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DOS Filenames (Users)

posted by Rugxulo Homepage, Usono, 31.07.2010, 13:04

> I started testing FreeDos a while back. I had just begun to test
> the drivers loaded in CONFIG.SYS. IO.SYS, COMMAND.COM, (or the
> free-dos equivalent names), UMBPCI, and LOWDMA worked fine.

MSDOS.SYS + IO.SYS = MS-DOS
KERNEL.SYS = FreeDOS

> The fifth driver I tested was "Drive Exchange" from this web site.
> It doesn't work at all and I cannot live without it.

Wait until rr gets back from hiatus, see what he says. I find it hard to believe it wasn't tested under FreeDOS also.

> I don't consider drive exchange to be defective. I think that
> FreeDos is simply "less than" adequately DOS compatible.

Barely. It runs almost everything. There are some corner cases, however (as nothing is perfect). But overall FreeDOS is indeed quite good (IMHO)!

> This was just a tiny start into testing FreeDos. My thoughts are
> that if I had continued a thourogh test, that a "large list" of
> problems would be uncovered.

Large? No, definitely not. But some obscure things will exist, surely.

> I quickly gave up on FreeDos.

Please don't. The only reason to (ever) give up on FreeDOS is if it's no longer developed. (Ahem, MS, DR.) And even then, it still "mostly" works! ;-)

> As for EDR-DOS there are compatibility problems too.
>
> I have the following types of disks:
>
> 1.44mb floppies.
> 120mb LS-120 super floppies.
> IDE hard disks.
> SATA hard disks.
> USB sticks.
>
> Under MS-DOS the MSDOS formatter formates all of these fine.

MS-DOS can't read USB either. So your BIOS must be emulating a HD there. SATA is almost definitely running in compatibility mode. (Don't) try MS FDISK with your SATA drive or (don't) try to create FAT32 without mucking up other partitions. ;-)

> Under EDR-DOS it's formatter only formats 1.44 and IDE disks.
> I had to search the internet for formatters, and it tool an
> additional two formatters for a total of three to format
> everything.
>
> So I quit using EDR-DOS too.

EDR-DOS is a valiant effort, but the license is less than ideal, and Caldera / Lineo really screwed the pooch by not releasing a fully patched version. (7.01 had known bugs, even some long fixed by Novell.) It's a shame, the idea was sound, but not everybody can be the next Linux.

 

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