getting applications working

[Jack-101]

If you update FreeDOS, in accordance with the update list
noted by Eric Auer, do consider adding the UIDE or UIDEJR
driver, also XMGR and RDISK if desired.   They are avail-
able from <http://johnson.tmfc.net/dos/driver.html>, also
 from other Internet sources.

UIDEJR is a "basic" hard-disk and CD/DVD driver.   It can
run SATA or IDE disk/CD/DVD drives, in many cases about 2
times as fast as BIOS logic for disks or older "PIO mode"
drivers for CD/DVD drives.    UIDEJR replaces the GCDROM,
XCDROM, and XDMA drivers, offering faster performance via
use of an XMS buffer for I-O "not suited" to UltraDMA.

UIDE adds caching for disk/diskette/CD/DVD drives and has
the same device-handler capability as UIDEJR.   Its cache
makes UIDE about 2 times faster than UIDEJR for both disk
and CD/DVD drives.   UIDE can cache 5-MB to 2-GB of data!

UIDE/UIDEJR take about 5K/3K of upper-memory on a FreeDOS
system, that does not provide HMA space to drivers loaded
by the CONFIG.SYS file.   If desired, Eric Auer's DEVLOAD
can be used to load them from the AUTOEXEC.BAT file, thus
reducing UIDE/UIDEJR to 992/768 bytes of upper-memory and
the rest occupying HMA space.

JEMM386 is recommended for extra upper-memory, DPMI/VCPI,
or if any "protected mode" applications are used.    If a
simple "real mode" system is wanted, the UMBPCI driver by
Uwe Sieber and the XMGR driver (offered with UIDE) can be
used.   XMGR has built-in features to support the "Shadow
RAM" memory used by UMBPCI, which does not allow DMA.

See the README file for XMGR/RDISK/UIDE for some examples
of CONFIG.SYS files that can load these drivers.


------------------------------------------------------------------------------
OpenSolaris 2009.06 is a cutting edge operating system for enterprises
looking to deploy the next generation of Solaris that includes the latest
innovations from Sun and the OpenSource community. Download a copy and
enjoy capabilities such as Networking, Storage and Virtualization.
Go to: http://p.sf.net/sfu/opensolaris-get
_______________________________________________
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@...
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

[Bernd Blaauw]

Jack schreef:
> If you update FreeDOS, in accordance with the update list
> noted by Eric Auer, do consider adding the UIDE or UIDEJR
> driver, also XMGR and RDISK if desired.   They are avail-
> able from <http://johnson.tmfc.net/dos/driver.html>, also
>  from other Internet sources.
>  
We'll surely add them, as they are the de-facto only usable legally
freely distributable and good working cd-rom drivers.
I guess this means we'll be able to drop the old sets of PCI UDMA
drivers and cdrom-drivers as well, though I can remember using some of
them to get a more stable pci-bus set up.
(more initialisation done than standard PCI by BIOS)

Your integration with JEMM/JEMMEX is a quite nice feature.

Bernd

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
OpenSolaris 2009.06 is a cutting edge operating system for enterprises
looking to deploy the next generation of Solaris that includes the latest
innovations from Sun and the OpenSource community. Download a copy and
enjoy capabilities such as Networking, Storage and Virtualization.
Go to: http://p.sf.net/sfu/opensolaris-get
_______________________________________________
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@...
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

[Eric Auer-3]

Hi Bernd, Jack,

> Jack schreef:
>> If you update FreeDOS, in accordance with the update list
>> noted by Eric Auer, do consider adding the UIDE or UIDEJR
>> driver, also XMGR and RDISK if desired.   They are avail-
>> able from <http://johnson.tmfc.net/dos/driver.html>, also
>>  from other Internet sources.

> We'll surely add them, as they are the de-facto only usable legally
> freely distributable and good working cd-rom drivers.

