Re: [Freedos-devel] Bare Metal installation of FreeDOS

2021-12-26 Thread richardkolacz...@hotmail.com 
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 
Sent: Wednesday, 22 December 2021 12:02 PM
To: [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 slooow to load, probably because
it's loading a huge image
QEMU: Plays fine, but takes a long 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

Re: [Freedos-devel] Bare Metal installation of FreeDOS

2021-12-27 Thread richardkolacz...@hotmail.com 
Jerome


Thanks for your detailed instructions - HOWEVER  nothing seemed to work for me.


With my Windows 10 computer, I could not even get to any install screen (for 
FD13 RC5), even IF I wanted to use full install USB stick for hard drive 
install (maybe I just misunderstood your instructions). So for instance I could 
not get to the FDISK stage.

Using RUFUS to FAT32 format usb and the usb img file results in an error 
message (and the usb stick is "dead" now) - as below.


I hope the following links (photos of attempts for FreeDOS install) are 
self-explanatory.



When using RUFUS with FD img file

https://www.dropbox.com/s/bevyd8dn2nfg18c/FreeDOS13_format_error.PNG?dl=1





BOOT screen (how I can select Windows or otherwise)

https://www.dropbox.com/s/glpj72yjck4xrhl/BOOT%20IGP2197.JPG?dl=1





With FD 13 RC5 on NTFS formatted usb stick (booting from this)  --> no OS

https://www.dropbox.com/s/x3lh2tu6w6lbfoc/noOS_IGP2203.JPG?dl=1





Using RUFUS to format FAT32 with RUFUS version of FreeDOS

https://www.dropbox.com/s/x4cf6dg4d440g30/Rufus%20IGP2204.JPG?dl=1





What RUFUS supplies as FreeDOS

https://www.dropbox.com/s/z70835deg3npqdy/c%3B%60LOCALE%60_IGP2195.JPG?dl=1
https://www.dropbox.com/s/52gx0rwnmkevbta/c%3Blocale%60%60_IGP2196.JPG?dl=1



AUTORUN.inf

; Created by Rufus 3.17.1846
; https://rufus.ie
[autorun]
icon  = autorun.ico
label = 16 GB


J:\>type autoexec.bat
@echo off
set PATH=.;\;\LOCALE
echo Using US-English keyboard with US-English codepage [437]






So to sum up - all I have now is a usb stick, formatted by Rufus, with next to 
nothing of FreeDOS files.


Could I just download the individual FreeDOS files and simply copy them onto 
the Rufus usb stick (or is it not that simple)?


Thanks


Richard



From: Jerome Shidel 
Sent: Monday, 27 December 2021 1:06 PM
To: FreeDOS Developers 
Subject: Re: [Freedos-devel] Bare Metal installation of FreeDOS

Hi,

> On Dec 26, 2021, at 5:32 AM, [email protected] wrote:
>
> 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.

There is a way to install FreeDOS to a USB stick by only using a USB drive…
• Download FD13-FULL usb stick images.
• On a Unix, Linux or macOS use dd to write that image to the Flash 
Drive. There should be a Windows equivalent to dd (I don’t know what it is). 
The image should be written as-is and not stretched or modified by the program 
writing it.
• Boot the Flash Drive and exit the installer.
• Use FDISK to manually create an additional partition on the USB stick 
and reboot again.
• Use FDISK to identify the drive letter assigned to the new partition 
and exit. (I will assume it is E:)
• Change directories to C:\FDOS-x86
• Run “setup E:\FREEDOS”
• (answer the prompts, and

Re: [Freedos-devel] Bare Metal installation of FreeDOS

2021-12-27 Thread richardkolacz...@hotmail.com 
Jerome

I think I may have worked out what the error with RUFUS was all about.


I went into Windows anti-virus (AV) and set up RUFUS.exe as an "exclusion 
file". Re-ran the RUFUS formatting exercise on the usb stick and this time NO 
ERRORS.

Below is a simple DIR of my usb stick



 Volume in drive J is FD13-FULL
 Volume Serial Number is 1C44-19F6

 Directory of J:\

12/08/2021  05:39 PM46,256 KERNEL.SYS
12/08/2021  05:39 PM85,480 COMMAND.COM
12/08/2021  06:17 PM 1,931 fdauto.bat
12/08/2021  05:39 PM   223 fdconfig.sys
12/08/2021  06:17 PM  FDOS-x86
12/08/2021  06:08 PM  freedos
12/08/2021  06:17 PM  packages
12/08/2021  05:39 PM 6,773 setup.bat
   5 File(s)140,663 bytes
   3 Dir(s) 132,096,000 bytes free



Will try this usb stick in an hour or so.


Sorry for the inconvenience I may have caused you.


Richard






From: Jerome Shidel 
Sent: Tuesday, 28 December 2021 12:07 AM
To: FreeDOS Developers 
Subject: Re: [Freedos-devel] Bare Metal installation of FreeDOS

Hello,

> On Dec 27, 2021, at 7:41 AM, [email protected] wrote:
>
> Jerome
>
>
> Thanks for your detailed instructions - HOWEVER  nothing seemed to work for 
> me.
>
>
> With my Windows 10 computer, I could not even get to any install screen (for 
> FD13 RC5), even IF I wanted to use full install USB stick for hard drive 
> install (maybe I just misunderstood your instructions). So for instance I 
> could not get to the FDISK stage.
>
> Using RUFUS to FAT32 format usb and the usb img file results in an error 
> message (and the usb stick is "dead" now) - as below.
>
>
> I hope the following links (photos of attempts for FreeDOS install) are 
> self-explanatory.
>
>
>
> When using RUFUS with FD img file
>
> https://www.dropbox.com/s/bevyd8dn2nfg18c/FreeDOS13_format_error.PNG?dl=1
>

This makes me wonder if there is an issue with the USB stick itself.
Or, if RUFUS is manipulating the IMG before writing it.

For all intents and purposes, I haven't used Windows in 15+ years. I do have a 
Win10 box. But other that cross-compiling and video conferencing, I basically 
don’t use it. So unfortunately, I have know idea what RUFUS may or may not be 
doing when it writes the image to the USB stick.

> With FD 13 RC5 on NTFS formatted usb stick (booting from this)  --> no OS
>
> https://www.dropbox.com/s/x3lh2tu6w6lbfoc/noOS_IGP2203.JPG?dl=1

The OS does not natively support NTFS.

Booting from and using FAT32 is not a problem.

> Using RUFUS to format FAT32 with RUFUS version of FreeDOS
>
> https://www.dropbox.com/s/x4cf6dg4d440g30/Rufus%20IGP2204.JPG?dl=1

Since the RUFUS version of FreeDOS boots… This should work.

Download the LiveCD.
Extract the zip and mount the iso image.
copy the FDOS-x86 and packages directory from the CD to the USB stick. (The 
rest won’t be needed)
boot the USB stick.
change to FDOS-x86 and run “setup adv” (no need to backup, make sure your OS 
Target drive matches the USB stick — drive C: also probably skip updating the 
MBR)

That should install BASE and allow you to install packages using FDIMPLES.

Otherwise, you can do stuff manually and you can get a mostly working version 
of FreeDOS.  But, the directory structure will probably not match what is 
expected by many things and you may run into many minor issues. But, it is 
doable.

Jerome

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Re: [Freedos-devel] Bare Metal installation of FreeDOS

2021-12-27 Thread richardkolacz...@hotmail.com 
Jerome
Wilhelm


Just to let you know how I went with FD RC5 bare metal installation only on usb 
stick.

Summary - Rufus formatted FAT32 16 GByte usb flash drive ->
c:\  512 Mbyte
d:\ 14000 MByte

which so far seems to boot up OK.

