The FreeDOS Project

ProfAstro@... wrote:
> Hello to all,
> 
> I have just subscribed to this list dealing with FreeDOS and I have a 
> question about it.
> 
> Does FreeDOS have a feature allowing to use it on computers network ?
> 
> My main operating system is currently Geos and its flag ship Ensemble (from 
> Breadbox) and for our NPO, I think later to install the whole under FreeDOS if 
> this one supports networked computers.
> 
> Thank you very much for your answer.
> 
> Best,
> 
> Alain.
> 

So much as MS-DOS does, I would suppose.

-uso.

At 12:50 AM 5/18/2004 +0400, you wrote:
>Hi!
>
>17-=ED=C1=CA-2004 14:03 _FreeDosStuff@... (Michael Devore)=
 wrote to
>freedos-user@...:
>
>>>as always, your message appears as 1 long line. Very wide. Manually=
 quoting now..
>MD> wins and I'll change or not, accordingly.  What I won't do is change=
 away
>MD> from using the world-standard multi-platform Eudora after ten+ years=
 along
>MD> with a few million other people.
>
>     Do you mean, that Eudora can't "hardly" wrap long lines?! I don't
>beleive. :)

I have no idea what Eudora is doing, the e-mails look okay to me going out=
 with plain style.  By the way, your original quote-back was not wrapped and=
 indented, and Bernd's was, so what does that mean?

This all would be a good deal easier if sundry people weren't taking this=
 silly "HTML-email-is-evil, my extra bandwidth bill is .0000238 more=
 euros/dollars when HTML is used,  my billable time to scan past a few extra=
 lines costs an additional 3 zillion zloty's" attitude.  Then we could=
 auto-send nice looking HTML e-mail to those who support it and plain-text=
 fronts for those who don't.  Eliminates the whole problem.

Geez, if it worked with Topica, how come SourceForge can't match it there? =
 Doesn't say good things for VA Software's own open-source project they're=
 trying to sell the services for that they can't even support basic=
 mail-list filtering and front-end processing.

Michael Devore schreef:

> I have no idea what Eudora is doing, the e-mails look okay to me going out with plain style.  By the way, your original quote-back was not wrapped and indented, and Bernd's was, so what does that mean?

When replying with your text quoted, I see it as 1 single long line.
When receiving my mail with your long line in it, I see it as multiple lines, each one with a 
quote-sign before it. Maybe even a problem at my end ("don't wrap quoted text when replying")..
so only problem is in composing.

no problem with HTML mail, except that people like to abuse it, especially with the weak security in 
Outlook Express.
HTML mail sometimes is very useful (Record store mailings, computer store mailings, etc..)

no big problem.

Sourceforge seems more limited than Topica. I wonder how other mailinglists handle it.
(probably their own mail-server with newer version of the mailinglist software).
-virii
-attachments (and size)
-html-mail
-mail-from-non-subscribed-people.
-mail archiving and (online/offline)searching options
-Sourceforge archiving troubles - list last indexed on April 4, 2004. 6 weeks ago!!!
  http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_id=4173237&forum_id=36903
-etc

Bernd

On Mon, 17 May 2004, Michael Devore wrote:

> I have no idea what Eudora is doing, the e-mails look okay to me going
> out with plain style.  By the way, your original quote-back was not
> wrapped and indented, and Bernd's was, so what does that mean?

There is something strange here.

Eudora seem to be one of the main supporters of "format=flowed".
http://www.eudora.com/techsupport/kb/1626hq.html

Yet Bernds mail uses according to the headers
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed
Mozilla Thunderbird 0.6 (Windows/20040501)

but Michaels mail:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 5.1
-- note the "format=flowed" is missing!

(us-ascii becomes iso-8859-1 when replying to Arkady in a hopeless attempt
to deal with quoted cyrillic characters but that's a different story...)

Maybe all that's necessary is to change a few Eudora settings to convince
it to use "format=flowed" in its headers.

Happily for me "pine" has ^J to fix up any messed up quotes... And no
matter what other mailer I tried (even mutt) my fingers always seem to
want pine again.

Bart

p.s. to others, please don't ask me when I'm going to do this or that --
as I said I'm not even sure if there'll be a new FD kernel release
or even basic CVS updates before July -- most of the components of my
freedos test box are on their way to a container ship due to
arrive mid-July...

Bart Oldeman schreef:

> p.s. to others, please don't ask me when I'm going to do this or that --
> as I said I'm not even sure if there'll be a new FD kernel release
> or even basic CVS updates before July -- most of the components of my
> freedos test box are on their way to a container ship due to
> arrive mid-July...

shipping components one-by-one? :)
good luck with your new location and job. Looks like you're a real "world-traveller"
(or job-hopper).

