Re: [Freedos-user] Games - and DOS installation

[Jerome E. Shidel Jr.]

> On Jun 18, 2016, at 1:29 PM, Eric Auer  wrote:
> 
> 
> Hi guys,
> 
> (sorry about the long mail...)
> 
>> During the discussion of version 1.2, this was my interpretation of 
>> how this should be handled and what was implemented when the 
>> user installed FreeDOS in normal mode. Having a failed install (by 
>> not booting into FreeDOS) was unacceptable behavior. Therefore, 
>> the installer would normally backup and then over-write the boot...
> 
> Well, as mentioned several times in the 1.2 discussion, losing all
> your data is even more unacceptable, so there should be a choice ;-)

No data is lost unless the user intentional destroys it themselves. 
The boot sector and boot code is backed up prior to being over-written.
This occurs in either normal or advanced mode.

> 
> On dedicated harddisks or virtual computer images, which optionally
> could be auto-detected by the installer, it is of course nice to do
> automatic "rude" installs which makes sure that DOS boots afterwards.
> 
> But the user should have the choice between "rude" install, "no"
> install at all (simply use "live" DOS as booted from USB stick)
> and as 3rd choice "manual" install, where the user has to do the
> partitioning and formatting by hand before running the installer
> which limits itself to install DOS to any user-chosen directory,
> even asking whether SYS should be run and whether config/autoexec
> should be overwritten or just prepared under another name :-)

If the user has already prepared a drive C: prior to using the installer,
the installer will see this and will not auto-partition the hard drive. It will
also not even prompt to partition the drive. If the user has also formatted
the drive, the installer will skip this as well. 

Other things, like not installing the SYS files, not installing boot code,
not installing new autoexec & config files are all optional in advanced 
mode. 

Personally, I think anyone who is running the installer on a system
that is to be multi-boot or some other situation, should run the installer
in advanced mode to fully control its behavior.

> 
>> code during installation. This action can be overridden if advanced 
>> mode is used during the install. There were many pros and cons 
>> to this being the default action.
>> 
>> The installer will not destroy partitions...
> 
> As long as the installer makes it clear that you have a CHOICE,
> as long as that choice is not what happens by default when you
> just press Y or enter, this is already quite reasonable :-) As
> you see, people ARE scared that the install can delete data.
> 
>> * The installer checks if there is a drive C: visible to FreeDOS. 
> 
>> If does not find one, and that drive is blank it will use fdisk to 
>> automatically partition the drive in "smart" mode. Otherwise, if
>> there are partitions existing on the drive, or it cannot figure 
>> out what should be partitioned, or if it is in “dumb" mode. It
>> will launch fdisk and let the user deal with it.
> 
> How does it decide about the "blank" aspect?

It uses multiple tools and parses results from queries to fdisk.

If there are any partitions present, the drive will not be 
auto-partitioned. If there is a drive that fdisk lists as hard drive C:,
it will be used. 

> 
>> * Installer checks if drive C: can be read by FreeDOS. If not, 
>> it will format it.
> 
> It should NOT do that by default if you ask me. It should rather
> say something like "There is a C: but it does not work for DOS.
> If you just made the partition for DOS, you can press F now to
> let me format C: Otherwise, please leave the installer and take
> care to make C: accessible for DOS, in any way that seems good.”

As I said, I left out all question prompts the installer asks in the 
logic summary I posted. The installer does not just format a drive.
It asks first. 

It doesn’t even partition without asking. The partitioning behavior is
slightly different in advanced and normal modes.

When drive needs to be partitioned:

Normal mode:

Does all that detection stuff.

Asks if user wants to partition or quit?

If so, and can auto-partition, it does so. If it cannot auto-partition
it launches fdisk.

After partition. Asks to reboot or exit.

Advanced mode.

Does some detection stuff to determine bios drive.

Asks if user wants to partition or quit?

Launches fdisk set for the bios drive.

After partition. Asks to reboot or exit.

> 
> (the above example deliberately uses "F" instead of "Y" to make
> sure that people have to think before they just press "agree”)

Advanced mode.

> 
>> * The installer transfers the system files and overwrites the
>> boot code. 
> 
> That, too, might want to ask the user first…

Advanced mode.

> 
>> Advanced mode, provides these capabilities:
>> * never auto-partition 
>> * option of long-slow formatting.
>> * installing to drives other than C: (configured 

Re: [Freedos-user] Open Source and/or Free Software?

[Robert Riebisch]

Rugxulo wrote:

> The irony is that most people choke on the complexity, even on
> "simple" systems, because they get caught up in creeping featurism,
> featuritis, code bloat, or whatever you want to call it. It really
> shouldn't be this hard to (re)build world. The fact that we (still!)
> haven't solved this only proves that (like you imply) nobody cares
> enough about having reproducible builds / portable sources or that
> (more likely) nobody knew how to adequately solve the issue,
> universally.

At least some people care about https://reproducible-builds.org/

Robert Riebisch
-- 
  +++ BTTR Software +++
 Home page:  http://www.bttr-software.de/
DOS ain't dead:  http://www.bttr-software.de/forum/


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Re: [Freedos-user] Games

[Eric Auer]

Hi :-)

Yes, FreeDOS clones DOS and that forces it to support old interfaces...

> DR DOS had a multitasker.

