As this is about software licensing issues, I want to state here: I'm not
a lawyer and this e-mail does not contain any legal advice. Oh, and if
you're easily annoyed by licensing issues then you might prefer not to
read this thread.
In FreeDOS 1.1 (again), dos386 wrote:
Bret's USBDOS
Don't forget
http://www.osor.eu/eupl/european-union-public-licence-eupl-v.1.1 for
European developers, because it's compatible with GNU GPL v2 and is
available in 22 languages.
I think you're allowed to use it even if you're no European citizen,
aren't you? Still, isn't it GPL v3
RBIL is pretty much it (right? or some undocumented book, perhaps?),
and it doesn't say much that hasn't already been mentioned.
http://www.delorie.com/djgpp/doc/rbinter/id/40/32.html
For completeness, here's the original site (right?):
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~ralf/files.html
The book is
1. ax=7300h dl=0 cl=1 int 21h - if it returns ax unchanged,
then the kernel is not aware of the 21.73xx FAT32 functions.
Why test another function (which is really undocumented at that, so
unlikely to be implemented properly in other DOS versions) to determine
whether function 7303h is
I am possibly going to rewrite my df utility to work with freeDOS' FAT32
filesystem (DJGPP uses int21h function 36h which is 16-bit FAT16 and
16-bit
regs).
I cannot find any documentation on the functions that freedos uses for
its
filesystem functions, like getting filesystem volume
Combined with, for example, a UTF-8 enabled Super-NANSI to
make the step from strings to their display, of course. The
problem would be loss of ASCII art block graphics in apps
which are not using Unicode.
But that happens for some code pages anyway. (For example, CPs 858 and 850
drop some
You would need an Input Method driver which lets you type
complex key sequences or combinations to type in a language
which has more than the usual few dozen chars of alphabet.
Yes. The (keyboard) input and (screen) output appears to be the most
complicated exercise here. DBCS or UTF-8
I think your attitude is not very constructive. We have to keep this
idea as simple as possible or nobody implements it.
I think some of that is important, even if you only want to implement a
simple translation. Besides, of course it isn't very constructive to
*discuss* an idea. Go use
Now programs do it self by looking into own datafiles with .TBL
extension. Look at DOSLFN or Volkov commander 4.99. They have few files
like cp852uni.tbl, cp866uni.tbl and so on.
It is a very good solution but problem is that here is no way now how to
determine which file should be
each bios is going to be different. what is common between the BIOSes
is the
int21H functions, which are outlined here:
http://hdebruijn.soo.dto.tudelft.nl/newpage/interupt/out-0100.htm
Interrupt 21h is provided by DOS. The list you link to contains BIOS
functions as well as DOS
I read through the boot code and didn't see and specifics written
about where the system bios is stored in memory.
The boot code uses the software interrupts associated with the BIOS to
call BIOS functions. For example, interrupt 16h (BIOS keyboard functions)
and interrupt 13h (BIOS disk
How can I deal with an improper file name?
This is probably a question you should rather ask the TortoiseSVN guys,
but I found the relevant section of their FAQ:
http://tortoisesvn.tigris.org/faq.html#cantmove
It links to this, which is a workaround for improper file names but
requires
DOS386 (on Freedos-user):
[...] the great . and .. AKA dot and dotdot entries are
inherently
useless and many DOS and non-DOS kernels do ignore them mostly or fully.
I think that there are drivers/systems that will just expect both entries
to reside in the first two directory entries. This
Now, I will have to disclose that I have not tried jwasm. There's no
reason
behind that except for laziness. Having learned nasm and finding it met
my
needs, I just didn't try jwasm because I didn't want to learn it. So, I
cannot compare nasm to it.
I can't really compare NASM to it
I'm thinking it would be a good idea to standardize on one C/C++ compiler
for the project. [...]
I would be interested in your opinions about standardizing one or several
assemblers for the project. I think that the kernel and FreeCOM assembler
source files currently use NASM, a 2-clause
Hi Alain,
JEMMEX crashes XMSDSK, so it could crash other programs and I did no
further test.
