Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS make better compatibility with DOS games [current status]

[Bryan Kilgallin]

Yes, Eric:


Networking with Samba is a bit complicated to configure, but Bryan
and Frantisek have recently done that for Bryan's computers, so
they can probably share some tricks.


We have indeed done this! So I don't need to transfer data via USB stick.

I mainly use FreeDOS to receive heart monitor data. The receiver talks 
to a hardware serial port. Its software is DOS.


I also wanted to print text files from that PC. Hence we started this 
project. We've run into a Samba bug. That truncates files received from 
DOS. So only the first hundred or so characters, print.


This was a heterogeneous printing project. Thus it used Samba for 
networking. While CUPS was used for printing. Only the networking part 
works right from FreeDOS.


This project lasted months. It required patience and goodwill. I gave 
needs, analysis, and trial and error testing. Frank advised, simulated, 
researched, and tested.


My main computers run Ubuntu. Its GUI applications include a CUPS front 
end. I repeatedly installed Brother's printer driver. That installer, 
and the CUPS front end, offer many options. Those lack documentation. 
And half the installer options gave error messages!


Configuration files were scattered across PCs. In the Linux file system, 
some were in /etc, /mnt, /run, and /var. On the FreeDOS PC, I installed 
MSNET.


Suggested syntax sometimes didn't work in practice. So I repeatedly used 
command line tools. Such as editing configuration files.


In the Ubuntu file system, I worked mainly in the /etc directory. 
Therein I was mainly in cups/ and samba/. There I was editing hosts, 
smb.conf, printers.conf, and *.ppd files.


In FreeDOS, I repeatedly edited files. Those were LMHOSTS and LOGON.BAT. 
We found password and file name limitations in FreeDOS. An Ubuntu 
password--failed in FreeDOS. FreeDOS also fell over at Brother's default 
printer name!


I recursively edited and tested configuration. That was on both Ubuntu 
and FreeDOS computers. For one printer, Ubuntu's CUPS GUI made multiple 
print queues! Configuration was transient. Then applications did or 
didn't print. Their listed print queues, mostly had various errors! We 
disabled a daemon. This limited the many print queues listed by 
Files/Nautilus.


Samba runs from two servers. They are my Ubuntu PC, and the router's USB 
stick. My Ubuntu computers can use both. But the FreeDOS PC only sees 
the PC server.


We cooperated well. So I learned kludgy command-line tools. So we 
explored the limits of software design!

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


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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS make better compatibility with DOS games [current status]

[Jerome Shidel]

Hi Eric,

[reply on-list as asked]

> On Jun 3, 2021, at 7:38 AM, Eric Auer  wrote:
> 
> Why cannot FDIMPLES free the allocated memory before calling FDINST?

It is not that it can not do it. It is only that it’s original design (as a 
list editor) meant
that all remaining memory was available for it to do with as it pleased. The 
data for the
the package states, file lists, descriptions, groups, etc. are simply stored in 
memory 
wherever they fit. Different pieces of this are freed as needed to make room 
for more
immediate needs. These are managed through linked trees, lists and pointers to 
pointers to pointers. There is data is not in fixed memory layout like static 
memory lists.

To be able to free more memory, it would need to be able to shuffle things 
around and
put the list of changes as low as possible. This would require a good deal of 
work to make
it capable of doing that. Since there are other improvements I’d like to make 
that 
would require even more effort with the current design, implementing the data 
shuffle 
doesn’t make sense to me. A redesign really is the best choice overall.

> 
> Why do you need a writeable disk to test for FreeCOM? Also, I thought
> you already ensure having temp space for pipes etc. by using MEMDISK
> and some RAMDISK? Please give an example of an old code snippet for
> FreeCOM presence testing which you have removed.

Unfortunately, the oldest version of the installer is 1.2 PRE-3. That is when
I started pushing it to GitHub. By that time, I had already decided doing the
tests for FreeCOM were flakey. So, that code no longer exists.

According to GitHub, 1.2 PRE-3 was pushed 6 years ago. I don’t recall 
exactly what I did to test for FreeCOM. 

However, what it probably did was just used VER. This means it would need to
pipe that somewhere to compare it. This is a problem at installer start up. 
There
is no guarantee that a RAM drive exists or there are any other writeable 
filesystems. Nowadays, the boot media is generally able to create some sort
of RAM drive. And when one doesn’t exist, the installer will try to make one.
That way, it can do automate a couple more things in the early stages of the
install and possibly import a couple settings from a possibly existing config 
(like 
LANG=?). 

But, there are some situations that a RAM drive cannot be created. When that
occurs, the installer falls back to really dumb mode until the HD is 
partitioned and
formatted. Then it will start using it I/O redirection.

Sure, it could test for FreeCOM only when a RAM drive or writeable FS is 
present.
But, that would be more startup overhead which I think really isn’t necessary. 

The LiveCD uses MEMDISK. But, the LegacyCD, USB and CD boot floppy do not.

> 
> Thanks :-) Eric
> 

:-)

Jerome



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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS make better compatibility with DOS games [current status]

[Jerome Shidel]

Hi Eric,

> On Jun 2, 2021, at 7:47 AM, Eric Auer  wrote:
> 
> 
> Hi Jerome,
> 
> if FDIMPLES is specifically used in advanced mode, where
> more data has to be processed, I would suggest to consider
> automatically enabling support for XMS when XMS is found.

Not really needed. When run by the installer, FDIMPLES does not 
run FDINST. It just manipulates the package lists and passes those
back to the installer. 

Basically, FDIMPLES is 4 similar (but different) programs all mashed 
together. The original installer package list editor. A USB stick package 
list customizer that can alter the BASE and FULL sets on the install 
media. A front end UI for FDINST. And finally the rarely mentioned, a 
package analyzer and upgrader. It also includes features to import and
export package customization lists and other stuff. 

> Do you say that the amount of required RAM does not depend on
> the number of packages, but on the size of the largest ZIP? How?

Yes.

Package extraction is handled by FDINST. Exact requirements for
it should be directed to Mateusz. 

I can really only speak to what I’ve observed. Reserving more RAM 
for FDIMPLES causes FDINST to fail to install really big packages. 

Eventually, I’d like to find the time to redo FDIMPLES. There are some 
features regarding multiple repositories and such I’d like to add. Such 
things would be extremely difficult with it’s current design. 

Although the original design was fine for the original intent of just 
“tweaking” the package list for installation. It is not suited very well
for all the other things that got thrown into it. 

Nearly everything would be improved by a re-design. Mainly things
like performance and it’s required memory footprint. The current version
doesn’t even have mouse support to help keep its footprint down. 

It really really really needs redone.

> 
>> FDIMPLES was really only designed to modify the package
>> list for advanced mode installs. All the the other stuff
>> it does and restrictions that were added came later.
>> It’s really not designed to do that.
>> It really needs to just be redone.
> 
> That sounds tedious. But please explain in more detail.
> 
>> What OS let’s you boot a different OS to perform your install?
> 
> I generally agree, but it is easier for people who do not know
> how to use a disk image to make our boot floppy, or are simply
> too lazy because they assume DOS is DOS which may seem plausible.
> 
> Maybe the installer could test if it runs on FreeCOM and abort
> with a complaint if it is not? Should be easy enough for users
> to start FreeCOM and not worth the effort to automate that.

The installer used to test for FreeCOM. But without a guaranteed 
writable filesystem, I didn’t think it was reliable enough. 

So, at present… 

When you boot the install media, the installer just runs. 

If you run SETUP from the command line, it just loads FreeCOM and 
runs itself under that instance. This takes a second or so. But, the 
second FreeCOM uses very little memory. This guarantees that the
stuff it needs from FreeCOM is present and there is sufficient
environment space for the installer. It does have a couple other
side effects. But, the installer manages those. 

During the original creation of the installer, the intent was to make
it compatible with lesser shells like MS-DOS 3(ish). But, the extra 
overhead soon made that pointless. There is some legacy stuff in 
the installer from that time that will eventually be improved. Just 
one simple example are things like this:

if “%1” == “/help” goto ShowHelp
if “%1” == “/HELP” goto ShowHelp

can be replaced consolidated with /I to ignore case

if /I “%1” == “/help” goto ShowHelp

> And as you say, if people load FreeCOM on top of another shell,
> maybe even without having XMS drivers, it will severely limit
> free RAM, so they better update their config and reboot again.
> 
> Do you require any other FreeDOS specific things apart from
> FreeCOM? I assume you require working XMS and CD-ROM drivers,
> but not much else, so people could use other DOS boot disks
> at their own risk. A good example would be that they already
> have some DOS on their harddisk and know how to configure it,
> so they want to use that to run our CD installer manually.

Yes and no.

The only FreeDOS specific requirement I know of is FreeCOM (with a fairly 
large environment). But, there are numerous tools required by the installer. 
There aren’t really any extra programs on the CD Boot Floppy. Since, it needs
all of them, it uses those versions. 

Running the installer under another DOS is not really supported and I 
don’t feel it is worth the effort and time to determine. 

For example, checking if you can use fdisk from MS-DOS 5, 6, 6.22, PC-DOS 7, 
OpenDOS and on and on… instead of the FreeDOS version feels like a waste of 
time 
to me. 

If needed, just add a custom CD driver or whatever to the CD boot floppy. 

> 
> Regards, Eric
> 
:-)

Jerome



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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS make better compatibility with DOS games [current status]

[Eric Auer]

Hi Jerome,

if FDIMPLES is specifically used in advanced mode, where
more data has to be processed, I would suggest to consider
automatically enabling support for XMS when XMS is found.

Do you say that the amount of required RAM does not depend on
the number of packages, but on the size of the largest ZIP? How?

> FDIMPLES was really only designed to modify the package
> list for advanced mode installs. All the the other stuff
> it does and restrictions that were added came later.
> It’s really not designed to do that.
> It really needs to just be redone.

That sounds tedious. But please explain in more detail.

> What OS let’s you boot a different OS to perform your install?

I generally agree, but it is easier for people who do not know
how to use a disk image to make our boot floppy, or are simply
too lazy because they assume DOS is DOS which may seem plausible.

Maybe the installer could test if it runs on FreeCOM and abort
with a complaint if it is not? Should be easy enough for users
to start FreeCOM and not worth the effort to automate that.

And as you say, if people load FreeCOM on top of another shell,
maybe even without having XMS drivers, it will severely limit
free RAM, so they better update their config and reboot again.

Do you require any other FreeDOS specific things apart from
FreeCOM? I assume you require working XMS and CD-ROM drivers,
but not much else, so people could use other DOS boot disks
at their own risk. A good example would be that they already
have some DOS on their harddisk and know how to configure it,
so they want to use that to run our CD installer manually.

Regards, Eric



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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS make better compatibility with DOS games [current status]

[Jerome Shidel]

Hi Eric,

> On Jun 2, 2021, at 6:33 AM, Eric Auer  wrote:
> 
> 
> Hi Jerome,
> 
> thanks for the explanation, but are we talking about DOS
> RAM (at most 640 kB) here? Or EMS, XMS, protected mode?

FDIMPLES and FDINST are both made for 8086. FDIMPLES is limited to only using 
low memory (640k). I believe FDINST is as well. But, you’d have to as Mateusz 
about that.

