Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS 1.1 crashing in VirtualBox 5.0.22

[Rugxulo]

Hi again,

On Fri, Jul 1, 2016 at 12:34 AM, Rugxulo  wrote:
>
> But I agree, in theory, that JEMMEX shouldn't be preferred or
> suggested without a good reason. But that's not my decision for FD 1.2
> (and I forget offhand what Jerome uses, I haven't downloaded any
> recent prereleases, too preoccupied with other bagatela).

Just so Jerome doesn't tear me a new one (not really, he's nice), I
quickly downloaded FDI-FLOPPY.zip (dated June 27):

It simply loads HimemX (XMSv3, 386+) and nothing else.

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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS 1.1 crashing in VirtualBox 5.0.22

[Rugxulo]

Hi,

On Thu, Jun 30, 2016 at 6:51 PM, Abe Mishler  wrote:
>
>> On Jun 30, 2016, at 6:19 PM, Rugxulo  wrote:
>>
>> If JEMMEX is your only problem, then you have no problems.
>
> This idea has appeared before in this thread and it is a relief to hear it 
> echoed.
> Perhaps a disclaimer like this is warranted in the Wiki install guide for new 
> users
> like myself. (I had very limited exposure to DOS when it was mainstream so 
> the idea
> of so many different memory modes has been overwhelming to learn suddenly.)

I didn't have a PC back then, but AFAIK 

The IBM PC used an 8088 in 1981. The max memory supported was 640 kb
(low / conventional), but even that was usually overly idealistic. I
think?? you typically got 400 kb free back in those days (if you could
even afford the full 640 kb at all). The original IBM PC didn't even
have a hard drive, and it shipped with like two 160 kb floppy drives.
I think 64 kb of RAM was the initial amount (similar to CP/M, I
suppose).

Only later did 500 kb RAM free become the norm and even required, e.g.
MS-DOS 5 bragged about freeing up "45 kb at least".

Of course, originally it was optional things like (hardware) EMS that
(partially) brought more RAM. That was presumably more common with
8086-ish machines than newer ones. With the 286, although it took a
while to standardize, the preferred approach was either "raw", XMSv2,
or DPMI (which really sat atop one of the others). Even DPMI didn't
appear until 1989/1990 with Windows 3.0.

The 286 was, what, 1982? Obviously the 386 was (first) introduced in
1986 by Intel. But the IBM PC didn't get the 286 until (I don't even
know) XT? Nope, Wikipedia says "XT 286" was 1986. Nope, Wikipedia also
says "The 80286 was employed for the IBM PC/AT, introduced in 1984".
But it took a *long* time for megabytes of RAM to become common. It
was just too expensive. (My 1994-era 486 Sx/25 only had 4 MB.)

Long story short, the differing memory APIs were due to different
hardware. So hardware "expanded" (EMS) needed one API while the 286
(max 16 MB RAM)'s "extended" (XMS) memory needed another one. And
Windows 3.0 (1990) invented yet another one (DPMI) that was "better"
than VCPI (and more widely supported, although most DPMI servers ended
up being 386+ anyways).

> If a consensus can be reached, I would humbly submit the idea of swapping 
> options 1 and 2 in the next release to give less emphasis to JEMMEX.

Even Blackthorne (game, which is now freeware BTW) required EMS, and
that was what, 1990s?? (Wikipedia says 1994.) So we can't totally say
that nobody should or can use EMS (e.g. EMM386). But yeah, I agree,
JEMMEX as default isn't really all it's cracked up to be (due to
various rare quirks, among other reasons).

> As a new user, I naively thought that JEMMEX was the best/preferred option 
> based on its ranking which may be intended.

In theory, if everything was perfectly bug-free, then sure, having
both XMS and software-emulated EMS (via V86 mode) + VCPI and using
UMBs (leading to more conventional memory free) is perfectly ideal.
(DPMI is usually loaded on demand via separate TSR.)

Obviously, in hindsight, you don't really need a billion APIs for the
same family of hardware. But that's the point, FreeDOS tries to
support 8086, 286, and 386 memory schemes (but no AMD64, obviously).

> But under the example of VBox, it doesn't hold up. I think I have learned now 
> that even though JEMMEX claims
> to do the same thing as option 2 in less memory by combining driver logic, 
> option 2 really works better even if
> there is a slightly larger overhead.

The more differing environments, the more testing you have to do to
support them all. It can add up, leaving obscure bugs.

> Option 2 certainly gives me more expanded memory (EMS).

Not sure why, offhand.

