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Interview: Learn About the FreeDOS Project
This week's interview guest is Jim Hall, founder of the FreeDOS project. Jim isn't rich or famous, just an old-fashioned open source contributor who helped start a humble but useful project back in 1994 and still works on it as much as he can. FreeDOS is the DOS behind DOSEmu, so if you've used any DOS programs (like games) under Linux, you've benefited from Jim's work. One question per post, please. Moderators do the question selection, with editorial help only if there are duplicate or overlapping questions. Cutoff for questions and moderation is Tuesday noon, U.S. EST. Jim's answers will appear Friday.
Who cares about DOS? I mean, will you interview the guy responsible for the C-64 emulator next week? Is there something useful about a DOS emulator that I am missing?
So where are we going - and how far will it take FreeDOS?
Matt Thompson - Actuality - Insert product here.
Seriously, whatever happened to the Larry Augustin interview? I had a really good question pending but for some reason the interview answers never got posted. I don't mind if I don't get an answer to my question, but it's kind of insulting for YOU not to explain why we didn't get a promised story.
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So, do you like Fritos?
What about Freedows?
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To understand recursion, one must first understand recursion.
What is the single most important task you have ever accomplished using FreeDOS?
Marjo Wycam, Master of the Programming Arts
I found out about this a while ago, when I first heard about Litestep, but I've always wondered one thing...
Could you rewrite a version of DOS that'll work with Windows 9x and have the correct slashes ( / ) in the filesystem instead of those bass-ackward ones ( \ ) that are always in the wrong spot to type quickly?
- 8Complex
While it is very nice to have some sort of non-MS DOS available (at least for us gamers), it still basically 15-20 year old technology. How much longer do you think DOS, or DOS emulation, will be necessary?
The cake is a pie
... it will work with most other versions of dos, including DRDOS 7.x, MSDOS 6.x and (i believe) Windows 95 DOS. Of course, these aren't free software. freedos is a bit different in design from msdos/drdos, for example it has a \bin directory which contains dos programs, and other unix-like directories. Also, you don't need dosemu to use freedos! It might seem obvious, but if you have an old 386 with msdos 3.3, and you want to be able to have partitions > 32 mb, then freedos could be a good bet. (For the price of msdos you could buy a new (second-hand) computer).
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
I was once an enthuastic supporter of dos back when it was a viable os. When I saw the freedos project I was quite interested in getting it to work for me in some way. However what turned me off fight from the start was that development seemed a bit; how shall I put this: slow. I have since moved to linux and still run a partition that relies on MSDOS for some things.
Will development increase in capacity, and have you met your goals? I have also read your documentation and you implied that a 32 bit extension to the dos package was at some future time going to be implimented at some future date; you also said that if people didn't like what you had they could move to linux. My related question is when will you be able to impliment these features (32 bit) to your dos project.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
16bit Windows emulation is available (not perfect but, available) using WINE.
What, if anything, can you shed on development of Win32 emulation? Will we someday be able to run W95/98 apps in emulation or, are we consigned to pressuring developers to support cross platform?
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong."
My office has been taken over by iPod people.
There is more software available for dos than for any other OS (except windows 95). Many businesses rely on legacy apps which are only available for dos. 90% of desktop computers around today run on a dos kernel of some sort (this includes windows 95).
Note that freedos is not a dos emulator, but a free implementation of dos. dosemu is the dos emulator.
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
Since you must be very well acquainted with the internals of DOS, are there any parts of it that have struck you either as being very clever in a hackerish sort of way, or very clumsy and kludgy (in an equally hackerish sort of way)?
Whilst we all loathed DOS when it was around, there was no debating that it was danged fast for some things, and its complete lack of abstraction was fun for games programmers and the like who got to cut through to the hardware when it suited them (and when it didn't!). Do you miss this rawness and freedom in more protective environments like Unix and Win32?
