[Freedos-user] New FreeDOSers Monthly Reminder

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Re: [Freedos-user] Country Code

[Jon Brase]

The issue is memory-mapped hardware. Any hardware that exposes configuration 
resisters or data buffers on the main address bus ends up taking a block of 
physical address space that could be used by RAM. If your CPU, motherboard, 
and/or OS can't deal with physical addresses wider than 32 bits, then you can 
have a maximum of 4 GB of RAM *and* hardware that can addressed. So if you have 
4 gigs of RAM and a graphics card with half a gig of VRAM exposed to the bus, 
then you end up with half a gig of main RAM that's unusable. Even with a 
CPU/OS/mainboard that can handle >32 bit physical addresses, you may see some 
RAM unusable: if the mainboard assigns DIMMs to consecutive addresses starting 
from zero, with no holes, and you have 4+ GB of RAM and a device that only 
handles 32-bit addresses, then the device will end up stealing addresses from 
some of your RAM under 4GB.

Note that "dealing with physical addresses wider than 32 bits" doesn't mean 
"64-bit". Motherboards generally don't have a neat power-of-two bus width, and 
and when a CPU or OS is called 32/64 bit, that generally refers to *virtual* 
addresses. For x86, a 32-bit CPU/OS with PAE will handle 36-bit physical 
addresses.

Dec 31, 2021 19:12:31 Travis Siegel :


> Reminds me of my last XP machine, supposedly, XP could handle up to 4GB of 
> ram, but when I installed 4GB in my machine, XP only saw 3.5GB.  No idea why, 
> I never did find out what the technical reason was, but it was a commonly 
> known problem, since almost everywhere I tried to get the ram from for the pc 
> insisted XP wouldn't see more than 3.5GB.  Kind of odd I thought, but it 
> accomplished what I needed, so I was ok with it.  I still have that machine 
> around here somewhere, though I've not turned it on in a couple years. :)


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Re: [Freedos-user] Country Code

[Travis Siegel]

Reminds me of my last XP machine, supposedly, XP could handle up to 4GB 
of ram, but when I installed 4GB in my machine, XP only saw 3.5GB.  No 
idea why, I never did find out what the technical reason was, but it was 
a commonly known problem, since almost everywhere I tried to get the ram 
from for the pc insisted XP wouldn't see more than 3.5GB.  Kind of odd I 
thought, but it accomplished what I needed, so I was ok with it.  I 
still have that machine around here somewhere, though I've not turned it 
on in a couple years. :)



On 12/31/2021 5:37 PM, tom ehlert wrote:

At that point, the system wants to create a page file that is larger (by
default) than the 2GB fixed file size limit of FAT16/32.

FAT has a limit of 4GB.

it's DOS that limits this unless you indicate at DosOpen that you understand
the difference between signed and unsigned (2GB and 4GB) offsets for
file systems. so the limit for NT was 4GB, not 2 GB (or at least
should have been)

Tom



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Re: [Freedos-user] (no subject)

[Travis Siegel]

On 12/31/2021 11:50 AM, Liam Proven wrote:

On Fri, 31 Dec 2021 at 08:37, Thomas Mueller  wrote:

I remember OS/2 2.x and Warp could run emulated DOS and could also boot and run 
a specific DOS, but with limitations.


I actually had a copy of OS/2 1.33 Extended edition.  If I recall 
correctly, it was something like 40 floppy floppy disks.  I never did 
install it on anything, I gave it to a friend of mine, and I don't think 
he ever installed either, but I at least did have a copy for a short 
period of time. :)


That's as close to OS/2 as I ever got.




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Re: [Freedos-user] Country Code

[tom ehlert]

> At that point, the system wants to create a page file that is larger (by
> default) than the 2GB fixed file size limit of FAT16/32.

FAT has a limit of 4GB.

it's DOS that limits this unless you indicate at DosOpen that you understand
the difference between signed and unsigned (2GB and 4GB) offsets for
file systems. so the limit for NT was 4GB, not 2 GB (or at least
should have been)

Tom



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Re: [Freedos-user] Country Code

[Ralf Quint]

On 12/31/2021 8:14 AM, Liam Proven wrote:

On Thu, 30 Dec 2021 at 21:04, Deposite Pirate  wrote:

Windows XP can indeed officially be installed and boot from FAT32.

https://kb.iu.edu/d/ajqm

AFAICS that page is inconclusive and merely says that XP supports
FAT16, 32 and NTFS, which was never in doubt. But I checked and you're
right. It's a long time since I installed XP!