I agree - you could also use XCDROM / GCDROM / XGCDROM but
with UIDE or UIDEJR you get a newer version with better
maintenance and small memory footprint :-). Bernd, maybe
you could make FDPKG / installer / FDUPDATE compatible
packages for the Mateusz and his fdupdate repository? My
hope is that at some point we can throw a nice collection
of fdupdate packages over our 1.0 ISO to instantly have
an almost complete FreeDOS 1.1 ISO at little effort :-).

> I guess this means we'll be able to drop the old sets of
> PCI UDMA  drivers and cdrom-drivers as well, though I can
> remember using some of them to get a more stable pci-bus set up.
> (more initialisation done than standard PCI by BIOS)

Interesting, but using BIOS is more compatible, I hope.

What I miss in UIDE is support for BIOS Eltorito disk
access of the CD/DVD you booted from. Similar to the
ELTORITO SYS from Bart L, hopefully with similar list
of BIOS bug workarounds of which there seem to be many
in the driver from Bart ;-). That would make UIDE even
more universal for CD/DVD access in DOS :-).

Eric



------------------------------------------------------------------------------
OpenSolaris 2009.06 is a cutting edge operating system for enterprises
looking to deploy the next generation of Solaris that includes the latest
innovations from Sun and the OpenSource community. Download a copy and
enjoy capabilities such as Networking, Storage and Virtualization.
Go to: http://p.sf.net/sfu/opensolaris-get
_______________________________________________
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@...
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

[LM-9]

>> My favorite DOS programming editor (ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/editor/edwin15c.zip)
>> fails and won't run. Has anyone been able to get edwin working on FreeDOS?

Eric Auer wrote:
>Please describe the failure in more detail. Tried with
>minimal drivers, HIMEM or HIMEMX and nothing else?

Tried it with the out-of-the-box FreeDOS setup in fdconfig.sys.  So whatever it set up, I used.  I tried each of the 3 boot options at the beginning.  Every time I run the program it says it can't find the overlay file.  The install program says it can't find the edwin.com program.  The files all sitting in the same directory.  If you want, you can pull down the program from the garbo archive and see if it does any better on your machine.  I even tried running it with HX extender and got the same results.

Any good text/programming editors that can handle switching between multiple documents and with good keymapping support?  I really need an editor I can remap the command keys with since I'm pretty used to using certain key sequences.  I guess I can always get by on edit or pico or nano if I can't find anything else.  One place I worked, we used to use Brief.  It was a nice programming editor.

Mateusz Viste wrote:
>You'll need also GUS instruments to make it work with MIDI (I can >provide you GUS files if you won't be able to find them).

Timidity can also work with GUS patches.  I have the FreePats standard GUS patch distribution.  FreePats is the only group I've found that's working on Open Source patch and sf2 files.  By the way, they need volunteers.  So, if anyone can record some instruments to share or wants to help out in any way, please let them know.  The FreePats project site is:
http://freepats.zenvoid.org/

Found copies of Timidity for DOS:
http://sca.uwaterloo.ca/www.cgs.fi/tt/timidity/distribution.html
Now I just have to try to get it set up properly.  That's usually a nuisance.

Tried mpxplay.  Works fine on my machine for midi files.

Any good Karaoke players out there (for kar files)?  I'll see if I can get Timidity working for that purpose, but there's a recent patch for midi karaoke (kar) files created with abc2midi that I'm sure never made it into the older builds of the program.

I also tried mplayer.  Seemed to work without crashing, although the display jittered and there was a lot of text in the background.  Is there a version of vlc or xine that works on DOS?

dos386 wrote:
> No, get FreeBASIC compiler. There are some interpreters but...
Eric Auer wrote:
>>FreeBASIC usually works very well and it has a QBASIC compat mode :-)

Don't need Qbasic, just basic.  Does FreeBASIC only compile or can it run programs in interpreted mode?  Would prefer interpreted.  I still have my Microsoft Basic Professional Compiler for DOS.  I bought the last version before they switched to Visual Basic.  Any big differences between it and FreeBASIC as far as building programs?  I tried out some old applications I'd built using my Basic compiler on FreeDOS.  All of them seemed to run.  Only issue was with sound, which doesn't appear to be working using the BASIC commands.