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Do you think this sort of project is only suitable for dead or dying software? By this I mean, DOS hasn't been in significant development for a while now, so making a clone is like reconstructing a static subject. Do you think your project could have been successful during the time of MS-DOS 6.0, or instead do you think commercial developers would have torpedoed your efforts by redesigning their next release to be less cloneable?
Certified Microsoft Notworking Specialist
Where do you see the future of OS/hardware emulation and binary compatibility going, with more new architectures coming out (Crusoe, Merced, etc.)? Do stand-alone legacy OS clones like Free-DOS have a place in this evolving landscape or will backwards compatibility eventually become entirely modularized within compatibility layers in next generation OSes?
Is it possible that FreeDOS has an embedded future. It has what you need...almost. FreeDOS is (obviously) free(TM) software, small, fast (enough). Being dos, It could be moved to realtime easily, if it isn't close enough already. You may consider some tools to help advance into this area. I might even use it to control the house... hmmm. I wouldn't need unix multi{user|tasking}, or it's size. Sound's like a winner.
I've played a bit with FreeDOS (Beta3) on a spare 386 some. I will likely be trying Beta4 (or later, depending on my time..) in the foreseeable future. I'm reasonably impressed with the "lite" setup version. (Though warning a third disk, blank, may be needed would be a Good Idea, IMO.)
What do you feel are the remaining steps that must be taken to move from beta to the first non-beta version? No, I am NOT asking time to that release, that is always 'longer than desired.' And thank you for your time.
I don't subscribe to RMS's GNUtopian vision.
There are two things that could make me put FreeDOS back on. Can You tell me if I can:
(1) "mount" an ext2 device as a drive.
(2) Boot Free DOS from somewhere besides the first partition on the first drive. MS WinDOS 98 is already hda1, because they never intend to fix that bug. So to run Freedos without floppies, it has to be able to boot from somewhere else.
And one other question
(3) Unix shell - What's the best command.com replacement that:
Has built in unix commands(ls,rm) instead of those dos things(dir,...)
Lets me use / for path separators and - for switches.
Thanks.
There are a lot of pseudo embedded DOS based systems out there. My previous employer had a remote access concentrator product in this category, and paid a non-trivial sum per box to Microsoft for DOS 5.0, a product that Microsoft refused to support. Unfortunately, I was unable to convince management to give Free DOS a try.
Has Free DOS made any progress in these types of markets? Are people using Free DOS to replace MS-DOS in these pseudo embedded systems?
The world will not get better through technology. We must seek to be better people.
I used to program dos back when it payed the bills and used undocumented dos a lot. What was harder? replicating the undocumented by MS but very well documented by third parties code or the bog standard should have been documented better calls? Sparkes
blog and junk
90% of desktop computers around today run on a dos kernel of some sort (this includes windows 95).
Windows 9x does not run on a dos Kernel, the main system controler is vmm32.vxd, I think and it is not based on anyway on Legacy dos code. NT has its own Kernel as well. Just being DOS compatable does not make an operating system a version of DOS. Infact Linux is probably more DOS compatable (with DOSemu) then NT.
Saying that windows95/98 runs on DOS is ether pure FUD or pure ignorance
[ c h a d o k e r e ]
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
i find your work on freedos interesting. in a shadetree mechanic sort of way, i enjoy such projects myself.
i like the "old-fashioned" open source contributor description too. it reminds me of dr. mccoy on "star trek" - you know, the "old country doctor."
so (finally) i get around to my question... if you could open source an old-fashioned hot young actress, which old-fashioned hot young actress would it be? why would you select that particular old-fashioned hot young actress?
how do you feel about open sourcing old-fashioned feminazis, old-fashioned men and old-fashioned cute teenage girls?
finally - and I don't mean to put you on the spot here - but have you ever used an old-fashioned lubricating midget?
these are all one question.
thank you.
I have recently setup a client with a Linux server running DOSEMU and one of the requirements was to access network shares from within the DOSEMU session using LREDIR or emufs.sys.
