4 cool facts you should know about FreeDOS

[Rich]

https://opensource.com/article/17/6/freedos-still-cool-today

Quoting from the URL above:

In the early 1990s, I was a DOS "power user." I used DOS for everything
and even wrote my own tools to extend the DOS command line. Sure, we had
Microsoft Windows, but if you remember what computing looked like at the
time, Windows 3.1 was not that great. I preferred working in DOS.

You might understand that I was a little confused and upset in 1994 when
Microsoft announced (via interviews in tech magazines) that the next
version of Windows would do away with MS-DOS. I thought, "If Windows 3.2
or 4.0 looks anything like Windows 3.1, I want nothing to do with that."
I looked around for options and decided that if DOS was going to
continue, someone would have to create a DOS that everyone could use
when MS-DOS went away.

So it was on June 29, 1994, that I wrote a message to a Usenet
discussion group, announcing a new "free DOS" project:

A few months ago, I posted articles relating to starting a public domain
version of DOS. The general support for this at the time was strong, and
many people agreed with the statement, "start writing!"

So, I have...

Announcing the first effort to produce a PD-DOS. I have written up a
"manifest" describing the goals of such a project and an outline of the
work, as well as a "task list" that shows exactly what needs to be
written. I'll post those here, and let discussion follow.

Today, it's 23 years later, and FreeDOS is still going strong!

...

[Ian McCall]

Post by Rich
https://opensource.com/article/17/6/freedos-still-cool-today

Used to use FreeDOS for BIOS updates and for an arcade emulator too.
Must admit I don't have a use today, but glad to know it's still alive
and going strong.



Cheers,
Ian

[Dan Cross]

Post by Rich
https://opensource.com/article/17/6/freedos-still-cool-today
[snip]

I remember being one of the voices critical of this effort when it was
announced. I couldn't understand the appeal for a free DOS clone instead
of running Linux (or FreeBSD, or another open-source Unix derivative) and
improving DOS emulation support.

In retrospect, I think my objection was perhaps too harsh: this project
certainly has utility and has been fun for it's participants. But it does
seem like one could have written things like BIOS update programs as device
drivers in a more capable kernel.

- Dan C.

[Michael Black]

Post by Dan Cross

Post by Rich
https://opensource.com/article/17/6/freedos-still-cool-today
[snip]

I remember being one of the voices critical of this effort when it was
announced. I couldn't understand the appeal for a free DOS clone instead
of running Linux (or FreeBSD, or another open-source Unix derivative) and
improving DOS emulation support.
In retrospect, I think my objection was perhaps too harsh: this project
certainly has utility and has been fun for it's participants. But it does
seem like one could have written things like BIOS update programs as device
drivers in a more capable kernel.

DIdn't DRDOS become public domain or something? Reading your post reminds
me of something like that, I suddenly have a memory of "why an open
source clone of DOS when you can just download DRDOS for free?"

Michael

[Dan Cross]

Post by Michael Black

Post by Dan Cross
I remember being one of the voices critical of this effort when it was
announced. I couldn't understand the appeal for a free DOS clone instead
of running Linux (or FreeBSD, or another open-source Unix derivative) and
improving DOS emulation support.
In retrospect, I think my objection was perhaps too harsh: this project
certainly has utility and has been fun for it's participants. But it does
seem like one could have written things like BIOS update programs as device
drivers in a more capable kernel.

DIdn't DRDOS become public domain or something? Reading your post reminds
me of something like that, I suddenly have a memory of "why an open
source clone of DOS when you can just download DRDOS for free?"

I don't recall, but I couldn't understand the appeal of DOS in
particular. As I recall, the original author of FreeDOS was looking
for a general-purpose operating system for interactive use; it
seemed to me (and frankly still does) that one of the Unix clones
would have been a far better choice.

Where FreeDOS has really shined has been in the niche of hardware
vendors who needed a dead-simple OS for shipping things like firmware
updates and the like. I suppose it would have been more challenging
to do that under a Unix-like OS, but it's a very different use-case
than what originally motivated FreeDOS.

- Dan C.

[Mike Spencer]

Post by Dan Cross
I don't recall, but I couldn't understand the appeal of DOS in
particular. As I recall, the original author of FreeDOS was looking
for a general-purpose operating system for interactive use; it
seemed to me (and frankly still does) that one of the Unix clones
would have been a far better choice.

I went from CP/M at home directly to Unix (user, not admin), bypassing
DOS and Windoes. So when I eventually got a box at home that
supported DOS (but not good enough for Linux/BSD) it was a come-down.
OTOH, there was no great learning curve to admin it. I'm all-Linux
today but I've spent countless hours in the last 18 years learning to
tweak, hack and admin the system.