I often use both together without issues. Maybe you could report the bug
that you experience? When did you test JemmEx?
Regards,
Christian
I'm thinking that I can perfectly get an interrupt, without having to
reserve one. That is, a function under AMIS could tell the driver to get
hooked at a certain interrupt chosen by the caller. This would be more
comfortable for the high-level programmer than having to call an
The reason why I've been considering a brand new interrupt is because
the driver is not supposed to be single-purposed.
This does not convince me.
What I want to create is a new standard interface where support for new
features can be hooked in a very tidy and organised way. I think
Is there any site where I can read in very good detail and in a way that
is easy to understand, how flat-real mode, VCPI and DPMI work and how
they deal with other previously loaded systems to avoid collisions?
I don't know about such a site. RBIL however provides much information
about
but then virtual-86 mode is set and I can no loger use 32bit real-mode
pointers!
IF you need PM from V86 there is VCPI.
Protected mode isn't the same as flat real mode.
Yet, there has to be a way, because HIMEM works even though EMM386 is
loaded.
As said, it uses INT $15 / AH=$87
I'm building a driver (for DOS) that's supposed to have several
functions hooked at an interrupt. When applications call these
functions, the driver should load and unload some tables or
activate/deactivate them somehow. Because these tables are big, I don't
want to keep them in
Int21.33FF returns a pointer to an ASCIZ release string in dx:ax. Try the
function in a debugger and look at the string; it's format isn't fixed.
There's no call which returns the numbers but you might try to parse the
string instead.
Regards,
Christian
LARGE SECTOR DRIVES: There is also the issue of large-sectored disks
coming after the 2TB drive, if anyone plans on purchasing one of those.
by large-sectored I mean drives that have 1024, 2048, 4096 byte sectors.
Microsoft has warned of this. large-sectored drives allow you to use
The lesson to be drawn today: develop in Pascal, since that's not
case-sensitive, and have a nice system for handling modules (units).
:p
After one year of Pascal introduction in school I still couldn't write
code easier to read/understand/maintain than my Assembly programs.
Consider that
I am changing
RDISK from a .SYS to a .COM file, which will then allow a user
specified drive letter when loaded thru the AUTOEXEC.BAT file.
[Not possible in CONFIG.SYS, a long story why!].
Actually, with a bad hack it is possible to do that. RDISK won't install
as normal block device driver
1. For AH=$5A, EDR-DOS appends slash, FreeDOS doesn't ... what is more
valid ???
Appending is valid. RBIL is wrong. MS-DOS 5+ appends it, not only version
5.
And just in case someone suspects evil usage of DEBUG to disassemble
MS-DOS: that wasn't even required here. Just test the call on
and leaves both (!!!) files present in the directory and empty ...
Which both do you mean? It deletes the original,
so only the temp file still exists?
YES, but the following rename call apparently recreates the original
name,
Yes.
but without deleting the temp name,
No, the rename
Just linking this item for those of you interested:
http://www.bttr-software.de/forum/forum_entry.php?id=6772
If you want to comment and prefer the mailing list, feel free to add your
comment as reply here.
Regards,
Christian
not yet a fully working kernel.
Am working on RxDOSEXE.ASM right now ;-)
Regards,
Christian
--
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Check out the new simplified licensing option that enables unlimited
replying here would be somewhat off topic.
You're saying development of free DOS software is not on topic in the
FreeDOS devel list?
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Crystal Reports - New Free Runtime and 30 Day Trial
Check out the new simplified
RxDOS is another DOS clone entirely from FreeDOS.
I agree, but *please* send the link to that other list... I would like to
subscribe :)
This, and that RxDOS isn't so entirely different. First, it's of course
free now (thanks to Mike!), and second, RxDOS is effectively just a kernel
plus
Hi, at the risk of talking too much about EDR DOS...
