KormaX shared this interesting utility: "UNMUTE is a utility from TomCat that sets up your HDA as an internal speaker and lets you control its volume and even the output at some degree. UNMUTE1B utilizes all your available outputs (built-in speakers included), and UNMUTE11 only uses the lineout jack: (with this version, your built-in speakers are not in use, which is a better control over beeper-speaker oriented programs as the unavoidably beeping machine)" The UNMUTE11 release also includes source code (MIT license) so we've mirrored that on the FreeDOS Files Archive at Ibiblio, under /files/util/sound/unmute

UHDD is a disk-only caching driver for up to ten BIOS disks using up to four UltraDMA controllers. Mercury Thirteen has "packaged up the most recent version of UHDD, which you can find at website. The new version supports Read-Ahead and DMA/Caching Overlap for all cache sizes from 5 to 4093 MiB, which should help make all the work done by Jerome's FreeDOS installer happen faster than ever." And a special thank-you to Jack R. Ellis, the developer behind UHDD. We've also mirrored this release at the FreeDOS Files Archive on Ibibio, under /files/dos/ellis/uhdd/

We announced the FreeDOS Project on June 29, 1994. So that means FreeDOS turned 27 years old today! If you'd like a reminder about FreeDOS history, you can read today's article on Opensource.com about A brief history of FreeDOS. Despite all of the new development on FreeDOS, we remain true to our DOS roots. As we continue working toward FreeDOS 1.3 "final," we carry several core assumptions, including: + Compatibility is key + Run on new and old PCs + FreeDOS is open source software. We welcome your help in making FreeDOS great! Please subscribe to our email lists and join the discussion.

FreeDOS turns 27 on June 29 - and to help us celebrate, Opensource.com is running a month-long article series about FreeDOS. Every Monday-Friday in June, you can find a new "how-to" article about FreeDOS. Recent topics include: How to install FreeDOS manually, Listen to music on FreeDOS, How to set up FreeDOS as an embedded system, Why text has 16 colors, How to edit with Edlin, Programming with GW-BASIC, How to edit with Freemacs, Programming with Bywater BASIC, How to use copy files between Linux and FreeDOS, Programming in C. On June 29, look for a special article about the history of DOS and FreeDOS. The article series wraps up on June 30, with an interview about FreeDOS.

Paul Dufresne has ported GNU Chess to FreeDOS. This is an update from GNU Chess version 4 in the FreeDOS 1.3 RC4 distribution. Version 5 was released in 1999, and version 6 in 2011 - but version 5 is easier to build on DOS, to not use threads. GNU Chess is ASCII-based and uses algebraic board notation to indicate your moves, so you use "e2e4" to move a pawn. You can find GNU Chess 5.05 at Paul's gches GitLab. Thanks Paul!

JEMM is an "Expanded Memory Manager", based on the source of FreeDOS EMM386. It should work with MS-DOS and other DOSes, too. JEMM just released version 5.80 with a ton of new updates and features, including: + Jemm does again scan the region C000-EFFF for RAM; this avoids a system crash if upper memory has been supplied by UMBPCI and is used by DOS. + new option MOVEXBDA for Jemm implemented. + JemmEx will recognize memory blocks activated by UMBPCI and include them into its UMB pool; this makes option S=start-end virtually obsolete. + a warning is displayed if the extended memory block where Jemm386 will reside is beyond the 16MB limit. + strategy to realloc an EMB to increase its size has been changed and is + now smart enough to check if the block can be increased without moving it. Read the release notes for the full details. You can download the latest JEMM at JEMM v5.80 on GitHub. We've also mirrored it in the FreeDOS Files Archive at Ibiblio, under /files/dos/emm386/jemm386