Post by Dan Cross
Where FreeDOS has really shined has been in the niche of hardware....

s/shined/shone/ IYWBSK

(Brought to you by SPIV: Society for the Preservation of Irregular Verbs.)

[RS Wood]

Post by Mike Spencer
s/shined/shone/ IYWBSK
(Brought to you by SPIV: Society for the Preservation of Irregular Verbs.)

^^^^^^^
Bringed ;)

[Marko Rauhamaa]

Post by RS Wood

Post by Mike Spencer
s/shined/shone/ IYWBSK
(Brought to you by SPIV: Society for the Preservation of Irregular Verbs.)

^^^^^^^
Bringed ;)

Speaking of which...

The past participle form has all but disappeared from the modern North
American.

I have went
I have came
I have began
I have ran
I have drank
I have shook
I have took
I have wrote
I have gave
I have showed
I have ate

etc

Only

I have been

and (to a large extent)

I have done

are holding up.


Marko

[Nyssa]

Post by Marko Rauhamaa

Post by RS Wood

Post by Mike Spencer
s/shined/shone/ IYWBSK
(Brought to you by SPIV: Society for the Preservation of
Irregular Verbs.)

^^^^^^^
Bringed ;)

Speaking of which...
The past participle form has all but disappeared from the
modern North American.
I have went
I have came
I have began
I have ran
I have drank
I have shook
I have took
I have gave
I have showed
I have ate
etc
Only
I have been
and (to a large extent)
I have done
are holding up.
Marko

You have hit on one of my biggest hot button issues.

I have been hearing this non-use of the past participle
almost exclusively, even from "professional" broadcasters
and others who should have the education to know better.

I'd hate to think that the correct form is going the
way of the do-do bird simply from this constant misuse.

Plus it has the added problem of the next generation of
English speakers hearing this to the point of believing
it must be the correct way.

To sum up my feelings about this trend I say ARRRRRGGGGHHH!!

Nyssa, who has been known to yell at the radio whenever
she hears the incorrect tense combination being used

[Mike Spencer]

Post by Nyssa
Nyssa, who has been known to yell at the radio whenever
she hears the incorrect tense combination being used

Good on you. And keep it up. AIUI, if you have a very up to date
radio, it's *listening*!

[Johnny B Good]

Post by Nyssa

Post by Marko Rauhamaa

s/shined/shone/ IYWBSK (Brought to you by SPIV: Society for the
Preservation of Irregular Verbs.)

^^^^^^^ Bringed ;)

Speaking of which...
The past participle form has all but disappeared from the modern North
American.
I have went I have came I have began I have ran I have drank I have
shook I have took I have wrote I have gave I have showed I have ate
etc
Only
I have been
and (to a large extent)
I have done
are holding up.
Marko

You have hit on one of my biggest hot button issues.
I have been hearing this non-use of the past participle almost
exclusively, even from "professional" broadcasters and others who should
have the education to know better.
I'd hate to think that the correct form is going the way of the do-do
bird simply from this constant misuse.
Plus it has the added problem of the next generation of English speakers
hearing this to the point of believing it must be the correct way.
To sum up my feelings about this trend I say ARRRRRGGGGHHH!!
Nyssa, who has been known to yell at the radio whenever she hears the
incorrect tense combination being used

A reflection of my own feelings with regard to similar abuses
exemplified by phrases such as "Chomping at the bit" in place of the
original and correct "Champing at the bit", along with that other bugbear
of mispronunciation of the word "controversy" where the stress is
misplaced on the first instead of the second (correct) syllable resulting
in the artificially forced lumbering style of pronunciation that appears
to have been promulgated as a practical joke by some prick in the BBC's
RP department issuing 'The Memo' in regard of a word list of RP rules
some two or three decades back.

Sadly, said prick was either too cowardly to correct the 'error' in a
later memo or else died/retired before letting anyone else in the RP
department know of his 'joke memo', allowing for this particular sin by a
major public services broadcaster to go uncorrected to this day. :-(

[Mike Spencer]

Post by Marko Rauhamaa

Post by RS Wood

Post by Mike Spencer
s/shined/shone/ IYWBSK
(Brought to you by SPIV: Society for the Preservation of Irregular Verbs.)