If you are interested, the following link is camera screenshots of various 
stages in creating usb flash drive.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/hz60qalgpbsk4oh/AABv73hXOZobftArLKFgSSo2a?dl=1



Now that I have a somewhat usable DOS-type OS - I will now experiment on what 
hardware in my computer I can access (this may take me quite some time). I wish 
to establish things like maximum number of usb drives, DVD drive, SATA and 
PCIe, RAMdrive, mouse, touchpad, graphics resolution, RAM memory, etc.

In the above link, photo 002.jpg illustrates error with CD-ROM initialization - 
attempting to use the UDVD2 CD driver -error 255 (failed). Any ideas how to 
fix? My laptop has an internal DVD drive (laptop about 8 years old).

I gather that now I will encounter issues specific to my BIOS/hardware - 
hopefully eventually I will have workarounds to these issues.

Richard


From: [email protected] 
Sent: Tuesday, 28 December 2021 12:35 AM
To: Technical discussion and questions for FreeDOS developers. 

Subject: Re: [Freedos-devel] Bare Metal installation of FreeDOS

Jerome

I think I may have worked out what the error with RUFUS was all about.


I went into Windows anti-virus (AV) and set up RUFUS.exe as an "exclusion 
file". Re-ran the RUFUS formatting exercise on the usb stick and this time NO 
ERRORS.

Below is a simple DIR of my usb stick



 Volume in drive J is FD13-FULL
 Volume Serial Number is 1C44-19F6

 Directory of J:\

12/08/2021  05:39 PM46,256 KERNEL.SYS
12/08/2021  05:39 PM85,480 COMMAND.COM
12/08/2021  06:17 PM 1,931 fdauto.bat
12/08/2021  05:39 PM   223 fdconfig.sys
12/08/2021  06:17 PM  FDOS-x86
12/08/2021  06:08 PM  freedos
12/08/2021  06:17 PM  packages
12/08/2021  05:39 PM 6,773 setup.bat
   5 File(s)140,663 bytes
   3 Dir(s) 132,096,000 bytes free



Will try this usb stick in an hour or so.


Sorry for the inconvenience I may have caused you.


Richard






From: Jerome Shidel 
Sent: Tuesday, 28 December 2021 12:07 AM
To: FreeDOS Developers 
Subject: Re: [Freedos-devel] Bare Metal installation of FreeDOS

Hello,

> On Dec 27, 2021, at 7:41 AM, [email protected] wrote:
>
> Jerome
>
>
> Thanks for your detailed instructions - HOWEVER  nothing seemed to work for 
> me.
>
>
> With my Windows 10 computer, I could not even get to any install screen (for 
> FD13 RC5), even IF I wanted to use full install USB stick for hard drive 
> install (maybe I just misunderstood your instructions). So for instance I 
> could not get to the FDISK stage.
>
> Using RUFUS to FAT32 format usb and the usb img file results in an error 
> message (and the usb stick is "dead" now) - as below.
>
>
> I hope the following links (photos of attempts for FreeDOS install) are 
> self-explanatory.
>
>
>
> When using RUFUS with FD img file
>
> https://www.dropbox.com/s/bevyd8dn2nfg18c/FreeDOS13_format_error.PNG?dl=1
>

This makes me wonder if there is an issue with the USB stick itself.
Or, if RUFUS is manipulating the IMG before writing it.

For all intents and purposes, I haven't used Windows in 15+ years. I do have a 
Win10 box. But other that cross-compiling and video conferencing, I basically 
don’t use it. So unfortunately, I have know idea what RUFUS may or may not be 
doing when it writes the image to the USB stick.

> With FD 13 RC5 on NTFS formatted usb stick (booting from this)  --> no OS
>
> https://www.dropbox.com/s/x3lh2tu6w6lbfoc/noOS_IGP2203.JPG?dl=1

The OS does not natively support NTFS.

Booting from and using FAT32 is not a problem.

> Using RUFUS to format FAT32 with RUFUS version of FreeDOS
>
> https://www.dropbox.com/s/x4cf6dg4d440g30/Rufus%20IGP2204.JPG?dl=1

Since the RUFUS version of FreeDOS boots… This should work.

Download the LiveCD.
Extract the zip and mount the iso image.
copy the FDOS-x86 and packages directory from the CD to the USB stick. (The 
rest won’t be needed)
boot the USB stick.
change to FDOS-x86 and run “setup adv” (no need to backup, make sure your OS 
Target drive matches the USB stick — drive C: also probably skip updating the 
MBR)

That should install BASE and allow you to install packages using FDIMPLES.

Otherwise, you can do stuff manually and you can get a mostly working version 
of FreeDOS.  But, the directory structure will probably not match what is 
expected by many things and you may run into many minor issues. But, it is 
doable.

Jerome

___

Re: [Freedos-devel] Updating the FreeDOS website (progress)

2022-01-03 Thread richardkolacz...@hotmail.com 
Suggestion...

On the first website page, have

Download Stable build 1.2 (created -mmm-dd)
Download Development build RC5 (last updated -mmm-dd)

buttons

I personally use the date format -mmm-dd, for example 2022-Mar-02, to avoid 
confusion with having a two-digit month value.

To me, being new to FreeDOS website, it would greatly help me to identify if I 
have the latest development build by looking at the first web page.

Also, any package should also clearly indicate the -mmm-dd tag and maybe a 
"dummy" empty file whose filename is yyymmmdd (to satisfy 8.3 format)




From: Jim Hall 
Sent: Tuesday, 4 January 2022 6:22 AM
To: [email protected] 
Subject: [Freedos-devel] Updating the FreeDOS website (progress)

Hi everyone

I wanted to share that I'm still working on an update to the FreeDOS
website. I shared in an email to the list some time ago the issues
with the current website, but the short version is certain parts of
www.freedos.org are hard to navigate, and it's not very 
easy for folks
who are new to FreeDOS to figure out how to use it and what they can
run on FreeDOS. So I want the updated version to address those issues.

More generally I'm also trying to reduce the amount of text and/or the
density of text on the website. A lot of the web pages are very
text-heavy.

I'm working on an updated version of the website. If you'd like to see
it, the work in progress is at http://test.freedos.org/ or
https://test.freedos.org/

(BTW, you can also visit the main website as either
http://www.freedos.org/ or https://www.freedos.org/)

A few notes about this test site:

(1) This is a *test* website. It is not the final version. Despite the
"test" nature of the new site, it's at least in a state that you can
see how the site will be put together. I welcome comments and
suggestions.

(2) Most of the test site uses "lorem ipsum" text. This is dummy text
that's just meant to be a placeholder. I find it's very useful to use
"lorem ipsum" to figure out how to arrange text (using paragraphs, or
lists, or info boxes, etc) without worrying about the exact text to
use.

(3) The test site uses placeholder images. I just used a bunch of
screenshots that I already had. Some of them are *probably* the images
I'll use, but they are the wrong size. The images will get changed.

(4) Ignore the pink background color. I'm using the pink to help me
see where certain boxes will show up. The pink will later change to
white or some other color.


I'm continuing to work on the new website. My goal is to have things
finished by the end of January.

Jim


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Re: [Freedos-devel] Updating the FreeDOS website (progress)

2022-01-03 Thread richardkolacz...@hotmail.com 
Jim

Fair enough NOT to have "additional buttons" on the first web page.

It would be nice (for me) to identify by a -mmm-dd text as to the update 
status of the development build, so for example :-

With the (pink) Download FreeDOS button - the button also has the text in 
smaller print, "Last updated 2022-Mar-02" so one can tell quickly regarding the 
development builds.