I downloaded the latest version of pictview plus many of the files at
http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/fdupdate/ 
Didn't see any instructions on how to update.  Hope unziping in the \FDOS directory is okay, because that's what I did.  Still appears to be booting and running okay.

Eric Auer wrote:
>HIMEM to HIMEMX, EMM386 to
> nothing or JEMM

Is there a web site or a how to with instructions on how to switch some of these and which ones to use?  A sample fdconfig.sys with some of these would be nice.

I've been trying for a few days now to get USB working.  Checked out the FreeDOS wiki on the subject and the sites it pointed to and some others the search engine brought up.  Tried at least 4 different methods.  Nothing seemed to work.  I tried again after updating the kernel and other files today.  I put the following in my fdconfig.sys:
2?DEVICE=C:\FDOS\USBDISK.SYS
and then ran dosuhci.  It crashed or hung a lot.  I did finally manage to get a directory of my e: drive (USB flash drive).  The first time I try dir e: on a drive it takes an incredibly long time to run, like 5 minutes or more.  Once it showed the directory for a first time, performance got a little better.  However, trying to get a directory of my CD when this stuff is loaded crashed my system.  Any tips on getting better performance from a USB drive?  I'm thrilled I can at least get a directory some of the time and it seems to be able to copy some files.  Does size of the USB drive affect how well it performs?  Was wondering if I should stay with the smaller drives so it might display the directory faster?  Hope this gets less buggy in future releases (of FreeDOS and the USB driver).

>> One last question. Is there a good forum or mailing list for >>discussing porting/compiling Open Source applications to DOS?
Mateusz Viste wrote:
>Sure. You just posted to such mailing list ;-)

Okay, any suggestions on best basic command line options to use with djgpp or OpenWatcom when compiling apps for FreeDOS?  Any special settings or optimizations recommended?

I tried compiling lcal and pcal (at Sourceforge) yesterday and both built fine with djgpp, but they have a djgpp makefile already.  I also tried diffh (also at Sourceforge) with djgpp.  Had to copy the makefiles and .Tpo files from the mingw build over in order to get it to compile, but then it built.  Any good place to share applications or what patches are needed to get them building?

Thanks.

Sincerely,
Laura
http://www.distasis.com/cpp



     

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
OpenSolaris 2009.06 is a cutting edge operating system for enterprises
looking to deploy the next generation of Solaris that includes the latest
innovations from Sun and the OpenSource community. Download a copy and
enjoy capabilities such as Networking, Storage and Virtualization.
Go to: http://p.sf.net/sfu/opensolaris-get
_______________________________________________
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@...
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

[Jack-101]

>> I guess this means we'll be able to drop the old sets of
>> PCI UDMA drivers and cdrom-drivers as well, though I can
>> remember using some of them to get a more stable pci-bus
>> set up.  (more initialisation done than standard PCI by
>> BIOS)
>
> Interesting, but using BIOS is more compatible, I hope.

I agree.   Since about 2006, my UltraDMA drivers have not
tried to alter any BIOS settings.   In a few cases, doing
so caused a system to HANG.   Unsure why, but to be safe,
the drivers will now "accept" whatever UltraDMA/PIO modes
and other disk settings the BIOS makes.   Most BIOS logic
is quite accurate at handling the PCI bus these days, but
some BIOS programs still OMIT any "Virtual DMA" logic and
force disks to use "PIO" for JEMM386 or "protected mode".
This is why at least UIDEJR is still needed.

> What I miss in UIDE is support for BIOS Eltorito disk
> access of the CD/DVD you booted from. Similar to the
> ELTORITO SYS from Bart L, hopefully with similar list
> of BIOS bug workarounds of which there seem to be many
> in the driver from Bart ;-). That would make UIDE even
> more universal for CD/DVD access in DOS :-).

