The DR-DOS/OpenDOS Enhancement Project has finished work on version 7.01.06 of the patches to the original Caldera OpenDOS/DR-DOS 7.01 source code, adding support for the FAT32 file system.
The DR-DOS/OpenDOS Enhancement Project Gets FAT32 support
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How does this compare with FreeDOS as far and device and application compatibility. The last time I tried to FreeDOS, it had some problems with some of my bigger and newer(1995-97) DOS games, and that gets a bit frustrating since they don’t always work that great in Windows 2000. It would be great if DR-DOS could fill that gap so I wouldn’t have to use an old MS-DOS, especially since I have to have it on it’s own FAT16 partition despite 2000 being on a FAT32 partition, where they could live happily together. I would use Windows 95(my most recent before 2000), but it is the early version without FAT32 support.
I was under the impression that the source code for 7.02 or 7.03 was also available. Does anyone know anything about this?
Also, what are the advantages of 7.02 or 7.03 over 7.01?
Thanks in advance.
Not to be a spoil sport…
before we use this are we sure Caldera REALLY realeased the source? They’re not going to forget they released it again are they? Other than that, it sounds great…
I was under the impression that DR-DOS had fat32 support for a long. I have a copy of the driver on my web server.
whyyyy?!?
whyyyy?!?
I guess it’s like the guy who turned is Gameboy Advance into a web server … some people just don’t have anything better to do. But, to each their own.
DR-DOS 7.01.06 is based on the Caldera OpenDOS 7.01 MRS
(Machine Readable Source) kit which was released under an
open source license. Though later versions were not open
source, Caldera cannot take back what they granted us.
DR-DOS 7.01.06 lacks some options that DR-DOS 7.03
supports, but in terms of features it more resembles
DR-DOS 7.04/7.05 which is an OEM version by Ontrack.
It is true that DR-DOS had its DRFAT32 driver before this
project started, but 7.01.06 has *internal* FAT32 support,
so it does not need any external driver. Unfortunately,
the ability to boot from FAT32 partitions did not make it
into this patch, however, it will be added in one of the
next WIP versions of 7.01.07.
From my first-hand experience, compatibility with games is
good, though replacing emm386 with qemm386 might further
improve it.
I hope this answers most of the questions. 🙂
Why not??
DOS is a VERY useful OS. It’s nice, simple, stable, has a very small footprint, and gets the job done.
I still use it over here for quite a few things. I don’t know what I’d do without DOS. Sure it doesn’t have all the nifty features that more modern operating systems have, but that’s one of its advantages. DOS is so very simple that not much can go wrong. I’ve had DOS systems up for hundreds of days. DOS is as stable as any Linux/Unix system I’ve seen. And the footprint is amazingly small.
DOS is as stable as the apps running on it… So as long as your app is stable, DOS will be stable. That’s the great thing about DOS. Single tasking has its advantages!
As for DR-DOS getting FAT32 support, I think they’re building it right into the DOS kernel?? So external drivers aren’t needed? From what I’ve read on that page they’ve also fixed the large hard drive support as well. I find it very exciting news personally. I think it’s wonderful!
And DOS still has a market as an embedded OS, actually it’s perfect for embedded applications. Nice and simple… And have I mentioned the small memory footprint?? Try to boot Linux with less than 512k of ram and let me know how it goes.
Give DOSBOX a try. I have tried FreeDOS and it is still early in its goal of full dos compatibility. DOSBOX supports SOME games that use the DOS4GW extender and lists the level of compatibility.
unfortunately….. I’m currently on an athlon 17000xp system with 1gb of ram. Master of Magic plays GOD AWFUL SLOW with DOSBOX, but atleast it’s supported fully and can be played in a window.
the goal of DOSBOX is to allow modern win32 OS to play “Protected Mode” (DOS4GW games) NOT full dos compatibility.
It sort of works like command line M.A.M.E.
DOS is as stable as the apps running on it… So as long as your app is stable, DOS will be stable. That’s the great thing about DOS. Single tasking has its advantages!