In my opinion, since they both need to do everything they do on an 8086, there 
isn’t much point adding support for memory over 640k. 

> In FDIMPLES, FDINST of FDNPKG, and other involved apps?

There aren’t any other programs directly involved. When running the FDIMPLES 
exe, it does everything except the actual install or removal of the individual 
packages. 

The OS installer is different. It does not normally use FDIMPLES at all. 
Package installation there is handles through batch logic, V8Power Tools and 
FDINST. 

However, when running the installer in advanced mode, it will run FDIMPLES in a 
special mode to modify the package list. That is then passed back to the 
installer and the process above is used.

> 
> How much RAM do you recommend to be free?

As much as possible to prevent problems with very large packages.


> Could FDIMPLES
> shrink before calling FDINST and grow back when it exits?

Yes and no.

FDIMPLES was really only designed to modify the package list for advanced mode 
installs. All the the other stuff it does and restrictions that were added came 
later. It’s really not designed to do that.

It really needs to just be redone.

> 
> Note that Lukas had been booting from a Win9x floppy to
> run the CD installer, as his BIOS does not boot CD and
> he did not use the special installer boot floppy either,
> so I expect his context to be rather unusual for the
> installer and wonder which parts are likely to fail in
> that situation and what could be done to warn the users
> or, better, to work with arbitrary DOS boot disks :-)

First…

What OS let’s you boot a different OS to perform your install? You don’t boot 
MS-DOS 5.0 and try to run the MS-DOS 6.22 installer. You don’t boot CentOS and 
try to install Ubuntu. 

That being said. The primary installer does what it can to try and do it. 
However, the installer requires FreeCOM. So, if you boot MA-DOS, FreeCOM is 
loaded by the installer. This would really reduce the amount of free RAM. The 
installer itself and most of the utilities it uses can get by with fairly low 
amounts of free RAM. I don’t know off hand what the absolute minimum level of 
free RAM required for FDINST to be able to install all the packages in BASE or 
FULL. But, he didn’t say when it actually fails to install. 

Overall, I think the installer should just completely remove any support for 
installation under any OS other than FreeDOS. Permitting it under MS, PC or 
other DOS is rarely tested and probably flakey at best.

> 
> Regards, Eric
> 
> 

Jerome


> 
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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS make better compatibility with DOS games [current status]

[Jerome Shidel]

Hello Tom,

> On Jun 2, 2021, at 6:35 AM, tom ehlert  wrote:
> 
> Hallo Herr Jerome Shidel,
> 
> am Mittwoch, 2. Juni 2021 um 02:39 schrieben Sie:
> 
> 
> 
 On Jun 1, 2021, at 11:10 AM, Eric Auer  wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Hi Lukas,
>>> […]
>>> 
 said it is memory issue and solved also by installing FreeDOS on hard drive
 in Pentium machine. That's how I did it as well and it works. Even
 installing a lot of packages on 486, the fdimples will crash with out of
 memory while browsing packages tree and selecting many packages.
>>> 
>>> That sounds as if FDIMPLES had too little DOS memory free?
> 
>> It is related to memory. However, not really tied to how much free
>> memory is available on his machine. 
> 
>> Like I’ve mentioned many times before… FDIMPLES is just a front end
>> UI. Actual installation and removal of packages is done by FDINST (part of 
>> the FDNPKG package).
> 
>> For the end user, this isn’t important. However to install some
>> really big packages, FDINST requires a lot of low memory. This means
>> FDIMPLES has to have a very small memory footprint. 
> 
>> FDIMPLES looks simple. However, it correlates multiple pieces of
>> data. Something like as little as 1 up to about 8 different metadata
>> files and a handful of other data points for each entry. 
> 
>> All of that is pulled through something that resembles a
>> prioritized cache. As it runs out of memory, it discards less
>> important data first then ever more important data until sufficient
>> memory is available to complete its current task.
> 
>> Basically with the extreme memory constraints placed on it.
>> Sometimes, it gets stuck needing some low importance data and is
>> forced to hold onto or keep recaching the same data.
> 
>> Just having FDIMPLES reserve more RAM for itself would fix it. But,
>> then insufficient memory would be available to FDINST to install some of the 
>> really big packages.
> 
>> The current version of FDIMPLES improved this a lot. But, it still
>> does happen far to often (like at all). I just need to find the time to 
>> completely resolve it.
> 
>> With the little RAM it is permitted to consume, I’m often amazed it manages 
>> to work at all.
> 
> given the fact that FDINST is some sort of glorified UNZIP, you need an 
> amazing
> amount of words to describe the process.
> 
> Tom
> 

The occasional FDIMPLES out of memory crash is not a problem with FDINST 
itself. 

Just wanted to explain why the “easy-fix” of just letting it have a little more 
RAM to resolve the problem is not the best solution.

I’d love to let it have more RAM. Not only does that fix this problem. But, it 
runs much faster while browsing the packages as well. 


> 
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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS make better compatibility with DOS games [current status]

[tom ehlert]

Hallo Herr Jerome Shidel,

am Mittwoch, 2. Juni 2021 um 02:39 schrieben Sie:



>> On Jun 1, 2021, at 11:10 AM, Eric Auer  wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> Hi Lukas,
>> […]
>> 
>>> said it is memory issue and solved also by installing FreeDOS on hard drive
>>> in Pentium machine. That's how I did it as well and it works. Even
>>> installing a lot of packages on 486, the fdimples will crash with out of
>>> memory while browsing packages tree and selecting many packages.
>> 
>> That sounds as if FDIMPLES had too little DOS memory free?

> It is related to memory. However, not really tied to how much free
> memory is available on his machine. 

> Like I’ve mentioned many times before… FDIMPLES is just a front end
> UI. Actual installation and removal of packages is done by FDINST (part of 
> the FDNPKG package).

> For the end user, this isn’t important. However to install some
> really big packages, FDINST requires a lot of low memory. This means
> FDIMPLES has to have a very small memory footprint. 

> FDIMPLES looks simple. However, it correlates multiple pieces of
> data. Something like as little as 1 up to about 8 different metadata
> files and a handful of other data points for each entry. 

> All of that is pulled through something that resembles a
> prioritized cache. As it runs out of memory, it discards less
> important data first then ever more important data until sufficient
> memory is available to complete its current task.

> Basically with the extreme memory constraints placed on it.
> Sometimes, it gets stuck needing some low importance data and is
> forced to hold onto or keep recaching the same data.

> Just having FDIMPLES reserve more RAM for itself would fix it. But,
> then insufficient memory would be available to FDINST to install some of the 
> really big packages.

> The current version of FDIMPLES improved this a lot. But, it still
> does happen far to often (like at all). I just need to find the time to 
> completely resolve it.

> With the little RAM it is permitted to consume, I’m often amazed it manages 
> to work at all.

given the fact that FDINST is some sort of glorified UNZIP, you need an amazing
amount of words to describe the process.

Tom



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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS make better compatibility with DOS games [current status]

[Eric Auer]

Hi Jerome,

thanks for the explanation, but are we talking about DOS
RAM (at most 640 kB) here? Or EMS, XMS, protected mode?
In FDIMPLES, FDINST of FDNPKG, and other involved apps?

How much RAM do you recommend to be free? Could FDIMPLES
shrink before calling FDINST and grow back when it exits?

Note that Lukas had been booting from a Win9x floppy to
run the CD installer, as his BIOS does not boot CD and
he did not use the special installer boot floppy either,
so I expect his context to be rather unusual for the
installer and wonder which parts are likely to fail in
that situation and what could be done to warn the users
or, better, to work with arbitrary DOS boot disks :-)

Regards, Eric




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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS make better compatibility with DOS games [current status]

[tom ehlert]

> You see how many subscribers and views Phil has.
it's always kind to not only mention 'Phil', but be more specific like
"go to Youtube.com, search FreeDOS 1.2 Review - Can it replace MS DOS
for retro gaming?"
or even give the link directly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGmCVeAKR4w

otherwise you are just trolling.

> There are others
> like this on Youtube. Everyone from time to time tries FreeDOS for
> gaming hoping that this time it will be more modern and efficient
> solution for this type of use. Every discussion ends that it does
> not work and it is not worth it. And I think end of our discussion will be 
> similar.

if you would watch the video yourself, you would learn that MANY games
work right out of the box, and most others work after replacing some
files (mostly UDVD2.SYS) with updated versions and skipping EMM386.
I'm not sure what you are so loudly complaining about.

yes, Phil is right to complain that FreeDOS doesn't distribute some
updated components after several years of existence.

but that's an entirely different story.

Tom



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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS make better compatibility with DOS games [current status]

[tom ehlert]

> A lot of games I tried with JEMM386/JEMMEX had some really jarring 
> issues. They varied from the game gracefully crashing to outright raping
> my ears or gradually eroding FAT away. FreeDOS' own FAT repair tools 
> couldn't help me. Only nuking everything and re-installing and 
> re-configuring everything. At this point I've included a special GRUB 
> entry that uses a Linux distro coupled with a custom init script to fix
> my FDOS partition. I lost a lot of time and mental wellbeing on these 

did you ever hear about the concept of BACKUP/RESTORE?

Tom






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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS make better compatibility with DOS games [current status]

[Mateusz Viste]

On 01/06/2021 23:55, Lukas Satin wrote:
The driver VIDECDD is not working at all. It will not find my CD-ROM 
drive. Perhaps because 486 bios cannot find the CDROM. But driver such 
as MSCDEX or SHSUCDX will find the drive.


Hi Lukas, MSCDEX/SHSUCDX are not really drivers, they are only a 
subsystem that talks to the actual driver and presents a "network-like" 
filesystem to the DOS kernel. Back in the day, each CDROM drive came 
with a floppy that contained a DOS driver. This DOS driver had to be 
loaded (via config.sys), and only then MSCDEX (or SHSUCDX) could find 
it. I think you said earlier that your setup works fine with MSDOS - 
then perhaps you could use the same driver on FreeDOS, instead of the 
universal UDVD? MS-DOS does not come with a CDROM driver at all, so I do 
not know where you obtained your driver from.


As for EMM386/JEMM386 - simply do not use it. It is always cleaner to 
run in real mode anyway. The only difference is that you won't be able 
to run games that require EMS memory, but I am not sure there are really 
many games that require EMS memory, usually games are able to use either 
EMS or XMS, depending on what's available.


Finally, if you look for a more basic FreeDOS system, you might want to 
test SvarDOS. It is a FreeDOS distribution that aims for minimalism and 
8086 compatibility, I'd be curious to know how it runs on your 
"difficult" setup.


Mateusz


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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS make better compatibility with DOS games [current status]

[Jerome Shidel]

> On Jun 1, 2021, at 11:10 AM, Eric Auer  wrote:
> 
> 
> Hi Lukas,
> […]
> 
>> said it is memory issue and solved also by installing FreeDOS on hard drive
>> in Pentium machine. That's how I did it as well and it works. Even
>> installing a lot of packages on 486, the fdimples will crash with out of
>> memory while browsing packages tree and selecting many packages.
> 
> That sounds as if FDIMPLES had too little DOS memory free?

It is related to memory. However, not really tied to how much free memory is 
available on his machine. 

