreeDOS image called BARE_DOS that works well: https://sites.google.com/site/rugxulo/ Georg FYI: I've also mirrored Rugxulo's BARE_DOS to http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distributions/unofficial/bare_dos/ Not sure why, esp. this much later, heh, but it's useful, I suppose. (But like all things, it too could use an update, argh. And sources could've been easier to grab, e.g. bundled, but that was back when I was very disorganized. Yet another distraction. It had a list of URLs, and 99% should be easy to find, but it's less than ideal, I admit.) I don't use a floppy drive anymore, so I can't say how well this works. Georg thinks it works well. I have a USB floppy drive, but I haven't used it lately. I dunno, seems pointless, very few care. Even if I bothered, honestly things change too fast. It's just easier to update things upstream or provide patches and let people roll their own than trying to update binary images ten bazillion times. If others think this is a good FreeDOS floppy mini-distro, I'll link to it from the Downloads page on www.freedos.org. Like I told Eric, the best way would be to make the smallest, most useful boot disk possible with minimal dependencies and hopefully very few things would become outdated. Then make everything else plain .ZIPs that can be unzipped manually if someone wants more than bare minimum. So, roughly speaking, the main (bootable) disk would be: KERNEL, FreeCOM, XMGR, JEMMEX, UIDE, CTMOUSE, DOSLFN, UNZIP16, 7ZDECODE, EDIT, SYS, FDISK, FORMAT, DISKCOPY, FDXMS286, HDPMI16, CWSDPMI, DOS32A, CWSTUB, XCOPY, SHCDX33F, RDISK, I know you and Eric prefer BASE plus some stuff from UTIL, so maybe that's more comprehensive. But I can't remember everything, so I don't know what that would omit or how big it would be. But surely something like KERNEL + COMMAND.COM is way too minimal. It should at least be able to install to hard disk and copy its own disk. It's just honestly a lot to think about. Maybe I'm overthinking it, maybe I need to build QEMU for my Linux machine for testing (or use one of the Win32 alpha builds I've seen online) for easier updating. It's just somewhat exhausting, heh, esp. for someone like me who always starts too many minor projects.;-) -- How fast is your code? 3 out of 4 devs don\\\'t know how their code performs in production. Find out how slow your code is with AppDynamics Lite. http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;262219672;13503038;z? http://info.appdynamics.com/FreeJavaPerformanceDownload.html ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS Boot Disc
I'll link to the 1.0 boot floppy image, under the FreeDOS 1.0 section. http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distributions/1.0/fdboot.img Kernel on that image uses 386+ instructions... and it seems as if it does that without (properly) checking for the presence of a 386. That it's a 386+ kernel is just an oversight (or should be documented for the image), but if 386+ kernels really do not abort with an appropriate message on non-386 CPUs, that's a bug. Does a kernel developer know whether such checks are... just kidding, I examined the sources myself. In kernel.asm such a check does not exist or (in recent builds and SVN revisions) it exists but isn't used to orderly abort loading if the CPU isn't supported. It then jumps to _FreeDOSmain, which is the C function FreeDOSmain in main.c. In the kernel on that disk image, the very first instruction happens to be push fs, code 0Fh 0Ah, which on pre-386 CPUs is an error (or at least not push fs). The file kernel.asm (SVN r1705) is this one: http://freedos.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/freedos/kernel/trunk/kernel/kernel.asm?revision=1705view=markup Note lines 194 to 196, where precisely in this latest r1705, Kenneth added the comment TODO display error if built for 386 running on 8086 etc. I can prepare a patch to implement this (I'd think entirely in kernel.asm) if the kernel developers are interested. Regards, Chris -- Everyone hates slow websites. So do we. Make your web apps faster with AppDynamics Download AppDynamics Lite for free today: http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;258768047;13503038;j? http://info.appdynamics.com/FreeJavaPerformanceDownload.html ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
