Hi Jim,
thanks for your thoughts. I have classified your answers to get an overview which parts are still uncommented. You say: okay * both SRDISK and RDISK okay * both EDLIN and EDIT okay * both DOSZIP and DN2 okay * both P7ZIP and ZIP/UNZIP chose? * both XFDISK and FDISK chose? * both AMBHELP and HTMLHELP chose? * NOT both DOSLFN and LFNDOS (which of them was better?) check? * Maybe not even both FREEDOOM and BOOM at the same time You made no comments yet about: * all of HIMEM * XMGR and FDXMS286 (maybe not FDXXMS and not FDXMS?) * both UDVD2 and ELTORITO * both JEMMEX and JEMM386 * both DOSFSCK and CHKDSK * both UHDD and CDRCACHE * both UHDD and LBACACHE * both MKEYB and KEYB * both SHSUCDX and SHSUCDHD * NOT GCDROM (an old predecessor-sibling of UDVD2) * NOT COMPINFO either given that INFOPLUS is much better * Also, UIDE should be "less default" and UHDD more default Given that we are trying to have MS DOS look alike apps, I think it is good to have FDISK and CHKDSK in spite of XFDISK and DOSFSCK having extra features, so I still say it is best to include all 4. I think both AMB and HTML have advantages, so it is good when at least "full" offers both. For example HTML lets you edit and add your own help pages more easily, but AMB can have a more modern architecture. Hopefully somebody remembers which DOOM and which LFN package is better than the other in their two pairs. Note that the FDXMS is a very "niche" family of HIMEM alternatives and sort of unmaintained. So I would only keep FDXMS286 and only for the few users with 286 CPU. Why keep HIMEM and XMGR? Because one may work better than the other depending on hardware. Why keep UDVD2 and ELTORITO? Because ELTORITO works on BIOS-supported AHCI-only drives after booting from them, while UDVD2 works in all other situations. Why keep JEMMEX and JEMM386? Because the former contains both HIMEM and EMM386 functionality, saving RAM, while the latter can be used with all HIMEM alternatives. Why keep MKEYB and KEYB? Because MKEYB is smaller, while KEYB has more choice in keyboard layouts. Disks and caches: Why keep UHDD and LBACACHE? Because the latter works with very little XMS, in case somebody has little RAM, while the former can use more XMS than the latter if available. Also, the former can cache UDVD2 supported drives and speed up harddisk/SSD access using UDMA etc. Why keep UHDD and CDRCACHE? Because the latter can cache all CD/DVD drivers, but needs additional XMS, while the former can cache UDVD2 in shared XMS. Why keep SHSUCDX and SHSUCDHD? Because the former works with actual drives and the latter works with ISO images, of course :-) Why should UHDD be used more and UIDE be used less? Because UHDD has more features, in particular in combination with UDVD2, while the latter can save space for example on almost full boot floppies. There are very few reasons to use UIDE unless you are in a very disk space limited situation, so it is better to use UHDD (and UDVD2) when possible. In the special case of using the ELTORITO or, if licensing is granted, AHCICD driver, they should be used together with some additional CDRCACHE, while still using UHDD as harddisk/SSD cache. A CDRCACHE should be transparent for everyday use, but it does hide "read long prefetch" from the actual CD/DVD driver as far as I remember. UHDD sizes start at 5 MB, but of course 20 MB or even a lot more are better when plenty of XMS is available. For read-ahead, use 10 MB or more. The smaller sizes must be multiples of 5 MB and as mentioned, if you load UDVD2 after UHDD, the cache memory will be shared between the two :-) Regards, Eric _______________________________________________ Freedos-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