:) )
We had to deploy the system with MS-DOS 6.22 (in other words we could not deply the system using Free DOS) because FAQ 6.1 of the DOSEMU FAQ says "First make sure you aren't using DosC (the FreeDos kernel), because unfortunately this can't yet cope with the redirector stuff. " (I know it doesn't work - I tried anyway
Anyway, my question is, when will FreeDOS work with redirection?
Um, there's not such thing as an 8-bit x86 CPU, the first the 8086 was a 16-bit word machine, on a 16 bit bus, and the second, the 8088 was a compatable 16-bit word macine on an 8-bit bus. If you've ever done any DOS assembly programing, as I have, you would know that DOS is entirely a 16 bit system.
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ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
The DVD CCA's argument has essentially become, had MS thought in advance to include but a single sentence in a license agreement, FreeDOS could have been supressed.
How do you feel about this, and what advantages do you feel society has a whole has received from the fruits of your reverse engineered labors? Similarly, what harms would we have as a society if you could never have rewritten DOS?
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
A previous Slashdot article included reactions to the settling of Caldera's lawsuit regarding DR-DOS, their non-free DOS clone. What are your feelings on the lawsuit and its settlement? Even though your development isn't focused upon running Windows, have you ever run into any similar "forced incompatibility" issues (Microsoft-related or otherwise)?
What is FreeDOS' take on such quirks? In other words, where the system call specification is more general than what was actually implemented, are you referring back to the specification or what Microsoft actually coded?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
DRDOS is free (as in beer) for personal use and Free (as in speech). Caldera bought it from Novell and released the source over two years ago. In fact, it was this purchase that gave Caldera the legal basis for their lawsuit, filed July 1996 against microsoft, which they recently settled for $150 Million. http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/01/10/184024 4&mode=thread You can get DRDOS at ftp://ftp.lineo.com/pub/drdos
I remember in Win3.1 whenever i went to File/Copy in File Manager you could put / in the path of the directory you wanted to copy (or move) the file to.
I tried it once for a laugh and it worked. I just typed c:/emu/snes or something.
I suppose that isn't really a DOS question though, sorry for wandering off topic
Please add to this question: I think that the problem with LREDIR is the same with network. My question is: Will someday FreeDOS support network assigned drive letters, using Netware VLM.EXE, MS-Client, LANtastic, etc? IMHO this is a good step in the direction of thin workstations.
-- (
by the time they thought to put directories in they'd already got saddled with \ 'cos for some insane reason they'd used / for options so if you had a directory /V then /v /v is the option to verify the copy (which incidentally only verifies that a file was written not that the data is correct)
.oO0Oo.
copy *.*
Would be a problem because
This is also a lose lose because the \ key is one of those keys that moves around on international keyboards and their key-maps. It pays to keep in mind that you can get to it using alt-092.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
IIRC, A win95 system boots DOS, uses that to configure PnP devices and load the win95 system files (kernel32.dll, vmm32.vxd, etc). Then the win95 stuff takes over, pulls the system up into 32-bit mode and unloads DOS. DOS funcions like a bootloader for win95. However, the win95 kernel can still run command.com, so depending on your definition of DOS, win95 may be DOS or it may not.
As for not being based on legacy code, I have a hard time believing that MS would do a clean rewrite of all the DOS bits that were included into win95. They already had a functional command.com, why rewrite it instead of modifying the existing code?
0 1 - just my two bits
This might have more to do with the usefulness of freedos beyond being able to run legacy programs or mind bogging fast DOS games :)
Would it be possible at some point to install FreeDOS without using floppies? Or more precisely, would it be possible to install FreeDOS using an El Torito CD-ROM or a ZIP disc? I've got a Linux-only box where I simply refuse to put a floppy disk drive (IMO the floppy is dead), but I have a little problem: I can't flash the BIOS (neither the motherboard nor the graphics card BIOS) from Linux (there was a project to do that, but it got assassinated). Since I don't want to install Windows (and pay US$120) to flash a BIOS, my next option is to use DOS. MS-DOS is not an option (it's hard to find someone who has it, and the installation media is floppy disks, so it's back to square one). FreeDOS seems like an option, except that I haven't been able to install it using neither a CD-ROM nor a ZIP disc (which is the only removable media my box has)
So, I think there must be hundreds of similar uses for FreeDOS, and I was wondering if it's planned to take it just a bit further than its predecessor. Bring DOS into this millenium, so to speak.
