I am investigating installing FreeDOS 1.3 RC5 as a bare metal installation (i.e. everything is on a 16 GByte USB stick) and will try to boot off the USB stick (i.e. the USB stick becomes the C:\ drive and so the hard drive with Windows 10x64 is not accessible).
I have never used FreeDOS before - a while ago I experimented with a RUFUS formatted USB stick FAT32 and used same as a bare metal setup for DOS (and with some 30 year old 16 bit software and a special DOS version recent software package). A partial list of DOS-type files on the USB stick include HIMEM.exe UMBPCI.sys MEM.exe MORE.exe EMMEX.exe EMM386.exe XDVD2.sys RDISK.com and others (all are dated later than 2005). At this stage I wish to avoid say using (DOSbox and DOSbox-X) and Virtual Machine. >From my experimenting with above I was happy to, from DOS environment, to >actually access a 3200x1800 display (though I did end up with only about 240 >colors - not millions of colors). There were a number of issues I could not >sort out with my previous bare metal configuration. The computer I am using has an INTEL i7 x64, 256 GByte PCIe SSD, 4TByte SSD, built-in DVD drive, 32 GByte RAM and 3200x1800 display. The computer is about 8 years old. If I understand correctly, all your releases are for actual installation on a hard drive - i.e. not for installation onto a USB BOOT stick. Because I had serious problems when I previously tried to have dual boot (Windows initially installed + LINUX later) - resulting in computer not being useable for 2 weeks until I could finally completely re-install Windows + apps - I do not wish to install anything onto the hard drive (at this stage). Is it possible to have a zip file of the individual FreeDOS programs - so that I can copy same to my already FAT32 formatted USB stick (i.e. as a "parallel" DOS-type operating system)? I look forward to using FreeDOS, though I may be initially faced with various issues for my bare metal configuration requirements. ________________________________ From: Jim Hall <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, 22 December 2021 12:02 PM To: [email protected] <[email protected]> Subject: [Freedos-devel] Testing FreeDOS 1.3 RC5 (Games) I'm starting to go through all of FreeDOS 1.3 RC5 and testing everything. I'm starting with Games, so I wanted to start a thread dedicated to Games discussion. I am testing on both VirtualBox ("VB") and QEMU. (I don't seem to have sound set up properly on VirtualBox, but it works fine on QEMU. If someone else uses VirtualBox and has sound working, please share your config info.) I think it would be great for all games to work on all systems (virtual machine or actual hardware) but probably "good enough" if it works for most folks. I'm open to discussion on this point. What do you think? Here's what I found in my testing: Bolitaire (Freecell-like game) VB: Plays fine, but the screen just goes to black after I exit, never goes to the command prompt QEMU: Doesn't even start, just reboots my virtual machine Boom (Doom-like game) VB: Plays fine, but I don't have my sound set up so I don't get sound QEMU: Doesn't start, just aborts with "Illegal instruction" Beyond Titanic (text adventure game) VB: Seems fine QEMU: Seems fine **I have big concerns with this game. I'm seeing conflicting license info everywhere; the game startup screen has different messages about it being released as both public domain and shareware, and the Readme says this is released as freeware. So we have conflicting license info here. I think we should drop this from 1.3 Dosdef (Defender-like game) VB: Doesn't start, I get a Jemm386 exception. If I reboot without Jemm386, I get "Interrupt divide by zero." QEMU: Doesn't run, just a blank screen. Eliza (chatbot) VB: Seems fine QEMU: Seems fine **But this isn't really a fun "game," and seems kind of lame. Do we really need this one? Does anyone else here think it's fun? Empong (Pong-like game) VB: Plays fine, but my VB isn't set up for sound QEMU: Completely unplayable; I get a beep, then the game seems to freeze, then my turn is over. Ev4de (space flight game) VB: Plays fine. Feels a bit sluggish, but I think that's how the game is supposed to go. QEMU: Doesn't run, I get "Fatal error! Error code 5" Ewsnake (snake game) VB: Plays fine, but I think the colors are messed up (hard to tell because it doesn't use much of a palette) QEMU: Plays fine, and the graphics palette seems correct here Floppybird (Flappybird-like game) VB: Plays fine QEMU: Plays