Not that I'm a programmer, but I'd like to suggest patches to be problem-driven from now on,
and not code-optimisations, until the (current) kernel maintainer has more time available.
lots of encountered problems, but no easy solutions.
a ready-to-apply problem + patch (solution) should smooth the maintainer's activities in the scarce 
time that he can make free for this project.

time to sleep (0:55AM here..),

goodnight,

Bernd

Hi all,
I think most people should be happy with HIMEM now.
Most important use for FD*XMS* is the FDXMS286 for 286 based PCs.
As EMM386 does not run on a 286, no problem if FD*XMS* is not
compatible. Anyway, if you or I should get some free time and
enough couriosity, I can recommend to analyze the incompatibility
with BOCHS (available for Windows and Linux), which has a great
builtin debugger (debugger runs in another window than the window
which shows the output of the simulated PC)...

About HTML mail: I vote for plain text, non-flowed, hard-wrapped
mail. Something like 66 or 72 columns. Bad if your mail software
cannot wrap the mail for you before you send it. Some mail software
indeed lacks this important feature - it will just DISPLAY both
incoming mail and the mail composer windows in DYNAMICAL soft wrap
style depending on the window size, instead of properly wrapping
to N columns on send.

Sourceforge should indeed be able to convert mail to text and block
attached files (they already do block ZIP, even if I try to send to
an ...@... address :-|). I do not think that we
really get viruses and "mail from not subscribed people": In fact,
viruses pretend to be from the list most of the time, instead of
being REALLY sent through the list. And Sourceforge is better known
than Topica (more "high profile"), so spammers take the effort to
subscribe to our lists just to spam us :-(.

Eric.

PS: "analyze the incompatbility with BOCHS" is ambiguous. I meant:
"Use BOCHS to find out why FD*XMS* is not compatible with EMM386".
And do not forget that you must not use normal EXE packers for SYS-EXE
files. Only the EXE part, not the SYS part of the file will survive
that. So HIMEM / EMM386 must not be UPXed nor APacked.

At 12:03 AM 5/18/2004 +0200, Bernd Blaauw wrote:

>no big problem.

Alright, I changed to hard CR's, but if that brings in anti-hard-CR protestors now (and they are out there in force, at least on Usenet), I ain't changing anything else.  I'll simply switch back to original plain+HTML and see whether those particular anti- forces can muster enough support to vote me off the island.  Changing my e-mail setup three times is quite enough.


>Sourceforge seems more limited than Topica. I wonder how other mailinglists handle it.
>(probably their own mail-server with newer version of the mailinglist software).

Topica is dead man walking in my estimation.  Between the rise of web-based boards, standard feature private ISP mail lists, Yahoo groups, and the newest Google group feature introductions, Topica's current structure has low potential for long-term survivability. Their frequent outages and delays prior to the FreeDOS switchover are, in my opinion, symptomatic of their coming death spiral -- or minimally a major cost structure overhaul.

You'd think SourceForge would take note of external Internet trends and being shoring up their weak mail list feature set.  They aren't as bad as Topica as far as delays and downtime yet, but they are certainly sloping in the wrong direction recently.

Hi!

17-=ED=C1=CA-2004 16:47 _FreeDosStuff@... (Michael Devore)=
 wrote to
freedos-user@...:

>>>>as always, your message appears as 1 long line. Very wide. Manually q=
uoting now..
>>MD> wins and I'll change or not, accordingly.  What I won't do is chang=
e away
>>MD> from using the world-standard multi-platform Eudora after ten+ year=
s along
>>MD> with a few million other people.
>>     Do you mean, that Eudora can't "hardly" wrap long lines?! I don't
>>beleive. :)
MD> I have no idea what Eudora is doing, the e-mails look okay to me goin=
g out
MD> with plain style.  By the way, your original quote-back was not wrapp=
ed and

- original (unqoted) letter my mailer automatically wraps (when viewed or
  when answered).
- quotes in viewed/answered letter are untouched. Thus, if someone answer=
s
  to your letter (and not _manually_ edits your text), then I see very lo=
ng
  (outside screen borders) lines.

Sometime I manually edit (your) quotes, when answer to letters (for examp=
le,
if I answer to letter of Eric, which answers to you), but in last answer =
to
Bernd I remain your long line untouched.

MD> indented, and Bernd's was, so what does that mean?

MD> This all would be a good deal easier if sundry people weren't taking =
this
MD> silly "HTML-email-is-evil, my extra bandwidth bill is .0000238 more
MD> euros/dollars when HTML is used,  my billable time to scan past a few=
 extra
MD> lines costs an additional 3 zillion zloty's" attitude.

