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Life After MS-DOS: FreeDOS Keeps On Kicking
angry tapir writes "FreeDOS — the drop-in, open source replacement for MS-DOS — was started after Microsoft announced that starting from Windows 95, DOS would play a background role at best for users. Almost two decades later, FreeDOS has survived and, as its creator explains in this interview, is still being actively developed, despite achieving its initial aim of an MS-DOS compatible OS, which quite frankly is somewhat amazing."
To recreate something is to understand it, and msdos is worth understanding. Tons of legacy applications still depend on dos and are still in use! This is a step towards long term support of those applications.
To offset political mods, replace Flamebait with Insightful.
The graphics suck though.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
If only I hadn't used all my 5.25" floppies trying to decapitate attacking zombies...
Great, development is ongoing. What, exactly? What sort of interesting things have happened in the development? What sort of 'bugs that have become features' had to be included?
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
What's better for retro gaming: DosBox, or a virtual machine running FreeDos?
Play Command HQ online
They can take our lives, but they will never take our FreeDOS! William (Bill) Wallace
This just makes me miss DR-DOS...
Why not? For embedded systems, when you need more than a boot loader, don't want all the excess baggage of Linux, and don't want to pay for one of the embedded OSs like QNX, it's a good option.
You also know that FreeDOS doesn't have a "phone home" feature, a HTTP server, a mail server, or something else on an open port running in the background without your knowing about it.
Calm your tits. If it was a spoken interview, such lapses are forgivable. If it was written, it could be a problem of editing. For example, maybe he intended to say: "we don't have the number of developers today that we had 10 years ago". Then he thinks: it would sound better if I said "we don't have as many developers today as we had 10 years ago". So he edits part of the phrase, but misses just one word, and you have a weird mix of versions.
Some mistakes are a bit harder to forgive, though. Such as "alot", or using "y'all" as singular. Those are quite annoying indeed.
Circumcision is child abuse.
Is it just me or is the average textual user interface much more efficient and quick to use than the average graphical user interface?
This is speaking from my experience in retail back-ends.
But when we start work on 2.0, I'd prefer to take another look at FreeDOS and think about what DOS needs to do to take a step forward.
How about a GUI?
Circumcision is child abuse.
DOS is one of those things that is there like herpes if you dig deep enough under the skin of any enterprise and even a few home users you will find it there.
XP refuses to die on the otherhand and which came out when PCs were much more popular than during the DOS era. I wonder in 2023 we will be having XPBOX or FreeXP since it has so many die hard users who refuse to leave kicking and screaming the whole time.
http://saveie6.com/
Internet is spelled with a capital I. Idiot.
since if you avoid TSRs you have full control over the hardware.
I once implemented a digital PID controller (with a few extra bits) using Turbo C on a 486 with an A/D card. The drivers for the card sucked, so I had to rewrite them but the result was a read/calculate/write cycle that was 4x faster than the stock driver.
What I want is a FreeDOS shell for Linux: FreeDOSH . If that existed, it would be exciting to write DOS batch scripts on linux. LOL
-- Betting on the survival of the media industry is a serious risk. I advise investing elsewhere.
Maybe its like Australians saying
A is different TO B
when they mean
A is different FROM B
The language dictates
Similar TO
Different FROM
Still, we simply smile, and not jump down the throats of our Australian friends, or call them names.
F. Robert Jack
It's "as many... AS"... not "that". Bloody Americans - why can't you understand what simple words mean? Why are you constantly substituting 'then' for 'than', or 'that' for 'than', or even 'than' for 'then'? Are you so stupid that you can't even understand simple words like that? It's all over the internet. Idiots.
Last I saw I wasn't leaking any sort of life sustaining fluid. But I guess your colloquialism of "Bloody Americans" is OK since it happens to align with your culture. Word usage changes over time. Not that he is correct, but word usage and even definition changes over time. Get used to it.
Dos is still required for bios flashings. I really like using Rufus ( http://rufus.akeo.ie/ ) and get a flash drive ready with FreeDos. A two clicks process and it's all FOSS.
"640kb ought to be enough for anybody." -- Bill Gates
It now appears to be true.
The backslash is used as the directory heirarchy separator.
The drive letter is part of the path specification.
The current directory is implicitly first on the execution search path.
Stuff like that.
Linternet?
rewriting history since 2109
many thin clients (e.g. some of HPs) refuse to boot from anything other than a ms-dos partition. to turn them into BSD or Linux appliances I have a FreeDOS partition on usb drive with grub in it, which chain boots the next partition. if you choose to boot into the FreeDOS there is editor for grub config and whatever other handy things you might need (like alternate flash images or whatever). need a very low power consumption domain/mail/web/vpn/unix shell server at home? those thin clients can pull 18W or less
DOS could really use a modern composited OpenGL accelerated desktop. Maybe call it "GL Accelerated Disk Operating System". What do you think?
change the battery
The Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary lists both alternatives.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Only in French. And you forgot the apostrophe.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
If you want to access PC hardware directly without any abstraction layers and OS latencies that screw up timing, a copy of MS-DOS 5.0 or FreeDOS is still the way to go. In fact, I just set up a machine last week with a copy of MS-DOS 5.0 and TurboCNC, which is sending stepper motor step commands at precise intervals to the motors on a CNC machine using the PC's parallel port. USB is as useless as Windows and the more recent Linux distributions for things like this.
