Off-Topic > Off-Topic - Tiny Tux's Corner
FreeDOS - any users here?
PDP-8:
Just wondering if anybody here is using FreeDOS?
I ran it a few years ago for fun, digging out some old favs, like the VDE editor and putting a whole bunch of unix-like utils on it. Elvis and VI too of course.
But I haven't kept up, and apparently, it is possible to boot it from a usb-stick now? I haven't tried to see if it can run from one. I think you still have to install to an HD, but I'm not sure.
I haven't kept up for years now, but it is weird/fun to boot it on modern hardware, and have all that available ram go to waste. :)
I have no interest in retro-gaming with it, and wonder if anyone is/has used it for more conventional ops like running unix-like utils on it in some way like I did -- gotta' have a different kind of mindset running dos on purpose...
jazzbiker:
Hi, PDP-8!
I have FreeDOS on Toshiba 480CDT with Pentium MMX and 64M of RAM. This old box has USB1.1. FreeDOS docs say that this system can deal only with one type of USB hardware among OHCI, AHCI and UHCI (I don't remeber which of them exactly). I really don't understand, what these *HCI's are, but FreeDOS can do nothing with USB on my old (ancient?) box. In fact when I wanted to copy retro-games :) to the FreeDOS partition, I was booting TC6, copying from USB-drive to HDD, and rebooting back to FreeDOS. I guess it is not possible to boot some system from the drive, accessed through interface not supported by this system.
Sorry, I can not imagine the job for FreeDOS. I'm happy it is the kind of time machine, bringing me 30 years back for a while :) This is its task, and it is doing it well :)
PDP-8:
Yep - time machine. It was a painful reminder when years ago I bought one of my earlier laptops used, a Tandy 1200 with *lead acid* batteries (I had to rebuild that) and put FreeDOS and a bunch of unix utils on it.
As much as I enjoyed the nostalgia, it was just too much of a pain to share data with more modern machines - having to resort to floppy sneakernet, where floppies just became a pain to find. Almost like trying to find 9-track magtape reels from an earlier generation. :)
I feel the same about cd/dvd roms these days - just too much of a pain except for museum pieces / nostalgia. And more importantly, some arbitrary distro size limitations based on that when you can get an ssd, or even a huge usb/flash drive to last you years if treated correctly. Like TC does.
jazzbiker:
Hi, PDP-8!
I found some hardware specifications of the Tandy 1200 and didn't found any ports mentioned. Does it really have not a single COM? Probably it is meant to be an expansion card. In the pre-internet era I prefered to use COMs to share data between my laptops and PCs instead of those dances with floppies. If You will succeed in adding some COM port to Your Tandy, I think the soft complying some common protocol may be found both for FreeDOS and Linux, I have uncertain reminiscences of xmodem, ymodem, zmodem...
Your Tandy is definitely the right place for FreeDOS. My oldest box is able to run TinyCore, so FreeDOS entry in the bootloader menu is just a kind of placeholder.
Maybe this is the waste of time, but if You will decide to give Your Tandy COM connectivity, it will be interesting to me too.
Regards!
PDP-8:
Machine is long gone. It was a 1400HD model actually. Maybe not lead-acid batteries but nicads, but sure weighed like it. :)
But man, the sculpted keyboard and tactical feel made you want to type at it.
Then again, it was offline most of the time, since my online data service was $6 per hour at night, and $10 per hour during business hours. 1200 baud.
The rebuild with FreeDOS was fun, but at the end of the day, using unix-like utils, it became apparent that the hardware was an abstraction.
Makes me wonder how many people would use say TinyCore Core only (or text mode only) with no net connectivity and see if they could find some use and joy in that simplicity.
Make their own programs, perhaps just shell scripts to do stuff just for personal gratification. Maybe nothing but poems written in vi - whatever. I'm not sure people could cut the cord and become creators rather than consumers, without a pass/fail grade attached.
Getting way OT. But kudos to the people at FreeDOS for doing what they do.
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