> At least this seems to be the case in VBox. However, JEMMEX behaves just fine 
> running under QEMU.
> So go figure. Perhaps the Wiki should push people towards QEMU on Linux 
> rather than VBox on Windows.

No, because most people don't need JEMMEX and/or EMS, and VBox
(sometimes) has other advantages. It's not worth giving up the whole
environment due to one or two accidental incompatibilities.

But I agree, in theory, that JEMMEX shouldn't be preferred or
suggested without a good reason. But that's not my decision for FD 1.2
(and I forget offhand what Jerome uses, I haven't downloaded any
recent prereleases, too preoccupied with other bagatela).

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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeBASIC status?

[Rugxulo]

Hi,

I'm no expert, so I've only lightly dabbled.

On Thu, Jun 30, 2016 at 6:10 PM, Abe Mishler  wrote:
>
> I see it is back up now.

Like I said before, the compiler has been around (even heavily
developed) for 12 years! It's no toy but instead a mature tool at this
point.

> I had been doing some reading on the pros/cons of FreeBASIC vs QB64. Not 
> looking to start a flame war here,
> but I had decided to invest some time with FreeBASIC when the site went down. 
> I thought perhaps that was an
> early portent that I had picked the "wrong" compiler.

I've never used QB64 but have heard some stuff about it. For one, it
uses a C++ compiler as backend, no?

FreeBASIC is a fully native compiler (written in itself), albeit not
really optimizing, although it does also have an optional C (GCC)
output backend. The DOS version is based upon DJGPP's libc (and uses
DJGPP ports of GNU BinUtils), so it's compatible with anything (e.g.
libs) that already works with that.

fbhelp is really helpful (no pun intended) for looking up what's
supported. A lot of that is taken directly from the wiki. Also, the
DOS FAQ is quite helpful, too (thanks to DOS386).

> I see that Black Annex is probably written with QB64

But I (barely) disagree that the above is the "best QB game ever"
since, quite honestly, there were hundreds of really amazing (DOS
graphical) games written for vanilla QBasic interpreter. Well, at
least I always found them amazing. Even though I never worked on any,
they were always really really beyond what you would normally consider
appropriate for QB (so Gorillas is not the ultimate example I'd give,
there were many programs way way better than that ... although even
that is probably better than Donkey, heh, sorry Bill).

FYI, there's a truly brilliant genius named Joel who has written a lot
of cool stuff (even using QuickBASIC, e.g. NES emulator):

https://www.youtube.com/user/Bisqwit

> Does anyone have any experience or tips working with the DOS version of 
> FreeBASIC in FreeDOS that they'd like to share?
>
> If not, thanks for humoring me this far in the thread.

It has several supported "dialects", e.g. "fb" or "fblite" or "qb".
While the QB (and VBDOS) compatibility isn't 100%, it's better than
nothing. Of course, I think they more or less recommend all new code
be written in "improved" dialects like "fb", which offers a lot of
advantages. Though I'm not honestly sure if they ever finished with
the OOP support. (It's at least partially supported, though.)

Oh, you can also do inline asm (although that's not as easy as it
sounds with DPMI/pmode).

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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS 1.1 crashing in VirtualBox 5.0.22

[Abe Mishler]

Hi,

> On Jun 30, 2016, at 6:19 PM, Rugxulo  wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
>> On Thu, Jun 30, 2016 at 6:17 AM, Abe Mishler  wrote:
>> 
>>> On 6/29/2016 1:03 PM, Rugxulo wrote:
>> 
>> On the page that you sent regarding QEMU Binaries for Windows, it says:
>> "QEMU for Windows is experimental software and might contain even
>> serious bugs, so use the binaries at your own risk."
> 
> It's just a standard disclaimer, don't read too much into it. It works
> fine for me (FreeDOS). While I haven't exhaustively tested gigabytes
> of software, everything I tried seems to work fairly well, no huge
> obvious deficiencies. So don't worry.
> 
> The only real problem would be if it had major bugs and they refused
> to hear bug reports or even consider fixing them. AFAIK, that's not
> true. But indeed, I do think they prefer Linux more.
> 
> Nevertheless, several other OSes bundle Windows binaries of QEMU with
> some of their releases (e.g. ReactOS, AROS), so it must also work well
> for them too. So don't overreact, it works! But no software is 100%
> perfect, hence some people feel the need to explicitly disclaim legal
> liability, etc.
> 
>> Since QEMU is more mature on linux right now, I installed Xubuntu 16.04
>> LTS inside VirtualBox (5.0.24 now) and then QEMU inside of that.
> 
> I don't think it's a billion times more mature there. QEMU is a very
> complicated suite of software, for many many different architectures.
> Certainly it's almost strange / funny / pointless to install QEMU
> inside another OS inside VBox!
Yes, the levels of virtualization were getting ridiculous! Funny how it sped 
things up on a Win8.1 host though!!! I guess the farther away from Windows you 
get... well you fill in the rest. Ha!
> 
> VBox works well too. If you have problems with JEMMEX, then don't run
> that. Again, you really don't need it at all. Don't kid yourself, VBox
> is well-tested (overall), just not as much for DOS. So FreeDOS still
> (mostly) works fine there.
Great to hear! I have been learning a lot about JEMMEX as compared to the other 
drivers lately. You guys have been a terrific help!

