Re: [Freedos-devel] Working on FreeDOS 1.2

[Louis S. <lps...@gm...>]

On Wed, Dec 31, 2014 at 8:54 AM, Matej Horvat
<mat...@gu...> wrote:
[SNIP]
> I agree that a better installer is needed (the one in 1.1 seemed to be
> slow and generated broken AUTOEXEC.BAT files for non-US(?) keyboard
> layouts). I think we should adapt FDNPKG so it can be compiled with Open
> Watcom and use mTCP so it can be 8086-compatible. After installation, it
> could immediately update packages if newer versions are available.


I like the idea of standardizing on mTCP, especially if the openssl
and ssh/sftp packages could be made to depend on it.  However believe
that the code hasn't yet been ported to djgpp or Watcom 32-bit so that
would be an impediment to my ssl interests.


> It would be also very cool if we could have some kind of autodetection of
> network cards and install a driver automatically (and generate WATTCP and
> mTCP configuration files?). Packet drivers are the easiest to install
> (we'd probably only need a table of PCI IDs - any volunteers? - and the
> driver filenames associated with them), but ODI and NDIS drivers might
> require some more work.
[SNIP]

Dunfield & Potthast already have PCI bus/NIC sniffers [0][1] and a
collections of NIC packet drivers as well [2][3].

[0] http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/dos/pcinic.zip
[1] http://www.georgpotthast.de/sioux/pktdrv/nicscan.zip
[2] http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/dos/pktdrv.zip
[3] http://www.georgpotthast.de/sioux/packet.htm