Bernd suggested this to me privately, earlier today.   I
am currently modifying UIDEJR so Bernd can use it in his
automatic-loader "scripts" -- UIDEJR will not "hook" the
Int 13h vector if no disks are used, will declare a name
of "UIDEJR$" overriding the /D: name if no CD/DVD drives
are found, and will have /N3 to work without XMS memory.
Had it working but by-mistake ERASED my hard disk today,
so I must reconstruct the new driver from memory; I have
CD/RW backups for all else.   After that, and maybe some
similar UIDE changes, THEN I can look at "El Torito"!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
OpenSolaris 2009.06 is a cutting edge operating system for enterprises
looking to deploy the next generation of Solaris that includes the latest
innovations from Sun and the OpenSource community. Download a copy and
enjoy capabilities such as Networking, Storage and Virtualization.
Go to: http://p.sf.net/sfu/opensolaris-get
_______________________________________________
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@...
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

[Florian Xaver-2]

Hi,

> I tried compiling lcal and pcal (at Sourceforge) yesterday and both  
> built fine with djgpp, but they have a djgpp makefile already.  I also  
> tried diffh (also at Sourceforge) with djgpp.  Had to copy the makefiles  
> and .Tpo files from the mingw build over in order to get it to compile,  
> but then it built.  Any good place to share applications or what patches  
> are needed to get them building?

I think learning from those makefiles is the easiest way. One problem is  
sometimes, that the libraries which are needed aren't available for DJGPP.  
But I think Robert and others know more. :-)

Bye
  Flo

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
OpenSolaris 2009.06 is a cutting edge operating system for enterprises
looking to deploy the next generation of Solaris that includes the latest
innovations from Sun and the OpenSource community. Download a copy and
enjoy capabilities such as Networking, Storage and Virtualization.
Go to: http://p.sf.net/sfu/opensolaris-get
_______________________________________________
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@...
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

[dos386]

> Notable things:
> edit

buggy (some PC's)

> perl

NOMYSO ???

> Georg Potthast is also doing experiments with a player for new hardware.

His "driver" now can play from memory so it became a real driver :-)

> > * BOCHS emulator (host OS = emulated OS = DOS)
> Or any other emulator, of course

QEMU or BOCHS only (BOCHS is slower and better)

> > > Is there a PNG viewer for FreeDOS?
> I guess you could use DISPLAY from our ImageMagick port

"DISPLAY" works for 95% of PNG's ... NOT from "ImageMagick port"

> I also tried mplayer.

For video, not sound.

> Seemed to work without crashing, although the display jittered and there
> was a lot of text in the background.

RTFM: "--really-quiet"

> Is there a version of vlc or xine that works on DOS?

VLC is very buggy (a few bugs got fixed ... but we are at 1.0rc4, not 0.20 ...)
and the GUI is horrible. I'm not aware of any efforts to port it to DOS.
The only benefit of VLC is OGG Dirac support.

> Don't need Qbasic, just basic.

???

> Does FreeBASIC only compile or can it run programs in interpreted mode?

Compile only.

>> HIMEM to HIMEMX, EMM386 to
>> nothing or JEMM
> Is there a web site or a how to with instructions on how to switch some of these and which > ones to use?  A sample fdconfig.sys with some of these would be nice.

REM DEVICE=HIMEMX.EXE
DEVICE=HIMEMX.EXE /NUMHANDLES=72
REM DEVICE=XMGR.SYS
REM DEVICE=EMM386.EXE NOEMS

DEVICE=SRDXMS.SYS
DEVICE=XDMA.SYS

> 2?DEVICE=C:\FDOS\USBDISK.SYS
> and then ran dosuhci.

Update DOSUHCI to DOSUSB.

> It crashed or hung a lot.

Confirm.

