FreeDOS Not Dead; 1.0 Release Imminent

Lisa writes "Jim Hall, creator of the open source MS-DOS operating system project FreeDOS, says that while work on the project may have slowed recently, he isn't ready to throw in the towel just yet. In fact, Hall says he hopes to see version 1.0 released as soon as the end of the month." (So rumors to the contrary can be safely ignored.)

Comments

Let me be the first to ask....

[Radi-0-head]

Does anyone care?

Re:Let me be the first to ask....

[$p4(3_P1r473]

No They don't.

Re:Let me be the first to ask....

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. Embedded systems vendors, firmware upgrade disk image producers, people who like the simplicity of DOS, PC manufacturers who want to get around Microsoft's refusal to OEM-licence windows to them if they sell PCs without any Operating System (Microsoft has a big, nasty industry campaign against "naked PCs"...). There'll be a niche "market" for FreeDOS pretty indefinitely, it's pretty much the "last DOS standing", since Microsoft gave up on MS-DOS. No, not _many_ people will care. But with Open Source, a few are enough.

Re:Let me be the first to ask....

[Tatarize]

You're the kind of nay sayer that says that since Duke Nuke'em: Forever has been in production for the last decade it probably isn't worth caring about.

I, for one, wait with baited breath for FreeDOS 1.0, and Duke Nuke'em: Forever... which will be out "when it's done." (Read: Any day now.)

Anybody who says waiting for vaporware is like watching grass grow is just crying over spilled milk the cow jumped over the moon the queen of heart of the problem child. ... Apparently there might be some psychological drawbacks to waiting on such things.

Re:Let me be the first to ask....

[Lumpy]

Everyone that builds network imaging boot CD's does.

Freedos rocks. Tcp/ip stack and all the goodies to make imaging machines from a network image repository with ghost of other dos based imaging apps a real treat/breeze.

universities love freedos, researchers do as freedos works on old Pc104 386 based boards for space based or rugged terrain data collection on hardware that the only collection app is an old dos one that will not run under linux. most machine shops love freedos as it's the only way to keep those old machines that use dos running instead of buying new CNC hardware and software for tens of thousands of dollars when the old machine works just fine.

I can go on for hours if you really want me to list everyone who cares about FreeDos....

Re:Let me be the first to ask....

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone who needs to reflash their BIOS might be interested. I bought an amd64 machine, running gentoo and never purchased anything from Microsoft. So when it comes time to flash, I need to make a bootable cd/disk. And for that, I use FreeDOS.

Re:Let me be the first to ask....

[TobyRush]

Hey, cool, man! I love Fritos too!

Oh, FreeDOS. Sorry, my mistake.

Re:Let me be the first to ask....

[Total_Wimp]

Ahmen. Booting an OS off of a floppy is something that still needs to be done from time to time and this is one of the best wayst to do it. I must admit, though, I was a bit concerned by this paragraph at the end of TFA

"I really want to break out of the mold of MS-DOS, and start to extend what DOS means," he says. "FreeDOS-32 is along that direction." Hall says that software will include features like multitasking and flat memory. "I'd also like to see more utilities to make it possible to replicate some of the advanced features we take for granted in modern operating systems, such as Linux." Hall says he hopes Linux users will feel right at home with FreeDOS. He also wants to bring Mac users into the fold, but understands their need for a strong GUI.

32-bit? Multitasking? Is he serious? I hope this part is just another joke. The beauty of light-weight is it's lightness.

TW

Re:Let me be the first to ask....

[Anonymous Coward]

Code monkey like FreeDOS
Code monkey like TAB and Mountain Dew

Re:Let me be the first to ask....

[MacgyverJr]

We use freeDOS to run many mission critical sytems at my work...Like VisiCalc and WordStar (both pop)

Re:Let me be the first to ask....

[value_added]

Everyone that builds network imaging boot CD's does.

Or "uses", of course.

But networking in DOS, like just about everything else in DOS is still ugly, limited and painful. And if you remove the need to support a legacy application, it's usefulness approaches zero.

I can go on for hours if you really want me to list everyone who cares about FreeDos....

And I could go on about the what I see as my wasted years in the DOS world, to say nothing of the first few generations of Windows. To be fair, you are correct, DOS is still alive and well and very much in use, but my hopes for the new generation is that after using for the first time something like a Knoppix live CD is that they never even consider learning or using what the rest of did, and turn their noses up at the very thought of it.

Re:Let me be the first to ask....

[Anonymous Coward]

> Freedos rocks. Tcp/ip stack and...

Does this mean that I can finally get my PC XT on the Internet?

Re:Let me be the first to ask....

[X3J11]

A 32-bit multitasking DOS could still be "light-weight". Remember DESQView? I can't imagine(*) it would be all too difficult to add some sort of a supervisor to manage multiple DOS sessions. Any DOS box (box as in hardware) running an Expanded Memory Manager (such as EMM386) is already on its way there as the EMM continues to run DOS in V86 mode.

(*) In my imagination, there's a mysterious genius out there who understands every nuance of DOS and I86 hardware who's more than willing to put time into this. :)

Re:Let me be the first to ask....

[d'fim]

"baited breath"

I hate to be a grammar Nazi, but with what do you bait your breath - worms?

And just what are you hoping to catch?

Re:Let me be the first to ask....

[sphealey]

> "FreeDOS-32 is along that direction."
> Hall says that software will include
> features like multitasking and flat memory

Throw in windowing, and you would have FreeDesqView-386.

sPh

Re:Let me be the first to ask....

[Bing Tsher E]

And the beauty of a lightweight OS that uses the 32-bit flat memory model and has the 'hooks' for multitasking integrated should be apparent to some of us.

I mean, the multitasking sounds optional. A flat memory model would be really, really great for high performance tasks where you just want the core machine.

Re:Let me be the first to ask....

[Anonymous Coward]

In fact, Hall says he hopes to see version 1.0 released as soon as the end of the month." (So rumors to the contrary can be safely ignored.)

Likewise, I hope to be married to Hallie Berry as soon as the end of the month. Unfortunately, I don't think rumors to the contrary can be safely ignored.

Re:Let me be the first to ask....

[blixel]

Just a guess here, but I assume he meant "bated breath." I also assume you knew that and are just being a dick.

so Sens youv got. nothin beter too dew then ignoure teh relivant parts-of-teh-post, and fokiss ownly on typographikal errs er othar misstaekes; then heers a hole "mesage four, you two tier apart. Hav phun. O, & Git a liefe looser.

Re:Let me be the first to ask....

[evilviper]

Does this mean that I can finally get my PC XT on the Internet?

If you have an 8-bit NIC, sure... If not, the TCP/IP stack won't do you any good, and you just need the old SLIP/PPP programs for DOS.

SSHv1, Telnet, FTP, etc. There's even BOBCAT for a lynx-like browser, except that it's somewhat painful on an XT, and crashes after every ~20 pages you visit (out of memory).

It was only a couple years ago I still had an old 286 up and working this way. Not for any good reasons, mind you, just for the hell of it.

Re:Let me be the first to ask....

[Anonymous Coward]

Tcp/ip stack and all the goodies to make imaging machines from a network image repository with ghost of other dos based imaging apps a real treat/breeze.

I have found that netbootdisk works well with all of my disk imaging needs.

Re:Let me be the first to ask....

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, they surely do. Freedos is fscking brilliant for simple data collection/hardware control projects on oooold hardware (386 era stuff up, ie anything you have lying around). Does everything you need, backwards compatible with all kinds of useful software, and several orders of magnitude easier to install/use than its competitors. And most importantly (for me anyhow), it doesn't try to get between you and the hardware.

btw. I'm usually a linux advocate...

Re:Let me be the first to ask....

[kimvette]

For playing legacy games on new systems it should be an excellent choice, shouldn't it? they may be old but games like the Dommander Keen series, Doom (yeah, I know, Linux and Windows ports exist and have for some time), and many, many other older DOS games are still just as much fun to play now as they were back when they were new.

Re:Let me be the first to ask....

[NaDrew]

Throw in windowing, and you would have FreeDesqView-386.

... and there would be much rejoicing.

Re:Let me be the first to ask....

[walstib]

I hate to be a grammar Nazi, but with what do you bait your breath - worms?

With whisp'ring humbleness, of course.

Re:Let me be the first to ask....

[JimDaGeek]

IME, those old games don't work that well with FreeDOS. You are much better off to get DOSBox

Re:Let me be the first to ask....

[MyLongNickName]

Courage is being scared to death - but saddling up anyway. -John Wayne

Interesting quote from a draft dodger.

Re:Let me be the first to ask....

[bcat24]

Kind of like early versions of Windows?

Re:Let me be the first to ask....

[geminidomino]

Yay!

Re:Let me be the first to ask....

[Reziac]

Don't forget NetTamer (http://www.nettamer.net/tamer.html) which has a version that runs perfectly well on an XT, and there is now a palmtop version as well. The reg'd version even does IRC. And I believe it's still maintained. Sortof a text/graphics hybrid, but basically geared toward working in plaintext. Very reliable, once you get used to it.