What kind of apps are you running in DOS, sans games? I think a really useful DOS would be one you could boot of a CD that supported NTFS, so that I could make Ghost images that were > than 4GB.
DOS is superb!
Thanks to Udo for this great Patch!
and now… Breadbox Ensemble (GEOS) has the best future ever 🙂
SealOS and Qube3p don´t forget…
Bye
For anyone wishing to run DOS games on NT/2000/XP I recommend you check out VDMSound. It is also freeware (released under GPL). I have only used it for a couple of games–Silent Hunter Commander’s Edition, Dark Forces, and a little bit of Pacific Air War, 1942–but it has worked for all of them. Pacific Air War even picks up my USB Saitek X45 joystick with the buttons, and throttle and such.
VDMSound website:
http://www.ece.mcgill.ca/~vromas/vdmsound/#faq
Install Guide for Silent Hunter (the principals though are the same for almost all games):
http://www.subsowespac.org/sh_xp/silent_hunterxp.shtml
There are some solid DOS MP3 player/jukebox programs out there, so being able to use a big hard drive in a standalone PC-based MP3 jukebox is a nice thing to have. Yes, you can set it up with a W98 boot floppy, but better to keep Bill out of the whole equation.
I have a dos box that would of ad uptime of 1095 days if not for 2 days. one day the hard drive died. The other day in question the power supply failed due to power spike. no UPS supply is on this machine. This machine uses DOS to boot and load Novell network server for the company and it runs 24-7.
So yes Dos does have value
Brandon Sharitt: why not use Windows 98 to make a boot floppy. Maybe one is already available at http://www.bootdisk.com – or email me. Using win win98 boot floppy, one can format a fat32 hard disk and so on. OK, it’s not free software, but many trashbins are filled with win98 licenses already 🙂
I think dos still has a few uses. If one wants to play old games (as i do) there are a lot of free dos games and low cost dos games. I’d rather not purchase a license for 6.22 and win 3.11. Most of the surplus shops sell these for outrageous prices. So i’m going to check out freedos and drdos.
I happen to like linux, but if one isn’t into that, DOS would make a nice OS for old box. If you had a really old box, say 286 then it’s perfect. Minix, xenix, and ELKS are about the only nix type OS’s that will work on such hardware. Minix is lacking features, xenix is expensive, and ELKS is in alpha and dead if i’m not mistaken.
Eventually i’m going to build a small arcade unit. DOS will certainly be one of the OS’s on the machine.
After browsing the links for a bit, looks like these are mods to 7.01, which has source code available. But i’m seeing 7.02 and 7.03 available for download also. Guess i’ll try 7.03 first.
Also device logics is selling 7.03 for $29. I’m guessing caldera / sco sold off dr dos and open dos.
DR-DOS is not only good for old hardware – I have a
Pentium 4 with 3.06 GHz running DR-DOS 7.01.06; it works
great! 🙂
DOSbox is pretty cool. The best part about it is that there are ports to other operating systems, like BeOS.
Dos…
I just read that MS has a patent of the FAT filesystem, how’d they manage it, and is Caldera – aka SCO still involved in the ownership of Open DOS?
The patent announcement is here:
http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/ip/tech/fat.asp
will
But most importantly, VDMSound allows one to enjoy games like “Unlimited Adventures” and the “Quest for Glory” series 8)
Damn, I’m getting old.
It’s an interesting legal scenario outlined earlier in this thread, that DR-DOS 7.01 was released as open source, but then Caldera or Lineo or whoever had second thoughts and released 7.02, 7.03 and evidently 7.04 and 7.05 either for sale or under some other license. So what these guys do (bless ’em) is make their changes to 7.01 and keep releasing *that*.
I have used DR-DOS 7.03 a few times to install on or troubleshoot spare PCs. DR-DOS 7.03 has a free-for-personal-use license. This is really the first time I’ve heard that 7.04 and 7.05 are sold commercially.
I find FreeDOS, compared to DR-DOS 7.03, to be very advanced in its features but not reaching the awesome stability of DR-DOS, and with FreeDOS I think you still have some holes here and there because they are still working on components.