And MS DOS had limited task swapping in DOSSHELL, yes. If you ask me,
it is easier to run multiple virtual DOS windows (DOSEMU, DOSBOX or
even complete virtual PC) on modern PC: Those are not limited by the
ability of the multitasker to handle various hardware, because they
handle ALL hardware visible to the DOS in the respective virtual box.

You could try Tri-DOS, but stability is rather limited. I think most
programs with graphics, sound, network or even with non-trivial DOS
extenders or memory usage (EMS, XMS, VCPI, DPMI) will have troubles
even in a good multitasker like Windows 3 (supports multiple virtual
DOS windows in parallel) or the DR DOS one. Would be interesting to
know which multitasker is how strong, in particular the DR DOS one.

> Note that the SoundBlaster DOS drivers (.SYS) did the exact same thing 
> on DOS: since modern SB cards were hardware-wise completely different 
> cards, namely Ensoniq, they had to provide "drivers" that would enable 
> you to continue to play games (and programs) written for the original 
> SoundBlaster (1.x or 2.0, Pro and 16). The SoundBlaster 16 PCI cards...

That is unfortunately only a part of the problem: The DOS "drivers" for
sound cards usually only do initial hardware setup. They do not tell a
DOS game how to use the sound card, so the game still onky knows how to
use SoundBlaster. The SoundBlaster PCI cards came with a protected mode
"driver" which actually created a complete simulation of a SoundBlaster
in a similar way to what DOSBOX and DOSEMU and virtual PC do when they
simulate a complete set of DOS game friendly hardware for the game. The
problem is that SoundBlaster Live PCI drivers only work with games with
no or well-behaved DOS extenders, because of the protected mode usage
as requirement for being able to simulate any hardware.

Some (even PCI) sound cards also had chips which could simulate part of
a SoundBlaster in hardware. Drivers for those could for example react
to interrupts generated by the chips and use software to assist in the
simulation of SoundBlaster compatibility. Unfortunately, those tend to
only work well on mainboards which still are designed with a minimum of
ISA infrastructure awareness. I have a few DOS friendly PCI sound cards
and none of them has reasonable DOS game support on modern mainboards.

(By the way: If we both are in Germany, you can try some of my cards...)

> 1. The network hardware is one example. For every ISA network card you 
> had a DOS driver, and sometimes even a proprietary protocol (NetWare).

Most of the time things work okay with PCI RTL8139 chipset for DOS, but
to be honest, networking is not very nice in a single tasking OS anyway.
Quite a few already PCI network chipsets do have DOS drivers on CRYNWR.

> 2. I don't know if there is one, but a CPU throttling driver...

You can use ACPI throttling with FDAPM and some experiments exist for
"change clock and voltage and save power" features of AMD and Intel.

Plus of course you can use POWER and FDAPM for the classic HLT method
of reducing power consumption.

If your PC only runs DOS all the time, you can probably simply use
the BIOS setup to underclock and undervolt your CPU "statically"
without drivers. DOS games run better at low CPU speed anyway :-)

> 3. USB devices like USB sound cards, USB video cards (enabling you to 
> use a second/third/... montior) will not work. USB video capturing

USB sound would make sense, but USB video-out and USB video-in do
not, if you ask me. You would first need to have any DOS software
which does anything with a second monitor at all! Or a DOS video
editing software. Fun fact: I have written and used a DOS software
which used two PCI video cards at the same time, one in text mode
and one in graphics mode. Very few ancient DOS programs did support
the parallel use of VGA compatible cards and black and white HGC.

> devices (WebCams, analog TV, DVB, ...)

To make use of that, you would need a DOS version of Skype and some
sort of DOS living room hub software for watching TV. I think it is
a lot easier to use your TV or a multi tasking OS to watch TV today.

> 4. Some input devices like keyboards and mice don't work correctly,
> or additional functions are not accessible (additional mouse buttons
> / wheels). Again, there is no DOS driver to program these functions.

I believe CTMOUSE does have support for a wheel and maybe some extra
buttons, but of course there are no apps in DOS which would use them.

Keyboards and mice are generally supported by the BIOS - even the USB
style ones - so they should always work in DOS! Note that you could
define your own key mapping for extra keys such as media player keys
by simply reconfiguring your DOS keyboard layout. However, while your
Linux or Windows could start a media player if you press "play", the
single tasking DOS will not! You could configure your DOS 

Re: [Freedos-user] Games

[dmccunney]

On Sat, Jun 18, 2016 at 3:35 PM, Rugxulo  wrote:
> On Sat, Jun 18, 2016 at 1:47 PM,   wrote:

> There's just not a lot of sympathy for old hardware anymore. Forced
> obsoletion is more fierce than ever, so people are routinely asked to
> upgrade (or even re-buy) everything on a fairly constant basis. They
> don't want stability, legacy, compatibility, they want "shiny! new!"
> features.
>> DR DOS had a multitasker.
>
> So did OS/2. Also Win16 and Win9x. Not to mention Desqview. And even
> DOSEMU. And WinXP's NTVDM.

OS/2 was a full OS, built from the ground up to be multi-tasking.  It
required at least a 286 CPU to run at all.  It was capable of
reading/writing a DOS FAT filesystem, and running DOS applications,
but was *not* DOS.  It was originally intended to *replace* DOS.

DV and Win3.X were a multi-tasking shells on top of DOS.  Win95 was
moving away from that.  Win98 completed the move.  It used DOS as a
real-mode loader for a protected mode OS.  Once Win98 was loaded and
active, it took over, and DOS was out of the loop.