Actually, since Windows 2000, the default installation option will 
always create and install on a NTFS partition, though you could install 
on a FAT[16/32] partition optionally. I think this option has been 
removed with one of the service packs for Windows XP (SP2?), as it 
creates a problem when the computer you use as your host has more as 2GB 
of physical RAM.


At that point, the system wants to create a page file that is larger (by 
default) than the 2GB fixed file size limit of FAT16/32.


Ralf


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[Freedos-user] MicroWeb

[Jose Senna]

Liam Proven said about MicroWeb:

 | Limitations
 |
 | HTTP only (no HTTPS support)
 | No CSS or Javascript
 | Very long pages may be truncated if
 | there is not enough RAM available

 Then DOSLynx
 http://www.fdisk.com/doslynx/doslynx.htm
 is probably more useful.



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Re: [Freedos-user] Country Code

[Deposite Pirate]

On Fri, 31 Dec 2021 17:14:10 +0100
Liam Proven  wrote:
> FWIW, I always used to have a DOS boot partition (C:) and put Windows
> on D: back in the XP days. It was useful to have the ability to
> dual-boot DOS for BIOS reflashing and occasionally for emergency data
> recovery. I made the partition big enough to hold XP's pagefile, as
> this was slightly quicker than having it on NTFS, it reduced
> fragmentation on the Windows system drive, and if you needed the space
> in DOS you can just delete PAGEFILE.SYS — Windows will silently
> recreate it next boot.

Seems to me as a great way to do it, especially in those days where you
often just had one drive to work with.

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[Freedos-user] A new (?) DOS web browser

[Liam Proven]

https://github.com/jhhoward/MicroWeb

«
MicroWeb is a web browser for DOS! It is a 16-bit real mode
application, designed to run on minimal hardware.

Minimum requirements

To run you will need:

Intel 8088 or compatible CPU
CGA, EGA, VGA or Hercules compatible graphics card
A network interface (it is possible to use your machine's serial port
with the EtherSLIP driver)
A mouse is desirable but not 100% required
640k RAM is desirable. EMS/XMS are not required

Limitations

Text only (this may change in a later release)
HTTP only (no HTTPS support)
No CSS or Javascript
Very long pages may be truncated if there is not enough RAM available
Mouse cursor is currently not visible in Hercules mode
»

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Re: [Freedos-user] (no subject)

[Liam Proven]

On Fri, 31 Dec 2021 at 08:37, Thomas Mueller  wrote:
>
> I remember OS/2 2.x and Warp could run emulated DOS and could also boot and 
> run a specific DOS, but with limitations.
>
> I ran OS/2 from 1.3 to Warp 4 Fixpack 12 until it crashed and destroyed most 
> hard drive data sometime during the single-digit days of April 2001.

You lasted longer than me, then. I was a big fan of OS/2 2.0 and ran
it on 3 or 4 PCs. It was so far ahead of any other PC OS back then, it
was amazing.

But 2.1 broke a bunch of my device drivers, so I lost my mouse, my
(external parallel-port) sound card, and SVGA mode on my 14" CRT.

I tried what was then still codenamed Windows Chicago Beta (it was
before the 95 name had been chosen) and it ran flawlessly, picking up
all my hardware, allowed networking with my flatmate's PC, and had a
better UI.

So I switched.

At work, I ran NT 3.51.

> I even remember my room temperature at that time was 83 F, which was, and 
> still is, quite comfortable to me.

I am "only" 54 so I don't speak Fahrenheit; it was no longer taught in
UK schools by 1971 or so when I started primary school.

Google tells me that's 28º C. Unpleasantly warm but tolerable. Above
about 35º I find it hard to focus at all and I don't think I could
work in a room at 30º.

> After that, I was never again able to boot OS/2 even from the installation or 
> other floppies (Trap 000c or 000e).

You mean, on the same PC? Sounds like something sustained thermal
damage. Early 1990s PCs had poor cooling, because they didn't need
much.

> I then ran DR-DOS 7.03 much of the time before migrating to Linux Slackware.

I think my home computers went:

[Various 8-bits ->] Acorn RISC OS -> OS/2 2 -> Windows 95 -> NT 4 ->
Caldera OpenLinux -> SUSE Professional -> Ubuntu.

I tried lots of other Linuxes and also ran Mac OS X 10.0 through to
10.6, before a long gap of several versions until I could afford an
Intel Mac.