Like I’ve mentioned many times before… FDIMPLES is just a front end UI. Actual 
installation and removal of packages is done by FDINST (part of the FDNPKG 
package). 

For the end user, this isn’t important. However to install some really big 
packages, FDINST requires a lot of low memory. This means FDIMPLES has to have 
a very small memory footprint. 

FDIMPLES looks simple. However, it correlates multiple pieces of data. 
Something like as little as 1 up to about 8 different metadata files and a 
handful of other data points for each entry. 

All of that is pulled through something that resembles a prioritized cache. As 
it runs out of memory, it discards less important data first then ever more 
important data until sufficient memory is available to complete its current 
task.

Basically with the extreme memory constraints placed on it. Sometimes, it gets 
stuck needing some low importance data and is forced to hold onto or keep 
recaching the same data.

Just having FDIMPLES reserve more RAM for itself would fix it. But, then 
insufficient memory would be available to FDINST to install some of the really 
big packages.

The current version of FDIMPLES improved this a lot. But, it still does happen 
far to often (like at all). I just need to find the time to completely resolve 
it.

With the little RAM it is permitted to consume, I’m often amazed it manages to 
work at all.

:-)

Jerome




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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS make better compatibility with DOS games [current status]

[Eric Auer]

Hi again,

>>Not sure why Michał mentions Yamaha YMF724

> I've lots of issues with this card.
> Shame on me for not getting a
> motherboard with ISA slots.

After trying several different PCI soundcards which claim
some level of ISA Sound Blaster compatibility, I can tell
you that your luck will also depend on how much ISA your
PCI mainboard still supports with special retro DMA etc.

So basically this only worked well for computers which were
only slightly too new to have ISA slots. After that, things
do indeed get ugly and success also varies from game to game.
But this most likely also happens with MS DOS.

None of the cards worked for more than non-DMA or OPL3 on
too new mainboards. Maybe SB PCI or SB Live would be the
exceptions. I have not tried those because those are known
to require protected mode drivers to simulate compatibility
in software instead of relying on mainboard hardware help.

The SB Live drivers may work better with MS EMM386, but the
drivers fail to work with specific games in the way they do
or do not cooperate in protected mode use in all DOS brands.

And the nicer protected mode SB16 simulation is DOSEMU2 or
DOSBOX, I think. Some "SB16 on HDA hardware" could be nice
to have in real DOS, but that has a bad balance between the
complexity and desire to have it if you have DOSBOX/DOSEMU.

> A lot of games I tried with JEMM386/JEMMEX had some really jarring
> issues. They varied from the game gracefully crashing to...

In context of the above: Does the same happen if you do
NOT load the special PCI soundcard drivers? I would think
that the trio JEMM386 plus PCI sound plus protected mode
games is most evil, while real mode games and ISA or no
sound might be just fine with the same JEMM386. Of course
some daring command line options for JEMM386 are still a
source of stability risks. You are free to change those.

Please be more specific about how FreeDOS DOSFSCK fails
to repair FAT (FAT16? FAT32?) damage by crashing games
in situations where Linux (also with DOSFSCK?) fixes it.

Having crashes which cause FAT damage is really frustrating,
but I would have to know more details to think about which
repairs types FreeDOS repair tools (either CHKDSK or DOSFSCK)
fail to offer yet.

Regards, Eric



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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS make better compatibility with DOS games [current status]

[Eric Auer]

Hi Lukas,

> Phil has even FreeDOS starter pack, but it is for FreeDOS 1.2. I tried it.
> The driver VIDECDD is not working at all. It will not find my CD-ROM drive.

Such is life. Try OAKCDROM or stick to UDVD2 in that case. This should
not depend on your BIOS, though. As long as the CDROM is connected to
the mainboard, it should be easy. If your CDROM is connected to some
ATAPI-style connector on your soundcard, additional configuration or
command line options may become necessary in DOS.

> Perhaps because 486 bios cannot find the CDROM.
> But driver such as MSCDEX or SHSUCDX will find the drive.

This actually is a two layer system: UDVD2, OAKCDROM or VIDECDD are
what talks to your hardware as layer 1. MSCDEX and SHSUCDX only talk
to layer 1, NOT directly to your hardware. There also is ELTORITO,
which talks to the BIOS which in turn talks to your hardware, but
that only works when you boot from the CD drive in question. When
UHDD is loaded first, UDVD2 will additionally talk to UHDD to cache.

In short, if VIDECDD does not work, use UDVD2 or another layer 1
driver. Whether you use MSCDEX or SHSUCDX makes no difference in
that point, but it might make a difference for copy protections.
Different layer 1 drivers may ALSO make copy protection differences,
so you really have to try a few combinations to find out more.

> Yes, he mentions that a lot of games will fail because they cannot
> find a CD drive at all. And this must be something specific to
> FreeDOS (I think it can be driver for CD or EMM386).

You forget that he also mention many games which work immediately.
If you say EMM386 is a likely source of problems, I repeat my
recommendation to simply avoid loading it. Much easier than to
wonder whether another version or other options make it better.

> You know I spent last 3 days with FreeDOS, trying to make it work. I don't
> think I'm impatient. We spent one day here and I did not have any solution

I spent at least half an hour finding and watching Phil's videos,
youtube comments, pausing short screenshots of error messages etc.

It would have been a lot easier if you just answered my questions
and actually you would have saved four hours of experiments with
Windows boot floppy and our installer if you had carefully read
the instructions, or had asked immediately, to know that there is
a FreeDOS boot disk which should be used with the install CD when
your BIOS cannot boot from CD (in general, this is common for 486).

So again, life is hard with DOS. When we used it in the 1980s or
1990s, it was not uncommon to spend some time wondering about the
drivers or configuration for some new hardware or software. This
is not specific to the FreeDOS style of DOS. Remember that with
MS DOS 6, you were not even able to use more than 8 GB of your
harddisk (often less, depending on BIOS) or more than 2 GB for
each drive letter. Hardware has not become simpler since then,
so it is quite nice that UDVD2 covers a large range of systems.

Thirty years ago, you just used the driver which came with your
CD-ROM drive and hope that it was of good quality, but nobody
would have complained about having to copy that BRANDCD.SYS from
the CD vendor to their DOS directory and read the docs and so on.

Compared to that, UDVD2 is very plug and play. For everything
not automatically done right by that, pretend that it is 1990.

> Therefore I will try hack my way around. Copy MSCDEX and EMM386.

That would be a very interesting experiment, yes. Please tell
me which games work better with those. Again, you should also
try different layer 1 drivers if MSCDEX is not sufficient to
make the CD-ROM detected by copy protection schemes.

> If that won't work, I will format the drive and install Windows 95.

You do know that DOS games are not exactly famous for running
inside Windows, right? Or do you mean the MS DOS 7 which came
with Windows? That might work, but it may actually have fewer
drivers for modern hardware than FreeDOS does. Again, let me
know how well your games work with it if you test MS DOS 7.

> PS: CD Audio was fixed in Freedos 1.3 RC2 thanks to updated UDVD2 driver
> and I use XT-IDE custom BIOS attached on Realtek NIC. That allows to
> unlimited disk size (limited only by filesystem, 8TB for FAT32).

That is a pretty fancy way to solve the disk size limitation
compared to your expectations about plug and play DOS drivers.

Note that disk size is limited to 2 TB, not 8 TB, because DOS
only supports MBR partition tables and 512 byte sector size at
the moment, but both can be fixed in future FreeDOS updates :-)

> ...took a vacation this week to solve stuff like this. Because I won auction
> with 15 retro gaming PCs after someone's brother deceased. And it was whole
> weekend for me with only FreeDOS installation crashing because of out of

Sad thing about the brother! Still, if I had FIFTEEN new PC, I
would not be surprised to spend a lot of time to install them.

> memory. Then other stuff and now I see the compa

Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS make better compatibility with DOS games [current status]

[Lukas Satin]

Hi, thank you. That comment on Phil's video by Lukas Satin - that's me.

Phil has even FreeDOS starter pack, but it is for FreeDOS 1.2. I tried it.
The driver VIDECDD is not working at all. It will not find my CD-ROM drive.
Perhaps because 486 bios cannot find the CDROM. But driver such as MSCDEX
or SHSUCDX will find the drive.

Yes, he mentions that a lot of games will fail because they cannot find a
CD drive at all. And this must be something specific to FreeDOS (I think it
can be driver for CD or EMM386).

You know I spent last 3 days with FreeDOS, trying to make it work. I don't
think I'm impatient. We spent one day here and I did not have any solution
or a possible solution. Therefore I will try hack my way around. Copy
MSCDEX and EMM386. If that won't work, I will format the drive and install
Windows 95.

PS: CD Audio was fixed in Freedos 1.3 RC2 thanks to updated UDVD2 driver
and I use XT-IDE custom BIOS attached on Realtek NIC. That allows to
unlimited disk size (limited only by filesystem, 8TB for FAT32).

I would copy few files, I think users are not lazy. But see, I'm a software
developer, have a lot of other stuff to do and this is my hobby. I even
took a vacation this week to solve stuff like this. Because I won auction
with 15 retro gaming PCs after someone's brother deceased. And it was whole
weekend for me with only FreeDOS installation crashing because of out of
memory. Then other stuff and now I see the compatibility with MY  MS-DOS
software that I need to test is like 50%. I feel like in the old days, when
you could install Redhat Linux on 486 and play DOOM there, but nothing
else. I think FreeDOS is a little bit like Redhat 20 years ago. It is a
little bit better of course, but still feels more like Unix system than
native DOS system.

You see how many subscribers and views Phil has. There are others like this
on Youtube. Everyone from time to time tries FreeDOS for gaming hoping that
this time it will be more modern and efficient solution for this type of
use. Every discussion ends that it does not work and it is not worth it.
And I think end of our discussion will be similar.

This is a long term problem. I know open source is difficult and you don't
have time to watch social media, what people say about FreeDOS. If there
would be some Patreon or Kickstarter campaign to support FreeDOS
development and these particular use cases would get focus, I would not
hesitate to donate some money. Because it cost me time and a lot of users
are unhappy. And I see this could be so good system. I would even accept
the fact that developers will not spend time with corner cases
compatibility, if there is some proven solution with copying a few original
MS-DOS files to FreeDOS. I will try it tomorrow. But it's just a hit or
miss situation and I did not find any help about this step.