By having the above date message as part of the first web page - means one less 
"hoop" to jump through to establish if one has the latest development package. 
I personally find it somewhat unpleasant to jump through extra "hoops" when for 
the sake of a short text message (say in small print) important information is 
immediately at hand - with Windows 10 for example, extra "hoops" such as paging 
down on a "heavily spaced" page or selecting a sub-menu that only has "one 
item" in it, illustrates the "poor" (in my opinion) layout of Windows.

Anyway, just a "suggestion"

Richard


From: Jim Hall 
Sent: Tuesday, 4 January 2022 11:09 AM
To: Technical discussion and questions for FreeDOS developers. 

Subject: Re: [Freedos-devel] Updating the FreeDOS website (progress)



On Mon, Jan 3, 2022 at 5:58 PM 
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> 
mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Suggestion...

On the first website page, have

Download Stable build 1.2 (created -mmm-dd)
Download Development build RC5 (last updated -mmm-dd)

buttons

I personally use the date format -mmm-dd, for example 2022-Mar-02, to avoid 
confusion with having a two-digit month value.

To me, being new to FreeDOS website, it would greatly help me to identify if I 
have the latest development build by looking at the first web page.
[..]


To make sure I understand this correctly: you'd rather have that info on the 
front page, instead of navigating to the "Download" page to get the FreeDOS 1.3 
RC5 or FreeDOS 1.2? (Both RC5 and 1.2 are listed on the "Download" page.)

I'm trying to avoid adding too many buttons. But what if the front page had 
(above the "Download FreeDOS" link/button) some tags or other highlighted text 
that said "FreeDOS 1.2" and "FreeDOS 1.3 RC5"? Would that be a useful way to 
communicate the versions without adding too much text?

(Hopefully this is a short-lived problem. Once 1.3 "final" is out there, I'll 
stop advertising FreeDOS 1.2 on the website. (1.2 will still be on the Files 
Archive at Ibiblio, but the www website will just have download links for 1.3.)

Jim



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[Freedos-devel] RAMdrive install problem (on bare metal)

2022-02-16 Thread richardkolacz...@hotmail.com 
I am new to FreeDOS and trying to convert over to RC5 from a bare metal USB 
BOOT disk that does not use any FreeDOS material.

With my old setup, I successfully created two RAM drives (D:\ and E:\) of 
approximately 1.3 G Byte and 128 M Byte respectively. The C:\ drive was just 
the USB stick itself (and the real hard drive effectively did not exist to the 
DOS).

With my RC5 USB BOOT stick (16 GByte) I have on it

C:\  ~ 512 M Byte (about 128 MByte free)
D:\ ~ 13 G Byte free

and from my simple test, FreeDOS RC5 appears to work for me (and is a great 
improvement over my old USB BOOT stick).


I am trying to modify FDconfig.sys and FDauto.bat to allow a RAMdrive (say E:\) 
but with no success.

I modified FDconfig.sys to have an additional entry after the line
SHELLHIGH = \FREEDOS\BIN\COMMAND.COM ...

adding

devicehigh=srdxms.sys

I modified FDauto.bat (near the end) to have an additional entry

C:\FREEDOS\BIN\srdisk E:8192 /s=256 (using % notation for C:\FREEDOS)

with the intention of having a 8 M Byte RAMdrive.


My attempt (for a RAM drive) was not successful resulting in the following 
errors:-



Always on A20 method

devicehigh=srdisk.sys
UMBs unavailable
CONFIG.SYS error line 12
>>>devicehigh=srdisk.sys
  ^
Kernel: allocated 46 Disk buffers = 24472 bytes in HMA


and because of this (in FDauto.bat) when get to

C:\FREEDOS\BIN\srdisk.exe E:/8192 /s=256

Resizeable RAMdisk Formatter Version 2.09 ...

Fatal error No SRDISK driver installed

Aborted



Any suggestion on how to fix?

Running on an INTEL i3 (+ i7 Xeon)


From: Jim Hall 
Sent: Thursday, 17 February 2022 10:30 AM
To: [email protected] 
Subject: [Freedos-devel] Reminder: FreeDOS virtual get-together on Sunday, Feb 
20

Hi everyone!

Just a reminder that our next virtual get-together is coming up THIS
SUNDAY, February 20.

Email is great, but sometimes it helps to put a face to a name, so we
aren't all just people behind an email address. We like to get
together once a month to get to know each other a little better. Our
next virtual get-together is Sunday, February 20 at 11am US/Central.
(Use your favorite timezone converter to find your local time.) We
alternate topics each month, between "technical" and "social time."
For the February get-together, it's "technical."

I'll share the link here when the meeting starts. You can also check
the website. (I'd share the link now, but when spammers find the link
they start banging on the URL right away, and BlueJeans can mark that
meeting as "compromised" and take it down. So I'll need to wait until
the meeting is about to start to share the URL.)

In January, we used Zoom as a test. For February, we're back to using
BlueJeans. (Jim uses this for his consulting.) You can join from your
browser, but you may get better performance if you download the
desktop or mobile client. You can download the client from here:
https://www.bluejeans.com/downloads#desktop


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Re: [Freedos-devel] RAMdrive install problem (on bare metal)

2022-02-19 Thread richardkolacz...@hotmail.com 
@Jerome

Thanks for reply.

With 3 different HP laptops - SRDISK does work and the MAXIMUM RAMdisk is 512 
Mbyte (not one byte more).

I experimented with xmsdsk.exe and obtained LARGER RAMdisk:-

i3 INTEL -> 2,146,140,160 bytes for E:\ RAMdrive
i7 Xeon  -> 1,554,317,312

It is interesting for me that there is a significant difference in maximum size 
(~ 512+ MB), the i3 has 8 GByte Memory and the i7 has 32 GB Memory.

I had to reduce the RAMdrive size (from the values above) because at maximum 
size, got "Out of Memory" / "Out of Data" with my programs.




@Eric

Thanks for reply.

I have not tried RDISK yet - but I think that xmsdsk.exe is about as good 
(maximum RAMdisk) as I can achieve.

For info, with my very old USB BOOT stick (non-freedos from around 2000) I 
achieved two RAMdrives:-

D:\ 1,323,237,376 bytes (both i7 and i3) ABSOLUTE MAXIMUM SIZE
E:\   134,217,728 bytes (both i7 and i3) ABSOLUTE MAXIMUM SIZE

whereas my NEW "FreeDOS" (RC5) USB BOOT stick now (adjusted down RAMdrive size 
to allow my programs to work) gives

E:\ 1,531,772,928 bytes (for both i7 and i3)

NO D:\ RAMdrive possible BUT I do have a larger ~~1,5 GByte E:\ RAMdrive (a 
size increase of about 200 MByte) so I am not complaining.

HOWEVER, a "plus" with my NEW FreeDOS USB BOOT is that the USB stick is split 
between ~ 512 MByte C:\ (of which at present I have about 75 MByte free) and 
over 14 GByte free D:\.

The results for the third laptop with AMD k6 processor are very similar to i3.

In summary, the INTEL i7 laptop has the "worst" memory specs (despite having 
32GByte versus 8 GByte memory) but I will typically use this for important work 
and always ensure that the ONE (and only one) USB BOOT disk (FreeDOS RC5) 
always works on the i7 (mandatory requirement). So for example, using 
jemm386.exe "locks up" the i7 but not the i3.

