Chat Logs for Episode 614 — #Category5 on irc.freenode.net / cat5.tv/discord


MVP's:

With 39 Posts:freedos
With 20 Posts:Solbu
With 11 Posts:MarshMan
With 6 Posts:bp9
With 4 Posts:stormchaser3000


Chat Logs:

6:58:17 PMSolbu btw in exactly 3 weeks I have moved into my new house. :-)
6:58:33 PMSolbu Moving day is wednesday july 17.
6:59:10 PMfreedos Hi everyone! I'm JIM HALL from the FreeDOS Project. :-)
6:59:32 PMSolbu freedos: Somehow I figured that. :-)
6:59:39 PMfreedos :-)
6:59:44 PMMarshMan Hey there, Jim!
7:04:22 PMnoeman5 I started Linux with RedHat, I think it was 5.4
7:04:54 PMMarshMan Ubuntu Dapper Drake for me.
7:05:45 PMSweSG Ubuntu 6.06 here
7:05:46 PMSolbu freedos: regarding when Window s95 and 98 came about, the irony is that when it crashed badly, you needed a dos utility do fix the registry. :-)
7:06:13 PMSolbu It was posibly called scanreg.
7:06:30 PMfreedos Microsoft didn't really get rid of DOS until they went to NT
7:06:37 PMfreedos I think even Win2000 had a version of DOS in it
7:06:44 PMnoeman5 Besides FreeDOS, I also did some of my early programming in QBasic
7:07:12 PMnoeman5 Still have some DOS discs lying about
7:07:24 PMfreedos I liked that MS-DOS 5 had QuickBASIC included in it. Not a bad BASIC environment.
7:10:32 PMfreedos I also got an email once from someone at NASA who was using FreeDOS to recover data from an old system. He wouldn't give details, but that was neat too!
7:11:37 PMnoeman5 25 years in computers is a couple of ice ages.
7:11:49 PMfreedos It is definitely a long time :-)
7:12:29 PMfreedos FreeDOS is slightly older than Amazon (FreeDOS = June 29 1994 | Amazon = July 5 1994)
7:12:42 PMnoeman5 I wonder if it would read the data on a couple of 8-inch floppies I have in storage?
7:13:09 PMfreedos Good question. I don't know anyone that's tried to read 8" floppies, but give it a try! :-)
7:14:13 PMfreedos FreeDOS is also older than eBay (eBay founded 1995)
7:14:18 PMG_Dog1985_ lol i have floppes drives
7:15:03 PMnoeman5 I even have the drive for it, last time I fired it up (9 years ago) it ran fine.
7:15:11 PMfreedos Cool! :-)
7:15:25 PMSolbu Some computer vendors ship with Freedos installed for users who order systems with no operatingsystems.
7:15:43 PMMarshMan Powerful thunderstorm about to hit here. May get cutoff.
7:16:15 PMfreedos Yes they do! Some of them pre-install FreeDOS to get around an OEM licensing clause - or so I'm told (Pat looked into it, some years ago)
7:17:07 PMfreedos The reasoning goes this way: "If you want the Windows OEM discount, you can't sell 'naked' computers with an OS .. and you can't pre-install with Linux."
7:17:23 PMfreedos But I don't mind. I think it's neat.
7:18:03 PMnoeman5 Break out the King's Quest discs!
7:18:24 PMfreedos (But I doubt that loophole exists anymore .. but some manufacturers still pre-install FreeDOS, and that's very cool.)
7:19:27 PMfreedos I think King's Quest does run on FreeDOS!
7:19:34 PMfreedos Most games run on FreeDOS. :-)
7:19:38 PMMarshMan Could FreeDOS run on an Intel Atom processor?
7:19:51 PMfreedos Does Atom have a BIOS? If so, then yes!
7:19:55 PMSolbu My all time favourite dos game is the first two xcom games.
7:20:02 PMMarshMan Yes it does.
7:20:13 PMfreedos :-)
7:20:33 PMMarshMan I can try it on an AtomicPi then.
7:20:51 PMfreedos Email me and let me know how that goes. I'd love to know!
7:21:22 PMSweSG MarshMan: https://www.lightningmaps.org
7:22:34 PMMarshMan SweSG, I am in that blob in southern NY state.
7:23:09 PMfreedos I mentioned AsEasyAs in the interview. This was a great shareware spreadsheet for DOS. TRIUS doesn't support it anymore, but they posted a free activation code on their forum:
7:23:11 PMfreedos http://www.triusinc.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=10
7:23:59 PMstormchaser3000 what about a replacement for Windows 3.1?
7:24:08 PMfreedos Here's the FreeDOS website : https://www.freedos.org/
7:24:29 PMfreedos We don't include a Windows replacement in FreeDOS - we're DOS. :-)
7:24:44 PMfreedos But there's a free "Windows" replacement called ReactOS that you might want to look at.
7:24:49 PMMarshMan Downloading FreeDOS now