There's also Arachne (works okay, tho its setup is quirky as hell) and its offspring WebSpyder, which used a 32bit DOS extender, and worked really well (at least, between crashes!) But if you needed a graphical browser on a DOS-only system, WebSpyder was the best of the lot.

Re:Let me be the first to ask....

[Anonymous Coward]

Not many people dodge the draft. It takes true courage to stand up and say No.

Re:Let me be the first to ask....

[Vo0k]

Yep, except without windows. Usablity of task switching without bloat, restrictions and requirements of GUI. Comfortable way to run multiple applications without forcing them to be written and designed in some highly specific way.

Re:Let me be the first to ask....

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope you realize that DOSBox relies considerably on FreeDOS code for it's internal DOS implementation. If it weren't for FreeDOS you would probably still need a copy of MS-DOS to use DOSBox at all.

Re:Let me be the first to ask....

[chthon]

I think Digital Research had a multi-user version of DOS, supporting up to 16 users on one machine.

Anybody care to elaborate/supply more information ?

Re:Let me be the first to ask....

[MyLongNickName]

What he did had nothing to do with courage. He swore he would sign up. Repeatedly. He even went through the motions once, but did not follow through. Plus, we are talking about World War II, not the current "War on Terrorism". Then, he makes dozens of movies where he is a war hero. Doesn't sound so "anti-war" to me.

For an example of a REAL courageous anti-war indiviual, click here

Re:Let me be the first to ask....

[petermgreen]

iirc early versions of windows could only multitask windows apps.

windows 3.x in 386 enhanced mode could multitask dos apps but at least for games it didn't work anywhere near as well as native dos. 9x was much better at it but your already getting pretty bloated by that point (and i certainly don't call 9x an early version of windows).

also iirc tcp/ip using the windows stack from a dos app was afaict a pita (ID software reffered to it as a delicate balancing act and iirc there was a seperate windows helper app).

Re:Let me be the first to ask....

[Alchemar]

And for that I am thankfull. I like the concept of FreeDos and have tinkered with it several times in the past. On the latest trial I set up a full system to do nothing but play all the old dos games I had collecting dust. After getting everything setup, then I realized that the disk read/writes were too slow to be of any use. I left it doing a copy overnight and thought something was broke with the computer when it was only 5% done the next morning. I setup the machine to run win98 with dosbox. When running dosbox, it uses the natives OS to cache the read/writes making it usable. Using win98 let me install the older windows games too. If they get the disk read/writes working, I have several old dos programs at work that I would like to try and run on it. I am hoping that it will let me use hardware that only has dos drivers. Until then linux/windows with dosbox is a much better option for most pure software applications.

Re:Let me be the first to ask....

[squiggleslash]

DR had several operating systems that could be described that way. Their first was MP/M, which was loosely based on CP/M. Despite that (heh, I'm not a CP/M fan) it had a large following of users who bought it as a single-user multi-tasking OS, a good multitasking OS rather than a a multiuser one.

MP/M came in a variety of forms including MP/M86, and then was followed by Concurrent DOS. Concurrent DOS has limited DOS compatibility, but what it did it did fairly well, and in the mid-eighties a variety of computers were built to run it.

Finally, there's DOSPlus. DOSPlus wasn't multiuser, but it was the culmination of DR's work in different areas. It was largely DOS compatible, with a few exceptions which, needless to say, prevented many major applications from running. It had a multitasking system, though it was limited to multitasking CP/M86 applications (and I don't believe you could actually switch between them, they had to be background tasks, but I've read stuff that contradicted my own experience of the system); it was arguably DR's best single user operating system, followed later by DRDOS which sacrificed most of DR's innovations for DOS compatibility. DR could probably have come out with quite a nifty, powerful, system based on DOSPlus and GEM if MSDOS compatibility wasn't so important, and if they had the option of going 32 bit rather than being limited to the 8086 architecture.

I believe a sizable amount of this code is freeware and/or free software, as Caldera released a lot of it before they turned to the dark side. It's not always provided in an easy to work with form though, especially as the source code tends to be written in languages like PL/M.

Re:Let me be the first to ask....

[mycall]

I have lots of old games that stopped working at DOS 3.31 (which I am still looking for). I think DOS 4+ got rid of some old interrupts that old games required.

Re:Let me be the first to ask....

[ajs318]

Well, CP/M {an OS originally written for the Intel 8080 8-bit processor, but which happened to work with the binary-compatible 8085 and Z-80 processors} used to support multiple users after a fashion. MS-DOS was originally QDOS, a cheap and nasty CP/M work-alike for the 8086 processor. QDOS was based on an obsolete CP/M version, and in any case Microsoft bought it before it was properly finished.

Sometime later, the University of California at Berkeley managed to get a version of unix to run on an 80386 PC. This eventually became FreeBSD. And a printer manufacturer managed, by withholding driver source code, to annoy a hairy MIT hacker enough to motivate him to start writing his own operating system; which ended up almost complete, bar the kernel. Later still, a Finnish student got into a row with a lecturer about macro- vs. micro-kernels, wrote his own macrokernel {but, alas, no userland utilities} just to prove his point. Then a guy called Ian tried to pull a chick called Debra by combining the Linux kernel with the GNU userland. Amazingly, against all probabilities, the venture was successful on both counts and both couples ended up happily married; however, whilst Mrs Murdock liked her new name, there was much rumbling {and not from The Finn} that the other partnership ought to have kept both their names.

Whilst all this was going on, the creators of VAX/VMS {a somewhat temperamental operating system for the DEC VAX, a 32-bit extension to the venerable PDP-11} were sucked up by Microsoft and set to writing a replacement for MS-DOS, which it was hoped would also be portable to other processors {except for the slight flaw that the target processors would end up being discontinued before a port was ready}. This ended up becoming Windows NT. When it became apparent that Windows NT was worse than VAX/VMS, which was always seen by many VAX owners as the poor relation to BSD unix, Microsoft began ripping off bits of FreeBSD and grafting them into NT in place of the unstable parts. This was OK, because the BSD licence basically says "This is our hard work, which we tried to make available freely to everybody, but hey! if you want to pretend you wrote it, and lock it up so people can't have a copy of the Source Code, that's fine, we'll just rollover and play dead like good little doggies". The result ended up becoming Windows 2000 -- arguably the most stable Windows ever, though that's still a bit like saying "tallest midget". To make this new Windows even more attractive to complete idiots, a "Tellytubbies" theme was added and the name changed to XP so people would be able to spell it.

So yes, DOS should have been multiuser. But hey, if it had been right from the start, Microsoft would never have been able to sell upgrades. That's the Closed Source Way: Do half a job, then a quarter of a job, then an eighth of a job, and so on ..... After a certain number of such "upgrades" it becomes increasingly hard to convince the public to upgrade, so you have to build in a Nuclear Option such as inherent insecurity.

Re:Let me be the first to ask....

[elvum]

Sarcasm may be the lowest form of wit (whoever said that had obviously never seen Benny Hill), but that doesn't mean that using it makes you a dick.

Re:Let me be the first to ask....

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, yes. I think that's the point.

Maybe I'm missing something...

[Shadow Wrought]

They haven't released anything in 12 years and its that lack of "recent" progress that's hurting them. What is it that I'm missing?

Re:Maybe I'm missing something...

[Eravnrekaree]

They actually have released several versions over the past few years. Although, recently, they have been a bit slow to realese new versions, over the past year or so. FreeDOS is functional and can be used to do things including run many older DOS titles. I think they have been saving the 1.0 version for a point where they have obtained a very high level of compatability with MS-DOS.

I have used FreeDOS to run several programs, and it is useable for many tasks, although it still does have some way to go before it is a perfect imitation. Nevertheless, I am glad to see it is still progressing, since I do think there is a use for this kind of thing.

Re:Maybe I'm missing something...

[Anonymous Coward]

They haven't released anything in 12 years and its that lack of "recent" progress that's hurting them. What is it that I'm missing?

I think you're thinking of "freedows", not freedos.

Re:Maybe I'm missing something...

[1u3hr]

They haven't released anything in 12 years and its that lack of "recent" progress that's hurting them. What is it that I'm missing?

Reading TFA for one thing.

Re:Maybe I'm missing something...

[Spliffster]

They haven't released anything in 12 years

spliffy@sarge:~$ apt-cache search freedos
...
dosemu-freedos - FreeDOS package for DOSEMU

Seems they have.

Re:Maybe I'm missing something...

[baadger]

s/FreeDOS/Wine;

Re:Maybe I'm missing something...

[RLiegh]

>>They haven't released anything in 12 years

>spliffy@sarge:~$ apt-cache search freedos
>...
>dosemu-freedos - FreeDOS package for DOSEMU

>Seems they have.

Or maybe not. You are running sarge. Software that's twelve years old would still be considered a bit on the new side of things. I, for one, am surprised it made it out of testing so quickly.

Re:Maybe I'm missing something...

[vtcodger]

Not missing anything on the basis of what you've been told. What no one got around to mentioning to you is that the 0.x FreeDOS releases are quite usable. I have a couple of very old notebook computers around here that boot through Freedos and it works fine.