AFAIK there is no 'NETWORK REDIRECTOR' or equivalent for FreeDOS at all.
Please comment on what effort(s) you see as needed to NFS network a FreeDOS machine. (I'd be happy to give whatever help I can to get this done.)
BTW- I am doing this with M$DOS and XFS, but AFAIK there is NO WAY to network FreeDOS and get a 'drive letter' which connects to a networked machine or to send LPT1: stuff to a remote printer.
What do you think of some of the competitors of FreeDOS, such as DoriDOS and TostiDOS? DoriDOS in particular, with its Jay Leno ad campaign, seems to be a particularly formidable competitor. A lot of the major salsa companies are aligning themselves with TostiDOS. Does this worry you in any way? What will FreeDOS have to do to make sure that it stays on top of the pack?
:-)
What are the challenges (and the likelyhood of future sucess) involved with getting DOSEmu to be able to load and play games that came with their own DOS replacement?
What about a freeBIOS that works for all machines too!.
homophobic piece of shit. thank you.
if you use lilo, you can usually convince win98 to live somewhere else (note that it says in the docs this could break DMA drivers, but mine kept working, AFAICT). In lilo.conf :
other=/dev/hdc1
label=msdos
table=/dev/hdc
map-drive=0x80
to=0x81
map-drive=0x81
to=0x80
this swaps hda+hdc from windows' perspective, so it thinks it's on hda1, when it's on hdc1.
Choice of masters is not freedom.
Can I use FreeDOS to run linux in windows? I want to run linux but I don't like the idea of using the LILO operating system to run Linux.
>Saying that windows95/98 runs on DOS is ether pure FUD or pure ignorance
May I suggest some proof? Take win '95 (original, not OEM, Rev 2.5.3.56.3 etc...). Shut down. Type:
mode co 80 [enter]
and tell me that isn't a DOS prompt... Looks a hell of a lot like win 3.1 to me with a "nice" little graphic displayed at the end to confuse people.
Subject asks it all. ;-)
That's two questions, and should be posted in two seperate comments. You obviously know NOTHING of proper trolling.
Hey, Rob! AC's should be labeled "Butt-Biting Monkeys" from now on.
(Yes, I am an AC. I know.)
THERE U GO AGAIN POSTING STUPID SHIT...
COME ON...ROBLAMO...GO AWAY
FreeDOS works well enough and supports network redirection well enough that shucdx (a freeware w/src implementation of MSCDEX) allows you to read CDs. FreeDOS B4 is also quite stable.
Some of us developed Open-Source UNIX console apps that are strict ANSI-C. Without leaving the comfort of our UNIX machines, we can use dos-gcc to make .exe files to distribute along with our tar.gz's and rpm's.
My question to you is, how do you get the rest of the "culture" right for the DOS distro, if you're unwilling to immerse yourself in DOS by using it? I'm basically talking about doing all the stuff that "rpm -i" does automatically on a Linux box, along with issues like portable uses of the ANSI system() and getenv() to do things like find a local C compiler and execute it from your C program. Is there a HOW-TO or FAQ about making your UNIX console program fit (as opposed to work) in a DOS world? Thanks in advance!
P.S. To put the question in perspective, the app I actually maintain is a program that generates C files, thus the compilation issue.
What is your position towards Lineo's DrDos?
What's theirs towars FreeDOS?
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Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
Some of us developed Open-Source UNIX console apps that are strict ANSI-C. Without leaving the comfort of our UNIX machines, we can use dos-gcc to make .exe files to distribute along with our tar.gz's and rpm's.