Thank you and have a nice rest of the day.
Lukas

On Tue, Jun 1, 2021 at 11:04 PM Michał Dec  wrote:

>  >Not sure why Michał mentions Yamaha YMF724
>
> I've lots of issues with this card. Shame on me for not getting a
> motherboard with ISA slots.
>
>  >No idea why Michał is so negative about our HIMEM and EMM386 versions
> and even our filesystem checking and repair tools
>
> A lot of games I tried with JEMM386/JEMMEX had some really jarring
> issues. They varied from the game gracefully crashing to outright raping
> my ears or gradually eroding FAT away. FreeDOS' own FAT repair tools
> couldn't help me. Only nuking everything and re-installing and
> re-configuring everything. At this point I've included a special GRUB
> entry that uses a Linux distro coupled with a custom init script to fix
> my FDOS partition. I lost a lot of time and mental wellbeing on these
> issues so it's really no surprise I'd rather live in a world where the
> sources of my problems do not exist, can't hurt me anymore, and can't
> hurt others.
>
> W dniu 01.06.2021 o 15:17, Eric Auer pisze:
> > Hi Lukas,
> >
> >> Please help with solution, don't waste time with asking why and why
> > You will have to ask specific questions when you want
> > specific answers. If you want to visit your uncle, it
> > does not help to tell your taxi driver "bring me to
> > my uncle, do not ask me where he lives" either ;-)
> >
> > You will not have to "hack your way around", you simply
> > have to patiently describe the problem so we can give
> > answers which fit the problem, too.
> >
> > You mentioned that UDVD2 is outdated. Updates are here:
> > http://mercurycoding.com/downloads.html#DOS
> >
> > I certainly agree with Michał that FDNET should be there,
> > as far as network driver licensing permits distribution.
> > For the rest, we should offer vendor download links.
> >
> > Not sure why Michał mentions Yamaha YMF724 drivers, do
> > you have a Sound Blaster 16? Or do you have a sound card
> > based on Yamaha YMF724? Which sound card do you two have?
> >
> > As Michał already said: If your game has a problem with
> > our brand of EMM386, simply try without EMM3

Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS make better compatibility with DOS games [current status]

[Michał Dec]

>Not sure why Michał mentions Yamaha YMF724

I've lots of issues with this card. Shame on me for not getting a 
motherboard with ISA slots.


>No idea why Michał is so negative about our HIMEM and EMM386 versions 
and even our filesystem checking and repair tools


A lot of games I tried with JEMM386/JEMMEX had some really jarring 
issues. They varied from the game gracefully crashing to outright raping 
my ears or gradually eroding FAT away. FreeDOS' own FAT repair tools 
couldn't help me. Only nuking everything and re-installing and 
re-configuring everything. At this point I've included a special GRUB 
entry that uses a Linux distro coupled with a custom init script to fix 
my FDOS partition. I lost a lot of time and mental wellbeing on these 
issues so it's really no surprise I'd rather live in a world where the 
sources of my problems do not exist, can't hurt me anymore, and can't 
hurt others.


W dniu 01.06.2021 o 15:17, Eric Auer pisze:

Hi Lukas,


Please help with solution, don't waste time with asking why and why

You will have to ask specific questions when you want
specific answers. If you want to visit your uncle, it
does not help to tell your taxi driver "bring me to
my uncle, do not ask me where he lives" either ;-)

You will not have to "hack your way around", you simply
have to patiently describe the problem so we can give
answers which fit the problem, too.

You mentioned that UDVD2 is outdated. Updates are here:
http://mercurycoding.com/downloads.html#DOS

I certainly agree with Michał that FDNET should be there,
as far as network driver licensing permits distribution.
For the rest, we should offer vendor download links.

Not sure why Michał mentions Yamaha YMF724 drivers, do
you have a Sound Blaster 16? Or do you have a sound card
based on Yamaha YMF724? Which sound card do you two have?

As Michał already said: If your game has a problem with
our brand of EMM386, simply try without EMM386. Easier
than hoping for MS EMM386 to work better, which may or
may not be the case :-)

Also, in the unlikely case that your game even has some
problem with our HIMEM, you can use XMGR instead, same
download link mentioned above.

No idea why Michał is so negative about our HIMEM and
EMM386 versions and even our filesystem checking and
repair tools. Actually FreeDOS includes DOSFSCK which
is the same tool which you would also use in Linux :-p
The Linux DOSFSCK version is updated more often, though.

I disagree with Michał about completely avoiding parts
of MS DOS. I kept QBASIC from MS DOS for quite a while,
as far as I remember. Now there is the big FreeBASIC.

Of course this is no option when you have no license for
MS DOS, but even if you have one, MS DOS is extremely old
and for many components, the FreeDOS versions are better.

Cheers, Eric



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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS make better compatibility with DOS games [current status]

[Eric Auer]

Hi Lukas,

> Ok, I was born 1987. Had 386 and 486. Today I am software developer. I have

As a software developer, you have to know that "My computer is
not working, make it work" while hesitating to provide details
is not making our life easier. A good bug report contains as
many details as possible.

> cd in the tray. Tried to remove second hdd so it is on drive D and it does
> not help. Same use case is working in Windows 98 and its ms dos. So it is
> clearly some incompatibility in Freedos driver.

If you would be less impatient, you could have noticed that
SHSUCDX lets you use any drive letter you want, possible range
limited by LASTDRIVE, of course. So stop running around in
circles, take a deep breath, read the documentation or at the
very least the output of "NAMEOFTHEAPP /?" before you state
that NAMEOFTHEAPP is "obviously broken" or start searching for
a 90% unrelated "solution" such as removing your harddisk. The
young people today just have too little patience ;-)

> Please look at youtube, PhilsComputerLab. He has Youtube video about
> freedos gaming. He mentions exactly these issues and that he need to
> replace some files, but I dont know which files to replace.

https://www.youtube.com/c/philscomputerlab/videos this guy has 677
videos as of today. Also 120 000 followers, so if I would know which
of those 600+ videos you mean, it would be a promising channel.

None of the videos has "copy protection" in the name, nor protect,
but there are a few called "Create Installation CD from GOG.com
DOSBox Game with ..." where ... can be ISO image or BIN/CUE image,
optionally with audio. There is one called "Indiana Jones and the
Fate of Atlantis CD Roland MT-32" and two called "Space Quest 4
CD Roland ..." for MT-32 or SC-55 which showcase some soundtracks.

There are 78 videos mentioning "DOS", but only 6 mentioning "CD".
Only a single video mentions "FreeDOS":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGmCVeAKR4w
FreeDOS 1.2 Review - Can it replace MS DOS for retro gaming?

It mentions that some BIOS boot the standard and some boot the
legacy image. At 1:17 he shows a screenshot which apparently
shows MEMDISK 4.05 int 13, 15 and 1e vectors, followed by the
FreeDOS kernel booting, but then crashing as soon as HIMEM loads
with invalid opcode. Probable MEMDISK-HIMEM-ELTORITO conflict?
Might be fixed in newer MEMDISK or with better boot options?

The installer asks for language, whether to overwrite the whole
harddisk, keyboard layout and amount of installed packages, for
which he suggests BASE packages only. Interesting that he likes
manual install because he can delete even more old partitions.

The boot menu seems to be the same as in 1.3, which means 1. JEMMEX
with NOEMS, 2. JEMM386 "and SHARE", 3. no drivers and 4. few drivers.
Phil recommends the first two options, but non-EMM386 options for
e.g. Turrican.

Wing Commander crashed for him with exception 06 at 1:bc0d while
DS, SS and ES are 0 and FS and GS look like real mode segments,
code at CS:IP is FE 50 9a 94, CR0=8011, EFL=33002, ESP=f076,
ESI and EDI use 32-bit values, other registers do not etc.

Phil mentions that FreeDOS uses different config.sys menu syntax,
so you cannot drop-in his MS DOS config file examples, but he has
provided FreeDOS style config and menu files for us :-)

https://www.philscomputerlab.com/ms-dos-starter-pack.html

He uses IDE DVD, K6 CPU, AGP Matrox graphics, 32 MB RAM, SD
card via IDE adapter, SB16 with wavetable board and, notably,
tried SOFTMPU. As said, with SB AWE32, you do not need SOFTMPU.

Most games worked fine for him. Screamer 2 failed to detect
the CD. Some games failed to have full sound without SOFTMPU.

Need for Speed failed to detect the CD and the message was
"cdromdirectoryentry - ERROR 2 READING DIRECTORY
/frontend\movielow\ea.tgv" (note the mixed slash directions)

Phil complains that playing "CD digital audio" does not work
at all. You can test this by inserting an audio CD and using
my CDROM2UI tool to tell your drive to start playing a track:

http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/repositories/1.3/pkg-html/cdrom2ui.html

CDROM2 [EJECT|CLOSE|LOCK|UNLOCK|RESET] X:
Audio: CDROM2 [PAUSE|CONT|INFO|PLAYnn] X:
Ask *CDEX 2.0+ if a CD-ROM exists: CDROM2 N:

Note that you will have to connect the internal audio cable.
Phil later explains that audio failed because 1.2 used an
outdated UDVD2 version. We now use the version about which
Phil says that CD audio works fine with it, so there should
be no need to switch to Acer VIDECDD for that. Given that
Phil still prefers VIDECDD over updated UDVD2, my guess is
that VIDECDD works better with some copy protection schemes?

http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distributions/1.3/previews/1.3-rc4/report.html

Unfortunately, Phil only SUSPECTS that switching from SHSUCDX
to MSCDEX could fix copy protections, but has not TESTED that.

I wonder why Strike Commander crashes after the intro
and whether that is supposed to be a copy p

Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS make better compatibility with DOS games [current status]

[Michał Dec]

Thank you! I've been looking for the mixer and found the appropriate 
settings :)


If you want to replace parts of FreeDOS with MS-DOS stuff, it's up to 
you. I just don't see it going places.


W dniu 01.06.2021 o 14:55, Lukas Satin pisze:

CDAudio:
Freedos 1.3 since RC2 features upgraded UDVD2 driver, which fixes 
CDAudio problem. The solution for you is to download UDVD2 driver from 
author's website and replace it with what you have now. That is the 
ultimate solution. One hint: sound card mixer have some utilities and 
they might set zero volume for CD Audio. Get drivers for Yamaha and 
there should be some setup utility or mixer.


Please help with solution, don't waste time with asking why and why 
and why. Because I ask for it. And I ask kindly. I want FreeDOS. 
That's why I'm here. If I have to hack my way around and replace some 
files from original MS-DOS discs I have here on my table. Then yes I 
will do it because I need FAT32 support and I want FreeDOS ecosystem 
with apps.


Thank you,
Lukas

On Tue, Jun 1, 2021 at 2:49 PM Michał Dec > wrote:


>CDAudio is working, but you have to install proper Sound Blaster
drivers

Would be nice if you could be more specific. I can't get it
working on my Yamaha YMF724.

>FDNET has been removed

Good job devs. Remove the kernel next time. That should help make
FreeDOS better.

>*3)* A lot of games will crash because of JEMM386 exception ==>
how to fix?

Run without drivers. It will start FreeDOS in real mode without a
memory manager. Most games will not be very happy with FreeDOS'
own memory managers and will run into strange issues. Use the
memory manager only if you really need it. And you know what? With
"strange issues" in FreeDOS it's a guaranteed domino effect that
may lead to OS annihilation. Let's say, your game crashes and
hangs the entire system due to reasons. You have no way of
recovering other than forcibly restarting the computer. Now good
luck if that game was in the middle of writing anything to the FAT
partition, because if that's so, your FAT partition is now
slightly more screwed up than it used to be. Keep doing it over
and over and eventually the corruption will eat away your FreeDOS
files. Don't count on FreeDOS' own FAT filesystem checking tools.
They're useless. Consider dualbooting Linux with FreeDOS just so
you can have a filesystem repair tool that actually works.

>any mention of copying anything from proprietary DOS

What's the point of running FreeDOS then if you're just gonna end
up gluing together parts of FreeDOS and Microsoft's proprietary
ecosystem? Might as well get the full Monty and install MS-DOS.