Bringed ;)

Thank you for that. :-\

Post by Marko Rauhamaa
Speaking of which...
The past participle form has all but disappeared from the modern North
American.
I have went
I have came
I have began
I have ran
I have drank
I have shook
I have took
I have gave
I have showed
I have ate
etc

Gak! Either I need to get out more or you need a beter class of
interlocutors. I haven't noticed that. The subjunctive is a lost
cause but people I talk (actually talk, not e-talk) to usually do okay
with past participles.

As a blacksmith, however, I do notice one that almost no one except
other blacksmiths (and metallurgists) get right. People speak of
"wroughted iron".

I live in a place with, historically, a lot of Germanic settlers so
among my older rural neighbors with 8th grade or less, I hear such
things as "I wed my carrots..." and "He tooken it to the garage...",
viz. intuitive appreciation of irregular verbs but lacking certain
prescriptive details.

Post by Marko Rauhamaa
Only
I have been
and (to a large extent)
I have done
are holding up.

[Marko Rauhamaa]

Post by Mike Spencer
Gak! Either I need to get out more or you need a beter class of
interlocutors. I haven't noticed that.

Some 20 years back I pointed out the form

I have wrote

to a coworker, a technical writer with an English major. He insisted no
native speaker could say such a thing, or they must be completely
illiterate.

A day or two later I caught him saying the same thing, which he couldn't
deny.

Post by Mike Spencer
I live in a place with, historically, a lot of Germanic settlers so
among my older rural neighbors with 8th grade or less, I hear such
things as "I wed my carrots..." and "He tooken it to the garage...",
viz. intuitive appreciation of irregular verbs but lacking certain
prescriptive details.

There's a huge variation of dialectal conjugation around the
English-speaking world.

I recently read an excellent biographical account of the Klondike Gold
Rush by Mont Hawthorne (<URL: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Klondike-Alaska-G
old-Rush-Trail-Led-North-Mont-Hawthornes-Story-McKeown-HC-/371833513754>).
Hawthorne used an Appalachian vernacular throughout his story (as
written down by his niece): <URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appala
chian_English>.

Hawthorne regularly used dialectal conjugational forms. For example, he
would use "come" instead of "came", "done" instead of "did", and
"throwed" instead of "threw/thrown":

come verb past tense of come. [OED dates this usage from the 14th
century]

<URL: http://artsandsciences.sc.edu/engl/dictionary/dictionary.html>

Lots of other conjugational forms mentioned in the dictionary:

be — was/war/were (s./pl.) — been
blow — blowed — blowed
catch — catched — catched
come — come — come
drink — drank — drank
drive — driv — driv
drag — drug — drug
eat — eat — eat
fall — fell — fell
fight — fit — fit
give — give — give
hear — heared — heared
help — holp(ed) — holp(ed)
know — knowed — knowed
reach — retch(ed) — retch(ed)
run — run — run
see — seed/seen — seed/seen
throw — throwed — throwed
take — took/tuck — took/tuck


Marko

[Mike Spencer]

Post by Marko Rauhamaa

Post by Mike Spencer
Gak! Either I need to get out more or you need a beter class of
interlocutors. I haven't noticed that.

But now that you've alerted me, I just spotted this:

...timesharing would've really took off earlier than it did...

on alt.folklore.computers, posted by a guy reasonably presumed to be
neither a PFY nor uneducated.

Post by Marko Rauhamaa
Some 20 years back I pointed out the form
to a coworker, a technical writer with an English major. He insisted no
native speaker could say such a thing, or they must be completely
illiterate.
A day or two later I caught him saying the same thing, which he couldn't
deny.

Sic transit gloria mundi or something.

[Johnny B Good]

Post by Mike Spencer

Post by Marko Rauhamaa

Post by RS Wood

s/shined/shone/ IYWBSK (Brought to you by SPIV: Society for the
Preservation of Irregular Verbs.)

Bringed ;)

Thank you for that. :-\

Post by Marko Rauhamaa
Speaking of which...
The past participle form has all but disappeared from the modern North
American.
I have went I have came I have began I have ran I have drank I have
shook I have took I have wrote I have gave I have showed I have ate
etc

Gak! Either I need to get out more or you need a beter class of
interlocutors. I haven't noticed that. The subjunctive is a lost cause
but people I talk (actually talk, not e-talk) to usually do okay with
past participles.
As a blacksmith, however, I do notice one that almost no one except
other blacksmiths (and metallurgists) get right. People speak of
"wroughted iron".

I'm neither a blacksmith nor a metallurgist but even I have never ever
used (or for that matter, *heard*) such an expression as "wroughted
iron". Such ferrous based material has only, ime, ever been referred to
as "wrought iron".