My question to you is, how do you get the rest of the "culture" right for the DOS distro, if you're unwilling to immerse yourself in DOS by using it? I'm basically talking about doing all the stuff that "rpm -i" does automatically on a Linux box, along with issues like portable uses of the ANSI system() and getenv() to do things like find a local C compiler and execute it from your C program. Is there a HOW-TO or FAQ about making your UNIX console program fit (as opposed to work) in a DOS world? Thanks in advance!
P.S. To put the question in perspective, the app I actually maintain is a program that generates C files, thus the compilation issue.
I recall early in the beta 1 days of freedos, reading about LBA support and possibly VFAT and Fat32 support. How has the freedos project considered these goals in recent times, and are these goals attainable?
Desperation is a stinky cologne
I was wondering, since there are still some bugs to work out in the kernel, what is stopping you from doing some good, clean room, reverse engineering (ala the original Compaq BIOS) with the DR-DOS source code. What I mean is; gather up three teams, completely unknown to each other. Team One reads the DR-DOS source, and compiles a very detailed functional spec, and leaves it under a trash can. Team Two "finds" it under the trash can, and creates a very detailed software design, then leaves the software design under a rock. Team Three "finds" the design under the rock and "discovers" what it is for and writes the code.
Even the letters from the alfabet are not always in the same place like the letters W, Z and Y, that's why some keyboards are called QWERTY, while others belong to the QWERTZ or the QZERTY family...
ms
does FreeDOS cost?
Hey, I just wanted to know what your favorite kind of salsa for freedos is?
I like extra hot 'n spicy when constipated, but melted cheese is the way to go when I wanna get creative.
Are you gonna come out with any new flavors soon?
>(1) "mount" an ext2 device as a drive.
Don't hold your breath for this!
>(3) Unix shell - What's the best command.com >replacement that:
> Has built in unix commands(ls,rm) instead of >those dos things(dir,...)
> Lets me use / for path separators and - for >switches.
Have you tried bash from cygwin32?
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Lots of embedded stuff, like real embedded stuff, out there using freedos. The GPL makes using it on some types of embedded systems a bit iffy, but other than that it's nice for embedded single board computers of moderate complexity. It's nice to have a nice know quantity to work off of when doing rapid prototyping.
I vaguely recall the Fred Eady?? from Circuit Cellar Ink running some articles on freedos in embedded PCs.
dv
"There's no secret. You just press the accelerator to the floor and keep turning left." -- Bill Vukovich
The only question i want to have answered is: When will FreeDOS acheive the level of compatibility that MS-DOS and PC-DOS acheived in the early nineties?
Recently I had a problem. I had an IBM Thinkpad 500 (486slc2-50, 12 megs ram, 540 meg hd) that had a few bad sectors on the hard disk.
I didn't have any Linux floppies with mkdosfs, and MS-DOS format was bailing when it hit them.
Too cheap to buy a new hard drive, and with lots of time on my hands (down with the flu), I decided that this was unacceptable, and that there must be some way to format around them.
Obviously, the first option is to try one of the free (or free-ish) DOSes.
I downloaded both FreeDOS and DR-DOS, made floppies.
Now, what was disappointing was that the TP500, an admittedly weak notebook, can run MS-DOS, PC-DOS (obviously, shipped with it), any version of OS/2, Win95, Win98 (slowly), and Linux without any problems (other than crappy APM support in Win32) - both FreeDOS and DR-DOS completely refused to boot on it.
I ended up digging out my old OS/2 Warp 4 maintenence disks and using OS/2's format -l2, which worked fine.
I later read that FreeDOS will choke and die on hard drives larger than 528 megs. Also possibly (or maybe quite likely) corrupt the partition table as it dies.
And that this has been a known problem for quite some time now.
I don't think DR-DOS suffers from the same problem, since I've used it on systems with hard drives larger than 528 megs. Obviously there's some sort of deeper weirdness going on, but i can't imagine what.
Granted, my specific problem may be related to the Thinkpad being oddly constructed. Some of these have BIOSs that don't report hard drive geometry, etc, tho this isn't one of them.