> did finally manage to get a directory of my e: drive (USB flash drive).
> The first time I try dir e: on a drive it takes an incredibly long time to run, like 5 minutes

A well known FAT28 design fault

> Does size of the USB drive affect how well it performs?

Huge FAT28 is evil.

> Was wondering if I should stay with the smaller drives so it might display the directory faster?

YES. < 1 GiB FAT16

> Hope this gets less buggy in future releases (of FreeDOS and the USB driver).

Me too. AFAIK fault of USB driver rather than DOS.




--
~~~ wow ~~~

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Crystal Reports - New Free Runtime and 30 Day Trial
Check out the new simplified licensing option that enables unlimited
royalty-free distribution of the report engine for externally facing
server and web deployment.
http://p.sf.net/sfu/businessobjects
_______________________________________________
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@...
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

[Eric Auer-3]

Hi!

>> Notable things: edit
>
> buggy (some PC's)

Who what where?

>> perl
>
> NOMYSO ???

There is Perl for DOS. I think even version 5.6 or newer...

> QEMU or BOCHS only (BOCHS is slower and better)

The Bochs emulator also has a nicer debugger built-in :-)

>>>> Is there a PNG viewer for FreeDOS?
>> I guess you could use DISPLAY from our ImageMagick port
> "DISPLAY" works for 95% of PNG's ... NOT from "ImageMagick port"

But there is a tool which has the name DISPLAY and
which is part of the ImageMagick suite. If there
is no DOS version of it, it would be nice to add.

>> I also tried mplayer.
> For video, not sound.

Mplayer can also play pure audio files.

>> Seemed to work without crashing, although the display jittered and
>> there was a lot of text in the background.
> RTFM: "--really-quiet"

Interesting problem! Of course mplayer in X / Linux
uses separate windows for text and graphics, but in
DOS it is important to know that the text will most
likely end up in the same screen area as the video.
Maybe there is a more general solution to this? Let
the text scroll at the bottom of the screen or sth?


>> Is there a version of vlc or xine that works on DOS?
> VLC is very buggy ... and the GUI is horrible.

Dunno, it does DVD menu better than mplayer and somehow
since I updated my Linux mplayer has problems to play
some movies at correct speed while VLC still works. But
in general, I also like mplayer better :-)).

>> Don't need Qbasic, just basic.
> ???

I am not aware of GWBasic clones for DOS beyond BWBasic
which we once tried to improve by adding graphics/sound.
But as said, FreeBASIC is very nice :-).

>> Is there a web site or a how to with instructions

JEMM386 and JEMMEX come with nice text files about how
to use them, just read the manual :-).

> Update DOSUHCI to DOSUSB.
>
>> It crashed or hung a lot.
>
> Confirm.
>
>> did finally manage to get a directory of my e: drive (USB flash
>> drive). The first time I try dir e: on a drive it takes an
>> incredibly long time to run, like 5 minutes

DOSUSB does not use USB 2 speed. It also is slower
than some BIOSes even in USB 1 mode but has similar
speed compared to other BIOSes... :-).

>> Was wondering if I should stay with the smaller drives
>> so it might display the directory faster?
> YES. < 1 GiB FAT16

You can also partition your USB stick to make the first
partition FAT16 and smaller than 1 GB, but I do not think
that FAT32 will be extremely bad for performance. However,
DOSUSB driven partitions are not cached because they are
DOS block devices without int 13 background...

Eric



------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Crystal Reports - New Free Runtime and 30 Day Trial
Check out the new simplified licensing option that enables unlimited
royalty-free distribution of the report engine for externally facing
server and web deployment.
http://p.sf.net/sfu/businessobjects
_______________________________________________
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@...
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

[dos386]

Hi!

> > buggy (some PC's)
> Who what where?

RTFB ... mouse cursor invisible on some PC's

> But there is a tool which has the name DISPLAY and

There are simply too many DISPLAY's ... I mean the one from 1998 by ???
done with DGJPP closed source freeware

> Mplayer can also play pure audio files.

On Linux maybe. In DOS NOT with PCI cards.

> > RTFM: "--really-quiet"
> Interesting problem! Of course mplayer in X / Linux
> uses separate windows for text and graphics, but in
> DOS it is important to know that the text will most likely

Not "most likely" , but definitely

> Maybe there is a more general solution to this?
> Let the text scroll at the bottom of the screen or sth?

If you can modify the source and compile it YES, and I would
heavily appreciate. But rather than scroll brew 2 gfx screens, 1 with
text and 1 with video, and switch them. Also, all text should go
into 1 stream (rather than "stdout" "stderr" "stdtrouble" ...) and allow
to save it COMPLETE. Now "--really-quiet" is not REALLY quiet, but
at least sufficiently quiet.

> partition FAT16 and smaller than 1 GB, but I do not think
> that FAT32 will be extremely bad for performance.

The bigger the FAT ...



--
~~~ wow ~~~

