FREEDOS - OS SOFTWARE

MSDos is a distant memory for many PC users. Those who have entered
the PC world within the past five years might never have heard of the
product. However, Dos was powering PCs a long time before Windows was
even on the Microsoft drawing board. Linux has a dramatically higher
learning curve than Dos ever had, and it's far from guaranteed that
all your peripherals will work with it. Dos may have been unfriendly
and it may have lacked central driver support for peripherals, but it
was lean and fast. Anyone who thought Dos was unreliable was in for a
real shock when Windows came along.

Microsoft knew that things had to be improved if more people were to
use PCs. Dos applications had to be learnt from scratch. This was
difficult because most tasks were based on function keys and control
codes. These changed between applications, although the Common User
Access standard helped to bring some commonality. The first two
versions of Windows were hardly success stories, and Microsoft had
virtually abandoned the project in favour of working with IBM on OS/2.

However, a physics professor called Murray Sargent was working at
Microsoft in the summer of 1988. He bumped into Windows programmer
Dave Weise and they began talking about the problems with Windows 2 -
which were performance, memory and functionality. Weise spent the next
couple of weeks recoding parts of Windows.

>> Big Cheese Triangle

A meeting was then called with some of Microsoft's managers, including
Bill Gates. Weise told the meeting that it was essential for Windows
to run in protected mode. 'And by the way,' he added, 'I have it
running downstairs.' This meeting changed the course of computing
history. A further 21 months of work was needed before Windows 3 made
its debut on 22nd May 1990. Microsoft soon fell out with IBM and it
bet the future on Windows. Its value trebled over the next year and a
half.

Dos was still needed to power Windows at this point - Windows was
effectively an application running on Dos. By this time, Digital
Research was doing well with its rival operating system, DRDos, and
IBM was selling its own PCDos. There was controversy when the
much-anticipated Windows 3.1 failed to work with the new DRDos
6. Digital Research had to hurry out a service pack to rectify the
problem.

The next version of DRDos was released after Novell bought Digital
Research, as Novell Dos 7. The company wasn't integrated into Novell
at first - but after it was discovered that Digital Research's name
was getting more press coverage than Novell's, a rapid reorganisation
ended with Digital Research being retitled as the Novell Desktop
Systems Group. Most of Novell's purchases around this time turned out
to be mistakes, and the separate products were sold off. Dos was one
of the last things to be sold, and the buyer was Caldera. DRDos made
an appearance as Caldera OpenDos before being called DRDos 7 and
targeted at the embedded market (see Network Shopper, Shopper 145).

When it came to the successor to Windows 3.1, Microsoft wanted to shut
out the rival forms of Dos. This was the first version of desktop
Windows not to require Dos. But rather than being engineered not to
need a Dos loader, Windows 95 was merely a self-loading copy of
Windows running on top of MSDos 7. This was plain for all to see at
the command line. It was this deception that killed off the market for
Dos. PC users quickly embraced Windows 95 after Microsoft's biggest
ever launch campaign.

>> FreeDos

So is Dos no more? Not quite. At the end of 1993, someone called Jim
Hall installed his first copy of Linux. With the Windows 95 hype
already beginning, Jim was aware that Dos would no longer be sold by
Microsoft. He also realised that IBM and Digital Research could not be
relied on to offer Dos forever. This gave him the idea of creating a
project to produce a free version of Dos. A manifesto was produced and
PD-Dos was released in July 1994. This woud then go on to become
FreeDos.

The software was originally downloadable from the FTP service at
Sunsite.unc.edu. Regular discussions also took place on the
Comp.os.msdos.misc newsgroup. These days, FreeDos has its own Web site
at www.freedos.org. You can join a mailing list when you visit the
site. This is where most of the FreeDos discussions now take place.

FreeDos is not based on any Microsoft code. Instead, the developers
have based the operating system on the MSDos functionality documented
by Microsoft. It should run on all PCs - there are no minimum
requirements. There is currently no multitasking or protected memory
support, but features such as these might be added in the future.

The majority of Dos applications can be run on FreeDos, although the
developers do not recommend running Windows on the operating system,
even if some users have got certain versions working.

As its name suggests, FreeDos is completely free. Most of its
utilities have been released under the GNU General Publish
Licence. This means the source code is available for the kernel,
Command.com and most of the utilities. The FreeDos Web site lists all
the components of the operating system, their version numbers, who
maintains them and the type of licence they are released
under. Developers are encouraged to volunteer their services and a
to-do list is maintained on the Web site.

>> Be prepared

FreeDos is downloaded directly from the main Web site, as well as from
a number of mirrors. Entering the download section, you will be
offered a copy of Unzip.exe, the release notes, installation
instructions and an erratum. You then choose between the mini or full
installation. The mini edition requires two floppy disks and the full
edition needs five disks. For the mini edition, the image of the boot
floppy disk is downloaded, along with the Rawrite.exe utility for
copying the image to disk. A Zip file also has to be downloaded. This
needs to be decompressed on to the other disk. The full edition is
much the same, apart from the three extra Zip files to decompress on
to another three floppy disks.