W dniu 01.06.2021 o 14:31, Lukas Satin pisze:

Hi, the current status for FreeDOS 1.3 RC4:
A) cannot install from CD on 486 due to low cache or low memory
=> solution is to install on Pentium, then put the drive in 486

B) FDNET has been removed, for networking download FDNET from
FreeDOS 1.2 if you need

C) CDAudio is working, but you have to install proper Sound
Blaster drivers and also open the mixer to unmute CD Audio (set
volume)

*I NEED HELP WITH THIS:*
*1)* If game has problem with DOS4GW.EXE, just replace it by
DOS32A.EXE from C:\FDOS\BIN (copy and rename to DOS4GW.EXE in
game's directory => sometime can even speed up the game)
*
*
*2)* Most of CD games will report CD is missing and are unable to
start ==> this is important => how to fix it? Use MSCDEX?
*
*
*3)* A lot of games will crash because of JEMM386 exception ==>
how to fix? Use MS-DOS 6.22 or Windows 98 MS-DOS 7.1 EMM386? What
do you think? Can you please help what to copy from DOS 7.1 or
DOS 6.22? I have original discs.

*CONCLUSION:*
FreeDOS right now is very powerful and offer a lot of new
software and new networking possibilities.

Can 100% MS-DOS gaming compatibility be made by copying some
files from MS-DOS?

Can you please help me with this one?

I struggle for 2 days already.

Some example of working FDCONFIG.SYS and FDAUTO.BAT with these
files would be very nice!

Thank you!
Lukas


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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS make better compatibility with DOS games [current status]

[Lukas Satin]

I told u I can install from cd. So list is working. Only launching game
with some copy protection will not find cd. Some game will find cd in
freedos. I sent screenshots of games that do not work. It is like 50% of
games from cd.


On Tue 1. 6. 2021 at 20:49, Lukas Satin  wrote:

> Ok, I was born 1987. Had 386 and 486. Today I am software developer. I
> have cd in the tray. Tried to remove second hdd so it is on drive D and it
> does not help. Same use case is working in Windows 98 and its ms dos. So it
> is clearly some incompatibility in Freedos driver.
>
> Please look at youtube, PhilsComputerLab. He has Youtube video about
> freedos gaming. He mentions exactly these issues and that he need to
> replace some files, but I dont know which files to replace.
>
> Thank you,
> Lukas
>
> On Tue 1. 6. 2021 at 19:57, Eric Auer  wrote:
>
>>
>> Hi Lukas,
>>
>> > Please please I solved sound. I shared only experience. Please focus on
>> cd
>> > drive not found. Forget dosbox. I use original floppy discs from 1992.
>> Dont
>> > overcomplicate. Can u recommend which files replace from ms dos?
>>
>> Okay then. So there was no sound problem, you just used a DOSBOX
>> driver outside DOSBOX? If it is supposed to work with SB16 on real
>> hardware, supporting MS EMM386 style I/O traps would still be one
>> feature that I would like to see from Japheth in JEMMEX/JEMM386 :-)
>>
>> But you ask "please focus on CD drive not found". Then I ask: Please
>> tell me, do you have the CD in the drive? Can you access the files
>> on the CD? In other words, is only your game complaining, because it
>> does some copy protection check which has compatibility issues? Or
>> are you completely unable to access any files on the CD? Those are
>> two different problems which have two different solutions. Please
>> specify which versions of which drivers with which options you use.
>>
>> You also have not answered those questions: Out of which memory did
>> the installer run? Why have you used a Windows boot floppy instead
>> of the real FreeDOS installer boot floppy? As you have circumvented
>> the problem, you are free to ignore that question if you have no
>> time to tell me whether the installer would still fail if you use
>> it properly, but I am curious.
>>
>> I assume AWEUTIL /EM and Intel ICU for ISA PnP is what you have now
>> used to solve the MIDI sound problem, but it would be nice to know.
>>
>> Also, CTCM, CTSB16 and CTMMSYS are probably not perfect for AWE32:
>>
>> https://comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.rpg.narkive.com/duCiqd7H/ot-configuring-sb16-for-dos
>> But as long as it works for you, it is better to have a working than
>> to have an overly elegant solution.
>>
>> As you do NOT want too complicated answers, you should wait with
>> MSCLIENT and SAMBA attempts until you have the easy things fixed!
>> This means you should not load IFSHLP at the moment, I think.
>>
>> I also assume that the mouse works fine with CTMOUSE and that
>> your compact flash drive works great now?
>>
>> As nothing is known about the Terminator 2029 problem, you have
>> several remaining problems, but ALL relate to the same issue:
>>
>> Games which are not able to access the game CD.
>>
>> To solve that problem, you could start by answering my question
>> whether or not you can access files on the CD outside the game.
>>
>> For example, if the CD drive has letter D: then does DIR D: work
>> fine and show you a directory listing of the CD contents? Or is
>> there some error message? Which? Do you get error messages earlier
>> while booting, from UDVD2 or from SHSUCDX? What do those messages
>> say? You could also make screenshots if you prefer. You can press
>> F8 when DOS starts to boot: Then it will ask you for confirmation
>> for each line, which makes it easy to read or screenshot messages.
>>
>> >>> 3) Mass Destruction PC DOS game: installs from CD, fails to start.
>> >>> Tried both DOS4GW and DOS32A
>> >>
>> >> It says DOS/32A warning 9003: real mode vector has
>> >> been modified, and exits.
>>
>> According to http://dos32a.narechk.net/manual/html/user/8.htm
>> this is the fault of Mass Destruction itself, when it exits
>> without cleaning up vectors. Which leaves only the CD problem.
>>
>> Regards, Eric
>>
>> PS: This should be 123?DOS=HIGH and 23?DEVICE=...HIMEM... My
>> earlier comments about I=TEST, I=B000-B7FF NOVME and NOINVLPG
>> still apply. If games need EMS 3.2, you must also remove NOEMS
>> and you should not load IFSHLP until you have solved the rest.
>>
>> >> 12?DOS=HIGH
>> >> 12?DOS=UMB
>> >> 12?DOSDATA=UMB
>> >> 1?DEVICE=C:\FDOS\BIN\JEMMEX.EXE NOEMS X=TEST I=TEST NOVME NOINVLPG
>> >> 234?DEVICE=C:\FDOS\BIN\HIMEMX.EXE
>> >> 2?DEVICE=C:\FDOS\BIN\JEMM386.EXE X=TEST I=TEST I=B000-B7FF NOVME
>> NOINVLPG
>> >> 34?SHELL=C:\FDOS\BIN\COMMAND.COM C:\FDOS\BIN /E:1024 /P=C:\FDAUTO.BAT
>> >> 12?SHELLHIGH=C:\FDOS\BIN\COMMAND.COM C:\FDOS\BIN /E:1024
>> /P=C:\FDAUTO.BAT
>> >> 123?DEVICE=C:\CTCM\CTCM.EXE
>> >> 123?DEVICE=C:\SB16\DRV\CTSB16.SYS /UNIT=0 /BLA

Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS make better compatibility with DOS games [current status]

[Lukas Satin]

Ok, I was born 1987. Had 386 and 486. Today I am software developer. I have
cd in the tray. Tried to remove second hdd so it is on drive D and it does
not help. Same use case is working in Windows 98 and its ms dos. So it is
clearly some incompatibility in Freedos driver.

Please look at youtube, PhilsComputerLab. He has Youtube video about
freedos gaming. He mentions exactly these issues and that he need to
replace some files, but I dont know which files to replace.

Thank you,
Lukas

On Tue 1. 6. 2021 at 19:57, Eric Auer  wrote:

>
> Hi Lukas,
>
> > Please please I solved sound. I shared only experience. Please focus on
> cd
> > drive not found. Forget dosbox. I use original floppy discs from 1992.
> Dont
> > overcomplicate. Can u recommend which files replace from ms dos?
>
> Okay then. So there was no sound problem, you just used a DOSBOX
> driver outside DOSBOX? If it is supposed to work with SB16 on real
> hardware, supporting MS EMM386 style I/O traps would still be one
> feature that I would like to see from Japheth in JEMMEX/JEMM386 :-)
>
> But you ask "please focus on CD drive not found". Then I ask: Please
> tell me, do you have the CD in the drive? Can you access the files
> on the CD? In other words, is only your game complaining, because it
> does some copy protection check which has compatibility issues? Or
> are you completely unable to access any files on the CD? Those are
> two different problems which have two different solutions. Please
> specify which versions of which drivers with which options you use.
>
> You also have not answered those questions: Out of which memory did
> the installer run? Why have you used a Windows boot floppy instead
> of the real FreeDOS installer boot floppy? As you have circumvented
> the problem, you are free to ignore that question if you have no
> time to tell me whether the installer would still fail if you use
> it properly, but I am curious.
>
> I assume AWEUTIL /EM and Intel ICU for ISA PnP is what you have now
> used to solve the MIDI sound problem, but it would be nice to know.
>
> Also, CTCM, CTSB16 and CTMMSYS are probably not perfect for AWE32:
>
> https://comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.rpg.narkive.com/duCiqd7H/ot-configuring-sb16-for-dos
> But as long as it works for you, it is better to have a working than
> to have an overly elegant solution.
>
> As you do NOT want too complicated answers, you should wait with
> MSCLIENT and SAMBA attempts until you have the easy things fixed!
> This means you should not load IFSHLP at the moment, I think.
>
> I also assume that the mouse works fine with CTMOUSE and that
> your compact flash drive works great now?
>
> As nothing is known about the Terminator 2029 problem, you have
> several remaining problems, but ALL relate to the same issue:
>
> Games which are not able to access the game CD.
>
> To solve that problem, you could start by answering my question
> whether or not you can access files on the CD outside the game.
>
> For example, if the CD drive has letter D: then does DIR D: work
> fine and show you a directory listing of the CD contents? Or is
> there some error message? Which? Do you get error messages earlier
> while booting, from UDVD2 or from SHSUCDX? What do those messages
> say? You could also make screenshots if you prefer. You can press
> F8 when DOS starts to boot: Then it will ask you for confirmation
> for each line, which makes it easy to read or screenshot messages.
>
> >>> 3) Mass Destruction PC DOS game: installs from CD, fails to start.
> >>> Tried both DOS4GW and DOS32A
> >>
> >> It says DOS/32A warning 9003: real mode vector has
> >> been modified, and exits.
>
> According to http://dos32a.narechk.net/manual/html/user/8.htm
> this is the fault of Mass Destruction itself, when it exits
> without cleaning up vectors. Which leaves only the CD problem.
>
> Regards, Eric
>
> PS: This should be 123?DOS=HIGH and 23?DEVICE=...HIMEM... My
> earlier comments about I=TEST, I=B000-B7FF NOVME and NOINVLPG
> still apply. If games need EMS 3.2, you must also remove NOEMS
> and you should not load IFSHLP until you have solved the rest.
>
> >> 12?DOS=HIGH
> >> 12?DOS=UMB
> >> 12?DOSDATA=UMB
> >> 1?DEVICE=C:\FDOS\BIN\JEMMEX.EXE NOEMS X=TEST I=TEST NOVME NOINVLPG
> >> 234?DEVICE=C:\FDOS\BIN\HIMEMX.EXE
> >> 2?DEVICE=C:\FDOS\BIN\JEMM386.EXE X=TEST I=TEST I=B000-B7FF NOVME
> NOINVLPG
> >> 34?SHELL=C:\FDOS\BIN\COMMAND.COM C:\FDOS\BIN /E:1024 /P=C:\FDAUTO.BAT
> >> 12?SHELLHIGH=C:\FDOS\BIN\COMMAND.COM C:\FDOS\BIN /E:1024
> /P=C:\FDAUTO.BAT
> >> 123?DEVICE=C:\CTCM\CTCM.EXE
> >> 123?DEVICE=C:\SB16\DRV\CTSB16.SYS /UNIT=0 /BLASTER=A:220 I:5 D:1 H:5
> >> 123?DEVICE=C:\SB16\DRV\CTMMSYS.SYS
> >> 12?DEVICEHIGH=C:\NET\MSCLIENT\ifshlp.sys
>
>
>
> ___
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> Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
>
___
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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS make better compatibility with DOS games [current status]

[Eric Auer]

Hi Lukas,

> Please please I solved sound. I shared only experience. Please focus on cd
> drive not found. Forget dosbox. I use original floppy discs from 1992. Dont
> overcomplicate. Can u recommend which files replace from ms dos?

