Hi Marco! > - Emergency / Base floppy distribution is OK, I agree with max > 3 diskettes base system... really crazy to manage +100 floppies > distribution but if you insist...
Indeed ;-) > - Version number. What version number return s Int21h Functions 30h and > 3306h? Some programs refuse to work if version numbers is under 3.0. We report 6.22 (formerly 5.0) for fat16 kernels and and 7.10 for kernels which have fat32 support enabled. You can modify the value returned by function 30 with help of the CALLVER tool and with the VERSION config sys option :-) I think MS SETVER would work, too. > - Fax software Only for RS232 COMn port connected Fax I hope ;-) > - A free USB mass storage driver and a USB stick distribution. I think we should start with a free ASPIDISK clone. It just wraps ASPI disk access into DOS block device access and of course it parses your USB partition table first to know the physical "disk" offset of the USB drive (letters)... I think it would also be nice to have an open source ElTorito cdrom and dvd driver. In ElTorito, the BIOS lets you access the cd/dvd as if it were a harddisk (simply speaking) so a DOS driver is only a wrapper to make SHSUCDX / MSCDEX able to use the drive via that interface. > Able to boot from USB or to execute DOS on virtual machine Try www.ywesee.com/pmwiki.php/Site/FlashingBiosOfALinuxServer it already lists 3 methods (2 Linux, 1 Windows) to install FreeDOS on USB stick :-). FreeDOS also does work on several types of virtual machine such as Bochs, VMWare, VirtualPC, Qemu... Some of them have flaws which DOS has to work around so some more testing is always an idea. > For future long term releases: If we want go beyond a simple toy or > emergency tool, the people must to find the things usual on modern OS. DOS is not a toy even if it stays DOS: It is useful for running old DOS apps and runs on old / small hardware such as embedded / PLC systems. If you were to add, say, all features of Linux to DOS, you should better use Linux. > - More multitasking abilities, even better, several > virtual machines running each a DOS instance running > full screen. This would the best ever game platform. Play several games at the same time :-). Making the screen virtual is like writing a virtual machine, so it is not really a part of DOS. Similarily, the DRDOS multitasker is mostly a part of DR emm386 and less so a part of the kernel. All emm386 are typical candidates for doing virtual stuff. A new version of VSB, virtual sound blaster, which can run in JEMM386 and can use AC97 and HDA hardware (drivers from mpxplay?) would be cool. > Something like DOS-SHELL did on MS-DOS 5.0. For the task swapping? Because for the file manager, you already have nice things like NDN, MC, FileMaven. > But with new hardware and virtual machines is possible > a real multitasking more than a simple task switcher. > No windowed apps or graphics environment, simply a hotkey to go You still have to program a complex "watch the state of the vga" to be able to switch virtual tasks over a single real graphics card, but it would be slightly easier than a full virtual vga which you need for windowed apps :-) Remember that Linux apps do not access raw hardware which makes it a lot easier for them to share the hardware. For the doom and mail example, you will also need to watch the state of the soundcard and network. Classic but still complex multitaskers like Desqview already had lots of work to get multitasking for silent non-network graphics mode... > - A clipboard so programs can share copy and text and graphics The Rugxulo.googlepages.com distro already has one for text :-) There are also graphics screenshot tools (printer or file based). > - A better full screen printer spool wich receive printing. Why would you want a full screen list of print spool items? Actually I even wonder why you need more than "copy x.txt lpt1" in the first place :-). But yes, print / printq could be made more user friendly... :-). Eric ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by the Moblin Your Move Developer's challenge Build the coolest Linux based applications with Moblin SDK & win great prizes Grand prize is a trip for two to an Open Source event anywhere in the world http://moblin-contest.org/redirect.php?banner_id=100&url=/ _______________________________________________ Freedos-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