Such an expression would strongly suggest that the utterer's native
tongue is *not* English (however, going from the evidence mounting up in
this thread, it would seem that that wouldn't necessarily exclude
"American English" 'speakers').

[Johnny B Good]

Post by Marko Rauhamaa

s/shined/shone/ IYWBSK (Brought to you by SPIV: Society for the
Preservation of Irregular Verbs.)

^^^^^^^ Bringed ;)

Speaking of which...
The past participle form has all but disappeared from the modern North
American.
I have went I have came I have began I have ran I have drank I have
shook I have took I have wrote I have gave I have showed I have ate

I have gone, I have come, I have begun, I have run, I have drunk, I
have shaken, I have taken, I have written, I have given, I have shown, I
have eaten... etc.

Yet another indictment of the American public school education system.
Mind you, that isn't boding well for the UK's state education system
since the UK tends to be only about a decade or so behind America with
regard to its societal influences (typically due to the propaganda effect
of Hollywood based entertainment franchises). :-(

[Nyssa]

Post by Johnny B Good

Post by Marko Rauhamaa

Post by Mike Spencer
Society for the Preservation of Irregular Verbs.)

^^^^^^^ Bringed ;)

Speaking of which...
The past participle form has all but disappeared from the
modern North American.
I have went I have came I have began I have ran I have
drank I have shook I have took I have wrote I have
gave I have showed I have ate

I have gone, I have come, I have begun, I have run, I
have drunk, I
have shaken, I have taken, I have written, I have given, I
have shown, I have eaten... etc.
Yet another indictment of the American public school
education system.
Mind you, that isn't boding well for the UK's state
education system since the UK tends to be only about a
decade or so behind America with regard to its societal
influences (typically due to the propaganda effect of
Hollywood based entertainment franchises). :-(

Add Canadians to the list of wrong doers.

I've been hearing university educated radio broadcasters
based in Toronto misusing the past participle for several
years now. Said broadcasters range into their forties and
fifties in age, so the mis-education is not recent in their
cases.

A sad state of affairs for the English language from what
are supposed to be native speakers.

Nyssa, who even has to bite her tongue when speaking with
a neighbor in her 60s who gets it wrong all the time

[Marko Rauhamaa]

Post by Johnny B Good

Post by Marko Rauhamaa
The past participle form has all but disappeared from the modern North
American.
I have went I have came I have began I have ran I have drank I have
shook I have took I have wrote I have gave I have showed I have ate

I have gone, I have come, I have begun, I have run, I have drunk, I
have shaken, I have taken, I have written, I have given, I have shown, I
have eaten... etc.
Yet another indictment of the American public school education system.

No, just a language on the move.

Post by Johnny B Good
Mind you, that isn't boding well for the UK's state education system
since the UK tends to be only about a decade or so behind America with
regard to its societal influences (typically due to the propaganda
effect of Hollywood based entertainment franchises). :-(

Every language is the product of societal influences.


Marko

[Bruce Horrocks]

Post by RS Wood

Post by Mike Spencer
s/shined/shone/ IYWBSK
(Brought to you by SPIV: Society for the Preservation of Irregular Verbs.)

^^^^^^^
Bringed ;)

Brung :-)

[Michael Black]

Post by Dan Cross
Where FreeDOS has really shined has been in the niche of hardware
vendors who needed a dead-simple OS for shipping things like firmware
updates and the like. I suppose it would have been more challenging
to do that under a Unix-like OS, but it's a very different use-case
than what originally motivated FreeDOS.

I did a firmware upgrade on my tv set soon after I bought it, and in the
process of setting up the USB flash drive, I realized it was Linux. It
turns out the tv set uses it. I really hadn't given thought to the GNU
license in the manual.

So there, it was just a barebones Linux and some file for the actual
upgrade.

My blu-ray player and my TomTom One GPS receiver uses Linux too.

Michael

[Huge]

Post by Michael Black

Post by Dan Cross
Where FreeDOS has really shined has been in the niche of hardware
vendors who needed a dead-simple OS for shipping things like firmware
updates and the like. I suppose it would have been more challenging
to do that under a Unix-like OS, but it's a very different use-case
than what originally motivated FreeDOS.

I did a firmware upgrade on my tv set soon after I bought it, and in the
process of setting up the USB flash drive, I realized it was Linux. It
turns out the tv set uses it. I really hadn't given thought to the GNU
license in the manual.

I was amused when I unpacked our first flat-screen TV (a Sony) and a GNU
licence fell out of the manual. I wonder how many people knew what it
was and what it meant?