NTVDM (which existed on Win2K as well as WinXP) was a limited virtual
machine, implementing enough of DOS to allow old 16 bit applications
to run on a 32 bit OS. Multi-tasking was actually provided by the host
OS, and NTVDM was simply another task running under the host OS.

> And nobody cares anymore.  :-(   Well, maybe ReactOS, but even their
> NTVDM still needs lots of work.

Why *should* anyone care?  Hardware is *cheap*.  My generic 7" Android
tablet, which cost me a whopping $30, has far more power than my old
XT clone (which cost over $1,000 back when), with a quad-core 1.3ghz
processor, 512MB RAM, 8GB flash, an 800x480 color screen, and a 32GB
microSD card.  I have an assortment of DOS apps running on it via an
Android port of DOSBox.

Support for ancient hardware simply isn't worth the time and trouble
for those capable of doing it.  People who *can* do that sort of thing
do it for money, and there's no money in DOS these days.
__
Dennis

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Re: [Freedos-user] Games

[Rugxulo]

Hi,

On Sat, Jun 18, 2016 at 4:00 AM, Brandon Taylor 
wrote:
>
> As much as I hate to concede, I must. I have found a critical passage on
the FreeDOS website
> which, in my eyes, discourages further experimentation:

How did it discourage anybody? By giving them total freedom??

> “FreeDOS is a complete operating system. If you choose to install this on
your computer,
> you may overwrite the operating system you have now (for example,
Windows.) If this is not
> what you intend, please stop now.”

In case it hasn't already been made obvious, this is a warning for
inexperienced users who (surprise!) would rather NOT wipe out their
existing OS and data if all they want to do is play around and experiment
with DOS.

Perhaps it needs to mention that VMs (e.g. QEMU) are a much safer
alternative.

> It seems, in making FreeDOS, the developers have decided to stay true to
the original nature
> of the earliest days of DOS. 640KB was all the memory anyone ever needed,
DOS liked to be
> the ONLY operating system on any given PC, and multi-booting wasn't even
heard of.

Sure, multi-booting is still somewhat rare, mostly because it's dangerous
and nobody "needs" DOS as much as they used to (or nowadays even frown upon
it).

But there's an entire category just for multi-booting ("BOOT"):

http://www.freedos.org/software/?cat=boot

But, as Eric already mentioned, 640 kb is only for IBM PCs running
8088/8086. Anything like 286 (max 16 MB ftw!) can run XMSv2 or DPMI 0.9 and
386 can run XMSv3 and DPMI 1.0. (Although almost all DPMI stuff is 386+.)
While you may not get full "4 GB" of RAM on 386+, you can usually get up to
2 GB, comfortably. That is well supported by many tools (e.g. OpenWatcom,
DJGPP, FreeBASIC, Free Pascal).

> Anyway, Dennis, although plugging a different SourceForge project, is
essentially correct.
> DOSBox always played my games without problems, and, as the old adage
goes,
> “If it ain't broke, don't fix it.”

DOSBox is "only" for games, nothing else. That was their entire goal. It's
not a "real" DOS and was never meant to boot on native hardware. Heck, to
stay portable, they refused to add any x86 extensions, so it's slow as
molasses! (A "fast 486" isn't very fast, IMHO.)

> So anyway, thus ends my brief and unsuccessful foray into FreeDOS.

DOS is not for the faint-hearted! If you don't already know it and like it,
it's not going to do what you want. Honestly, it's an uphill battle (maybe
impossible task) to keep supporting it in such a hostile tech world that
doesn't care one whit about legacy anymore.

I hate to be cynical, but it just goes to show you that nothing stays
popular forever. Even if you get "better", nobody cares, it's "too old" or
"doesn't burn DVDs" or whatnot. You can't win for trying.

Why try at all? Nobody will care in a few years, and it'll all be obsolete
in lieu of newer trendy stuff. Ungrateful world.  :-(

> Sent from my Windows 10 phone

Ah, the true problem presents itself.   ;-)
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Re: [Freedos-user] Games

[dmccunney]

On Sat, Jun 18, 2016 at 2:47 PM,   wrote:
> Original message from Eric Auer, 2016-06-18 19:14:
>> Hi anonymous Abwesend forum member who is pessimistic about DOS ;-)
>>
>>> Running FreeDOS on real hardware can be challenging.
>> FreeDOS no, old DOS games yes.
>
> No offence, FreeDOS is of course a modern project. But DOS is an old
> conpect for an operating system.
>
>>> FreeDOS on the other hand is a very old operating system concept.
>> Old concept yes, old operating system no. This means: DOS
>> has no multi tasking and no 64 bit address space, so your
>> modern computer will be bored: Only a single CPU core and
>> at most 3 to 4 GB of RAM can be used inside DOS. Which is
>> of course a lot more than old DOS games ever could imagine.
>
> DR DOS had a multitasker.

MSDOS could do a limited form of multi-tasking.  The PRINT command
installed a resident portion that did time-slicing, and could allocate
clock ticks to spool print jobs in the background while the user
continued to work in the foreground. This was a boon to early word
processor users, who didn't have to twiddle their thumbs while the
document they just sent to the printer finished printing before they
went on to the next one.  IIRC, analysis of what the PRINT command did
spawned the whole notion of terminate and stay resident programs, that
also installed themselves as resident extensions to DOS.