Using MEM (for i7), in a typical working setup with FreeDOS RC5 I now have:-



Conventional Memory Detail:

SegmentTotal   Name   Type
---      -
    1,024(1K)interrupt vector table
  0040768(1K)BIOS data area
  0070  8,880(9K)  IOsystem data
 NUL system device driver
 CON system device driver
 PRN system device driver
 AUX system device driver
 LPT1system device driver
 LPT2system device driver
 LPT3system device driver
 COM1system device driver
 COM2system device driver
 COM3system device driver
 COM4system device driver
 CLOCK$  system device driver
 A: - D: system device driver
  029b  3,120(3K)  DOS   system data
  029d192(0K)FILES   FILES=40 (3 in this block)
  02aa  2,176(2K)HIMEMX  device driver
   XMS0  installed DEVICE=HIMEMX
  0333160(0K)UMBPCI  device driver
   UMBPCIXX  installed DEVICE=UMBPCI
  033e528(1K)XMSDSK  device driver
   E:installed DEVICE=XMSDSK
  035f272(0K)  QBX   environment
  0371324,192  (317K)  QBX   program
  5298272(0K)  MEM   environment
  52aa  2,320(2K)  COMMAND   program
  533c 55,248   (54K)  MEM   program
  60ba249,920  (244K)free

Upper Memory Detail:

SegmentTotal   Name   Type
---      -
  9dc0205,824  (201K)reserved
  d000  6,368(6K)  DOS   system data
  d002 64(0K)DEVICE  data area
  d007  1,904(2K)FILES   FILES=40 (32 in this block)
  d07f  2,288(2K)LASTDRV LASTDRIVE=Z
  d10f  2,048(2K)STACKS  data area
  d18f 96(0K)free
  d196  2,320(2K)  COMMAND   program
  d228720(1K)  UHDD  program
 UHDD$   installed DEVICE=UHDD
  d256100,256   (98K)free
  ead1  2,304(2K)free
  eb62448(0K)  COMMAND   environment
  eb7f  2,048(2K)  COMMAND   environment

Memory Type Total  Used   Free
        
Conventional  631K   333K   298K
Upper 112K12K   100K
Reserved  281K   281K 0K
Extended (XMS)   1,518,080K 1,501,500K16,580K
  --

Re: [Freedos-devel] RAMdrive install problem (on bare metal)

2022-02-22 Thread richardkolacz...@hotmail.com 
@Eric

Many thanks for your time and information.


Although I have not extensively tested my NEW FreeDOS RC5 USB BOOT stick (to 
use on a HP INTEL i7 Xeon laptop with 32 GByte Memory and 3200x1800 display) - 
the following somewhat summarizes my setup when booting off the USB stick (and 
the USB stick becomes the C:\ drive and also now has a D:\ drive).

RAMdrives now available for FreeDOS use:-

E:\ 4,094 Mega bytes free
G:\ 4,094 Mega bytes free
H:\ 4,094 Mega bytes free
I:\ 4,094 Mega bytes free
J:\ 4,094 Mega bytes free
K:\ 4,094 Mega bytes free
L:\ 4,094 Mega bytes free
M:\ 2,541 Mega bytes free

Note F:\ reserved for built in DVD (when and if I can successfully install)


E+G+H+I+J+K+L+M ~ 30 GByte

so I think I have essentially all of the RAM assigned to FreeDOS use.

Interesting that on the i7 the maximum size of any ram drive is only ~4 GByte. 
On a HP laptop with AMD k6 (8 GByte) - the maximum possible is ~6,141 Mega 
bytes. On a HP laptop with an i3 (4 GByte) no ram drive is created (tried to 
force a 4 GByte drive - so errors out rather than make a smaller drive).

I had never anticipated that more than 4GByte in total could be assigned to 
RAMdrives (but in my case a collection of RAM drives is the method).


Although you may not need to know any of the following in regards to my setup, 
various DOS utilities provide the following info for my i7:-





MEM
***

Conventional Memory Detail:

SegmentTotal   Name   Type
---      -
    1,024(1K)interrupt vector table
  0040768(1K)BIOS data area
  0070  8,880(9K)  IOsystem data
 NUL system device driver
 CON system device driver
 PRN system device driver
 AUX system device driver
 LPT1system device driver
 LPT2system device driver
 LPT3system device driver
 COM1system device driver
 COM2system device driver
 COM3system device driver
 COM4system device driver
 CLOCK$  system device driver
 A: - D: system device driver
  029b  3,088(3K)  DOS   system data
  029d192(0K)FILES   FILES=40 (3 in this block)
  02aa  2,688(3K)HIMEMSX device driver
   XMS0  installed DEVICE=HIMEMSX
  0353160(0K)UMBPCI  device driver
   UMBPCIXX  installed DEVICE=UMBPCI
  035d272(0K)  QBX   environment
  036f328,016  (320K)  QBX   program
  5385272(0K)  MEM   environment
  5397  2,320(2K)  COMMAND   program
  5429 55,248   (54K)  MEM   program
  61a7246,128  (240K)free

Upper Memory Detail:

SegmentTotal   Name   Type
---      -
  9dc0205,824  (201K)reserved
  d000  6,288(6K)  DOS   system data
  d002  1,904(2K)FILES   FILES=40 (32 in this block)
  d07a  2,288(2K)LASTDRV LASTDRIVE=Z
  d10a  2,048(2K)STACKS  data area
  d18a320(0K)  SHSURDRV  program
 E:  installed DEVICE=SHSURDRV
  d19f320(0K)  SHSURDRV  program
 G:  installed DEVICE=SHSURDRV
  d1b4320(0K)  SHSURDRV  program
 H:  installed DEVICE=SHSURDRV
  d1c9320(0K)  SHSURDRV  program
 I:  installed DEVICE=SHSURDRV
  d1de320(0K)  SHSURDRV  program
 J:  installed DEVICE=SHSURDRV
  d1f3320(0K)  SHSURDRV  program
 K:  installed DEVICE=SHSURDRV
  d208320(0K)  SHSURDRV  program
 L:  installed DEVICE=SHSURDRV
  d21d320(0K)  SHSURDRV  program
 M:  installed DEVICE=SHSURDRV
  d232 96(0K)free
  d239  2,320(2K)  COMMAND   program
  d2cb720(1K)  UHDD  program
 UHDD$   installed DEVICE=UHDD
  d2f9 72,656   (71K)free
  e4b7 24,976   (24K)free
  ead1  2,304(2K)free
  eb62448(0K)  COMMAND   environment
  eb7f  2,048(2K)  COMMAND   environment

Memory Type Total  Used

Re: [Freedos-devel] Thinking about FreeDOS 2.0

2022-03-03 Thread richardkolacz...@hotmail.com 
I may be misunderstanding the situation but in my case I created a USB BOOT 
stick using the full USB version (RC5).

It may be a while before I switch to 1.3 (no hurry for me since I am 
preoccupied trying to get things to work, which is "slowly" going OK) - 
converting from a very "messy" non-FreeDOS USB BOOT stick from very long ago.

I only use FreeDOS in bare metal mode (and the FreeDOS USB stick becomes the 
C:\ +D:\ drives) - i.e. Windows 10 C:\ drive now does not "exist".

At present the built in DVD drive (on the HP laptop) is not working with 
FreeDOS  (will try to spend more time to solve this problem) - have yet to try 
an external USB DVD blue-ray (but this will be a while before I try). I have no 
CD only drives at all.

So for me, a "modest" 16 GByte USB BOOT stick seems to allow me "the works" 
(for everything FreeDOS that is available ?).

I do not plan to install FreeDOS on any computer hard drive (SSD) and I am not 
confident to have a partition dedicated (to dual boot with Windows 10) - this 
is partly because of what happened when I tied to have Linux and Windows 10 (on 
the C:\ drive) - the end result was that the computer was unusable for two 
weeks until finally the original Windows 10 was "fixed up".

So with your plans on more frequent releases - (USB only wise) - where does it 
leave me?

