It is *not* my day. I don't know how a copy-and-paste of some plain text magically acquired attachments; that was not intentional. My apologies. -- Liam Proven ? Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? Google Mail/Talk/Plus: lproven at gmail.com Twitter/Facebook/Flickr: lproven ? Skype/LinkedIn/AIM/Yahoo: liamproven UK: +44 7939-087884 ? ?R/WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal: +420 702 829 053

On Fri, 17 Nov 2017, william degnan via cctalk wrote: Liam, if you need me to I can build a full distro of OpenDOS 7 - I've got a machine that I can build the original sources on. g. -- Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007 http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind. http://www.diy-cockpits.org/coll - Go Collimated or Go Home. Some people collect things for a hobby. Geeks collect hobbies. ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes. http://scarlet.deltasoft.com - Get it _today_!

On Fri, 17 Nov 2017, Liam Proven wrote: If you've got the same MRS disc that Roger sent me, you've got the whole build environment already. You can kick it off with a single command. The only caveat is that you need to boot into OpenDOS/DR-DOS in order to get enough free lower RAM to run the build process. g. -- Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007 http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind. http://www.diy-cockpits.org/coll - Go Collimated or Go Home. Some people collect things for a hobby. Geeks collect hobbies. ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes. http://scarlet.deltasoft.com - Get it _today_!

Latest updates... I've taken the downloads for Enhanced DR-DOS 7.01-6 and 7.01-7, trimmed the boot disk image to work with Virtualbox, added the actual files to make the boot images bootable, and also added in the other updated commands -- SYS.COM, XCOPY, TASKMGR, SHARE, and their README files etc. I've re-zipped them and put them on Dropbox. Here are the links: 7.01-6: https://www.dropbox.com/s/fr8ugx1r7yjczu5/dr70106b.zip?dl=0 7.01-7: https://www.dropbox.com/s/tu998h4a7tufpf3/dr70107b.zip?dl=0 and the previous one, as before... 7.01-8 WIP: https://www.dropbox.com/s/cz8nrdv7h4sgr6o/drdep7018.zip?dl=0 By all means please mirror these elsewhere. To use them, the easiest way is to get a copy of DR-DOS 7.01, e.g. http://www.bttr-software.de/freesoft/os.htm https://winworldpc.com/product/dr-dos/7x Install in a VM. Reboot. Boot from my boot disk image, SYS the hard disk, and copy the other files into C:\DOS or whatever you called it. I will follow with complete VM images in time, but I'm back at work after 7 weeks off sick, and I'm just too tired at the moment. -- Liam Proven ? Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? Google Mail/Talk/Plus: lproven at gmail.com Twitter/Facebook/Flickr: lproven ? Skype/LinkedIn/AIM/Yahoo: liamproven UK: +44 7939-087884 ? ?R/WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal: +420 702 829 053

On 11/20/2017 6:35 AM, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote: The downloads page for this seems to be relatively intact on archive.org.? I didn't see you had checked there for their original work. <snip> The archive.org snapshots may have had the blank images, but they also seem to have grabbed the archived downloads as well. This is an arbitrary link to the 3/26/2016 snapshot.? There are quite a few others, and I didn't try anything yet to see if the data is good or not. https://web.archive.org/web/20160326184121/http://www.drdosprojects.de/inde… Thanks Jim

On 11/20/2017 4:27 PM, Liam Proven wrote: Welcome! I am trying to figure out how to send you the files I got, in case the script I sent doesn't scrape them.? Now it's more than a need to send it and a battle of wills to send a binary that Google keeps blocking. I was up odd hours and gave up a bit ago, I suspect you already used the script or your own means to get their files.? But you may get my obfuscated binary anyway. Thanks for figuring this out, will be interesting to look at it. thanks Jim

On Mon, Nov 20, 2017 at 03:35:07PM +0100, Liam Proven wrote: [...] Ah. Please forgive me for making remote allusions :-) As of "things" mentioned above, my current understanding is, those may be both active code (virri, worrmms etc), as well as Darth Vader's hand reaching out from the inside of VM and manipulating bits of memory on hosting machine. Chances are, I worry too much about this, but I suppose Pentium does not make a good platform for running VMs, only a cheap one (although it used to look like a decent one, but today it is only cheap). My current understanding is, emulators without JIT should be more decent. They sometimes enable one to have a peek into running "machine", which might be nice thing to have, too. And speedwise, they should be much closer to the original ;-P [...] Well, owing to lack of time, I am so far from creating anything like "my own" that any actual problem with more interesting stuff just does not come into my mind (and I have close to zero knowledge about Desqview, which I regret because it looks great on those pictures out there). Most probably I will go with some frankensteinish solution involving Dosemu or Dosbox, whichever could run assembler without a flop, Emacs on native side for editing, thus hybrid multitasking. FreeDOS, for me, is the advanced way to do it, but as the developers keep improving it (prepackaged utils and stuff), so I might actually go for it - laziness pays. But the main reason for me to go there would be to play with assembler, rather than with other software. There are also MenuetOS and KolibriOS, which look like nice "couldbe" multiplexers for Dosbox, but I am not sure (would have to find time to research) if there is any possibility to run DOS programs under their control (and I could not find explicit answer in few minutes). -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home ** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com **