Development of that approach resulted in Desqview, which was
essentially a multi-tasking shell on top of DOS.  So, for that matter,
was Windows through 3.X, that was booted from DOS.

I never ran DR-DOS, but I believe its multi-tasker used the same
approach.  Digital Research also had a variant called Concurrent DOS,
originally based on their Concurrent CP/M-86 product.  Wikipedia has a
writeup on the various approaches:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiuser_DOS

> 2. I don't know if there is one, but a CPU throttling driver would be a
> good thing. One that supports Intel (Enhanced) SpeedStep and AMD
> PowerNow!/Cool'n'Quiet. Reading the ACPI tables would be required.
> Turning off the remaining (unused) CPU cores would reduce power
> consumption and enhance the thermal situation.

There is a long established application called TameDOS that does that,
and is still sold and supported.

The problem it addresses is that early DOS programs assumed they were
the only thing running on the PC and had exclusive access to the
hardware.  They were not written to gracefully surrender unused time
slices.  One thing later DOS applications used to mention was being
"DesqView aware", and able to cooperate with DV's time slicing, and
this was the sort of issue TameDOS addressed.  See
http://www.tamedos.com/

There's a fork of DOSBox called vDOS, specifically intended for
running old DOS character mode business applications under Windows.  I
have an assortment of old DOS apps up under vDOS on a 64 bit Win10
machine.  TameDOS is useful for folks doing that so the DOS app they
are running doesn't max the CPU core the DOS session is running in.
__
Dennis

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Re: [Freedos-user] Games

[Rugxulo]

Hi,

On Sat, Jun 18, 2016 at 1:47 PM,   wrote:
>>
>>> Running FreeDOS on real hardware can be challenging.
>> FreeDOS no, old DOS games yes.
>
> No offence, FreeDOS is of course a modern project. But DOS is an old
> conpect for an operating system.

But you have to be "old" to run on old cpus (e.g. 8086, 286). Sure, in
theory you could have a binary OS release that runs on multiple cpu
families (dispatching via CPUID), but that's a lot more testing and
work. DOS already offloads almost everything outside of the kernel,
which is probably a bit too minimal.

There's just not a lot of sympathy for old hardware anymore. Forced
obsoletion is more fierce than ever, so people are routinely asked to
upgrade (or even re-buy) everything on a fairly constant basis. They
don't want stability, legacy, compatibility, they want "shiny! new!"
features.

>>> FreeDOS on the other hand is a very old operating system concept.
>> Old concept yes, old operating system no. This means: DOS
>> has no multi tasking and no 64 bit address space, so your
>> modern computer will be bored: Only a single CPU core and
>> at most 3 to 4 GB of RAM can be used inside DOS. Which is
>> of course a lot more than old DOS games ever could imagine.
>
> DR DOS had a multitasker.

So did OS/2. Also Win16 and Win9x. Not to mention Desqview. And even
DOSEMU. And WinXP's NTVDM.

And nobody cares anymore.  :-(   Well, maybe ReactOS, but even their
NTVDM still needs lots of work.

>> This leads to the next problem:
>>> Running it on modern hardware will very often result in some features
>>> not working correctly. DOS games often required an AdLib or SoundBlaster
>>> audio card. For AC'97 and Intel HD-Audio sound, there are no DOS drivers
>> Old DOS games do not use "DOS drivers" for sound. They could
>> not imagine that games would have any more fancy sound card
>> available than a stereo SoundBlaster. So the games THEMSELVES
>> contain drivers for SoundBlaster.

More or less true (but not absolutely). Blame the tooling, but even
then there has been "some" support for dynamic loading of libs, etc.
It's just not popular (or bug-free or easy enough, I suppose). E.g.
(DJGPP-built) "h2dos -sndpci" (as .dxe). (Bad example, that's a fairly
recent backport. But I know many DOS games had separate drivers for
various hardware.)

There were other games that used similar methods for drivers, but
those never caught on as much (and weren't well-supported).

So it's not that nobody did it, they just didn't keep it up, it didn't
widely catch on, it wasn't obvious enough, etc.

> Yes, but bit number of original DOS programs cannot use modern sound
> hardware.
>> Is there anything else than sound which has problems in DOS on
>> modern hardware, when playing old games written in the 1990s?

Cpu timing?

>> Which other "dozens" of drivers do you miss? Interesting topic!
>
> 2. I don't know if there is one, but a CPU throttling driver would be a
> good thing. One that supports Intel (Enhanced) SpeedStep and AMD
> PowerNow!/Cool'n'Quiet. Reading the ACPI tables would be required.
> Turning off the remaining (unused) CPU cores would reduce power
> consumption and enhance the thermal situation.

There are at least two simple prototypes for that for DOS in recent
years, but they weren't widely tested and thus don't work on all
models.

Power management, as designed by hardware manufacturers, doesn't
concern itself very much with DOS. By far, most people only use
Windows or (less common) Linux.

> 3. USB devices like USB sound cards, USB video cards (enabling you to
> use a second/third/... montior) will not work. USB video capturing
> devices (WebCams, analog TV, DVB, ...) will also lack drivers and a
> usable protocol.

Already lamented as "too complicated" by local experts.

> 6. How is the support for graphics cards? Are there tools to add
> additional VESA modes if they happen to be missing in the BIOS?