Richard



From: Jerome Shidel 
Sent: Thursday, 3 March 2022 7:56 PM
To: FreeDOS Developers 
Subject: Re: [Freedos-devel] Thinking about FreeDOS 2.0

Hi,

> On Mar 3, 2022, at 1:13 AM, Jim Hall  wrote:
>
> On Sun, Feb 20, 2022 at 4:16 PM Jim Hall  wrote:
> [..]
>> I'm sure we'll want to discuss "1.4" or "2.0" or whatever version
>> comes after 1.3. (I can start a new conversation next week to talk
>> about that.)
>
>
> Now that FreeDOS 1.3 has been out for a little while, I wanted to
> start thinking about what comes next. Let's use this thread to discuss
> it.
>
> What would you like to see changed or added (or removed) in the next
> distribution?
>
> My top three ideas:
>
>
> 1. Move to a "rolling release"
>
> It's taken several years* to release a new version of FreeDOS. Yes,
> DOS is pretty stable, so we don't need a new distribution very often
> anyway. But for many folks, the new official distribution is the only
> way they get the updated tools (most people don't download individual
> tools to update a running FreeDOS system.)
>
> *Not counting Release Candidates, the last few releases were:
> 1.0 (2006) - 1.1 (2012) - 1.2 (2016) - 1.3 (2022)
>
> I think it would be interesting to set up a system that builds a new
> FreeDOS "test" distribution whenever we update packages on the FreeDOS
> Files Archive at Ibiblio. That doesn't need to be a new build every
> night, but maybe every month.

Since the RBE (Release Build Environment) is fully automated, the is nothing 
prevent throwing a copy into a virtual machine that can run once a week week, 
month, quarterly or whenever.

Just a side note… The previous version of the RBE used would pull down a copy 
of the packages from the Official Software Repo on ibibio. However with the 
improvements to package staging, update and deployment, it makes more sense to 
pull them from the GitLab archive. This also permits making test branches of 
projects that can be used during the release build process. Such changes are 
temporary and can be permanently included or discarded prior to committing 
those packages to the Software Repository on ibiblio. This can include updates 
to metadata, translations, configuration or any other part of a package and is 
great for “testing” things before fully committing to a change.

>
> I think these distributions would come in only two versions: a "full"
> FreeDOS that looks like the LiveCD (see also #3 below) and a "mini"
> FreeDOS that contains just the FreeDOS "Base" packages, without source
> code. (The "mini" should be very tiny, and basically the same as a
> "floppy" FreeDOS install .. I guess "floppy" is a third distro
> version, but I think it could be derived from the "mini.”)

The RBE can be told to only bother making specific skews.

LiveCD. No problem.
Mini CD? Well, wouldn’t take much to add that.
Floppy Edition. No problem.

However, you cannot really derive the Floppy Edition from the the install 
process used by the LiveCD. The installers are completely different. Although, 
the end result of an install is more or less the same on most VM’s and 
Hardware. The work in completely different ways, using different process and 
methods and are not compatible with each other. The process used by the LiveCD 
(FDI) requires a 386+ and cannot be split across floppy diskettes. The Floppy 
Edition (FDI-x86) only requires an 8088/86 and is made to span diskettes.

So practically speaking. That leaves three choices for a MiniCD.

1) Since it is on CD, requiring a 386+ is not a problem. It can use FDI (the 
primary installer). FDI is already capable of having a source media that only 
co

Re: [Freedos-devel] Thinking about FreeDOS 2.0

2022-03-08 Thread richardkolacz...@hotmail.com 
Tom - thanks for suggestion (re try AHCICD.sys)


.

I downloaded AHCICD.sys and on booting up FreeDOS RC5 from a USB stick in bare 
metal mode, the relevant parts of the process are:-



UHDD.sys
UHDD, 10-30-2021  5-MB cache
Bios-handled disks : 3
1 char device installed
Driver loaded

set _CDROM.DRVR = AHCICD

Attempt to use the AHCICD CD driver

success   (in green)

Attempting to load SHSUCDX CD extentions

success (in green)

Successfully started the CD driver and extentions for
drive F:  (F: in green)  (FDCDX001)

... Done Processing start up files FDconfig.sys and FDauto.bat




When I tried  dir F:\  (F:\ is the DVD drive built into my laptop) with an 
audio CD in the tray - I get the following error message:-


Volume in drive F Error reading from dive F: data area: drive not ready
(A)bort, (R)etry, (F)ail?


At this stage all I wanted to do was to get only a directory list of what is on 
the music CD in the DVD tray.


Any pointers (anyone) of what else I need to do?


This is the first time ever for me to, in DOS, ever tried to access a DVD drive 
- so it was helpful that the DVD was "installed".

Richard


From: tom ehlert 
Sent: Thursday, 3 March 2022 10:46 PM
To: Technical discussion and questions for FreeDOS developers. 

Subject: Re: [Freedos-devel] Thinking about FreeDOS 2.0



>  At present the built in DVD drive (on the HP laptop) is not
> working with FreeDOS  (will try to spend more time to solve this
> problem) - have yet to try an external USB DVD blue-ray (but this
> will be a while before I try). I have no CD only drives at all.

there is a good chance that your BIOS uses AHCI mode for the DVD, and
your DVD driver supports only SATA/legacy mode.

try to use AHCICD.SYS


Tom



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Re: [Freedos-devel] Thinking about FreeDOS 2.0

2022-03-08 Thread richardkolacz...@hotmail.com 
Tom - thanks for suggestion (re try AHCICD.sys)


.

I downloaded AHCICD.sys and on booting up FreeDOS RC5 from a USB stick in bare 
metal mode, the relevant parts of the process are:-



UHDD.sys
UHDD, 10-30-2021  5-MB cache
Bios-handled disks : 3
1 char device installed
Driver loaded

set _CDROM.DRVR = AHCICD

Attempt to use the AHCICD CD driver

success   (in green)

Attempting to load SHSUCDX CD extentions

success (in green)

Successfully started the CD driver and extentions for
drive F:  (F: in green)  (FDCDX001)

... Done Processing start up files FDconfig.sys and FDauto.bat




When I tried  dir F:\  (F:\ is the DVD drive built into my laptop) with an 
audio CD in the tray - I get the following error message:-


Volume in drive F Error reading from dive F: data area: drive not ready
(A)bort, (R)etry, (F)ail?


At this stage all I wanted to do was to get only a directory list of what is on 
the music CD in the DVD tray.


Any pointers (anyone) of what else I need to do?


This is the first time ever for me to, in DOS, ever tried to access a DVD drive 
- so it was helpful that the DVD was "installed".

Richard


From: tom ehlert 
Sent: Thursday, 3 March 2022 10:46 PM
To: Technical discussion and questions for FreeDOS developers. 

Subject: Re: [Freedos-devel] Thinking about FreeDOS 2.0



>  At present the built in DVD drive (on the HP laptop) is not
> working with FreeDOS  (will try to spend more time to solve this
> problem) - have yet to try an external USB DVD blue-ray (but this
> will be a while before I try). I have no CD only drives at all.

there is a good chance that your BIOS uses AHCI mode for the DVD, and
your DVD driver supports only SATA/legacy mode.

try to use AHCICD.SYS


Tom



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Re: [Freedos-devel]   >512MB C:\ for USB BOOT install maybe?

2022-04-14 Thread richardkolacz...@hotmail.com 
Assuming that in future having USB full install is still available (there were 
mentions in the past, I think, not to even have USB option) - is it easily 
achievable to have bigger than the 512 MB C:\ that exists?

I do not actually "install" FreeDOS as I use the USB stick as a BOOT stick for 
bare metal mode - so FreeDOS does not actually "see" the Windows 10 hard drive 
in Legacy Mode.

I do use up the remaining space on a USB stick for D:\ and E:\ partitions - but 
it would be nice to have a bigger C:\ partition.

