Actually, Caldera has re-named OpenDOS to DR-DOS, because their DOS was neither really open nor free.

alternative to the official documentation is the outstanding file nwdostip.txt in the MPDOSTIP.ZIP archive (http://www.uni-bonn.de/~uzs180/mpdokeng.html#M.MPDOSTIP) from Matthias Paul. This package isn't an official document, but it contains much information about DR-DOS and other DOS related topics like NC and a file with many undocumented features of DR-DOS. Unfortunately, these files only exist in german language.

The goal of the FreeDOS Project is to create a free implementation of MS-DOS. DOS is a popular system, and there is plenty of hardware out there that supports DOS. The FreeDOS Project was founded in 1994 by Jim Hall. FreeDOS is not a derivation of MS-DOS - we are not using or referring to any Microsoft code. We are instead using the description of the MS-DOS program as given in publications (such as the user manual) to create a program of our own that follows that spec.

I found an outdated (March 14, 1997) OpenDOS FAQ at http://www.delorie.com/opendos/faq/. If you know any other DR-DOS/OpenDOS FAQ, please contact me <cfuchs@n-net.org>. PTS DOS is a russian DOS, written in assembler. It's really fast. It comes on two floppy disks, one with the system and the utilities, the other one with Arachne as webbrowser. It claims to be MS-DOS compatible, but it's a bit strange in configuration and memory management but it is still developed. At http://phystechsoft.

OpenDOS is a clone of the popular MS-DOS operating system. Like MS-DOS, it is a 16 bit OS, and includes the full range of standard utilities (sort, chkdsk, etc), most of which are improvements over their counterparts supplied with MS-DOS. The supplied game, NetWars, is far better than MS-DOS"worms"!

OpenDOS is the sole property of Caldera, but they are releasing a free "evaluation" copy which can be used for non-commercial use and evaluation. They plan to release the sources to the public within the next month or so, too.

You may also consider joining the FreeDOS mailing list. Or, you can post a message to comp.os.msdos.programmer or comp.os.msdos.misc (whichever seems more appropriate) and ask your questions there. A lot of people in these groups are pretty knowledgeable about FreeDOS. A number of FreeDOS mailing list members are also part of c.o.m.m and c.o.m.p.

This is due to the way that Caldera's web server is set up - it times out. If you have access to a high-speed network at your ISP or work, download it there and then transfer it over your modem. Until Caldera modifies their license, no mirrors can be set up. Send email to geneb@web.wa.net if you really need it to find out what the current best way to get it.

The DJGPP and OpenDOS groups expect to work closely together to "clean up" the OpenDOS sources and integrate the GEM, TCP/IP, and EMM386 APIs into DJGPP's development kits. While no official arrangements have been made, suffice to say that there will be many DJGPP developers with OpenDOS sources! As for porting OpenDOS to DJGPP, remember that DJGPP doesn't support 16-bit machines, which will be a popular platform for OpenDOS.

Each part is built with a different development package. To build everything (once the sources are found and cleaned up), you'll need nine different development packages to build it all. The hope is that this list can be reduced to two or three. The current list is approximately "Turbo Cv2,v3, BCC v2,v3.1, Watcom C v7, 3 versions of MASM, 2 version of TASM... and a partridge in a pear tree.....", according to Gene! EMM386 is all in assembler.

Well, the core OS can't be (IBMBIO.COM, IBMDOS.COM, and COMMAND.COM) but there's no reason why the utilities couldn't all be 32-bit DJGPP programs. However, that means that a 386 is required, which otherwise wouldn't be true.

Some suggested OpenDOS slogans from the mailing list 286s! They are $9.99/lb. Close Windows, OpenDOS Close those Windows, OpenDOS! Close your Windows - OpenDOS! OpenDOS - Where do you want to go NOW? OpenDOS - Where else would you want to go? OpenDOS - Why go through windows when you could have a !&$^&* DOOR? OpenDOS, Windows DOSnt OpenDOS: Now you will get actually there. Why open a Window when you can OpenDOS? Windows can break, invest in a solid 'OpenDOS'

In short, yes, FreeDOS should run on all PC's. That means you can run FreeDOS on your Pentium-Pro 800Mhz. It will just run really fast. You can also run FreeDOS on your 5MHz PC-XT. It will just run a little slow. FreeDOS will run on all levels of PC's, from as low as an XT with 640k memory. We may one day expand the project to support 32-bit extensions such as protected memory or multi-tasking, but for now we are content with supporting the lower systems.

Yes. FreeDOS works well in several PC emulators, including the popular Linux DOSEmu. In fact, FreeDOS is the official DOS of the DOSEmu folks. FreeDOS is also used in other PC emulators as well, including Mac Bochs, and VMWare (for Linux and Windows NT.) Can I use FreeDOS to install my copy of Windows? FreeDOS will run most MS-DOS programs. However, Windows is a special case. Microsoft Windows does not like to run on any DOS other than MS-DOS.

Yes, FreeDOS really is free. Most FreeDOS programs are written under the GNU General Public License. This means that the source to all FreeDOS programs (including the kernel and replacement COMMAND.COM shell) is available.

Some software in the FreeDOS software distribution is protected under other licenses, so you should be sure to check the licensing of any program that you want to bundle with your app.

Refer to the FreeDOS Maintainers Lists for a list of all programs that are currently distributed with FreeDOS. To see a list of old DOS programs that are currently known to run on FreeDOS, please see the kernel compatibility list.

The short answer is to boot from the FreeDOS Install Boot Floppy. When your system comes up, just type: After that's done, remove the floppy from the A: drive, and reboot. Your system is now running FreeDOS.

Some anti-virus software, including Norton's, will report that the install boot floppies contain a virus (usually reported as the 'Bloodhound' virus.) This is a false positive, there is no virus. If your MD5 Sum matches the server, then you should be okay. Norton AntiVirus 5.0 identifies the FreeDOS boot record as infected with a Bloodhound.Boot virus. It turns out that 'Bloodhound' is actually a heuristic for identifying unknown viruses.

It's actually very simple. I originally wrote the code as part of a real-time os. That os had disk drivers that worked with dma and were multitasking. So, I took advantage of it and only did all my reads and writes out of the disk buffers. The next sector was always set for read-ahead so that while I was reading or writing the current sector, the next one was filling the buffer. For the bios drivers, I need to specifically fetch each sector and wait until it finishes.

ReactOS natively supports long and unicode filenames. It is up to the file system driver how it deals with it. The FAT-driver delivered with ReactOS supports VFAT (=long names on FAT).

A''' ReactOS natively supports long and unicode filenames. It is up to the file system driver how it deals with it. The FAT-driver delivered with ReactOS supports VFAT (=long names on FAT).

The FreeDOS kernel (even as late as build 2017f) still contains the bug for 512MB disks. Do not use this kernel if you plan to access - even read - a disk partition bigger than 512MB. If you do, you will find that your drive is corrupt, and you will need to reformat and re-install your software. This is a well-known bug with large hard disks, advertised on the FreeDOS sites since Aug 12 1998. The reason for the delay in releasing the new kernel is that I'm trying to track down a serious bug.