VESA is way too simplistic for modern users anyways. And one hobbyist
told me that his professor said hardware acceleration was basically
impossible for DOS anyways. So DOS is stuck in minimal support, at
best, and it's not going to get better. You're going to have to do
without, dual boot, and/or use DOSEMU.

> 8. But the worst incompatibility of them all is the lack of CSM
> (Compatiblity Support Module) on modern UEFI machines. Or does FreeDOS
> run on EFI/UEFI?

Lacking CSM is because they aren't intended to be used for legacy
OSes. That's their prerogative. How can you convince them that DOS is
still important in 2016? AFAIK, you can't.

> I know, this may not be a dozen, but a lot. Depending on the actual
> hardware and on the requirement of the to-be-used (legacy) software.
>
> IMHO, for games lack of sound and mouse/joystick support really is the
> fun-killer.

Unavoidable, esp. sound. Maybe I could have minimal hope for the
others (doubt it!), but overall nobody is writing drivers for DOS
anymore.

I hate to be pessimistic, but I think 

Re: [Freedos-user] Games

[userbeitrag]

Hello Eric Auer!


Original message from Eric Auer, 2016-06-18 19:14:
> Hi anonymous Abwesend forum member who is pessimistic about DOS ;-)
>
>> Running FreeDOS on real hardware can be challenging.
> FreeDOS no, old DOS games yes.

No offence, FreeDOS is of course a modern project. But DOS is an old 
conpect for an operating system.

>> FreeDOS on the other hand is a very old operating system concept.
> Old concept yes, old operating system no. This means: DOS
> has no multi tasking and no 64 bit address space, so your
> modern computer will be bored: Only a single CPU core and
> at most 3 to 4 GB of RAM can be used inside DOS. Which is
> of course a lot more than old DOS games ever could imagine.

DR DOS had a multitasker.

> This leads to the next problem:
>> Running it on modern hardware will very often result in some features
>> not working correctly. DOS games often required an AdLib or SoundBlaster
>> audio card. For AC'97 and Intel HD-Audio sound, there are no DOS drivers
> Old DOS games do not use "DOS drivers" for sound. They could
> not imagine that games would have any more fancy sound card
> available than a stereo SoundBlaster. So the games THEMSELVES
> contain drivers for SoundBlaster. DOS kernel is unable to tell
> a game that it must use your computer has 7.1 channel surround.
> This is where DOSBOX and similar special tools comes into play:
>
> DOSBOX can show your game a SIMULATION of a SoundBlaster card
> and capture all sound from that simulation. It can then send
> the sound to your REAL sound card so you can hear the sound
> from the front speakers of your surround system :-)

Note that the SoundBlaster DOS drivers (.SYS) did the exact same thing 
on DOS: since modern SB cards were hardware-wise completely different 
cards, namely Ensoniq, they had to provide "drivers" that would enable 
you to continue to play games (and programs) written for the original 
SoundBlaster (1.x or 2.0, Pro and 16). The SoundBlaster 16 PCI cards 
already used Ensoniq chips and were incompatible with the ISA 
SoundBlaster - the DOS driver worked as an emulator for the original SB.
> Note that you CAN run a modern media player for DOS, which is
> aware of surround sound cards, to enjoy MP3 & OGG on modern PC.

Yes, but bit number of original DOS programs cannot use modern sound 
hardware.
> Is there anything else than sound which has problems in DOS on
> modern hardware, when playing old games written in the 1990s?
>
> Note that DOS also does not involve networking in the operating
> system itself: You may have a DOS web browser which supports a
> common packet driver interface. The DOS kernel does not care if
> you have packet drivers or web browsers. So because you will not
> find a packet driver for your wireless network, the DOS kernel
> can not help your DOS web browser to use a wireless network.
>
> Which other "dozens" of drivers do you miss? Interesting topic!

1. The network hardware is one example. For every ISA network card you 
had a DOS driver, and sometimes even a proprietary protocol (NetWare).

2. I don't know if there is one, but a CPU throttling driver would be a 
good thing. One that supports Intel (Enhanced) SpeedStep and AMD 
PowerNow!/Cool'n'Quiet. Reading the ACPI tables would be required. 
Turning off the remaining (unused) CPU cores would reduce power 
consumption and enhance the thermal situation.

3. USB devices like USB sound cards, USB video cards (enabling you to 
use a second/third/... montior) will not work. USB video capturing 
devices (WebCams, analog TV, DVB, ...) will also lack drivers and a 
usable protocol.

4. Some input devices like keyboards and mice don't work correctly, or 
additional functions are not accessible (additional mouse 
buttons/wheels). Again, there is no DOS driver to program these functions.

5. Is there a DOS driver for USB joysticks? I know that analog joysticks 
on the MIDI port (gameport) will likely work, but do digital protocols 
work as well?

6. How is the support for graphics cards? Are there tools to add 
additional VESA modes if they happen to be missing in the BIOS?

7. I recently re-installed a IDE/ATAPI Zip Drive (250MB). I guess there 
will be a DOS driver available for this one. How about other exotic 
storage devices? And will USB Zip Drives also work in DOS? (I know that 
parallel port versions and IDE versions do, but USB?)

8. But the worst incompatibility of them all is the lack of CSM 
(Compatiblity Support Module) on modern UEFI machines. Or does FreeDOS 
run on EFI/UEFI?


I know, this may not be a dozen, but a lot. Depending on the actual 
hardware and on the requirement of the to-be-used (legacy) software.