Okay then. So there was no sound problem, you just used a DOSBOX
driver outside DOSBOX? If it is supposed to work with SB16 on real
hardware, supporting MS EMM386 style I/O traps would still be one
feature that I would like to see from Japheth in JEMMEX/JEMM386 :-)

But you ask "please focus on CD drive not found". Then I ask: Please
tell me, do you have the CD in the drive? Can you access the files
on the CD? In other words, is only your game complaining, because it
does some copy protection check which has compatibility issues? Or
are you completely unable to access any files on the CD? Those are
two different problems which have two different solutions. Please
specify which versions of which drivers with which options you use.

You also have not answered those questions: Out of which memory did
the installer run? Why have you used a Windows boot floppy instead
of the real FreeDOS installer boot floppy? As you have circumvented
the problem, you are free to ignore that question if you have no
time to tell me whether the installer would still fail if you use
it properly, but I am curious.

I assume AWEUTIL /EM and Intel ICU for ISA PnP is what you have now
used to solve the MIDI sound problem, but it would be nice to know.

Also, CTCM, CTSB16 and CTMMSYS are probably not perfect for AWE32:
https://comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.rpg.narkive.com/duCiqd7H/ot-configuring-sb16-for-dos
But as long as it works for you, it is better to have a working than
to have an overly elegant solution.

As you do NOT want too complicated answers, you should wait with
MSCLIENT and SAMBA attempts until you have the easy things fixed!
This means you should not load IFSHLP at the moment, I think.

I also assume that the mouse works fine with CTMOUSE and that
your compact flash drive works great now?

As nothing is known about the Terminator 2029 problem, you have
several remaining problems, but ALL relate to the same issue:

Games which are not able to access the game CD.

To solve that problem, you could start by answering my question
whether or not you can access files on the CD outside the game.

For example, if the CD drive has letter D: then does DIR D: work
fine and show you a directory listing of the CD contents? Or is
there some error message? Which? Do you get error messages earlier
while booting, from UDVD2 or from SHSUCDX? What do those messages
say? You could also make screenshots if you prefer. You can press
F8 when DOS starts to boot: Then it will ask you for confirmation
for each line, which makes it easy to read or screenshot messages.

>>> 3) Mass Destruction PC DOS game: installs from CD, fails to start.
>>> Tried both DOS4GW and DOS32A
>>
>> It says DOS/32A warning 9003: real mode vector has
>> been modified, and exits.

According to http://dos32a.narechk.net/manual/html/user/8.htm
this is the fault of Mass Destruction itself, when it exits
without cleaning up vectors. Which leaves only the CD problem.

Regards, Eric

PS: This should be 123?DOS=HIGH and 23?DEVICE=...HIMEM... My
earlier comments about I=TEST, I=B000-B7FF NOVME and NOINVLPG
still apply. If games need EMS 3.2, you must also remove NOEMS
and you should not load IFSHLP until you have solved the rest.

>> 12?DOS=HIGH
>> 12?DOS=UMB
>> 12?DOSDATA=UMB
>> 1?DEVICE=C:\FDOS\BIN\JEMMEX.EXE NOEMS X=TEST I=TEST NOVME NOINVLPG
>> 234?DEVICE=C:\FDOS\BIN\HIMEMX.EXE
>> 2?DEVICE=C:\FDOS\BIN\JEMM386.EXE X=TEST I=TEST I=B000-B7FF NOVME NOINVLPG
>> 34?SHELL=C:\FDOS\BIN\COMMAND.COM C:\FDOS\BIN /E:1024 /P=C:\FDAUTO.BAT
>> 12?SHELLHIGH=C:\FDOS\BIN\COMMAND.COM C:\FDOS\BIN /E:1024 /P=C:\FDAUTO.BAT
>> 123?DEVICE=C:\CTCM\CTCM.EXE
>> 123?DEVICE=C:\SB16\DRV\CTSB16.SYS /UNIT=0 /BLASTER=A:220 I:5 D:1 H:5
>> 123?DEVICE=C:\SB16\DRV\CTMMSYS.SYS
>> 12?DEVICEHIGH=C:\NET\MSCLIENT\ifshlp.sys



___
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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS make better compatibility with DOS games [current status]

[Lukas Satin]

Please please I solved sound. I shared only experience. Please focus on cd
drive not found. Forget dosbox. I use original floppy discs from 1992. Dont
overcomplicate. Can u recommend which files replace from ms dos?

On Tue 1. 6. 2021 at 17:09, Eric Auer  wrote:

>
> Hi Lukas,
>
> > Guys, I built regular 486DX2 66Mhz. I would not be that guy and put PCI
> > soundcard in that machine. Of course I have ISA soundcard. I have even
> VLB
> > slot, but I use TSENG 4000/W32p for ISA. In PCI, there is only Realtek
> NIC
> > with XT-IDE EEPROM.
>
> Actually Realtek PCI Network cards and older PCI, AGP and PCIe graphics
> cards work really well with DOS, but you made a good choice to use an
> ISA soundcard for your old games on that 486DX2 PC.
>
> As said, your ISA soundcard is supposed to come with appropriate tools.
> If it is SB16 compatible, games should be happy, but you may still have
> to load some activation or volume control tool, set BLASTER and other
> environment variables, maybe set jumpers. If the card is PnP, you may
> have to install that large Intel DOS PnP manager thing.
>
> > A) 486DX2 66Mhz, 32MB Ram, onboard 256kB cache. BIOS does not allow CDROM
> > boot, but combination of Windows98 floppy to boot and running
> installation
> > from FreeDOS cd works. At the end there it will crash due to out of
> memory.
>
> Out of DOS memory or out of XMS, EMS or other memory? Those 32 MB
> should certainly be enough for our installer, so the problem will
> be something more specific than your overall size of RAM.
>
> Note that your install style is very non-standard, because the
> installer has not been tested with MS DOS 7 (from your Windows
> floppy). I recommend that you use a FreeDOS boot floppy instead,
> or even better, our special boot floppy for the install CD :-)
>
> The CD installer may expect specific drivers to be loaded, while
> your Win98 boot floppy may be using completely different drivers.
>
> http://freedos.org/download/ explicitly mentions the boot floppy
> for those who want to use the CD without booting it. Sorry that
> you had to spent 4 hours searching other workaround approaches.
>
> > said it is memory issue and solved also by installing FreeDOS on hard
> drive
> > in Pentium machine. That's how I did it as well and it works. Even
> > installing a lot of packages on 486, the fdimples will crash with out of
> > memory while browsing packages tree and selecting many packages.
>
> That sounds as if FDIMPLES had too little DOS memory free? Anyway,
> while the solution to install your target harddisk into a PC which
> CAN boot from CD is very nice, it does not really tell me which
> solution would have worked for the 486 and whether it was really
> the amount of memory. 32 MB sounds very okay. Maybe it was the
> amount of DOS memory, because the Win98 floppy loaded too many
> unnecessary drivers or something like that?
>
> > B) I have Realtek original DOS packet driver, default interrupt 0x60. No
> > problem with that. Just documentation for MTCP tells me to install FDNET
>
> Ah okay. I think if you have the Realtek (8139 or similar, I guess)
> packet driver anyway, you only have to complete some config settings
> for mTCP and the packet driver. No need to install extra components
> as far as I know. Ask Michael Brutman (e.g. here) for config hints :-)
>
> > C) I have Sound Blaster AWE 32 and AWE 64.
>
> The AWE 32 is pretty cool for DOS games! I remember that it came
> with a volume control tool and a setup-at-boot tool and that it
> was recommended to install the intel plug and play configuration
> utility: https://drivers.dosreloaded.de/Plug&Play/Intel%20ICU/
>
> > I have sound + cdrom + network (including Samba support) with dhcp +
> > mouse + compact flash working. Everything is working on this side.
>
> Sound should be relatively easy. For CDROM, use the three drivers
> which I have recommended. You may replace UDVD2 by whatever came
> with your CD/DVD drive, but UDVD2 probably works better.
>
> Networking with Samba is a bit complicated to configure, but Bryan
> and Frantisek have recently done that for Bryan's computers, so
> they can probably share some tricks.
>
> Mouse (PS/2 or RS232) should be easy, too: Use CTMOUSE. If you have
> USB mice, modern BIOS will have some legacy support which translates
> it to a simulation of PS/2 which you can use in CTMOUSE. If you have
> an old BIOS, you can try Bret Johnson's USB drivers.
>
> Not sure what you mean by compact flash, do you mean a card reader
> or do you mean a purely mechanical adapter to connect CF to your
> IDE/ATA connectors on the mainboard? The latter should work without
> any drivers, but you cannot change "disks" while DOS is running and
> you may have to be careful to use proper geometry and partitioning.
>
> > some games install from CD and won't run because they complain cannot
> find
> > CD. Mostly computer will seek floppy drive A: when searching for CD. I
> > guess it is some kind of copy protection.
>
> No idea, 

Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS make better compatibility with DOS games [current status]

[Eric Auer]

Hi Lukas,

> Guys, I built regular 486DX2 66Mhz. I would not be that guy and put PCI
> soundcard in that machine. Of course I have ISA soundcard. I have even VLB
> slot, but I use TSENG 4000/W32p for ISA. In PCI, there is only Realtek NIC
> with XT-IDE EEPROM.

Actually Realtek PCI Network cards and older PCI, AGP and PCIe graphics
cards work really well with DOS, but you made a good choice to use an
ISA soundcard for your old games on that 486DX2 PC.

As said, your ISA soundcard is supposed to come with appropriate tools.
If it is SB16 compatible, games should be happy, but you may still have
to load some activation or volume control tool, set BLASTER and other
environment variables, maybe set jumpers. If the card is PnP, you may
have to install that large Intel DOS PnP manager thing.

> A) 486DX2 66Mhz, 32MB Ram, onboard 256kB cache. BIOS does not allow CDROM
> boot, but combination of Windows98 floppy to boot and running installation
> from FreeDOS cd works. At the end there it will crash due to out of memory.

