Re: [Freedos-user] DOS on Raspberry Pi

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 07:05 PM 3/27/2013, Jim Hall wrote:


On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 2:11 AM, john s wolter 
<johnswol...@wolterworks.com> wrote:
Okay, had anyone done a name search prior to production?  MINiX3.org 
might not be amused.  Go was the last test of overlapping  names.




I don't see the name conflict. "rpix86" and "MINIX" look entirely 
different to me. Just because there's an "x" or "-ix" in there 
doesn't make it a name conflict, just like "FreeDOS" (or the 
original name, "PD-DOS") didn't make it a name conflict with "MS-DOS".


And MINIX is different from rpix86: MINIX is a whole Unix kernel 
plus Unix userspace, rpix86 is a virtual x86 machine for ARM plus 
DOS kernel. And "rpix86" is just the name of the binary package, 
anyway. It really stands for "R. Pi x86".


He was likely rather referring to the Hong Kong based company/web 
site called MiniX that offers the media hub which Robert mentioned in his reply
Doom on my MiniX NEO X5 
(http://www.minix.com.hk/Products/NEOX5.html)

connected to a 37" LCD TV. ;-)


Ralf --
Own the Future-Intel® Level Up Game Demo Contest 2013
Rise to greatness in Intel's independent game demo contest.
Compete for recognition, cash, and the chance to get your game 
on Steam. $5K grand prize plus 10 genre and skill prizes. 
Submit your demo by 6/6/13. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel_levelupd2d___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Running a DOS task (full screen) in a W7 PC

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 03:36 AM 3/24/2013, giorgio.gilard...@libero.it wrote:
>The best would be to have a "DOS window" running the DOS task
>in full screen mode and be able to switch (and tranfer data) to other
>applications commonly running in other W7 windows.
>Please let me know if the above is possible with Free DOS and how
>to manage the Free DOS installation to obtain it.
>If not please suggest me the most practical way (if any !) to manage
>a DOS task and a Windows task without rebooting any time.

Well, that is more an issue of using Windows 7, specially when using 
the 64bit version, which doesn't allow direct execution of old 16bit 
software to begin with, regardless of full screen or not.

The best option is to run FreeDOS as an instance in VirtualBox, a 
virtual machine that you can download for free from Oracle 
(https://www.virtualbox.org/). But you won't have (easy) access to 
any of our Windows 7 drives nor easy printing from your DOS 
application to anything connected to Windows host PC.
Also haven't bothered myself with a fullscreen mode with that one 
yet, would be much too big for me on todays large (and wide screen) 
flat screen monitors...

Ralf 


--
Everyone hates slow websites. So do we.
Make your web apps faster with AppDynamics
Download AppDynamics Lite for free today:
http://p.sf.net/sfu/appdyn_d2d_mar
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] hexed12a.zip

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 05:44 AM 2/22/2013, Alain Mouette wrote:
>I have seen otherwise...
>Specialy some old compilers or embedded.
+1

Standard nor not, it has been good programming practice since before 
the days of DOS.

There is no excuse to being lazy as a programmer...

Ralf 


--
Everyone hates slow websites. So do we.
Make your web apps faster with AppDynamics
Download AppDynamics Lite for free today:
http://p.sf.net/sfu/appdyn_d2d_feb
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Change dos "gray-on-black" default c olour settings

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 11:18 AM 2/13/2013, sakura kinomoto wrote:
>how to use nansi.sys to change colour scheme? I find some info in 
>web, but it is hard for newbie
>
>I guess I put string in config.sys: "device=c:\odin\nansi.sys"; what 
>next step I need?

LMFGTFY: http://kb.iu.edu/data/aamm.html
(section "Changing Colors")

Ralf 


--
Free Next-Gen Firewall Hardware Offer
Buy your Sophos next-gen firewall before the end March 2013 
and get the hardware for free! Learn more.
http://p.sf.net/sfu/sophos-d2d-feb
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Change dos "gray-on-black" default c olour settings

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 10:33 AM 2/13/2013, sakura kinomoto wrote:
>I can not find neither PRISM nor PC MAG in google :(

You might need to work on your Google-Fu, try
"prism pc magazine dos tools" ;-)

Ralf 


--
Free Next-Gen Firewall Hardware Offer
Buy your Sophos next-gen firewall before the end March 2013 
and get the hardware for free! Learn more.
http://p.sf.net/sfu/sophos-d2d-feb
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] New program - hexed.zip

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 06:21 PM 2/10/2013, Chris Evans wrote:
>I just made a hex viewer and editor for DOS,
>I still have to debug it, so if you find any bugs in it
>let me know.  I made this as I needed a small
>hexeditor/viewer, and this fits the bill.

Well, just had a quick look at it and beside the 32KB filesize limit, 
as you load the whole file at once, I immediately noticed at least a 
couple of issues:

- in the switch statement for the cursor movement, you misspelled the 
"default" case as "defualt", which means there is no default and 
instead an undeclared variabel with the name "defualt"...

- you do not check against cursor movements beyond the actual read 
number of bytes in your buffer or the buffer size itself, resulting 
displaying nonsense beyond that

hth,

Ralf 


--
Free Next-Gen Firewall Hardware Offer
Buy your Sophos next-gen firewall before the end March 2013 
and get the hardware for free! Learn more.
http://p.sf.net/sfu/sophos-d2d-feb
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Bios limitation at 8 gb, and new hdd

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 05:33 PM 2/9/2013, john s wolter wrote:

BS,

Don't forget the FAT-16 limit of 514 or was that 
504 MBytes. Â Somehow this issue keeps being 
asked. Â Maybe we are not doing enough to explain it clearly.


There is no FAT-16 limit of 504MBytes.
There was such a limitation in the original/ealy 
INT13h BIOS calls, which allowed for maximal 1024 
cylinders (x 16 heads x 63 sectors x 512 
bytes=528482304 bytes = 504MBytes). Later BIOS 
version allowed for up to 4095 cylinders, which 
increased the addressable disk size to 2GB.


FAT16 partitions for DOS can be up to 2GB (32KB x 
65524 clusters), Windows NT 4.0 could create and 
access FAT16 partitions of up to 4GB using 64KB clusters...


Ralf  --
Free Next-Gen Firewall Hardware Offer
Buy your Sophos next-gen firewall before the end March 2013 
and get the hardware for free! Learn more.
http://p.sf.net/sfu/sophos-d2d-feb___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Handhold for nervous newbie

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 04:37 PM 2/6/2013, Robert Reeves wrote:
>"Install to the hard drive" sounds fine, except that I don't want to 
>overwrite the Windows install that I need to return to.

Well, correct...

>"Create Drive C" sounds like I'm going to wipe out the current drive 
>C: which is formatted to NTFS

That is correct as well. And also, (Free)DOS knows squat about NTFS

>"Boot from system hard disk" would be fine except that the only 
>thing on the system hard disk is Windows.

Correct, beside that, as mentioned before, FreeDOS won't see the disk 
as it is NTFS formatted...

>"Boot from Diskette" except that I don't have one. The diskette 
>image file I downloaded won't copy to a diskette and I get an error 
>message saying the copy needs another 16 kb room on the diskette.
The letter is likely as you are trying to "copy" the image on to the 
diskette instead of using a program like WinImage or (Win)RaWrite to 
"write" it to the diskette (it's a sector by sector copy, including 
the ones you don't "see")
>
>As I dither over these choices, another screen appears announcing 
>that "FreeDOS can be installed to the following destination drive," 
>with choices
>"None" but what good does that do?

I leave that to others to answer...

>"Press 1 to start installing from cd to C". Since I didn't create a 
>drive C at the first screen, I don't know whether the install can 
>happen and where it is going, and the big one, whether I'm going to 
>damage the Windows install.

As FreeDOS does't know anything about NTFS, it won't do anything. You 
simply can't install it onto the same drive this way..

>The next choice to run FDISK and modify the partitions worries me 
>for the same reason. There is lots of unused room on the disk, if it 
>wants to create a partition for FreeDOS.

Well, that would be your only/best choice, if there indeed is "unused 
room". However, you should use the partition option within Windows 
7's disk properties to create an empty partition is there is indeed 
space. That partition should then show up in FreeDOS's FDisk and you 
should be able to format and SYS just that one. Confusing might be 
however that FreeDOS idea of drive C and that of Windows 7 might not 
be the same...

>OK, so I don't know what I'm doing and my ignorance overflows. I 
>freely admit it. But if someone would take pity and help me through 
>this, I would certainly be grateful.

If there is indeed unused space, I have you a starting point above. 
If not, you could try to resize the existing partition(s) of Windows 
7 down to create some space, but then you might still have the issue 
that the start of that partition is out of reach for FreeDOS to boot from it.

So somehow, with just that laptop, you are indeed a bit in a pickle 
if you do not have an alternative system all together, unless you are 
using something like VirtualBox or QEMU to set up a virtual machine 
and install FreeDOS in that one. But that is likely to open up 
additional cans of worms...

Ralf 


--
Free Next-Gen Firewall Hardware Offer
Buy your Sophos next-gen firewall before the end March 2013 
and get the hardware for free! Learn more.
http://p.sf.net/sfu/sophos-d2d-feb
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] New standard FreeDOS text editor - what it should be (voting)?

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 10:56 AM 1/30/2013, dmccunney wrote:
>I'm actually more interested in what editors people *do* use under
>FreeDOS, and why they use them than I am in some hypothetical new
>product.
Well, I am using the same editor(s) that I have always/long time used 
in MS-DOS/PC-DOS for +25 years...

For small things, I usually use my own adaptation of the BINED editor 
of Borland's Turbo Pascal Editor Toolbox.
It's a 63KB .EXE file of which about 20KB are actually directly 
attached overlays and help file.
Can edit up to 60KB of text (with lines up to 249 characters) faster 
than pretty much anything else, using an expanded WordStar/Borland 
keyboard layout

If I need to do anything larger than that, I use the SEE editor that 
came with DeSmet C. That one handles files larger than available RAM 
(no XMS or EMS though), the largest file that I have probably used 
with it was around 8MB...

Both run just fine from anything from an 8088/8086 CPU on upwards... ;-)

Ralf



--
Everyone hates slow websites. So do we.
Make your web apps faster with AppDynamics
Download AppDynamics Lite for free today:
http://p.sf.net/sfu/appdyn_d2d_jan
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] New standard FreeDOS text editor - what it should be (voting)?

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 08:51 AM 1/29/2013, Michael B. Brutman wrote:
>- Editors do not need interpreted languages in them.  (EMACs users,
>please forgive me.)

EMACS? Like the operating system, that's just lacking a decent editor? >:-}
(Doesn't EMACS stand for "Eight Megabytes And Constantly Swapping"? :-P

>- An editor should be smart enough to page in parts of the file as it
>needs to from disk.  This enables editing of files that are larger than
>the memory size.

SEE does this just fine... ;-)

>- An editor should have "journalling" to help recover the lost work if
>the machine crashes while editing.  This is normally done by recording
>the keystrokes to a separate temporary file and flushing them to disk
>periodically.  In the event of a crash the journal file can be replayed
>to restore most of the edits, and hopefully not cause another crash
>because of a bug in the editor.

Wouldn't it be better to fix the bug in the editor instead? >:-}

>- Undo support.
>
>- The ability to convert tabs to whitespace and vice-versa.
>
>- A pop-up on-screen ruler.
>
>- Regular expression support for searching through text.
>
>- A hexadecimal display mode.

I could see the use for a (limited at least) Undo support and regex 
search, but I could do easily without the others.

Ralf 


--
Master Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL, ASP.NET, C# 2012, HTML5, CSS,
MVC, Windows 8 Apps, JavaScript and much more. Keep your skills current
with LearnDevNow - 3,200 step-by-step video tutorials by Microsoft
MVPs and experts. ON SALE this month only -- learn more at:
http://p.sf.net/sfu/learnnow-d2d
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] New standard FreeDOS text editor - what it should be (voting)?

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 07:02 AM 1/29/2013, =?KOI8-R?B?5dfHxc7JyiDuxdbEwc7P1w==?= wrote:
>Hi all, dear FreeDOS community members! I please answer all to my questions:
>1. You want to have in the FreeDOS distribute more powerful text 
>editor as standard text editor?

Well, not the greatest fan of the FreeDOS EDIT, but in general it 
would be good if people have a choice, so if there's another one 
available, great. If that is to become "the standard", that might 
need to be seen...

>2. These editor must be only 8086 or can be 80386 (8086 machines 
>used only by nostalgy value by museum staffs)?

I am not a "museum staff", but I still have two 8088 machine (though 
I need to get around to fix the power supply in the Commodore PC10) 
as well as at least 3 fully functional 80286 machines...
IMHO, authors of FreeDOS related programs should consider to support 
machines as far back as possible. That includes the RAM usage...

>3. Editor must be written on the Pascal or BASIC language? I 
>convinced that the C language is does not work properly with the strings.

Looks like you need to get yourself more acquainted with C. Endless 
numbers of editors have been written in C...
Beside that, it doesn't matter, as long as you can provide the source 
code with it.
It's just that there are more "free" C compilers available for use 
with/for FreeDOS than for any other programming language...

>4. Editor must be have:
>4.1. Calculator;

no

>4.2. ASCII table;

maybe

>4.3. Inbuild cyrillic font;

I think very few users will care

>4.4. Support to external fonts;

no

>4.5. Support the copy/paste;
>4.6. Support the block selection;
>4.7. Support the line selection;

would consider that standard text editor features...

>4.8. Support the paragraph formatting;

Might depend on how you define this...

>4.9. Support the change case of the selected text;

No.

>4.10. Have a inbuild BASIC language interpretter;
>4.11. Calendar.

certainly not

>5. Editor must be work in the graphics or text mode?

I don't see any purpose in using a "text editor" in graphics mode. 
IMHO, it will just cause code bloat and therefor increase RAM usage 
and make it slower.
Text mode is just fine, in almost all video adapters (still working 
today, Hercules maybe aside), you can get more than 25 rows or 80 
columns of text anyway.

>6. Editor in what license type:
>6.1. GNU GPL v2;
>6.2. GNU GPL v3;
>6.3. Apache license;
>6.4. BSD license;
>6.5. EULA.

Well, people in here prefer a "free" one. The definition of "free" is 
debatable though...

Ralf


--
Master Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL, ASP.NET, C# 2012, HTML5, CSS,
MVC, Windows 8 Apps, JavaScript and much more. Keep your skills current
with LearnDevNow - 3,200 step-by-step video tutorials by Microsoft
MVPs and experts. ON SALE this month only -- learn more at:
http://p.sf.net/sfu/learnnow-d2d
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Backspace

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 01:28 PM 1/14/2013, john s wolter wrote:
>"Re:" has become a way to get past Spam filters. 
>Â It also attracts the attention of the reader. 
>Â This could get the reader to open an EMail 
>assuming it was a reply to a message sent. Â It 
>is a form of social engineering.
Any spam filter that would fall for that simply 
doesn't deserve that name and you should swap it 
out for something that works...

The [Spam] tag in the subject has been inserted 
by Sourceforge's spam checker as a warning for 
"the possibility" of being spam, due to the email 
provider that Henrique used for his reply, just check the headers of his post:

>X-Spam-Report: Spam Filtering performed by mx.sourceforge.net.
> See http://spamassassin.org/tag/ for more details.
> -1.5 SPF_CHECK_PASS SPF reports sender host as permitted sender for
> sender-domain
> 0.0 FREEMAIL_FROM Sender email is 
> commonly abused enduser mail provider
> (hperon[at]terra.com.br)

Ralf 


--
Master Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL, ASP.NET, C# 2012, HTML5, CSS,
MVC, Windows 8 Apps, JavaScript and much more. Keep your skills current
with LearnDevNow - 3,200 step-by-step video tutorials by Microsoft
MVPs and experts. SALE $99.99 this month only -- learn more at:
http://p.sf.net/sfu/learnmore_122412
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Freedos V2.0 - when will it be available?

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 05:12 PM 1/9/2013, Louis Santillan wrote:
>An interesting historical note, early versions of the FreeDOS kernel 
>(DOS-C kernel) were portable to the 68k architecture. See 
>(http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Villani).

Well, you noticed that in that reference, it also clearly states: 
"This move to a completely different target platform, while losing 
binary compatibility with existing applications,..."

Ralf 


--
Master Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL, ASP.NET, C# 2012, HTML5, CSS,
MVC, Windows 8 Apps, JavaScript and much more. Keep your skills current
with LearnDevNow - 3,200 step-by-step video tutorials by Microsoft
MVPs and experts. ON SALE this month only -- learn more at:
http://p.sf.net/sfu/learnmore_122712
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Freedos V2.0 - when will it be available?

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 04:15 PM 1/9/2013, Michael Robinson wrote:
> > Most embedded processors (that are still actively produced) are
> > 32-bit. Anyways, I don't think FreeDOS qualifies, at least not for
> > 8-bit (AVR??) ones.
>
>PIC16F505, PIC16F1938...  these are microchip baseline 8 bit
>microprocessors intended for embedded use.  Yes microchip offers
>32 bit processors, but one often doesn't need them unless USB or
>ethernet is required for the application at hand.
>
>It would be interesting to port Freedos to something other than the
>ia32 architecture.

And what you are going to do with such a "port"?

Sorry, if you (try to) port FreeDOS to anything other than x86, you 
simply don't have DOS anymore.

Beside that those micro controllers won't run much more than very 
task specific software, mainly due to very limited stack and RAM 
space on those chips, certainly not on any of the 8 bit ones.
A PIC16F505 has 1024 12bit "words" (1.5KByte) of program (flash) 
memory and a full 72 bytes of RAM. And a PIC16F1938, though it has a 
full 28KByte of program (flash) memory, it still has only 1024 bytes of RAM.

Good luck trying to run anything that would even remotely resemble 
"DOS" (as in MS/PC/DR/FreeDOS) on it...

Ralf 


--
Master Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL, ASP.NET, C# 2012, HTML5, CSS,
MVC, Windows 8 Apps, JavaScript and much more. Keep your skills current
with LearnDevNow - 3,200 step-by-step video tutorials by Microsoft
MVPs and experts. ON SALE this month only -- learn more at:
http://p.sf.net/sfu/learnmore_122712
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] CD-DVD ROM drıve

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 02:14 PM 1/3/2013, TuLithu wrote:

>Last night I installed FreeDOS on my HP Pavilion g series laptop.  Everything
>seems to work fine, except I can't access my DVD ROM drive.  I have spent
>several hours reading the help files and examining the config.sys and
>autoexec.bat files, but I can't figure out what the problem is.
>
>I figured the drive would be at D: or E:, but I just get an invalid drive
>message.  If anyone can help, it would be greatly appreciated.  I haven't
>used DOS since about 1995, and even then, I only knew the bare basics.


DOS knows squat about any CD/DVD ROM drive unless you load the 
appropriate driver for it as well as MSCDEX to allow access to the 
CD-ROM file system. For the later, there exists a free replacement in 
SHSUCDX...

Ralf


--
Master Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL, ASP.NET, C# 2012, HTML5, CSS,
MVC, Windows 8 Apps, JavaScript and much more. Keep your skills current
with LearnDevNow - 3,200 step-by-step video tutorials by Microsoft
MVPs and experts. ON SALE this month only -- learn more at:
http://p.sf.net/sfu/learnmore_122712
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Stack overflow

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 12:58 PM 12/20/2012, Louis Santillan wrote:
>The Memory Model (Tiny vs. Small vs. Compact vs. Medium vs. Large, 
>.COM vs. .EXE) of the compiler could be causing the issue. Some 
>compilers used to default to Small.  What compiler flags are you using?

Even in the TINY model, there is no reason to get a stack overflow, 
if the compiler indeed is not artificially limiting the stack size.
The sample program is using 8KB static data, 8KB+some slack for stack 
and likely 2KB of code, as there is no output like printf. All well 
below of the limit of 64KB.
SMALL and MEDIUM memory models only have static data and stack in the 
same segment and separate 64KB for code, while COMPACT, LARGE and 
HUGE (Borland only) even have their own 64KB stack segment...

This should compile and run, regardless of the memory model...

Ralf 


--
LogMeIn Rescue: Anywhere, Anytime Remote support for IT. Free Trial
Remotely access PCs and mobile devices and provide instant support
Improve your efficiency, and focus on delivering more value-add services
Discover what IT Professionals Know. Rescue delivers
http://p.sf.net/sfu/logmein_12329d2d
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] desinscription

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 06:38 AM 11/26/2012, Jim Hall wrote:

>Hi. I think you are looking for more information about the FreeDOS 
>email lists.

I think our French friend tried to unsubscribe and doesn't understand 
that he can do this in the very same place where he subscribed in the 
first place... :-\

Ralf


--
Monitor your physical, virtual and cloud infrastructure from a single
web console. Get in-depth insight into apps, servers, databases, vmware,
SAP, cloud infrastructure, etc. Download 30-day Free Trial.
Pricing starts from $795 for 25 servers or applications!
http://p.sf.net/sfu/zoho_dev2dev_nov
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS bootable CD image sought

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 07:28 PM 11/24/2012, bruce.bowman tds.net wrote:
>This may be a FAQ.
>
>I have an old DOS program that I wrote and still want to run, but it 
>uses VESA 3.0 SVGA graphics, which are not [fully] supported by 
>later versions of Windoze.* To make matters worse, the program 
>writes to disk during operation, and no modern computer has FAT16 
>partitions anymore.
>
>So I'm looking to package the program on a CD with FreeDOS, DOS 7.1 
>or something that can provide DOS functionality and write to a FAT32 
>partition. And preferably, the program should autorun upon bootup.

Well, your main problem here is that in case of an machine running 
Windows XP, you are likely using a hard drive formatted with NTFS and 
not FAT32, which means you would be at the mercy of a working NTFS 
file system driver as well, and that is at least in terms of write 
access a bit of a gamble IMPE...

Ralf 


--
Monitor your physical, virtual and cloud infrastructure from a single
web console. Get in-depth insight into apps, servers, databases, vmware,
SAP, cloud infrastructure, etc. Download 30-day Free Trial.
Pricing starts from $795 for 25 servers or applications!
http://p.sf.net/sfu/zoho_dev2dev_nov
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] hard drive question?

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 06:38 PM 11/13/2012, Michael B. Brutman wrote:
>I wanted to be able to dual boot my machine (a PCjr, 1983) to both
>operating systems.  DOS 3.3 uses an earlier variant of FAT16, which is
>only good up to 32MB.

Well, that's because this was a "true" FAT16, with up to 65535 
sectors of 512 bytes each, indicated by a partition type of 04h. 
"True" FAT16 because the sector count in the BPB is a 16 bit value.

>The FAT16 that everybody else is familiar with is more correctly 
>called FAT16B, and that allows for partitions up to 2GB.

Never heard the term "FAT16B" before, I remember that Compaq (who 
came up with the enhancement in their MS-DOS 3.31 version) used the 
term "Big FAT", using a partition type of 06h.
The partition limit of 2GB also applies only for DOS and early 
Windows 95, using a cluster size of 32KB. Windows NT (3.5+ IIRC) 
allowed for 64KB clusters, raising the limit for a FAT16 partition to 4GB...
Also, this is FAT implementation is using a 32bit value for the total 
sector count in the BPB, which makes it incompatible with earlier DOS 
versions (and hence the new partition type, preventing earlier 
version to even recognice those partitions)

>I think that 8GB is more than enough for any DOS system I'm ever going
>to run ...

+1

Ralf 


--
Monitor your physical, virtual and cloud infrastructure from a single
web console. Get in-depth insight into apps, servers, databases, vmware,
SAP, cloud infrastructure, etc. Download 30-day Free Trial.
Pricing starts from $795 for 25 servers or applications!
http://p.sf.net/sfu/zoho_dev2dev_nov
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] News reader

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 10:56 AM 10/17/2012, Santiago Almenara wrote:
>Hello!
>
>I am looking for a good news reader for DOS
>
>I need to subscribe in a "news://news.foo.org"; server.
PC-Pine should work for that just fine...

http://www.washington.edu/pine/overview/pcpine.html

Ralf 


--
Everyone hates slow websites. So do we.
Make your web apps faster with AppDynamics
Download AppDynamics Lite for free today:
http://p.sf.net/sfu/appdyn_sfd2d_oct
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Partition magic anyone?

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 02:09 PM 10/5/2012, Karen Lewellen wrote:
>Yes I do realize partition magic is still legal, but not so sure about its
>availability free for dos, because its new owners  state as of July 2011
>they are no longer offering partition magic at all.

That doesn't matter at all. It's still copyrighted software and if 
the copyright owner doesn't distribute it anymore, tough nuts...
There is legally no such thing as "Abandonware", the term that is 
floated by some to advocate (unrightfully though) that it is ok to 
distribute such software freely...

>There is a link for a free partition magic on the partition wizard 
>site, the replacement product
>for partition magic,  but it is not directing me clearly in lynx.

Welcome to the 21st century! ;-)

>Still I will check out offerings you present here.  your note gives me an
>idea, perhaps shifting the primary dos partition slightly so it is closer to
>that 2 gig window, which is why no data loss is important.
GParted (and off-shoots)is your best bet, though I am not sure that 
they (or any other Open Source project) can reliably resize data 
partitions, at least on non-FAT partitions involved, without data loss...

Ralf 


--
Don't let slow site performance ruin your business. Deploy New Relic APM
Deploy New Relic app performance management and know exactly
what is happening inside your Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and .NET app
Try New Relic at no cost today and get our sweet Data Nerd shirt too!
http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic-dev2dev
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Partition magic anyone?

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 08:49 PM 10/4/2012, Karen Lewellen wrote:
>greetings all,
>I realize I tend to wonder through the room and then find my corner again
>smiles.
>Anyway, I am wondering if any of you may be hiding a copy of partition
>magic for dos?
You do realize that this is still copyrighted, commercial software 
that nobody can legally provide you with a copy, do you?

Ralf 


--
Don't let slow site performance ruin your business. Deploy New Relic APM
Deploy New Relic app performance management and know exactly
what is happening inside your Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and .NET app
Try New Relic at no cost today and get our sweet Data Nerd shirt too!
http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic-dev2dev
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Userlist

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 11:20 AM 9/20/2012, Johannes Schwartz wrote:
>Hello can someone please delete my emailadress from that emaillist?
>Thanks.

Why don't you do it yourself, just follow the link at the very bottom 
of these messages to un-subscribe yourself

>__
>Freedos-user mailing list
>Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
>https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user


--
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

Re: [Freedos-user] false info on the freedos home page?

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 03:26 PM 9/18/2012, C. Masloch wrote:
> >> >>Again, this was purely marketing, not technical, as MS wanted to
> >> >>exclusively bundle their DOS with Windows. With (very creaky) shims,
> >> >>DR-DOS was said to be able to boot Win95 (and proved such in court),
> >> >
> >> > Where and when was that? This lawsuit was never brought to trial in
> >> > the first place...
> >>
> >> I don't know all the details, barely any actually.
> >
> > So why keep spreading such rumors? :-\
>
>Sources specified in the article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DR-DOS :
>
>http://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/1996865/cebit-caldera-windows-dr-dos-denying-ms-claims
>http://www.seattleweekly.com/1998-09-16/news/the-mouse-that-roared/
>(second page)

Where neither source mentioned that there was anything "proved in 
court", as there was never a trial on that matter.
There was an out-of-court settlement before it came to a trial, which 
beside apparently putting some money in Caldera's robs us now to 
actual see what was claimed and what in fact the ties between Windows 
95 and DOS at that point was...

> > Why do you think that back in the early days of Windows 95, the
> > "16bit thunking" was such a big deal? That wouldn't have been at all
> > necessary if Win32 and the old 16bit stuff weren't in effect two
> > discrete entities...
>
>Thunking is just API translation because of different pointer conventions
>and such.

Sorry, but that isn't the only kind of translation that needs/might 
have to be done...

>  Arguably the existence and usage of Windows-4-style thunking
>between 32-bit and 16-bit components illustratively shows that Windows 4
>is close to its Windows 3 roots.

Rather to the contrary, if it would be that close, thunking should 
not be necessary in the first place (or to a far lesser extend). And 
the issue of "16 bit thunking in Windows 95" ran itself out after 
more and more programs where specifically written for Win32 instead 
of relying on old Windows 3.x 16bit code/DLLs.


>In x86 Windows NT, 16-bit subsystems known as NTVDM and WOW are enabled by
>default, but they seem to be separated more clearly from the main (32-bit)
>system.

Well, as it is a new OS written from scratch, NTVDM was/is simply a 
replacement for the previously existed DOS at boot time. There is no 
need for NTVDM for anything but old 16bit DOS/Windows 3.x code and 
the command prompt for doing shell stuff in NT is not relying on any 
old 16bit stuff. That's why it is by default invoked by the 32bit 
cmd.exe instead of the for compatibility's sake still existing 16bit 
command.com.

Ralf 


--
Live Security Virtual Conference
Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and 
threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions 
will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware 
threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/
___
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?

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 02:25 PM 9/18/2012, Rugxulo wrote:
> >>Again, this was purely marketing, not technical, as MS wanted to
> >>exclusively bundle their DOS with Windows. With (very creaky) shims,
> >>DR-DOS was said to be able to boot Win95 (and proved such in court),
> >
> > Where and when was that? This lawsuit was never brought to trial in
> > the first place...
>
>I don't know all the details, barely any actually.

So why keep spreading such rumors? :-\

>I think it still did use DOS file system calls, but I could be wrong.
>DOS was not just a glorified boot loader here, it was way more
>interwoven and a hard requirement for this particular OS. You really
>couldn't (AFAICT) run Win95 without DOS, at least without rewriting
>the whole thing. But that's beyond my understanding, so you'd have to
>ask someone more technically inclined (Geoff Chappell ??).

May I suggest a closer study of works like "Windows 95 Internals" by 
Michael Podanoffsky (out of print though according to Amazon, ) or 
any other in-depth document about Win32?