On Tue, Nov 21, 2017 at 08:15:00PM +0100, Liam Proven wrote: Aw, not this. This: [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Row_hammer ] Row hammer (also written as rowhammer) is an unintended side effect in dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) that causes memory cells to leak their charges and interact electrically between themselves, possibly altering the contents of nearby memory rows that were not addressed in the original memory access. This circumvention of the isolation between DRAM memory cells results from the high cell density in modern DRAM, and can be triggered by specially crafted memory access patterns that rapidly activate the same memory rows numerous times.[1][2][3] The row hammer effect has been used in some privilege escalation computer security exploits.[2][4][5] Different hardware-based techniques exist to prevent the row hammer effect from occurring, including required support in some processors and types of DRAM memory modules. (...) On March 9, 2015, Google's Project Zero revealed two working privilege escalation exploits based on the row hammer effect, establishing its exploitable nature on the x86-64 architecture. One of the revealed exploits targets the Google Native Client (NaCl) mechanism for running a limited subset of x86-64 machine instructions within a sandbox,[15]:27 exploiting the row hammer effect to escape from the sandbox and gain the ability to issue system calls directly. and [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_machine_escape ] In computer security, virtual machine escape is the process of breaking out of a virtual machine and interacting with the host operating system.[1] A virtual machine is a "completely isolated guest operating system installation within a normal host operating system".[2] In 2008, a vulnerability (CVE-2008-0923) in VMware discovered by Core Security Technologies made VM escape possible on VMWare Workstation 6.0.2 and 5.5.4.[3][4] A fully working exploit labeled Cloudburst was developed by Immunity Inc. for Immunity CANVAS (commercial penetration testing tool). And even more interestingly, this (is your PC a hypervisor dreaming that he is a PC or a real PC?): [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperjacking ] Hyperjacking is an attack in which a hacker takes malicious control over the hypervisor that creates the virtual environment within a virtual machine (VM) host.[1] The point of the attack is to target the operating system that is below that of the virtual machines so that the attacker's program can run and the applications on the VMs above it will be completely oblivious to its presence. And this has truly amused me: [ http://www.zdnet.com/article/minix-intels-hidden-in-chip-operating-system/ ] Buried deep inside your computer's Intel chip is the MINIX operating system and a software stack, which includes networking and a web server. It's slow, hard to get at, and insecure as insecure can be. I have no idea how practical are those attacks (please bear in mind, MINIX inside your CPU is a feature, not a... uhm) in real life, but it does not matter as much as the fact they have been demonstrated (if I am to believe the net), and are going to be easier and easier to perform as time goes by. In some cases, it does not matter what is your machine host OS vs guest OS, but if guest OS had been carefully crafted with code meant to escape to outside (or influence it). Like, a floppy of DRDOS dropped online in 2016. Oh, a bit unrelated but I have read recently that in some (all?) cases it is possible to get hold of this MINIX stuff (and some more) by plugging in special USB dongle... This is nothing important compared to the above, but quite funny, so I included it here. Basically, the idea of the above snippets is, software running in isolated sandbox cannot be counted on staying isolated there. [...] "Flop", because my very old experience with those emulators (Dosemu, Dosbox) was such that sometimes, some software could flop, as in "To fall, sink, or throw one's self, heavily, clumsily, and unexpectedly on the ground." (Webster) But I think this has been improved and I do not have to worry. Believe me, the longer it is being used, the better it seems :-). [...] Ouch. Thanks for letting me know, it will save me some useless effort. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home ** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com **