Out of DOS memory or out of XMS, EMS or other memory? Those 32 MB
should certainly be enough for our installer, so the problem will
be something more specific than your overall size of RAM.

Note that your install style is very non-standard, because the
installer has not been tested with MS DOS 7 (from your Windows
floppy). I recommend that you use a FreeDOS boot floppy instead,
or even better, our special boot floppy for the install CD :-)

The CD installer may expect specific drivers to be loaded, while
your Win98 boot floppy may be using completely different drivers.

http://freedos.org/download/ explicitly mentions the boot floppy
for those who want to use the CD without booting it. Sorry that
you had to spent 4 hours searching other workaround approaches.

> said it is memory issue and solved also by installing FreeDOS on hard drive
> in Pentium machine. That's how I did it as well and it works. Even
> installing a lot of packages on 486, the fdimples will crash with out of
> memory while browsing packages tree and selecting many packages.

That sounds as if FDIMPLES had too little DOS memory free? Anyway,
while the solution to install your target harddisk into a PC which
CAN boot from CD is very nice, it does not really tell me which
solution would have worked for the 486 and whether it was really
the amount of memory. 32 MB sounds very okay. Maybe it was the
amount of DOS memory, because the Win98 floppy loaded too many
unnecessary drivers or something like that?

> B) I have Realtek original DOS packet driver, default interrupt 0x60. No
> problem with that. Just documentation for MTCP tells me to install FDNET

Ah okay. I think if you have the Realtek (8139 or similar, I guess)
packet driver anyway, you only have to complete some config settings
for mTCP and the packet driver. No need to install extra components
as far as I know. Ask Michael Brutman (e.g. here) for config hints :-)

> C) I have Sound Blaster AWE 32 and AWE 64.

The AWE 32 is pretty cool for DOS games! I remember that it came
with a volume control tool and a setup-at-boot tool and that it
was recommended to install the intel plug and play configuration
utility: https://drivers.dosreloaded.de/Plug&Play/Intel%20ICU/

> I have sound + cdrom + network (including Samba support) with dhcp +
> mouse + compact flash working. Everything is working on this side.

Sound should be relatively easy. For CDROM, use the three drivers
which I have recommended. You may replace UDVD2 by whatever came
with your CD/DVD drive, but UDVD2 probably works better.

Networking with Samba is a bit complicated to configure, but Bryan
and Frantisek have recently done that for Bryan's computers, so
they can probably share some tricks.

Mouse (PS/2 or RS232) should be easy, too: Use CTMOUSE. If you have
USB mice, modern BIOS will have some legacy support which translates
it to a simulation of PS/2 which you can use in CTMOUSE. If you have
an old BIOS, you can try Bret Johnson's USB drivers.

Not sure what you mean by compact flash, do you mean a card reader
or do you mean a purely mechanical adapter to connect CF to your
IDE/ATA connectors on the mainboard? The latter should work without
any drivers, but you cannot change "disks" while DOS is running and
you may have to be careful to use proper geometry and partitioning.

> some games install from CD and won't run because they complain cannot find
> CD. Mostly computer will seek floppy drive A: when searching for CD. I
> guess it is some kind of copy protection.

No idea, but I assume you do have CD drivers loaded and working in
general? In that case it would be interesting to know whether there
is indeed a copy protection using exotic functions which differ in
how SHSUCDX and UDVD2 differ from MSCDEX and ancient CD-ROM drivers?

> So making ISO image will not work unless you...

I would not be too sure about that. Simple copy protections might
already be happy with finding the "actual" CD as CD or ISO,

Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS make better compatibility with DOS games [current status]

[Lukas Satin]

Hi, Eric. Yes I agree.

Guys, I built regular 486DX2 66Mhz. I would not be that guy and put PCI
soundcard in that machine. Of course I have ISA soundcard. I have even VLB
slot, but I use TSENG 4000/W32p for ISA. In PCI, there is only Realtek NIC
with XT-IDE EEPROM.

What did I solve:
A) 486DX2 66Mhz, 32MB Ram, onboard 256kB cache. BIOS does not allow CDROM
boot, but combination of Windows98 floppy to boot and running installation
from FreeDOS cd works. At the end there it will crash due to out of memory.
It took me 4 hours to figure it out. Been changing CD Drives, burning new
CDs, you can imagine. And I Googled and one guy had the same problem and he
said it is memory issue and solved also by installing FreeDOS on hard drive
in Pentium machine. That's how I did it as well and it works. Even
installing a lot of packages on 486, the fdimples will crash with out of
memory while browsing packages tree and selecting many packages.

B) I have Realtek original DOS packet driver, default interrupt 0x60. No
problem with that. Just documentation for MTCP tells me to install FDNET to
configure packet driver and provide some default setup. But I guess MTCP
alone with packet driver should work, right? They just recommend installing
FDNET and their setup utility is looking for FDNET CFG file, I guess.

C) I have Sound Blaster AWE 32 and AWE 64. I just tried to help with what I
know.

What I want to solve:
I have sound + cdrom + network (including Samba support) with dhcp +
mouse + compact flash working. Everything is working on this side. Only
some games install from CD and won't run because they complain cannot find
CD. Mostly computer will seek floppy drive A: when searching for CD. I
guess it is some kind of copy protection. So making ISO image will not work
unless you get some crack. And crack means changing some stuff in hex,
which might make some stability problems (games often can crash in the
middle).

I have uploaded FDAuto.bat and FDConfig.sys together with screenshots on
OneDrive here (you have permission to update it directly):
https://1drv.ms/u/s!Aq5X0D4OWWAThYBsnQ0sI1_Me83H5g?e=Nsstqv

Screenshots in order as on OneDrive:
1) [OPTIONAL] SoftMPU crash JEMMEX Exception 06
2) Tried SoftMPU boot without both JEMMEX and JEMM386
3) Mass Destruction PC DOS game: installs from CD, fails to start. Tried
both DOS4GW and DOS32A
4) Destruction Derby: install from CD, fail to start
5) Comanche Gold CD: install, fail to start
6) Terminator 2029: installation from floppy drive will throw some JEMM386
error. Booting without it does not help.
7) Booting to FreeDOS without memory manager does not help with Terminator
2029 either. Installation is from floppy drive. Game is from 1992 and
requirements are 286 w/640k, 1MB Expanded Memory.

My uneducated guess is replace SHUCDX with MSCDEX and replace JEMM386 with
EMM386. Perhaps also replace Himem.sys or something like that. That could
solve all the issues.

Lukas


On Tue, Jun 1, 2021 at 3:18 PM Eric Auer  wrote:

>
> Hi Lukas,
>
> > Please help with solution, don't waste time with asking why and why
>
> You will have to ask specific questions when you want
> specific answers. If you want to visit your uncle, it
> does not help to tell your taxi driver "bring me to
> my uncle, do not ask me where he lives" either ;-)
>
> You will not have to "hack your way around", you simply
> have to patiently describe the problem so we can give
> answers which fit the problem, too.
>
> You mentioned that UDVD2 is outdated. Updates are here:
> http://mercurycoding.com/downloads.html#DOS
>
> I certainly agree with Michał that FDNET should be there,
> as far as network driver licensing permits distribution.
> For the rest, we should offer vendor download links.
>
> Not sure why Michał mentions Yamaha YMF724 drivers, do
> you have a Sound Blaster 16? Or do you have a sound card
> based on Yamaha YMF724? Which sound card do you two have?
>
> As Michał already said: If your game has a problem with
> our brand of EMM386, simply try without EMM386. Easier
> than hoping for MS EMM386 to work better, which may or
> may not be the case :-)
>
> Also, in the unlikely case that your game even has some
> problem with our HIMEM, you can use XMGR instead, same
> download link mentioned above.
>
> No idea why Michał is so negative about our HIMEM and
> EMM386 versions and even our filesystem checking and
> repair tools. Actually FreeDOS includes DOSFSCK which
> is the same tool which you would also use in Linux :-p
> The Linux DOSFSCK version is updated more often, though.
>
> I disagree with Michał about completely avoiding parts
> of MS DOS. I kept QBASIC from MS DOS for quite a while,
> as far as I remember. Now there is the big FreeBASIC.
>
> Of course this is no option when you have no license for
> MS DOS, but even if you have one, MS DOS is extremely old
> and for many components, the FreeDOS versions are better.
>
> Cheers, Eric
>
>
>
> ___
> Freedos-user m

Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS make better compatibility with DOS games [current status]

[Eric Auer]

Hi Lukas,

> Please help with solution, don't waste time with asking why and why

You will have to ask specific questions when you want
specific answers. If you want to visit your uncle, it
does not help to tell your taxi driver "bring me to
my uncle, do not ask me where he lives" either ;-)

You will not have to "hack your way around", you simply
have to patiently describe the problem so we can give
answers which fit the problem, too.

You mentioned that UDVD2 is outdated. Updates are here:
http://mercurycoding.com/downloads.html#DOS

I certainly agree with Michał that FDNET should be there,
as far as network driver licensing permits distribution.
For the rest, we should offer vendor download links.

Not sure why Michał mentions Yamaha YMF724 drivers, do
you have a Sound Blaster 16? Or do you have a sound card
based on Yamaha YMF724? Which sound card do you two have?

As Michał already said: If your game has a problem with
our brand of EMM386, simply try without EMM386. Easier
than hoping for MS EMM386 to work better, which may or
may not be the case :-)

Also, in the unlikely case that your game even has some
problem with our HIMEM, you can use XMGR instead, same
download link mentioned above.

No idea why Michał is so negative about our HIMEM and
EMM386 versions and even our filesystem checking and
repair tools. Actually FreeDOS includes DOSFSCK which
is the same tool which you would also use in Linux :-p
The Linux DOSFSCK version is updated more often, though.

I disagree with Michał about completely avoiding parts
of MS DOS. I kept QBASIC from MS DOS for quite a while,
as far as I remember. Now there is the big FreeBASIC.

Of course this is no option when you have no license for
MS DOS, but even if you have one, MS DOS is extremely old
and for many components, the FreeDOS versions are better.

Cheers, Eric



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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS make better compatibility with DOS games [current status]

[Lukas Satin]

CDAudio:
Freedos 1.3 since RC2 features upgraded UDVD2 driver, which fixes CDAudio
problem. The solution for you is to download UDVD2 driver from author's
website and replace it with what you have now. That is the ultimate
solution. One hint: sound card mixer have some utilities and they might set
zero volume for CD Audio. Get drivers for Yamaha and there should be some
setup utility or mixer.

Please help with solution, don't waste time with asking why and why and
why. Because I ask for it. And I ask kindly. I want FreeDOS. That's why I'm
here. If I have to hack my way around and replace some files from original
MS-DOS discs I have here on my table. Then yes I will do it because I need
FAT32 support and I want FreeDOS ecosystem with apps.