> 
>> FreeDOS is much peppier inside of this configuration. I will probably get
>> another HD for a native Xubuntu install and skip the VBox on Win 8.1
>> layer altogether.
> 
> Setup a bootable USB jump drive instead, it's probably cheaper and
> easier. Okay, so technically I don't know of all the ways to make one
> (DistroWatch Weekly mentioned a few ways several months ago), but IIRC
> the latest Ubuntu actually recommends RUFUS (which is also well-known
> for supporting FreeDOS)!
> 
> A while back I had setup a Ubuntu 14.04 jump drive (with persistence),
> but it's fairly slow, so that may be a concern for you. But I don't
> think it has to be that way, I just don't have the time or energy to
> try billions of configurations.
I have decided (I think!) to involve the use of another HD (SSD) to get as much 
speed as possible.

> 
> antiX 13 was very good and lightning fast, and 16 was just released,
> so maybe you should try that instead, it's based upon Debian.
I'll have to look into that. Thanks!

> 
>> Side note: Since VBox was updated to 5.0.24 during this thread I decided
>> to try a new installation of FreeDOS with it but had the same problem.
> 
> If JEMMEX is your only problem, then you have no problems.
This idea has appeared before in this thread and it is a relief to hear it 
echoed. Perhaps a disclaimer like this is warranted in the Wiki install guide 
for new users like myself. (I had very limited exposure to DOS when it was 
mainstream so the idea of so many different memory modes has been overwhelming 
to learn suddenly.)

If a consensus can be reached, I would humbly submit the idea of swapping 
options 1 and 2 in the next release to give less emphasis to JEMMEX. As a new 
user, I naively thought that JEMMEX was the best/preferred option based on its 
ranking which may be intended. But under the example of VBox, it doesn't hold 
up. I think I have learned now that even though JEMMEX claims to do the same 
thing as option 2 in less memory by combining driver logic, option 2 really 
works better even if there is a slightly larger overhead. Option 2 certainly 
gives me more expanded memory (EMS). At least this seems to be the case in 
VBox. However, JEMMEX behaves just fine running under QEMU. So go figure. 
Perhaps the Wiki should push people towards QEMU on Linux rather than VBox on 
Windows.

Please correct me if I'm wrong or have missed something important.

Ok, back to you guys :)

> 
>>> But nothing beats running natively (on real hardware).
>> You're right about that. As Ulrich mentioned earlier, he uses screencast
>> software to capture what he's doing. I'm interested in doing the same so
>> I think FreeDOS in QEMU on linux is the way to go (for me, at this time).
> 
> Who knows, eventually there might be an official Flatpak (or Snappy?)
> package that works across all the major 

Re: [Freedos-user] FreeBASIC status?

[Abe Mishler]

I see it is back up now. I had been doing some reading on the pros/cons of 
FreeBASIC vs QB64. Not looking to start a flame war here, but I had decided to 
invest some time with FreeBASIC when the site went down. I thought perhaps that 
was an early portent that I had picked the "wrong" compiler. I see that Black 
Annex is probably written with QB64 
(http://www.pcworld.com/article/2033318/black-annex-is-the-best-qbasic-game-youve-ever-seen.html).

Does anyone have any experience or tips working with the DOS version of 
FreeBASIC in FreeDOS that they'd like to share?

If not, thanks for humoring me this far in the thread.