To run some older Protel CAD tools. The very old (and used to be free) pcb editor now costs in the tens of thousands of dollars, and for my use case, isn't even as good. The old one runs fine on freedos, is fast as crap on new hardware, and gets my job done. And, the graphics are great.
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
Irrelevant to FreeDOS, a few days ago I was searching about MSDOS and in which language it was written. For whoever might be interested, there's a nice read here: What language was MS-DOS Written in?. Summary: MS bought the QDOS rights, QDOS was based on the CP/M OS which was written in FORTRAN
That's because so many people get that wrong. Denial of Service is correctly abbreviated as DoS (note the lowercase o).
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
You gimme a ping when you hear a Frenchman saying "je suis sur l'internet."
...I hear you can play Dwarf Fortress in native mode on it?
-Styopa
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norton_Commander
I guess it's called a TextUI, but it's all I ever needed for DOS. Really never saw the point of a GUI until I started multitasking. But since I'm guessing FreeDOS is not a multitasking OS, I don't see the point in anything more than NC.
PS when working with a Linux box from a windows workstation, WinSCP in NC mode ROCKS.
Those who can, do.
flashrom has dos, unix, linux, and possibly windows/osx support now.
With the exception of laptops, some servers, and super-new motherboards, it'll read, verify, and usually write new images without error.
Additionally it's a great way to back up your original bios if the bios updater app you're planning to use doesn't have an option to do it for you.
If you want to access PC hardware directly without any abstraction layers and OS latencies that screw up timing, a copy of MS-DOS 5.0 or FreeDOS is still the way to go. In fact, I just set up a machine last week with a copy of MS-DOS 5.0 and TurboCNC, which is sending stepper motor step commands at precise intervals to the motors on a CNC machine using the PC's parallel port. USB is as useless as Windows and the more recent Linux distributions for things like this.
back when I was a kid.. some games did more than that.
they were self bootables.. no dos. pretty neat actually. original pc pirates! was such for example.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Internet is spelled with a capital I. Idiot.
The Internet is an internet*.
* Any set of connected networks using the Internet Protocol.
yeah RENEGADE BBS going down the road bitches.. Legend of the Red Dragon while you zip down the freeway.
I can fucking still dream..
You said you like to run DOS, so...
:-)
Aw, screw it. You knew it was coming.
When you're dead, you don't know you're dead. It only affects the people around you. Same thing when you're stupid.
Did they have no DOS, or just no shell?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
There are a lot of applications for which DOS is "just right". Its running in a lot of embedded PCs. And there is zero reason to shcange it in many of these.
Australians don't respond well to dictators
It ran away.
rewriting history since 2109
On y'all as singular... I noticed when visiting some parts of the south that they say "y'all" to a single person and say "all y'all" to a group of people. I kid you not.
At the time I needed a bootable USB image (so I could use it to flash a BIOS), there wasn't one. I ended up writing up how I made one and Jim posted the end result at http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distributions/unofficial/virtualbox/ for others to download. If you want to try FreeDOS without going through the installation process yourself - or if you don't have the facilities to do so because the $#@()! server is down and your boss is freaking out and screaming and you're out of time - then enjoy!
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
> FreeDOS .. is still being actively developed, despite achieving its initial aim of an MS-DOS compatible OS ..
That isn't so amazing considering MS-DOS was a renamed 86-DOS, from 'Seattle Computer Products', and 'Digital Research' sold DR-DOS up until Microsoft started to build-in incompatibilities into Windows to make it not run on alien Operating Systems ...
AccountKiller
I'm from Texas. I spent quite a bit of time explaining to a native Japanese engineer the nuances of y'all. I remember specifically talking to him about when to use y'all when there was only you and the person you were talking to around.
That was Zen, this is Tao
Segments were a horrible chapter in uP history. From flat memory we went to the horrors of segments, then eventually, back again, thank goodness.
If those people at Motorola had the silicon skills of those at Intel, IBM might have gone with the 68000 and up, and we'd be years ahead of where we are now. Instead, we got slammed with the 8088 and up, and good grief, what a freaking nightmare.
Segments. Ugh. Someone oughta be shot over that. Also whoever invented pantyhose, while I'm making a list. :)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Hmm never noticed that before.
I'm Australian and:
different TO
different FROM
different THAN
all sound OK to me. Though in my head, they have subtly different usage contexts. I think I use 'different than' most of the time actually.
Then you taught him fuckin' WRONG.
Not to be pedantic, but you are describing EPROMs above, not EEPROMS. EPROMs are the devices that you program using higher voltages, and erase using UV rays (they had a transparent window to the die to enable that). Nobody makes those anymore. There is a variation of that called MTP, where instead of the UV rays, one can apply the higher voltage to the VPP and a particular address line to erase it, and program it normally putting the higher voltage just on the VPP pin. These products, to the extent that they are made, are the replacements of EPROM. Then there are mask ROMs for the high end equivalents of these things: while EPROMs and MTPs were in the 1 mebibit range, mask ROMs are in the 1 gibibit range.
