[Freedos-user] AST driver problem...

2011-12-19 Thread Michael Robinson 
There has been quite a bit of talk about AST hardware needing special
drivers even under DOS.  Well, if the company won't put the drivers in
the public domain and there aren't very many AST computers in the world,
the logical thing to do is recycle the ones that are left and replace
them.  Am I missing something?  Are AST computers superior to normal PC
compatibles?

In general, can free dos drivers be developed for hardware that is
otherwise unusable?  For example, the sound blaster 16 pci card doesn't
work apparently without expanded memory in dos and the driver has
to be in a Windows 98 tree.  Rather weird if you ask me.  More to the
point, you can't play Ultima 7 even under MS-DOS 6.20 because the game
is not compatible with protected mode environments.  Oops!  There is
Exult, but I find that it is somewhat unstable on top of 98SE.  I
haven't used it in a current Fedora system.  

Free operating systems whether we are discussing Freedos, Minix, or
Linux have problems with certain hardware.  In the Linux world
unfortunately, drivers for modern graphics cards that work are hard to
come by.  In a Freedos environment, modern graphics card came after DOS
lost most of it's popularity.  On modern systems, one can use an
emulated dos environment to create the appearance of a legacy PC, but
what if you don't want to emulate?  What if you are after real time
computing and need to use the full capability of a modern graphics card?
I can't think of a good example, but I'm sure one exists.

Maybe Freedos isn't the best get the maximum out of a modern computer in
real time OS.  Dos was originally developed before the modern computers
of today existed.  Minix may be a better choice.  I'm sure there are
other real time OS'es available beyond Minix and Freedos.

A few questions and points to take away:

1) Why should the open source community support rare hardware?

2) Can the open source community support rare or even cutting edge 
   hardware?

3) What is it about DOS environments that draws people to them 
   instead of Linux, Minix, etcetera environments?

There is talk of not letting copyrighted software that the producers
don't care about get lost.  I think supporting software that is
unpopular or not well documented inside and out in the public domain is
a mistake.  Freedos exists because DOS is well defined in the public
domain and there are talented people who took that information
implementing what we have today.  Think about where the open 
source community focuses resources and why.

One of the weaknesses of a real time OS is that it probably won't
protect against bad programming in the interest of speed.  Another
issue, spaghetti code is more likely which is harder to maintain than
object oriented code.  Whether a true real time environment is necessary
for a particular task has to be weighed against the disadvantages.
Computers are so fast now that an OS which allows one to write
maintainable code at the expense of some speed loss probably makes more
sense than an OS which will run a program as fast as possible at the
expense of the code being harder to maintain.  Harder to maintain code
is more likely to have serious bugs which is counterproductive when time
performance is critical.  There is probably a sweet spot between real
time and general purpose that is appropriate for most applications.

As a thought experiment, how do you design a real time kernel so that
you can say this operation has to complete in x time and it will?


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

2011-12-21 Thread Rugxulo 
Hi,

On Mon, Dec 19, 2011 at 7:36 PM, Michael Robinson
 wrote:
> There has been quite a bit of talk about AST hardware needing special
> drivers even under DOS.  Well, if the company won't put the drivers in
> the public domain and there aren't very many AST computers in the world,
> the logical thing to do is recycle the ones that are left and replace
> them.  Am I missing something?  Are AST computers superior to normal PC
> compatibles?

It's probably fair use to backup copies of drivers if the company goes
offline. Redistributing might not be allowed, though honestly if it's
available nowhere else (and not charged for), I don't see the harm.

Otherwise, yeah, I don't see any better answer than dropping them, but
that's a horribly sad and useless "solution".

> In general, can free dos drivers be developed for hardware that is
> otherwise unusable?

Dunno, but there aren't many DOS driver developers anymore (and I'm
not thus skilled). So sure, anything's possible, but who will do it?

> For example, the sound blaster 16 pci card doesn't
> work apparently without expanded memory in dos and the driver has
> to be in a Windows 98 tree.  Rather weird if you ask me.

Lots of legacy stuff did weird things, esp. geared towards Windows as
"MS" DOS was the (one-time) king.

> More to the point, you can't play Ultima 7 even under MS-DOS 6.20
> because the game is not compatible with protected mode environments.

Don't load EMM386 then? Wouldn't that work?

> Oops!  There is
> Exult, but I find that it is somewhat unstable on top of 98SE.  I
> haven't used it in a current Fedora system.

Dunno, if DOSBox doesn't work, try VirtualBox. I'd bet it works there
(at least with latest VT-X) as FASM's Kelvar demo ("big unreal mode"
or whatever) works (VirtualBox 4.1.4).

> Free operating systems whether we are discussing Freedos, Minix, or
> Linux have problems with certain hardware.  In the Linux world
> unfortunately, drivers for modern graphics cards that work are hard to
> come by.  In a Freedos environment, modern graphics card came after DOS
> lost most of it's popularity.  On modern systems, one can use an
> emulated dos environment to create the appearance of a legacy PC, but
> what if you don't want to emulate?  What if you are after real time
> computing and need to use the full capability of a modern graphics card?
> I can't think of a good example, but I'm sure one exists.