But the hard drive limitation sticks out like a sore thumb.
All I can say is, What's the deal?? Aren't there technical docs, even magazine articles about 10 years old that detail how Microsoft and IBM got around those sorts of limitations? I remember lengthy discussions about int13h, etc, adnausium in Byte, PC Mag, etc.
Is it a lack of time? developer apathy? What's the excuse? It seems like these are problems that have been overcome before, that are probably documented somewhere.
I guess I've said what i had to say. Please don't think I'm trying to be a jerk about this.
This is just like television, only you can see much further.
Can you give a link for SHUCDX ?
It might help network redirector effort.
Thanks
...will be the ability to play DOS heritage games that are still a lot of fun, such as the Infocom Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Electronic Arts' original Starflight (still the best plotted SF game on 720 KB with fractally generated planetary surfaces!), the original SimCity and the original Civilization. Without DOS, or at least a reasonable facsimile, new people will never get a chance to see how much fun these games *are*. I gave my original (1991) Civilization game to two cousins last spring and no-one's seen them since. I haven't got them a new system and won't until I can get them a Linux box with Alpha Centauri and Civilization III installed.
Are there any plans of "extending" FreeDOS? That is, once you have the basic compatibility down, will you be turning FreeDOS into a 32-bit, multi-tasking, multi-user, DOS-compatible "real" operating system?
considering this is the direction most commercial dos is heading ( and is going to be for some time to come ), Are there any plans to help move freedos into that market?
What other hobbies/projects you working on besides FreeDOS? And can some day can the fokes at your old University take you out to dinner? (Of course since your fames you get to pay ) - Mouring
And, relatedly, do you see places where MS seemed to plan to make DOS better, but instead let it languish while they worked towards Windows?
"The scheduler for DOS is laughable at best"
Here's my implementation:
void scheduler (void) {
}
Ha haha.
DOS doesn't even have a scheduler, so you can't laugh at what isn't there.
DOS is essentially a program loader with some hardware abstractions. This is a very useful environment for a great many devices. You seem to think that the lack of multitasking is a huge problem. In the embedded world, a lot of things are built in hardware, and I wouldn't be surprised to see a TCP chip someday for these embedded devices. Anyway, for low datarate devices, DOS can handle TCP just fine.
But, I wouldn't want to be the one building a DOS microwave oven...
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Often times, I would like to have, say a MSDOS 3.3 boot disk, or a DOS 6.21 disk, complete with the limitations and quirks of those versions. It means cracking open my diskette collection and (literally) dusting off old diskettes that have often times not survived my poor storage technique. I would love to be able to download FreeDOS_almost_MSDOS_5.0_inst_disk_1.img, rawrite the file to diskette and run an installation that would install a DOS to a hard drive that looked, felt like and said that it was DOS 5.0.
I don't know if this is possible, or even legal, but if it was, it would be awesome. I realize that the project is still progressing, but once FreeDOS has reached its pinnacle - and it looks like that day is not far off - will any effort go into making "I can't believe it's not MSDOS version X" distributions that look, act and simulate behavior precisely of older DOS versions?
Thanks,
Ross
As for not being based on legacy code, I have a hard time believing that MS would do a clean rewrite of all the DOS bits that were included into win95.
Hrm, I'm not sure, I do think they would have had to have rewriten quite a bit though to get it to work in windows... For instance, int21 (hex) can be used to write to graphical DOS boxes, and uses Windows' 32bit file access mode (with cashing, DMA, etc). But who knows exactly how it works?
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ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Windows dosn't run "on" DOS, it starts from dos, and then unloads DOS from the system (keeping environment for other DOS apps to use in). Thats like saying that NT is part of Linux beacuse the NT bootloader can start Linux.