> Now I see no advantage in OS/2's successors (eComStation, ArcaOS) compared to 
> choosing between FreeBSD, NetBSD, Linux and Haiku which have the advantage of 
> being open-source.

Honestly, I have to agree.

I want to try ArcaOS. I did get review copies of eComStation.

It runs fine in VMs, but on bare hardware, it's unable to install (or
even boot) on most machines I've tried, and on the ones it can, it's
got as far as corrupting my partitioning (in one instance destroying 3
or 4 other OSes) and then failing to install.

It's a pleasant enough desktop OS, but like MorphOS, to me it feels
clunky and old-fashioned in the 21st century, and the lack of modern
apps is very limiting. If it were cheap, I would use it for nostalgia,
but it's not -- it's priced like the 1990s as well.

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Re: [Freedos-user] Country Code

[Liam Proven]

On Fri, 31 Dec 2021 at 01:46, Deposite Pirate  wrote:
>
> Windows NT was designed to work with FAT. Windows NT 4

... and the 3 earlier versions...

> always
> first formats the install partition as a FAT16 filesystem and then if
> you selected NTFS at install, it converts the FAT16 file system online
> to NTFS on the first reboot after install.

Yep.

> This typical Microsoftish genius idea, makes you jump through all kinds of 
> hoops
> that include a third party online repartitioning tool to install it on
> an NTFS partition bigger than 2Gb.

That's unfair. I think it's connected with the way NT <5 bootstrapped
an installation.

Relevant digression: you can start NT installation from DOS. This was
a very useful feature and I urged IBM to copy it, but the techies I
spoke to could not understand why.

NT 3.x predates EIDE; indeed I ordered and returned a bunch of very
early EIDE Pentium 1 PCs because NT could only see the first 512MB of
their 540MB disks. We had to swap them for SCSI machines.

When NT 3.1/3.5/3.51 came out, most PCs could not boot from CD. Many
CD drives were attached to sound cards via proprietary interfaces;
Panasonic, Mitsumi and Sony were common:
https://goughlui.com/2012/11/12/tech-flashback-before-atapi-cd-roms-were-proprietary-interfaces/

No OS could boot off these, and most only supported DOS and Win9x in
DOS compatibility mode.

This also made it possible to install over the network without a local CD drive.

So, you could boot a PC under DOS, make a FAT partition, copy the NT
files from the CD or a network server onto the FAT partition, run
WINNT.EXE *under DOS* and  it built a very minimal installation system
on the hard disk. The folder name varied but it was something like
C:\~$win.nt$\

Then it rebooted the PC into that, where a 2nd stage setup ran and
built the real NT system. Then it rebooted into _that_. If you picked
NTFS that now ran `CONVERT C: /FS:NTFS` on your drive.

I don't think MS was trying to be awkward, and this functionality was
a lifesaver. It allowed me at one corporate client to bring up a whole
roomful of dozens of NT 4 machines with only a single optical drive on
the server, which saved so much money it paid for about 2-3 more PCs.

You could bypass the DOS step by booting from 3 special NT boot
floppies, but the DOS method was quicker, easier and more versatile.

Under OS/2 2.x and later, you only had the floppy method, and you had
to get your CD working under those boot floppies, adding drivers,
editing its vast multi-hundred-line CONFIG.SYS file to suit... it was
a major pain. If there were no OS/2 drivers for your CD, then you had
to copy the install files to a partition that the boot floppies could
access. The setup program only ran under OS/2 2 itself and couldn't
start from DOS.

But the 2-stage NT setup is why it went through this
format-as-FAT-then-convert process. It limited your Windows system
drive to a max of 4GB until PartitionMagic came along, but it worked
and it meant it was easy to get NT onto machines that OS/2 only
installed upon with great difficulty, or not at all.

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Re: [Freedos-user] Country Code

[Liam Proven]

On Fri, 31 Dec 2021 at 00:02, Jon Brase  wrote:
>
> NTVDM exists and runs a stripped down version of MS-DOS 5. I think it even 
> does have non-stripped versions of the relevant files available if the user 
> decides to sys a floppy. But I've never heard of it being possible to run 
> anything but there provided build of MS-DOS 5 in NTVDM. Maybe he ran the 
> FreeDOS installer and managed to pull in components of FreeDOS, but unless 
> he's using an emulator or VM, I agree that he certainly isn't running FreeDOS 
> on top of XP.