As you can see, a certain amount of preparation is required before
installation can begin. This includes formatting the correct number of
disks and then populating them with the appropriate files. It's worth
labelling the disks with their main names - full or mini and then
base, edit, language and utility. With preparation complete, the PC
needs to be restarted with the mini or full boot disk. This will leave
you at the FreeDos command line.

The installation routine is then run, and you'll be prompted to change
disks as required. With the full edition of FreeDos, some of the
packages are optional, and you'll need to be on hand to answer any
questions that pop up. Installation can take half an hour or
more. Although this will depend on the speed of the PC, floppy disk
access in FreeDos is known to be quite slow.

The two hidden system files with Dos are normally Io.sys and
Msdos.sys, or Ibmbio.sys and Ibmdos.sys. FreeDos combines these into a
single file called Kernel.sys, and its installation routine does not
make the destination disk bootable. You therefore have to run the Sys
command to make sure the C drive boots up into FreeDos. I also copied
over the supplied Config.sys and Command.com (actually referred to as
FreeCom).

>> Starting Line

Following a reboot, my test PC started to run FreeDos. When the
operating system starts up, it allows you to press F5 to ignore
Autoexec.bat and F8 to activate the diagnostic mode. Then, as you
would expect, you are left at a command line that looks much like any
other.

Typing a question mark displays the basic FreeDos help screen for the
built-in commands. This indicates the many familiar instructions that
can be run. The directory commands Cd, Md and Rd are here, as well as
the optional Chdir, Mkdir and Rmdir. Classic batch file commands
Break, Call, Echo, Exit, For, Goto, If, Pause, Prompt, Rem, Set and
Shift are present, and disk and file commands Copy, Del, Dir, Ren,
Type and Vol are supported, along with the optional Erase and Rename.

Memory commands Loadfix, Loadhigh and Lh are available, along with the
standard Cls, Date, Doskey, Path, Time, Ver, Verify and the rarely
used Truename. This leaves three new commands of Alias, Beep and
History. Beep, as you might expect, sounds a single tone. This is
normally achieved with Ctrl-G or holding down Alt and typing 007 on
the numeric keypad.

Alias and History provide functions that are normally combined with
Doskey. Alias is used to set up new keywords to perform certain Dos
functions. For example, a new command called Dirwide could be set up
to perform a wide directory listing with 'Dir /W'. The format of the
command is simply Alias, followed by the new word, an equals sign and
the Dos command to be performed. If Alias is used on its own, a list
of the current aliases will be displayed.

The History command displays a figure that indicates how many bytes of
memory are being used to store the command-line history. This defaults
to 256 bytes, and the figure can be changed by entering a new number
after the command. Altering this value will reset the current history
record.

All of this seems reasonably familiar. However, even those with a good
knowledge of Dos might find FreeDos rather quirky to use. Some of the
commands we have mentioned don't seem to be that mature. For example,
the Dos Copy command can normally be run without a destination. This
means the file will simply be placed in the current directory. The
FreeDos Copy command requires the statement to be fully
completed. There is also currently a known limitation where file
specifications cannot end with a slash. I found I could only copy to a
floppy disk if I used a subdirectory on the destination disk. Both A:
and A: gave an error of 'Path not found'.

You might also expect a command such as 'Dir shop*' to list all the
files starting with 'shop'. This is not the case - the full 'shop*.*'
has to be used. Searching directories with FreeDos' implementation of
the classic Dos commands is also troublesome. The 'Dir /S' command
does not seem to find files in sub-directories. Before MSDos
introduced this switch with version 5, 'Attrib /S' could be used to
locate files. Unfortunately, the FreeDos Attrib command does not
support this switch.

However, FreeDos does provide its own Locate command. This takes a
filename parameter and numerous switches, and it scans the PC looking
for occurrences of the specified file. The default is to look for
folders and files, but you tell the utility to search for
either. Windows long filenames are supported with the /L switch, and
/H searches for hidden and system files. /D and /T can be used to
specify start and end dates and times. There are switches for empty
files, deleting the files and listing only a specified number of
files.

>> Text of Kin

FreeDos provides its own text editor. Fortunately, it's modelled on
the MSDos Edit command and not its Edlin forerunner. Anyone used to
the MSDos version shouldn't have too many problems with this
version. It's a bit quirky, perhaps - especially when selecting files
for editing - but it does have some interesting functions. The File
menu includes an option to shell out to Dos. This is really quite
useful in the non-multitasking environment. You will be able to leave
the editor to check something in Dos, and return back to the editing
session with the Exit command.