No problems if this is too much trouble to implement.

Richard


From: Wilhelm Spiegl 
Sent: Tuesday, 5 April 2022 5:06 AM
To: Technical discussion and questions for FreeDOS developers. 

Subject: Re: [Freedos-devel]   Questions about FreeDOS Help

at internet there is only the browser-built-in-
> "go back" option to go back. If you start anywhere in the middle via an
> Internet hyperlink you have no chance to find the rest. So I would add
> at least a go back hyperlink (amb-solution) at the bottom of each side.
>
this refers to internet browser! e.g. if you start a google search, get a link 
as result, then you only get this command but cannot go back to main help site. 
earlier versions already had such a link.I think I will add it again anywhere 
at the bottom.

bugs, even in the latest version of htmlhelp from Andy Stamp:

sometimes the text shows many empty lines at the end of a file when you scroll 
down, sometimes not at the same file,
when it shows many free lines, the hyperlink shown on left bottom may become a 
character mismatch or, more worse, links that are not mentioned within the 
file; the shown links "broke out of the file", have nothing to do with it, if 
you click on it an error message shows a wrong path,
when opening a file, scrolling down and going back etc. htmlhelp crashes after 
a while, i have the feeling that it runs out of RAM.

My feeling is that htmlhelp has problems with opening/closing different files 
very often.

support for a g breve (something close to a tilde above g) for turkish support 
would be needed.



--
Diese Nachricht wurde von meinem Android Mobiltelefon mit 
mail.com Mail gesendet.
Am 04.04.22, 19:31 schrieb Jim Hall :
I found this email that Fritz sent to me off-list (it got lost in my
inbox) but I wanted to put this back on the freedos-devel email list
so we can discuss it here:


> The first question that has to be decided by Jim is if there are
> plans to support htmlhelp in the future. As reported several times
> it is buggy, crashes very often and the main problem is that it
> supports UTF-8, but only in about 250 UTF-8 characters when the
> correct codepage is activated. This was no problem till now with
> most European codepages. Turkish cp857 als works with htmlhelp, but
> when you write the help in UTF-8 it cannot translate the turkish "g"
> (gbreve) - and maybe some others. So turkish needs to be written with
> cp857 under all circumstances for htmlhelp. If you want I can try to
> make a small test version for you.
>
> AMB is nice, should support the turkish "g" (not tested) and has an
> option to import the primitive html files that we use (Mateusz does
> not love this option as he thinks that the internal .ama files are
> simpler). The reason why I prefer html is that I can simply upload the
> html files into internet and check if everything works fine, e.g. there
> is a tool to test if all internal links work fine. ama supports utf-8
> but does not have hyperlinks but simple and special types of links.
> And although you can write the text in UTF-8 (it makes cpxxx out of it)
> it is not able to export the UTF-8 to html. So my first question is:
> Will htmlhelp be given up or not?
>

I'll open this up to the FreeDOS developers.

I'm sort of in two states of mind on this. On one hand, HTML Help is
great. I like the idea that Help documentation can be maintained in
HTML files. That makes it really easy for folks to write
documentation.

I also like that HTML Help implements a simple version of HTML. It
doesn't understand , , , or  (these tags are
essentially ignored and displayed inline) but it can do other basic
documentation things like comments, , , , , ,
, , , and . I didn't test other HTML tags, but at least
that subset seems to cover the essentials for writing technical
documentation. For example, I wrote this simple test file:

:: 
:: 
:: Hi there!
:: 
:: 
::
:: Hi there!
::
:: This is a line of text.
:: This line has a few spaces at the beginning.
:: This is some sample text in
:: bold
:: italics
:: 
:: .
::
::
:: This is a link: link.
:: 
::
:: Heading 2
::
:: Heading 3
::
:: 
::
:: 
:: this is a preformatted block of text
:: this line has a few spaces at the start
:: and this line has bold and italics
:: 
::
:: 
::
:: This is the end
::
:: 
:: 



..and that rendered correctly in HTML Help.

When AMB came up, with the accompanying AMB Help, I really liked it.
Such as a simple

Re: [Freedos-devel] How to work with FAT12 in FreeDOS 1.3

2022-04-23 Thread richardkolacz...@hotmail.com 
I am trying to setup FAT12 drives so that I can test doslfn and doslfnMS which 
have been very recently updated.

I can only work via bare metal mode (usb BOOT disk is C:\ with also partitions 
D:\ and E:\). To date I have created a FAT16 partition (D:\) which both Windows 
and FreeDOS can recognize and work with.

I cannot find a way to reformat just the D:\  partition into a FAT12 - neither 
via Windows, CMD  or so far by FreeDOS. I was aiming for a 256 MB FAT12, but if 
this is not possible then a 32 MB FAT12 will do.

I also tried using a USB floppy drive as a FAT12 test drive, but strangely 
Windows refuses to have anything to do with it. When in FreeDOS, attempting to 
read the USB floppy drive results in say a DIR listing of part of what's on the 
current FreeDOS drive followed by a  lot of garbage - NO reference of what is 
on the floppy disk.

If there are not any programs available to make FAT12 - is there a way to 
"manually" byte-wise change things on the FAT16 partition (D:\) giving the same 
effect as what FORMAT would have done?


Richard

From: Eric Auer 
Sent: Saturday, 23 April 2022 8:01 PM
To: [email protected] 
Subject: Re: [Freedos-devel] Update on website usability test


Hi Jim, hi everybody,

sorry about being so late with the review. I hope the
(rather critical, but of course not intended to be
personal pouting & nagging) comments below still help.

It may be my German bad understanding of fashion, but:

A professional designer donated a new website design and
the result was that in a test, 2 out of 5 topics were
almost impossible to find. That does not sound like an
"overall ... good" and professional product to me.

The fact that your students commented that the website
now looks like other websites about software sounds like
"we are following a global trend to make websites look
nicer while making them less usable"? :-p

On the other hand, I guess it will be easy for you to
make the important things easier to find on the news
website, so we will get the best of BOTH worlds: New
looks and an easy to use website.
For me, it is always good to find the LIST OF PACKAGES
with descriptions and versions quickly. At the moment,
it only takes 2 or 3 clicks: "Download FreeDOS", then go
to "What's included" and enjoy that packages are grouped
by category in one large list, with each package name
being a link to some HTML rendering of the LSM metadata.

Your test tasks 1, 3, 5 are immediately answered by the
start page of the current version, while the install
instructions are in "download" and the mailing lists
are in "forums", very few clicks away.

In the new redesign, tasks 1, 2, 3, 5 are immediately
linked on the start page, with 4 being hidden behind
the two steps "contribute" and "join the forums" which
is a code for "mailing lists" ;-)

However, only 1 is one of the topics linked with an
image on the start page, all others are not. Next,
the new download page ONLY gives you download disks.

Why does the new download page REMOVE all other GOOD
to have links found on the old download page? Being
"how to install", "verify", "what's included" and
"read the readme", as well as "how to write IMG" and
a link to the individual package file archive?

All of those are very useful to read in context of
downloading and I agree that other software websites
also fail in providing this information in easy to
find ways. But we should not follow that bad example!

The current design focuses on "download" and "news",
while adding common other topics on the top menu bar
and social media (only as non-accessible graphical
logo links) and other things in the bottom menu bar.

The new design largely preserves the menu bars, but
tucks away the news behind a small text link which
does not have any glitter added.

While it is very nice and unusual that a project as
FreeDOS still has regular interesting news and is
not one of those retro projects which have not been
touched for years. So the news should get more shine.