Are you afraid of different DOS versions? ;-)
No, you misunderstood that. He's going to expand the current EDR-DOS
EDPB
(call it the [FAT32] DDSC, that's the DR-DOS term Drive Descriptor) by
another 2 bytes, it will be 6 bytes larger
Hi,
the current DEVLOAD version contains a special check for EDR-DOS, to set
the DPB size to a 4 byte larger value if it's found. (It appends new DPBs
when loading block devices, and therefore needs to know the size of the
DPB.) Now, that's a fine thing, to support other DOS versions and
Hi guys,
EA:
Thanks for the warning :-)). Luckily most of the FreeDOS
kernel is written in C... One of the things that make it
complicated is that it sometimes has to follow long chains
of things calling each other because it is documented that
MS DOS does it the same way, so for
- I am not sure whenever Udo Kuhnt's version uses 16 or 32 bit DPMI but
it I think it's 16.
The difference isn't that big, anyway. Default code operation size
changes, but this doesn't require changes to the actual code (even in .ASM
source files) if the assembler or compiler supports both
A (or more then one) virtualizer is a good source for initial developing
and testing, often an emulator is even more picky about how you
implement. DOSBox is good for DOS games but many utilities refuse to
work.
You can boot a real DOS (f.e. FreeDOS) disk image inside DOSBox which
makes
As Eric put it, NASM is considered more free than JWASM.
as you probably can see there are also rather questionable sentences
to find
in this mailing-list. Freedom, Democracy, Justice, Fairness, ...
are
commonly regarded as positive terms and because of this they are also
favorite
If you want to learn about (16-bit) DOS kernel stuff, first get the RBIL
(Ralf Brown's Interrupt List) and the source of DOS-C (mostly C) and
Udo's
Enhanced DR-DOS kernel (Assembly). (You might as well get the old RxDOS
7.1.5 Assembly sources but oh well.)
...and the sources for MS-DOS
fdpkg requires c:\FDOS?
how do you maintain a working existing environment
along side the beta one even following the existing
structure and using c:\FDOSBETA or something acceptable.
No, it doesn't require this directory name. The directory name is read
from the DOSDIR environment
The question whether Masm or Nasm has a larger community or is more
widely
used is indeed somewhat interesting, but it's interesting because it's a
common propaganda item which nicely shows that people tend to believe
what
they want to believe.
It's also interesting because JWASM and
Hi Adam,
My main interest is programming and a challenge. Occasionally play some
old
games
that I miss. Bards Tale etc.
Check out Commander Keen ;-)
Interested in the Kernel and Assembly programming.
If you want to learn something about the DOS kernel and Assembly language
I could
DOSLFN is probably not free enough for Fedora [...]
I wasn't talking especially about Linux license compatibility here, sorry.
Is the 4DOS license okay for Fedora?
I doubt this. Lucho added some ridiculous crap and limitations to it.
Not really written for - Japheth just stopped keeping an
Is the 4DOS license okay for Fedora?
I doubt this. Lucho added some ridiculous
crap and limitations to it.
Strong words, do you have examples of changes
in 4DOS that are unpleasant for you / others?
I'm talking about the license here. Just read what he writes about it on
the main 4DOS
The FreeDOS Spec says:
Our reference C compiler is OpenWatcom C. (Borland C 3.1 was
originally chosen as the reference standard because this is the
compiler used to build the FreeDOS kernel. However, it is preferable
to use entirely free tools to create FreeDOS.)
[...]
This does not mean
You can cast a short to an int, an the conversion in ok, but to cast a
short* to an int* will bring in 2 extra bytes and an INVALID POINTER...
no short * and int * are the exact same size in 16-bit compilers (try
compiling a test program which prints sizeof(int), sizeof(short). For
some
I have a proposal for the 2038 kernel:
What about to add possibility to disable creating the fantom
drive B: on systems with only one disk drive (A:) installed?
This feature already exists and is much older than 2035 ;-)
It is called the DJ mechanism: When you try to access drive
B: DOS
1) For existing 3,5 floppy disks all give the same (correct) results only
MSDOS gives wrong Total number of Sectors and Sectors per Cluster
This bug of MS-DOS 7.10 is also documented in RBIL 61.
BTW, I think the other registers should not be changed when al is set to
FFh regardless of what
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