Oh, yes, absolutely, but it's dedicated to the built-in DOS, as far as I know.

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Re: [Freedos-user] Country Code

[Liam Proven]

On Thu, 30 Dec 2021 at 21:04, Deposite Pirate  wrote:
>
> Windows XP can indeed officially be installed and boot from FAT32.
>
> https://kb.iu.edu/d/ajqm

AFAICS that page is inconclusive and merely says that XP supports
FAT16, 32 and NTFS, which was never in doubt. But I checked and you're
right. It's a long time since I installed XP!

It seems it's NT 6 and above (Vista & later) that make NTFS a hard
requirement for the Windows System drive.

FWIW, I always used to have a DOS boot partition (C:) and put Windows
on D: back in the XP days. It was useful to have the ability to
dual-boot DOS for BIOS reflashing and occasionally for emergency data
recovery. I made the partition big enough to hold XP's pagefile, as
this was slightly quicker than having it on NTFS, it reduced
fragmentation on the Windows system drive, and if you needed the space
in DOS you can just delete PAGEFILE.SYS — Windows will silently
recreate it next boot.

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Re: [Freedos-user] Free? Games

[Jerome Shidel]

Hi,

> On Jun 13, 2021, at 10:38 AM, Rafael Angel Campos Vargas 
>  wrote:
> 
> Two new free 2020 games of mine with Freedos version (freepascal without 
> sound for now, i am working on it but it is complicated). Both of them are 
> some simple.
> 
> Aventura trivial only have spanish version 
> https://juegosenlazaruscr.itch.io/aventura-trivial-ciencias7 
> . It is a 
> trivia game.
> 
> What is it? Is very simple but it has english version (it was a game made for 
> a Dos JAM). https://juegosenlazaruscr.itch.io/what-is-this 
>  It is about stereograms.
> 
> Actually I am working on a 4 minutes video for a video jam of a year of 
> duration. I am the host of the jam. You could look fot the details on the 
> links above.

I took a while for me to get around to looking at them.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to try them. 

When I go to the page, all I see is “Download - name your price” and the url 
itself contains to “purchase"

Maybe I’m wrong about this. But to me, this implies they are not free. Nor, can 
they be freely redistributed. 

If they can be freely redistributed, I have no problem putting them on my 
unofficial repo https://fd.lod.bz/repos/current/pkg-html/ 
 

However, for me to put them on the Official FreeDOS repo at 
https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/repositories/latest/pkg-html/
 

 , they would need to be open source. Open source is also required to be 
considered for inclusion on future releases of FreeDOS install media or bonus 
cd.

:-)

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Re: [Freedos-user] (no subject)

[Bryan Kilgallin]

Hi Thomas:


OS/2 2.x and Warp could boot DOS from a floppy, but I don't think even
they could run it from a disk partition.


I used OS/2 Warp 4. Being delighted by the speech-recognition interface!


I ran OS/2 from 1.3 to Warp 4 Fixpack 12 until it crashed and destroyed most 
hard drive data sometime during the single-digit days of April 2001.


I struggled to keep it alive. Discovering that my installation disks got 
corrupted!



I even remember my room temperature at that time was 83 F, which was, and still 
is, quite comfortable to me.


My desk temperature is now 27 °C (81 °F).


Now I see no advantage in OS/2's successors (eComStation, ArcaOS) compared to 
choosing between FreeBSD, NetBSD, Linux and Haiku which have the advantage of 
being open-source.


Being retired, I don't want to pay ongoing licence fees.

But I am working on nerd-dictation. So I've been filling-up its 
configuration file with exceptions!

--
members.iinet.net.au/~kilgallin/


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Re: [Freedos-user] remembering Warp; disk I/O speed

[Felix Miata]

Thomas Mueller composed on 2021-12-31 07:37 (UTC):

> Now I see no advantage in OS/2's successors (eComStation, ArcaOS) compared to 
> choosing between FreeBSD, NetBSD, Linux and Haiku which have the advantage of 
> being open-source.


eCS is just as bulletproof running DOS as Warp with MCPx. I run my DOS apps on 
it
24/7. File saves in my most used files in eCS are done seriously faster than 
they
were with DesqView on PC DOS, portions of seconds rather than 30+ seconds, even
minutes.

Is FreeDOS' 32bit storage driver in the same speed category as OS/2 or Linux?
-- 
Evolution as taught in public schools is, like religion,
based on faith, not based on science.

 Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks!

Felix Miata


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