Thank you,
Lukas

On Tue, Jun 1, 2021 at 2:49 PM Michał Dec  wrote:

> >CDAudio is working, but you have to install proper Sound Blaster drivers
>
> Would be nice if you could be more specific. I can't get it working on my
> Yamaha YMF724.
>
> >FDNET has been removed
>
> Good job devs. Remove the kernel next time. That should help make FreeDOS
> better.
>
> >*3)* A lot of games will crash because of JEMM386 exception ==> how to
> fix?
>
> Run without drivers. It will start FreeDOS in real mode without a memory
> manager. Most games will not be very happy with FreeDOS' own memory
> managers and will run into strange issues. Use the memory manager only if
> you really need it. And you know what? With "strange issues" in FreeDOS
> it's a guaranteed domino effect that may lead to OS annihilation. Let's
> say, your game crashes and hangs the entire system due to reasons. You have
> no way of recovering other than forcibly restarting the computer. Now good
> luck if that game was in the middle of writing anything to the FAT
> partition, because if that's so, your FAT partition is now slightly more
> screwed up than it used to be. Keep doing it over and over and eventually
> the corruption will eat away your FreeDOS files. Don't count on FreeDOS'
> own FAT filesystem checking tools. They're useless. Consider dualbooting
> Linux with FreeDOS just so you can have a filesystem repair tool that
> actually works.
>
> >any mention of copying anything from proprietary DOS
>
> What's the point of running FreeDOS then if you're just gonna end up
> gluing together parts of FreeDOS and Microsoft's proprietary ecosystem?
> Might as well get the full Monty and install MS-DOS.
> W dniu 01.06.2021 o 14:31, Lukas Satin pisze:
>
> Hi, the current status for FreeDOS 1.3 RC4:
> A) cannot install from CD on 486 due to low cache or low memory =>
> solution is to install on Pentium, then put the drive in 486
>
> B) FDNET has been removed, for networking download FDNET from FreeDOS 1.2
> if you need
>
> C) CDAudio is working, but you have to install proper Sound Blaster
> drivers and also open the mixer to unmute CD Audio (set volume)
>
> *I NEED HELP WITH THIS:*
> *1)* If game has problem with DOS4GW.EXE, just replace it by DOS32A.EXE
> from C:\FDOS\BIN (copy and rename to DOS4GW.EXE in game's directory =>
> sometime can even speed up the game)
>
> *2)* Most of CD games will report CD is missing and are unable to start
> ==> this is important => how to fix it? Use MSCDEX?
>
> *3)* A lot of games will crash because of JEMM386 exception ==> how to
> fix? Use MS-DOS 6.22 or Windows 98 MS-DOS 7.1 EMM386? What do you think?
> Can you please help what to copy from DOS 7.1 or DOS 6.22? I have original
> discs.
>
> *CONCLUSION:*
> FreeDOS right now is very powerful and offer a lot of new software and new
> networking possibilities.
>
> Can 100% MS-DOS gaming compatibility be made by copying some files from
> MS-DOS?
>
> Can you please help me with this one?
>
> I struggle for 2 days already.
>
> Some example of working FDCONFIG.SYS and FDAUTO.BAT with these files would
> be very nice!
>
> Thank you!
> Lukas
>
>
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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS make better compatibility with DOS games [current status]

[Eric Auer]

Hi Lukas, thanks for testing!

> Hi, the current status for FreeDOS 1.3 RC4:
> A) cannot install from CD on 486 due to low cache or low memory

How much memory does your 486 have? Can it boot from CD?

> solution is to install on Pentium, then put the drive in 486
> 
> B) FDNET has been removed, for networking download FDNET from FreeDOS 1.2
> if you need

Then we should include FDNET again, if possible. This might
depend on licenses for individual drivers, BUT as suggested
earlier, we could include a PCISLEEP based shell script to
tell you where to download the driver for your specific
network controller in cases where we cannot include it :-)

> C) CDAudio is working, but you have to install proper Sound Blaster
> drivers and also open the mixer to unmute CD Audio (set volume)

It is normal for DOS compatible soundcards that they are
bundled with the appropriate drivers, but we cannot usually
distribute those proprietary drivers ourselves. Which model?

> *I NEED HELP WITH THIS:*
> *1)* If game has problem with DOS4GW.EXE, just replace it by DOS32A.EXE
> from C:\FDOS\BIN (copy and rename to DOS4GW.EXE in game's directory =>
> sometime can even speed up the game)

While this is a trick which has been used before, I would
not suggest to make it the default. Instead, we should
advertise the trick, so users can decide themselves :-)

Which problems occur with which games, specifically?

> *2)* Most of CD games will report CD is missing and are unable
> to start ==> this is important => how to fix it? Use MSCDEX?

Please be more specific. Which CD games? What type of CD drive
are you using? Which drivers do you load? I recommend that you
load the following:

1. UHDD
2. UDVD2
3. SHSUCDX

This gives you a disk cache and fast, cached CD/DVD/BD access
for ISO9660 media. SHSUCDX is our alternative to MSCDEX. You
can even use SHSUCDHD to open ISO image files and pretend that
they would be a CD. If your controller is not IDE, ATAPI or
classic SATA, you can replace UDVD2 by AHCICD from R. Loew:

https://rloewelectronics.com/distribute/AHCICD/1.1/ for AHCI
which is a non-backwards-compatible SATA mode. Sometimes, you
can also use BIOS settings to switch to a non-AHCI SATA mode.

> *3)* A lot of games will crash because of JEMM386 exception ==> how to fix?
> Use MS-DOS 6.22 or Windows 98 MS-DOS 7.1 EMM386? What do you think? Can you
> please help what to copy from DOS 7.1 or DOS 6.22? I have original discs.

A far easier solution should be to not load JEMM386 unless
you really need UMB or EMS :-) Also, you have the choice
between JEMMEX and JEMM386, does one of them work better
than the other? What EXACTLY is the way in which which
game crashes? If you have a SB PCI or SB LIVE or similar
PCI soundcard, you may need special command line options
for JEMMEX or JEMM386 to enable compatibility mode with
the special protected mode use of their PCI sound drivers.

To answer your other question: You would simply copy the
EMM386 EXE file from MS, but this driver is very outdated
so it could actually work worse than our newer driver ;-)
> Can 100% MS-DOS gaming compatibility be made by copying
> some files from MS-DOS?

You really have to tell us FAR more details about which
games fail in which way and which drivers you have loaded
and which hardware you have. Unless you have a classic
ISA Sound Blaster of some sort, you can expect that the
sound will be the main problem for your games. This does
not depend on the brand of DOS, however, so using MS DOS
will not help Commander Keen to use your HDA sound either.

> Some example of working FDCONFIG.SYS and FDAUTO.BAT with
> these files would be very nice!

I suggest the other way round: Tell us what is in your
fdconfig and fdauto (or just use config.sys and autoexec
bat! Only if you have both, FreeDOS prefers the FD ones,
to be more exact, it prefers fdconfig and then uses the
autoexec mentioned in the shell line) and tell us which
hardware and games you try to run, with which errors. I
can then tell you what you could change in your config.

That would be better than blindly recommending you some
complete config. After all, most things already work with
the config which you have adjusted to your own situation.

Regards, Eric



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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeDOS make better compatibility with DOS games [current status]

[Michał Dec]

>CDAudio is working, but you have to install proper Sound Blaster drivers

Would be nice if you could be more specific. I can't get it working on 
my Yamaha YMF724.


>FDNET has been removed

Good job devs. Remove the kernel next time. That should help make 
FreeDOS better.


>*3)* A lot of games will crash because of JEMM386 exception ==> how to 
fix?


Run without drivers. It will start FreeDOS in real mode without a memory 
manager. Most games will not be very happy with FreeDOS' own memory 
managers and will run into strange issues. Use the memory manager only 
if you really need it. And you know what? With "strange issues" in 
FreeDOS it's a guaranteed domino effect that may lead to OS 
annihilation. Let's say, your game crashes and hangs the entire system 
due to reasons. You have no way of recovering other than forcibly 
restarting the computer. Now good luck if that game was in the middle of 
writing anything to the FAT partition, because if that's so, your FAT 
partition is now slightly more screwed up than it used to be. Keep doing 
it over and over and eventually the corruption will eat away your 
FreeDOS files. Don't count on FreeDOS' own FAT filesystem checking 
tools. They're useless. Consider dualbooting Linux with FreeDOS just so 
you can have a filesystem repair tool that actually works.


>any mention of copying anything from proprietary DOS

What's the point of running FreeDOS then if you're just gonna end up 
gluing together parts of FreeDOS and Microsoft's proprietary ecosystem? 
Might as well get the full Monty and install MS-DOS.


W dniu 01.06.2021 o 14:31, Lukas Satin pisze:

Hi, the current status for FreeDOS 1.3 RC4:
A) cannot install from CD on 486 due to low cache or low memory => 
solution is to install on Pentium, then put the drive in 486


B) FDNET has been removed, for networking download FDNET from FreeDOS 
1.2 if you need


C) CDAudio is working, but you have to install proper Sound Blaster 
drivers and also open the mixer to unmute CD Audio (set volume)


*I NEED HELP WITH THIS:*
*1)* If game has problem with DOS4GW.EXE, just replace it by 
DOS32A.EXE from C:\FDOS\BIN (copy and rename to DOS4GW.EXE in game's 
directory => sometime can even speed up the game)

*
*
*2)* Most of CD games will report CD is missing and are unable to 
start ==> this is important => how to fix it? Use MSCDEX?

*
*
*3)* A lot of games will crash because of JEMM386 exception ==> how to 
fix? Use MS-DOS 6.22 or Windows 98 MS-DOS 7.1 EMM386? What do you 
think? Can you please help what to copy from DOS 7.1 or DOS 6.22? I 
have original discs.


*CONCLUSION:*
FreeDOS right now is very powerful and offer a lot of new software and 
new networking possibilities.


Can 100% MS-DOS gaming compatibility be made by copying some files 
from MS-DOS?


Can you please help me with this one?

I struggle for 2 days already.

Some example of working FDCONFIG.SYS and FDAUTO.BAT with these files 
would be very nice!


Thank you!
Lukas


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[Freedos-user] FreeDOS make better compatibility with DOS games [current status]

[Lukas Satin]

Hi, the current status for FreeDOS 1.3 RC4:
A) cannot install from CD on 486 due to low cache or low memory => solution
is to install on Pentium, then put the drive in 486

B) FDNET has been removed, for networking download FDNET from FreeDOS 1.2
if you need

C) CDAudio is working, but you have to install proper Sound Blaster drivers
and also open the mixer to unmute CD Audio (set volume)

*I NEED HELP WITH THIS:*
*1)* If game has problem with DOS4GW.EXE, just replace it by DOS32A.EXE
from C:\FDOS\BIN (copy and rename to DOS4GW.EXE in game's directory =>
sometime can even speed up the game)

*2)* Most of CD games will report CD is missing and are unable to start ==>
this is important => how to fix it? Use MSCDEX?

*3)* A lot of games will crash because of JEMM386 exception ==> how to fix?
Use MS-DOS 6.22 or Windows 98 MS-DOS 7.1 EMM386? What do you think? Can you
please help what to copy from DOS 7.1 or DOS 6.22? I have original discs.

*CONCLUSION:*
FreeDOS right now is very powerful and offer a lot of new software and new
networking possibilities.

Can 100% MS-DOS gaming compatibility be made by copying some files from
MS-DOS?

Can you please help me with this one?

I struggle for 2 days already.

Some example of working FDCONFIG.SYS and FDAUTO.BAT with these files would
be very nice!

Thank you!
Lukas
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