[ c h a d o k e r e ]
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
I find DOS to be an extremely useful system, and a necessary one if you're running old hardware. I personally know know several students who contentedly write their essays on 286 machines using DOS WordPerfect or WordStar. I myself have an old PC XT, running DR DOS, networked to my Linux router using a DOS plip packet driver and wattcp. There's a lot of old hardware around, and I think that tcp/ip network connectivity is one of the most useful ways of breathing added vitality into old boxes. The problem with it now is that it can be a bear to setup (especially dialup ppp connections), and most of the people I know who would make use of it are not exactly computer enthusiasts.
Looking through the FreeDOS software lists I don't see any mention of packet drivers, tcp/ip stacks, or pppd implementations. Are there any plans of integrating some form of tcp/ip network connectivity in future versions of FreeDOS? If so, would it be easier to setup then what is presently available?
Keep up the good work, I've been watching FreeDOS for a while, and I'm looking forward to it's final release.
Matthew Adie
Hyperbolic Tangent
What sources did you use as a reference to reverse engineer MSDOS? Have you checked into the legal aspects of reverse engineering (any links for the rest of us)?
With FreeDOS, do you forsee a free(beer or speech)/open source version of Linux that is able to run WinXX programs "off the shelf"? Is this on your radar at all, or do have a different (better?) plan for capturing the applications market that would make Linux the dominant OS? --Jurph
Windows boots from DOS. Windows does not Use the functions of the MSDOS operating system while it is running. Load a large file into edit.com in pure dos mode, then try it in a windows DOS box. The DOS box is much faster, because of the 32bit DMA-enabled IO drivers.
Windows is not DOS, Windows does not run 'on top' of DOS.
[ c h a d o k e r e ]
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Yes, I was aware of the Fact that Windows keeps some of DOS "around" somewhere to be used for DOS apps to start, etc. But my main point, was that windows itself was not running on top of DOS. Really, kind of 'beside' it or something... I don't know.
The part about the drivers is true though. It's a little muddled, but Saying that windows is a shell for dos is patently wrong.
[ c h a d o k e r e ]
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Well...I can assure you, that DOS has *barely* any kernel.
It is just a bunch of system calls thru INT 21H - and hardly does anything the modern OS like Linux and NT do...no scheduling, no concurrency, no paging, no protection, etc. (shell doesn't count)
People are free to add "TSR" programs (basically extending the system calls) and redirect the interrupt vectors - basically extending the OS.
I view Win3.x and Win9x as ways DOS is extended - they become one with DOS - and added layers on top of it. Just that this extension puts the processor into 32-bit protected mode and stays so.
Where exactly is the DOS kernel? I've seen people give instructions for memory location zero, but this, however would be the interupt vector table, not the "DOS kernel". The IVR is set by both the BIOS and by dos. If the Vector Table was really the DOS kernel, then it would prove without a doubt that its not the DOS kernel, beacuse win32 apps cannot ever call CPU interupts.
[ c h a d o k e r e ]
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Of course, MS-DOS 6.22 is the most "compatible" DOS around, because everybody wrote for its bugs and quirks and used its drivers. What features do you want to see implemented better for compatibility? Also, have you guys considered (do any of you) work on the DOSEmu project? (I've been tempted to, just because I'd *love* to be able to properly run the Second Reality demo again...)
:)
:)
:)
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Also, maybe we should try to interview the DOSEmu guys sometime, 'cause I have more questions for them.
DOSEmu issues (not necessarily your problem
The stuff I've had the biggest problems with under DOSEmu are probably Sound Support, DPMI, Video Support, and Mouse Support, in that order.
I've managed to get MIDI working before (but I want to try it through Timidity)
I've gotten sound on Star Control 2, (b/c it does DMA writes) and that's about it for sound. Other applications detect it, but can't use it, or they hang.
(I realize there isn't much sound code fleshed out there...
I had DPMI problems under OpenDOS, and when I tried FreeDOS it probably wasn't as far along as it is now. (good thing I still own MS-DOS 6.22
Video much over 320x200 generally doesn't work well for me, I don't know much about this in DOSEmu. Also palette support in X could use some work.