IMO, the major reason that FreeDOS hasn't achieved more recognition is that Microsoft apparently doesn't much care if you pirate MSDOS. I've always wondered why MS doesn't sell no-support, Bring Your Own Media, licenses for MSDOS and old Windows versions for a few bucks. They don't, so people just make (illegal) copies and get on with their lives.

MSDOS/FreeDOS/et al remain the only real OSes that will conveniently fit onto a standard 1.44mb floppy and do real work. (It's possible to get Linux into 1.44mb -- Google LRP -- but it's painful). Admitedly, MSDOS/FreeDOS won't do a lot. But sometimes, you don't need to do a lot. They are very robust. In my last job, I had a stack of about six MSDOS floppies that had the software to partition and format disks, run a GHOST client, run a Netware client, do some basic diagnostics, and access balky CDROM drives. Used em all the time.

Re:Maybe I'm missing something...

[andrewman327]

Will it run Duke Nukem Forever?

Good to hear this

[Eravnrekaree]

I have used FreeDOS previously and indeed it has quite a bit of importance and valuable to use, both as an OS for older hardware, and as well, for running old DOS software games on newer hardware. I have run FreeDOS on Bochs for nostgalgia's sake, to run various old DOS titles. A fully MS-DOS compatable OS does indeed have many applications, such as running older software, nostgalgia, preservation of old computer operating systems, and for older hardware and modern hardware for which a small, lightweight OS is needed.

Re:Good to hear this

[ScrewMaster]

I agree, and embedded systems running some variant of DOS are very common. I've delivered more than a few of those myself. Claims that "DOS is dead" aren't really accurate, and won't be for some time to come. Speaking of DOS games, would you happen to know if Build Engine games such as Duke Nukem 3D, Shadow Warrior, Blood and so forth work under FreeDOS?

Re:Good to hear this

[Eravnrekaree]

I do not know if those will work, perhaps they might. It would be nice if they would however, one of the best uses of a DOS is running older software such as this. Perhaps someone else knows. I think there is also OpenDOS (http://www.drdosprojects.de/), which is actually based on DR-DOS which was made open source a few years ago by Caldera (which ironically became the now-evil SCO). I am not sure if that will work any better either. I think Linux and FreeBSD also have some sort of DOS emulation layer. (http://www.dosemu.org/)

Re:Good to hear this

[triso]

Speaking of DOS games, would you happen to know if Build Engine games such as Duke Nukem 3D, Shadow Warrior, Blood and so forth work under FreeDOS?

Duke 3D and SW are available in native Linux versions using OpenGL and 32-bit textures. See http://jonof.edgenetwork.org/ for details.

Re:Good to hear this

[caseih]

I still run several DOS applications and even piddle around with my old PowerBASIC compiler in FreeDOS running under DOSEMU. DOSEMU works very well for most things (non-graphical) and runs several orders of magnitude faster than bochs (no emulation of the cpu). FreeDOS and DOSEMU are a great match. Plus all the years of Unix innovations in the command line have been incorporated into the FreeDOS shell, makeing DOS actually quite nice to use in all its 16-bit glory. For graphical DOS stuff, I use dosbox which has it's own DOS implementation but, like bochs, emulates the hardware as well (but is way faster than bochs) and allows sound and vga emulation for running the old Sierra games.

FreeDOS still has a bright future in several niches. There is still a need for a 16-bit, real-mode operating system in a number of embedded situations.

Re:Good to hear this

[chgros]

FreeDOS on Bochs
You may want to consider DOSBox instead.

Re:Good to hear this

[Bing Tsher E]

Speaking of DOS games, would you happen to know if Build Engine games such as Duke Nukem 3D, Shadow Warrior, Blood and so forth work under FreeDOS?

I would predict they would. The whole concept for those games fits with the MS_DOS philosophy which is that the OS should be capable of 'getting the hell out of the way' of an application that comes along and does it all itself.

Many modern programmers are terrified of having to code to the bare hardware, and many act like it's always a bad thing. I've had to 'clean up' embedded controller projects written by programmers who mostly have experience relying on a 'system' to initialize timers, interrupts, and what-not. It isn't pretty.

Re:Good to hear this

[Bing Tsher E]

Tons of other stuff won't and never will. Some of them because all that exists are binaries. So it's cool that ways of running them in modern environments exist. Especially when a 'sandbox' approach allows them to run on modern hardware. But for the real experience, you want to keep around an old 386 system with a real sound blaster, etc.

Re:Good to hear this

[Bing Tsher E]

Bochs is a more widely ported environment. But it's good, and important, for both projects to continue.

Remember, all kinds of stuff can run on Bochs, which makes it a more universal option. DOSBox seems to be almost entirely focused on making old graphical games run. Which is cool, but it ain't CP/M-86, it isn't all sorts of weird old stuff that it's cool that there is a bare x86 emulation environment for. A CP/M-86 prompt on a Macintosh SE/30 running NetBSD? No problem! Run it on your SparcStation IPC, too! (don't plan on running anything fast)

Re:Good to hear this

[fm6]

OK, granted that a freeware MS-DOS clone has value. (I use it together with Dosbox to run old games under XP.) But why is it good news that people are still working on it? It's been around for 12 years now. And it's a clone of a truely simple-minded OS. Indeed, you could argue that MS-DOS is just a program loader — it lacks almost all the features of a real OS.

Re:Good to hear this

[Tough Love]

Bios upgrades typically require booting to DoS.

Re:Good to hear this

[NormalVisual]

Many modern programmers are terrified of having to code to the bare hardware, and many act like it's always a bad thing.

On the other hand, some of us welcome any chance to do so, and have stuff like the Windows DDK, and PIC, 8051, Z-80, and other emulators laying around in our toyboxes. If you don't know what an 8255 is without having to look it up, you probably shouldn't be programming PC hardware directly. :-)

Re:Good to hear this

[innocent_white_lamb]

article

Re:Good to hear this

[Bing Tsher E]

Furthermore: If you don't know the internal bugs and quirks of the 8255, you should be using 74LS245s instead. Or a 6821.

The wirewrap gun is our friend.

I'd LOVE to have a Z80 emulator. I hope you're not talking about a bit of software, though. I have an 8051 ICE and a couple of 68HC11 emulators. I have some monitor code for the Z80 that works in a pinch, but nothing beats a hardware emulator.

Re:Good to hear this

[NormalVisual]

I have some monitor code for the Z80 that works in a pinch, but nothing beats a hardware emulator.

Agreed, but software emulators make it *so* easy to bang out & do some rough testing of code quickly without having to go to a lot of effort in setting everything up or downloading code every time you make a change, and modern PCs are fast enough so that you don't have to wait 30 minutes to run 10 milliseconds of machine time anymore. :-) They're not as accurate (especially timing w/interrupts, it often seems), but they're cheap and sure can be convenient in the early stages of getting something built.

Re:Good to hear this

[cafard]

Yet, the only time i needed to upgrade the BIOS of a dell box to get linux on it, freedos was unable to do it, the upgrade executable thankfully crashing before doing anything too nasty. Had to hunt MS-DOS 6.22 for that one...

Re:Good to hear this

[pe1chl]

If you don't know the internal bugs and quirks of the 8255

I always found the 8255 had too few features, too many problems, and too large a footprint.
Just some 3-state drivers and octal latches plus the odd 74LS139 usually did the job much better!

Re:Good to hear this

[baadger]

...there are websites on the net offering Windows boot disk images that are sufficient to do that. That is the environment most BIOS updates are tested under anyway

this is good!

[Anonymous Coward]

It means I can still play Duke Nukem 3D until DNF comes out. At least I don't have to worry about any lack of overlap in the DN releases...

Re:this is good!

[ScrewMaster]

This is a bit off-topic, but if you're into Duke Nukem 3D as I am, you might want to check out Jonof's JFDuke3D port. It's a remarkable Windows port of Duke ... you need access to the original game data but if you have that it works great, adds a lot of visual enhancements using modern video cards. Even supports multiplayer, and the game plays just like the original.

jonof.edgenetwork.org

Re:this is good!

[Anonymous Coward]

Finally, this explains the slow development process.

how's about Free95?

[Anonymous Coward]

Once we've gotten up to FreeDos 6.2, will the next release be Free95 (release date 2095), which replicates Windows 95 in a feature and bug-complete way?

Re:how's about Free95?

[phase_9]

I know it's not strictly speaking Win95, (plus the fact you were clearly making said comment in jest) but ReacOS?

Re:how's about Free95?

[cgenman]

If I'm remembering Windows 95 correctly, it pretty much already does.

Okay...

[Anonymous Coward]

But how does this change anything important?

http://www.uncoverip.com/

A for determination

[theaddkid.com]

Oh well got to give him an A for determination right.

Why?

[Realistic_Dragon]

Because.

(Oh, and also because FreeDOS running in a VM plays some wierd DOS games very well.)

Re:Why?

[despisethesun]

That's the main reason I'm interested in it. A lot of those old games will run too fast on modern hardware (if they run at all), and finding old enough hardware that runs well enough and will continue to be reliable is getting more and more difficult. A VM + FreeDOS seems like a good solution to me, though I suppose DOSBox would work too.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there a xen port or is it easier to stick with DOSBOX?

Re:Why?

[Darkinspiration]

i'm very interested if free dos can do usb support. the ability to use ghost 2k3 with an usb hd is like the holy grail.... ok maybe not. but for any tech that invented new bad work and new variation using the three letter word trying to ghost some image on a usb harddrive this could be a lifesaver.

Re:Why?

[Wierdy1024]

Trick I use to slow down old apps on old OS's (win95), is to fire up paint, make an image 99999pixels by 999999pixels, hit create, then play your game. The swapping into the swapfile of paint will slow the game down the perfect amount. you can also run more than one copy of paint to get even slower. If you get out-of-memory errors then up the swapfile to an unlimited size. I used it for "Risky woods" all the time... :) An alternative method is to type "echo bigvideo.avi > LPT1:" at command prompt, and the PIO mode transfer to LPT1 uses so much CPU (even on modern machines like XP it still uses 100% CPU to copy at under 300 kbytes per sec) that all other apps slow down.

Re:Why?

[Ythan]

Wow, makes me feel rather unoriginal for just using MoSlo...

Re:Why?

[RGRistroph]

What you want is a bootable Linux CD such as Knoppix, and to clone the windows on and off the harddisk to the USB, ntfsclone (which is already in Knoppix).

http://alma.ch/blogs/bahut/2005/04/cloning-xp-with -linux-and-ntfsclone.html

If you have piracy in mind, note that Windows own protections will mess things up when you reboot on the new hardware -- this is a good way to backup windows after you have just spent a day installing software, however.

I care, sort of.

[Jett]

At work we found an ancient "portable computer" built by Compaq - we couldn't find any installer disks old enough to work with it so we installed FreeDOS. It wasn't really useful for anything, but it was fun - especially since most of us are young enough that if we have used DOS it was when we were children. Everyone was amazed that we got the old beast working. I'm sure somewhere out there is someone who needs DOS for something, if only an hours entertainment...

hear that?

[Anonymous Coward]

*crickets chirping*

Obligatory joke, forgive me...

[Anonymous Coward]

Netcraft confirms it: FreeDOS is dying!

Don't forget...

[SpectreHiro]

Check out DOSBox

It's an excellent DOS emulator for Windows, Linux, MacOSX, BeOs, FreeBSD, OS/2 and toasters... Wait, it might not run on toasters. You may need to do a little fine tuning, but I haven't found a better way to run old DOS games.

Re:Don't forget...

[Txiasaeia]

"You may need to do a little fine tuning, but I haven't found a better way to run old DOS games."

How about a P133 with a VESA-compatible video card?

Re:Don't forget...

[SpectreHiro]

How about a P133 with a VESA-compatible video card?

Nope... That'd take up more space, and my space is sort of limited these days. With DOSBox, I can run old Sierra games in a window on my Linux box while I'm ignoring the work I'm supposed to be doing.

Re:Don't forget...

[eekygeeky]

what's wrong with rightclick>properties>compatibility>run this program in compatibility mode?

Re:Don't forget...

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean besides, 'It doesn't work'?

Re:Don't forget...

[tchristney]

Um, it doesn't work?

Re:Don't forget...

[SpectreHiro]

Funny - I can't find "compatibility mode" options anywhere in KDE. I wonder why.............

Re:Don't forget...

[BobNET]

Wait, it might not run on toasters.

It probably does, there's a NetBSD package...

Re:Don't forget...

[creepynut]

A few problems.

1. It doesn't work.
2. Have you ever, you know.. used Linux? It could be my memory playing tricks, but I can't for the life of me recall the "Run in Compatibility Mode" to run my DOS games in Linux.

Re:Don't forget...

[CronoCloud]

it runs on a Playstation 2 Linux kit, that's not that much bigger than a toaster.

Re:Don't forget...

[Fred_A]

It could be my memory playing tricks, but I can't for the life of me recall the "Run in Compatibility Mode" to run my DOS games in Linux.

You clearly need to upgrade.

Re:Don't forget...

[boa13]

Check out DOSBox (...) You may need to do a little fine tuning, but I haven't found a better way to run old DOS games.

Good old Dosemu works pretty well for me, especially on a Pentium III @ 750 MHz. I've heard DOSBox requires several GHz to acceptably emulate a 486DX2 @ 66 MHz. Dosemu does not emulate the CPU, so it is an order of magnitude faster.

Dosemu used to be hard to configure and used to require root privileges and direct acces to the hardware; recent versions have pretty much gotten rid of those problems. I run most of my games with xdosemu in a regular window, I can easily switch to full screen if I prefer, I get very nice MIDI thanks to ALSA + Sound Blaster Live, etc. Of course the experience depends on the games, some of them had funky ways to address the hardware, there are a few cases where Dosemu doesn't cope that well (jerky mouse in a few games). But I can play Day of the Tentacle, Duke Nukem 3D, Dungeon Master, Lands of Lore, Arkanoid, Ecstatica, the Elder Scrolls: Arena just fine, and that's just those I tried this past week-end.

Re:Don't forget...

[Emetophobe]

The DosBox project is alot more active than dosemu. A new version of dosbox was released on June 27th, 2006 (last week), on the other hand dosemu hasn't been updated since 2004-07-11. Dosemu has the advantage that it runs better on older systems, dosbox has the advantage that it is compatible with amd, ppc, intel cpus and several different operating systems.

Re:Don't forget...

[Canordis]

2. Have you ever, you know.. used Linux? It could be my memory playing tricks, but I can't for the life of me recall the "Run in Compatibility Mode" to run my DOS games in Linux.

It's called DosBOX.

Re:Don't forget...

[LiquidFire_HK]

There's other ways to play some old games. In particular, Day of the Tentacle, which you mentioned, uses the Scumm engine, which the open-source community is reimplementing in a project called SvummVM: http://scummvm.sourceforge.net/compatibility.php

Other games also have free clones able to run the originals: freeciv (Civilization), freecraft (Warcraft), OpenTTD (Transport Tycoon). I'm sure there are others around there.

Re:Don't forget...

[boa13]

Others that I have tried and that work well:

• xrick is an excellent Rick Dangerous reimplementation
• REminiscence is an excellent reimplementation of the Flashback engine
• raw is an excellent reimplementation of the Another World engine. Its author has stopped distributing it at the request of Eric Chahi, the author of Another World, who has started selling a high-res version. There's a very interesting making-of on that website, by the way.

I use freedos on a daily basis

[Wierdy1024]

I use freedos on a floppy, with NTFSdos pro, to do some handy scripting changing registry entries on windows boxes without booting them. No other way I can thing of doing it, other than a liveCD of something, but that negates the point, as everything must fit inside about 4MB for my purposes. Also, occasionally, use a network freedos floppy, but I'm annoyed at the lack of a "universal" ethernet driver - even if performance is slow - rather like the universal 640x480 video driver in windows. Also, support for SATA drives is poor at best - and I can't find a driver for most chipsets. (although having said that even the windows XP install doesn't find most right!)

Re:I use freedos on a daily basis

[evilviper]

Also, occasionally, use a network freedos floppy, but I'm annoyed at the lack of a "universal" ethernet driver - even if performance is slow - rather like the universal 640x480 video driver in windows.

It's just not possible to have a universal NIC driver. Videocards all impliment SVGA and VESA compatibility, but networks cards don't have any similar universal standard.

Still, probably a handful of different NIC drivers will handle 95% of ethernet cards you'll come across. Tulip, NE2000, RTL8139, SIS900, 3C905, etc.

Re:I use freedos on a daily basis

[mottie]

Floppies are dead. Put BartPE on a USBkey or on a creditcard cdrom and you have way more functionality and you can add any driver with ease (if there's not already a plugin built, which there are a LOT of)

Re:I use freedos on a daily basis

[babyrat]

Apparently floppies aren't dead as this person uses them often.

    There are lots of older PCs that don't have a working CD and tons more that don't have usb ports, or don't have a bios capable of booting from USB.

Re:I use freedos on a daily basis

[rickb928]

For those of us who are trapped in the dead-end jobs that require installing Windows Server 2whatever on new hardware, the joy of the F6 diskette is fleeting, replaced by the realization that our new hardware has dispensed with the obsolete, but needed, floppy drive.

The exercise of creating a USB key that mimics a floppy drive with those F6 drivers is nontrivial. Just give me a floppy, or tell Bill and the Redmond Insults to change the installer ever so slightly and look at all media for those cursed drivers.

And yes, I have several different ways to do that, and several different keys that do it. I'm just recovering from an extended rollout. Thank God it wasn't something painful, say RH9.

rick

Re:I use freedos on a daily basis

[Fred_A]

Apparently floppies aren't dead as this person uses them often.

Shut up you necrophile ! They are dead ! DEAD I tell you ! :)

Re:I use freedos on a daily basis

[Cicero382]

I work at a small BioTech company. We use a lot of "obsolete" equipment because a) it's *much* cheaper than the new stuff and b) it does what we want anyway.

This is why we like projects like FreeDOS. For example; we use BioMek 1000's for liquid handling - they cost us about $1,000 each compared with $20,000+ for the newest kit. The problem is that the s/w runs on DOS... do we have DOS installation disks? Nope! Enter FreeDOS - it works fine *and* it runs happily on the old PC host.

Thank you FreeDOS developers - you just saved us a whole load of money which we can put into research instead.

Re:I use freedos on a daily basis

[Anonymous Coward]

Christ, why didn't you just roll your own install CD? It's not like it's that hard.

Re:I use freedos on a daily basis

[squiggleslash]

I'm surprised to hear the SATA comment, does FreeDOS not use the BIOS or is this not really enough for SATA drives as you intend to use them?

Re:I use freedos on a daily basis

[Wierdy1024]

It doesn't work at all with most controllers - while I can't see why it shouldn't work, there are some sata cards/chipsets that don't work with linux/windows/dos/freedos without extra drivers. Booting dos installed on a HD causes "Non system disk or disk error. Replace disk and press any key" errors - caused by the boot sector, which is loaded by BIOS, not being able to load IO.sys. Not sure how partition tables are handled though... Also, can't install any DOS based windows on them (windows 95, 98, ME), as the installer reports that windows requires a hard disk drive to run. (dur...)

Re:I use freedos on a daily basis

[evilviper]

Apparently floppies aren't dead as this person uses them often.

And Jay Leno drives around in his steam-powered, wood-fired car often... but steam cars are still dead.

Re:I use freedos on a daily basis

[rikkards]

The exercise of creating a USB key that mimics a floppy drive with those F6 drivers is nontrivial. Just give me a floppy, or tell Bill and the Redmond Insults to change the installer ever so slightly and look at all media for those cursed drivers.

Vista includes multiple methods of providing drivers rather than only the Floppy; USB, Floppy, CD, and I believe network drives.

Re:I use freedos on a daily basis

[rickb928]

Which works fine, I'm sure.

Didn't really help me the past 5 weeks.

In fact, I wonder if Vista will support much of my old SCSI hardware. Upgrades all around! Wheeee!

sheesh.

rick

Re:I use freedos on a daily basis

[CTachyon]

Sorry, but floppies died when Verbatim and the like pushed the prices on floppies down so low that everyone else had to drop all quality control to compete. Any floppy disk made after 1997 or so will develop bad sectors if you so much as make a rude face at it. Out of necessity, I now treat floppies as write-once media.

Man, I can't wait for this to come out!!

[Junior J. Junior III]

Now, if only someone will come up with a decent window-manager and GUI toolkit to run on top of it...

Re:Man, I can't wait for this to come out!!

[TheDreadSlashdotterD]

They tried that once. I'm still recovering from Windows 3.1

Re:Man, I can't wait for this to come out!!

[Junior J. Junior III]

Geez, that's a long time... have you tried cleaning your tape drive? ;)

Re:Man, I can't wait for this to come out!!

[rickb928]

Yeah, XFCE would rock! Nothing much to run, but hell, who cares: we got a gui!

Re:Man, I can't wait for this to come out!!

[TheDreadSlashdotterD]

I was talking about the psychological damage that "GUI" inflicted upon me, but that was pretty good. LOL

Re:Man, I can't wait for this to come out!!

[SCull]

And here's what you ordered: OpenGEM http://gem.shaneland.co.uk/index.html

It is a clone of GEM from the late 80's early 90's. Now you have no more excuses!

Re:Man, I can't wait for this to come out!!

[vtcodger]

***Now, if only someone will come up with a decent window-manager and GUI toolkit to run on top of it.***

About the best I'm aware of would be WFWG3.11 (pirated) and IBM's Workplace Shell for Windows (freeware). ... if they will run on FreeDOS. But there doesn't seem to be much 16 bit Windows applications software that is conveniently usable.

Yeah, but will it support

[SensitiveMale]

DoubleSpace?

Re:Yeah, but will it support

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember using DoubleSpace on my 200MB hard drive that I purchased for $200. After I got the drive, I thought "wow I can store 400MB of stuff on here!". What I did not realize was how it actually stored "double" the amount of space. First of all, I had a lot of ZIP and ARJ files which were obviously not much more compressable, so didn't seem to do much as far as extra hard drive space was concerned. Secondly, it slowed down the computer like hell just trying to compress/uncompress files as they were being used.

Needless to say, I did not use DoubleSpace for long.

Re:Yeah, but will it support

[NaDrew]

DoubleSpace?

Real geeks use(d) Stacker and QEMM.

Re:Yeah, but will it support

[innocent_white_lamb]

Actually, real geeks used filedv13 to create a logical hard drive with 512k clusters to store their FidoNet messages on.
 
*ahem*

Since when did the existing DOS disappear?

[Anonymous Coward]

What was wrong with the DOS that came with the CNC machine?

Re:Since when did the existing DOS disappear?

[Lord Kano]

Machine shops aren't necessarily the most healthy environments for people or computers.

The heat and the dust in the air can contributed to shortened lifespans for equipment. If that 10 year old HDD dies, why replace the whole machine when you can replace the bad HDD and use FreeDOS?

LK

It's effectively dead...

[evilviper]

Even if he's still going to make another few releases, FreeDOS is still dead.

MANY, MANY years into the project now, and yet compatibility with MS-DOS is in a rather sad state, the partitioning/formating programs create corrupt partitions that MS-DOS/Windows will choke on after a little bit or writing to. Many of the programs (Defrag?) still can't even handle FAT32, even though FAT32 has been around forever, and is largely obsolete now. What are the chances of FreeDOS 2.0 adding NTFS support?!

DR-DOS is still freely available, and a much better choice for boot floppies/CDs, as well as running old DOS programs (something like xmess will probably include 100% DOS compatibility before FreeDOS does).

DOS is too old and simple to be of any use in embedded apps as well. Projects like ELKS and ucLinux are far better options. It might be usable by companies' boot disks, but the limited compatibility might make licensing one of the many commercial DOS implimentations a cheaper and more reliable option.

The project is a zombie. It can continue walking on, but it's still long since dead, whether it knows it or not.

Re:It's effectively dead...

[Anonymous Coward]

And when did DOS support NTFS?

Re:It's effectively dead...

[evilviper]

And when did DOS support NTFS?

You completely missed the point. It's not about what DOS has done in the past, it's about what it needs to do to become a useful and viable OS in the near future.

FreeDOS isn't some retro-programming experiment, trying to make old games work on old hardware. It's niche has been for Windows boot disks, and for use in dual-booting. But with 2000 and XP defaulting to NTFS, you'll see FreeDOS no longer working properly for either job, just as older OSes with only FAT16 support have gone away as well.

In the next few years, as Microsoft gets a clue, and it becomes easier for average people to create WinPE/BartsPE boot discs, DOS will become a distant memory... Just as distant as CP/M is now.

Re:It's effectively dead...

[Onymous Coward]

Funny, I just used it tonight to flash my mobo BIOS. Damned older BIOS wasn't reading the new CPU fan's slow RPM correctly so it freaked and wanted to shut down at boot. MSI had a fixed version, but figuring out how to flash it was a hassle.

Any recommendations for a replacement method for BIOS flashing?

Re:It's effectively dead...

[xtracto]

I got a computer from the trash in the street (yeah, damn britons immitating the "use and throw" USA culture). Unfortunately, its BIOS wont allow me to install my 80 GB hard disk (the autodetect choked and when specifying the configuration manually it will recognize it as 8GB only) so I had to upgrade the bios.

The way I did it is just download a WIN98SE boot disk from bootdisk.com and burn the image with Nero (using the "boot cd option" (the Floppy was not working), then i added the AMI flashing utility and the .rom file. It was really straightforward.

Now, I had to use the WIN98SE because I needed the RAMDRIVE as (for some reason) the flashing utility needed to write in the disk when it was flashing.

Re:It's effectively dead...

[caseih]

DOS is too old and simple to be of any use in embedded apps as well. Projects like ELKS and ucLinux are far better options. It might be usable by companies' boot disks, but the limited compatibility might make licensing one of the many commercial DOS implimentations a cheaper and more reliable option.

This is simply not true. I know of quite a few developers still working with embedded systems using DOS. And no it won't be replaced with ELKS or ucLinux anytime soon. DOS works and works very well in this niche. Serial port communications, harward control, even POS, etc. The DOS embedded world is alive and well.

Re:It's effectively dead...

[evilviper]

Any recommendations for a replacement method for BIOS flashing?

Yes, DR-DOS, as I already said in my previous post. Under FreeDOS, you're really taking the risk that your flashing app might crash, destroying your hardware.

Besides that, most hardware companies have stopped using DOS flashing programs (for good reason). Many of them are Win32 these days, so you absolutely NEED a WinPE/BartsPE CD or USB drive (or Windows on a 1GB hard drive, or similar).

Re:It's effectively dead...

[Anonymous Coward]

no, you completely miss the point.

sure, maybe there is something to your contention that FreeDOS "wants" to be "futurely viable".

there is also the point that there are "brazillions" (34234 googleplexes raised to the power of itself) of pallets of "dumpster tech" out there that are still usuable. ok, fine; no vector shading, no pixelated pipelines, no aa, no ntfs - but each of them can still move bits! (sure, slower than today - but considering how all that "improved capability" is being used? flash, ads, flash-ads, "push-pull"(old terminology that is not used anymore, but the concept is alive and well and coming in a rootkit to "YOU"!) ??? ) it might even be possible to get some sort of very minimal video communications going, but that ain't even needed for people to talk to people.

of course, all of the capitalistic/corporate/gotta have a shiny gimmick purveyors, (and you; their suckers^H^H^H^H^Hcustomers/developers) are force feeding broken, invasive crap. why? not to improve the experience, but to make a buck! throw away the old grandfolks^H^H^H^Hhardware; ditch that old piece of software that has been doing the job just fine! "i wanna make money and you must buy!! i want my desert property in inland oregon!!"

(far as i'm concerned, this "industry" has been increasing thrust and speed on it's race downhill ever since y'all went "OOPS"! (make that "structures" or "systems" or something, eh?) and now the "new" hardware (abstracting the board data tables off the hardware and into the borg? every piece of hardware should have everything that is needful of being known about it just sitting there at that standard access address, no matter who is asking, or what they are asking for. ... as long, of course, as they are asking for what the hardware provides ...) as is being designed, built and marketed, is FubaRd all to hELL[d]!)

but that's ok; go on with your bad self!! keep on moving "forward"!! when i get to the cliff edge, i'll pour out a libation to you down in that pile of lemmings!!

Re:It's effectively dead...

[Geezle2]

This makes me think of something. Has anybody else out there noticed that each version of Microsoft Word runs at about the same speed on the hardware available at the time the version was released as the previous version did on the platform? Sure, Word has been pumped full of features, but who really uses any of them? I am willing to bet that most users (over 90%) wouldn't miss anything at all using the version available over a decade ago. How much have they invested in new platforms to support the latest version to get features that they never use?

These upgrade treadmill types are the first to go shouting that product X "is dead!" This vehement shrieking about the demise of other platforms is simply an attempt to justify (deny?) their habitual need to upgrade. Rather than face the truth that they are dancing on the ends of strings pulled by various marketing machines, they cry out that the reason for their compulsive upgrade habit is that the previous platform was "dead". They vocally proclaim the demise of everything except that which they most recently purchased and imply or outright claim that they had no choice but to buy into Microsoft's latest white elephant.

It is true that most applications don't need an OS any more elaborate that DOS (or FreeDOS). Many applications would be faster, more reliable, easier for the end user to operate and easier for tech support to fix if they were properly coded for DOS rather than being built for Windows.

The retarded perception of a need to recode embedded and vertical applications for Windows is what drove me out of the software engineering business. Until the corporate decision makers wake up and unhitch themselves from Microsoft's marketing department, I will stay, quite happily, out of the coding for cash business. I code for aesthetic reasons so when aesthetics and corporate policy are at odds, I walk.

Re:It's effectively dead...

[Onymous Coward]

Ah, well thank you for the pointer.

I guess it's good to note that FreeDOS beta9sr2 and the MSI flash utility amifl827.EXE worked fine together in my experience.

*ahem*

[absurdist]

You know, it would be nice if people would actually bother to do a little research before they post...

If you'd bothered to even glimpse at the FreeDOS web page, you'd see that the first priority of FreeDOS is and always has been to maintain a lightweight, completely DOS compatible OS. FreeDOS-32 is a completely different project. Any multitasking extensions (think DR-DOS in its latter days), GUIs (FreeGEM, notably, among others), etc... have always been planned after and as an adjunct to FreeDOS, not to replace it. There's still plenty of life left in DOS and the DOS environment. I for one would love to see a high-performance, single-user OS optimized for modern hardware without the cruft of the NT based MS OSs OR Linux.

In Other News...

[Nefarious Wheel]

...Calls to participate in an open-source replacement for Windows 3.11 / Windows for Workgroups are now being heard...

Re:In Other News...

[tumbleweedsi]

I thought the BSD community were already working on that?

Re:In Other News...

[popsicle67]

Now do't make fun of 3.11. It was a fun system to work with even though it was crotchety. I wish there was a project to build the 3.11 look into a more powerful OS. I still have one box with the best stuff I can find WFW drivers for to play old games on but it would be nice to have an OS that was less buggy to run them on.

Re:In Other News...

[Nefarious Wheel]

Ahh, yes, good old Lan Damager. I made a fair quid off that o/s version too. I liked the interface rather a lot, some bits of it better than XP.

If only I hadn't had to install the Exchange client on an early Novell stack.... I think there were two or three bytes left to do other work after it loaded...

Visual Basic for MS-DOS

[Bing Tsher E]

I will have to throw together a Bochs environment sometime soon and try running Visual Basic for MS-DOS under FreeDOS. Because I can. And because it's a pretty cool 'dead-end' product from Microsoft, to be honest.

Re:Visual Basic for MS-DOS

[Anonymous Coward]

Qbasic works just fine under both FreeDOS and DRDOS, in dosemu, as far as I have tested it.

Freedos writes OS2 Warp floppy disks

[Penicillus]

A long time ago, I copied my OS2 Warp installation CD to my hard drive; the CD is now someplace safe. In February, I used FreeDos to make OS2 Warp disk images from the hard drive, and installed OS2 onto an old 486. When the OS2 disk creation program is run under MSDOS 6, 7, or Win98 the 1.88 meg installation disks are created occasionally, and with agony; the dos window format of W2K and XP won't touch anything over 1.44 megs. FreeDos writes the 1.88 meg format easily on normal HD floppies, and all the floppies work the first time. Thank You FreeDos Developers!

I know I've heard this story before...

[Anonymous Coward]

DEAD PERSON: I'm not dead!
MORTICIAN: What?
CUSTOMER: Nothing -- here's your nine pence.
DEAD PERSON: I'm not dead!
MORTICIAN: Here -- he says he's not dead!
CUSTOMER: Yes, he is.
DEAD PERSON: I'm not!
MORTICIAN: He isn't.
CUSTOMER: Well, he will be soon, he's very ill.
DEAD PERSON: I'm getting better!
CUSTOMER: No, you're not -- you'll be stone dead in a moment.
MORTICIAN: Oh, I can't take him like that -- it's against regulations.
DEAD PERSON: I don't want to go in the cart!
CUSTOMER: Oh, don't be such a baby.
MORTICIAN: I can't take him...
DEAD PERSON: I feel fine!
CUSTOMER: Oh, do us a favor...
MORTICIAN: I can't.
CUSTOMER: Well, can you hang around a couple of minutes? He won't be long.
MORTICIAN: Naaah, I got to go on to Robinson's -- they've lost nine today.
CUSTOMER: Well, when is your next round?
MORTICIAN: Thursday.
DEAD PERSON: I think I'll go for a walk.
CUSTOMER: You're not fooling anyone y'know. Look, isn't there something you can do?
DEAD PERSON: I feel happy... I feel happy. [whop]
CUSTOMER: Ah, thanks very much.
MORTICIAN: Not at all. See you on Thursday.
CUSTOMER: Right.

Yawn... and this belongs in the ??? category...

[Super Dave Osbourne]

A few things come to mind... 00. Will the project never get released if there is pre-release press about it never coming out? 01. Will the dozen or so users/developers bail out if there is bad press after release 1.0? 10. Is there actually anyone interested in using FreeDOS instead of a ripped/stolen copy of the real thing? 11. Is the FreeDOS project really cleanroom, or can we expect M$haft to come and stop this before it really starts. There are more questions to be asked, but I'm not sure I really care all that much other than to post something that makes me sound smarmy and cute. I'm still laughing at this post, and have to ask is the news day so slow today that this kinda stuff makes it out of OSNews and into /.-land... To be discontinued.

Re:Yawn... and this belongs in the ??? category...

[TheZorch]

Unlike Windows an agreement was made that allows other developers to make their own versions of DOS that are compatible with MS-DOS. There have been several different varients of DOS in the past including DR-DOS, PC-DOS (by IBM) and the DOS OS used in DosBox.

I can see FreeDOS used with things like Parallels for Mac OS X so people can run old DOS software if they want.

Version 1.0 due out soon?

[Nybble's Byte]

What prompted this?

Re:Version 1.0 due out soon?

[innocent_white_lamb]

C:>_

What else?

Re:Version 1.0 due out soon?

[Anonymous Coward]

C>prompt $P$G

C:\>

Re:Version 1.0 due out soon?

[freeze128]

Version 0.99

You'd be better off with...

[Ayanami Rei]

...a realtime kernel library you can link into your code.
Most "high-performance" programs you write in full-on flat mode do this anyway. They either coordinate via the timer, vertical retrace, or hard drive/sound card DMA fill-request interrupt. And then they run a set of "tasks", that is, a bunch of potentially unrelated functions, in order, then return to the main busy loop.

So why not a small, RT kernel that lets you structure you program into seperate modules? It might provide you with some nice memory/syncro primitives that you can leverage. You can probably fit the text for a feature complete implementation with threads, round-robin and hard deadlines in 32K.
In this fashion you can potentially "schedule" a bunch of DMA requests, and then collect the "results" out of order. This gives you a bit more flexibility in your coding without having to roll up your own state machine and stuff.

Re:You'd be better off with...

[Vo0k]

You're confusing "real-time" and "fast". They aren't similar. They aren't even orthogonal. They go in pretty much opposite directions.

"Real-time" allows for getting things done within fixed latency. It requires some very tricky programming techniques and creates so much overhead that you need really good hardware to keep it running without failure. Of course it has all kinds of safeguards to make the failure recoverable, but all it really does is granting that the real-time process won't be waiting for its share of time to access the hardware longer than specified time. Then it must return control to the kernel in specified time or get killed. This isn't how you get things done fast. This is how you get things done without breaks. Monitoring, driving, streaming - not much CPU power needed but no pauses allowed. That's how RTOSes work.

"Fast" is giving the program a big chunk of resources and not disturbing. The whole machine stops reacting to any controls for 5 minutes, then presents you with a result, instead of crunching the data for a hour but making you able to play Solitaire in the meantime. The priority task takes over all the required system resources and any overhead is minimized, latency of any OS operations skyrocketing. Real-time reactions go bye-bye, scheduled for after the program returns control to the OS and it's up to the program to decide if any interrupts are worth bothering or when (how late) to service them. This is where OS like FreeDOS comes in handy - launch and get forgotten.

Let me be the first to answer...

[nurb432]

Yes, a lot of people care.

DOS still has a large user base out there, espcially in the embedded and machine controller markets. So yes, people care.

Lift your game Blixel!

[BluBrick]

so Sens youv got. nothin beter too dew then ignoure teh relivant parts-of-teh-post, and fokiss ownly on typographikal errs er othar misstaekes; then heers a hole "mesage four, you two tier apart. Hav phun. O, & Git a liefe looser. You correctly used two periods and one comma. That's a little careless, but my main concern is that, aside from the surrounding punctuation, there are six words in that message which are both correctly spelled and correctly used. Now, because some of the smaller words like 'a', 'on' and 'and' can be somewhat difficult to misspel, I was prepared to cut you a little slack. But you failed to misuse 'your' in place of 'you', and correctly spelled 'apart'. That's just sloppy.

Re:Lift your game Blixel!

[blixel]

That's just sloppy.

You failed to distinguish my part of the post from your part of the post.

Re:Lift your game Blixel!

[BluBrick]

Indeed I did. Shoddy work on my behalf.

I should be punished.
Slap me, beat me, knock me to the ground, make me feel cheap!

Re:Lift your game Blixel!

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

Thanks to AT&T and Google Maps, a black van will arrive shortly.

I think FreeDOS is genius:

[Progman3K]

Everything you need to boot an XT PC onward to today's PCs, format and/or do system installs?
Open-source too?
A very useful project!

Parallel's for OSX

[Super Dave Osbourne]

Ok, I'm about blown away by the implementation of Parallels, not having a thing to do with this threat apart from your mention. Question I have is for 49.99 is Parallel's worth the price, does it really work well, and does the virtual rooted window of each OS get in the way as it has in the past like X11 in the rooted solutions of years gone bye? I'm very interested in the product, and may just move me from my PPC eMac (which is still a great machine 1.5 years old and going strong, albeit some service work that cost Apple 'retail' about 1700 USD on a 700 USD machine :) to a dual core mini... The life-time-bomb on this eMac is ticking now, mwhahahaha.

Finally? You must be kidding/trolling.

[nurb432]

Umm that isnt hard to do, never has been..

Ever hear of SLIP or PPP? How about an 8 bit network card?

None of these things are new. I was running ethernet on an XT running X11 ( via desqviewX ) at least 15 years ago.. might have been longer..

FreeDOS on other platforms

[Kadin2048]

Everyone here seems to be concentrating on FreeDOS running on x86. Which is fine -- x86 is the dominant architecture, after all, but I'd be really interested in a stable, minimalist OS that would run on other architectures as well -- perhaps architectures that there aren't any open-source OSes available for right now.

I'm thinking particularly about the old Apple machines (II series); it would be cool to get an OSS operating system and application stack (compiler, etc.) for some of the platforms that wouldn't comfortably run Linux.

Maybe even cooler than the Apple IIs (for which it's not terribly hard to find software for anyway) would be something that would run on some of the old minicomputers. Not sure how practical/possible it would be to target something designed for x86 for them, but if it's anywhere near feasible, it would be neat (if only from a geek perspective).

Re:FreeDOS on other platforms

[Slashcrap]

Everyone here seems to be concentrating on FreeDOS running on x86. Which is fine -- x86 is the dominant architecture, after all, but I'd be really interested in a stable, minimalist OS that would run on other architectures as well -- perhaps architectures that there aren't any open-source OSes available for right now.

The problem is that DOS has always been rather intimately tied to the x86 architecture. So much so, that I'm not even certain that the concept of DOS for e.g. PowerPC actually makes any sense.

It's all 16 bit x86 real mode code and BIOS calls and interrupt service routines. You'd not only have to re-code the whole thing for another architecture, you'd have to re-design it as well.

Re:FreeDOS on other platforms

[Kooglebot]

Perhaps you would be interested in the Contiki OS, which has already been ported to the Apple ][ as well as wide variety of other old (mostly 8-bit) machines. http://www.sics.se/~adam/contiki/

Re:FreeDOS on other platforms

[Kadin2048]

Interesting. I wasn't sure (although I suspected) how deeply MS-DOS and it's derivatives/clones was tied to x86. I suppose that the DOSses for other architectures are similarly tied at a low level (e.g., Apple's ProDOS for the II series, AmigaDOS, etc.).

I think the ContikiOS mentioned in the response below is probably as close as anyone is going to get to a lighter-than-Linux "universal DOS."

give DOSEMU more credit

[Anonymous Coward]

DOSEMU can still emulate some games that DosBOX can't touch, for example, you can run Duke3D at a very fast speed, even on older hardware (think 400Mhz P2). Why would you say that DOSEMU can't handle graphical stuff? DosBOX is optimized for games, and for the games it supports, it runs very well, but I dare say that overall, DOSEMU still has it beat.

Re:give DOSEMU more credit

[caseih]

Well in my experience, dosemu doesn't always emulate some graphics modes. if you want to run dosemu on a virtual terminal, it can actually grab the vga bios and use your video card directly. dosbox has been a little more faithful in its emulation of vesa modes I think (but it is way slower than dosemu)

Well...

[wolf369T]

Does it run Windows95?

Urgent : System requirements

[Afroblanco]

Freedos 1.0 better have a working version of EDLIN. DOS just isn't DOS without EDLIN.

Re:Urgent : System requirements

[innocent_white_lamb]

It does, as a matter of fact.
 
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 29376 Jul 10 2004 edlin.exe
 
That's from FreeDOS 0.82 that I have installed on my computer at this momment; I can't imagine why they would remove it from version 1.0 since it's working fine.

[off topic] Re:Let me be the first to ask....

[advid.net]

Microsoft has a big, nasty industry campaign against "naked PCs"...

Can someone elaborate on this, any clues ?

edlin

[shani]

I used to use edlin. Not for serious editing, but for small changes to files. My roommate made fun of me once. "Why don't you use a real editor?" My answer: "Because edlin will always be there, on every computer."

Imagine my surprise when MS-DOS 6 shipped without edlin. :(

LiveCD FreeDOS distro in alpha stages

[udos]

From the new UDOS site on Sourceforge (http://sourceforge.net/projects/udos):

uDOS is a free operating system built on the FreeDOS kernel with DJGPP. uDOS provides an integrated suite of features inluding Perl, Python, etc., as well as a Watt-32 based networking environment and ELF library support. Can be run live from CD image.

Discussion for UDOS currently takes place on irc://irc.freenode.net#djgpp

UDOS does a great deal to demonstrate what DOS tools are still out there, as well as the bugs they have! Many problems reported with the CD bootup involving LFN support, EMM386, etc. Not sure *nostalgia* is the right word for this kind of thing, but hey whatever... :)

Ah, and the ELF support isn't in just *yet*, pending release of DJGPP 2.04 so that the ELF patches can be made part of the core compiler as 2.05 (the last thing people need are *two* DJGPP distros). Now DJGPP just needs a release manager. Any takers?

Very usefull for flashing a BIOS

[Quietti]

FreeDOS is the only way to flash a BIOS using Free Software. Never mind the slow release cycles, it already works and it has helped me upgrade countless computers, without a single copy of MS-DOS on hand.

Re:Very usefull for flashing a BIOS

[Antique Geekmeister]

Good point. But most BIOS's themselves frankly need to be replaced. Take a good look at www.linuxbios.org for what you can accomplish when you discard the amazingly bad proprietary and bugpatch layered on broken workaround htat most BIOS's actually consist of: if you ever get into the guts of current commercial BIOS's, they're really quite horrible, and the hardware really does benefit in boot time, robustness, and flexibility from switched to an open source code base.

Re:Very usefull for flashing a BIOS

[evilviper]

FreeDOS is the only way to flash a BIOS using Free Software.

How is the fact that FreeDOS is GPL'd possibly a benefit? You're running a closed program, to update the closed firmware, on your closed hardware.

DR-DOS is both free as in beer, and the source is freely available, though certainly not GPL-compatible (neither is qmail, but that hasn't stopped people from using it).

Re:Very usefull for flashing a BIOS

[Onymous Coward]

I imagine the logic goes something like this: If I have to torture babies to get my BIOS update done, is there a way to torture one less baby by using FreeDOS?

If there's no alternative, and you absolutely must update your BIOS, then I guess you have to torture one more baby. But there is an alternative.

I'm not likening use of proprietary systems to torturing babies for the sake of condemning it, but instead as a way to clarify the idea that incremental improvements are still of value, even in largely disagreeable systems. If one weren't inclined to believe this, then one might be more likely to do things like litter, for example.

Whether you're a proponent of the spirit of the GPL and a detractor of proprietary methods is (closely) beside the point.

Graphical interface

[RasendeRutje]

Maybe they should start moving towards a graphical interface, then they're only 12 years behind of Microsoft and 20 behind Apple...

Naked PCs

[Morosoph]

Here you go!

DOS IS NOT DEAD

[DarkOx]

To all you lusers out there that think dos has no value, you are way wrong. I know there are many industrial applications like CNC where it is still in very common use. From my own experience I can tell you that it is *THE* platform for scan guns and automatic inventory management used in wherehouses and large reatial shops. Chances are pretty good if you have ever purchased anything in a large reatil store chain, or that has spent time on a self in a wherehouse it was scanned with a handheld scanner runing you guessed it DOS\>

Re:DOS IS NOT DEAD

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, dealing with barcode scanner producers like Denso, Intermec and Symbol, most devices they create and sell are windows CE based. In fact, they're about as up-to-date as you can get with winCE/ windows mobile 5.0 support so commonplace that people are complaining that old software they add can't be run on newer machines...

maybe there's a point in DOS yet...

Re:DOS IS NOT DEAD

[TheSkepticalOptimist]

Also, heard of Linux?

I will be the first to complain that Linux isn't ready for primetime as a desktop replacement OS, but as an embedded environment, it is absolutely brilliant.

Consider that anything with a microprocessor has been hacked to run Linux, its the obvious choice for embedded applications. I know someone that is working on a CNC controller that is using Linux and can actually run a visual environment on the controller for more advanced managment and control of CNC jobs. All you would get with Dos is a c:\ prompt because when it comes to embedded applications, DOS has fallen way behind in the times compared to Linux embedded apps.

DOS IS DEAD, get over it. Those holding on to it are using legacy hardware that is sorefully in need of an upgrade. Linux is just cheaper and easier to implement for embedded applications and is a much more rich and robust environment for dedicated equipement.

Besides, most retail stores I purchase stuff at has full blown touch screen color displays running Windows and most likely uses Linux or Windows servers to manage online and warehouse stock accessed through Windows workstations. It has been a long time since I have seen a black and white or blue and white text screen environment in a retail store, or bank, or airport, or warehousing system, etc. And I have actually worked in factory automation to know that DOS workstations seldom exist at any level.

Re:DOS IS NOT DEAD

[Anonymous Coward]

>> I know there are many industrial applications like CNC where it is still in very common use.

I've designed a lot of control applications and I can say that
DOS is pretty cool for getting out of the way and letting the application have
the machine. The app owns the box and the operating system just lays there in memory,
only acting if you call on it.

If you want multitasking, you have to do it yourself, though.

Multibooting DOS, Linux and Windows

[Rick17JJ]

DOS is one of several operating systems that I have installed and can boot-up into on my AMD Athlon 64 3800+ computer. I actually have PC-DOS 2000 (instead of FreeDOS) installed on the first partition of my first harddrive, it is a FAT-16 partition. When booting up, a menu appears that allows me to choose whether to boot up into Windows 2000, PC-DOS 2000. or one of several different versions of Linux. PC-DOS 2000 was a minor Y2K upgrade of the Last version of DOS that IBM had released. As you may recall, Microsoft and IBM each had their own versions of DOS since back in the 1980's Surprisingly, my AMD Athlon 64 can run more than just 64-bit software. I don't recall if DOS is 16-bit software or what, but it runs just fine on my AMD Athon 64.

The obvious question is why would anyone want to run DOS on a modern computer? Well, I have fond memories of tinkering with batch files, DOS commands and old DOS games back in the late 1980's and early 1990s. Every once in a while, I like to re-experience the retro experience of what it was like to run DOS. I do not boot-up into DOS very often, but I am glad that I can choose to boot up into DOS once in a while when I want to. Of course Linux, Windows or almost any other modern OS is actually better on a modern desktop computer for everyday use.

I actually have a mixture of Free-DOS and PC-DOS 2000 installed on the fat-16 partition. If I remember correctly, I did that by installing FreeDOS first and then later installing PC-DOS 2000 on top of it. Afterwards, I then manually edited the autoexec.bat and config.sys files to remove any wierdness that resulted from istalling both that way. I had a slight preference for the PC-DOS 2000 but doing it that way gave me all the extra free software and some Linux/Unix like commands that come with the FreeDOS. Am I the only one out there who occasionally boots his AMD Athlon 64 3800+ up into DOS?

There are actually several choices for running old DOS programs. One choice is Free-DOS. Another choice is DR-DOS/OpenDOS which, if I understand correctly, is a commercial product in which the source code of the kernel has been under an Open Source license. Another alternative is to run the free DOSBox emulator under Windows or Linux. Using DOSBox I have been able to run old DOS games such as "Commader Keen" under Linux and even managed to get my USB joystick and modern soundcard to work with it. Yet another option is to use VMWare to create a virtual machine for FreeDOS and run it in a virtual machine under either Linux or Windows. Even though their are other alternatives, I am glad to see that the FreeDOS project is still alive and about to release version 1.0.

FreeDOS isn't done till....

[cttforsale]

Windows 3.1 won't run....

OpenGEM not a Clone

[Anonymous Coward]

OpenGEM is a true continuation of GEM. GEM's source code and development SDK's were GPL'd by Caldera before Darl took over and they went insane.

Re:OpenGEM not a Clone

[SCull]

I stand corrected.

Thanks for the clarification.

Seems to me...

[Nom du Keyboard]

Seems to me that Q[&]DOS was written faster than this, and with less advanced development tools twenty-five years ago. I guess coders are just getting soft these days.

Best name?

[atomic-penguin]

Best name for a FreeDOS fork?

a) CheeDOS
b) DoriDOS
c) TostiDOS
d) FriDOS

Other solutions?

[bigtrike]

Have you tried.... DOSEmu? Windows command prompt, under WINE? VMWare?

Re:Don't forget...OS/2?

[Geezle2]

I am not too clear on why OS/2 needs another DOS Box. The one the system ships with has been better than the real thing since the early `90's. I suppose if you need that PCjr machine mode for something, then maybe you will need DOSBox. That said, I have had FreeDOS windows and fullscreen mode available from my OS/2 desktop (along with a number of other OSes) for many years. I am glad to hear that development continues on it.

Free

[ananthap]

FreeDOS is actually bundled along with some HP laptops as this allows HP to say that they are selling a PC with an OS (which is necessary) to use the PC.

I understand that this is the only way, some companies can formally afford to unbudle windoze and other such products while selling new computer.

Should be reason enough to use freedos.

End

On a x86 architecture, they are not orthogonal.

[Ayanami Rei]

Absent any pending interrupts, a task will run to completition in the same time it would take with or without interrupts enabled.
So, having support for hard realtime scheduling (when you know in advance why you are doing it) is not an impediment to getting things done quickly. The ratio of 5 minutes to one hour in your solitare example is hyperbolic and unrealisitic. With a modern system (one that could run FreeDOS) with a scheduling granularity of even something as extreme as 100us you would experience a degradation of about 5-10% with clock-tick handling overhead on a 1-2GHZ CPU.

But in the case of a single main idle task (something suitable for FreeDOS loader + some memory/kernel/tasklet code) you probably don't care about a periodic timer interrupt. You probably care about lower frequency or OOB type stuff (video retrace, sound card, keyboard, network card, etc.). If you do use the timer interrupt it's for one-shot type stuff... set and call me later type things.
I mean, the need for a task to "Go Fast" in this kind of environment is because you're threading calculations into a polling loop, or trying to fit them in between the receipt of one interrupt and needing them to be done and acted upon before the next. But you've got an environment that lets you handle interrupts switfly or on your own time... however you want to. So there's no need to disable interrupts and do things since you've got a fast, task-switchin', interrupt handlin' kernel that can do some of that for you. You make the decisions about what to handle and not handle, and when, at run time.

The benefit you gain is logical, code-level seperation between interrupt context code and the primary execution stream. And no need to poll to do I/O.