Sincerely,
Abe

> On Jun 30, 2016, at 6:03 PM, Rugxulo  wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
>> On Thu, Jun 30, 2016 at 6:52 AM, Abe Mishler  wrote:
>> 
>> Does anyone know the state of FreeBASIC? The site (http://freebasic.net)
>> has been down for at least 2 days now. Has the project been shuttered?
> 
> I'm not in the loop and haven't heard anything privately, but I know
> that I browsed there in the past week with no problems. Everything is
> still chugging along, AFAIK. So no, it's not anywhere near being
> abandoned. (IIRC, the project has been constantly improving since
> 2004.)
> 
> The most recent release was five months ago (which, all things
> considered, is quite a short gap, we don't need new releases every
> week). It's already been mirrored to iBiblio for us:
> 
> http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/devel/basic/freebasic/1.05.0/
> 
> Anything in particular you were looking for?
> 


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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS 1.1 crashing in VirtualBox 5.0.22

[Rugxulo]

Hi,

On Thu, Jun 30, 2016 at 6:17 AM, Abe Mishler  wrote:
>
>> On 6/29/2016 1:03 PM, Rugxulo wrote:
>
> On the page that you sent regarding QEMU Binaries for Windows, it says:
> "QEMU for Windows is experimental software and might contain even
> serious bugs, so use the binaries at your own risk."

It's just a standard disclaimer, don't read too much into it. It works
fine for me (FreeDOS). While I haven't exhaustively tested gigabytes
of software, everything I tried seems to work fairly well, no huge
obvious deficiencies. So don't worry.

The only real problem would be if it had major bugs and they refused
to hear bug reports or even consider fixing them. AFAIK, that's not
true. But indeed, I do think they prefer Linux more.

Nevertheless, several other OSes bundle Windows binaries of QEMU with
some of their releases (e.g. ReactOS, AROS), so it must also work well
for them too. So don't overreact, it works! But no software is 100%
perfect, hence some people feel the need to explicitly disclaim legal
liability, etc.

> Since QEMU is more mature on linux right now, I installed Xubuntu 16.04
> LTS inside VirtualBox (5.0.24 now) and then QEMU inside of that.

I don't think it's a billion times more mature there. QEMU is a very
complicated suite of software, for many many different architectures.
Certainly it's almost strange / funny / pointless to install QEMU
inside another OS inside VBox!

VBox works well too. If you have problems with JEMMEX, then don't run
that. Again, you really don't need it at all. Don't kid yourself, VBox
is well-tested (overall), just not as much for DOS. So FreeDOS still
(mostly) works fine there.

> FreeDOS is much peppier inside of this configuration. I will probably get
> another HD for a native Xubuntu install and skip the VBox on Win 8.1
> layer altogether.

Setup a bootable USB jump drive instead, it's probably cheaper and
easier. Okay, so technically I don't know of all the ways to make one
(DistroWatch Weekly mentioned a few ways several months ago), but IIRC
the latest Ubuntu actually recommends RUFUS (which is also well-known
for supporting FreeDOS)!

A while back I had setup a Ubuntu 14.04 jump drive (with persistence),
but it's fairly slow, so that may be a concern for you. But I don't
think it has to be that way, I just don't have the time or energy to
try billions of configurations.

antiX 13 was very good and lightning fast, and 16 was just released,
so maybe you should try that instead, it's based upon Debian.

> Side note: Since VBox was updated to 5.0.24 during this thread I decided
> to try a new installation of FreeDOS with it but had the same problem.

If JEMMEX is your only problem, then you have no problems.

>> But nothing beats running natively (on real hardware).
>>
> You're right about that. As Ulrich mentioned earlier, he uses screencast
> software to capture what he's doing. I'm interested in doing the same so
> I think FreeDOS in QEMU on linux is the way to go (for me, at this time).

Who knows, eventually there might be an official Flatpak (or Snappy?)
package that works across all the major distros. I think that will
ease deployment (instead of having billions of separate incompatible
versions).

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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeBASIC status?

[Rugxulo]

Hi,

On Thu, Jun 30, 2016 at 6:52 AM, Abe Mishler  wrote:
>
> Does anyone know the state of FreeBASIC? The site (http://freebasic.net)
> has been down for at least 2 days now. Has the project been shuttered?

I'm not in the loop and haven't heard anything privately, but I know
that I browsed there in the past week with no problems. Everything is
still chugging along, AFAIK. So no, it's not anywhere near being
abandoned. (IIRC, the project has been constantly improving since
2004.)

The most recent release was five months ago (which, all things
considered, is quite a short gap, we don't need new releases every
week). It's already been mirrored to iBiblio for us:

http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/devel/basic/freebasic/1.05.0/

Anything in particular you were looking for?

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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS 1.1 crashing in VirtualBox 5.0.22

[Eric Auer]

Hi, to bring in some thoughts from off-list...

JEMMEX has a built-in HIMEM which apparently is known to have
problems when memory useable for XMS is discontinuous, which
happens quite often on modern (virtual) hardware.