IMHO, for games lack of sound and mouse/joystick support really is the 
fun-killer.

> Cheers, Eric

Cheers as well, the anonymous userbeitrag.

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Re: [Freedos-user] Games - and DOS installation

[Eric Auer]

Hi guys,

(sorry about the long mail...)

> During the discussion of version 1.2, this was my interpretation of 
> how this should be handled and what was implemented when the 
> user installed FreeDOS in normal mode. Having a failed install (by 
> not booting into FreeDOS) was unacceptable behavior. Therefore, 
> the installer would normally backup and then over-write the boot...

Well, as mentioned several times in the 1.2 discussion, losing all
your data is even more unacceptable, so there should be a choice ;-)

On dedicated harddisks or virtual computer images, which optionally
could be auto-detected by the installer, it is of course nice to do
automatic "rude" installs which makes sure that DOS boots afterwards.

But the user should have the choice between "rude" install, "no"
install at all (simply use "live" DOS as booted from USB stick)
and as 3rd choice "manual" install, where the user has to do the
partitioning and formatting by hand before running the installer
which limits itself to install DOS to any user-chosen directory,
even asking whether SYS should be run and whether config/autoexec
should be overwritten or just prepared under another name :-)

> code during installation. This action can be overridden if advanced 
> mode is used during the install. There were many pros and cons 
> to this being the default action.
> 
> The installer will not destroy partitions...

As long as the installer makes it clear that you have a CHOICE,
as long as that choice is not what happens by default when you
just press Y or enter, this is already quite reasonable :-) As
you see, people ARE scared that the install can delete data.

> * The installer checks if there is a drive C: visible to FreeDOS. 

> If does not find one, and that drive is blank it will use fdisk to 
> automatically partition the drive in "smart" mode. Otherwise, if
> there are partitions existing on the drive, or it cannot figure 
> out what should be partitioned, or if it is in “dumb" mode. It
> will launch fdisk and let the user deal with it.

How does it decide about the "blank" aspect?

> * Installer checks if drive C: can be read by FreeDOS. If not, 
> it will format it.

It should NOT do that by default if you ask me. It should rather
say something like "There is a C: but it does not work for DOS.
If you just made the partition for DOS, you can press F now to
let me format C: Otherwise, please leave the installer and take
care to make C: accessible for DOS, in any way that seems good."

(the above example deliberately uses "F" instead of "Y" to make
sure that people have to think before they just press "agree")

> * The installer transfers the system files and overwrites the
> boot code. 

That, too, might want to ask the user first...

> Advanced mode, provides these capabilities:
> * never auto-partition 
> * option of long-slow formatting.
> * installing to drives other than C: (configured as C: for booting)
> * not transferring the system boot files
> * not over-writting the boot code.
> * lots of other stuff.

That is nice but I wonder if it is necessary in that style:
Advanced mode could also let the user do the partition and
format step and offer the easier-to-implement second half
of the install only: Install to user-selectable directory,
then invite user to optionally add SYS files / boot sector.

I am aware that this is a rather controversial topic :-)

For easy improvement, maybe the installer could initially
say something like "if this is a dedicated DOS PC, maybe
virtual, select easy install now. If you have other data
on the PC, please select advanced manual installation..."

The rest of the installer can probably stay as it is :-)

> The FreeDOS 1.2 Preview releases contain several boot images.

> sudo dd if=FILENAME.IMG of=/dev/USBDEVICE

That is okay for Linux users, but those probably would use
GPARTED for the partition and format step anyway ;-) Many
Windows users might prefer something simpler, like DOSBOX.
Also because of the nice "old sound card" simulations :-)

Or of course some tool or howto for making it REALLY easy
to make a bootable USB stick which can be used without the
need to install DOS to any harddisk?

Cheers, Eric



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Re: [Freedos-user] Games

[Eric Auer]

Hi anonymous Abwesend forum member who is pessimistic about DOS ;-)

> Running FreeDOS on real hardware can be challenging.

FreeDOS no, old DOS games yes.

> FreeDOS on the other hand is a very old operating system concept.

Old concept yes, old operating system no. This means: DOS
has no multi tasking and no 64 bit address space, so your
modern computer will be bored: Only a single CPU core and
at most 3 to 4 GB of RAM can be used inside DOS. Which is
of course a lot more than old DOS games ever could imagine.

This leads to the next problem:

> Running it on modern hardware will very often result in some features 
> not working correctly. DOS games often required an AdLib or SoundBlaster 
> audio card. For AC'97 and Intel HD-Audio sound, there are no DOS drivers

Old DOS games do not use "DOS drivers" for sound. They could
not imagine that games would have any more fancy sound card
available than a stereo SoundBlaster. So the games THEMSELVES
contain drivers for SoundBlaster. DOS kernel is unable to tell
a game that it must use your computer has 7.1 channel surround.
This is where DOSBOX and similar special tools comes into play:

DOSBOX can show your game a SIMULATION of a SoundBlaster card
and capture all sound from that simulation. It can then send
the sound to your REAL sound card so you can hear the sound
from the front speakers of your surround system :-)

Note that you CAN run a modern media player for DOS, which is
aware of surround sound cards, to enjoy MP3 & OGG on modern PC.

Is there anything else than sound which has problems in DOS on
modern hardware, when playing old games written in the 1990s?

Note that DOS also does not involve networking in the operating
system itself: You may have a DOS web browser which supports a
common packet driver interface. The DOS kernel does not care if
you have packet drivers or web browsers. So because you will not
find a packet driver for your wireless network, the DOS kernel
can not help your DOS web browser to use a wireless network.

Which other "dozens" of drivers do you miss? Interesting topic!

Cheers, Eric



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Re: [Freedos-user] Games

[Dale E Sterner]

I'm curious; do you have a removable hard drive?
If you do you might do it the way I do. I replace the
hard drive with CF flash chips. Each chip has a
different OS. I can run anything from dos to win 7
by just replacing the chip. Your computer is probably
too new for this to work. Works well on old machines.
There would be no chance of FREEDOS damaging
your main OS this way. Just a thought.


cheers
DS


On Sat, 18 Jun 2016 04:00:57 -0500 Brandon Taylor
 writes:
> As much as I hate to concede, I must. I have found a critical passage 
> on the FreeDOS website which, in my eyes, discourages further 
> experimentation:
> 
> “FreeDOS is a complete operating system. If you choose to install 
> this on your computer, you may overwrite the operating system you 
> have now (for example, Windows.) If this is not what you intend, 
> please stop now.”
> 
> It seems, in making FreeDOS, the developers have decided to stay 
> true to the original nature of the earliest days of DOS. 640KB was 
> all the memory anyone ever needed, DOS liked to be the ONLY 
> operating system on any given PC, and multi-booting wasn't even 
> heard of.
> 
> Anyway, Dennis, although plugging a different SourceForge project, 
> is essentially correct. DOSBox always played my games without 
> problems, and, as the old adage goes, “If it ain't broke, don't 
> fix it.”
> 
> So anyway, thus ends my brief and unsuccessful foray into FreeDOS.
> 
> Now if you'll excuse me, I have a Temptress to kill. 😉
> 
> Cheerio!
> 
> Brandon Taylor
> 
> Sent from my Windows 10 phone
> 


**
>From Dale Sterner - MS organic chemistry
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jo00975a052
***



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Re: [Freedos-user] Games

[userbeitrag]

Running FreeDOS on real hardware can be challenging.

If you only want to play Lure of the Temptress, on a mordern computer 
you have two options:
* DOSBox
* ScummVM

I would recommend to use ScummVM for playing old (and by ScummVM 
supported) click-and-point adventures. It integrates very well into 
modern operating systems (Windows, OS X, Linux) and doesn't have to 
emulate a DOS environment and x86 hardware.

DOSBox will run almost all DOS games on various hardware and also runs 
on modern operating systems, even on other platforms (ARM, MIPS, PowerPC 
and more, additional to x86).

FreeDOS on the other hand is a very old operating system concept. 
Running it on modern hardware will very often result in some features 
not working correctly. DOS games often required an AdLib or SoundBlaster 
audio card. For AC'97 and Intel HD-Audio sound, there are no DOS drivers 
that can emulate an AdLib or SoundBlaster card. The result is that on 
lots of hardware setups you will end up with a bootable FreeDOS with 
dozen of missing drivers, simply because of the comprehensible fact that 
those drivers would have to be programmed by the developers, which would 
cost a lot of money, and for an operating system that is almost no 
longer used by anyone, except some enthusiats. DOS driver development on 
modern hardware is just not viable.


Good luck!



Original message by Brandon Taylor, 2016-06-17 23:12:
> I just acquired FreeDOS via Rufus, a program that lets me create bootable USB
> drives. I’m trying to play some DOS games, such as “Lure Of The Temptress,” 
> but
> the game won’t run – it says “Not enough memory to run the game.” As I have 
> not
> had a lot of experience with the DOS family of operating systems (I was raised
> on Windows), I don’t know what to do, if there’s anything I /can/ do, to get
> this game to work. It sounds like a typical problem with DOS’s 640KB 
> limitation,
> but I don’t know how to get around it. Can anyone help me out here?
>
> Brandon Taylor


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Re: [Freedos-user] Games - and DOS installation

[Jerome E. Shidel Jr.]

> On Jun 18, 2016, at 7:20 AM, Eric Auer  wrote:
> […]
> I think this was part of the FreeDOS 1.2 discussion before, but
> how about detection whether a harddisk is "totally" empty before
> showing the question how to install? I agree that for people who
> made a totally empty virtual PC image a minute before installing
> FreeDOS, it would be easiest to just let the installer throw one
> standard DOS partition on that "disk" without asking the user to
> make many decisions on partitioning and formatting. But for the
> users who do NOT have a dedicated harddisk for DOS, it is scary.
> 
> Cheers, Eric

During the discussion of version 1.2, this was my interpretation of 
how this should be handled and what was implemented when the 
user installed FreeDOS in normal mode. Having a failed install (by 
not booting into FreeDOS) was unacceptable behavior. Therefore, 
the installer would normally backup and then over-write the boot
code during installation. This action can be overridden if advanced 
mode is used during the install. There were many pros and cons 
to this being the default action.

The installer will not destroy partitions. Basically, this is what 
happens in basic normal mode (excluding question prompts
and lots of other stuff):

* Installer Boots.
* Installer tries to create a RAM drive for temporary data storage.
If that fails, the installer falls back to “dumb” mode.
* The installer checks if there is a drive C: visible to FreeDOS. 
If does not find one, and that drive is blank it will use fdisk to 
automatically partition the drive in "smart" mode. Otherwise, if
there are partitions existing on the drive, or it cannot figure 
out what should be partitioned, or if it is in “dumb" mode. It
will launch fdisk and let the user deal with it.
* If fdisk was run, reboot.
* Installer reloads.
* Installer performs all of the above checks again, this time
it finds a drive C:.
* Installer checks if drive C: can be read by FreeDOS. If not, 
it will format it.
* …….. Much later.
* The installer transfers the system files and overwrites the
boot code. 

Advanced mode, provides these capabilities:
* never auto-partition 
* option of long-slow formatting.
* installing to drives other than C: (configured as C: for booting)
* not transferring the system boot files
* not over-writting the boot code.
* lots of other stuff.

The FreeDOS 1.2 Preview releases contain several boot images.
ISO, Small USB and Big USB. There is lots of software for 
burning the ISO to a disc. Using a Mac or Linux machine, it
is also very easy to put either USB image on a flash drive.
This can be done by just using:

sudo dd if=FILENAME.IMG of=/dev/MEDIA

There are additional dd options. Some, that can be used to 
greatly speed up the process. But, that is all that is really needed.

Jerome
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Re: [Freedos-user] Games - and DOS installation

[Eric Auer]

Hi guys,

> “FreeDOS is a complete operating system. If you choose to install
> this on your computer, you may overwrite the operating system you
> have now (for example, Windows.) If this is not what you intend,
> please stop now.”

That leads to the IMPORTANT questions:

* Is it easy enough to make a bootable USB stick with FreeDOS with
  plenty of software included which does NOT need to install to
  harddisk but can be used as "live" operating system boot disk?

* In particular, is there some sort of how-to for doing that? The
  installer may want to install DOS to RAMDISK for performance :-)

* Is it easy enough to make the decision whether or NOT you want
  to install to harddisk and whether or not you want to DESTROY
  your existing Windows / Linux install in the install process?

As much as it is "classic and straightforward" for installers to
just replace everything on a computer by DOS, as dangerous and
frightening it is for those who want no dedicated DOS-only PC.

I think this was part of the FreeDOS 1.2 discussion before, but
how about detection whether a harddisk is "totally" empty before
showing the question how to install? I agree that for people who
made a totally empty virtual PC image a minute before installing
FreeDOS, it would be easiest to just let the installer throw one
standard DOS partition on that "disk" without asking the user to
make many decisions on partitioning and formatting. But for the
users who do NOT have a dedicated harddisk for DOS, it is scary.

Cheers, Eric


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Re: [Freedos-user] Games

[Don Flowers]

Brandon,


>“FreeDOS is a complete operating system. If you choose to install this on
your >computer, you may overwrite the operating system you have now (for
example, >Windows.) If this is not what you intend, please stop now.
Notice the word "may" .

That FreeDOS *may* overwrite the current installed operating system does
not mean that it must exist soley on a given machine. I have 6 currenly
running machines of and not one is currently setup to run FreeDOS
exclusively. Three are running Windows (2xW7 & W10). The W10 system will be
adding a Linux Distro today. Another machine is running FreeDOS & Puppy;
yet another has FreeDOS and Ubuntu 8.04.




On Sat, Jun 18, 2016 at 5:00 AM, Brandon Taylor 
wrote:

> As much as I hate to concede, I must. I have found a critical passage on
> the FreeDOS website which, in my eyes, discourages further experimentation:
>
>
>
> “FreeDOS is a complete operating system. If you choose to install this on
> your computer, you may overwrite the operating system you have now (for
> example, Windows.) If this is not what you intend, please stop now.”
>
>
>
> It seems, in making FreeDOS, the developers have decided to stay true to
> the original nature of the earliest days of DOS. 640KB was all the memory
> anyone ever needed, DOS liked to be the ONLY operating system on any given
> PC, and multi-booting wasn't even heard of.
>
>
>
> Anyway, Dennis, although plugging a different SourceForge project, is
> essentially correct. DOSBox always played my games without problems, and,
> as the old adage goes, “If it ain't broke, don't fix it.”
>
>
>
> So anyway, thus ends my brief and unsuccessful foray into FreeDOS.
>
>
>
> Now if you'll excuse me, I have a Temptress to kill. 
>
>
>
> Cheerio!
>
>
>
> Brandon Taylor
>
>
>
> Sent from my Windows 10 phone
>
>
>
>
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> consuming the most bandwidth. Provides multi-vendor support for NetFlow,
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Re: [Freedos-user] Games

[Brandon Taylor]

As much as I hate to concede, I must. I have found a critical passage on the 
FreeDOS website which, in my eyes, discourages further experimentation:

“FreeDOS is a complete operating system. If you choose to install this on your 
computer, you may overwrite the operating system you have now (for example, 
Windows.) If this is not what you intend, please stop now.”

It seems, in making FreeDOS, the developers have decided to stay true to the 
original nature of the earliest days of DOS. 640KB was all the memory anyone 
ever needed, DOS liked to be the ONLY operating system on any given PC, and 
multi-booting wasn't even heard of.

Anyway, Dennis, although plugging a different SourceForge project, is 
essentially correct. DOSBox always played my games without problems, and, as 
the old adage goes, “If it ain't broke, don't fix it.”

So anyway, thus ends my brief and unsuccessful foray into FreeDOS.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a Temptress to kill. 

Cheerio!

Brandon Taylor

Sent from my Windows 10 phone

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