Why do you think that back in the early days of Windows 95, the 
"16bit thunking" was such a big deal? That wouldn't have been at all 
necessary if Win32 and the old 16bit stuff weren't in effect two 
discrete entities...

Ralf 


--
Live Security Virtual Conference
Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and 
threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions 
will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware 
threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/
___
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?

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 01:29 PM 9/18/2012, Rugxulo wrote:
>(I hate legalese, so I dislike bringing this up, but ...)
>
>Again, this was purely marketing, not technical, as MS wanted to
>exclusively bundle their DOS with Windows. With (very creaky) shims,
>DR-DOS was said to be able to boot Win95 (and proved such in court),

Where and when was that? This lawsuit was never brought to trial in 
the first place...
If there were indeed technical reasons or not, Windows 9x/ME used the 
DOS it was started from just for the bootstrap process as well as in 
the command prompt window once booted. No other part of the OS is 
otherwise using any of the "underlying" DOS, it is all handled by the 
Win32 system. So Windows 9x/ME is in fact an OS in it's own right, 
just like Netware is/was an OS in it's own right, regardless of it 
being booted from DOS in the initial phase as well...

>Caldera / Lineo / DeviceLogics / DR-DOS Inc. were the ones selling
>7.03 (finalized circa late 1998, early 1999), which I bought online
>some years ago. Indeed, it lacked any "kernel" functionality regarding
>LFNs or FAT32, hence you were limited to 8 GB (four primary FAT16
>partitions of 2 GB each). And BTW, IIRC that would be 16 kb clusters,
>which is incredibly wasteful, blech.

Well, 2GB partitions would require 32KB cluster size... (65524 x 32KB 
= 2096768KB = approx. 2GB)

But certainly does no officially released DR-DOS/Novell 
DOS/OpenDOS/Caldera DR-DOS does support FAT32.

As mentioned, this is only possible by using the driver/patch/release of the "

The DR-DOS/OpenDOS Enhancement Project

"
(http://www.drdosprojects.de/) and that in turn is subject to the 
license agreement of the original (not so) OpenDOS 7.01 sources...

Ralf 


--
Live Security Virtual Conference
Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and 
threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions 
will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware 
threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Problem running a DOS game requiring EMS inside of VirtualBox

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 10:10 AM 9/18/2012, Louis Santillan wrote:
>There's only 13K upper mem free according to mem/c. I believe it is 
>in one block. And, iirc, all that most apps need is to be able to 
>swap a 4k page at a time. My guess is that jemmex doesn't implement 
>ems in a way that fps fbpro expects which is why it finds 0k free ems.
Sorry, but that is not correct, you would need a full 64KB segment 
for the EMS page frame for anything that is EMS 3.x/LIM compatible. 
EMS 4.0 allowed for smaller page frame size, but I don't know right 
now if anything below 16KB was possible, as that is the size of the 
logical EMS pages, there's also the requirement that a page frame 
starts at a 16K boundary.

If jemmex the culprit should be easy to find out by testing with 
another EMS manager to see if they would be able to set up EMS 
memory, but with only a 13KB block available, I doubt it...

Ralf 


--
Live Security Virtual Conference
Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and 
threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions 
will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware 
threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/
___
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?

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 08:45 PM 9/17/2012, Karen Lewellen wrote:
>You are too funny!
>consult the rest of the thread.

For exactly what?

Ralf 


--
Live Security Virtual Conference
Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and 
threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions 
will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware 
threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/
___
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?

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 04:48 PM 9/17/2012, Karen Lewellen wrote:
>Granted, I am a media professional, so facts especially n the Internet
>are important.
>the fact is ms dos 7.1 under wind 98 had fat 32, even Dr dos in 99 has it.

The fact is that there never was a "MS-DOS 7.1", it just happened 
that the underlying DOS mode of Windows 95B intensified itself with 
that version. As mentioned, MS-DOS 6.22 was the last official version 
of MS-DOS.

And DR-DOS never officially supported FAT32 either, the last version 
of "DR-DOS" was 6.0, released in 1991, followed by Novell DOS 7.0 in 
December 1993.
Any FAT32 support for it only exists in some 3party support for an 
unofficially maintained version of the later Caldera OpenDOS 7.x...

So in light of all that, there is no false information on the FreeDOS 
home page...
Ralf 


--
Live Security Virtual Conference
Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and 
threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions 
will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware 
threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Boot floppy image files

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 01:46 PM 9/16/2012, Ricardus Vincente wrote:
>On Sun, 2012-09-16 at 22:39 +0200, Eric Auer wrote:
>
>  Thanks!
>
>  Wow. I imagined that it would be a little easier than this.
>
>  While I understand that FreeDOS is a modern DOS not meant just for
>older hardware, I thought that one of the purposes for FreeDOS was to
>make older hardware relevant again. From the looks of it, I can't see
>any reasonable way to get FreeDOS working on an old machine that has no
>OS currently on it.

Just hang in there, not all people are just ignoring problems like this...

Ralf 


--
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

Re: [Freedos-user] Printers

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 03:55 PM 9/4/2012, Kenny Emond wrote:
>Hey,
>
>   What type of printer interface/language does FreeDOS support?

Short answer: Any printer on a parallel or serial interface.

>  Does it support PCL ver3? For example, would I be able to use an 
> HP Deskjet 950c ( 
> http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=bpd07350&cc=us&dlc=en&lc=en&product=57835
>  
> ) with FreeDOS? Thanks for the help,

DOS does not have a concept of OS wide drivers, all drivers are 
application dependent. As far as output from DOS itself goes, it only 
assumes a printer accepting plain ASCII code...

There are a couple of USB drivers that possible allow for a limited 
number of USB connected printers, but that leaves you still with the 
printer code restrictions...

Ralf 


--
Live Security Virtual Conference
Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and 
threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions 
will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware 
threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] How do I check a box in FreeDOS during installation?

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 10:18 AM 8/6/2012, Geoffrey van Wyk wrote:
I have been puzzled by ticking a checkbox in a GUI with the keyboard 
as well, but never bothered to find out, because I could always use the mouse.


What's a Biebermouse? This is DOS! 
(btw, the space bar works for check boxes in Windows for example as 
well, just like moving from one data entry field to another in a 
Windows program by just hitting the return/enter key instead of going 
back and forth between keyboard and mouse)


Ralf --
Live Security Virtual Conference
Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and 
threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions 
will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware 
threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] How do I check a box in FreeDOS during installation?

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 12:01 AM 8/6/2012, Geoffrey van Wyk wrote:
>Dear All,
>
>At a certain point during the installation of FreeDOS, one has to 
>choose which optional packages to install. The packages selected by 
>default are marked with Xs in their repective boxes. One then has to 
>place Xs in the boxes of the unselected packages.
>
>I do not know how to make the Xs in the boxes. I can move between 
>boxes with the arrow keys, but cannot find any way to make an X. I 
>have tried to type the X. I also tried SHIFT + X, to no avail.
>
>Please help.

Could you possibly persuaded to use the space bar/key?

Ralf 


--
Live Security Virtual Conference
Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and 
threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions 
will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware 
threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] ? - ?Not sure? - ?

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 11:16 PM 7/14/2012, Rugxulo wrote:

>On Jul 15, 2012 12:56 AM, "Ralf A. Quint" 
><<mailto:free...@gmx.net>free...@gmx.net> wrote:
> >
> > See above. It would be really helpful for you if you hit the books
> > about BASIC (almost any one will do) to understand the differences
> > between the different data types and how to use them.
>
>Or he could use a language like Rexx (see Regina), where everything 
>is a string. It has its own built-in debugger too.

That doesn't help one bit (pun intended) with neither actually 
learning the very basics of programming nor the problem of not using 
quotes around the string constants.
That would also be the very same issue in Rexx. Or pretty much any 
other programming language for that matter...

Ralf 


--
Live Security Virtual Conference
Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and 
threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions 
will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware 
threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] ? - ?Not sure? - ?

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 08:22 PM 7/14/2012, Kenny Emond wrote:
>Hey,
>
>   I'm not sure if I can post this here, but I seem to have hit a 
> small roadblock (but I don't know where it is). My main goal is to 
> have an easily accessible meter and feet converter. When I use 
> FBide to compile and run, it comes up with no errors. But when it 
> runs, I put in "a" or "b" and then it just quits (of course, after 
> I press "enter"). Could anyone help me out? Here's what my file looks like:

Well, not a FreeDOS problem at all, but "basic" (mis)understanding of 
programming (not to mention that the math is simply wrong)

>
>dim ft as single, m as single, answer1 as single, 
> answer2 as single, input1 as string, a as string, b as string
>input "Convert (A) Feet to meters, or (B) Meters to 
> feet? [NOTE- Use lower case!] ", input1
>cls
>if input1 = a Then

That's where soft matter hits a fast rotating object: You input a 
string but compare the input against an uninitialized variable called 
a. The proper comparison would be 'if input1 = "a" then', as string 
constants have to be enclosed in double quotes

>   input "Feet amount: ", ft
>
>   answer1 = ft * 3.2808399

Don't know where you got that number from but a foot in the commonly 
accepted Fred Flintstone units is 0.3048m (1 foot = 12 inches of 
25.4mm each, that's 304.8mm = 0.3048m)

>   cls
>   print ; ft; " feet is equal to "; answer1; " meters."
>   sleep
>
>elseif input1 = b then

Same as above, to compare strings, you need to enclose the string 
constant in double quotes, so it needs to be 'elseif input1 = "b" 
then', or else you again compare against an uninitialized variable named b

>   input "Meter amount: ", m
>
>   answer2 = m / 3.2808399

Again wrong math, in order to get from meters you need to divide by 
0.3048 (or multiply by 3.28084)

>   cls
>   print ; m; " meters is equal to "; answer2; " feet."
>   sleep
>
>end if
>sleep
>end
>
>
>Any ideas?

See above. It would be really helpful for you if you hit the books 
about BASIC (almost any one will do) to understand the differences 
between the different data types and how to use them.

Ralf 


--
Live Security Virtual Conference
Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and 
threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions 
will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware 
threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Networking

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 07:14 PM 6/15/2012, Marcos Favero Florence de Barros wrote:

>If all goes well, technicians from the municipality will run the
>network cables in the building for us. But we don't want them to
>start drilling walls and roofs before we are sure the system is
>robust.

I haven't touched DataPerfect for 14 years and back then, it was a 
data conversion of existing DP database files into some other data format.

What I remember and at least the available DP manuals also state is 
that DP is using the very basic DOS "(un)lock file region" call of 
DOS 3.0+ to allow concurrent access to the same database on a 
network. That would be specifically INT21h/AH=5Ch, and that call 
needs to be properly supported in FreeDOS to begin with.
Any file caching software should not touch access to networked drives 
(on the clients) and on the local machine that acts as server, it 
needs to be aware of the locking call and act accordingly...

Ralf 


--
Live Security Virtual Conference
Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and 
threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions 
will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware 
threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] usage report

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 09:27 PM 6/6/2012, Rugxulo wrote:
>BP 7.01 (see file times) should? already be patched for the runtime
>200 error.

No, there was never an 'official' patch from Borland, for any version 
of Borland Pascal 7...

>No idea why you would have a runtime error. You mean running
>BP7-compiled apps? Compiler itself? BPC.EXE? Or the IDE?

Before mentioned runtime error effects only compiled programs that 
utilize the CRT unit. The IDE/compiler itself and compiled programs 
that do not use the stock CRT unit are not effected by that runtime 
error 200 problem.

>384 MB should be plenty for DPMI 16-bit, but maybe it's "too much"??
>Dunno.

Certainly not. I have the BP7 (and BC++3.01) IDE running on hosts 
with 512 and 768MB of RAM with no issue (not on a FreeDOS system though)..

>You could try limiting (or increasing) memory handles for XMS
>or (EMS?) "MAX". (IIRC, BP7 can access up to 128 MB on suitable 386+
>machines, but I'm not sure of the details.)

see above...

Ralf


--
Live Security Virtual Conference
Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and 
threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions 
will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware 
threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] New FreeDos user (installed to both amd64 desktop && old toshiba satalite)

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 11:30 PM 5/24/2012, Joe(theWordy)Philbrook wrote:

>I don't suppose there is a way to tell FreeDOS to execute something more
>slowly???
(Free)DOS runs as fast as the processor you're using allows it too. 
And why shouldn't it? ;-)

For slowing down games and such, there are/were a bunch of slow-down 
tools around, never used any of those myself though. One programs 
name that's kind of stuck in my head in that regard's is "moslo", 
another Google search probably will get you into the right direction 
for that... ;-)

Ralf 


--
Live Security Virtual Conference
Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and 
threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions 
will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware 
threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Virtual floppy change problem with VirtualBox

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 12:31 PM 5/23/2012, Jack wrote:
>As I just got through noting, in another post, why would the BIOS
>data include diskette change-line flags if they were NOT intended
>to be USED??
>Until someone can positively REFUTE the data offered by the BIOS
>Central data-table list, my opinion is that neither you nor any-
>one else can say Int 13h is better or 40:xx is "coffee grounds"!

There is no need to refute anything, it all comes down to the very 
simple fact that IBM documented the mentioned INT13h BIOS calls, 
while vast areas of the BIOS data segment simply are not!!!

Comes to show that you are just out to prove another old engineering 
truth, "good is the enemy of great".

Just as Tom mentioned, this is all going nowhere, "Du hast Recht und 
ich hab meine Ruhe"... :-(

Ralf


--
Live Security Virtual Conference
Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and 
threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions 
will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware 
threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Virtual floppy change problem with VirtualBox

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 11:33 AM 5/23/2012, Jack wrote:
>And certainly, it is not impossible to cache floppies.Before the
>debut of VirtualBox, UIDE/UIDE2 had done so successfully, for years,
>without any complaints at all!

Jack, PLEASE, don't pull yourself up on the "VirtualBox" issue, it is 
rather a more general problem.

You simply rely on the contents of the memory region rather than than 
properly query system via INT13. And that isn't adding much to the 
logic and overall size of your drivers compared to the indiscriminate 
reliance on the validity of the BIOS data area.

Yes, this will be more likely an issue with a(ny) virtual machine 
setup than with a "real iron" box, but then querying the DOS 
interrupt would rather help for example to make use of the floppy 
drive caching in a system with more than 2 floppy drives...

Ralf 


--
Live Security Virtual Conference
Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and 
threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions 
will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware 
threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Virtual floppy change problem with VirtualBox

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 09:22 AM 5/23/2012, Jack wrote:

>You are WRONG, Tom!!

Sorry, Jack, but he is not

Honestly Jack, please don't explode each time someone is making a 
critical statement. There simply is no reason to get all personal about this...

>UIDE has NEVER ignored if a diskette has change-line support!   It
>does in fact check the BIOS data table at 0:448h for bit 0 (change
>line for diskette A:) or bit 4 (change line for diskette B:).   If
>those bits are off, diskette A: or diskette B: will not be cached.

Beside assuming on my part that 0:0448 is a typo (and you are 
referring rather to 0040:0041, as used in your sources), the problem 
that Tom is trying to make you aware of is that you rely on the value 
in that location regardless of the fact if the system is indicating 
via BIOS interrupt INT13h/15h that the line change status is 
supported in the first place.
And VB is apparently clearly stating when "asked" that it does not 
support the drive change line status, hence you can not rely on those 
bits in the BDA. Simple as that...

Ralf 


--
Live Security Virtual Conference
Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and 
threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions 
will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware 
threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Virtual floppy change problem

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 05:10 PM 5/20/2012, Bertho Grandpied wrote:
> > From: "Ralf A. Quint" 
>
> > At 02:45 PM 5/20/2012, Bertho Grandpied wrote:
> >>Case in point : unless explicitly excluded, MS-not-so-Smart-Drive
> >>will happily cache certain RAMdisks (not MS ramdrive)
>
> > What ramdisks would that be?
>
>Your question is challenging my memory big time - I think it was 
>seen with XMSDISK (and cousins thereof) but could've been some other ramdisks.
>
> > A ramdisk that is properly identifying
> > itself as such should not be cached by Smartdrive, if it
> > doesn't, it is not the fault of Smartdrive...
>
>Raises the question of what a Ramdisk should do in order to 
>"properly" identify itself to smartdrv... impersonate MS-RAMDRIVE, maybe ;=)

For starters, use a media descriptor byte value of 0xFA in the BPB...

>I suspect a mix of bad faith and lazy coding on behalf of MS, but - 
>whose "fault" ever it may be, the problem - once recognised! - was 
>easily worked around by explicitly excluding the RD on smartdrive's 
>command line.

yeah, that good old "Microsoft bashing without hard facts" trick, 
never gets old... :-(

Ralf 


--
Live Security Virtual Conference
Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and 
threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions 
will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware 
threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Prevent boot from Floppy?

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 03:10 PM 5/20/2012, Wolfgang Schechinger wrote:
>Der experts,
>
>may I ask another question:
>
>Is there a way to make FreeDos ignore that there is a floppy present 
>upon boot, i.e. force a boot from the harddrive? Again only a 
>problem when running it in a VM, I think, as on a hard PC, you may 
>set the boot options in the BIOS.

Try to think about this for more than a second!

How is FreeDOS supposed to decide from which media it is to be booted?
(You have heard about the "chicken and egg" problem before, haven't you?)

Ralf 


--
Live Security Virtual Conference
Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and 
threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions 
will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware 
threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Virtual floppy change problem

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 02:45 PM 5/20/2012, Bertho Grandpied wrote:
>Case in point : unless explicitly excluded, MS-not-so-Smart-Drive 
>will happily cache certain RAMdisks (not MS ramdrive) which is 
>counter-productive to say the least. This is very arguably a defect 
>of smartdrive, which I don't expect UIDE can possibly share.
What ramdisks would that be? A ramdisk that is properly identifying 
itself as such should not be cached by Smartdrive, if it doesn't, it 
is not the fault of Smartdrive...

Ralf 


--
Live Security Virtual Conference
Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and 
threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions 
will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware 
threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Virtual floppy change problem

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 04:51 AM 5/20/2012, Bertho Grandpied wrote:
>Jack, if I may chime in... I think you're now contemplating the 
>right step.  I can understand your frustration with VB in this 
>instance, BUT imho your previous approach has been to ignore a few 
>facts, that have nothing to do with that or another emulator or virtualiser :
>
>On REAL (old) PC hardware, the existence of floppy disk changelines 
>is not guaranteed; even if the line is present AND properly 
>connected it MIGHT be flaky or not work at all; or the BIOS might 
>not update the bits you expect. MS-DOS (and, I presume, good DOS 
>clones as well) will use alternate means and kluges to check for 
>media change in the absence of a (credible) change line. Your DOS 
>drivers could have been relying on DOS for checking media change, 
>not on the BIOS or direct HW interrogation in the 1st place !
Sorry but "REAL OLD" would have to mean "pre-IBM AT", as every 1.2MB 
5.25" drive and all 3.5" drives available in those machines and newer 
did support the disk change line/signal. There were only very few 
systems (really cheap clones) where the BIOS did not support this and 
those kludges you were referring to "like the disk volume label" 
check had to be used.

Anyway you slice it, that Virtual Box (and probably a few other VMs) 
are not properly supporting this is rather due to the ignorance of 
those VM developers and the stupid attitude of "nobody is using 
floppy disks anymore". It is a very well known function, relatively 
easy to implement, so it should be up to the VM developers to do so...

just my 2c,

Ralf 


--
Live Security Virtual Conference
Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and 
threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions 
will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware 
threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] D525MW

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 02:45 AM 5/18/2012, Radoslav Tchipanov wrote:
>Hi Ralf
>
>This board D525MW has printer port - the board is in front of me.

My bad, I must have looked at a different Atom board... :-[

>We use our proprietary software which controls external I/O board 
>trough printer port at address 378. Unfortunately the software could 
>not communicate with the board on this motherboard, as it does on 
>older computers.

As you are not sure what port it might be using and just assuming 
that it uses 378h is certainly wrong, have you checked with what 
value is in the BIOS data segment at 0040h:0008h? That should tell 
you what the (first) parallel ports actual base address supposed to 
be. Chances are, it might be for example 3BCh, as with PS/2 or Compaq computers

>About the graphics. Our software is written in C and uses the video 
>controller in graphics mode trough C graphic driver. Unfortunately 
>only the zero digit is displayed properly. All other digits are not 
>displayed on the screen.

Well, not a FreeDOS issue. You again seem to rely on some specific 
hardware features (character map). Certainly nothing that FreeDOS has 
an influence on. Any character mapping features are video BIOS 
dependent, not DOS...

Ralf 


--
Live Security Virtual Conference
Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and 
threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions 
will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware 
threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Printer Setup, again

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 06:40 PM 5/17/2012, Kenny wrote:
>So I've been hearing that DOS needs no drivers for a printer.

Again, all that DOS knows about a printer is that it is a (ASCII) 
character based device on either parallel or serial port. No driver 
needed for that functionality...

>  Well, it's not working for me.

Tough nuts, but such is life...

>If it helps, I have an HP printer. It's not that new, and connects 
>via USB, but other than that, that's all I know.

Well, DOS by itself predates the use of USB, all you can try is to 
use the USB drivers that are mentioned a few times here. But those 
only provide the basic functionality of talking to a USB device, like 
a printer. It still doesn't provide you with anything printer specific...

>  I have no idea what to do. And telling me that it's not going to 
> work unless you do something, and not telling me how to do it is 
> not going to help me at all (just saying).

You need to try and understand the answer you got. I clearly told you 
that DOS does not have the concept of "printer drivers". That's a 
simple fact. If there are printer specific drivers for use under DOS, 
they are application specific. Like printer drivers for MS Word, 
printer drivers for WordPerfect, printer drivers for Lotus 1-2-3, etc.

>I tried using the "print" command, but all it did was add it to a queue.

Well, that's what the purpose of the "print" command is, it's a print 
queue (spooler), for printing "in the background". It has nothing to 
do with any printer drivers, for before mentioned reasons...

>I tried doing it through the "edit" program by changing the ports to 
>every option there was on there, but it still didn't work.

Well, "doesn't work" doesn't help. It is not a proper problem description...

>I would like some friendly advice and instructions on how to do it. Thanks,

Doing what? Again, DOS (and it's direct related utilities) does not 
have the concept of printer drivers, so if you do not have a printer 
that understands simple character output and ASCII control sequences, 
then you are simply out of luck...

Ralf 


--
Live Security Virtual Conference
Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and 
threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions 
will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware 
threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] D525MW

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 07:02 AM 5/17/2012, Radoslav Tchipanov wrote:
>Hi
>
>Has anybody run Freedos on Intel motherboard D525MW? I have problems 
>with the printer port and Video graphics display of it.

Well, this Atom board doesn't have a "printer" port (only USB) and 
DOS by itself doesn't use any graphics, so you might need to be a bit 
more detailed as to what your exact problems are...

Ralf 


--
Live Security Virtual Conference
Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and 
threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions 
will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware 
threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Printer Setup

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 04:54 AM 5/17/2012, Kenny Emond wrote:
>Hey all DOS users and such,
>
>I know I already posted a thread before about setting up a 
> shared printer (which by the way, how would you acquire the ip 
> address of the printer in DOS? And how again would you say you had 
> to use the printer if you wanted to print something from a DOS 
> computer in the LAN network? Sorry about the little rabbit trail 
> here), but I wanted to know how to just set up a regular printer in 
> DOS (FreeDOS). I'm pretty sure you need drivers for it, but beyond 
> that, I'm pretty fuzzy on how to actually get the computer 
> communicating with the printer. I'd also like to know how to set it 
> up so it loads the driver and printer on startup, and I can call 
> from it anytime with the "print" command. I'm sure that setting it 
> up is the same as doing that, but I just figured I'd clarify, just 
> in case. Thanks,

Sorry, that is not how (printing in) DOS works! DOS doesn't know 
squat about "printers", beside that one could be connected on a 
parallel (serial) port.

DOS printer drivers are application dependent, loaded and used by the 
application as needed. There is no concept of a OS wide printer 
driver in DOS...

Ralf 


--
Live Security Virtual Conference
Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and 
threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions 
will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware 
threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Laptop With Built in Wireless

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 09:04 AM 5/8/2012, Kenny Emond wrote:
>I recently put FreeDOS on my laptop that has built in wireless. I 
>tried to see if the BIOS on the computer would let me know what the 
>packet driver name was or where, but it didn't. So I was wondering 
>how to find it or how to scan for what type of driver to get, or 
>something. I tried just typing in the packet interupt in mtcp.cfg, 
>but when I ran the dhcp app it wouldn't work. Ay clues/tips? Thanks
You will likely be SOL with using a wireless adapter with (Free)DOS, 
as you not only need a general packet driver for the NIC itself, but 
also software that handles all the encryption stuff as well as all 
the wireless settings (SSID, channel, etc)...

Ralf 


--
Live Security Virtual Conference
Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and 
threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions 
will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware 
threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Setting up a POP email for gmail

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 06:35 AM 5/6/2012, Kenny Emond wrote:
>Hey all,
>
>I tried (using arachne) to put gmail as my pop3 email thing, but 
> for some reason it won't work. I even turned on the POP3 settings 
> in gmail, but arachne still won't pull from it. Any Ideas?

Well, there are two possible issues:

- for one, as already mentioned, Arachne is a web browser and not an 
email client, so it isn't doing POP3 in the first place. Beside that 
GMail isn't doing "stanard" POP3 (on TCP/110) but POP3 over SSL, 
which runs on TCP/995 (likewise, SMTP is not using TCP/25, it's SMTP 
over SSL on TCP/465)

- when accessing GMail via a web browser, you are also no longer 
using standard http (TCP/80) but https over TCP/443. Not sure if 
Arachne handles https properly (last time I had a look at it, years 
ago, it didn't)

Ralf 


--
Live Security Virtual Conference
Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and 
threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions 
will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware 
threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Long-term survival of FreeDOS

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 01:13 PM 4/10/2012, Jack wrote:
>Cannot answer on all subjects, but re: disk/CD/DVD drivers, I am NOT
>overly optimistic!   Intel/Microsoft want us all to "buy into" AHCI,
>and they may have started "ordering" mainboard vendors to omit SATA/
>IDE logic from their BIOS routines.

Do you have a source for this statement?

Sorry, but this completely contradicts the latest "Ivy bridge" 
chipset just released, which includes 6 SATA/eSATA ports...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/10/intel_7_series_chipsets/

http://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/product-briefs/z75-z77-express-chipset-brief.pdf


Ralf


--
Better than sec? Nothing is better than sec when it comes to
monitoring Big Data applications. Try Boundary one-second 
resolution app monitoring today. Free.
http://p.sf.net/sfu/Boundary-dev2dev
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Arachne Troubles

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 01:05 PM 4/9/2012, Kenny Emond wrote:
>Okay, Thanks everyone! I filled in the my_ip section with my ip 
>(according to dhcp.exe), but Arachne still points me to the 
>Roadrunner search, saying "Why Am I Here? - You entered a web 
>address that was used to present site suggestions...". I tried a lot 
>of things,  one of which was filing in mtcp (which I did 
>successfully and when I ping a web address or other computers 
>connected to our router, it comes back positive), but nothing really 
>worked. I know that our internet works on our other comps because 
>I'm browsing right now on our mac. Also, Arachne is clearly 
>connected because it brings up the home page, which it couldn't do 
>before I set it up right. I also have to add (since I didn't really 
>in the first place): I'm pretty new to DOS, so I don't know all the 
>DOS-talk terms and whatnot. I do know how to effectively do a lot of 
>things, but not as much as most of you experienced users and such.

As I mentioned before, you end up on this Roadrunner page when you do 
not have a proper DNS server set on you host. That is in general not 
something DOS specific, that is something you need to have on every 
OS unless you want to access remote servers by their IP address only.
If Arachne brings up the (which) homepage, it could be that there is 
an Arachne specific setting for the primary DNS...

Ralf 


--
For Developers, A Lot Can Happen In A Second.
Boundary is the first to Know...and Tell You.
Monitor Your Applications in Ultra-Fine Resolution. Try it FREE!
http://p.sf.net/sfu/Boundary-d2dvs2
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] mTCP: Telnet, TCP, etc.

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 01:12 PM 4/9/2012, Rugxulo wrote:
>Hi,
>
>On Mon, Apr 9, 2012 at 3:08 PM, Kenny Emond  wrote:
> > Hey,
> >
> >I'm going to just not beat around the bush. I'll and ask it 
> straight out.
> > What the heck are Telnet, TCP and all those other programs that comes with
> > mTCP for?
>
>You can use Telnet to do certain things like play a roguelike online.
>See http://crawl.develz.org/wordpress/howto for telnet servers for
>Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup.
well, just to be clear, telnet is not anything related specifically 
to online games, but it is a tool to get shell (command line) access 
to a remote server...

beside that, Michael (the mTCP author) lists the basic general 
purpose on his mTCP web site (http://www.brutman.com/mTCP/)

Ralf




--
For Developers, A Lot Can Happen In A Second.
Boundary is the first to Know...and Tell You.
Monitor Your Applications in Ultra-Fine Resolution. Try it FREE!
http://p.sf.net/sfu/Boundary-d2dvs2
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Arachne Troubles

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 06:46 PM 4/8/2012, Kenny Emond wrote:

Hey,

   I was finnaly able to find a packet driver for my DOS computer 
(ethernet connection), but for some reason Arachne shows the main 
page, but when I try to go to a different page, it brings up a 
"roadrunner" search thing.


That means that you do not have a proper DNS server set in your setup...


 I tried to edit the wattcp.cfg file, like so:

   my_ip = dhcp


That IP has to be in the same subnet as your gateway, which means in 
must be also a 192.168.0.x address...



   netmask = 255.255.255.0
   gateway = 192.168.0.1
   domain_list = www.rr.com

I had to use our mac to find out our router ip (it was under "dhcp" 
as "router"). I put the ip under the "gateway" section, which I 
don't know was correct.

That would be correct.

P.S.- Please don't use any info I gave you to hack me or something 
like that. I'm doing this on the honour system. Thanks! Again!


Even your local IP that you masked out in this case would be a 
"private" one, of no use to anyone as you are behind a router that 
has your public IP address...


Ralf --
For Developers, A Lot Can Happen In A Second.
Boundary is the first to Know...and Tell You.
Monitor Your Applications in Ultra-Fine Resolution. Try it FREE!
http://p.sf.net/sfu/Boundary-d2dvs2
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] 32 bit FreeDOS?

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 11:39 AM 4/7/2012, Marco Achury wrote:
>Check Kolibri OS, is very nice 32 bits, simple,
>ligth, GUI, boot from floppy...
>
>The sole thing is missing there is a DOS
>emulator so we can run our beloved DOS
>apps.

So what CAN you run on that, beside playing Minesweeper?

Ralf 


--
For Developers, A Lot Can Happen In A Second.
Boundary is the first to Know...and Tell You.
Monitor Your Applications in Ultra-Fine Resolution. Try it FREE!
http://p.sf.net/sfu/Boundary-d2dvs2
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] 32 bit FreeDOS?

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 04:19 AM 4/7/2012, Zbigniew wrote:
> >> I was wondering what would it take to upgrade FreeDOS to 32bit,
> >> whether it would be worth and whether we would have the human
> >> resources.
> >
> > 32bit user programs tend to be available already in the form of
> > protected mode software, using one of the various DOS Extenders.
>
>I've got no idea - but many of you can answer precisely: it is really
>the same having 4 GB of "linear" address space, and, from the other
>side, just 640 KB, and "the rest" (if 3,5 GB can be called "the
>rest"...) available by using some kind of "extenders"?

Well, using the "extender" approach doesn't break compatibility with 
an existing setup/applications...

>But is "high-end consumer platform" FreeDOS' "target audience"?
>Besides: 4GB compared to 64 GB is 16x less. But 640 KB compared to 4
>GB is more than 6000x times less...
I seriously don't think so. I just don't see the point of using such 
a system with FreeDOS.
The target audience should rather be people that uses system with 
more limited resources, either by need or by choice and those that 
need to be able to easily access hardware resources in their 
applications, like in embedded or "kiosk" style applications.
Or simply for "old times sake", like playing old games, possibly even 
on old computers.

>Why not, actually? DOS - or something as simple, as DOS - on desktops
>has advantages over contemporary OS-es, even Linux/BSD's:
>- simplicity
>- "light weight"

But what are the trade-offs for these?

>At the time of cheap computers, do we really need "multiuser" OS? It
>was reasonable 20 years ago, when fast machine was really expensive -
>but is it still today, when every average user can have his own
>computer (and - in fact - has several without even realizing it, e.g.
>his handy, iPhone, watch etc)?

I think here you have a mixup in terms and usage...
A "multi-user" OS/computer from 20 years ago was indeed being used to 
"service" multiple, independent user connected to the single 
"processing unit" via "dumb" terminals.

>No idea however, how much overhead/complexity could be disposed of, if
>Linux were single-user - but indeed after establishing my own user
>account ("root" is always present immediately after installation) I
>don't need to create the third one on the same machine.

It's today not as much the need to create a different user (as in 
concurrent user with his/her own keyboard/display/mouse) but the 
ability to use multiple "sessions", to switch between workspaces...
The way that all those "contemporary OSes" achieve this is by using 
the same system architecture that was used 20+ years ago on those 
"multi-user" systems you describe them...

>I remember, that it has been advertised as serious advantage of Win
>3.x, that the drivers from now on shall be created "for Windows", and
>not for every single program separately, like it was before - but
>never found information, why the drivers weren't made "for DOS"
>earlier. Not "for AutoCAD", "for WordPerfect" and so on - but "for
>DOS" in general (then available for every program/application).
Simply by the way the whole PC/computer world developed. In those 
early days (remember that DOS is now 30 years old!), the basic 
hardware available was fairly simplistic. No graphic screens (as the 
RAM to created memory mapped devices was extreme expensive
back then), even printers were pretty dumb and featureless. There was 
simply no need for any driver concept.

But was things developed, graphic screens/cards started to appear. 
DOS by itself didn't have any use for those features, it was still 
text based only. Applications that wanted to take advantage of those 
additional features first simply were able to use the interface 
provided by the add-on ROMs on those video cards, via INT 10h. Please 
note that this is part of the BIOS system, not of  DOS!
In the early days of graphics on the PC, things were still pretty 
simply, most manufacturers just followed "the lead" of IBM and access 
to the graphics adapters was limited to the memory layout of the 
CGA/EGA/VGA cards and the initial INT10h functions that were defined. 
Still not much of a need for special "drivers", as there was a fairly 
limited set of common features and functions. And no need for DOS to 
make use of any of those, still good old 80x25 text mode and a 
command line. And things were good... ;-)

Then the first "extended/enhanced" VGA cards showed up (ok, there 
were a handful adapters that expanded beyond the original CGA/EGA 
definitions), hitting both the limitation of the direct hardware 
access (video RAM) and the INT10h interface (take a look at the 
INT10h mode options in the RBIL to get a rough idea). And graphics 
functionality was still limited to a few application that made use of 
it, like spreadsheets displaying charts graphics, the first CAD 
programs, computer games.
So in order to take advantage of those newly available features, 
programmers had to think "outside of the 

Re: [Freedos-user] 32 bit FreeDOS?

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 03:15 AM 4/7/2012, Alex wrote:
>In the recent threads there have been many mentions to the fact that
>FreeDOS is "only" 16bit (of course, that is what it is meant to be)
>and that it is out of touch with the modern computing world.

You do realize that it is kind of 'out of touch with the modern 
computing world' for more than a decade? That its defined goal is to 
recreate a proprietary legacy 16bit OS that was announced "End of 
Life" by Microsoft, which started Jim to initiate this project?

>I was wondering what would it take to upgrade FreeDOS to 32bit,
>whether it would be worth and whether we would have the human
>resources.

It's not worth it IMHO, as it would not (MS-/PC-/DR-)DOS anymore...

>What would be the pros, cons, in actual terms *for FreeDOS users*?

I am not sure what you actually mean by "upgrade to 32bit"? What are 
the technical changes/benefit in doing though?
DOS ties in deeply into the segmented 1MB memory model of the 
original 8086 processor and any change in that will simply break 
compatibility with existing DOS drivers/applications and you simply 
do not have DOS anymore...

>The underlying assumption is that FreeDOS is, as stated by others, a
>"niche OS", and we have no problem with that. Nor do we need to run
>after all the modern computer standards just for the sake of being
>abreast with the times.
>Having said this, could we have tangible benefits from a 32bit
>version? What are the prospects of a 32bit FreeDOS in the future? And,
>again, would it be worth?

No benefits at all, as there are simply no applications to use with it.
Therefor I don't think there are any prospects, making it simply not 
worth. You would create a complete new OS, with all the downsides of 
widespread support for that. Just see how many "wanna-be" OSes are 
out there that never see any use beside by their "inventors" (if even that)...

>I expect flames in this thread, but that is not the objective.

No flames, just an honest opinion. This "32bit DOS" is just a 
buzzword that's around for a while without anyone actually stating 
what the benefits "should" be, without creating a complete new OS...


>By the way, there once was a FreeDOS-32 project being developed. Does
>anyone know if it is ever likely to see the light of the day? What are
>the prospects?
As I mentioned in a previous reply, it is IMHO a "still born" 
project, hence I doubt that you will ever see "the light of day".
Those folks that started it simply underestimated/misjudged their 
objectives, specially in light of the available resources and skills...

just me 2c, from someone who is using DOS for 30 years now,

Ralf 


--
For Developers, A Lot Can Happen In A Second.
Boundary is the first to Know...and Tell You.
Monitor Your Applications in Ultra-Fine Resolution. Try it FREE!
http://p.sf.net/sfu/Boundary-d2dvs2
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Strange timer-related issue

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 02:06 AM 4/7/2012, Zbigniew wrote:
>2012/3/11, Bernd Blaauw :
>
> > Please let us know if/when you're able to pinpoint a culprit.
> > You might want to start with a MSDOS/Win9x bootdisk (www.bootdisk.com)
> > to eliminate FreeDOS components as the culprit, and to have a proven
> > reference platform.
>
>With a help of Ed (DXForth creator) the problem is recognized; Ed wrote:
>
>#v+
>   4DOS (or something associated with it) is setting PIT timer 0 
> from mode 3 to
>   mode 2 - which in turn is causing MS in DX-Forth to run slow.
>#v-
Nice find, didn't really expect that. Any hints in the sources as to 
why they are fiddling with the timer?

Ralf 


--
For Developers, A Lot Can Happen In A Second.
Boundary is the first to Know...and Tell You.
Monitor Your Applications in Ultra-Fine Resolution. Try it FREE!
http://p.sf.net/sfu/Boundary-d2dvs2
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Programming languages in FreeDOS

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 08:32 PM 4/6/2012, Rugxulo wrote:

> > For more than half of those languages, there doesn't exist a (at
> > least serious) DOS implementation.
> > You rather have to use what is available, and that is fairly limited...
>
>There is easily an implementation for more than half of those, but
>often it's hard to find. So you have to dig fairly hard, and sometimes
>it's fairly old and doesn't work well anymore (on modern hardware,
>OSes, etc.).

That's why I clearly mentioned "serious"...


> > It doesn't matter for example if PHP is in the top of this popularity
> > list when there is no use for that in DOS. Or JavaScript, or Haskell,
> > Ruby, Python, Objective-C, C# or Java, just to name a few...
>
>Ruby, Python, and Objective C work in DOS (among others) thanks to
>DJGPP. But apparently those aren't "true DOS enough" for you.

Correct, as soon as DJGPP gets in the mix, you are just trying to 
emulate *ix on DOS. With an enormous overhead...

>  While I
>sympathize, I don't know what else to tell you. You have to take what
>you can get (or roll your own, which ain't easy).

Correct again, and that's why I don't consider these "serious" 
implementations.
Just because something exists, doesn't mean that it is also 
practically usable...


> > And if there is a more or less complete DOS port, for things like
> > Python, D, you still have to fight with the inherited Unix/Linux or
> > Windows centric concept of a lot of those.
>
>Yes, it's true, most code these days is POSIX or Windows only, which
>definitely complicates things. They don't care for being minimal or
>compatible to things outside of that (sadly).

What code are you talking about here?
If you write your own, this isn't an issue. And if you are looking 
for existing DOS code, it isn't an issue either.
Only if you try what I consider futile and start to "back port" 
Windows or Linux applications to DOS.
I am sure that in the vast majority of cases (there might be 
exceptions) the result will be rather "half-a***d"...

> > And how does it matter "how popular" a language is, it matters what
> > you want to achieve. And then try to use the best tool for the job,
> > as with everything else in life...
>
>Well, if you're going to port something, you need helpers, testers,
>and examples, etc. If I choose Python, hypothetically, I'm probably
>going to have more people helping me than if I chose Occam. But like I
>said, we're low on volunteers, so it doesn't matter. FreeDOS isn't
>shiny and new enough for "most" people to bother with it, sadly.

First of all, why "port something" instead of developing new. In a 
lot of cases, proper documentation to begin with, this might not be 
more difficult. Or take significantly longer. And the result might be 
even more "rewarding" than trying to adjust source code for a 
different OS to the inherited limitations.
And your example of choosing "Python over Occam" for anything FreeDOS 
based/related doesn't make sense. You will get certainly more/enough 
people familiar with C or Pascal, two long time used, tried and test 
languages...

Yes, (Free)DOS isn't "shiny and new", that is by definition and that 
isn't necessarily a bad thing. As I mentioned in my other reply, 
people just need to understand strengths and weaknesses and act 
accordingly. And people need to start collaborating again, on a 
common goal. That's why for example all those wanna-be GUIs that 
popped up a few years ago ended up going nowhere...

Ralf 


--
For Developers, A Lot Can Happen In A Second.
Boundary is the first to Know...and Tell You.
Monitor Your Applications in Ultra-Fine Resolution. Try it FREE!
http://p.sf.net/sfu/Boundary-d2dvs2
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Programming languages in FreeDOS

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 05:05 PM 4/6/2012, Zbigniew wrote:
>2012/4/6, Alex :
>
> > Just to be clear, which is the best Pascal version available to date
> > for FreeDOS?
>
>Perhaps TP 3.0 - maximal effect taken out of minimum of code?
>
>#v+
>Turbo Pascal 3 for MS-DOS was released in September 1986. Being
>version 3, there were lesser releases prior to it and flashier ones
>after, but 3 was a solid representation of the Turbo Pascal
>experience: a full Pascal compiler, including extensions that it made
>it practical for commercial use, tightly integrated with an editor.
>And the whole thing was lightning fast, orders of magnitude faster at
>building projects than Microsoft's compilers.
>
>The entire Turbo Pascal 3.02 executable--the compiler and IDE--was
>39,731 bytes. How does that stack up in 2011 terms? Here are some
>things that Turbo Pascal is smaller than, as of October 30, 2011:

Well, I don't know...
I used 3.02 on DOS for a long time, after having already used 1.0 and 
2.0 on CP/M. It was back in those days really great, also considering 
the price (about 10-20% of what other compilers cost back then, with 
a couple of exceptions).
But the unit concept introduced in version 4.0 (and "copied" from 
UCSD Pascal) really made larger programs more feasible, the IDE made 
the development easier, specially with the integrated debugger. And 
the possibility to generate .EXE files and link with external 
assembler code (or C or Fortran if you fancied) would be clear 
advantages over 3.0. And it was still relatively small.
That's why I would rather say that Turbo Pascal 5.5 is the "best" 
version available...

Ralf 


--
For Developers, A Lot Can Happen In A Second.
Boundary is the first to Know...and Tell You.
Monitor Your Applications in Ultra-Fine Resolution. Try it FREE!
http://p.sf.net/sfu/Boundary-d2dvs2
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Programming languages in FreeDOS

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 04:45 PM 4/6/2012, Alex wrote:
>On Sat, Apr 7, 2012 at 12:41 AM, Rugxulo  wrote:
>
> > 16-bit is dead, no machines are made purely 16-bit anymore. AMD64 long
> > mode doesn't (properly) support 16-bit at all, and popular compilers
> > like GCC never cared to support it. Also, people hate it, so a lot of
> > C code uses 32-bit-isms, sadly. We can't change any of that.
>
>There was once a FreeDOS-32 (32 bit) project being developed. What
>happened to it? Their website is still there, but not much news. Does
>anyone have some more info about the actual prospects of its
>development? (Guesswork is welcome too).

IMHO, it was a still-born project from the get-go...
You can't develop a 32bit OS as they intended and still be compatible 
with DOS...

>Just to be clear, which is the best Pascal version available to date
>for FreeDOS?

Best?
IMHO, the mentioned Turbo Pascal 5.5, as it is available for free 
from Embarcadero's web site.
It runs on 16 bit DOS and produces 16 bit DOS applications. With 
limited use of resources and light years faster and with a better IDE 
than anything else...

Ralf 


--
For Developers, A Lot Can Happen In A Second.
Boundary is the first to Know...and Tell You.
Monitor Your Applications in Ultra-Fine Resolution. Try it FREE!
http://p.sf.net/sfu/Boundary-d2dvs2
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Programming languages in FreeDOS

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 03:57 PM 4/6/2012, Rugxulo wrote:
>Hi,
>
>On Fri, Apr 6, 2012 at 5:43 PM, Ralf A. Quint  wrote:
> > At 02:59 PM 4/6/2012, Rugxulo wrote:
> >
> >>Also see Gautier's "Transparent Language Popularity Index" (updated
> >>each month):
> >>
> >>http://lang-index.sourceforge.net/
> >
> > Sorry, but as far as programming for (Free)DOS is concerned, that
> > list is completely irrelevant...
>
>No. You have to know what language dialect you want to use before you
>can actually start. Who tells a Pascal programmer to use C? Or maybe
>you expect everyone to be language agnostic (doubt it)??
>
>My point is that there are a lot of languages, and often there is a
>DOS port *somewhere* in the world, but some (C, C++) are more popular
>than others (ML, Lisp). So try not to choose the hardest road
>possible!

For more than half of those languages, there doesn't exist a (at 
least serious) DOS implementation.
You rather have to use what is available, and that is fairly limited...

It doesn't matter for example if PHP is in the top of this popularity 
list when there is no use for that in DOS. Or JavaScript, or Haskell, 
Ruby, Python, Objective-C, C# or Java, just to name a few...

And if there is a more or less complete DOS port, for things like 
Python, D, you still have to fight with the inherited Unix/Linux or 
Windows centric concept of a lot of those.

And how does it matter "how popular" a language is, it matters what 
you want to achieve. And then try to use the best tool for the job, 
as with everything else in life...

Ralf 


--
For Developers, A Lot Can Happen In A Second.
Boundary is the first to Know...and Tell You.
Monitor Your Applications in Ultra-Fine Resolution. Try it FREE!
http://p.sf.net/sfu/Boundary-d2dvs2
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Programming languages in FreeDOS

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 02:59 PM 4/6/2012, Rugxulo wrote:

>Also see Gautier's "Transparent Language Popularity Index" (updated 
>each month):
>
>http://lang-index.sourceforge.net/
Sorry, but as far as programming for (Free)DOS is concerned, that 
list is completely irrelevant...

Ralf



--
For Developers, A Lot Can Happen In A Second.
Boundary is the first to Know...and Tell You.
Monitor Your Applications in Ultra-Fine Resolution. Try it FREE!
http://p.sf.net/sfu/Boundary-d2dvs2
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Best GUIs for DOS

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 01:27 PM 4/6/2012, Alex wrote:
>On Fri, Apr 6, 2012 at 10:07 PM, Ralf A. Quint  wrote:
>
> > And what exactly do you mean by "GUI as development tool". That's a
> > term that doesn't make any sense to me at least...
>
>What I meant was simply a tool for developing GUI-based applications.

Well, for that, you need to have a working GUI in the first place. 
And of course some development tools that support that GUI...

Ralf 


--
For Developers, A Lot Can Happen In A Second.
Boundary is the first to Know...and Tell You.
Monitor Your Applications in Ultra-Fine Resolution. Try it FREE!
http://p.sf.net/sfu/Boundary-d2dvs2
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Best GUIs for DOS

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 12:48 PM 4/6/2012, Alex wrote:
>Any idea why OpenGEM is the only GUI environment listed on the 
>FreeDOS website under the category GUIs? To be fair, I must say that 
>if you look hard withing the website you do find the reference to 
>other GUIs, such as the Icon GUI. So why OpenGEM is the only one in 
>the spotlight? Please share your experiences with regard to 
>DOS-based GUIs as development tools. Thanks again, Alex -

Simply because it is the only half-ways complete one that also works...

There have been tons of attempts to create something new, like the 
myriad of "SEAL" versions that were once around but none of them got anywhere.

And what exactly do you mean by "GUI as development tool". That's a 
term that doesn't make any sense to me at least...

Ralf


--
For Developers, A Lot Can Happen In A Second.
Boundary is the first to Know...and Tell You.
Monitor Your Applications in Ultra-Fine Resolution. Try it FREE!
http://p.sf.net/sfu/Boundary-d2dvs2
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Catch-all Repository for legacy DOS

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 12:06 PM 4/6/2012, Eric Auer wrote:


>Harbour / xHarbour are free DBase Clipper (database scripting
>language compiler?) clones, a bit bulky afair but portable :-)
>See also their harbour-project.org web site :-)

First of all Harbour and xHarbour are pretty much two completely 
different projects (with more or less the same basic subject though).
www.harbour-project.org is only for the Harbour project, which is the 
most "free" in the same sense that it is proclaimed here over and over again.
xHarbour is at www.xharbour.org and is leaning more and  more into a 
paid services model, and both projects are also focusing more and 
more into a Windows direction as well
The last DOS binaries for Harbour are from 2008, xHarbour, while 
still mentioning DOS as a supported OS, have only download links to 
Windows and Linux...

And considering them "bulky" is probably also an understatement...

> > In programing: MASM, QBASIC, MS C,  Turbo C, Lahey Fortran,
> > Scheme,  Turbo Pascal, Watcom C, DJGPP
>
>DJGPP is a free open DOS port of GNU C/C++ and OpenWatcom C is
>also pretty open. None of the Turbo things are open, although
>some were free in the Borland Software Museum for a while. Now
>you have Freebasic and Free Pascal (FPC) which comes with both
>a Borlandish-Turboish IDE and a graphical Delphi style IDE :-)
>And Freebasic has a QBASIC style mode for more compatibility.

I know people hate me for saying this, but NOT considering the Turbo 
Compilers (including Turbo Pascal 5.5) is IMHO a big mistake. Nobody 
who wants to start getting into programming on (Free)DOS will get 
anywhere fast with a behemoth like DJGPP or OpenWatcom. Or FreePascal 
for that matter.
And to compare FreeBASIC with QBASIC is kind of comparing apples and 
oranges, as the former is a (also massive) compiler (and actually 
targeted at compatibility with QuickBasic) while the later was a 
"quick and dirty" (for the "common Joe" to use) interpreter

Ralf


--
For Developers, A Lot Can Happen In A Second.
Boundary is the first to Know...and Tell You.
Monitor Your Applications in Ultra-Fine Resolution. Try it FREE!
http://p.sf.net/sfu/Boundary-d2dvs2
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Catch-all Repository for legacy DOS software

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 08:45 PM 4/2/2012, dmccunney wrote:
> > And don't forget Lua. It's very simple and quite powerful at the same
> > time. An excellent language indeed.
>
>But it's specifically intended for embedding within other programs as
>a script language.  (There  are an assortment of text editors (like
>SciTE) that embed Lua in that fashion.  You don't write stand-alone
>apps in it.

Neither would you do that with Javascript, HPTML5 or CSS3...

Also, Lua can run very well as a standalone interpreter, there is 
even one guy who seems to update a versions including binaries (Lua 
itself is officially only distributed as plain ANSI C source, though 
highly *ix centric) specfically for FreeDOS..

Ralf 


--
Better than sec? Nothing is better than sec when it comes to
monitoring Big Data applications. Try Boundary one-second 
resolution app monitoring today. Free.
http://p.sf.net/sfu/Boundary-dev2dev
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] New topic: makeing a ISO

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 04:55 PM 4/2/2012, Garry Ricketson wrote:
>Ok, 1 more question,  I also installed Freedos to a laptop, (Acer 
>aspire series 150), runs fine, but I can not get the
>"touch pad ,(mouse)", or a USB mouse, to work.  I tried CTMOUSE, but 
>it says it is not installed ? Do I need to download CTMOUSE , and 
>add it ?  I also tried installing the USBUHCI driver, so I could use 
>USBMOUSE, but it is causeing a "lockup",... (keyboard,etc) just as 
>the warning says it might. So any suggestions as to what usb /mouse 
>driver would be best ?
>   On this computer (the one I use most,and am using at this time), 
> my "table" top, a old IBM, I did not have any problem with the 
> mouse working when I installed Freedos, everything works fine, 
> right from  the start.

Chances are that you would need a driver for that touchpad to work 
and for Cutemouse to detect it in the first place...

Ralf 


--
Better than sec? Nothing is better than sec when it comes to
monitoring Big Data applications. Try Boundary one-second 
resolution app monitoring today. Free.
http://p.sf.net/sfu/Boundary-dev2dev
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] VERY Funny "Off Topic" --

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 08:16 PM 3/26/2012, Jack wrote:

>VERY funny "off topic", overheard today, which I just HAVE to share --
>
>What does a U.S. Age-20s "Slept Thru High-School" type, too old to say
>"The dog ate my homework!!", try to tell our apartment manager re: why
>he cannot help with his girlfriend's 3-week late rent??
>
>"The ATM ate my check!!"
>
>A valuable lesson, as I know little of the U.S. language "BratSpeak"!!

Not funny at all for me, as this seriously happened to me a few month 
ago. Got to the bank 15min after closing and needed to get a check of 
several hundred dollars in the account that day in order to prevent 
bouncing my rent check which I had already dropped off with my 
apartment manager in the morning. Took the better part of the next 
day to get this all straighten out and I was lucky that the manager 
of that particular bank where I normally go to made sure that there 
was no overdraft charges as the rent check was indeed already cashed 
the same day...

Ralf 


--
This SF email is sponsosred by:
Try Windows Azure free for 90 days Click Here 
http://p.sf.net/sfu/sfd2d-msazure
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Update

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 04:00 PM 3/14/2012, Zbigniew wrote:
>2012/3/13, Ralf A. Quint :
>
> > So far, this rather looks like a problem with 4DOS, not with JEMM as
> > I initially suspected... :?
>
>Yes, you were right: I'm terribly sorry, but my former reports were
>somewhat misleading. Just finished another couple of tests, and
>indeed: it's 4DOS who is the culprit. No idea, how could it happen;
>maybe too many things done at the same time, maybe a bit of
>auto-suggestion (or both) - or maybe too many lines in my
>fdconfig/autoexec files - but just found out, that neither JEMMEX nor
>any other memory manager (JEMM386, HIMEMX) should be blamed for
>described problem. Be it FreeDOS or MS-DOS - contrary to my
>yesterday's report. Sorry. :(
>
>Then there is some strange issue just with 4DOS as command shell.

Do you use 4DOS with any special parameters on startup?

Ralf 


--
This SF email is sponsosred by:
Try Windows Azure free for 90 days Click Here 
http://p.sf.net/sfu/sfd2d-msazure
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Update

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 12:35 PM 3/13/2012, Zbigniew wrote:
>After Eric's suggestion I made additional tests: still on original
>MS-DOS 6.22; I used JEMMEX this time:
>
>1. JEMMEX + 4DOS means problem, but...
>2. ...JEMMEX + command.com didn't make any problem! Neither to the
>game, nor to DX-Forth.
>
>I'm always using "X=TEST I=TEST" parameters.
>
>The test under FreeDOS - tomorrow.
So far, this rather looks like a problem with 4DOS, not with JEMM as 
I initially suspected... :?

Ralf 


--
Keep Your Developer Skills Current with LearnDevNow!
The most comprehensive online learning library for Microsoft developers
is just $99.99! Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL - plus HTML5, CSS3, MVC3,
Metro Style Apps, more. Free future releases when you subscribe now!
http://p.sf.net/sfu/learndevnow-d2d
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Strange timer-related issue

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 04:47 AM 3/11/2012, Zbigniew wrote:
>Yesterday I've found another related thing: while trying to test my
>soundcard with several games, I discovered, that "Civilization" has
>quite the same issue with FreeDOS: when ran under configuration
>"JEMMEX + 4DOS" it works very slowly (I'm using Sempron 2 GHz as CPU),
>playing the background music at about half a speed, and playing its
>animations so slowly, like it were run on 386SX16 or so. When switched
>to "XMGR + COMMAND.COM", it's playing the music quite normally, and
>the game animations (moving "unit icons" from tile to tile etc.) are
>fast, as can be expected while using 2 GHz CPU.
>
>I've got a feeling, there is something worthy a fix.

Still not sure why 4DOS would be causing it (if using that alone, 
without JEMMEX), but as I suggested in a off-list reply to a question 
that Eric Auer send me, the fact that sound output is effected as 
well, this seems kind of confirm my suspicion on how JEMM is handling 
IN/OUT statements when in protected mode, or something along those lines...

Ralf 


--
Virtualization & Cloud Management Using Capacity Planning
Cloud computing makes use of virtualization - but cloud computing 
also focuses on allowing computing to be delivered as a service.
http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfnl/114/51521223/
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Strange timer-related issue

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 01:09 PM 3/10/2012, Zbigniew wrote:
>If I correctly found the relevant sections of DX-Forth's kernel.asm
>(it's included in the package), the word is defined the following way:
>
>#v+
>[..]
>;   runtime for deferred words - equiv to @ EXECUTE
>
>dodef:  pop bx
> jmp [bx]
>[..]
>;   MS  ( ms -- )
> hdr 1,'MS'
>ms: calldodef
> dw  ms0
>;
>[..]
>#v-
Well, that's only the Forth definition of it, which in fact calls the 
kernel routine ms0, which in turn does quite bit that could be 
influenced at least by JEMM, though not sure what in 4DOS could interfere:
>ms0:pop cx  ; (MS)
> pushtnext1
>
>;   delay (ms) in CX; uses timer 0
>
>ms1:jcxzms5
>ms2:testcl,3; PAUSE each 4mS for
> jnz ms3 ; multitasking
> pushcx
> calldocol
> dw  pause
> dw  exit1
> pop cx
>ms3:callms6
> mov dx,bx
>ms4:callms6
> sub bx,dx
> cmp bx,-2385
> jnc ms4
> loopms2
>ms5:ret
>
>ms6:pushf   ; clear interrupts
> cli ; during CTC read
> sub al,al
> out 43h,al
> iodelay
> in  al,40h
> mov bl,al
> iodelay
> in  al,40h
> mov bh,al
> popf
> ret
The "pause" call is for me the most likely culprit, doubt that this 
is something that could be fixed in DX-Forth, specially if it works 
without and with other memory managers...
The INT 1Ah that Rugxulo mentioned doesn't come into play, it would 
have only a 18Hz resolution, not milliseconds, to begin with...

Ralf 


--
Virtualization & Cloud Management Using Capacity Planning
Cloud computing makes use of virtualization - but cloud computing 
also focuses on allowing computing to be delivered as a service.
http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfnl/114/51521223/
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Fwd: MUMPS (M)

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 10:45 AM 2/19/2012, Eric Auer wrote:

>Hi, forwarding something from Ken Geiger :
>
>I still use DataTree MUMPS (DTM) for some production.  Do you know of
>anyone else who is working in MUMPS who has an interest in freedos.
>MUMPS is very powerful and efficient database manipulation and was used
>in health care and finance applications.  Looking for feedback and
>direction.
No!!!, not MUMPS, I don't want to get sick!!! And no M either... .

Also, I am fully able to write complete words, so I prefer these days 
to not use anything as cryptic as this excuse of a programming language...

Sorry, couldn't help it, still have traumatic residue from trying to 
convert a MUMPS (M) based software package to a more readable and 
therefor manageable programming environment back in the mid '80s. 
Luckily, that project was scrapped two weeks in and saved the sanity 
of at last half a dozen programmers.

Ralf



--
Virtualization & Cloud Management Using Capacity Planning
Cloud computing makes use of virtualization - but cloud computing 
also focuses on allowing computing to be delivered as a service.
http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfnl/114/51521223/
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] int33h again.

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 08:54 PM 2/17/2012, kurt godel wrote:
>but I fear to do it since I've been using the int by way of the 
>UNION regs gambit, whereas you are showing a direct asm patch. I am 
>afraid I will screw up the regs structure.

What is there much to mess up, it's just a "pseudo" structure to a 
more C like access to the actual CPU registers...

>Also, I am not familiar with
>the mask byte, since evidentily the 'int86' function takes care of all that

Certainly not. How is a general interrupt function to know about what 
the bits of such "mask" byte in an arbitrary function are supposed to 
mean?... =-O

Ralf


--
Virtualization & Cloud Management Using Capacity Planning
Cloud computing makes use of virtualization - but cloud computing 
also focuses on allowing computing to be delivered as a service.
http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfnl/114/51521223/
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] possibly interesting free open software ultradefrag

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 09:12 AM 2/16/2012, Rugxulo wrote:
>You'd think DOS (direct hardware access) would be an ideal environment
>for defragging, and certainly DJGPP should be robust enough, in
>theory, but I guess some people prefer to do it in the background of
>Windows itself while running other stuff. Remember Win9x? Nobody liked
>having to sit there bored, walking on eggshells, while it got the job
>done.
>
> > It was one of the project of the month candidates.
> > UltraDefrag defrags FAT, NTFS, exFAT, including
> > registries and swap/pagefiles and MFT structures.
>
>Only the FAT part would be interesting to FreeDOS. Though there really
>isn't any active file system guru around here, AFAICT. And I don't
>think NTFS or exFAT are likely candidates for political / licensing
>reasons.

I think the point of looking into UltraDefrag as being interesting 
for (Free)DOS is a bit mute, as for the most interesting part, it is 
actually using the "Microsoft Defragmentation Libray", which is only 
present in Windows NT 4.0 and newer (basically along with NTFS)...

Ralf 


--
Virtualization & Cloud Management Using Capacity Planning
Cloud computing makes use of virtualization - but cloud computing 
also focuses on allowing computing to be delivered as a service.
http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfnl/114/51521223/
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] bizzare bug in freedos 1.1

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 10:32 AM 1/28/2012, kurt godel wrote:
>This has to be one of the strangest ever:
>I made this batfile:
>cd \
>cd ta

And? 


--
Try before you buy = See our experts in action!
The most comprehensive online learning library for Microsoft developers
is just $99.99! Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL - plus HTML5, CSS3, MVC3,
Metro Style Apps, more. Free future releases when you subscribe now!
http://p.sf.net/sfu/learndevnow-dev2
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] int notation.

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 03:13 PM 1/24/2012, C. Masloch wrote:
>I've been out of the loop on development for a while. Bret, do you,
>incidentally, remember whether we came up with this one independently, or
>how did it develop? I honestly would have to search through old mail again
>to answer that myself.

The INT xx.yy notation has been around for a loong time, doubt 
that there is anyone who can put a claim on having invented this b now... ;-)

>I might slightly amend my (long!) description in that I prefer to use
>"Int" in that capitalization and no space between that abbreviation and
>the xx; whereas, say, Bret uses "INT" all-capitalized here, and a space
>before the xx.

That's as well a matter of preference here, at least as far as the 
capitalization is concerned, as all DOS assemblers are case-insensitive...
You could have pretty much a discussion like over the "one true brace 
style" in C over this... >:-}

Ralf 


--
Keep Your Developer Skills Current with LearnDevNow!
The most comprehensive online learning library for Microsoft developers
is just $99.99! Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL - plus HTML5, CSS3, MVC3,
Metro Style Apps, more. Free future releases when you subscribe now!
http://p.sf.net/sfu/learndevnow-d2d
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS 1.1 released

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 07:18 PM 1/14/2012, dos386 wrote:
>I can install and update FreeDOS manually (and I've been
>having it for years), so the problems don't really hurt me,
>but for potential new users, I'd prefer a well working distro.

How about you come up with a better working installer yourself then?

Ralf 


--
RSA(R) Conference 2012
Mar 27 - Feb 2
Save $400 by Jan. 27
Register now!
http://p.sf.net/sfu/rsa-sfdev2dev2
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS 1.1 released

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 07:15 PM 1/14/2012, dos386 wrote:
> > > What's the purpose of the menu item "Pasquale" (see top shot) ?
> > Are you such an idiot or are you just trying to play the troll here?
> > It should be obvious to almost everyone that this is not an 
> active menu item
>
>Idiot yourself. It is active. Just try to select it and push ENTER :-D

No, I won't. I am not idiot enough to do that...

Ralf


--
RSA(R) Conference 2012
Mar 27 - Feb 2
Save $400 by Jan. 27
Register now!
http://p.sf.net/sfu/rsa-sfdev2dev2
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS 1.1 released

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 07:14 PM 1/14/2012, Michael Robinson wrote:
>First off, I don't appreciate anyone calling anyone an idiot on this
>email list.

Sorry but this was just one arrogant post of him too many!

He is one of the reasons, beside my past health issues, that I have 
not participated in here for years.

Ralf 


--
RSA(R) Conference 2012
Mar 27 - Feb 2
Save $400 by Jan. 27
Register now!
http://p.sf.net/sfu/rsa-sfdev2dev2
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS 1.1 released

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 06:56 PM 1/14/2012, dos386 wrote:
> > [Freedos-kernel] FreeDOS 1.1 released
>
>COOL :-)
>
>http://jafile.com/uploads/dos386/freeds11.png
>
>Problems:
>
>- What's the purpose of the menu item "Pasquale" (see top shot) ?

Are you such an idiot or are you just trying to play the troll here?

It should be obvious to almost everyone that this is not an active 
menu item but as it clearly says, it indicates that this release is 
dedicated to Pat ("Pasquale") Villani, who wrote the initial FreeDOS 
kernel and who passed away last year.
Why the f*** don't you complain about the "FreeDOS is a trademark by 
Jim Hall" menu item as well? ...

>- CWSDPMI, VSM, DOSNTLFN, ... are in
>- INFOPAD, 7-ZIP, UNTGZ, HX/HDPMI32, MPXPLAY, FASM, CC386, FREEBASIC,
>ARACHNE, ... are NOT in ... what can you do with it when installed ?

How about installing whatever software you like to run?...

Ralf 


--
RSA(R) Conference 2012
Mar 27 - Feb 2
Save $400 by Jan. 27
Register now!
http://p.sf.net/sfu/rsa-sfdev2dev2
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Freedos and graphical user interfaces...

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 09:20 AM 1/11/2012, dmccunney wrote:
>I ran DesqView, back in the day.  It worked surprisingly well.
>I recall one BBS sysop running four instances of a Wildcat BBS on a
>25mhz AT under DV.  He could have 4 nodes connected to four modems and
>operating simultaneously on on machine.

It did indeed, we used it at a former employer, a CAD/CAM software 
company, to run "compiler servers"...

> > And the name GUI means "Graphical User Interface". Basically handling
> > common tasks by more visual means rather than having to use/type
> > various and possibly long command line instructions.
>
>Yes, but I don't see why such a thing shouldn't exist for DOS.  GUIs
>took over the world for a reason.

I don't say that a GUI for DOS in general is a bad thing,...

And it is not that GUI's "took over the world", but nowadays every 
mouse jockey insists on using GUI based operating systems.
And there is far more to any Windows, Mac OS X, Linux these days than 
just running a GUI on top of a command line based OS.
And IMHO it just doesn't make sense to back port all that additional 
fluff, as you easily reach the limits of the underlying DOS in terms 
of available resources. And a lot of efforts that people are 
making/trying to make in order to push those limits or eliminate them 
just lead to changing (Free)DOS into another Linux distro.

Ralf 


--
Ridiculously easy VDI. With Citrix VDI-in-a-Box, you don't need a complex
infrastructure or vast IT resources to deliver seamless, secure access to
virtual desktops. With this all-in-one solution, easily deploy virtual 
desktops for less than the cost of PCs and save 60% on VDI infrastructure 
costs. Try it free! http://p.sf.net/sfu/Citrix-VDIinabox
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Freedos and graphical user interfaces...

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 07:39 AM 1/11/2012, dmccunney wrote:
>Please recall that DesqView, DesqViewX, GEM, and Windows through 9.X
>were precisely GUIs strapped onto a DOS environment.

Just for the record, DesqView is not a GUI, but a text mode 
multi-tasking/task-switching add-on for DOS and basically an 
extension to Quarterdesk's QEMM memory manager.

And the name GUI means "Graphical User Interface". Basically handling 
common tasks by more visual means rather than having to use/type 
various and possibly long command line instructions.

What people nowadays seem to expect that they get all the new fluff 
of newer developments in operating systems instead of sticking with 
the original meaning of the term as far as the use of "GUI" in 
relation to (Free)DOS goes...

Ralf 


--
Ridiculously easy VDI. With Citrix VDI-in-a-Box, you don't need a complex
infrastructure or vast IT resources to deliver seamless, secure access to
virtual desktops. With this all-in-one solution, easily deploy virtual 
desktops for less than the cost of PCs and save 60% on VDI infrastructure 
costs. Try it free! http://p.sf.net/sfu/Citrix-VDIinabox
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] x windows server for DOS

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 12:30 AM 1/11/2012, Florian Xaver wrote:

>El 11.01.2012, a las 03:38, Ralf A. Quint escribió:
>
> >> I'd love to have you contribute to a GUI project. There have been
> >> several. The one with the longest history is OpenGEM, but the web site
> >> is now idle (http://gem.shaneland.co.uk/). The OpenGEM6 pre-release is
> >> the last we heard of this project, in 2006
> >> (http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/gui/opengem/6/).
>
>
>I wouldn't contribute to this GUI. The framework 
>has no modern features, were very nice years back. But now…

What modern features would that be?


>I would only contribute to GUIs, which are ports 
>from Linux or at least are using libraries for the GNU C/C++ compiler.
Why encumber yourself on DOS with a behemoth of a Unix/Linux compiler?

Nothing personal Florian, but this all seems to 
be exactly one of those cases where people are 
just trying to force DOS into a second coming of Linux...

Ralf


--
Ridiculously easy VDI. With Citrix VDI-in-a-Box, you don't need a complex
infrastructure or vast IT resources to deliver seamless, secure access to
virtual desktops. With this all-in-one solution, easily deploy virtual 
desktops for less than the cost of PCs and save 60% on VDI infrastructure 
costs. Try it free! http://p.sf.net/sfu/Citrix-VDIinabox
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] x windows server for DOS

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 08:39 PM 1/10/2012, jhall wrote:
> >> I encourage you to look around for what's there, and see if you can
> >> move any of them forward. OpenGEM shows a lot of promise, but the
> >> graphics are dated and could use a refresh. Since it's GNU GPL, I
> >> imagine you could borrow from another GPL'd desktop environment, such
> >> as GNOME.
> >
> > I don't think neither that this is feasible nor that this would make
> > too much sense. GNOME (or KDE, Xfce,  > window manager of the day here> for that matter) are all just like X
> > Windows from their structure Unix/Linux based. Trying to force that
> > on a single tasking DOS, with limited resources probably requires
> > more resources/work than trying to somewhat modernize GEM.
> >
>
>I should have been more clear. I meant to suggest reusing graphics 
>elements (icons) from Gnome to refresh the look of OpenGEM. I didn't 
>mean to suggest borrowing code from Gnome to update functionality of 
>OpenGEM. As you said, these come from totally different 
>architectural backgrounds, so straight-up reuse of code is not a 
>good use of time.

Ok, that is a slightly different issue. Though a bit of a chicken and 
egg problem, all those fancy icons, etc won't do you much good if you 
don't have the graphics drivers to display them...

In my personal view, less is sometimes more and I take functionality 
over glitter any day... ;-)
That was also one of the things that prevented me from taking that 
Seal stuff serious, they were more concerned to "borrow" fancy icons 
from Windows XP than actually getting things (application, real ones, 
not just some simply games) working...


>I had a conversation along these lines with Shane once, about the 
>graphics, and he pointed me to a dev tool in OpenGEM that would 
>convert graphics for use as GEM icons. I think it's been there since OpenGEM5.


Do you have any info what happened to Shane/the OpenGEM project, the 
whole "disappearance" happened a bit quick and starring for several 
years now at the site that proclaims "Something exciting is coming 
soon" is a bit of a drag :-( ...

Ralf 


--
Ridiculously easy VDI. With Citrix VDI-in-a-Box, you don't need a complex
infrastructure or vast IT resources to deliver seamless, secure access to
virtual desktops. With this all-in-one solution, easily deploy virtual 
desktops for less than the cost of PCs and save 60% on VDI infrastructure 
costs. Try it free! http://p.sf.net/sfu/Citrix-VDIinabox
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] x windows server for DOS

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 05:49 PM 1/10/2012, Marco Achury wrote:

>Looks like a better option, specially because is a current project 
>and is free.

... (see my reply to Jim)

>I see the download lists and I dont undersand what is that we must 
>to download.
>
>http://code.google.com/p/nanox-microwindows-nxlib-fltk-for-dos/downloads/list
>
>Is needed to download their djgpp package in order the run the 
>calculator and other examples?

To "run" it, no.
But if you want change/compile it or do anything what else that 
people rave about when referring to FOSS, then the answer is yes. 
You'll need the whole shebang, as this is required to provide all 
those nice *ix tools to produce the running binary...

Ralf 


--
Ridiculously easy VDI. With Citrix VDI-in-a-Box, you don't need a complex
infrastructure or vast IT resources to deliver seamless, secure access to
virtual desktops. With this all-in-one solution, easily deploy virtual 
desktops for less than the cost of PCs and save 60% on VDI infrastructure 
costs. Try it free! http://p.sf.net/sfu/Citrix-VDIinabox
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] x windows server for DOS

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 03:16 PM 1/10/2012, Jim Hall wrote:
>On Tue, Jan 10, 2012 at 12:17 PM, Koh Choon Lin <2choon...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi
> >
> > If someone is willing to start a free as in freedom graphical
> > interface for FreeDOS, I am ready to contribute resources and money to
> > the project.
> >
> >
>
>I'd love to have you contribute to a GUI project. There have been
>several. The one with the longest history is OpenGEM, but the web site
>is now idle (http://gem.shaneland.co.uk/). The OpenGEM6 pre-release is
>the last we heard of this project, in 2006
>(http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/gui/opengem/6/).

That's IMHO the best option, specially as it is "from the ground up" 
DOS based. And the later/last version(s) weren't that bad at all. 
It's really a shame about Shane, what ever caused him to go into hibernation...
There are a few others that have been working on GEM under different 
labels since it was released as Open Source, including some enhanced 
video drivers. Would be nice to see if those and possibly some new 
folks, who can still at least think in the ways old software works, 
could get something going again...

>Another promising GUI was SEAL, which seems to have also gone idle
>long before GEM.

I don't think that SEAL (regardless under which name and incarnation, 
there were several IIRC) ever got to the point that it was in any 
form "usable". Can't call this promising at all. All they got was 
some nice desktop picture, nothing more...

>As a result, I kind of pulled back from any particular GUI, and
>focused on the command line experience. But I would really like to see
>a nice GUI for FreeDOS. An X Windows implementation would be very
>interesting, for example.

The problem with X Windows is that it is not DOS, it is Unix based 
from the very core, with quite some "appetite" for resources. So 
while it is a nice niche usage to be able to use a DOS based PC as an 
X terminal, I don't think that there is much point (beside proof of 
concept) to put much energy in an X server for (Free)DOS. Missing 
multi-tasking and somewhat limited IP networking capabilities put 
IMHO a fairly early limit to these efforts...


>I encourage you to look around for what's there, and see if you can
>move any of them forward. OpenGEM shows a lot of promise, but the
>graphics are dated and could use a refresh. Since it's GNU GPL, I
>imagine you could borrow from another GPL'd desktop environment, such
>as GNOME.

I don't think neither that this is feasible nor that this would make 
too much sense. GNOME (or KDE, Xfce,  for that matter) are all just like X 
Windows from their structure Unix/Linux based. Trying to force that 
on a single tasking DOS, with limited resources probably requires 
more resources/work than trying to somewhat modernize GEM.

Ralf


--
Ridiculously easy VDI. With Citrix VDI-in-a-Box, you don't need a complex
infrastructure or vast IT resources to deliver seamless, secure access to
virtual desktops. With this all-in-one solution, easily deploy virtual 
desktops for less than the cost of PCs and save 60% on VDI infrastructure 
costs. Try it free! http://p.sf.net/sfu/Citrix-VDIinabox
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS 1.1 released

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 01:58 PM 1/4/2012, James Hall wrote:
> >>I have discovered the wifi connection I am using have a locked ftp port...
> >
> > That won't cause any problems, as there is an http download link
> > presented on the FreeDOS download page for your convenience as well. ;-)
> >
> > That's btw the link I tested the other day...
>
>
>And in a few minutes, we'll have a torrent seed, thanks to our friends
>at ibiblio.
>:-)

That's working fine as well, about 3x as fast as http, with only 1 
peer when I started (myself?, shows 6 peers by the time I was finished).

But would be surprised if that would work for Marco, that an ISP 
blocks FTP but NOT torrent traffic... :-\

Ralf 


--
Ridiculously easy VDI. With Citrix VDI-in-a-Box, you don't need a complex
infrastructure or vast IT resources to deliver seamless, secure access to
virtual desktops. With this all-in-one solution, easily deploy virtual 
desktops for less than the cost of PCs and save 60% on VDI infrastructure 
costs. Try it free! http://p.sf.net/sfu/Citrix-VDIinabox
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS 1.1 released

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 09:34 AM 1/4/2012, Marco Achury wrote:

>I have discovered the wifi connection I am using have a locked ftp port...

That won't cause any problems, as there is an http download link 
presented on the FreeDOS download page for your convenience as well. ;-)

That's btw the link I tested the other day...

Ralf 


--
Ridiculously easy VDI. With Citrix VDI-in-a-Box, you don't need a complex
infrastructure or vast IT resources to deliver seamless, secure access to
virtual desktops. With this all-in-one solution, easily deploy virtual 
desktops for less than the cost of PCs and save 60% on VDI infrastructure 
costs. Try it free! http://p.sf.net/sfu/Citrix-VDIinabox
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS 1.1 released

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 05:09 PM 1/2/2012, Marco Achury wrote:

>I cant connect ibiblio today, Appear that freedos release has 
>colapsed the servers :-)

Works just fine and snappy from California

Ralf 


--
Write once. Port to many.
Get the SDK and tools to simplify cross-platform app development. Create 
new or port existing apps to sell to consumers worldwide. Explore the 
Intel AppUpSM program developer opportunity. appdeveloper.intel.com/join
http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-appdev
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS Memory

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 11:49 AM 12/27/2011, Koh Choon Lin wrote:
>Hi
>
> >> 2. Does it faces 640 KiB limitation as MS-DOS, e.g. Do I have to "load
> >> high" drivers to save on conventional memory?
> >
>
>Thanks for all the fast replies. I think my question is misunderstood.
>"Load high" is a MS-DOS technique to load drivers in the upper memory
>to save conventional memory. I remembered 20 years ago there were many
>attempts to free up as much conventional memory as possible.

The same still applies for FreeDOS today. As I already mentioned, 
FreeDOS is an MS-DOS 6.00 clone.


>Like to ask if FreeDOS comes with memmaker too?

No.

Ralf 


--
Write once. Port to many.
Get the SDK and tools to simplify cross-platform app development. Create 
new or port existing apps to sell to consumers worldwide. Explore the 
Intel AppUpSM program developer opportunity. appdeveloper.intel.com/join
http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-appdev
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS Memory

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 11:08 AM 12/27/2011, Koh Choon Lin wrote:
>Hi
>
>1. Would like to ask how much memory does FreeDOS support, e.g. 4 GiB?
>
>2. Does it faces 640 KiB limitation as MS-DOS, e.g. Do I have to "load
>high" drivers to save on conventional memory?
>
>3. Does it support usage of a swap file/partition?

FreeDOS is an MS-DOS 6.00 clone, a 16bit operating system, so it will 
by itself only support 1MB (or 640KB as you mentioned), just as MS-DOS.
More than that can only be access by use of an XMS or EMS compatible 
memory manager. And due to all this, there simply is not a need for 
any swap file/partition (though some memory manager might create/use one)...

Ralf 


--
Write once. Port to many.
Get the SDK and tools to simplify cross-platform app development. Create 
new or port existing apps to sell to consumers worldwide. Explore the 
Intel AppUpSM program developer opportunity. appdeveloper.intel.com/join
http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-appdev
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] AST driver problem...

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 05:03 PM 12/22/2011, dmccunney wrote:
>I repeat, be careful of *what*?  If you get as C&D letter from them,
>you take it down and apologize.  You needn't hire a lawyer or engage
>in a resource-requiring defense.  Such letters are warning shots.
>*They* would as soon not *take* you to court.  That takes time and
>costs money.  They would only do so if they saw a pot of gold at the
>end of a litigation rainbow.

I think you are a bit on the naive side here. In a lot of cases, a 
C&D letter will be accompanied by an invoice from the lawyers of 
copyright/trademark owner...

>But offering AST drivers from a website isn't a trademark
>infringement.  You don't call the site AST anything, and you make
>clear that AST is a registered trademark (as far as you can tell) of
>Data Access in France, and no infringement is intended.   Trademark
>infringement cases also have money involved.  A trademark holder is
>attempting to either prevent someone else from doing business under
>(and getting the benefit of) their trademark, or to prevent confusion
>in the market.

If this is in this case of AST indeed a "cyber squatter", it is hard 
to tell what might trigger their "wrath". They might jump on anything 
to make a quick buck without having to actually work for it...

In any case, I think it would be worthwile to try and attempt to make 
such drivers available/preserve them. However, I don't think this is 
anything that the FreeDOS project itself should get involved in in general.

I have been looking around a bit and the best site, beside some "old 
computer museum" web sites is a site called http://www.drivermuseum.com/

but some of the info/contact links don't seem to work (haven't tried 
the email address provided though).

Ralf


--
Write once. Port to many.
Get the SDK and tools to simplify cross-platform app development. Create 
new or port existing apps to sell to consumers worldwide. Explore the 
Intel AppUpSM program developer opportunity. appdeveloper.intel.com/join
http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-appdev
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] AST driver problem...

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 03:48 PM 12/22/2011, James Hall wrote:
>Mirroring "abandonware" drivers is a bit uncertain - unless the
>license says we can redistribute them. I agree the original copyright
>holder probably doesn't care; they've gone out of business.

It's highly unlikely that there is any license of any "down the 
drain" hardware manufacturer that would explicitly include any such 
provision. And as Catch 22 goes, you can't get a permission either...

Best option would be either a dedicated web site or maybe one of the 
"Old Computer" museums web sites, but that might be a matter of 
someone doing the work to maintain such an archive

>But according to Wikipedia 
>as of early 2011, the dormant AST trademark appears to be being
>relaunched by a new, independent company named DATA ACCESS based in
>France. I don't know if that means they purchased the previous
>copyrights (Beny Alagem, founder of Packard Bell Electronics, bought
>the name and intellectual property of AST Research, Inc. in 1999.)

Saw this too, and I have the strange feeling that this is just 
another "cyber squatter"...

Ralf 


--
Write once. Port to many.
Get the SDK and tools to simplify cross-platform app development. Create 
new or port existing apps to sell to consumers worldwide. Explore the 
Intel AppUpSM program developer opportunity. appdeveloper.intel.com/join
http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-appdev
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] data type length problem

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 09:55 PM 12/11/2011, David Griffith wrote:
>On Sun, 11 Dec 2011, Ralf A. Quint wrote:
>
> > At 09:36 PM 12/11/2011, Ralf A. Quint wrote:
> >>> How can I get this code to do the Right Thing?
> > Actually just realized that it's pretty easy, you just need to
> > typecast properly all parts of the makeid macro:
>
>Ugh!  how'd I miss something like that?  This revelation may come in handy
>when dealing with some uint32 types.

Well, you're probably used to program in an environment that has a 
different (32 bit) default int size! ;-)

In 16bit DOS the default int is 16bit, that also means that all macro 
or other from the compiler performed computation is done with 16 bit 
values, unless explictly specified otherwise.
For me the penny dropped as soon as I had send my first reply, 
noticing that in DOS, it printed all 16 bit values even though the 
format string defined clearly a %ul. Took a quick look at the 
assembler output from BC++3.11 and notices that it actually pushes a 
0 upper 16 bit register and then the computed 16bit value. That's 
when I realized that shifts of a and b are just for the bit bucket 
unless properly typecasted...

Ralf 


--
Learn Windows Azure Live!  Tuesday, Dec 13, 2011
Microsoft is holding a special Learn Windows Azure training event for 
developers. It will provide a great way to learn Windows Azure and what it 
provides. You can attend the event by watching it streamed LIVE online.  
Learn more at http://p.sf.net/sfu/ms-windowsazure
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] data type length problem

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 09:36 PM 12/11/2011, Ralf A. Quint wrote:
> >How can I get this code to do the Right Thing?
Actually just realized that it's pretty easy, you just need to 
typecast properly all parts of the makeid macro:

#include 
#include 


typedef unsigned long zlong;


// all parts of the macro need to be typecast to unsigned long, or 
operation on those parts will only be performed in 16 bits, // // 
despite the overall result type of the macro being defined as an unsigned long
#define makeid(a,b,c,d) ((zlong) (((zlong)(a)<<24) + ((zlong)(b)<<16) 
+ ((zlong)(c)<<8) + (zlong)(d)))
#define ID_FORM makeid ('F','O','R','M')
#define ID_IFZS makeid ('I','F','Z','S')
#define ID_IFhd makeid ('I','F','h','d')
#define ID_UMem makeid ('U','M','e','m')
#define ID_CMem makeid ('C','M','e','m')
#define ID_Stks makeid ('S','t','k','s')
#define ID_ANNO makeid ('A','N','N','O')


int main(void)
{
printf("sizeof(unsigned long) == %i\n", sizeof(unsigned long));
printf("sizeof(long long) == %i\n", sizeof(long long));
printf("ID_FORM == %lu\n", ID_FORM);
printf("ID_IFZS == %lu\n", ID_IFZS);
printf("ID_IFhd == %lu\n", ID_IFhd);
printf("ID_UMem == %lu\n", ID_UMem);
printf("ID_CMem == %lu\n", ID_CMem);
printf("ID_Stks == %lu\n", ID_Stks);
printf("ID_ANNO == %lu\n", ID_ANNO);
return 0;
} 


--
Learn Windows Azure Live!  Tuesday, Dec 13, 2011
Microsoft is holding a special Learn Windows Azure training event for 
developers. It will provide a great way to learn Windows Azure and what it 
provides. You can attend the event by watching it streamed LIVE online.  
Learn more at http://p.sf.net/sfu/ms-windowsazure
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] data type length problem

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 08:41 PM 12/11/2011, David Griffith wrote:
>Would someone take a look at this test code
>and give me some advice?  An unsigned long is four bytes under both Linux
>and 16-bit DOS.  Why then do my unsigned longs get chopped off when
>running under DOS?

It seems that at least the Borland compiler uses only the (last) 16 
bit of the defines, and "UMem" and "CMem" have both "em" as the last 
two bytes, while all others are different in those two. Hence the 
same 16 bit integer output.

>  Changing to an unsigned long long doesn't do any good.

That's not surprising, as the "long long" data type exists only since 
C99, which came out years after the latest true DOS compiler

>How can I get this code to do the Right Thing?

I have been out all day and just came back home, don't feel like 
spending hours on the computer tonight anymore. If work is slow, I 
will have some time to look into this.

Btw, I could quickly reproduce your problem with the latest version 
of Borland C++ 3.11, not sure which version you're using...

Ralf 


--
Learn Windows Azure Live!  Tuesday, Dec 13, 2011
Microsoft is holding a special Learn Windows Azure training event for 
developers. It will provide a great way to learn Windows Azure and what it 
provides. You can attend the event by watching it streamed LIVE online.  
Learn more at http://p.sf.net/sfu/ms-windowsazure
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

Re: [Freedos-user] Freedos iso file?

[Ralf A. Quint]

At 08:45 PM 11/27/2011, jhall wrote:
>Do you know which mirror site you were using at the time? It tells 
>you on the downloads page which mirror site it selected for you, and 
>the two links automatically use that mirror site. Perhaps that 
>mirror site was having a problem. Alternate sites (mirrors) are listed below.
>
>I'll have to check each of the mirror sites manually to verify any 
>haven't stopped mirroring FreeDOS.

I just did and they all work fine, iBiblio as well as all http/ftp 
mirrors, just mirrors.bbnx.net is not available, even for other sites 
like PuTTY.

Ralf 


--
All the data continuously generated in your IT infrastructure 
contains a definitive record of customers, application performance, 
security threats, fraudulent activity, and more. Splunk takes this 
data and makes sense of it. IT sense. And common sense.
http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-novd2d
___
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user