Instead, the new design gives more spotlights to the
youtube channel, system requirements (which are rather
boring: it SHOULD run on every PC, but on very new PC,
you will need a VM or emulator to compensate the lack
of BIOS and, not mentioned in the new design at all,
almost every game will need those for sound anyway),
"about", games, application and programming,

However, "about" just is an optional detour to reach
the games, application and programming pages, why?
With a rather short text about the why of FreeDOS,
with a typo "sofwtare" ;-)

The new "games" section links to several online
games collections, but does not provide hints on
the sound issue. And there could be a number of
shiny game screenshots on it as well :-)

The new programming section looks like a quite
useful collection of links to compilers, notably
INcluding several freeware ones but EXcluding the
open source DJGPP, why? Also, offering 3 Borland
Pascal and 2 Borland C/C+

Re: [Freedos-devel] How to work with FAT12 in FreeDOS 1.3

2022-04-23 Thread richardkolacz...@hotmail.com 
Thanks for quick reply.

So too big, how big can I go and the CMD line (in FreeDOS) to achieve some sort 
of FAT12 drive (for my USB stick D:\ partition)?

From: Steve Nickolas 
Sent: Saturday, 23 April 2022 8:59 PM
To: Technical discussion and questions for FreeDOS developers. 

Subject: Re: [Freedos-devel] How to work with FAT12 in FreeDOS 1.3

On Sat, 23 Apr 2022, [email protected] wrote:

> I cannot find a way to reformat just the D:\ partition into a FAT12 -
> neither via Windows, CMD or so far by FreeDOS. I was aiming for a 256 MB
> FAT12, but if this is not possible then a 32 MB FAT12 will do.

Both of those are too big for FAT12.  256 MB would require BIGFAT (which
is a variant of FAT16), and even 32 MB really needs FAT16.

-uso.


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Re: [Freedos-devel] How to access all drives on USB stick

2022-04-25 Thread richardkolacz...@hotmail.com 
I have a FreeDOS BOOT USB stick with 5 partitions (C:, D:, E:, F:, G:) where 
the C: partition (512 MB) is the FreeDOS stuff and the other 4 were created via 
Freedos as an option by me.

So far, I can only see the first three in freeDOS - Windows 10 can see all 5 
partitions (drives) on this USB stick (and I have files on all five partitions).


How, in FreeDOS, can I access/use the last two drives?

Richard


From: Mark Olesen 
Sent: Monday, 25 April 2022 2:48 PM
To: Technical discussion and questions for FreeDOS developers. 

Subject: Re: [Freedos-devel] Update on website usability test

Jim,

I want to thank you for taking the work of Pat and carrying it on. You
are not underappreciated. Especially all the developers, translators,
etc. I was not understating what you have done. I was just implying
that it is and never has been an easy to use OS for a novice. Your
bullets prove that (I read that before). Bullet number 4 (four) is
important but not for the survival of the OS. It would not attract new
users.

Platforms have changed. The compute of things has and is evolving to
abstract. Nobody is going to care what hardware is running just as
long as it can run your software --- just as FreeDOS is relying on
Emulators; very few bare metal systems.

FreeDOS might be embedded on a SOc to deploy firmware. However, the
future of it for gaming is bleak. Nobody teaches this stuff anymore.

On Sun, Apr 24, 2022 at 8:51 PM Jim Hall  wrote:
>
> On Sun, Apr 24, 2022 at 8:37 PM Mark Olesen  wrote:
> >
> > Just to chime in. Technically, FreeDOS is not for the novice. I
> > wouldn't expect my wife or daughter to be able to install it and then
> > figure out what to do with a prompt.
> >
> > Therefore, I suggest you try and understand your user base and gear it
> > towards those individuals instead of trying to make it appear (mask)
> > as a user friendly OS.
> >
>
>
> As a reminder, we conducted a user survey in 2021 to understand who
> was using FreeDOS today. Quoting from the end of the survey page on
> the wiki: (data is at the top of the page)
>
>
> http://wiki.freedos.org/wiki/index.php/Survey/2021
>
> [..]
> > 4. What is your level of DOS experience?
> >
> > Not surprising to me, since I get a lot of emails from folks who clearly
> > are experiencing DOS for the first time.
> >
> > I can see three "plateaus" in this chart: "beginner user" (6% are 1-3)
> > "some experience" (25% are 4-6) and "more experienced" (68% are 7-10).
> >
> > My big takeaways from this survey are:
> >
> > (1) Most people use FreeDOS in 2021 for playing DOS games, running other
> > DOS apps (work or home), writing new DOS programs, and doing some kind of
> > "system" work (updating BIOS, testing systems, recovering systems).
> >
> > (2) A lot of people boot FreeDOS in a virtual machine, but there's a
> > sizeable community of folks who run FreeDOS on actual hardware (such as
> > "classic" collectors with XT/AT/'386/etc, and people running on post-2000
> > PC hardware).
> >
> > (3) Most (all?) who boot FreeDOS in a virtual machine are probably
> > running a "FreeDOS-dedicated" virtual machine. If you're running FreeDOS
> > on physical hardware, I'd guess you're probably dual-booting.
> >
> > (4) Most of the people who use FreeDOS are more experienced, but we
> > shouldn't forget the "beginner" users or those with "some experience."
>
>
> I mentioned in another thread when I first talked about the website
> update that one of the reasons for the website refresh was to "head
> off" some of the emails I get from new users asking for help. For
> example, "I downloaded FreeDOS, how do I use it" or "can I run FreeDOS
> on my Raspberry Pi" or "what do I type" or "what can I do with
> FreeDOS." These folks have never used DOS before, but somehow found
> out about FreeDOS and want to try it out. My guess is they discovered
> FreeDOS by reading an article about it (I sometimes write about
> FreeDOS for Opensource.com or other places) and/or are university
> students learning about operating systems.
>
> My goal with the website refresh has been to first come up with a
> design that works well for these "some experience" users, and that
> also benefits the "expert" users. For the mock-up website that went to
> usability testing, I thought the design was balanced for intermediate
> and expert, with more help for intermediate users, with the assumption
> that more expert users could get the rest of the way.
>
> Jim
>
>
> ___
> Freedos-devel mailing list
> [email protected]
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel


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Re: [Freedos-devel]  Re: How to access all drives on USB stick

2022-04-25 Thread richardkolacz...@hotmail.com 
Hi Willi

Thank you for your reply.

I just did a quick test in FreeDOS, using fDISK, and now experimenting with 
"Logical Drives" . The dropbox links are screenshots is the stage I got up to. 
I may have to "wipe" the two Windows 10 partitions (F:, G:) I made previously 
(that's OK - as this is all "experimental" for me in the learning process).  
Similarly I may have to alter my FDauto.bat (due to conflict with pre-named RAM 
drives- that's also OK).

I have not yet rebooted into freeDOS (this email computer is the computer that 
I USB BOOT FreeDOS) - at this stage I do not work in Virtual mode at all - only 
bare metal mode on a fairly recent computer. I think I will have to format the 
two "new" logical drives - not sure.


I think I approached the problem the wrong way by involving Windows in creating 
the last two partitions of the USB stick.

I am still trying to figure out the "proper way" to create a "new" question for 
this mailing list - I gather that it is NOT via the ticket system, Feature/Bug 
report,  or BTTR forum.

I better get to bed now (almost sunrise here), will continue after some sleep.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/za5xscc4qlc9mo3/PRIMARY.png?dl=1

https://www.dropbox.com/s/za5xscc4qlc9mo3/PRIMARY.png?dl=1

Many thanks


Richard


From: Wilhelm Spiegl 
Sent: Tuesday, 26 April 2022 3:38 AM
To: Technical discussion and questions for FreeDOS developers. 