Unlike Notepad in Windows 98, the FreeDos Edit command has both search
and replace functions, and it has a single-step undelete function. If,
like me, you never have a calendar to hand, the Utility menu could be
worth a visit. This looks like it will contain a variety of functions
in the future. For now, it contains the single option of Calendar,
which provides a handy view of the current month in standard calendar
format.

The editor can also be customised to a certain extent. You have a
choice of a 25-, 43- or 50-line display. The screen can be colour,
monochrome or reverse, and you can enable or disable the title,
border, status bar and texture. There are options to set basic tabs,
and the editor can be set to insert mode and word wrap. Overall, this
is a reasonable editor. However, a little time will be required in
order for you to understand it fully.

FreeDos also comes supplied with the Ted editor. Although this is more
basic than Edit, it somehow seems easier to use. It provides all the
main actions on a series of function keys which are shown at the
bottom of the screen. These include mark, cut, copy, paste and
exit. In addition to this, the documentation also lists other control
sequences that can be used with the function keys.

>> Basic training

We've already covered quite a few commands, but there are plenty more
still to discover. The majority of external commands are held in the
FreeDoin folder. This also includes commands that seasoned Dos users
will recognise, as well as quite a few new ones. MSDos used to come
supplied with the GW Basic interpreter. I always assumed the initials
came from the reversed initials of William Gates. This went on to be
replaced by QBasic, a cut-down form of Microsoft's QuickBasic.

FreeDos upholds the tradition and comes supplied with the BW Basic
interpreter (make up your own jokes here). Some help text is provided
for this and many of the other FreeDos facilities. However, I found
the help system was expecting its data files to be in a top-level
directory. I therefore had to relocate the files before being able to
read them. I later discovered an environment variable that could be
set to get around this problem.

If you're into Unix, then you might notice a few familiar commands in
FreeDos - over and above the standard Dos commands that were taken
from Unix. The Cal (calendar) command is here. When run on its own,
you get a standard calendar display for the current month. The utility
can also be run with a month/year parameter to display a particular
month, and a one-year parameter which gives a 12-month display spread
across two screens.

The Tail command is used to examine the end of a text file. This is
useful for very large files that would otherwise consume a lot of
memory. Tail is generally run on log files. Used with just a filename
as a parameter, the last screen's worth of data will be displayed. A
minus sign and figure can be used immediately after the command to
indicate the number of lines to display. There are also options to
cope with growing files, multiple files and files in
subdirectories. Tail's options can be set as environment variables
when FreeDos starts up. This will ensure it's ready-configured.

The Tee command is also found in Unix. This has one input and two
outputs, allowing the output data to be saved and processed. As an
example, the command 'Sort text.txt |tee output.txt |more' would sort
the specified text file and then send the result to a new file,
displaying that file in the process.

>> Roger Deltree

There are two Deltree commands supplied with FreeDos. They both
include switches for reporting totals and displaying debug
information, and they both support the DRDos-style file
lists. Deltree2 seems to be a safer bet, though, because it omits the
/Y parameter for trashing directory structures without any further
reference.

Fin is a utility for display file information. Used on its own, it
simply lists files in the current folder. With the addition of the -A
switch, the file's attributes are displayed - hidden, read only and so
on. The -D switch shows size, date and time, and files may be shown in
terms of clusters. Several types of checksum can also be
calculated. Fin can deal with files in subdirectories with -R.

Another group of simple utilities is Touch, Reboot and Uptime. The
Touch command is used to change the date and time attributes of a
file. You can either specify the date and time or the utility can take
these details from a specified file. The time can also be set to a
file's version number, as can be seen on some of Microsoft's system
files in MSDos and Windows. Reboot restarts the PC, the /V switch
causes the utility to prompt before rebooting, and the /W and /C
switches specify whether the reboot will be cold or warm - with or
without the memory test.

The Uptime utility gives a figure in minutes or hours for the length
of the current session. It also reports the boot time and the current
time. You can choose which individual items of information are
displayed. The options can also be set through environment variables.

>> Verdict

FreeDos has been put together by enthusiasts for anyone who may want
to use it. Whether it's for personal use or inclusion on an embedded
system, FreeDos could be the solution. Anyone who is thinking about
downloading the product should make sure they read all the online
guides. There's a great deal of information available that will
ultimately save a lot of time when it comes to installing and using
the product. Despite its age, FreeDos is still considered beta
software.

By definition, FreeDos is not going to be as functional and polished
as a commercial release - yet. It's undoubtedly a little rough around
the edges; features you may remember from your Dos days are not
guaranteed to be included, but FreeDos is a great idea and with the
enthusiastic support of Internet users, it will be around for a long
time to come.

>> Reviewed Issue 150, Page 477

>> Contact www.freedos.org

>> Price Free

>> Reprinted from Computer Shopper / Technoworld