On 22 November 2017 at 11:25, Peter Corlett via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote: Which itself takes a ton of RAM, in MS-DOS terms. So far, trying VMware Player and VirtualBox, you only seem to get about 48 kB of so of usable UMBs, if you want a page frame as well. CD support takes, well, about that. Circa 35 kB or so. Network support is about 100 kB of RAM -- a hell of a lot for DOS. Back then, the fact that the Netware client could run partially in XMS or EMS was a big competitive advantage. The MS client was lardy, and that was with efficient little protocols like NetBEUI. Add something a bit chunkier like IPX/SPX or DECnet, and it became basically impossible to keep the whole thing from eating a significant chunk of conventional memory too. TCP/IP basically postdates the MS-DOS era, in PC terms, and it's Bloaty McBloatface. Couple that with needing SMB/CIFS support, and you can be looking at something horrendous like 150 kB of RAM. And you want 9p?! I mean, be my guest, go implement it, but to talk to VBox or VMware, you need CIFS. I've tried QEMU and KVM for work, just before I was off sick. My reaction is roughly that of Ford Prefect to Vogon poetry. It might be OK if you want a server hypervisor, which I don't, personally. But then, earlier this year, my reaction to modern server VMware was broadly similar. Horrified incredulity and appalled revulsion. Now I have it working, I concede, it actually _works_ quite well. I can run a bunch of VMs with a total of about 18-20GB of allocated RAM, concurrently, on a host machine with 12GB of RAM, and it _works_, and amazingly it's quick. (Of course this is a play/text box, and they're all unloaded.) But setup... *Screams and writhes* KVM? Well, it's every big as unpleasant or more so, but it's agonizing in a Unixy way, which is at least more familiar, so through the suffering and the tears, I could just about see enough to get it working. But only someone who thinks that Emacs or Vi are usable editors could think this was an appealing virtualisation solution. Did I mention my more or less complete and utter loathing for C21 computing? Why do you think I'm playing with MS-DOS again after 20y? -- Liam Proven ? Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? Google Mail/Talk/Plus: lproven at gmail.com Twitter/Facebook/Flickr: lproven ? Skype/LinkedIn/AIM/Yahoo: liamproven UK: +44 7939-087884 ? ?R/WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal: +420 702 829 053

On 23 November 2017 at 21:01, Tomasz Rola <rtomek at ceti.pl> wrote: I am wondering if I can cut-n-paste my response from somewhere but the last time I had this argument, it was at work, on work systems, and I shouldn't do that. Some of it is here: http://liam-on-linux.livejournal.com/32740.html And a sequel here which answers your direct question: http://liam-on-linux.livejournal.com/42908.html Currently, I use Tilde. Why? Basically, when I started out, I learned the Sinclair ZX series ROM editor, then the improved one in Beta BASIC, then the full-screen one on the Spectrum 128. I even bought the numeric keypad, which is super-rare. I did a lot of word-processing of essays on it, in The Last Word, an obscure word processor app. Then I went to university and learned some VMS and Fortran. I probably used VMS EDT. Then I got an Amstrad PCW and learned CP/M and some of the horrible old CP/M editors, the passable RPED and LocoScript. Then I started working, and learned Edlin, then the DR-DOS 5 editor, then the slightly better MS-DOS 5 EDIT. I also learned the Novell Netware editor, and Xenix vi. I worked with and supported WordStar, NewWord, WordStar Express (totally different!), WordStar 2000 (different again), WordPerfect, MultiMate, DisplayWrite, MS Word 3 and 4 for DOS, Samna Executive and others. All had totally different UIs. All were to some degree horrid. My least-disliked was MS Word for DOS. MS Word 5 switched the weird old MS UI for a CUA one of text-based menus. I learned that and liked it. I also worked on Macs and knew WriteNow, MacWrite, MS Word for Mac, TeachText, SimpleText, and others. Some a bit weird but all much better than on DOS! Then came Windows and NOTEPAD.EXE. Basically, after Windows, all editors were CUA. Menu bar at the top, Ctrl-O to open, Ctrl-P to print, Ctrl-S to save. Original weird CUA cut/copy/paste was replaced with Mac-style Ctrl-X/C/V. That's how _all_ editors work now -- including Kate, GEdit, Leafpad, Geany, basically every Linux desktop's editor. Except at the shell prompt, where horrid arcane old stuff from the 1970s lives on like a pack of zombies. All are totally weird and nonstandard except for a third-rate knock-off of WordStar, which itself was weird and nonstandard, because there were no standards back then. I refuse to even try to use any of them. I want a CUA editor. Standard menu bar, all the standard keystrokes. Standard terminology -- files/windows/panes/cut/copy/paste/clipboard etc. I will not use anything that involves "yanking" or "buffers" or command modes or any of that '70s garbage. Get modern or get out. The point here being that I learned *dozens* of editor UIs in my teens and early 20s. They were all horrid to some degree. The Mac banished them all, Windows nailed the coffin shut. MS-DOS conformed. It's _long_ past time Unix did too. Tilde. I have tried. Repeatedly. The crazy horrid old UI and crazy horrid terminology in the manual and tutorial put me off. I can't get past it. I don't write code. I want no syntax highlighting, no code-completion, none of that, because it gets in my way. I write English and I want a tool for that, with the standard UI and keystrokes. Any additional wonderful editing power is nice but entirely secondary. I don't need it. I don't really want it. But with the big 2 -- vi and emacs -- I have to get past foul fetid stinking rotten '70s UIs -- and the only enticement, the only reason, is vast editing power I don't actually need. I think my choices will offer nothing to you! :-( Yes. But not enough. :-) :-D -- Liam Proven ? Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? Google Mail/Talk/Plus: lproven at gmail.com Twitter/Facebook/Flickr: lproven ? Skype/LinkedIn/AIM/Yahoo: liamproven UK: +44 7939-087884 ? ?R/WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal: +420 702 829 053