7:24:53 PMfreedos :-)
7:25:10 PMstormchaser3000 fair point
7:25:30 PMnoeman5 @stormchaser3000 , the windows replacement is called Linux. ๐Ÿ˜ƒ
7:25:31 PMstormchaser3000 I was just thinking about an open source Windows 3.1 replacement that could run on top of FreeDOS
7:25:40 PMstormchaser3000 also fair point XD
7:26:02 PMSolbu Does Freedos have some hardware drivers in it, such as soundcard drivers?
7:26:36 PMSolbu I.e. can one install freedos and just have the sound work? :-)
7:27:15 PMfreedos .. We have a few GUIs in FreeDOS that you might like. SEAL and oZone and OpenGEM. None are "Windows" compatible though.
7:28:07 PMfreedos Solbu: DOS has a different driver model. There's no operating system -level support for sound cards. Games and music players supported that on their own.
7:28:13 PMSolbu Whenever I am in a dos environment, be it freedos or Dosbox, I use norton commander as gui.
7:29:26 PMfreedos Solbu: That's why so many sound cards of the DOS era were "SoundBlaster16/Adlib compatible." Because SB16 was the de facto sound card.
7:30:56 PMSolbu Last year I cleared my bedrom of old hardware. One of the cards was an actual Soundblaster 16 ISA card.
7:31:48 PMSolbu freedos: Modern sound cards often stil have sb16 compability mode avaliable.
7:32:52 PMfreedos :-)
7:33:15 PMSweSG Is this live?
7:33:21 PMfreedos For anyone out there running Linux: I use QEMU to boot FreeDOS. Here's the command line:
7:33:23 PMnoeman5 Dell HackerAssist installed. ๐Ÿ˜ƒ
7:33:23 PMfreedos qemu-system-i386 -m 32 -k en-us -rtc base=localtime -soundhw sb16,adlib,pcspk -device cirrus-vga -display gtk -fda /home/jhall/lib/qemu/drive_a.img -hda /home/jhall/lib/qemu/drive_c.img -drive file=fat:rw:/home/jhall/dos -cdrom /home/jhall/lib/qemu/FD12CD.iso -boot order=c
7:33:35 PMSolbu Speaking of old hardwqare. I work in a second hand store, selling used goods and old hardware.
7:33:40 PMfreedos SweSG: yes, chat is live! :-)
7:33:44 PMMarshMan I am live.
7:33:55 PMSolbu Last year we had a complete Nintendo NES system.
7:34:06 PMnoeman5 Last time I checked I was live
7:34:38 PMfreedos .. That QEMU command line is so long because you "define" each hardware component separately on the command line. Makes for a messy command line but gives a lot of flexibility. (Use a script to make it easy.)
7:34:48 PMnoeman5 Still have my PS1 and PS2
7:35:00 PMSolbu I have a PS2 myself.
7:38:09 PMfreedos Thanks everyone!
7:42:42 PMMarshMan Thank you Jim, freedos.
7:44:15 PMnoeman5 Congrats Jim!
7:45:11 PMSolbu freedos: I remember I created a dos utility in 1995 or so, because I didn't know how large my drive was, nor how much Free space it had. It is the only program I created my self. https://github.com/solbu/cap
7:45:20 PMfreedos Thanks!! 25 years is a big milestone for any project. :-)
7:46:32 PMfreedos Solbu: That's great that you posted it!
7:48:42 PMSolbu I tested compiling the souce code in linux using a linux pascal compiler, and it still compiles. :-)
7:49:12 PMfreedos Cool :-)
7:53:00 PMRonnicat Great show! Bye See you guys next week.
7:53:08 PMSkywriter64 goodnite from NYC
7:53:54 PMfreedos Goodnight all - thanks for the great chat about FreeDOS :-)
7:53:58 PMnoeman5 That show won't take much editing. Should free up some time for you @RobbieF
7:54:29 PMMarshMan Gโ€™night FreeDOS, Jim!
7:56:25 PMnoeman5 Goodnight all!
9:02:58 PMbp9 Oh.. I got all excited because the "Stream Starting Soon" graphic was up... and then I read the chat and saw that the show is already finished... Oh bother...
9:03:08 PMbp9 G'day Y'all! ๐Ÿ˜ƒ
9:04:23 PMbp9 looks around
9:06:35 PMSolbu :-)
9:07:14 PMSolbu bp9: I hax the same experience for a few seconds after the show endedโ€ฆ only to realise it is a boilerplate text. ;-)
9:07:21 PMSolbu *I had
9:17:33 PMbp9 Hi @Solbu
9:18:13 PMbp9 No worries, I knew I was late but I had some hope that I'd catch the end of the show. ๐Ÿ˜ƒ
9:19:00 PMbp9 I did enjoy your comments about your old PS1 and PS2 (I think that was you).
9:24:22 PMRobbieF Hi all! Hope you enjoyed the show.

Participants

Does Not Include Lurkers
G_Dog1985_
MarshMan
RobbieF
Ronnicat
Skywriter64
Solbu
SweSG
bp9
freedos
noeman5
stormchaser3000