EEPROMs, otoh, are NOR flash memory devices. Flash memory works this way - while read operations are the same as static or dynamic RAM, depending on design, program operations are done in software - by sending a certain address/data combination sequence before a program cycle(s) can start. That is what is known as in-system programming, and that is what PCs use. So any software that tries to 'flash a BIOS' essentially has to first determine who the manufacturer of the flash memory is (since different manufacturers tend to use different algorithms - most JEDEC endorsed) and then accordingly, send the appropriate command cycles to the flash before loading it w/ the addresses and data to be programmed into it.
Batteries are needed to maintain the system clock. Every time you power down a laptop, how does the thing remember the time when it boots up again? The battery is how - there is no way a flash device, which simply stores the last state that was programmed into it, would be counting down the time. When the battery goes down, that's when one sometimes sees motherboard failures and the like.
CMOS has forever been the standard that's used to build transistors, due to their scalability - TTL was never used, and ECL was tried on occasion by 1 company called Exponential Logic to build high performance PowerPCs for Apple in the 90s, but they went bust. CMOS will stop being used when silicon stops being used.
"Admittedly, we don't have as many developers today THAT we had 10 years ago,"
It's "as many... AS"... not "that". Bloody Americans - why can't you understand what simple words mean? Why are you constantly substituting 'then' for 'than', or 'that' for 'than', or even 'than' for 'then'? Are you so stupid that you can't even understand simple words like that? It's all over the internet. Idiots.
Don't you have royalty to bow to somewhere?
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Well, DOS is a lot easier to use than Linux, in that there are far fewer commands. Plus having DOS means being able to run a number of reasonably useful applications that existed before Windows took over, without having to worry about where things are in terms of configuration information. Typically, a setup program will install whatever is needed, and one is off to the races.
To recreate something is to understand it, and msdos is worth understanding. Tons of legacy applications still depend on dos and are still in use! This is a step towards long term support of those applications.
Precisely this! There is plenty of stuff that doesn't need Windows, and could just run off a DOS, which makes this project worth it. Now, if only ReactOS could be just as functional, nobody would bother what Microsoft is up to.
That said, a few questions I have. Does FreeDOS support some commands that came about in NT, such as as Start, to start background processes while returning to the DOS prompt?
I'd love it if there were 32- or 64-bit versions of FreeDOS, complete w/ NT enhancements. Heck, I'd even like them having PowerShell commands, as well as them being ported to other former NT platforms, such as MIPS and Alpha.
If you don't have a floppy and still need to boot into FreeDOS to run a utility or whatever, it is possible to boot it from Grub. Here is how to boot FreeDOS from Grub on Ubuntu.
But DOS is not a real-time OS. A real time OS is one that requires any program or operation to be completed within a predetermined time, and if it isn't, that program is aborted and system resources are freed up, thereby preventing a hang. DOS otoh is a single tasking OS (unless FreeDOS has taken NT's CLI's start command, which allows a task to be started after returning to the command prompt. Machine control systems need to be controlled, not by Linux or Windows, but not by DOS either: they need specific OSs created for them, such as QNX or WindRiver. Even Minix 3, w/ its reincarnation server, is a good choice.
Actually, what they should do here is ReactOS - make it completely target Windows 7 and do it, and then have XP Mode created inside it. I've never had trouble running Windows 95 games on XP - it was in Vista that it started breaking. But most recently, I installed Civ2 (a CD I have from years ago) in XP mode, and it works like a charm.
Or, better yet, have a 64-bit version targeting anything from 4GB and more, as well as a 32-bit version targeting anything between 32MB and 2GB (the Windows 95 to XP range. That should have them covered. I don't know if there's a point in having a 16 bit version that will mirror what Windows 3.1 used to be.
Newer software standards, such as IPv6, can be grafted on to these OSs.
1) I don't know why people keep perpetuating this silly made-up quote.
2) I don't know why Slashdot mods don't understand the difference between "funny" and "joke." Or perhaps they just have bad senses of humor.
from the WEBSITE...
"Windows standard-mode works on FreeDOS, but 386-mode Windows for Workgroups 3.11 does not."
REAL DOS can even run windows 95...
I think I will stick with that...
For instance, getting ATAPI CDROM support would enable a dozen things I'd like to do with FreeDOS. I've tried a dozen forum posts that claim to do it, tried a bunch of proprietary abandonware drivers, and nothing reliably works across any common set of hardware.
ATAPI.SYS has been "in development" for how long? I know, the core of DOS rather predates CDROM's (and I was there in the 90's doing it anyway), but keeping FreeDOS relevant on hardware that's available today is something I wish had higher priority. Yeah, yeah, grab that old Panasonic IDE out of the bin...
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
It would be great if cygwin could be integrated into FreeDOS, then we'll have the best of both worlds.