fine, and I get sound Fmines (minesweeper game) VB: Plays fine, but really slooooooooooow to load, probably because it's loading a huge image QEMU: Plays fine, but takes a looooooooooooong time to do anything, so long that I thought my virtual machine had stopped Freedoom/SMMU (Doom-like game) VB: Plays fine, but I don't have my sound set up (see Boom) QEMU: Doesn't start, I just get "Illegal instruction" (see Boom) GNU Chess (chess game) VB: Plays okay, but you need to load NANSI to play this one QEMU: Same; plays okay, but you need to load NANSI first **But this doesn't really seem like a good chess game. Is there a better open source chess game for DOS out there? Hangman (hangman game) VB: Plays okay QEMU: Starts up, but I can't start a game. I get "Illegal function call in module HANGMAN at address 02dd:0745" when I start any game. **This seems like a primitive Hangman game. Is there a better open source version out there? Ivan (Rogue-style game) VB: Plays ok QEMU: Starts up okay, but really slooooooooooooow to load. I'm also getting some "double keypress" problems on this game. Kraptor (Raptor-like game) VB: The graphics palette is messed up. I tried to quit, but then nothing happened. I think it froze up trying to quit. QEMU: Plays fine. Keyboard is faster than the mouse. Liquiwar (unique multiplayer strategy game) VB: The graphics palette is messed up. I tried to quit, but then nothing happened. I think it froze up trying to quit. QEMU: Starts up okay, but really sloooooooooooow to start. Mirror Magic (puzzle game) VB: The graphics palette is messed up. I tried to quit, but then nothing happened. I think it froze up trying to quit. QEMU: Plays fine, and I get sound Mistral (turn-based spy RPG game) VB: Plays okay QEMU: Starts up okay, and I get sound, but I get the "double keypress" problem and can't select Quit. Nethack (text explorer game) VB: Plays okay. QEMU: Plays okay, but I get the "double keypress" problem so I keep skipping over things NGE Nibbles (snake game) VB: The text fade in/out is really slooooooooow, and then the game is over. Unplayable. QEMU: The text fade in/out is really slooooooooow but it's otherwise playable. Noudar (3D dungeon crawler) VB: Plays fine. QEMU: Starts up okay, but I have the "double keypress" problem so if I hit right/left to turn right or left, it turns me all the way around. Unplayable. PakuPaku (Pacman-like game) VB: Plays fine QEMU: Plays fine, and I get sound **Note that this is "cardware" which is okay, but it also says it's public domain, so getting some conflicting license info here. Tetris Queen (Tetris game) VB: Plays fine QEMU: Plays fine **But I'm concerned that this one displays a lot of Queen band album cover art. At least in the US, the music industry carries a pretty big hammer, and I'm not sure I want to go down that road if we don't have to. We have other Tetris games, do we need this one? Senet (board game) VB: Plays fine QEMU: Plays fine Smiley (bouncing game) VB: Plays fine QEMU: Plays fine Supernova (text adventure game) VB: Plays fine QEMU: Plays fine **I have big concerns with this game, same as Beyond Titanic. I'm seeing conflicting license info everywhere; the game startup screen says public domain but it's also shareware? The Readme says this is released as GNU GPL, which doesn't match either one. So we have conflicting license info here. I think we should drop this from 1.3 Sudoku (sudoku game) VB: Plays fine QEMU: Plays fine Vertigo (flight sim) VB: The graphics palette is all messed up, so I can't play it. QEMU: Plays fine, and I get sound. VI Tetris (Tetris game) VB: Plays fine QEMU: Starts up fine, but I get the "double keypress" problem so I can't actually turn the pieces. They are either "up" or "down." Unplayable. Wing (space combat game) VB: The graphics palette is all messed up, so I can't play it. When I tried to quit, it hung up and I had to reboot the virtual machine. QEMU: Plays fine. Word Whiz (word game) VB: Plays fine QEMU: Plays fine **I have big concerns with this game, same as Beyond Titanic. I'm seeing conflicting license info everywhere; the game startup screen says shareware! The Readme says this is released as GNU GPL, which doesn't match. So we have conflicting license info here. I think we should drop this from 1.3 Zmiy (snake game) VB: Plays fine QEMU: Plays fine _______________________________________________ Freedos-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
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