DOS ain't dead

How to detect FreeDOS kernel from Turbo Pascal program? (Developers)

posted by mceric, Germany, 15.01.2022, 12:29

> The DOS call proposed by McEric certainly works but I recommend to use a
> shell call. The "ver" command is reliable and the format should be
> standardised even through various alternate command interpretters.

I disagree. I am not aware of any standard format for the text returned by a VER shell command in the DOS wild west.

Also, calling the shell and interpreting the results is a lot more overhead than calling a well-documented int 21.30 kernel interface or even a less documentet FreeDOS kernel version string interface. Also note that only FreeCOM, but not non-FreeDOS shells, is able to include the kernel version string in the VER /R output. The normal VER output only shows the version of FreeCOM, not the version of FreeDOS, and you can use FreeCOM with any version of DOS, possibly not FreeDOS at all.

By the way, I am curious why the Turbo Pascal program wants to know whether a FreeDOS kernel is active, does it need any special workarounds? Or does it provide extra features that you want to detect to be present?

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FreeDOS / DOSEMU2 / ...

Complete thread:

• How to detect FreeDOS kernel from Turbo Pascal program? - rosegondon, 14.01.2022, 22:39 (Developers)
  • How to detect FreeDOS kernel from Turbo Pascal program? - mceric, 15.01.2022, 00:22
    • How to detect FreeDOS kernel from Turbo Pascal program? - rosegondon, 15.01.2022, 16:20
      • How to detect FreeDOS kernel from Turbo Pascal program? - Rugxulo, 19.01.2022, 01:05
    • 21.33FF kernel version string interface - ecm, 15.01.2022, 17:32
      • 21.33FF kernel version string interface - rosegondon, 17.01.2022, 20:06
        • 21.33FF kernel version string interface - DosWorld, 18.01.2022, 02:54
          • 21.33FF kernel version string interface - rosegondon, 18.01.2022, 09:06
            • 21.33FF kernel version string interface - Laaca, 18.01.2022, 14:25
            • 21.33FF kernel version string interface - tkchia, 18.01.2022, 15:30
            • 21.33FF kernel version string interface - DosWorld, 18.01.2022, 16:44
              • 21.33FF kernel version string interface - rosegondon, 18.01.2022, 19:14
    • How to detect FreeDOS kernel from Turbo Pascal program? - Laaca, 18.01.2022, 19:06
      • How to detect FreeDOS kernel from Turbo Pascal program? - Rugxulo, 19.01.2022, 00:57
        • How to detect FreeDOS kernel from Turbo Pascal program? - Laaca, 19.01.2022, 10:33
  • How to detect FreeDOS kernel from Turbo Pascal program? - Oso2k, 15.01.2022, 00:24
  • How to detect FreeDOS kernel from Turbo Pascal program? - Laaca, 15.01.2022, 11:09
    • How to detect FreeDOS kernel from Turbo Pascal program? - mceric, 15.01.2022, 12:29