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Crystal Reports - New Free Runtime and 30 Day Trial
Check out the new simplified licensing option that enables unlimited
royalty-free distribution of the report engine for externally facing
server and web deployment.
http://p.sf.net/sfu/businessobjects
_______________________________________________
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@...
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

[Robert Riebisch]

dos386 wrote:

>> But there is a tool which has the name DISPLAY and
>
> There are simply too many DISPLAY's ... I mean the one from 1998 by ???
> done with DGJPP closed source freeware

??? = Jih-Shin Ho

Robert Riebisch
--
BTTR Software
http://www.bttr-software.de/

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Crystal Reports - New Free Runtime and 30 Day Trial
Check out the new simplified licensing option that enables unlimited
royalty-free distribution of the report engine for externally facing
server and web deployment.
http://p.sf.net/sfu/businessobjects
_______________________________________________
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@...
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

[Aitor Santamaría]

Hello,

2009/6/13 dos386 <dos386@...>:
>> Notable things:
>> edit
>
> buggy (some PC's)
>

Can you post any more information about those bugs?
If you refer to the "cursor blinking bug" that was supposed to appear
on 0.9a, so far I only know of a single PC of a single user where this
bug appears (apparently the user had some problem with his BIOS).
Frankly in my opinion the mouse pointer has always blinked too much
(in ALL versions of EDIT), and it is in my todo list (of short-term
changes).
Any other bug reports are appreciated.

Aitor

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
_______________________________________________
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@...
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

[Aitor Santamaría]

Hello,

2009/6/14 dos386 <dos386@...>:
> Hi!
>
>> > buggy (some PC's)
>> Who what where?
>
> RTFB ... mouse cursor invisible on some PC's

"some"? Do you have evidences of it to happen in more than ONE PC
where it was discovered?

Aitor

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
_______________________________________________
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@...
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user

[dos386]

Aitor wrote:

> If you refer to the "cursor blinking bug" that was supposed to appear
> on 0.9a, so far I only know of a single PC of a single user

2 PC's from 6 ... one user (talking for me for now)

> bug appears (apparently the user had some problem with his BIOS)

But nobody had so far an idea what the BIOS could do wrong or how to test it
(while you can test the "128-sector-BUG" or the
"VESA-B.S.-readout-BUG" for example)

> Frankly in my opinion the mouse pointer has always blinked too much
> (in ALL versions of EDIT), and it is in my todo list (of short-term changes).

Good, let's just wait :-)

> > mouse cursor invisible on some PC's
> "some"? Do you have evidences of it to happen in more than ONE PC

just 2


--
~~~ wow ~~~

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Come build with us! The BlackBerry(R) Developer Conference in SF, CA
is the only developer event you need to attend this year. Jumpstart your
developing skills, take BlackBerry mobile applications to market and stay
ahead of the curve. Join us from November 9 - 12, 2009. Register now!
http://p.sf.net/sfu/devconference
_______________________________________________
Freedos-user mailing list
Freedos-user@...
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user