Subject: Re: [Freedos-devel]  Re: How to access all drives on USB stick

Hi, I could try to explain you how fdisk, sys and format work together, but as 
i would need some time to write all this - and maybe you are not interested in 
this a little bit more complex system, i would say, lets start from the windows 
side.
plug i the stick under windows, open explorer with win button+e, cklick on the 
usb drive letters with right mouse button and then properties.
you should find informations about size in mb/gb/tb. you should also find 
informations about the filesystems in this window. fat12 or fat16 or fat32 or 
ntfs. note these values and tell me them and the whole size of the stick.
then try disk management to find out which of these drive letters are primary 
partitions.
to open it enter win-key +r, a window should open, then type 
diskmgmt.msc<http://diskmgmt.msc> . google, you will see that this is nothing 
criminal.
wait a while and then you should see all harddrives. take a screenshot of the 
usb stick and send it together with the values mentioned above.

i assume either one of the partitions is to big or too small or ntfs formatted.
if you try fdisk from freedos, simply start from bottom to top, choose the 
correct hd/stick, and try to find out how many primary partitions are set on 
the stick. freedos supports a maximum of 4 PRIMARY partitions, but more if you 
use an extended partition and logical drives inside. please a screenshot too.

Willi




--
Diese Nachricht wurde von meinem Android Mobiltelefon mit 
mail.com<http://mail.com> Mail gesendet.
Am 25.04.22, 16:59 schrieb "[email protected]" 
:
I have a FreeDOS BOOT USB stick with 5 partitions (C:, D:, E:, F:, G:) where 
the C: partition (512 MB) is the FreeDOS stuff and the other 4 were created via 
Freedos as an option by me.

So far, I can only see the first three in freeDOS - Windows 10 can see all 5 
partitions (drives) on this USB stick (and I have files on all five partitions).


How, in FreeDOS, can I access/use the last two drives?

Richard


From: Mark Olesen 
Sent: Monday, 25 April 2022 2:48 PM
To: Technical discussion and questions for FreeDOS developers. 

Subject: Re: [Freedos-devel] Update on website usability test

Jim,

I want to thank you for taking the work of Pat and carrying it on. You
are not underappreciated. Especially all the developers, translators,
etc. I was not understating what you have done. I was just implying
that it is and never has been an easy to use OS for a novice. Your
bullets prove that (I read that before). Bullet number 4 (four) is
important but not for the survival of the OS. It would not attract new
users.

Platforms have changed. The compute of things has and is evolving to
abstract. Nobody is going to care what hardware is running just as
long as it can run your software --- just as FreeDOS is relying on
Emulators; very few bare metal systems.

FreeDOS might be embedded on a SOc to deploy firmware. However, the
future of it for gaming is bleak. Nobody teaches this stuff anymore.

On Sun, Apr 24, 2022 at 8:51 PM Jim Hall  wrote:
>
> On Sun, Apr 24, 2022 at 8:37 PM Mark Olesen  wrote:
> >
> > Just to chime in. Technically, FreeDOS is not for the novice. I
> > wouldn't expect my wife or daughter to be able to install it and then
> > figure out what to do with a prompt.
> >
> > Therefore, I suggest you try and understand yo

Re: [Freedos-devel]  Re: How to access all drives on USB stick

2022-04-25 Thread richardkolacz...@hotmail.com 


The link below should have been the second one.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/afuol3h33en8d9i/LOGICAL.png?dl=1


From: [email protected] 
Sent: Tuesday, 26 April 2022 4:42 AM
To: Technical discussion and questions for FreeDOS developers. 

Subject: Re: [Freedos-devel]  Re: How to access all drives on USB stick

Hi Willi

Thank you for your reply.

I just did a quick test in FreeDOS, using fDISK, and now experimenting with 
"Logical Drives" . The dropbox links are screenshots is the stage I got up to. 
I may have to "wipe" the two Windows 10 partitions (F:, G:) I made previously 
(that's OK - as this is all "experimental" for me in the learning process).  
Similarly I may have to alter my FDauto.bat (due to conflict with pre-named RAM 
drives- that's also OK).

I have not yet rebooted into freeDOS (this email computer is the computer that 
I USB BOOT FreeDOS) - at this stage I do not work in Virtual mode at all - only 
bare metal mode on a fairly recent computer. I think I will have to format the 
two "new" logical drives - not sure.


I think I approached the problem the wrong way by involving Windows in creating 
the last two partitions of the USB stick.

I am still trying to figure out the "proper way" to create a "new" question for 
this mailing list - I gather that it is NOT via the ticket system, Feature/Bug 
report,  or BTTR forum.

I better get to bed now (almost sunrise here), will continue after some sleep.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/za5xscc4qlc9mo3/PRIMARY.png?dl=1

https://www.dropbox.com/s/za5xscc4qlc9mo3/PRIMARY.png?dl=1

Many thanks


Richard


From: Wilhelm Spiegl 
Sent: Tuesday, 26 April 2022 3:38 AM
To: Technical discussion and questions for FreeDOS developers. 

Subject: Re: [Freedos-devel]  Re: How to access all drives on USB stick

Hi, I could try to explain you how fdisk, sys and format work together, but as 
i would need some time to write all this - and maybe you are not interested in 
this a little bit more complex system, i would say, lets start from the windows 
side.
plug i the stick under windows, open explorer with win button+e, cklick on the 
usb drive letters with right mouse button and then properties.
you should find informations about size in mb/gb/tb. you should also find 
informations about the filesystems in this window. fat12 or fat16 or fat32 or 
ntfs. note these values and tell me them and the whole size of the stick.
then try disk management to find out which of these drive letters are primary 
partitions.
to open it enter win-key +r, a window should open, then type 
diskmgmt.msc<http://diskmgmt.msc> . google, you will see that this is nothing 
criminal.
wait a while and then you should see all harddrives. take a screenshot of the 
usb stick and send it together with the values mentioned above.

i assume either one of the partitions is to big or too small or ntfs formatted.
if you try fdisk from freedos, simply start from bottom to top, choose the 
correct hd/stick, and try to find out how many primary partitions are set on 
the stick. freedos supports a maximum of 4 PRIMARY partitions, but more if you 
use an extended partition and logical drives inside. please a screenshot too.

Willi




--
Diese Nachricht wurde von meinem Android Mobiltelefon mit 
mail.com<http://mail.com> Mail gesendet.
Am 25.04.22, 16:59 schrieb "[email protected]" 
:
I have a FreeDOS BOOT USB stick with 5 partitions (C:, D:, E:, F:, G:) where 
the C: partition (512 MB) is the FreeDOS stuff and the other 4 were created via 
Freedos as an option by me.

So far, I can only see the first three in freeDOS - Windows 10 can see all 5 
partitions (drives) on this USB stick (and I have files on all five partitions).


How, in FreeDOS, can I access/use the last two drives?

Richard


From: Mark Olesen 
Sent: Monday, 25 April 2022 2:48 PM
To: Technical discussion and questions for FreeDOS developers. 

Subject: Re: [Freedos-devel] Update on website usability test

Jim,

I want to thank you for taking the work of Pat and carrying it on. You
are not underappreciated. Especially all the developers, translators,
etc. I was not understating what you have done. I was just implying
that it is and never has been an easy to use OS for a novice. Your
bullets prove that (I read that before). Bullet number 4 (four) is
important but not for the survival of the OS. It would not attract new
users.

Platforms have changed. The compute of things has and is evolving to
abstract. Nobody is going to care what hardware is running just as
long as it can run your software --- just as FreeDOS is relying on
Emulators; very few bare metal systems.

FreeDOS might be embedded on a SOc to deploy firmware. However, the
future of it for gaming is bleak. Nobody teaches this stuff anymore.

On Sun, Apr 24, 2022 at 8:51 PM Jim H