The UMBPCI author tries hard to keep supporting modern chipsets
which can be interesting if you do not need EMS. As mentioned,
EMS is less popular than XMS anyway.

To stay on the safe side, people should use HIMEMX + JEMM386
or other combinations instead of JEMMEX. Also, they should be
able to understand the conflict potential of UMB and prepare
to manually add X=... areas based on their personal insights.

Having UMB areas conflicting with other things can cause hidden
instabilities: The actual crash may be delayed until you touch
the hardware or BIOS feature which resides in the conflict area
while at the same time having relevant DOS data in the conflict
UMB area at the same place.

I would like to avoid discussions about specific drivers beyond
the core "only use JEMMEX if you know what you are doing, make
HIMEMX and JEMM386 the preferred option" recommendation and a
warm mention of UMBPCI for those who have supported chipsets.

Peace guys :-) Eric



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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeBASIC status?

[dmccunney]

On Thu, Jun 30, 2016 at 7:52 AM, Abe Mishler  wrote:
> Does anyone know the state of FreeBASIC? The site (http://freebasic.net)
> has been down for at least 2 days now. Has the project been shuttered?

The Sourceforge back end is still up, and claims the last code update
was 4 days ago.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/fbc/

I suspect a DNS error preventing resolution of the freebasic.net URL.

> Thanks,
> Abe
__
Dennis

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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS 1.1 crashing in VirtualBox 5.0.22

[Ulrich Hansen]

> I think FreeDOS in QEMU on linux is the way to go (for me, at this time).

Inspired by this thread I also looked into qemu (even installed it on my Mac).

Just in case you missed it: 
There’s a great tutorial about running FreeDOS 1.1 in qemu.
Part three is all about networking. :-)

The author is Patrick G. Horneker.

http://pclosmag.com/html/issues/201206/page08.html 

http://pclosmag.com/html/Issues/201207/page11.html 

http://pclosmag.com/html/issues/201208/page11.html 

http://pclosmag.com/html/Issues/201210/page11.html 



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[Freedos-user] FreeBASIC status?

[Abe Mishler]

Does anyone know the state of FreeBASIC? The site (http://freebasic.net) 
has been down for at least 2 days now. Has the project been shuttered?

Thanks,
Abe

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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS 1.1 crashing in VirtualBox 5.0.22

[Abe Mishler]

Hi Rugxulo et al.,

On 6/29/2016 1:03 PM, Rugxulo wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Wed, Jun 29, 2016 at 10:05 AM, Abe Mishler  wrote:
>>
>> On 6/28/2016 7:55 PM, Rugxulo wrote:
>>>
>>> I would recommend you (also) test under QEMU if you're that worried or
>>> want (potentially) better stability.
>>>
>> QEMU, while about 10x slower (on Win 8.1 amd64 host), ran perfectly.
>> Thank you for the suggestion. Perhaps there are some optimizations that
>> I don't know about...
>
> Not sure about improving speed, esp. on Windows. There used to be
> kqemu for older versions (0.9.0?), but that's been discontinued.
>
On the page that you sent regarding QEMU Binaries for Windows, it says:
"QEMU for Windows is experimental software and might contain even 
serious bugs, so use the binaries at your own risk."

Since QEMU is more mature on linux right now, I installed Xubuntu 16.04 
LTS inside VirtualBox (5.0.24 now) and then QEMU inside of that. FreeDOS 
is much peppier inside of this configuration. I will probably get 
another HD for a native Xubuntu install and skip the VBox on Win 8.1 
layer altogether.

Side note: Since VBox was updated to 5.0.24 during this thread I decided 
to try a new installation of FreeDOS with it but had the same problem.

> Anyways, VBox itself is allegedly partially based upon QEMU, but it's

Yes, the VBox developer FAQ makes that claim:
https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Developer_FAQ

> not true that QEMU is always slower. At least one thing I was running
> was faster under QEMU (+ Linux) than VBox (+ Win7), even without VT-X.
> But that could be because of many different reasons. Using VT-X (which
> for QEMU means using KVM variant instead) obviously increases speed
> even further.
>
> But nothing beats running natively (on real hardware).
>
You're right about that. As Ulrich mentioned earlier, he uses screencast 
software to capture what he's doing. I'm interested in doing the same so 
I think FreeDOS in QEMU on linux is the way to go (for me, at this time).

Thanks to everyone for joining the discussion and sharing your knowledge 
with me. I learned a lot and consider my problem resolved. On to the next...

Best,
Abe

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