There are several real-time OSes, but I'm not familiar with any of
them. I assume someone would use something like VxWorks for that.

> Maybe Freedos isn't the best get the maximum out of a modern computer in
> real time OS.  Dos was originally developed before the modern computers
> of today existed.  Minix may be a better choice.  I'm sure there are
> other real time OS'es available beyond Minix and Freedos.

I don't know if either is strictly "real-time". Anyways, Minix 2 was
nice (lean and useful), and 3 has undergone massive improvements and
changes but still isn't fully stable. I don't know where they're
headed and honestly haven't tried it lately.

> A few questions and points to take away:
>
> 1) Why should the open source community support rare hardware?

They don't, they just tell you to buy more, esp. regarding RAM, HDs,
gfx cards, network cards, etc.

> 2) Can the open source community support rare or even cutting edge
>   hardware?

They can do whatever they wants, but usually it's pretty chaotic.
Usually it's only chasing trends, not stabilizing support.

> 3) What is it about DOS environments that draws people to them
>   instead of Linux, Minix, etcetera environments?

Experience? Old hardware? Fun? Tons of legacy apps that were never ported?

> There is talk of not letting copyrighted software that the producers
> don't care about get lost.  I think supporting software that is
> unpopular or not well documented inside and out in the public domain is
> a mistake.

Such as what? Obviously tons of people support Windows, even though it
radically changes every five years. And it's only partially
documented. Are you saying it's a waste of time to code for Windows?
(I would honestly "half" agree, but that's not saying much.) Though
I'm not sure I'm exactly pro-POSIX either.

Face it, most people treat computers as throw-away, even software.
It's only hardcore nerds that want to hoard it all forever and ever,
esp. because it "just works fine" for them. Silly nerds.  ;-)

> Freedos exists because DOS is well defined in the public
> domain and there are talented people who took that information
> implementing what we have today.  Think about where the open
> source community focuses resources and why.

It only exists because, at the time, it was very popular and had lots
of software and also computers were still weak. Nowadays almost nobody
cares, sadly, despite all the massively hard work that went into it.
They have "newer" toys, so they're willing to throw away the old ones.

> One of the weaknesses of a real time OS is that it p

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

2011-12-22 Thread James Hall 
On Wed, Dec 21, 2011 at 11:01 PM, Rugxulo  wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Mon, Dec 19, 2011 at 7:36 PM, Michael Robinson
>  wrote:
>> There has been quite a bit of talk about AST hardware needing special
>> drivers even under DOS.  Well, if the company won't put the drivers in
>> the public domain and there aren't very many AST computers in the world,
>> the logical thing to do is recycle the ones that are left and replace
>> them.  Am I missing something?  Are AST computers superior to normal PC
>> compatibles?
>
> It's probably fair use to backup copies of drivers if the company goes
> offline. Redistributing might not be allowed, though honestly if it's
> available nowhere else (and not charged for), I don't see the harm.
>
> Otherwise, yeah, I don't see any better answer than dropping them, but
> that's a horribly sad and useless "solution".
[..]


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.

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.)

If they have purchased them, they would probably have an issue with us
redistributing AST's previously "abandoned" drivers. I don't want to
risk damaging the FreeDOS Project by mirroring these driverse (if the
license doesn't say we can redistribute them) then get a C&D letter.
We don't have resources to defend ourselves legally.


It's not an ideal situation for these old drivers, but we need to be
careful here. And I'll admit that I'm not sufficiently motivated to
comb through all the driver zip files (I assume zip) and read all the
Readme & License files, just to see if we can redistribute them. I'll
leave that to someone with more free time. :-)


-jh

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

2011-12-22 Thread 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 


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

2011-12-22 Thread James Hall 
>>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"...



Yes, and those guys always worry me. They are similar to "patent
trolls", who buy up patent portfolios, then sue people who infringe on
them. I don't know anything about DATA ACESS, but maybe they are an
"IP troll" who bought AST's intellectual property portfolio to do
something like that.

-jh

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

2011-12-22 Thread dmccunney 
On Thu, Dec 22, 2011 at 6:48 PM, James Hall  wrote:

> It's not an ideal situation for these old drivers, but we need to be
> careful here. And I'll admit that I'm not sufficiently motivated to
> comb through all the driver zip files (I assume zip) and read all the
> Readme & License files, just to see if we can redistribute them. I'll
> leave that to someone with more free time. :-)

Be careful of what?

Generally speaking, people only really care when they think there is
money involved.  What money *could* be involved here?

We are talking about drivers for ancient hardware.  These drivers are
of no use whatever unless you happen to *have* the hardware.  Not many
will, and it's not exactly a paying market.

