DR-DOS

[Liam Proven]

On 17 November 2017 at 16:44, geneb via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> 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.

Thanks!

For now, I'm trying to avoid building anything. I believe that the
build process is horribly complex -- I can find the link to a
description of the horrors somewhere. Something like 9 different
compilers are apparently used.

So I hope not to need that, but appreciate the offer!

What I am planning to do is combine the released boot files for PC-DOS
7.1 and DR-DOS 7.01-8, both with FAT32 and LBA support, with the rest
of the released OSes of both, to make something as complete as
possible.

My plan is then to add on top of that a graphical shell -- DOSSHELL
for PC DOS, ViewMax for DR DOS.

And then add some useful shareware/freeware utilities and apps, to
make a complete useful working environment, for example able to boot
off a USB stick for a distraction-free, non-Internet-capable, writing
tool. There seems to be considerable interest in such things these
days, and of course, the problem with apps that provide
distraction-free clean-screen writing/editing environments is that you
can always just switch apps to something else.

I have DESQview and DESQview/X running in a VM, but not on bare metal.
QEMM seems to have problems on 21st century PC hardware, which is
perhaps unsurprising.

On one of my own Lenovo notebooks, I have a bootable partition with PC
DOS 7.01, MS Word 6, WordPerfect 6.2, Norton Utilities and some other
tools. With power management, but not networking or anything. This
works for me, but they can't be distributed; they're licensed tools.

MS Word 5.5 is a free download, though. I was planning to add tools
such as PC Write, PC Outline, As-Easy-As, WordPerfect Editor, a Norton
Commander clone -- stuff that _is_ distributable.

I also need to add a current DOS antivirus, unfortunately. I think
there still are some.

The theory is to produce something functionally rich that runs in a VM
-- because then I know the hardware environment and can configure
things for it. And something much less functionally-rich that can boot
and run off a USB stick on almost any hardware.

DR-DOS should be re-distributable. PC DOS, I fear not, at least not
fully legitimately. But my download diskette image contains nothing
that IBM itself currently does not offer for free unrestricted
download. I'm hoping that the company will tolerate that, at least.

-- 
Liam Proven • Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
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