     Don't forget about time (to receive and process HTML letters), which
costs much more. Not all sits on wide bandwith.

Hi!

18-=ED=C1=CA-2004 12:23 _FreeDosStuff@... (Michael Devore)=
 wrote to
freedos-user@...:

>>no big problem.
MD> Alright, I changed to hard CR's,

     I look at source of your letter (which I answer) - no, there are no
hard CRs inside paragraphs. :) :(

At 12:47 AM 5/19/2004 +0400, you wrote:
>Hi!
>
>18-=ED=C1=CA-2004 12:23 _FreeDosStuff@... (Michael Devore)=
 wrote to
>freedos-user@...:
>
> >>no big problem.
>MD> Alright, I changed to hard CR's,
>
>      I look at source of your letter (which I answer) - no, there are no
>hard CRs inside paragraphs. :) :(

That's because the option checkbox didn't apply for who knows why.  But=20
it's in there now.

Yann Benigot schreef:
> Does HIMEM.EXE work with 256Mb of RAM ?
> Or must I use FDXXMS with >64Mb RAM?

your own choice, though HIMEM is the preferred XMS-driver as it works perfectly with EMM386
and is a lot more recent than FDXXMS

> (Sorry, the last version of FreeDOS that I use >2weeks is the beta8...)

I hope you notice the many improvements that have been made.
I often install on a virtual machine (VMware) instead of a physical machine,
so I can install/update as often as I want, without wasting diskettes or cd's.

Bernd

On Tue, 18 May 2004 00:59:11 -0400, you wrote:

Hi,

>How do I go about creating a boot disk with just the extended memory drivers? I tried stripping down the fdconfig.sys, and I still get the menu at start-up?

I try to set a simple FDCONFIG.SYS for you. I assume you boot from
floppy without any directory.

---
files=50
buffers=40,0
lastdrive=z
dos=high,umb
device=himem.exe
device=emm386.exe noems
---

Be sure that you have the latest HIMEM and EMM386 from
"http://www.freedos.org".


Rgds,
Johnson.

G Simpson wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I am trying to set-up a "lite" version of a FreeDos bootable floppy, and I am a bit confused.
> 
> What I need is to boot to FreeDos with the Himem and EMM386 drivers loaded, but my attempts fail and I can't seem to get extended memory.
> 
> How do I go about creating a boot disk with just the extended memory drivers? I tried stripping down the fdconfig.sys, and I still get the menu at start-up?
> 
> TIA
> 
> Gary


FDCONFIG contents should just be the device lines for himem and emm386 
shorn of anything before "device".

-uso.

jaqian@... schreef:
> Jay Maus
> 
> 
>>How did you get the ISO onto the CD?
> 
> I burnt the .iso image using Nero. I've used this before to burn Linux distros which booted fine. I can see files etc on the cd but it just doesn't boot [and yep i've set the bios to boot from cd].

lots of people download the ISO, and it works fine. What brand of BIOS do you have (Award, Phoenix, 
AMI?). The used ISOLINUX cdrom-bootloader cannot handle buggy BIOS very well.

see for example http://www.zytor.com/pipermail/syslinux/2004-May/003521.html

I also like to know which Linux distro's and which versions of them you burned to cdrom.
They generally also use ISOLINUX, but I use the latest-and-greatest.
(but not all versions work on all computers due to buggy BIOS implementations).

> 
> Maybe there is something wrong with the download. I'll download the image again see if I can get it to work. 

verify the size matches exactly. If needed, also check MD5

> What does the fdos1440.img do? Does that load FreeDOS into RAM? 

it's a special bootdisk.
It has several functions in menu1:
-start Memtest86 (memory testing program, see http://www.memtest.org)
-start Smart Boot Manager, which allows you to select cdrom as boot device if you have a buggy BIOS
  implementation. SBM has its own boot-from-cdrom code).
-start FreeDOS. Indeed FreeDOS gets loaded into RAM (the 360KB image), just like booting from cdrom
  loads the 360KB image into RAM.

it has 1 option in menu2:
start FreeDOS from diskette.
this is a bit slower when comparing with loading FreeDOS parts into RAM.
Main purpose of this item is to allow 8086 and 80286 compuers to use the bootdisk.
Unfortunately, diskette installation isn't ready yet, but I plan to fix that
somewhere in June, when the final Beta9 will be released.

let me know if Smart Boot Manager helped you boot from cdrom properly.

> 
> Thanks,
> Robbie

Bernd