And I had fun configuring the mouse options, and deciding whether I wanted to fake a Serial port and use the Microsoft drivers, or trust gpm to do it for me. I've gotten varying results, but eventually it works.
Also, how's the DOSEmu project going, if anyone knows? I saw an update to the stable stuff, but nothing in development for a while. Do they need fresh blood sacrifices, or have people just lost interest?
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Re:(1) EXT2 under DOS (2) Boot DOS from second dri (Score:1)
by fishbowl (fishbowl@bigfoot.com) on Monday January 24, @01:20PM EST (#90)
(User Info) http://ssdd.conservatory.com
>(1) "mount" an ext2 device as a drive.
Don't hold your breath for this!
>Have you tried bash from cygwin32?
Are you saying that cygwin32 runs under freedos?
System Commander will allow you to install DOS anywhere, and have multiple kinds/versions of DOS installed on the same machine.
On the other hand, FreeDOS might be an efficient OS on embedded systems and palmtops, perhaps more efficient than Linux and ELKS (the 16-bit Linux kernel subset) if hardware capabilities are seriously limited.
gopher://cramer.plaintext.cc http://cramer.plaintext.cc:70
When are the reall cool games going to be ported over to freedos???
Go Lara!!
DOSemu emulates hardware and runs a real copy of DOS. I'd like to know why they didn't do it at a higher level by trapping the INT calls (jumps to operating system routines to do things like open files). I expect command.com would still run using an emulated DOS kernel instead of the msdos.sys/io.sys stuff. I imagine it would improve have a small performace benifit on IO bound programs. Presumably there is some good reason. Video hardware emulation would still beneeded. Possibly programs directly fiddling with DOS data structures in memory would be hard to accomodate. Perhaps there is some undocumented stuff thats hard to emulate.
works a lot better, in fact, it works better than ms-dos does under dos-emu...or as real os for that matter. Free DOS on the other hand needs a lot of work
How far along/mature is FreeDOS actually? A couple of weeks ago, I tried putting together a bootable FreeDOS floppy with generic ATAPI CD-ROM drivers (one of the most frequent uses for DOS I have) and gave up after a while.
The best-known alternative DOS to Microsoft's is DR-DOS, from Digital Research and later Caldera. Lineo (Caldera's thin clients division) recently released DR GEM as GNU open source, and as it is changing its efforts over to embedded Linux ("Embedix" - the first version has just been released) it's possible it may release DR-DOS as open source too.
As DR-DOS is a complete, finished, and very polished system, what would happen to the FreeDOS project if this happened? Keep going, try to merge the FreeDOS tree into DR-DOS, vice versa, or what?
GEM is going strong (see www.deltasoft.com) and I like to think there's life in DOS yet. With a GUI like GEM, a multitasker (such as DesqView) and maybe even an X server (like DesqView/X) it makes a good thin client OS.
Liam P. ~ "Intelligence is a lethal mutation." (me)
That doesn't prove a damn thing. I think you need to look a little bit deeper into Win9x internals. It has been said here that DOS is a boot loader for Win9x. DOS loads the Win9x kernel and then goes to sleep. The Win9x kernel handles all the work. DOS is occasionally woken up to provide backwards compatibility.
This is very similar to what Novell NetWare does. It uses DOS to load the kernel. By your argument NetWare is just shell, and it definitely is not.
Written under OS/2.
Most of the DOS function calls have been rewriten for windows. For instance, the IO calls. Disk IO is much faster in windows then it is in 'dos' mode. Quake also uses it's own Kernel, not DOS's
[ c h a d o k e r e ]
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
It was being developed back in the days of Win 3.1. When plenty of Dos stuff was readily available. Not to mention the hope that someday we'd be able to run our windows apps (netscape, corel, word) on linux... Of course, now netscape, corel products, and other word processing software is available so priorities have changed. But give the guy some credit. He did a lot of good for a lot of people and even though it's not as useful as it used to be. We might not have some of the other software we've got if it weren't for all his hard work.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin