FreeDOS 1.0 Released

Noksagt writes, "FreeDOS 1.0 has been released only a little bit later than planned. The 1.0 milestone is considered to be 'a stable and viable MS-DOS replacement' and features long filename support, HIMEM and EMM386 management, and CD-ROM support."

Comments

SecondPost!

[TaoPhoenix]

Since I'm sure someone had the first one.

Re:SecondPost!

[Anonymous Coward]

you fail it!

first

[Anonymous Coward]

Third!

Moo

[Chacham]

Umm, aren't they a little late on this one?

Re:Moo

[kimvette]

Not when motherboard manufacturers still ship BIOS updaters which require MS-DOS. Considering that you can't even BUY MS-DOS any more, and the images are likely leaving MSDN and Server disks soon, a legal alternative to DOS is still a necessity.

Re:Moo

[Anonymous Coward]

It's great and all, but it doesn't seem as useful now as it would have been 10 years ago. Yes, I'm sure it's great for some really old machines, but there just aren't as many of them around now.

Re:Moo

[nxtw]

XP has the ability to create MS-DOS startup disks which can be used to flash the BIOS. I assume Vista will also have this functionality.

Some BIOSes are include builtin flashing utilities that do not require one to boot into DOS.

Re:Moo

[kimvette]

That's just wonderful, but what if one does not run Windows XP? What if one bought OS X and hacked it to run on their non-Apple PC, or runs BSD or Linux instead? There is no legal MS-DOS in those situations, so an alternative is required. For some manufacturers (Asus, Foxconn) it's a non-issue since the BIOS includes an image loader for updates right in the firmware, but for other manufacturers (Gigabyte, Supermicro) that is not the case.

Re:Moo

[CODiNE]

Why are you worried about a legal DOS when you're running OS X on non-Apple hardware? Well hey if that helps you sleep at night.

Re:Moo

[dadragon]

He did also mention BSD and Linux. Those are perfectly legal to use on any PC.

Re:Moo

[tverbeek]

Although a fully-functional free MS-DOS clone isn't nearly as useful as it would have been 10 or more years ago, there are still uses for DOS today. For example, Symantec licenses PC-DOS from IBM for Ghost to make boot disks with. The one successful commercial clone of MS-DOS (DR-DOS), has apparently found a niche market as a mature, well-documented OS for embedded systems (not phones, obviously). Imagine putting FreeDOS in ROM on a motherboard as a last-resort boot device, along with some diagnostic tools. To say nothing of giving you the ability to run the best word processor ever written (WordPerfect 5.1) on cast-off hardware. :)

Re:Moo

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are you worried about a legal DOS when you're running OS X on non-Apple hardware?

No matter what Apple say, you're never going to convince a hacker with a copy of OSX that he is prohibited from booting it on a generic box. Where would Apple be today had it not been for the hacker ethos? Steve Jobs well knows the answer to that.

Re:Moo

[xjerky]

Heh. I had an Asus board that supposedly had a built-in BIOS flasher - but apparently the revision I had contained a bug that ended up nuking the BIOS completely. Very infuriating - it only does one task and at the lowest level possible - shouldnt they have tested it first?? I had to send the board back and get a replacement thanks to their major blunder. Luckily I only had it a few weeks at that point. Supposedly they fixed the bug in later revisions, but after that experience I will NEVER trust built-in BIOS flashers again.

Re:Moo

[drinkypoo]

I agree it's a bit of a PITA but there's a zillion free downloads that include one version of DOS or another. I've had great luck with the extremely roundabout method:

1. Download bootable CD image or a DOS floppy image. If the latter, skip next step.
2. Use IsoBuster (or similar) to strip the CD image out. I think Nero CD even has a tool to do this. I'm quite sure there's freeware tools to do it.
3. Mount the resulting floppy image as a filesystem. On Windows, I use vmware and do this in a virtual machine, typ. running Windows 98. Linux users with the msdos filesystem compiled in can simply mount it; mount -o loop,rw imagefile mountpoint IIRC.
4. Remove whatever files you don't want from the floppy, and lay down your own.

Now, on one hand this is probably illegal by the terms of the EULA, which probably says you can use this copy of DOS only to run whatever utility. (Seagate, for example, will provide you with DOS on a floppy or CD image, in order to deliver unto you the hard disk utility they licensed. It's a very nice one actually.) On the other hand, who gives a shit? The only thing wrong with this method is that it's beyond many people.

The real solution is that all BIOS manufacturers need to implement loading BIOS flash files from, at the very minimum, floppy, ISO CDROM, or MS-DOS format USB device, partition 1. This would eliminate this whole thing. I guess if it came down to it they could always just let you do that by putting FreeDOS into BIOS :)

Re:Moo

[Millenniumman]

Why would that hacker then be worried about having a legal DOS?

Re:Moo

[Dun Malg]

Umm, aren't they a little late on this one?

You'd be surprised (or perhaps dismayed) to know how many old crawling horror DOS applications there are out there in use. My boss uses this abomination of a program for creating master key systems that was written in Turbo Pascal back in the 80's. He recently paid $60 for the newest "upgrade" (last year!), but the thing is still written in TP, and still cannot be made to print to anything other than LPT1. I wrote a look-alike, work-alike windows app in two weeks (using Borland C++ Builder) that worked with his USB printer and could even import the data files from the old shitty program-- but he "couldn't figure out how to work it" so he continues to use that DOS-based crap. There are lots of people like that, some stuck with legacy software that can't realistically be brought into the 21st century, some just dumbfucks like my boss.

Re:Moo

[3dr]

He did also mention BSD and Linux. Those are perfectly legal to use on any PC.

Not when my questionably elected, somewhat appointed, congressional representatives get done with them!

Re:Moo

[MrHanky]

Send the board back? When I nuked a BIOS, the manufacturer just sent me a couple of BIOS chips. Replacing the chip is easier than taking the mainboard out of the case. The last time I flashed a BIOS, I did it from within Windows XP, with Asus Update. No problem.

Re:Moo

[ZiakII]

He recently paid $60 for the newest "upgrade" (last year!), but the thing is still written in TP, and still cannot be made to print to anything other than LPT1

If your talking about windows you can use the net use lpt1: //computername/printer name to make a network or USB printer print just like it was LPT1, I have to do it all the time for crappy military dos applications. (btw you do need to share the printer out if its a USB printer)

Re:Moo

[Dun Malg]

hmmm...got sidetracked by the idiocy of my employer and I never made the point I was aiming for.
I emailed the guy who wrote (and still sells) the software that he ought to be distributing it with VirtualPC combined with DOS, if he's not going to re-write it in a non-toy language.

Re:Moo

[kimvette]

OS X can be bought off the shelf. Just FYI. It doesn't have to be downloaded or copied for someone else to have a copy on hand.

What one does with it -- install it on an Apple-branded PC vs. a big-box PC vs. a whitebox PC -- is up to the person who purchased it.

Re:Moo

[chaoticgeek]

Hackers or vandals/criminals? I consider myself a hacker, but I try to do the right thing and I do not steal software. You should really think about what you say unless you would like to be grouped with the mass media and the general public that have no clue what words really mean. You come to slashdot I would think you should know this of many of the other people in this world.

Re:Moo

[xjerky]

Yes that was probably an option too - since this was 4 years ago, I don't remember why I didn't just do that. Probably because I didn't have a chip puller handy (it was an enclosed socket) and I didn't want to break anything trying to McGuyver it. Plus since I had just bought it it was within the store's return period, so I decided it was easier to just replace the whole thing.

Re:Moo

[Mryll]

That method is not so useful for machines without floppy drives. Perhaps it is possible to trick XP into genning a boot disk on a USB key drive but I don't know the trick.

Nero will burn a bootable CD with a DR-DOS startup, but the configuration lacked enough memory to run an Award BIOS updater correctly.

I ended up booting from an old Win98 CD to get the BIOS flash to run...

Re:Moo

[fishbowl]

>I wrote a look-alike, work-alike windows app in two weeks (using Borland C++ Builder) that worked with his USB printer
>and could even import the data files from the old shitty program-- but he "couldn't figure out how to work it"

If you had succeeded in the "look alike, work alike" departments, he wouldn't have to know you changed it.

Re:Moo

[Dun Malg]

If your talking about windows you can use the net use lpt1: //computername/printer name to make a network or USB printer print just like it was LPT1, I have to do it all the time for crappy military dos applications. (btw you do need to share the printer out if its a USB printer)

Yeah, that was the guy's "fix" also. Unfortunately, it requires several network services to be loaded, some of which conflict with the function of my Idiot Employer's dialup networking configuration.

Re:Moo

[Chacham]

To say nothing of giving you the ability to run the best word processor ever written (WordPerfect 5.1) on cast-off hardware. :)

Heh. I hear ya.

Re:Moo

[Chacham]

Umm, aren't they a little late on this one?

Hmm.. next, i'm sure, comes FreeDows, but that name would just be too corny.

Re:Moo

[Dun Malg]

If you had succeeded in the "look alike, work alike" departments, he wouldn't have to know you changed it.

Heh. Yeah, I did make the mistake of not making it look like a DOS text-mode app. I figured (incorrectly) that he'd appreciate not having to cursor around a non-intuitive text-based interface and use the space bar to fill in "check boxes", but instead be able to use the mouse on REAL check boxes. Eh, no great loss. He's an idiot. I did it for the fun of programming it, mostly.

Re:Moo

[solitas]

You'd be surprised how many DOS boxes and controllers are still out there running custom .EXE's for data acquisition and control and stuff (hooray for QuickBasic 4.5!)... I've got three of them under my responsibility - they've been in-place for yearsandyears and are still doing their jobs without so much as a hiccup.

Re:Moo

[anagama]

It seems that the percentage of non-windows using slashdotters keeps falling. For example, the GP's notion that freeDOS isn't necessary because of WinXP utilities and from the recent tab closing posting regarding Firefox (FF works differently in windows than on many linux systems with respect to middle-click). Now I haven't been here forever, but it seems more common recently to see windows-centric "advice". I'm sure there are more examples of this, but what's the deal?

Re:Moo

[Reaperducer]

To say nothing of giving you the ability to run the best word processor ever written (WordPerfect 5.1) on cast-off hardware. :)

Best. Word. Processor. Ever!

Re:Moo

[zerocool^]

Did you try the "new printer" - Connected to this computer locally, no plug and play - make a new port - TCP/IP - DNS name or IP of printer - then install the printer?

I've found windows printers tend to pretty much always work better if they assume they're directly connected, and the fact that you can lie and tell windows a tcp/ip connection constitutes the same thing as an rs232 plug to be very convienient. When you install a network printer it tends to bitch a lot and want to check and make sure the printer's there and whatever.

In fact, half of the printers I've installed, if they're network printers and also Laser printers, are in a situation so that windows thinks they're 1.) locally connected, and 2.) HP laserjet series II

~Wx

Re:Moo

[Watson Ladd]

To say nothing of giving you the ability to run the best word processor ever written on cast-off hardware :)

1:Won't the GC take a while and 2: You won't be running emacs DOS. You will be running emacs as your OS with DOS as a hardware emulation layer.

Re:Moo

[OrangeTide]

A sucker is born every minute.

Re:Moo

[cjsm]

glad your boss doesn't read slashdot, he sounds too tecno challenged for that. If he did, he might not like what you wrote.

Re:Moo

[Ch_Omega]

There are lots of people like that, some stuck with legacy software that can't realistically be brought into the 21st century, some just dumbfucks like my boss.

You're fired!!




:P

Re:Moo

[Stormwatch]

If the other guy still sells his outdated piece of junk, that means there is a market for it -- you could try selling your app too!

Re:Moo

[Millenniumman]

Intel OS X cannot be bought off the shelf. Just FYI. It has to be downloaded or copied from someone else who has a copy.

10.5 will be available as universal binary, but you will still need to download the "modified for all PCs" version, unless you can figure out how to do it.

Re:Moo

[Millenniumman]

The GP referred to someone who hacked OS X to run on any PC (and in the process violated license agreements, and likely pirated the OS) as a "hacker". I was simply using the same reference, and suggesting that someone who wasn't worried about those legalities wouldn't be worried about downloading a copyrighted DOS, which couldn't be obtained legally.

Yes, I know that "hacker" can refer to a benign person who makes toasters talk and vacuum cleaners cook food. It can just as easily as a person who hacks into other toasters and burn people's bread.

Re:Moo

[fishbowl]

"If the other guy still sells his outdated piece of junk, that means there is a market for it -- you could try selling your app too!
"

Watch the "idiot" boss become very smart when it comes to intellectual property and work done for hire by an employee...

Re:Moo

[Reziac]

WP5.1, YES!! still my word processor of choice for getting Real Work done, and it'll run on any piece of crap. I first used it on a 2-floppy XT (no hard disk) with DOS 3.2, mono screen, and 512k of RAM. More than sufficient!

Otherwise, I use DOS every time I test a machine, and every time I work on a hard disk, whether for partitioning, ghosting, or whatever. It's just so bloody much easier and more efficient than anything else. Doesn't even need a working CDROM drive or the ability to boot from CDROM -- things you can't count on when you're resurrecting older or donated hardware.

The guts of DOS, in ROM as an optional boot (Press F1 for CMOS Setup, Press F2 for ROM-DOS Boot) would indeed be a wonderful tool, with very little that can go wrong or be vulnerable to malware or stupidity (from the user or from other programs). Great place to start from if something is misbehaving in mysterious ways.

As to phones, I know someone who built voicemail systems using old PCs and DOS-based software. They were popular enough with businesses that he made a living at it.

Re:Moo

[evilviper]

There is no legal MS-DOS in those situations, so an alternative is required.

Exactly. DR-DOS, PTS-DOS, OpenDOS, etc. These operating systems do not exist, are not free for you to use, and source code for the latter is certainly not available... ...

Re:Moo

[SanityInAnarchy]

FreeDOS+qemu. Then the only thing that costs money is the app, if you care.

Re:Moo

[SanityInAnarchy]

First of all, your step 2 is unnecessary if the CD is layed out at all sanely. At least with mkisofs, you have to use a file as the boot floppy image anyway, and this file is visible within the ISO filesystem. Thus, all you have to do is open up the CD and look around.

But also, my typical solution here was, download a FreeDOS boot CD, and put whatever tools I need either on a floppy or on a temporary FAT partition.

As for the real solution, I'd argue we just need standard, documented ways to flash the BIOS from inside an OS. But there are more intelligent ways. From what I'm told, OS X includes BIOS updates in Software Update, and flashes the BIOS when you reboot -- I've never seen it, but maybe I missed it. That'd be the second best way -- force a reboot, but at least this way you don't have to repartition. Third way would be loading from a partition on the hard disk -- just shrink your FS by a bit, make a tiny FAT partition, then type in the pathname, or have it check in standard places. Your solution is a distant fourth, and in fact, I believe my last computer did this, from a floppy. Some of the newer laptops do it from a USB keychain.

I would still much rather have the system be open enough that we didn't have to beg for things like these. Just use LinuxBIOS and have a standard way of flashing it -- then you can flash it from anything Linux can read, including network, NTFS partitions, the works.

Re:Moo

[HeroreV]

Do you not realize that DR-DOS, PTS-DOS, and OpenDOS are all under proprietary licenses? They may be legal and freely available, but there's still very good reason for FreeDOS.

Re:Moo

[shaitand]

Programs that depend on the mouse are for idiots. Power users remove their hands from the keyboards as little as possible and worthwhile applications require the use of the mouse as little as possible. A well designed application can be operated MUCH faster with the keyboard than with the mouse.

Seriously man, there is no such thing as a power mouser. You can pretty up the interface and make it mouse accessible but you still need the keyboard interface to match. The same keystrokes should produce the same result.

Re:Moo

[lantenon]

Hmm. Sounds like the boss found this thread ;-)

Re:Moo

[swillden]

10.5 will be available as universal binary, but you will still need to download the "modified for all PCs" version, unless you can figure out how to do it.

Or, more likely, you will still need to download the tool that modifies it.

Re:Moo

[PJOttawa]

Hey, ChaCha, that name might be used come crunch-time. (not all of us missed your little pun)

Re:Moo

[drinkypoo]

Well, LinuxBIOS sounds fine to me, but I doubt it's going to be the dominant force any time soon. My solution has the added advantage that it works when the system is otherwise hosed. In fact, if you put the BIOS update tools in their own region of the EEPROM or into a separate EEPROM then you can have a machine that can come back literally from anything but hardware failure, especially if you have multiple methods to update BIOS.

There are apple firmware updates; I didn't think the BIOS updates came automatically though, just the assorted driver microcode updates. Not even all of them come automatically, you have to choose to download the apple bluetooth firmware updater for example.

Re:Moo

[npsimons]

It seems that the percentage of non-windows using slashdotters keeps falling. For example, the GP's notion that freeDOS isn't necessary because of WinXP utilities and from the recent tab closing posting regarding Firefox (FF works differently in windows than on many linux systems with respect to middle-click). Now I haven't been here forever, but it seems more common recently to see windows-centric "advice". I'm sure there are more examples of this, but what's the deal?

We've been invaded, similar to when AOL dumped all the newbies on Usenet. I too remember a time when a sig advertising "free mac mini!" was unthinkable, and Windows users with questions about Windows bugs were rightfully told to go ask Microsoft. Thankfully, there are options to turn off certain sections; I personally have Apple and BSD turned off (I'm perfectly happy with Linux and don't need to see any self-congratulatory wankery or bug reports for other OSes; see my sig). I only wish there was a way to turn off Microsoft and Windows stories as well. For now, whenever I see a Microsoft or Windows headline, I think "who gives a shit?" and ignore it. I'm ever so hopeful that my lack of moderation on those stories (as I get mod points fairly often) will help to turn them to shit so the Windows users will leave. Either that, or I hope they add a feature to slashdot to be able to turn off Microsoft and Windows stories. *sigh* I miss the early Linux only slashdot.

Re:Moo

[evilviper]

Do you not realize that DR-DOS, PTS-DOS, and OpenDOS are all under proprietary licenses?

Do you not realize that the BIOS flashing program you are trying to use is under a propritary license?

What possible benefit could you get from using a (buggy, unstable, etc) GPL'd DOS clone to flash your BIOS?

Re:Moo

[devilspgd]

Gigabyte has allowed updates from the BIOS itself for at least 5 years... See the screenshot for details

Bootability

[Anonymous Coward]

How good are the boot disks? I am always running into situations where I need a "DOS" boot disk. Can we put this on a USB key or CD (in addition to the traditional floppy) and get our computers going?

Re:Bootability

[varunnangia]

Yes, it does work in LiveCD mode, but anything more exotic that Windows/286 is still experimental. That said, if you need to just fsck or fdisk or something like that, it'll run off a CD quite happily. I've not tried it out with a USB key, but chances are if you're using a computer which uses DOS as it's OS of choice, it doesn't have a boot from USB option... I totally understand your pain.

Re:Bootability

[Anonymous Coward]

Booting from USB worked very well for me, I've used it to upgrade my motherboard BIOS.

Yep, I'm living on the edge.

Re:Bootability

[fo0bar]

For previous FreeDOS releases, I used FreeDOS ODIN, which is a single disk with a lot of utilities, similar to those DR-DOS utility disks that come with everything these days. But for today's release, I decided to make my own 1.44MB utility disk, patterned after ODIN: http://www.finnix.org/Balder

Re:Bootability

[valshaq]

I thought it would be great to automate assembling of a FreeDOS boot disk containing always the newest kernel, freecom, himem.sys and so on. Still great for updating your BIOS.

hooray!

[doofusclam]

~writes new MS-DOS compatible apps~

Re:hooray!

[M1FCJ]

Never underestimate the number of native DOS software out there. Even now, more than half of the non-linux Ham software runs on DOS. Even in the office I have two machines running a controller, the hardware supplier only provides simulators for the hardware on DOS. It's the typical "if ain't broke, don't fix it", sometimes it is a better approach than rewriting the software.

Re:hooray!

[jlebrech]

Actually some dedicated products would benefit for freeDOS like terminal screens. So a viable Dos replacement is the key, altho killing off DR-Dos (again) as DR-Dos has branched out to the dumb terminals market.

Re:hooray!

[moochfish]

~writes new MS-DOS compatible apps~

Is it Duke Nukem?

Re:hooray!

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

~writes new MS-DOS compatible apps~

NNNNOOOOOOOO!!!!!

Re:hooray!

[GreyPoopon]

It's the typical "if ain't broke, don't fix it", sometimes it is a better approach than rewriting the software.

Actually, many simulators are written for DOS simply because timing-critical applications are much more reliable than under Windows. Most of the problems that drove the creation of realtime Linux kernels are relevant in the DOS/Windows worlds.

Re:hooray!

[johansalk]

Why don't they just use a small unix? Or even forth for that matter?

Installer needs work...

[varunnangia]

I downloaded the full version, instead of the base, but it requires constant attention and keypresses to get through the installer. It does ship with a number of really useful utilities, though, and it does run Worms beautifully, even under Vista* :) *Note: Virtual PC breaks Aero :(

Re:Installer needs work...

[ImTheDarkcyde]

Does it run better than it would in DOSbox?

Re:Installer needs work...

[varunnangia]

IIRC, DOSbox is based on FreeDOS. So unless the DOSbox devs have changed the installer code, I'd suppose not.

Re:Installer needs work...

[Anonymous Coward]

I doubt this. I never was able to get Master of Magic to work under DOSBox, but it works flawlessly and with no extra work under FreeDOS. Sound too!

Re:Installer needs work...

[cp.tar]

I got Master of Magic working under DOSBoxwithout error... except for occasional discoloration/color inversion, which in turn I remember seeing even with DOS 6.22, so it isn't an issue.

And it's DOSBox 0.63, for I haven't bothered upgrading yet.

Re:Installer needs work...

[Anonymous Coward]

Note: Virtual PC does not "break" Aero. It is running on emulated video hardware and runs just the same as it would on real S3Trio64 hardware.

Re:Installer needs work...

[ObitMan]

I'm amazed somebody else is still playing MOM.
I have it working under DosBox .63 and it's still the same buggy program but i cant quit playing it.

Re:Installer needs work...

[Anonymous Coward]

If Virtual PC does not work for you, will VM Ware Player work?

You can use qemu-image.exe from QEMU for windows to create the VM Ware virtual hard disk.
Then do a search for VMXBuilder to build the VMWare virtual machine with FreeDOS 1.0.
Then use VM Ware player to run the VMX.

Re:Installer needs work...

[LatePaul]

or just download VMWare Server.

Re:Installer needs work...

[cp.tar]

I heard of a multiplayer hack... I'll have to test it someday.

Re:Installer needs work...

[Alsee]

*Note: Virtual PC breaks Aero :(

Note: Virtual PC does not "break" Aero. Windows Vista is explicitly designed to PROHIBIT Aero and serveral other parts of the operating system from operating if you attempt to use unapproved unsigned drivers or attempt to use any sort of debugger or attempt to use any sort of virtualisation mechanism or attempt to exert control over your computer in any way whatsoever.

Why?

Because if you were allowed to do any of that then you might be able to get around or modify the DRM schemes woven throughout the Aero desktop and other areas of your computer.

So it's not so much a problem with Virtual PC breaking Aero as it is a deliberate effort by Microsoft to sabotage Windows and deliberately selfdestruct Aero, and other Windows systems, against Virtual PC and against any other similar software.

-

Re:Installer needs work...

[varunnangia]

There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in your philisophy, Horatio. DRM and conspiracy is not the answer to every question. If you want to read why Aero Glass gets turned off, read this article. If an application tries to draw directly to the front buffer instead of the back buffer, Aero Glass shuts down and you're staring at Aero Basic. Virtual PC 2004 was never designed to work with Aero Glass: it writes to the front buffer and the compositing manager shuts down - which means no Aero Glass.

For examples of unsigned applications that doesn't break Aero: GAIM. Miranda. Firefox. VLC. We could go on and on.

Re:Installer needs work...

[Anonymous Coward]

Very nice conspiracy theory. Microsoft could hire you as a sort of anti-spokesperson. "See the kind of nutcase that doesn't use Windows?"

Ask yourself why they'd need to disable a window manager to enforce DRM. Or put it in the window manager at all.

Dumbass.

Re:Installer needs work...

[cheshire_cqx]

I fail to see why the parent was modded flamebait. I found it informative, though perhaps off-topic.

Re:Installer needs work...

[quizzicus]

So how is anyone going to develop for Windows if they aren't allowed to use debuggers or virtualization? How can drivers be developed? (I assumed they aren't "signed" until a vendor is ready to release them.) It seems to me this "feature" could kill Windows.

Re:Installer needs work...

[Alsee]

DRM and conspiracy is not the answer to every question.

True enough. But it is also absolutely wrong and misplaced in this case.

For examples of unsigned applications that doesn't break Aero: GAIM. Miranda. Firefox. VLC. We could go on and on.

Well DUH. You're making a strawman argument. You're falsely suggesting I'm a moron with has absolutely no clue what he's talking about. What you wrote is laughable. The words you are trying to stuff into my mouth are laughable.

I never suggested that unsigned applications break Aero. That came from you.

I said Vista enforces a lockout if you attempt to use "unsigned drivers or attempt to use any sort of debugger or attempt to use any sort of virtualisation mechanism".

If you want to read why Aero Glass gets turned off, read this article.

The explanation in your linked article is Wrong. Oh sure, it correctly explains *a* reason Aero would deactivate for certain Aero-unaware applications. However Aero *also* gets locked out even if you never attempt to write to the front buffer. That explanation provides absolutely no justification for the far broader iron-fisted mandatory lockout of Aero against perfectly functioning Aero-aware applications running on top of perfectly functioning Areo-aware drivers.

So why does Vista ENFORCE an Areo lockout if you attempt to use an unsigned driver - one which in fact never tries to write to the front buffer?

Because of DRM. Because Microsoft refuses to sign any driver that might be able to read the front buffer or might be able to read some other area of memory that at any given time may or may not contain information they want to impose DRM on. Because if you load an unsigned driver it is possible that it might attempt to read the front buffer or might be able to read some other area of memory that at any given time may or may not contain information they want to impose DRM on.

The DRM assumption and enforcement is woven deeply into Aero itself and various other parts of the system. Areo is forbidden to run at all, and various other segments of teh systenm are forbidden to run at all, if the operating system cannot ensure that the owner of the computer is securely locked out of these areas. That if Aero is running and the other systems are available, then the inherent assumption and rule is that the owner has *already* been securely locked out of reading any DRM-sensitive memory or modifying any DRM-sensitive code. That is Aero is active then any DRM'd data can flow through these areas without stopping to check anything or modify anything. That if Aero is active then all data in these areas is presumptively secure for DRM purposes, without any need to stop and check anything or modify anything whether the data is DRM'd or not.

This is why Microsoft FORBIDS you to be able to activate Aero when you use your own drivers, even if your drivers never interfere with the front buffer. The reason is that any unsigned driver has the potential to read some area of memeory or modify some area of the system which could punch a hole in the anti-owner DRM enforcement system.

Virtual PC 2004 was never designed to work with Aero Glass

You can design a new Virtual PC explicitly to work with Aero Glass until you are blue in the face, you can design it to work perfectly in concert without disrupting the front pane, but it will still be FORBIDDEN to work with Aero so long as Virtual PC allows any possibility that you might be able to read video memory (because it *might* be displaying DRM'd video) or be able to read other memory which *might* at any given time have DRM'd data flowing through it, or which might be able to access or modify code and components of the system which touch data that may or may not be DRM'd.

This is NOT some design flaw of Virtual PC. It is a deliberate lockout even if Virtual PC were redesigned to work "right", unless it is also designed to be

Re:Installer needs work...

[Alsee]

Ask yourself why they'd need to disable a window manager to enforce DRM. Dumbass.

That's an easy question to answer. Because an unsigned video driver could read DRM'd video being displayed on the screen, and even "worse" from their point of view that same driver could also get direct read access and/or video-card-mediated indirect read access to DRM'd data in general memory.

Simple. And you're the dumbass for jumping to the conclusion that I'm a nutcase and that I didn't already have the answer to your question.

I dunno, maybe the problem here is that I'm a programmer and I'm so familiar with all of the details of the system that I overlooked the need to explain to non-programmers how and why unsigned video present a treat to DRM and why Microsoft would need to forcibly prohibit you from using unsigned drivers with Aero.

When Aero is active the new DRM-enforcing driver model forbids the owner of the computer any read access to video or system memory that might touch DRM'd data, and forbid the owner any ability to modify any system code or area that might come in contact with DRM'd data. Microsoft has set rules that they will refuse a signature to drivers that might enable the owner to get that sort of read access or control that might threaten the ground-up DRM-enabled anti-owner security model.

-

Re:Installer needs work...

[Alsee]

You can still do most of that with Aero and related systems locked out. I think there might be new "DRM compatible" debuggers that give you access to your own program in Aero mode without allowing you any read access to "protected" video memory and "protected" areas or RAM not belonging to your program.

As for developing the Aero viseo drivers in the first place, I haven't looked into that but I'm sure you'll have to jump through some hoops. You may need special key and you may need a special development version of Vista... but in any case you won't be able to just write drivers that will work on normal Vista installs.

I'm sure you can find details on that sort of development on Microsoft's website regarding the new Driver Model. I've been reading much of the new Driver Model stuff, but I've spend my time looking at the restrictions they impose rather than examining the authorized development avenue. That avenue is clearly not intended for independant programmers developing video drivers. It is intended for major video card manufacturers to do in-house development of their own driver for their own card.

It seems to me this "feature" could kill Windows.

Chuckle, wishful thinking :)
They've put a lot of thought and effort into developing this stuff in a way that generally does not fatally interfere with most normal existing software, and which is mostly transparant to the ordinary computer illiterate DRM-submissive home user, and which does not overly interfere with big corporate development of software and drivers who *can* comply with burdensome development procedures for developing in DRM-senstive areas, and which does not overly interfere with independant software development so long as that software is content to live in its own DRM-free zone and it is content to be locked out of the DRM-infested zones of the system. You can write an independant application that writes to the Aero screen as mediated and permitted by the appoved DRM-enforcing video drivers, but your application cannot directly communicate with the video card in Aero-DRM enforcement mode, and your application cannot directly or indirectly read any of the video or system memory allocated to some other program.

-

Just say No!

[human spam filter]

Free DOS, something like mess-dos? Just say No!

Re:Just say No!

[Opportunist]

Hey, it's beer... I mean, free. Can't be from MS, right?

Bones that see a word, Bones that dont

[Anonymous Coward]

your eyes the one that sees the word, you butts the one that dont

Where does this fit into the map?

[TaoPhoenix]

I'm all for MS-Anything replacements ... but I don't understand what this means.

Can someone take a shell box, use this as a root OS, drop an equally front end on top of it, and come up with a Non-Linux OS variant?

  If you have a linux box already, do you run this like a Free-Dos-in-the-box, to fudge portability for MS software?

It's brilliant. I'm not. Someone help me out.

Re:Where does this fit into the map?

[human spam filter]

> My print library doesn't have DRM on it. ..but you can't grep dead trees

Re:Where does this fit into the map?

[nurb432]

its a complete OS, that is modeled on MSDOS. It fits well into the embedded market. It also works well for old legacy applications where you really cant upgrade the custom hardware or the software ( like in machine controlers ).

The fact it works as a desktop ( with some additional software ) even on the oldest of 'pc' hardware is just a great side effect.

Re:Where does this fit into the map?

[gEvil (beta)]

Sure you can. It just takes the intern a few days to get the results back to you...

Re:Where does this fit into the map?

[Bing Tsher E]

This is for running MS-DOS programs on your StrongARM NetBSD box, inside of Bochs.

Re:Where does this fit into the map?

[drinkypoo]

Actually, you almost certainly COULD get along using DOS as your home system these days. I'm at a loss as to why you'd want to, but it's not impossible. To get a decent range of functionality, however, WILL require that you use commercial software, not least to get an IP stack. Once you've done that, there's some old NCSA applications that support it, like telnet and even lynx.

If you want networked email, go looking for a very old version of pegasus mail for DOS; I think you can get POP3 but I doubt you can get any SMTP authentication methods whatsoever, although I guess you could manually pop-before-smtp or something...

The best use for DOS IMO is to run a BBS, but then, who wants to do that any more?

The most common use for DOS ATM is to run industrial control applications, because as pathetic as x86 is, doing x86 DOS assembler is really quite easy and was for a long long time by far the cheapest way to get anything done in terms of control systems. In fact most of the computer-driven machining equipment I've seen, even new stuff purchased in the last five years, is often DOS-based. There's a dinky, crappy PC inside a metal enclosure that probably cost more to design (per unit sold anyway) than your whole PC, and it's usually got some kind of interface board. The software is frequently still written in assembler because you may well neeed per-cycle accuracy to run your stepper motors or what have you.

The second most common use for DOS today is probably doing flash BIOS updates on PCs too stupid to load their BIOS without an additional program load.

Re:Where does this fit into the map?

[Anonymous Coward]

DR-DOS (currently owned by Caldera?) already has all the networking stuff built-in, and it allows multitasking as well. It's been available as a free download for many years now too. I don't know if they provide the source code though. But probably most people don't care and just want the binary distro anyway to run their old DOS apps/games.

Re:Where does this fit into the map?

[Drooling Iguana]

A few years ago I got an old 386 laptop from a pawn shop and, in my quest to find something useful to do with it, I stumbled across a program called Arachne that provided a reasonably full-featured graphical web browser as well as email and other miscellanious 'net functionality for plain ol' DOS. It's not free, but IIRC the shareware version wasn't overly crippled.

Re:Where does this fit into the map?

[Ch_Omega]

To get a decent range of functionality, however, WILL require that you use commercial software, not least to get an IP stack. Once you've done that, there's some old NCSA applications that support it, like telnet and even lynx.

No, you don't. :)

http://www.freedos.org/cgi-bin/freedos-lsm.cgi?q=d &a=net :)

Re:Where does this fit into the map?

[misleb]

The best use for DOS IMO is to run a BBS, but then, who wants to do that any more?

Even that is a stretch. DOS was good because it had a very low footprint and would allow more resources for the BBS, but if you wanted a BBS these days you be much better off with Linux or *BSD... especially if you were writting one from scratch. I mean, with *nix you've already got your modem/session/authentication/multitasking code done for you. YOu just have to write a console app.

A boot disk to do some low level stuff to a PC is about the only use for DOS these days. And even then it makes me cringe. It seems like such an insult to modern hardware to boot an OS designed for the 8086 CPU.

-matthew
-matthew

Re:Where does this fit into the map?

[dosius]

I've used FreeDOS in dosemu on Linux for years to run legacy DOS apps on Linux, if that's what you mean. Works like a charm for anything shy of Windows 3.x ... and I think you can run Windows 3.0 in 8086 mode too.

-uso.

Re:Where does this fit into the map?

[Ron from Oz]

You can do all the internet and email (yes, including authenticated SMTP) in DOS.
Have a look at Arachne http://www.cisnet.com/glennmcc/, a fully graphical browser/email client/even a desktop if that's what you want.
As it happens, my entire business runs in DOS.
DOS dieth not !

Re:Where does this fit into the map?

[ChrisA90278]

I doubt anyone would used DOS as a home desk top machine. However these are far more uses for computers than web surfing and reading e-mail. Applications that come to mind for Free DOS include. Controlling lab instruments. Embeded devices. Basically are the things that don't require megabytes of RAM and a graphical user interface.

Re:Where does this fit into the map?

[mikiN]

Almost.

Your link gets you a TCP/IP stack, but you still need to get a packet driver to talk to your network hardware.

In case you didn't get one with your device (like if you got a cheap NE2000 clone with no disks from the bargain bin or if you want to use a modem), take a look here:

ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/simtelnet/msdos/pktdrvr

Re:Where does this fit into the map?

[Reziac]

See also http://fdisk.com/doslynx/

I've used NetTamer, Arachne, and WebSpyder in DOS, all worked fine. NetTamer has a version that will run perfectly well on an XT.

Re:Where does this fit into the map?

[Jaruzel]

There's also a decent Wikipedia entry on Arachne, complete with screenshots (which unfortunately, the Arachne homepage doesn't have).

-Jar.

Re:Where does this fit into the map?

[WWWWolf]

The best use for DOS IMO is to run a BBS, but then, who wants to do that any more?

Everyone I know who were running a BBS were switching to that 'leet operating system called OS/2 that was apparently much cooler for running BBS - people couldn't afford a separate machine for their normal computer use. And then we got even better operating system for running BBSes, called Linux, but then everyone kind of said "but we have the Internet now", and forgot about it. =)

Still waiting on Free/PM

[rjamestaylor]

'cause it's not cool unless it's tomorrow's technology today or 25 year old technology today.

FreeWindows 3.11

[linguae]

This is exciting that we have a FOSS and functional equivalent of MS-DOS 6.22 (with some other features like long file names). I can run my old DOS games on my Mac with QEMU. Now, I wonder when somebody will get started on FreeWindows 3.11?

Re:FreeWindows 3.11

[I'm just joshin]

Ugh... You are a masochist of the worst kind.

Re:FreeWindows 3.11

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, I wonder when somebody will get started on FreeWindows 3.11?

Tell IBM to open-source the 3.1 clone they did in the nineties for OS/2

Re:FreeWindows 3.11

[Drooling Iguana]

I'm pretty sure IBM actually licensed Win3.1 from Microsoft for that.

Re:FreeWindows 3.11

[Nutria]

I'm pretty sure IBM actually licensed Win3.1 from Microsoft for that.

I'm positive they had a licence for Win 3.x.

Re:FreeWindows 3.11

[misleb]

This is exciting that we have a FOSS and functional equivalent of MS-DOS 6.22 (with some other features like long file names). I can run my old DOS games on my Mac with QEMU.

As if you couldn't just download MSDOS 6.22 from a hundred different sites in the form of boot/utility disks. I doubt if Microsoft even gives a crap.

Now, I wonder when somebody will get started on FreeWindows 3.11?

Soon after the come out with FreeBlackPlague 1.0.

-matthew

Re:FreeWindows 3.11

[zenhkim]

>> I'm pretty sure IBM actually licensed Win3.1 from Microsoft for that.
>
> I'm *positive* they had a licence for Win 3.x.

I remember seeing at Radio Shack the first IBM Aptiva systems arrive with both OS/2 Warp *and* Windows 3.1 installed, and both ran concurrently! Mind you, the Windows apps ran a little slower, but the fact that they ran at all was amazing. (Those machines were essentially IBM PS/2s, running on 75MHz Pentiums and heavily upgraded for multimedia.)

Then Microsoft turns around and releases version 3.11 -- which breaks compatibility with 3.1 -- and deliberately fucks things up for OS/2. That, and the following introduction and aggressive marketing of Win95 pretty much nailed the lid on the coffin for IBM's Brave New OS.

(Personally, I think it's a shame, given that IBM had the technically superior OS. While the earlier versions were awful, OS/2 Warp wasn't bad at all, and compared to Windows it's damn near bulletproof. Yet another example of an inferior product beating out the better one in the marketplace.)

Dos 1.0??

[scenestar]

And I Thought debian's release cycle was slow.

Re:Dos 1.0??

[93 Escort Wagon]

"And I Thought debian's release cycle was slow."

They did beat Hurd out of the gate, though.

Re:Dos 1.0??

[lunaticLT]

Duke Nukem Forever!

Why no link to the site?

[Amazing Quantum Man]

The submitter didn't even bother putting a link to freedos.org into the submission!

Re:Why no link to the site?

[funfail]

You know, because of Slashdotting... DOS just can't handle a DDOS.

Re:Why no link to the site?

[Anonymous Coward]

The submitter didn't even bother putting a link to freedos.

Mmmm, Freedos

--
More free D'ohs

Re:Why no link to the site?

[Anonymous Coward]

More likely DOS can't handle its acronym being superseded.

But does it run....

[Anonymous Coward]

But does it run Bash?

Re:But does it run....

[dosius]

Why not? But you'll need a 386 for that, and a copy of CWSDPMI.

-uso.

RE: =) !

[c0d3r]

=)!
C:\>debug
-e b800:0 1 1 21 7

Not exciting...

[evilviper]

I liked DOS as much as anybody, but FreeDOS is perhaps 5 years too late for anyone to care.

Most people have now (FINALLY) moved entirely off DOS (even Microsoft!), which had a solid niche until a few years ago.

FreeDOS has really poor compatibility with everything I try. Try to run some MS-DOS program, and it aborts before showing anything, or perhaps acts in very weird ways, sometimes doing real damage.

The main thing I tried it for, quite recently, was partitioning/formatting, as Windows has a few limitations in that regard. After finishing the job, Windows couldn't even read the partion. FreeDOS is a LONG way from 100% compatible.

What's more, DR-DOS has been freely available, for a very long time now. You can even get the source code to it, if needed, although it's under a restrictive license. It really is 99% compatible with MS-DOS, both applications and filesystems.

What is anyone using FreeDOS for, today, other than bragging rights?

Re:Not exciting...

[abradsn]

Dude, it was just released. Give it a chance to be used, before you complain that no-one uses it.
Someone put a tonne of effort into it, and you should have some respect for that at the very least.

Re:Not exciting...

[Abcd1234]

Well, it's pretty handy when used in combination with dosemu, as it allows distros to ship a fully functioning DOS box on Linux without requiring non-free software.

Re:Not exciting...

[drinkypoo]

I liked DOS as much as anybody, but FreeDOS is perhaps 5 years too late for anyone to care.

I wish I knew how you people find moderators dumb enough to mod this kind of crap up.

DOS is still heavily used in industrial control, with new programs being written for it every day. In fact, literally tens of thousands of computer-driven machining tools are running DOS right now as they run through their paces. DOS is literally the most popular OS in this space.

If people want to keep using those machines, and they're smart, they'll back up the programs right now, and burn them to a CD with a copy of FreeDOS. Someday they won't be able to find hardware their original DOS runs on. Of course, a lot of them just load from floppy, so all THOSE people need is a floppy image; they can burn it to a CD and boot from that someday when they can't find a 386 or a 1.44MB floppy drive for less than a hoijllion dollars.

Re:Not exciting...

[fm6]

You're obviously not into retro games. When I want to play Sword of the Samurai, I run it on top of FreeDOS, which runs on top of http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php>DOSBo x, which runs under Windows XP. Or I could just boot up FreeDOS, but that requires that I shut down XP, which is a nuisance.

There's also a lot of people who write embedded applications in DOS or DOS-like OSs. Having an open source alternative to aging, poorly supported closed-source OSs is good news to them.

Re:Not exciting...

[Kasar]

POS systems all over are still using it. The office machines used to administer the old software's usually running windows and the POS software in a DOS box though, so even if FreeDOS was used for the sales floor machines, it'd be of limited use to the office where they need MS Office-type applications and other things currently not available for DOS.

Not that it can't be used, but I think the world's pretty much moved to GUI and won't be going back. I just don't see a killer app coming for a new DOS.

Re:Not exciting...

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish I knew how you people find moderators dumb enough to mod this kind of crap up.

The moderators are the same as the posters. The only computing activities they know about are:

1) Games

2) Internet

3) Basic word processing

4) Compiling hello.c

Re:Not exciting...

[ScrewMaster]

Couldn't agree more, probably because I've spent about twenty-odd years in industrial control. The embedded world runs a Texas shitload of DOS, and the arrogance of people that assume that if it doesn't run from a hard disk and have a GUI it's obsolete just astounds me. FreeDOS claims that it can be ROMmed ... if so, it's a viable replacement for a lot of expensive industrial DOS clones out there (datalight and others.) People just don't realize the sheer number of embedded systems that support their lifestyles, they really don't.

Forgetting the embedded space for a moment, I downloaded FreeDOS 1.0 yesterday just for the heck of it, and installed it on an old P166 laptop I had lying around. I dumped a bunch of MP3 files onto it, and immediately began playing them with the included MPXPlay package. It took a while to get TCP/IP working on a 3COM 3C575 Cardbus adapter, but once that was done I had a nice DOS system with browsing, email, and a ton of other stuff.

As a matter of fact, FreeDOS is organized much like a typical Linux distro (even uses some of the standard DOS disk tools that come with most Linuxes) and includes a lot of applications if you get the full download. Memory management is very good: right out of the box it got more conventional RAM than I ever got with QEMM in years past. Some of the utilities are still a bit lacking in support for FAT32 and LFN, but overall a very useful package. Jim Hall and other contributors to the project are to be commended for their efforts.

DOS is as obsolete as the internal combustion engine.

Re:Not exciting...

[Reaperducer]

Where I work we have a lot of those scrolling LED display bars. They're all run by DOS boxes. The company that made them has a Windows version of the software, but it's not compatible with the dozens (hundreds?) of light bars we have, and we're not about to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to replace them.

Re:Not exciting...

[YrWrstNtmr]

5) Gentoo or Ubuntu

Re:Not exciting...

[weasel5i2]

evilviper said: "FreeDOS has really poor compatibility with everything I try. Try to run some MS-DOS program, and it aborts before showing anything, or perhaps acts in very weird ways, sometimes doing real damage."

Perhaps?? What, you're not sure how it's acting? Sometimes doing real damage..??? What?! Like how, causing your hard disk to burst into flames? Causing your monitor's side paneling to melt off? Please, be specific about how FreeDOS "perhaps, does real damage" to your computer! It is extremely hard to do any "real" damage to a computer through software means. The worst-case scenario is BIOS-failure-based bricking of your box, and if FreeDOS is capable or likely to do that, I would be very afraid, but this is simply not the case.

It generally takes a very specific and directed effort to cause "real damage" to a PC. It's well known that there have been a couple of viruses in the past which were capable of nuking your CMOS. However, a sledgehammer is just as useful if you're looking for "real damage".

evilviper also said: "The main thing I tried it for, quite recently, was partitioning/formatting, as Windows has a few limitations in that regard. After finishing the job, Windows couldn't even read the partion. FreeDOS is a LONG way from 100% compatible."

Which version of Windows couldn't see the partition? How big was the FreeDOS partition you tried? Does your BIOS support the size of the hard drive you were testing? In order to make such statements, one should be specific with the details. And if you really want to convince people to NOT use FreeDOS, you should maybe explain just how it "is a LONG way from 100% compatible." besides vague failures.. For all we know, the problem could actually exist between the keyboard and the chair, you evil viper you!

You seem to have a lot of Anti-FreeDOS FUD with no real facts to back it up.. You work for Microsoft, perhaps?

My personal reasons to love FreeDOS (recent Win32-ports aside): Terminal Velocity, DOOM, DOOM II, Descent 1 & 2, Death Rally, Epic Pinball.. The list is almost endless! And it's not for the gaming, it's for the nostalgia and memories.

--Weasel

Re:Not exciting...

[evilviper]

Dude, it was just released.

No, it just (finally) hit 1.0. That number isn't magic. New uses aren't going to just spring up when you reach that point. They've been making (beta) releases for years and years.

Someone put a tonne of effort into it, and you should have some respect for that at the very least.

Respect doesn't change my question at all.

Re:Not exciting...

[evilviper]

DOS is still heavily used in industrial control,

I never said otherwise. The installed base of DOS systems is large, but it certainly is declining, as other more advanced OSes take over. An installed base isn't something you want to aim for, as they've already got everything they need, and aren't going to be pursuing new features, or new code that does the same as the old.

Do you think there's a chance in hell they're going to rip out their commercial DOS, and replace it with FreeDOS? It's not even all that compatible, as stable, etc. If they were going to "mess" with things AT ALL, they wouldn't be making a small upgrade from one DOS to another, they'll be going to a whole new OS.

Re:Not exciting...

[SpaceballsTheUserNam]

"FreeDOS claims that it can be ROMmed ... if so, it's a viable replacement for a lot of expensive industrial DOS clones out there (datalight and others.) "

Wait, doesn't DOS stand for DISK Operating System? This kinda of activity must be stopped.

Re:Not exciting...

[buddahfool]

Not to mention in Symbol RF guns. Used heavily in warehouses throughout the nation, they are full functional mobile PCs. The newer ones have Windows CE, but not the one that connect to our servers, they have DOS.

I never knew how rusty my DOS skills were until I tried to walk a warehouse guy across the nation through troubleshooting 802.11 wireless authentication across a VPN tunnel on one...

Re:Not exciting...

[evilviper]

You're obviously not into retro games.

I am actually.

I run it on top of FreeDOS,

I tried a handful of DOS games I had lying around, and always ran into one compatibility bug or another. Do the most popular ones even work for you? Doom, Duke Nukem, Quake, etc.?

Re:Not exciting...

[evilviper]

we're not about to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to replace them.

But you're willing to spend the time and effort to switch over to FreeDOS as the underlying OS, and track down any bugs that might appear?

Re:Not exciting...

[CrankyOldBastard]

FYI, the largest selling CPUs are 4, 8 and 16bit machines. There's also a lot of tiny 32bit hybrids (386 class with small memory footprints). For the kinds of jobs a lot of these systems do, DOS variants are ideal. There is still plenty of DOS based software in use, and it'll stay in use as long as it's more economical to use it.

I've found FreeDOS to be pretty compatible, as long as you (ab)use it right. Perhaps you forget the umteen choices on your Dos 6.22 boot menu that you needed to get all jobs done. FreeDOS is the same, there isnt a one-size-fits-all config. And in extreme cases it can be patched to suit, as it's nowhere near as complex as those "whole new OS" you talk about. Let's face it, program load, ports and 13h calls are pretty easy to write for. Not anywhere near as hard as say writing a device driver for a unix clone is.

Re:Not exciting...

[simontek2]

like CNC machines, and a like. Hell I think most of the factories in Michigan run on DOS still. lots of terminals still do. (I live in GA, but grew up in MI)

Re:Not exciting...

[mdevore]

>I tried a handful of DOS games I had lying around, and always ran into one compatibility bug or another. Do the most popular ones even work for you? Doom, Duke Nukem, Quake, etc.?

Naturally FreeDOS was tested with popular (and unpopular) games. People being what they are, games are the front-line compatibility test for any OS in a replacement situation. Doom was always one of the first applications for stress testing on memory managers, not just under native DOS but running under Qemu and VPC 2004. Dukem Nukem, also. Quake, I don't explicitly remember, but other programs using the Quake engine were successfully tested by developers. Obviously, the larger count of end-users try a far greater range of programs and offer a stream of feedback on those.

It's difficult to address your comments in detail without knowledge of what you tested and when, but they sound as if they are based on versions of FreeDOS from two or more years ago. Probably the biggest breakthrough for running the Doom et al games with the standard FreeDOS EMM386 was when VCPI support was added a couple of years ago -- prior to that you could only run DOS-extended games under HIMEM or,if supported, without any memory manager. That restriction hasn't been necessary for a while now.

For the last year, most changes to FreeDOS have been to improve compatibility with more and more applications and clear up edge conditions, e.g. fix problems with free XMS memory >512M for DPMI hosts. If anything, I think the claims of FreeDOS compatibility for running different DOS applications has generally been understated. (COMMAND shell and Windows/advanced environment extensions compatibility, not so much, although I understand that improvements in those areas remain under vigorous development). At least twice in the past an open invitation has been made on the development and user lists to report ANY programs which failed to execute under FreeDOS, but worked with MS-DOS. Too, FD Bugzilla has been scoured for reports of failing applications which did not fail under MS-DOS, with all reports tracked, tested, and debugged if the application was available. I don't recall seeing your report there, but I might have missed it.

What some may not understand is that FreeDOS has to match completely undocumented MS-DOS behaviors and quirks to run well-known applications. I can give two examples I personally know the details on. First, some DOS-extended Borland applications depended upon an internal version of DOS to be set to a particular value, not because it wanteed that value, but because the Borland DPMI host didn't properly set CX and expected a zero CX value to drop through -- as it did with MS-DOS -- or else it blew the stack. And a compatibility fix for QuickBASIC 4.0 compiled programs was made immediately prior to FD 1.0's release because QB4 depended on MS-DOS allowing a re-release of a freed block of memory without error while spanning multiple unrelated memory management calls. Tracking those sorts of problems can be painful, but it's been done, and those are just two examples of non-FreeDOS-sourced problems successfully resolved. And for that matter, I know of one class of DOS-extended applications which run better under FreeDOS than MS-DOS because the applications made inappropriate assumptions about memory that FreeDOS works around.

All in all, there has been a great deal of effort made to make FreeDOS run all applications that MS-DOS will run. Doubtless a few problematic applications remain, and certainly particular user environments or setups may have issues as well. But I don't think calling out a list of popular games or other DOS programs will trigger a general failure report across most systems.

Re:Not exciting...

[WWE-TicK]

This idea isn't entirely unheard of. Some Tandy 1000 models had MS-DOS burned into it's ROM for instant start-up times.

Re:Not exciting...

[goarilla]

... if you talk about terminal velocity then don't forget
raptor & whacky wheels :D

Re:Not exciting...

[clickclickdrone]

>DOS is literally the most popular OS in this space.
The OS/firmware in some (all?) Canon D-SLRs is a DOS variant.

Re:Not exciting...

[drinkypoo]

For that matter I have a Tandy/Casio/GRiD Zoomer/Z-PDA-7000/GRiDPad 2310 and it's just a NEC V20-based (8086 clone) PC running GEOS. I forget whose DOS they used, though... but its full OS is, unsurprisingly enough, in memory.

Re:Not exciting...

[Anonymous Coward]

What's amazing to me is that all of this important commercial software is being written on top of an OS that has NO commercial support options.

How does one make a business case for this?

Re:Not exciting...

[fm6]

It would seem that you're more into retro games than I am. I don't do arcade-style games — hand-eye coordination issues.

I'm suprised to hear that there are compatibility issues. The fact is that DOS (and its clones, such as FreeDOS) are not really OSs, they're just a think library layer between the application software and the hardware. So probably your compatibility issues have more to do with hardware than your OS.

You might have more luck running old games under DOSBox than on a system booted up with FreeDOS. (That's the only way I've every run FreeDOS.) That system does a very good job of emulating the old hardware you probably don't have. There's a huge list of games that are known to work well with DOSBox.

Re:Not exciting...

[LordHugeMongus]

i've got Doom, Doom2, Quake, and alot of other older and somewhat newer games working great under dosbox, Quake needs alot of power, i had to set dosbox up to 80,000 cycles, but it runs just fine, in a window or full screen.. if something doesn't work browse thru the dosbox.conf and play with some settings, most things seem to run pretty well for me....

Re:Not exciting...

[evilviper]

The fact is that DOS (and its clones, such as FreeDOS) are not really OSs, they're just a think library layer between the application software and the hardware. So probably your compatibility issues have more to do with hardware than your OS.

I've run the same programs, on the same hardware under MS-DOS. This was probably a year ago now, since I tried FreeDOS, but it doesn't change quickly, so I doubt it's been fixed.

I realize DOS programs are rather low-level, but they don't just run on the hardware directly. They make numerous calls to different parts of the OS, directly address RAM where it expects certain drivers to be loaded, etc. Anything less than a 99% exact copy of MS-DOS, and high-end DOS programs have trouble.

You might have more luck running old games under DOSBox than on a system booted up with FreeDOS.

It certainly is possible that FreeDOS and MS-DOS only act differently when given hundreds of GBs of RAM to play with, and a multi-GHz CPU :-)

Re:Not exciting...

[ScrewMaster]

Good question. There are several commercially-available DOS clones that have various levels of support attached (not that Microsoft's "support" of MS-DOS was all that valuable anyway) and those are used heavily, particularly for embedded apps. DOS is also a very old, very stable, relatively predictable environment. It's pretty much a commodity item, doesn't change much, and there really isn't much support actually required anymore. That's obviously not the case for a commercial Windows or Linux application, but for DOS stuff you can get away with it.

In any event, if you're in a situation where you are actually using MS-DOS, support is a good reason to go with an open-source option such as FreeDOS, assuming it's compatible enough. If nothing else, you can support it yourself if you have the expertise.

Re:Not exciting...

[fm6]

What can I tell you? The same programs you say won't run on FreeDOS are known to run on DOXBox + FreeDOS.

Re:Not exciting...

[Reaperducer]

We have a whole fleet of engineers on staff and in the building 24 hours a day for emergencies. They do this sort of thing in the down time between each crisis. No biggie.

Re: =) !

[Anonymous Coward]

thats not nice... some clueless fool might... ...

oh wait. its a good thing. carry on.

ReactOS?

[varunnangia]

I know it's not the same as WfWG3.11, but what about ReactOS? Still a long way to go, but you can begin to run applications on it. And it's 100% FOSS.

Why?

[bendodge]

If it's not broke, don't fix it.
Why not use MS-DOS? Expense shouldn't be a reason. Or is it just to have an alternative that is out of MS's reach?

Re:Why?

[spauldo]

You can use it in emulators and use it for an operating system if you're selling a bare PC.

It's nice for legacy stuff - I had a client once that ran a QBASIC application and we had to set up a couple more machines for him. FreeDOS was nice and legal, since I had no idea how to buy a license for MS-DOS. It's not like you can walk down to the store and buy DOS these days.

I have an unopened copy of DOS 6.22 around here somewhere, but it's buried in a box, most likely. Probably next to my 70 NT4 Workstation licenses.

Re:Why?

[ScrewMaster]

Because you can't buy MS-DOS even if you wanted to. Besides, FreeDOS offers a lot more capabilities than MS-DOS 7.x ever had. 7.x was the final release of MS-DOS, and it was never sold as a standalone product, only as part of Windows 9x.

And if DOS is important to you (as it is to many, many people and companies) and completely open-source GPL'ed version that is beyond Microsoft's reach is certainly a good thing.

Re:Why?

[KC1P]

Really minor nitpick: actually the last MS-DOS is V8.0, that's what's underneath Win Me. Yes I know I'm the only one running Win Me (precisely because it has DOS) but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist!

My main product is a DOS application (well I sell Linux and Win32 versions too but customers who care about device support get the DOS one, plus I price it to encourage DOS use since support is much easier) which for some reason doesn't work under FreeDOS (the "open file" calls fail, of all things, but I can't duplicate it in real-mode code). It does work fine under MS-DOS, PC-DOS, DR-DOS, and the usual DOS boxes (it's been so long since I tested ROM-DOS or PTS-DOS that I've forgotten what happened), so it's hard to feel like it's my fault. Really diminishes my respect for FreeDOS though. Also their COMMAND.COM doesn't accept commands like "dir .txt" which worked on every version of real DOS (and are heavily programmed into my fingers), so I wonder if some of the developers weren't even DOS users? DOS is all about the nitpicky details (since it was so crude that we all had to commit some horrible atrocities to make our programs actually get work done) so they can't skimp on stuff like this.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

nice and legal

Except for QBASIC, which needs an MS-DOS licence.

Re:Why?

[ScrewMaster]

Sorry, I forgot about ME since, well, a lot of people including Microsoft wish they could forget ME. But so far as the general user bases of Windows 9x and ME was concerned, DOS didn't exist and that's pretty much how Microsoft wanted it. But from the standpoint of someone like myself that was developing and shipping DOS apps at the time, I wasn't happy about having to use a product as my primary operating system that was being treated as a mere loader program for Microsoft Windows. At that point, I just stuck with DOS 6.22 since at least it was sold as a standalone product and I'd had some years experience with it.

You're right in what you say about FreeDOS, but to be fair they do include a copy of the 4DOS shell with the full package, which I immediately switched to when I was playing around with it (their shell didn't feel right, I agree.) I had used 4DOS for years and became very comfortable with it. And you're right about their developers not all being DOS users ... a lot of them appear to have come from the Linux/Unix world. Many of the apps included in FreeDOS are Linux ports, and as I said before the whole thing has rather a Linux distro feel to it (that's not necessarily bad, but it's definitely different.) They don't claim it's perfect yet either: for example, I noticed that some of the commands (like CHKDSK!) don't handle FAT32 yet, and LFN support is spotty.

Still, unlike MS-DOS, PC-DOS, DR-DOS and the usual DOS boxes it's a GPLed open-source product so if there's sufficient interest I expect those nitpicks to get fixed.

Re:Why?

[ScrewMaster]

Just out of curiosity, may I ask the nature of your application? It's good to hear about DOS development now and then.

Re:Why?

[KC1P]

OK I agree, including 4DOS makes up for whatever's wrong with their own COMMAND.COM. I hadn't tried downloading their full install because I don't want to install it, I just want a floppy with KERNEL.SYS and COMMAND.COM that I can boot from to make sure my stuff works, well of course they can package it however they want so now I'll put in a scratch HD one of these days and do an install and pick out the good parts. It really is nice to see someone working on this, it's frustrating how all the new kiddies think should use DOS any more now that we have Linux, as if the two have anything to do with each other.

Trust me, you don't care about my application! But anyway it's an emulator for DEC PDP-11 minicomputers. DOS is a wonderful place for a project like that because I can help myself to all the hardware I need, so I reprogram the clock chip for 50/60 Hz and take over the keyboard to make it DEC-style so NumLock is a data key and ENTER doesn't autorepeat and the LEDs are under software control, and download DEC characters into the SVGA, and run a blinkenlights board off the LPT port, and program the FDC for 26-sector single density mode, and on and on, all that kind of stuff you can do easily in DOS that takes buttloads of ioctl()s on other systems (so, lots of context switches) if they let you do it at all. And there's no multitasking so the response time is great (except during file I/O of course). Plus I roll in my own drivers for a bunch of weird optional hardware (RocketPorts and I/O bus adapters and parallel interfaces), and those drivers keep on working year after year, not like anything I've written for Linux, where I have to write separate kernel drivers which break even between minor versions of a supposedly "stable" kernel series, so I'm always fixing them up to match the latest gratuitous kernel changes. Anyway last winter's big project was adding support for SMP motherboards, for emulating multi-CPU PDP-11s -- well it doesn't work on my new AMD64 X2 board but I'll sort that out -- I love this though, I can't think of any other OS where you could slip your own SMP code in underneath a totally non-SMP-aware OS. DOS's brainlessness is its greatest strength.

Necromancy

[KiloByte]

I'm not that skilled in necromancy, but as far as I can tell, in any system Animate Dead spells work only before the corpse rots away. And in the case of DOS, indeed, they're a tiny bit too late.

I guess it's rather the time for exorcisms now.

Re:Necromancy

[Drishmung]

Nope, from the d20 SRD---Spells (A)

This spell turns the bones or bodies of dead creatures into undead skeletons or zombies that follow the character's spoken commands.
...
Skeletons: A skeleton can be created only from a mostly intact corpse or skeleton. The corpse must have bones. If a skeleton is made from a corpse, the flesh falls off the bones.

. All you need is the skeleton. Looks like there's hope for DOS yet then.

Re:Necromancy

[Opportunist]

Well, since all you need is a skeleton system, I think it should do. For a full system, you'd prolly need a high level priest with revive.

Re:Necromancy

[MyLongNickName]

All hail the king of the geeks!

Re:Necromancy

[Anonymous Coward]

Plus you'd have a version of DOS that obeys spoken commands.

Re:Necromancy

[Takumi2501]

Wow, and I was impressed by long filename support (well, impressed for DOS anyway).

Re: =) !

[stevenp]

Just for the record:
This prints a little smile in the upper left corner of the text screen

How is this useful?

[Danga]

While this is a cool accomplishment does it serve any real useful purpose? I have had no need for MS-DOS since Windows XP came out since you can create a DOS boot disk easily if you need to and all of my old games that I still like to play every once in a while and old apps run file using the XP compatibility mode. Since I have upgraded to XP I use XP on my machines that I just want to use to play games/web browse/code Windows Apps and Linux on servers and machines I want to code Linux apps on. No MS-DOS needed. If I really wanted to load MS-DOS on a machine and couldn't find my old installer disks then I noticed sealed, brand new copies of version 6.22 can still be bought on eBay like the following: http://cgi.ebay.com/Windows-MS-DOS-6-22-Operating- System-W-Sealed-Floppies_W0QQitemZ260027371141QQih Z016QQcategoryZ11685QQtcZphotoQQssPageNameZWDVWQQr dZ1QQcmdZViewItem

So, while I find the freeDOS project cool in a nerdy sort of way I do not see how the amount of effort that went into it was worth the actual usefullness of the project.

Re:How is this useful?

[Anonymous Coward]

Aww, great. Now I'm going to be outbidded. Thanks!

Re:How is this useful?

[mh101]

Don't forget not everyone has Windows. I've run FreeDOS on my Mac in an emulated PC environment to play the good old DOS games.

Re:How is this useful?

[Simon Simian]

So, while I find the freeDOS project cool in a nerdy sort of way I do not see how the amount of effort that went into it was worth the actual usefullness of the project. I agree. FreeDOS is awesome!

Re:How is this useful?

[Reaperducer]

While this is a cool accomplishment does it serve any real useful purpose? I have had no need for MS-DOS

So... since YOU don't need it, no one else does, either? OK. I can play that game, too.
I have a Mac, and no use for Windows. Therefore, no one else should have Windows, either.

There. Now we've solved all of the world's problems.

Re:How is this useful?

[Danga]

Don't forget not everyone has Windows. I've run FreeDOS on my Mac in an emulated PC environment to play the good old DOS games.

Ok, so how is Free-DOS any better than Dr. DOS which I have heard is a lot more stable than Free-DOS or even spending less than 20 dollars to get a geniune version of MS-DOS 6.22 and running that in your emulated PC environment? I still see no real gain to using Free-DOS over anything else that is available, especially just getting a copy of the real thing. I see no area that using Free-DOS over MS-DOS is meaningful, Free-DOS has support for long filenames but that is of minimal use to any legacy software that probably wouldn't handle the long filenames anyway.

Re:How is this useful?

[RMingin]

Jesus H Christ, can you PLEASE put some periods in? They go at the end of a thought, to help the rest of us follow your ranting.

Seriously, punctuation is your friend, and you're making him very angry.

Re:How is this useful?

[Danga]

I did have periods and even a fancy question mark in there. Just because my sentences are longer than 5 words and you can't follow them due to your ADD doesn't mean the rest of the intelligent Slashdot readers have the same problem as you. Instead of complaining about something that makes no difference you may try to actually contribute thoughts that bear relevance to the topic at hand. You may even get modded up for those type of comments newb.

Re:How is this useful?

[karnal]

You're yelling at him about not enough periods whilst making a comment with far too many commas.

Those who live in glass houses....

Re:How is this useful?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, he's only got one comma that is incorrectly used -- separating a prepositional phrase at the end of his second sentence -- and that's actually a very common error. Nobody but an English teacher (or somebody who doesn't know rules on using commas) would get angry at him for that.

Re:How is this useful?

[flyingfsck]

Embedded control systems. Using DOS and either an assembler or the Turbo Pascal compiler from the Borland museum, you can create a very capable embedded system with great ease.

Re:How is this useful?

[steve-san]

Dude, did you learn nothing from BSG?
When the Cylons attack, all the XP/Linux2.6 users will be screwed. It'll just be us non-networked FreeDOS users holding the line for humanity!

Re:How is this useful?

[misleb]

With FreeDOS, you could ship a product without worrying about licencing. Even if Microsoft doesn't REALLY care if you pirate DOS, they might just go after you as a reflex.

Re:How is this useful?

[Danga]

With FreeDOS, you could ship a product without worrying about licencing. Even if Microsoft doesn't REALLY care if you pirate DOS, they might just go after you as a reflex.

Ok, I like this answer. I am not entirely sure using FreeDOS would be as safe as paying less than 20 bucks for MS-DOS, but it still is a good point. Thanks.

Re:How is this useful?

[legoburner]

Nobody but an English teacher (or somebody who doesn't know rules on using commas) would get angry at him for that.

Which is why I give thanks every day that we have slowly reduced the aggressive power of English teachers to their passive pullover-wearing state that they are in now.

Re:How is this useful?

[tehcyder]

all of my old games that I still like to play every once in a while and old apps run file using the XP compatibility mode

It must only be me, but there are only a very few old pre-XP windows/DOS games that I have ever been able to run successfully under XP's compatibility mode. Mostly I can't even install them.

Re:How is this useful?

[confused one]

I still have to support DOS software. This particular software won't run under Windows XP compatability mode because of low level memory calls that get blocked by the OS. While copies of MS-DOS 6.22 are still available, if you look, this is a easy to obtain solution (corporate Logistics department doesn't seem to believe in ebay...)

I'd like to see more focus...

[erroneus]

...maybe I haven't been looking in the right places or for the right things, but there are two things I need DOS for:

1. A means to boot a machine, load network drivers, protocol stacks and maps drives so I can run Ghost.
2. Other things like updating BIOSes

#1 is at the top of my list, obviously. Boot disks are pretty important. Bootable USB thumb drives and bootable CDROMs are good too. Need'm all. Seems like everywhere I look, things still seem to favor the Win98 DOS... it's annoying because I don't want to use those. For lack of a better term, I'd like to see more "marketting" focus on creating boot disk packages that people can use. Make'm as free as BSD so hardware makers can use them without worry. Philosophy be damned if all it does is make people nervous and hire lawyers, or worse, not use what is available because they simply don't understand it and can't afford a lawyer.

So if it were more available and better packaged, I think we'd get more than better acceptance of it, we'd get something of a clammoring for it.

Re:I'd like to see more focus...

[CyDharttha]

As far as #1 goes, my tool of choice is a knoppix bootdisc. I use it for many things, including recovering data from any sort of partition. Wonders of dd and netcat is a great article including info on cloning drives over a network. I do use freedos in the event I need to do a BIOS update on a machine, and no other method is available.

Re:I'd like to see more focus...

[dosius]

I started to work on a BSD-licensed DOS clone but only got as far as part of the userland. (This included a buggy but fairly complete replacement for COMMAND.COM, and a few of the less important tools.)

I'd go back to it if I knew how the heck I'd pull off writing a kernel when I can't even clone a simple system, like CP/M! (and if I can't clone CP/M I can't clone DOS since DOS uses a superset of CP/M APIs) But what's left of the project, it's up on sf as rmfdos, but it's not very useful atm.

-uso.

Re:I'd like to see more focus...

[misleb]

Make'm as free as BSD so hardware makers can use them without worry

Or maybe hardware makers could get with a friekin' times and allow flashing from inside a real OS. Maybe Microsoft could come out with an official LIve CD version of Windows for Ghosting (no fscking with DOS NIC drivers). Seriously, the PC is the only modern platform that requires you to boot an OS that hasn't changed significantly from 1983 to do basic maintence.

Another option is Linux. Novell, for example, does their ZenWorks system imaging (like Ghost) with a Linux boot CD. So much more universal and functional than a brain dead DOS boot disk. Also, IBM uses Linux boot CDs to configure/flash their RAID adapters. So it can be done.

DOS blows and I really wish it would just disappear from the face of the Earth. If I ever find myself editting another CONFIG.SYS... I don't know what I'd do... but it wouldn't be pretty. I probably wasted a total of several weeks of my life just trying to free up conventional RAM... on a 386!

-matthew

Re:I'd like to see more focus...

[evilviper]

1. A means to boot a machine, load network drivers, protocol stacks and maps drives so I can run Ghost.
2. Other things like updating BIOSes

For both, the answer is BartPE, to make a bootable Windows LiveCD.

1. Disc IO under DOS is painfully slow, and Ghost isn't all that great.

I found and started using 'udpcast' (2 Linux floppies including ALL network drivers) and soon, NOBODY was touching the Ghost disks.

2. Many flashing utilities are becomming Win32 based, without even DOS alternatives.

Alleycat

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but does it run Alleycat?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alley_Cat_(game)

Re:Alleycat

[ParallelJoe]

I'm not sure about Alleycat but a few years ago I set up an old P133 with FreeDOS, a simple menu system and a bunch of old games including: PacMan, Duke Nukem 2 AND Duke Nukem 3D, Doom, Quake, Wolfenstein 3D, Tomb Raider, etc. plus some old astronomy programs. There are zillions of DOS programs out there. My kids, big time gamers, still boot it up every now and then for a little old school action.

FreeDOS was a solid program even then.

Re:Alleycat

[labratuk]

I loved that game. Along with sopwith. But it's one of those things that I thought was incredibly obscure and nobody else played. I know better these days.

Re:Alleycat

[Anonymous Coward]

we've played alleycat here in Brazil too. this thing is very famous. :)

yayo for uselessness

[Anonymous Coward]

That's.......excellent. I think I'll go back to browsing the internet, listening to music, and playing games simulatenously on X11.

I like FreeDOS.

[Simon Simian]

I had to use FreeDOS for something a few years ago, but I can't for the life of me remember why. I remember running it in QEMU, I remember being simultaneously impressed with QEMU and FreeDOS, but I can't remember what I was actually doing.

Anywho, I know it must be good software because I'm not easily impressed.

Wow! A blue^H^H^H^H^H^H kill me.

This is what I've been waiting for!

[RAMMS EIN]

Finally! Now I can run loadlin on a completely free OS!

Re:This is what I've been waiting for!

[mzs]

And I can run edlin. Heck I like typing more than just ed.

Ten years for a DOS clone..? You got to be joking!

[j.leidner]

What? It took them 10 years to implement a DOS clone? Congrats for the most useless software project of the 21st century. DOS was never state of the art, not when it was on sale, not even when conceived by Tim Paterso, who was only too well aware it was a Qick and Dirty hack (hence the letters Q and D in its intiaial name, QDOS).

Stable?

[bendodge]

A stable alternative to MS-DOS? Isn't a little early to make that claim?

Re:Stable?

[nurb432]

Its been stable for years. It just didnt have the 1.0 version mark for people to notice it.

Old Dos Music Apps Can't Be Beat

[Jack Action]

The Linux Dos emulator Dosemu, uses FreeDos. Dosemu is extremely easy to install and use, and once you do, you have access to all the old Dos music applications that have now been released for free.

These include Sequencer Gold Plus, and, if you don't like the tracker interface, the CMU Midi Toolkit, which allows score info to be entered in a text file.

A lot of these original Dos programs really haven't been beat, and when combined with Linux and a modern soundcard and midi/soundfont instruments -- you can have a pretty robust home music setup.

Re:Old Dos Music Apps Can't Be Beat

[fishbowl]

>A lot of these original Dos programs really haven't been beat

I don't *really* want to argue, because I have nostalgia for this stuff, but... http://www.kvraudio.com/

It's all been beat. Really, really beat.

Re:Old Dos Music Apps Can't Be Beat

[foreverdisillusioned]

Why not Linux + Dosbox instead?

windows flash utils

[_Shorty-dammit]

all my motherboards from the last, oh, four or five years have had windows flash utils. While this most certainly leaves non-windows users out in the cold, it still doesn't tie you to DOS exclusively. Whether or not it is wise to flash from windows is a different discussion. The fact remains, those flash utils exist.

nostalgia

[gsn]

So many things to get from HOTU, so little time...
no more mounting folders and general dinking around with DOSbox! Only dinking around with the real thing! Ahh the thought that I will soon see beautiful CGA graphics brings a tear to my eye. Alleycat as god intended it... sniff /nostalgia

Re:nostalgia

[ovapositor]

Amen.

I keep older computers around with the vague intention of actually playing some of those "good ole games" when I have some free time. Turns out my free time is getting harder to come by... I may never have a chance to play with this cool DOS.

Re:Nostalgia

[Reziac]

Who modded you Offtopic? shoulda been modded Informative. Doesn't anyone else remember using ANSI and a series of numbers to set screen and text colours in DOS? and holding down the ALT key and typing on the numpad to make smileys, box-drawing characters, etc?

Re:Nostalgia

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is how you change the higher 8 of the background to mean bold background instead of blink:
mov ah, 10h
mov al, 3h
mob bl, 0h
int 10h
hehe...you can also change the rgb values of the palette, and change the ROM font to end up with a VGA looking screen in textmode, a graphical cursor (norton utils was the first commercial app that I can remember that used this technique), and by using ports and the vsync you can do cool smooth scrolling effects by adjusting the starting scanline and all kinds of fun stuff...ahh...the "scene"...hehe...
-holister

Re:Nostalgia

[An ominous Cow art]

I used to use [2j to clear the screen all the time. I think that was on terminals logged in to VMS, but I believe it still worked in DOS using ANSI.SYS.

Re:Nostalgia

[Reziac]

Never heard of that one (cool to know, tho, thanks!) but yeah, I expect a lot of what DOS ANSI knew must have inherited from terminals.

Good job, guys!

[SnappyCrunch]

I'm proud of these guys. Sure, it took 'em ten years, but they've made an OS from scratch that runs applications made for another OS. It's not an easy task. Just ask the GNU guys, or the Linux guys, or the Wine guys, or the ReactOS guys. Even if you don't see the utility of having a DOS clone, there are those who do, and I'll bet they're happy.

Re: =) !

[Spikeles]

I was going to say, the sad thing is i actually know what that means.. i can still remember how to write a helloworld.com program using debug. Those were the days! I actually taught myself assembly language using Ralf Browns PC Interrupts book and debug. And then i upgraded to Issac's A86 and D86, yep.. those were fun... especially when i was doing TSR's and got the interrupt return vector wrong! :)

FreeDOS was working for me 3 years ago

[Anonymous Coward]

That quick and dirty hack you mention finally devolved VMS into WinNT, what a crock of shit :-o Still, I'm glad FreeDOS is here because I still maintain some old production machinery and the controller software runs on DOS. Dosbox is good as well, I recently used it to run an accoustics exe written in QBasic.

Will it run bioforge?

[Rix]

I've never been able to get that running on a modern machine.

Re:Will it run bioforge?

[Anonymous Coward]

works fine in DOSbox, I've played it to completion using Dosbox and D-Fend, so here are my working settings:

Game EXE C:\Program Files\DOSBox-0.63\Dosbox C drive\BIOFORGE\BIOFORGE.EXE
Setup EXE C:\Program Files\DOSBox-0.63\Dosbox C drive\BIOFORGE\INSTALL.EXE
Amount of Dos Memory (MB) 32
EMS & XMS enabled
Cycles: 9000, 500 up, 20 down
Frameskip: 1
Display: VGA
Sound is sb16, address 220, IRQ 7, DMA 1, HDMA 5, Opl mode auto, Opl Rate 22050

Re:Will it run bioforge?

[ccozan]

wow, do still have that? i've lost it somewhere on some floppies ... never been able to recover it. I'm missing it...
If you're a good man, send me a copy to ccozan at gmail. Thanks.

Re:Will it run bioforge?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually the REAL question is, will it run Lotus?

Re:Will it run bioforge?

[elzahir]

If Lotus will run, then FreeDOS ain't done!

Re:Ten years for a DOS clone..? You got to be joki

[WED Fan]

O.K., clown, how long from Unix to Linux? Now, go sit down.

32 bit DOS extender?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does it come with a DOS extender fully compliant with the DPMI and VCPI specs? I think it's worth waiting a few more years for that.

Re:32 bit DOS extender?

[BigFootApe]

It can do:
http://dos32a.narechk.net/index_en.html

Totally awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

Sweet! We should have a version of FreeNT 4.0 within the next 20-30 years. I can totally justify stifling my company's technological progress for 20 years to save $110/workstation.

So...

[redkazuo]

if FreeDOS was finally released, does this mean I can hope for DNF this Christmas?

Re:So...

[dude8151]

HAHA! nice one!

3hird post LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

b/c u got 2nd!!lollerskating!!!11

Now they can start with FreeWIN3.11 v0.1 alpha

[FireMotion]

Now that FreeDOS 1.0 is done, they can start building FreeWIN3.11 v0.1 alpha on top of it.
(Do they already have a FreeDOSShell? If not, they can do that first).

In 2016, they might be able to start with FreeWIN95.
2026 FreeWIN98
2036 FreeWIN98SE
2046 FreeWINME
2056 FreeWINXP
2066 FreeWINVISTA

Will Microsoft or FreeDOS be first with the Vista editions? ;)

Re:Now they can start with FreeWIN3.11 v0.1 alpha

[deamonpainter33]

wow that's funny dude! omg if those guys come out with FreeVISTA or something, i'm shure it will beat the pants out of what M$ has cookin....and still cookin...still ....cooking ....spoiled

Re:Now they can start with FreeWIN3.11 v0.1 alpha

[Anonymous Coward]

2046 FreeWINME
2056 FreeWINXP
2066 FreeWINVISTA

Where does WILLIE 1.0 fit into all that?

Re:Now they can start with FreeWIN3.11 v0.1 alpha

[duzbin]

2026 FreeWIN98
2036 FreeWIN98SE
2046 FreeWINME
2056 FreeWINXP
2066 FreeWINVISTA

2067 Microsoft Windows Vista RC1

FAT Legal and others?

[btk667]

This may seems like an odd question but, what is happening with the FAT legal battle?
Who own FAT now? FREEDOS can use it ?

M$ is allowing this OS to exist? I know DOS is very own, and cannot be bought theses days but still Microsoft is leaving this "great" software freely available to the public?

Re:FAT Legal and others?

[donaldm]

It appears Microsoft won.

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/business/legal/0,39020651, 39246565,00.htm

Strange because when I was doing my Electrical Engineering degree in 1981 one of our projects was to write an OS and mini file-system for an embedded device and this was not out of the ordinary since people were doing this prior to the 1980's. You would think that File Allocation Table (FAT) file system is NOT in fact, "novel and non-obvious" at least to a trainee engineer.

Unfortunately for the Patent System it appears that what is obvious to a skilled person in that field is not obvious to people outside that field such as Law makers. Basically it appears that if you have money (and Microsoft does) then you can patent anything by bringing in their so called "Expert Witnesses".

What happened to not being able to patent a process of which software really is a mathematical process.

Re:FAT Legal and others?

[KC1P]

My understanding is that the patent only covers the LFN extension to the FAT directory structure. The rest of the FAT spec is free. So a regular DOS clone wouldn't violate it. But it sounds like yes, FreeDOS does violate it. But so does Linux and which one do you think M$ will go after first, if/when they get around to it? (Never mind why they felt like patenting such a hideous hack in the first place -- OK so it's non-obvious but the reason it's non-obvious is because it isn't as useful as a more obvious method, so it shouldn't have been patentable.)

Re:FAT Legal and others?

[mikiN]

When the shit hits the fan eventually, just switch your (v)fat mounts over to umsdos, use umssync on Linux and some (to be written) virtual filesystem plugin on Windows to keep long file names and the "--linux-.---" files in sync.

Re:FAT Legal and others?

[WWWWolf]

My understanding is that the patent only covers the LFN extension to the FAT directory structure.

Ah. And it was my understanding that DOSEmu (or was it FreeDOS or what? Can't remember anymore) was specifically skirting around the LFN patent by using a different method for short-name generation, so you didn't get MICROS~1 but something completely different...

Though I'm not a lawyer or anything and I don't know how that counts =)

Re:FAT Legal and others?

[Dunbal]

What happened to not being able to patent a process of which software really is a mathematical process.

      Or a file format, for that matter.

DOS is alive and kicking.

[elgee]

Twice in the last month, I had to boot from a XP CD and get into the recovery console and use, gasp, DOS to fix some disk and boot sector problems. Until something else comes along, such primitive stuff still works at the lowest level.

Re:DOS is alive and kicking.

[btk667]

In what cases does DOS help you with Windows XP?
DOS cannot read/write into NTFS?
And I am not sure it can read/write into FAT32!

For recovery purpose i use Knoppix, work great.

Re:DOS is alive and kicking.

[Anonymous Coward]

Something else *did* come along: Linux Live CDs. You thought you'd impress because you still use your DOS skills you had 10 years ago. Wrong crowd. Instead it is apparent that for the past 10 years Linux has been in your pile of "should look into it someday", but you never moved your ass and now you look stupid complaining about maintaining your gas lamp after light bulbs have been invented.

Re:DOS is alive and kicking.

[cnettel]

But, of course, what you used wasn't DOS. It was a native user-mode NT exe with a direct user interface. You know, that's how you can get your RAID driver to load for the recovery console. You even have a tiny registry hive mounted (in addition to the fact that it mounts the registry of the installation you try to recover).

Re:DOS is alive and kicking.

[Horse Rotorvator JAD]

Twice in the last month, I had to boot from a XP CD and get into the recovery console and use, gasp, DOS t

That wasn't fucking DOS you were using.

Re:DOS is alive and kicking.

[Ducaquis]

In what cases does DOS help you with Windows XP?

A:> format c:

Feature

[Anonymous Coward]

OMFG CD-ROM SUPPORT!!!!!!!111111111111111111111111111111111

Re:Feature

[Scarletdown]

I don't know if this is a false memory or not, due to age. But I do seem to recall a few years ago when I was checking out FreeDOS, I was able to get CD-ROM drivers to load just fine using stuff like oakcdrom.sys, the drivers for the old CR-563 series drives, etc., combined with a copy of mscdex.exe yoinked from a MS-DOS boot disk. So, CD-ROM support in FreeDOS doesn't seem like all that big a deal to me. Now, if there was DVD-RW, and CD-RW support, that would be another story.

DRDOS

[Anonymous Coward]

FreeDOS, eh? Is DR-DOS still out there?

Nostalgia

[The MAZZTer]

I actually know how to break that down... B800:0000 is the start of the ASCII video memory. First 0x1 is the smiley, next 0x1 is dark blue on black. 0x21 is !, 0x7 is light gray on black.

The memory is 4000 bytes long (longer if you use a bigger mode than 80x25) with 2 bytes for a screen tile. First byte specifies extended ASCII character (charmap.exe with font Terminal will show you all characters > 0x20), second specifies the color.

All colors that can be used are: 0 = black, 1 = dark blue, 2 = dark green, 3 = dark cyan, 4 = dark red, 5 = dark purple, 6 = brown, 7 = light gray, 8 = dark gray, 9 = light blue, A = light green, B = light cyan, C = light red, D = light purple, E = yellow, F = white. Note that the first nibble is the background color, second is foreground. By default, if you specify a background >= 8, subtract 8 to get the displayed background. The foreground will blink. Not sure what mechanism overrides this to allow "light" backgrounds, but I've seen it done.

I don't need DOS anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

Now that there is Privateer Remake to play in Linux, I am all done with DOS.

Re:I don't need DOS anymore

[geminidomino]

Link please. ;)

Don't care

[Opportunist]

As long as it comes bundled with DNF, I'm happy.

FreeDOS...

[Shadyman]

... but does it run Linux?

Re:FreeDOS...

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably!

C:\LINUX> loadlin vmlinuz root=/dev/hda1 ro

Yaah boo sucks to the naysayers

[mccalli]

This is a depressing thread to read - there seems to be a clear majority that think just because it's not immediately useful to them, it must be a waste of time and pointless.

Until recently, I was a FreeDOS user. I used it on a P100 laptop to connect to my Commodore 64 (the version of the connector cable I have requires a single-tasking OS). Is that a mainstream use? No, not by a long chalk. Is it a useful use? Well yeah, to me it definitely was. The C64 is turned on once in a blue moon to play the odd game or two, and the P100 (saved from a bin) let me transfer disk images off the net directly onto a 1541 floppy disk.

So that's one oddball use. Next up, two more mainstream uses. BIOS flash utilities? I'm on the Mac now, but I remember the majority of BIOS flashes being either required or recommended to be run from DOS. Then from reading some of the more useful posts to this thread I also learn it's in use within the embedded world. So that's two fairly mainstream activities where this helps.

And the final reason? Well....it's obvious. Just 'cos. That's a good and valid reason in itself, and the lack of appreciation for that thought within this thread is what's disappointing me. Just because someone hasn't spoon-fed you something shiny, it doesn't mean that the entire world disregards it. My congratulations to FreeDOS and the the positive posters, and once again - yaah boo sucks to the negative ones.

Cheers,
Ian

Re:Yaah boo sucks to the naysayers

[fm6]

This is a depressing thread to read - there seems to be a clear majority that think just because it's not immediately useful to them, it must be a waste of time and pointless.

We get those on every story. Not usually a majority though. Labor day?

Re:Yaah boo sucks to the naysayers

[VGPowerlord]

While booting to DOS may have been a requirement to Flash BIOSes in the past, it hasn't been for at least a few years now.

My current computer uses Award WinFlash by Phoenix Technologies (which acquired Award a while back), copyrighted in 2002, although the build that came on my motherboard's CD is dated 2005.

My BIOS also has an Upgrade BIOS on the CMOS Setup main menu, but I'm not sure how it works.

Re:Yaah boo sucks to the naysayers

[Reziac]

Maybe not a requirement anymore, but my feeling is since a BIOS flash is such a fundamentally critical operation, I don't want ANYTHING running that could possibly compromise that.

And even tho I would be the first to defend Windows' stability (I have WinMachines that have NEVER crashed, and I usually measure their uptime in months) ... if only because Windows is so complex, it's just one more thing that could conceivably interfere or go wrong. So if I have any choice at all, I prefer to do operations like BIOS flashing from plain old DOS.

Re:Yaah boo sucks to the naysayers

[davFr]

My motherboard is a MSI K8N NEO4 Platinum, I bought it ~1 year ago because it offered maximum stability and performance with the Athlon XP64 3500+.
The only ways to upgrade the BIOS are :
- floppy disk,
- updater tool under Windows only.

Now I am running Linux, and don't have this ancient piece of hardware called a floppy drive.
How should I upgrade the BIOS? For the timing being, I found no working method.
So yes : FreeDOS is definitely useful and I am waiting for a live CD of Freedos to flash my BIOS!

Re:Yaah boo sucks to the naysayers

[hummdinger02]

I use FreeDOS to breathe life back into used industrial equipment. Much of the equipment used DOS or some embedded variant and FreeDOS has helped me to help a variety of struggling businesses in Europe and North America to use good equipment that may have otherwise been too expensive to bring back to life.

Re:Yaah boo sucks to the naysayers

[the_greywolf]

When they release a flashing utility for Linux, then I'll rejoice in fervent jubilation.

Until then, I still have to fiddle with FreeDOS on my 32MB USB stick to do the dirty work.

Not only that but ...

[Anonymous Coward]

FreeDOS will run programs that I need to read old files that I haven't gotten around to converting.

FreeDOS also runs AutoCad 10. Laugh if you must but it does the job, I own it and it's way faster to use than any of the Linux CAD programs I have tried.

Wonder what grade Tanenbaum would give them ?

[ray-auch]

After this:

I still maintain the point that designing a monolithic kernel in 1991 is
a fundamental error. Be thankful you are not my student. You would not
get a high grade for such a design :-)

what grade would you get for rewriting DOS 15 yrs later, and would it be higher or lower than the Hurd guys get for taking 20+yrs to get to 0.2 (but doing it the "right" way, with a microkernel) ?

"5 years from now everyone will be running free GNU" - Andy Tanenbaum, 1992

Re:Wonder what grade Tanenbaum would give them ?

[k98sven]

what grade would you get for rewriting DOS 15 yrs later, and would it be higher or lower than the Hurd guys get for taking 20+yrs to get to 0.2 (but doing it the "right" way, with a microkernel) ?

What a smart-assed comment. What's your point? That you think that you (or the FreeDOS guys) know more about OS design than Tanenbaum? I doubt that very much. Tanenbaum wasn't saying a microkernel was the "right" way. He was saying it was the modern way.

It took less than a year for two guys to build the Wright Flyer but a decade for hundreds to build the Concorde. Which design do you think an avionics professor would consider more modern?

Implying that Tanenbaum's opinion was wrong just because the GNU Hurd project has been slow is ridiculous. Tanenbaum is not and never was a Hurd developer. He shares no part in that fiasco. The failure of Hurd versus the success of Linux has little or nothing to do with the kernel architecture and everything to do with the respective project leaderships.

It gets more ridiculous when you consider the fact that Tanenbaum is a guy who implemented an entire microkernel OS (Minix) from scratch, alone. (And Linux would not exist had he not, because Minix was the thing that inspired Linus to write Linux to begin with.)

"5 years from now everyone will be running free GNU" - Andy Tanenbaum, 1992

You're quoting that as if it implies some lack of insight on Tanenbaum's part. He correctly predicted that a free UNIX clone would become dominant, even if he missed the timescale. It's true he was wrong that it would be Hurd, and not Linux. But that was a sentiment shared by Linus himself at the time: "I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu)" - Linus Torvalds, 1991

Re:Wonder what grade Tanenbaum would give them ?

[ray-auch]

Tanenbaum wasn't saying a microkernel was the "right" way. He was saying it was the modern way.

If he didn't say microkernel was "right", he definitely said Linux / monolithic was "wrong". His acutal words were:

"a truly poor idea"
"a gross error"
"Not the way to go"
"a fundamental error"

Wright Flyer [...] Concorde. Which design do you think an avionics professor would consider more modern?

Linux was nowhere near as primitive in computing terms.

OS/360 -> Wright Flyer
Linux -> 747 (throwback design - SSTs were already in dev and thought to be the future)
Concorde -> Hurd / microkernels

Yep, you're right, your 1960/70s avionics professor would say that Concorder was more modern, and would be the future, and the 747 was obsolete.

History has proved them wrong, along with Tanenbaum. Like the microkernels, Concorde was beautifully engineered, technically advanced, a masterpiece. It was also massively late, over budget and a complete failure at actually doing the job on a large/commercial scale. Meanwhile the "obsolete" design (747, Linux) is the most successful aircraft ever and is still leading the game after the "modern" design (Concorde, microkernels) has failed.

he failure of Hurd versus the success of Linux has little or nothing to do with the kernel architecture and everything to do with the respective project leaderships.

Agreed entirely on the project leaderships, but if you look wider, the microkernels have _all_ failed (restricted to niches at best) and the major successful OSes are all monolithic. Is that really down to project leadership in every case ?

Recycling Old PC's

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm really overwhelmed by all the negativity here.

One of the very useful applications for this is in recycling old PCs. There are a lot of old computers out there that, you know, still WORK. Linux may not be the best choice for them.

Yeah there's talk about the $100 laptop, but you know, there's hardware out there that people would be happy to give away for free just knowing that someone will get some use out of it. FreeDOS is ideal for that.

Want a GUI? You could take Freedos put OpenGEM on it, and have a very useful GUI workstation, with word processor, drawing programs, mp3 player, etc etc.

Re:Ten years for a DOS clone..? You got to be joki

[Anonymous Coward]

It's been usable and stable for 8 years or more. And this is in no way equivalent to MS-DOS 1.0 - it's equivalent to the latest commercial DOSes (and even includes long file name support without needing Windows 9x), with a shitload of extra software included as well. In case you didn't notice, it took much longer than 10 years for the commercial DOS developers to do the same.

But...

[RAMMS EIN]

will it run Duke Nuke 'em Forever?

DOS is used is more places than you think

[rsayers]

I work in a casino, all slow machines run dos. I know there are still a lot of "embeded" uses still out there.

Re:DOS is used is more places than you think

[BigFootApe]

all slow machines run dos

They wouldn't have the poop for running Vista, now, would they.

Re:DOS is used is more places than you think

[Anonymous Coward]

I work in a casino, all slow machines run dos. I know there are still a lot of "embeded" uses still out there.

One of the newest buildings I know of in Sydney Australia (with the fastest most modern lifts around here), run DOS for their displays. There have been a few times I've walked into the lift and looked at the time (usually displayed on the screen with the floor, occupants, etc) and noticed that all the display could tell me, was that COMMAND.COM could not be found. ; )

Then there are the train station platform informational displays, with Windows NT BSOD's or "Press Control-Alt-Delete to log in".

I guess there is a pattern there though. The reliance on MS. I hope FreeDOS takes over the DOS world.

Related stuff

[sankyuu]

I haven't tried freedos in a while, but I tried dosbox and it worked well with commander keen on winxpsp2 =)

(I am not affiliated with any of the software listed above)

Where does that leave Linux?

[The_Abortionist]

If IBM loses the SCO case, Linux could fold. I guess FreeDOS could replace Linux at this point. It has similar feel and functionality, just missing a few drivers. Almost no re-training required!

PS: YFI

Re:Where does that leave Linux?

[OrangeTide]

FreeDOS has a feature Linux lacks, DRIVE LETTERS!!

Re:Where does that leave Linux?

[808140]

Well, on my linux installation, I have all my partitions mounted in folders called 'C:', 'D:', 'E:' ...

Re:Where does that leave Linux?

[Korin43]

Yeah, since SCO has such a strong case..

Re:Where does that leave Linux?

[4D6963]

Well, on my linux installation, I have all my partitions mounted in folders called 'C:', 'D:', 'E:' ...

If we assume you made them in /, you still have to do /C: instead of just C:, right?

Or maybe can you fix that with an alias?

Serious question:

[mblase]

Does it support Intel Macs? I can't find them mentioned on the project pages.

Re:Serious question:

[Anonymous Coward]

Intel Macs use EFI, not BIOS. So no, it won't work on an intel Mac unless you use an emulator like you would on a PPC Mac.

Netware

[Anonymous Coward]

So, can we boot netware with it?

No longer in development, but still powerful...

[Pollux]

Network admin here. I take care of about 150 computers in a small school district. I've been using Ghost 8 for the last two years, and it's worked great. For a boot disk, I've been using Bart's Boot Disk also for the last two years. I download the image, grab all the additional driver plug-ins that I need for the different network cards that are around (though I got a crapload of Intel Pro/100 PCI NICs lying around for whenever I run into an oddball NIC now and again). After I created the disk, got the right drivers on it, and set up the menus during the booting of the disk exactly the way I wanted it to be, I burned a copy of the disk to CD-ROM, made it bootable, and from bootup, I now have a bootable CD that takes 10 seconds (not including time to type in password, though I could automate that also if I wanted to...I don't myself) to log into the Windows domain, map a drive on the server that has all the Ghost images, and automatically loads Ghost for me. It uses the Win98 DOS kernel, but whoop-dee-doo. Nothing else comes close (not even Symantec's own bootdisk builder) to creating an efficient method of auto-detecting and loading drivers for your NIC, loading the TCP/IP protocol and using DHCP to grab you an IP, authenticating inside a Windows domain, mapping drives, and above all, doing it in DOS in under 10 seconds (on a CD...took about 45 seconds from the floppy).

As for updating all the stupid BIOS programs that still need DOS to run the flash programs...well, I still got some spare floppies lying around for just such an occasion.

Screenshots

[Bobby Cannon]

Where's the screenshots?

Re:Screenshots

[Espectr0]

Looks something like this:

C:\>

Re:Screenshots

[kusanagi374]

C:\> cd dos
C:\DOS> cd run
C:\DOS\RUN> cd dos
C:\DOS\RUN\DOS> cd run
C:\DOS\RUN\DOS\RUN> _

Re:Screenshots

[Prof.Phreak]

...only one in a million would find that funny.

Re:Screenshots

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is your screen shot:

c:\>

Re:Screenshots

[TheoMurpse]

Where's the screenshots?

Well, here's one:
C:\>cd media

C:\MEDIA\>dir
Volume in drive C has no label.
Volume Serial Number is DC5C-6B41

Directory of C:\Media

03/13/2002 05:18p <DIR> .
03/13/2002 05:18p <DIR> ..
03/13/2002 05:18p <DIR> Music
0 File(s) 0 bytes
3 Dir(s) 71,568,355,840 bytes free

C:\MEDIA\>

Re:Screenshots

[Brandybuck]

Actually, I found it funny. But that was ten years ago when I heard it the first time.

Re:Screenshots

[HatofPig]

C:/DOS>
C:/DOS>RUN
RUN/DOS/RUN

Re:Screenshots

[Prof.Phreak]

Actually, I found it funny. But that was ten years ago when I heard it the first time.

Congratulations for missing The Simpsons reference.

Re:Screenshots

[the_greywolf]

Having just finished watching seasons 1-13 and half of season 14, (still not having seen anything later) I completely miss any Simpson's reference.

On to Windows now...

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice!!!

Now, let's start a FreeWindows so we can have a fully compatible Windows 3.11

Imagine that!

oh yeah??

[Anonymous Coward]

well so does this!

10 PRINT "=)"
20 END

(Sorry, couldn't help it, just reminiscing on my old DOS days. Please move along)

Re:oh yeah??

[shani]

Actually, your program doesn't reproduce the behavior. The debug statements simple write directly to video memory. This means that the "=)" is written to the upper left of the screen, without changing anything else. You probably want something like this:

100 ' Save the original cursor position
110 SAVEROW=CSRLIN:SAVECOL=POS(0)
200 ' Output our message
210 LOCATE 1,1
220 PRINT "=)";
300 ' Restore our original position
310 LOCATE SAVEROW,SAVECOL

It's not quite the same, because it actually moves the cursor and restores it, but your screen should look the same as if you used the "debug" commands. This program also reproduces the "bug" that if you enter either program when you are already at the bottom of the screen, the smiley will scroll off the top right after it appears. :)

Re:oh yeah??

[Cat_Byte]

renum

Re:oh yeah??

[c0d3r]

Renum was very useful to me, particularly on my first attempt to implement a chess program in BASICA, where I entered the maximum number lines of code (64k) where it gave me the error:

Out of Memory

I was sure that that damn IBM pcjr had 16k RAM with a BASICA cartridge.

=)!

Re:oh yeah??

[c0d3r]

Just to Peek and Poke Line 110 had to be undoced (a standard business rule). Too bad the blue IBM technical reference with the ASM to at least the interrupt vector wasn't complete (sigh). I donno.. maybe i can order those old skool dox.

mb

Porting WINE to FreeDOS?

[78 105 107]

I'm not sure if this is possible, but, does anyone think it would be possible to port WINE to FreeDOS? What I thought might work would be heavily modifying OpenGEM or taking code from ReactOS to make a windowing system. Any other thoughts on this?

Re:Porting WINE to FreeDOS?

[dosius]

Anything's possible if you toss enough brain power at it.

I for one would like to see a win9x clone that runs on FreeDOS, but I don't have the technical knowhow to pull it off. On the other hand ReactOS is an OS unto itself that's Windows-compatible and perhaps pieces of that could be hacked to sit on top of FreeDOS?

Why? WYNAUT!

-uso.

You mean ReactOS

[tepples]

Hmm.. next, i'm sure, comes FreeDows, but that name would just be too corny.

The ReactOS developers would probably agree with you, which is part of why they chose the name "ReactOS" for their Windows clone.

Re:You mean ReactOS

[Chacham]

The project was renamed ReactOS, since the operating system's roots grew out of a dissatisfaction with Microsoft's monopoly over the operating system market.

Flashback

[misleb]

Whoa. That was quite the flashback.

"Now with EMM386!"

Umm, yay?

AM-100 Datalogger

[frogstar_robot]

The AM-100 is a datalogger used to collect data from photovoltaic panel fed inverters. It is no longer manufactured and the only software available to collect data from the logger runs in DOS. I run FreeDOS on top of DOSemu in Linux to collect this data. When running under Win98, the logger software would not be stable for more than three days at a time. It was no more stable under DOSemu but I used a cron job to kill and restart the software at midnight (no sunlight so it wasn't collecting data anyway...). Other scripts scrape the CSV files the logger software produces to make graphs. I futhermore run the DOSemu session under GNU screen. This allows me to view the logger software remotely w/ssh. FreeDOS in combination with other tools allowed me to usefully extend the capabilities of a no longer manufactured hardware/software product.

Re:AM-100 Datalogger

[Alsee]

It was no more stable under DOSemu but I used a cron job to kill and restart the software at midnight (no sunlight so it wasn't collecting data anyway...)

What a horrible and blatant bug!

The sun wasn't up at midnight yesterday, so you just assume the sun won't be up at midnight tomorrow.

Did no one learn anything from the Y2K bug fiasco? No, of course not. Most programmers still hardcode the year in a fixed 4 digit field.... which is the exact same bug just waiting to explode in the year 10000. The only *correct* way to code the year is in a dynamically allocated variable length string with no artifically imposed length limit.

-

Re:AM-100 Datalogger

[Anonymous Coward]

The sun wasn't up at midnight yesterday, so you just assume the sun won't be up at midnight tomorrow.

In the State of Ohio, USA that is a pretty safe assumption to make. If the sun DOES come up at midnight here, then we'll have bigger problems than a misconfigured logger for a solar panel. The software for the logger is what it is. I don't have source code or any such amenities for it. It is consistently only stable for three days or so and has to be logging data when the sun is shining.

The clock on the parent server is ntp synced and this makes it's way into the logger through DOSEMU. What else would you have me do?

Re:AM-100 Datalogger

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoosh.

Re:AM-100 Datalogger

[Alsee]

What else would you have me do?

I'd have you read the rest of my post, and then proceed to laugh that I suggested the sun might be up at midnight tomorrow.

And in true geek-humor fashion, hopefully to spot the meta-level. To first reject the blatant absurdity of my criticism, and then to be caught in a comic mental double-take realizing that there really *are* situations where the sun can be up at midnight. The point was absurd and absolutely unreasonable, but technicaly true.

As programmers we really can get bitten in the ass and blamed for assuming that the sun is going to rise tomorrow.

-

Why go to all the trouble??

[weasel5i2]

I realize this totally misses the point of TFA, but..

Just go to http://www.bootdisk.com/ and download one of many different illicit/fuzzy/licit DOS bootable images, among others. These guys have been around for some time.. ^_^

--Weasel

DOS is the operating system used by some cameras

[YA_Python_dev]

DOS is still used a lot. E.g.: the operating system in my Canon PowerShot camera is a DOS-clone (yes: the processor is 8086-compatible).

My use for DOS

[cgenman]

For a while after college I worked a job that required bouncing between locations. The computers in these locations included a 486 Win95, a P2 Debian, a P3 WinME, a P4 XP, and a 386 Win3.1.

A DOS boot disk turned out to be the perfect solution. "Screw your OS, I'm going back to DOS." The old but surprisingly robust word processor worked like a charm, and I got a lot of writing done, despite disparate environments and a wide hardware gap.

Thanks, DOS!

Re:My use for DOS

[Reziac]

Heh heh... I still use an "old but robust" DOS word processor (WordPerfect 5.1, which will run on a floppy-only system in a pinch), in part because it will indeed let me get work done on any piece of crap PC, in nearly any environment.

In fact my first requirement for any setup is "Will it run WP5.1?"

And my second is... "Will it run DOOM?" :)

DOS is still in use in embedded applications

[Cassini2]

I occasionally use DOS in embedded applications. DOS can actually be faster than Windows. DOS provides near direct hardware access. In Windows, you have so much stuff happening, that it is almost impossible to do anything with low latencies. Effectively, you have two choices: build some custom micro-controller board that can be programmed in assembly (or C), or run DOS on a PC and program in assembly (or C).

For one off systems, custom developing your own hardware costs way more than just using an obsolete PC. Besides, if the idea works out, you can port the code to a custom developed micro-controller board later.

Re:DOS is still in use in embedded applications

[misleb]

Would you even need to develop a custom micro-controller board? Aren't there generic programable controller/board combos that are a lot more compact and reliable than a PC?

Re:DOS is still in use in embedded applications

[Anonymous Coward]

They're also often slower and more expensive than just using some old x86 system board/cpu.
There is a definite market for embedded systems that need to do a lot, and store a lot.
I.E they might need a P III cpu and 512mb ram.
You won't get that on an embedded board without paying hell of $$

Another thing is with DOS + x86 you're getting a very stable / time-tested combo.
The probabilty of running into development troubles and getting system bugs is far lower than some exotic arch running a recent-ish linux or what have you :)

Great, I've got a use for my old DOS books.

[cjsm]

I'm been wanting to get rid of them somehow. I need to start getting rid of books I never use.

I dunno man

[Sycraft-fu]

I wonder if you've used modern music software. I've been playing with music software since the DOS days and while sure, there are neat programs for DOS, they don't compare to what's available for Windows/Mac today. Have you played with Sonar or the like? It's really just damn slick. I do have fond memories of things like Scream Tracker, and indeed you can get more powerful modern versions in the form of things like ModPlug Tracker. However once you've dealt with a modern sequence with a robust sampler playing samples gigabytes in size, with any kind of effects you can get a plugin for, it's real hard to go back to a text, spreadsheet like interface with tiny samples.

Now, I'll grant you, you can get the DOS programs for free, professional apps are expensive. However I think it's misleading to say the DOS programs "haven't been beat." I think they have, badly. That's no knock on them, there's only so much you can do when 4MB is a large program and you've maybe half that much RAM. However that's not a problem anymore, and it's nice to see what you can do with a modern system. Sure it's cool to see a MOD player with a robust cubic resampling engine to pitch shift a single note several octaves without distortion. However it's even cooler to have a 5GB sample bank that doesn't NEED pitch shifting, because all the notes have been recorded individually.

Re:I dunno man

[Jack Action]

Sure it's cool to see a MOD player with a robust cubic resampling engine to pitch shift a single note several octaves without distortion. However it's even cooler to have a 5GB sample bank that doesn't NEED pitch shifting, because all the notes have been recorded individually.

Trackers create and play their own samples. Soundfonts, however, are samples. They are loaded directly into the soundcard, where they are available to be used by a sequencer, keyboard etc.

The two examples cited above -- Sequencer Gold and CMU Midi Toolkit -- are both DOS sequencers that can play modern 5GB soundfonts because the samples are loaded in the card and available to any program (even one run through Dosemu). The two are separate. In my experience, these sequencers are better than anything now available for Linux.

Your point is definately true though that old Dos trackers are pretty feeble compared to what's available now.

Re:I dunno man

[Sycraft-fu]

I know what soundfonts are by the way, I've owned virtually every Creative card since the SB16 (currently have an X-Fi).

Soundfonts aren't really the best sample format though, and I've never really found large professional samples in that format. Also, if the sequencers rely on the soundcard, you aren't getting samples that large to load. If you are talking the older cards (like AWE 64 Gold) with onboard RAM, it didn't even approach that level. I think it capped out at around 40MB. If you are talking the newer ones that use system RAM they lack DOS support and they'll freak out on large sample banks and start dropping sounds, if they load at all. Even with the X-Fi, you are limited to the physical RAM in the system for SF cache size. It doesn't do DFD on samples so that's a necessity. You'd have to have a 64-bit system to get the amount you are talking about, and I'm not sure if it would work even then.

You'd also run in to polyphony limits in a hurry. Large samples usually have a large decay time. This means you need a ton of polyphony. For example on a drumkit I have I usually set the polyphony limit to 64 just for the cymbals alone. Well everything under the X-Fi is 64-notes max total, and the X-Fi is only 128. Just not really equipped for large samples.

I'm just not seeing DOS samplers as being able to handle the large samples like new ones do. Partially because I've never come across it being done, mostly of the limits of systems at the time. Systems lacked the RAM, HDs lacked the space, processors lacked the computation power, we lacked the optical distribution method (DVD is a virtual necessity).

Unfortunately

[Sycraft-fu]

I think you'll find that using the "real thing" is impossible unless you want to use it on old hardware. Running DOS bare metal on modern systems is an exercise in futility. The two major problems are sound and speed. Sound is a problem since most modern soundcards don't support the old APIs that DOS programs use. The SBLive had some DOS support, though it had to be loaded via Windows IIRC. The last one with real DOS support was the AWE64 Gold. An X-Fi simply isn't going to do anything at all. Speed is another issue. Though many of the speed gains in processors are in new things like vector math units, the whole thing has just gotten faster. Many DOS programs just can't cope with the speed since it is so far beyond what was conceivable in the day. Their counters overrun before anything can happen, and so on.

And you'll probably find it really annoying and limiting not to have a multi-tasking OS. You just get real used to being able to do lots of things at once and switch around. It becomes very strange to go to a system where you can't switch out to anything. You are stuck at a single command prompt, period.

Re:Unfortunately

[gsn]

You are right ofcourse - most speed adjusters are throughly useless on modern cpus and you have to keep some old hardware around. Currently that is an old thinkpad a22e and that currently runs xubuntu but it'd be nice to have DOS on it as well. Thats the intention atleast - lets see how it works in practice. Theres much older hardware at home in India and presumably my high school is still using 486s.

Speed adjusters are pretty effective on it - the laptop 98 out of the box and while I was young and stupid. MoSlo works well to slow games down. There is very little trouble getting its sound card to work in games. Alleycat uses pc speaker so no worries there :D Also shame on you - the lack of a multitasking OS is made up for my the privlege of using edit to change your autoexec.bat and config.sys and getting mscdex to work. Repeat atleast four times a day for maximum satisfaction! That single command prompt was all I knew when I was a wee lad. If anything my only annoyance is going to be that when I first started using *nix I'd alias clear to cls and ls to dir and got out of the habit after a while. There is almost certainly going to be a recurrence.

DOSbox is an absolutely great piece of software, and I meant no disrespect to them, but its not without its shortcomings - try getting magic carpet to work on it - its actually too slow for some old pc games. I suspect it will be easier to get games to run in a true DOS environment rather than a dos emulator - mostly because the old games used to run in actual dos to begin with. Don't know how compatible FreeDOS will be but am optimistic. Irrespective of what you use - and I'm sure DOSbox is not going to die because of FreeDOS or anything silly like that - its really good to have one more avenue to get old games to work. ANd a whole load of posters have pointed out several other merits to having a true DOS.

Actually DOS is shitty for a BBS

[Sycraft-fu]

DOS is single task and not network aware, so if you run a BBS it's one node, dialup only. If you want to run a BSS, and people still do believe it or not, the way to go is something like Synchronet (http://www.synchro.net/). That will run on modern OSes like Windows and Linux as a native app. Because of that, you can run a multi-node BBS with ease on a single system. Also, it's fully aware of their network stacks and will work over telnet as readily as a modem. It even supports teh old Door protocols and yes, Door games work just fine on it.

Basically, DOS is mostly useful for embedded stuff these days where you want essentially a zero impact OS, just something to do your disk and memory management (which is really all DOS did). Anything else, a modern OS does better.

Re:Actually DOS is shitty for a BBS

[Reziac]

Wildcat 4.x could do multiple nodes in DOS. It also plays nice with Netware linking DOS machines as separate nodes (which is nice for performance).

As to who'd still do such a thing... visit http://eqcity.com/bbs.htm :)

Re:Actually DOS is shitty for a BBS

[Wavicle]

Just out of curiousity... Were you even around during the early 90's when BBSes hit their peak? There were several BBS products written on top of DOS that were multiline capable even back in the 80s. For those BBS products that couldn't, there was a TSR that could do task switching so you could run two lines.

DOS is single task and not network aware, so if you run a BBS it's one node, dialup only.

Back in my day we didn't have any fancy multithreaded pre-emptive kernel to run our 32 line BBSes. We had 486/66 DX2 DOS boxes with 4 digiboards in ISA slots each with 8 serial ports running DLX software. And we said "Hey look at me, I connected at 2400 baud!" And we watched ASCII art animations that were best viewed at 1200 baud, and we used X-modem for our downloads, AND WE LIKED IT.

Re:Actually DOS is shitty for a BBS

[Sycraft-fu]

I never encountered a BBS running multi-node software. Of the ones that were multi-node (and there weren't a lot where I lived) a couple ran on OS/2 and had different instances of the software running on different modems. One or two were multi-computer on a small LAN. I never encountered one that handled multi-node internally.

Regardless, if you wish to run a BBS today, do it on Windows or UNIX. No reason to use DOS, that's just more effort you don't need.

Re:Actually DOS is shitty for a BBS

[multipartmixed]

Back in MY day... my BBS had six nodes, and ran Maximus-CBCS 2.01wb under MS-DOS 5.0/DESQview 2.31 (later upgraded to PC-Board 15).

Six serial ports were achieved by hardware-hacking a second serial board to have non-standard addresses, and scooping the interrupts from a sixteen-bit slot with bits of wire and a hunk of edge card connector. The X00 FOSSIL was required to get the non-standard COM ports up and running (BRU worked, too, IIRC).

Two monitors were achieved by running the secondary display on at 0xb000:0 (?) via MDA (Hercules) video card.

All in all, a good system, with a Cyrix 486DLC processor overclocked to 68MHz. No performance issues, even at 14,400 bps.

Re:Actually DOS is shitty for a BBS

[Cro Magnon]

Back in my day we didn't have any fancy multithreaded pre-emptive kernel to run our 32 line BBSes. We had 486/66 DX2 DOS boxes with 4 digiboards in ISA slots each with 8 serial ports running DLX software. And we said "Hey look at me, I connected at 2400 baud!" And we watched ASCII art animations that were best viewed at 1200 baud, and we used X-modem for our downloads, AND WE LIKED IT.

Was that before of after you walked 5 miles to school in knee-deep snow?

Re:Actually DOS is shitty for a BBS

[Anonymous Coward]

We expanded our one line BBS to two in the early 90s. We were very proud at the time, it was a small BBS with a loyal MUD addicted userbase.

Anywho simply put DOS didn't cut it, we even migrated out BBS software to something claiming it could handle multiple lines. After a bunch of work to make it all fly, we discovered that when one line hit full speed the other one dropped, or ignored inbound connections. I'm sure it all works fine if you have special / high end hardware for the serial ports / modems - but we didn't.

In the end we rolled back to our older BBS software and ran two instances of it under OS/2. OS/2 ate it for breakfast and never missed a beat.

Re:Actually DOS is shitty for a BBS

[drinkypoo]

In the end we rolled back to our older BBS software and ran two instances of it under OS/2. OS/2 ate it for breakfast and never missed a beat.

There's two ways BBS software comnonly handled multiple lines on DOS. One was with a FOSSIL driver that would let you support multiple modems at once. BBS had to have fossil support IIRC, but that pretty much covered all of the most popular software. The other way was with multiple copies of the software running on Desqview or OS/2, sharing the same data files.

But then, you must have known that... but where I was going with all this is that I personally have known people who ran successful multi-line BBSes with no special hardware save for serial port carts with configurable interrupts. On DOS.

Re:Actually DOS is shitty for a BBS

[innocent_white_lamb]

There is one other option that you didn't mention there. Before I got DESQview and used that to run my two-line BBS, I ran it using DoubleDOS on an XT, believe it or not.

DESQview on my 486 was much nicer, obviously.

Re:Actually DOS is shitty for a BBS

[drinkypoo]

DR-DOS 6 also came with a DOS multitasker, IIRC. At the time I was still running DOS I didn't have anything worth running it on, though. I think I might have used it to run two text editors at once but that's about it. By the time I got a 386, Linux was pretty decent, and I moved over to that. Let's see, I could have multiple DOS programs running, or I could be running Unix with X11, Netscape, etc etc. It was an easy one :)

Re:Actually DOS is shitty for a BBS

[Wavicle]

There's two ways BBS software comnonly handled multiple lines on DOS.

You forgot "created a state machine for each connection and polled the lines serially" which is what DLX did. I don't know about others, I don't have their source code, but DLX was released into the public domain. It's about 15K lines of very squirrely pascal with such ingenious variable names as "x" and "dd".

FreeWin95 became ReactOS

[tepples]

In 2016, they might be able to start with FreeWIN95.

ReactOS started as FreeWin95 but shifted in 1997 to produce a clone of the NT kernel.

You mean ReactOS

[tepples]

Now, let's start a FreeWindows so we can have a fully compatible Windows 3.11

The ReactOS team is already skipping forward to FreeWin2k.

At last!

[keeboo]

Now I can finally dump that trashy Linux and KDE, and enjoy a full computing experience with my dual core-powered machine!

Oh my....

[Anonymous Coward]

A free DOS replacement!!! Just in time! come on... be serious!

Re:DOS is the operating system used by some camera

[Chacham]

Nice.

Actually, in about 1997, i disagreed with someone over the use of DOS in a decade. He said it was dead, and after that period, would be totally gone. I still believe otherwise, and hope to ask this question on Ask Slashdot in January. :)

I still think it is kind of late. I didn't say useless, or even not appreciated, just late. :)

Yawwwn

[whichpaul]

Why? Why? Microsoft must be shaking in their boots. What's next: OpenPunchCard 1.0?!

Does it run on Intel Powerbooks?

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

I guess not but I'll ask anyway...

Re:Ten years for a DOS clone..? You got to be joki

[caseih]

Not sure why the parent comment was moderated insightful. FreeDOS has a very bright future and will continue to be used in its niche areas. So indeed it is a very useful project. So I am very grateful for the hard work of the freeDOS developers over all these years. Just the other day I used FreeDOS under dosemu to resurrect some old PowerBASIC code.

Actually...

[Gordonjcp]

... by far the most common use for DOS these days is in the EPOS market, still. If it doesn't have a garish "obviously-done-in-Visual-Basic-on-XP-Embedded" look about it, it runs DOS.

The REAL reason for FreeDOS

[ArhcAngel]

I have read countless comments asking basically the same question, "WHY?". I have the answer. M.A.M.E. I can now build and sell an arcade console complete with FreeDOS and M.A.M.E. installed and any home brew games available. Slap one of the nicer front-ends on it and market it without fear of legal entanglements. What you do with the box once you have it is none of my business. I know you can get boxes like that now but I think a FreeDOS / M.A.M.E. / Some form of Front-end preinstalled would be a nice package for the non-enthusiast.

Re:The REAL reason for FreeDOS

[VirUZI]

You should probably read the MAME license before you start selling your arcade consoles if you want to avoid legal entanglements:

* Redistributions may not be sold, nor may they be used in a commercial product or activity.

It might not be as free as you think.

USB Bootability

[DrYak]

USB Key :
While most old BIOS aren't able to boot from a storage class usb device unlike modern one, there are drivers like DUSE and others, that enable the access to USB devices on those oldies.
So one could make a generic "boots DOS with USB support" bootdisk / bootiso and use it everytime you have to flash some BIOS / Firmware and want to save the new ROM on a USB stick. (The combination "USB BootISO + ROM on a stick" come VERY handy when flashing floppy-less boxes).

Front-ends :
A open variant of GEM (huh... Seals ?) is included in the "larger" distribution of FreeDOS.
Also, for those who need a small box just to surf the web, no need for a full graphical environnement, there stuff like Arachne (full graphical browser, GPL. Description at Wikipedia).
Great for a surfbox, and the old 386 on which you'll run it doesn't draw as much power as a Pentium 4.

IBM PC

[ch0knuti]

FreeDOS is a free DOS-compatible operating system for IBM-PC compatible systems

Man now that brings back memories. When was the last time anybody used that term?

Re:IBM PC

[An ominous Cow art]

To this day I still say "IBM-PC contemptible"... :-)

Microsoft Word for DOS is now free as in beer

[ribuck]

Microsoft makes Word 5.5 for DOS available as free-beer software.

They had to fix a year 2000 bug and decided to give the software away rather than trying to sell it.

Word for DOS 5.0 was a really nice piece of work, although in my opinion the interface had started to go downhill by 5.5 (trying to copy the Windows interface too much).

Details here: http://www.downloadsquad.com/2005/11/25/free-file/

If it's 1.0, why's it called Dos?

[Junior J. Junior III]

I would have thought Uno would be more appropriate.

Re: =) !

[An ominous Cow art]

Back in my less socially responsible days, I had something similar I used on Apple ][ machines in stores or at school. I think it was:

]CALL -151

*300:A9 4E 20 ED FD AE 30 C0 4C 00 03
*300G

This is a tight loop which will fill the screen with garbage and constantly click the speaker. Ah, good times... It's probably been 21 years since I last used it. Hmm, I just tried it in an emulator and it's printing the same character over and over. I may be reading the wrong zero page location, or maybe the emulator isn't 100%, it is an old beta version.

re: DOS still has uses

[King_TJ]

Quite a few NEC NEAX phone PBX systems still run DOS. I'm quite sure NEC no longer makes any new systems that do, but the old DOS-based ones were incredibly reliable. They're still widely used by the military, as well as in many hotels and offices.

I used to work for a place that used one, and except for actual hardware failures or someone screwing up while trying to reprogram it, I don't think it ever crashed in 6 or 7 years of constant use.

(The place I work for now has a PBX that relies on a Windows NT box for its voice mail and voice prompting. In 6 months, I've had to reboot it twice to fix issues with voice messages no longer showing up in people's mailboxes, etc.)

I'm also told that the firmware in the Canon EOS Digital Rebel cameras is MS-DOS based.

Almost...

[leonbrooks]

...try this, to be sure:

A:\> FORMAT C: /U

Caution, don't do this on a real PC unless you really feel like head-butting a wall real soon now. (-:

-1, Factually Correct

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't want to get into a pissing match over mere facts, do you? Just shut up and run linux.

Re:Ten years for a DOS clone..?

[j.leidner]

DOS is DOS is DOS remains DOS. It remains true that even when it came out it was far from state of the art, and that's why I consider cloning it a decade later a waste of time. Of course people are free to do what they want with their time (reimplement ED.EXE in FORTRAN IV, anyone?). But I fear that FREEDOS' existence will just give IT people more pain, because they will continue to have to support the old legacy systems using DOS instead of being forced to re-design their IT in a clean way so as to take into account what has happened in technology since.

torrent file?

[drinkypoo]

could anybody seed up a torrent? the download speeds are tragic.

Mod parent up

[ink]

It's not flamebait at all, it's actually the truth...

Hope Windows 3.11 will run on it...

[DirtyFly]

Lets wait for M$ to release a new version of WFW that hangs on FreeDOS Jorge

Or they could do the Dell thing...

[Ayanami Rei]

In the past few years Dell has made an effort to make sure that you don't need to drop to DOS to flash the firmware in a piece of hardware. If your PC is ACPI compliant there's some device presented to the OS that can be used so that Windows/Linux/FreeBSD can flash the BIOS.
http://linux.dell.com/libsmbios/main/dellBiosUpdat e.html

The newer LSI and 3Ware cards have a feature like this too.

16 megs max

[extract]

I wonder if FreeDOS 1.0 has a hard 16 MB RAM upper limit! If so, nobody will be able to accuse FreeDOS of being a memory hog!

now that i've

[Bassman59]

finally repurposed those brain cells that I was using to store the arcane knowledge of autoexec.bat and config.sys!

Re:now that i've

[Aqua_boy17]

Hey, wait. Don't forget about edlin. Oh, wait. You probably already have.

Now all you damn kids better get off of my lawn!

Perspective

[Anonymous Coward]

Y'know, if you read "DDOS" as "Double-D OS", you almost start looking forward to getting one...

Is protected mode + C/C++ too much?

[Ayanami Rei]

I was rather fond of DJGPP's environment with RHIDE as an IDE. You could do real-modish realtime peeks and pokes with it while simultaneously allocating large arrays and doing fancy stuff with DMA.

I would think it'd be easier to interface an industrial controller DAC/ADC board that way ... but my only experience was with sound cards. But don't similar principles apply?

That's not DOS.

[Ayanami Rei]

That's the Windows XP recovery console.
Which is Windows XP running a minimal set of drivers (just enough to load the OS), and then giving you a CMD.EXE

It has absolutely nothing to do with DOS. The only real-mode component of Windows XP is the beginning portion of NTLDR before it switches to protected mode.

Mmmm...

[dafragsta]

FreeDOS Chili Pie.

The best use for DOS ..

[dbcad7]

Was Doom !

And probably still a good use for it, I would imagine.

Re: =) !

[c0d3r]

Uhh crash windoze.. I just did it by accident.. see if you can repro...

Open cmd.. copy some 50 lines of code (specifically c#) =)! Run the old skool edit editor and try to paste the code via alt-space-e-p and hit alt-enter to full screen the console... here lemme try it.. arrrrghh... 424...

Re: =) !

[c0d3r]

NE1 catch the bug? c: didn't exist til the XT. (Subst didn't exist)