I'd put the drivers up on a website and let folks know they existed.
The website would make it clear the drivers were archived there as a
service for folks who happened to have the hardware, and were offered
free of charge to those who could use them.  I'd state that I was
doing so because the manufacturers were out of business and the
drivers could not be found elsewhere, and offer to take them down if
someone who could demonstrate they were the rights holder objected.  I
would be rather surprised if any such rights holder came forward and
complained.

> -jh
__
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Re: [Freedos-user] AST driver problem...

2011-12-22 Thread James Hall 
On Thu, Dec 22, 2011 at 6:11 PM, dmccunney  wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 22, 2011 at 6:48 PM, James Hall  wrote:
>
>> It's not an ideal situation for these old drivers, but we need to be
>> careful here. And I'll admit that I'm not sufficiently motivated to
>> comb through all the driver zip files (I assume zip) and read all the
>> Readme & License files, just to see if we can redistribute them. I'll
>> leave that to someone with more free time. :-)
>
> Be careful of what?
>
> Generally speaking, people only really care when they think there is
> money involved.  What money *could* be involved here?

Careful, as in there seems to be a company out there that purchased
the IP from AST Research. I don't want to get a C&D letter from them,
or engage in anything that involves a legal defense. We just don't
have the resources to do anything against it.

Yes, companies don't tend to care unless there's money involved. But
in the case of trademark law, if you fail to defend attempted mis-use
of a trademark that you own, you automatically lose it. So companies
tend to police trademarks pretty aggressively.

I'd rather err on the conservative side here, and not mix the AST
Research driver archives with the FreeDOS Project archives.


> I'd put the drivers up on a website and let folks know they existed.
> The website would make it clear the drivers were archived there as a
> service for folks who happened to have the hardware, and were offered
> free of charge to those who could use them.  I'd state that I was
> doing so because the manufacturers were out of business and the
> drivers could not be found elsewhere, and offer to take them down if
> someone who could demonstrate they were the rights holder objected.  I
> would be rather surprised if any such rights holder came forward and
> complained.

It's a good idea. But I'll let someone else take that project. :-)


-jh

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

2011-12-22 Thread dmccunney 
On Thu, Dec 22, 2011 at 7:18 PM, James Hall  wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 22, 2011 at 6:11 PM, dmccunney  wrote:
>> On Thu, Dec 22, 2011 at 6:48 PM, James Hall  wrote:
>>
>>> It's not an ideal situation for these old drivers, but we need to be
>>> careful here. And I'll admit that I'm not sufficiently motivated to
>>> comb through all the driver zip files (I assume zip) and read all the
>>> Readme & License files, just to see if we can redistribute them. I'll
>>> leave that to someone with more free time. :-)
>>
>> Be careful of what?
>>
>> Generally speaking, people only really care when they think there is
>> money involved.  What money *could* be involved here?
>
> Careful, as in there seems to be a company out there that purchased
> the IP from AST Research. I don't want to get a C&D letter from them,
> or engage in anything that involves a legal defense. We just don't
> have the resources to do anything against it.

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.

> Yes, companies don't tend to care unless there's money involved. But
> in the case of trademark law, if you fail to defend attempted mis-use
> of a trademark that you own, you automatically lose it. So companies
> tend to police trademarks pretty aggressively.

I'm aware of trademark law.  It's why Xerox spent a ton of money over
the years reminding people that Xerox was a company name and
registered trademark, to try to prevent "xerox" from slipping into the
public domain as a verb meaning "photocopy".

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.  (I understand wrestler "Hulk" Hogan had to pay a
license fee to Marvel comics to use the name Hulk.)

> I'd rather err on the conservative side here, and not mix the AST
> Research driver archives with the FreeDOS Project archives.

I wasn't suggesting *you* do so: merely that it could be done without real risk.

>> I'd put the drivers up on a website and let folks know they existed.
>> The website would make it clear the drivers were archived there as a
>> service for folks who happened to have the hardware, and were offered
>> free of charge to those who could use them.  I'd state that I was
>> doing so because the manufacturers were out of business and the
>> drivers could not be found elsewhere, and offer to take them down if
>> someone who could demonstrate they were the rights holder objected.  I
>> would be rather surprised if any such rights holder came forward and
>> complained.
>
> It's a good idea. But I'll let someone else take that project. :-)

Your call.  But I think it's doable without the sky falling on anyone's head.

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

2011-12-25 Thread 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


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

2011-12-25 Thread dmccunney 
On Sun, Dec 25, 2011 at 3:10 PM, Ralf A. Quint  wrote:
> 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...

That's a good point.  I personally haven't heard of such a thing, but
I agree it's possible.

I'm still unconvinced anyone would bother in this case, as I don't see
a point to doing it.  (Though generating spurious legal fees for the
lawyer might be one, but would be dangerous turf to work if the layer
picked the wrong target.  A counter-suit might be deadly.)

>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...

They might, but the quick bucks involved would likely need to be more
than legal fees for their attorney.

> 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 never suggested it should - merely that the effort was worth making,
and likely not that risky.

> 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).

It does look promising, though some links don't work.  It's certainly
a place to try.

> Ralf
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