@@grappydingus True. I was thinking about including them, though the problem was, which BASIC interpreter to use then? BASIC from FreeDOS was way too large. I could have included the OSS version of GW-BASIC though. Or the OSS version of BASIC from MS-DOS 1.25?
I miss BASIC being included by default in Windows / Linux. Back in the DOS days you could just write a small - quick program and everyone could use it and / or learn / modify it. Simple days.
@@mudi2000a I have started switching over to Linux this year (4 PC's and NOT buying new machines just to make MS happy) and have settled on PopOS for myself and the wife likes LinuxMint. A few quirks but overall happy with Linux. I had no idea Python came loaded by default. There really should be an icon or something pointing to a STANDARD IDE / editor or something like that. Anyway, Thanks for the info.
Size of FreeDOS is humongous. It is definitely not optimal for genuine PC AT era. Making Homage edition is interesting, but I can't believe people requires you to try FreeDOS on that.
That is shocking that FreeDOS is not compatible with authentic DOS floppy images, what an obvious oversight and defect. After how many decades nobody thought to fix this??
Probably prioritizing keeping the memory footprint as small as possible and not including functionality which would likely rarely be used. It'll support any relatively modern FAT12 format disk, just not the earliest ones.
Nah, I wouldn't say so. FreeDOS was meant to be compatible to contemporary DOS versions. At the time, when FreeDOS was first released in 1994, PC/MS DOS 6 was current, and a good baseline for compatibility. DOS 1.x was obsoleted since 10 years by then already, and so was the early FAT12 disk format. Why bother, as propably nobody used those in 1994 anymore. Although I didn't check; it could be that early FreeDOS kernel did actually support it still, and it eventually just fell out. And I furtherly didn't check, if MS-DOS could read the old disk format. It might be even thinkable, that only IBM DOS did support it still, because of some weird 10-years enterprise warranty contract obligations. I shall revisit the topic eventually again, as it would be actually interesting to see, how for back it goes with the original disk format compatibility.
Microsoft and/or IBM did the same at least twice, with DOS 1.2 and with DOS 3.0: When 86-DOS was finally good enough to be released as PC-DOS it supported two types of FAT12. The early FAT12 was an 86-DOS upgrade of the original 8 BIT FAT that was limited to 6.3 filenames to add support for 8.3 filenames like CP/M, but since it used 16 BIT directory entries it was still very limited in file size to 16 MB and didn't had space to store the file dates and some other features. The definitive 86-DOS FAT12 was upgraded again with 32 BIT directory entries so it could already store file dates while reserving space for future features and the partition size and the file size could be up to 1GB in theory, but I think FDISK limited it to 32 MB per partition or maybe per drive. This first case was never fixed: 86-DOS and PC-DOS 1.1x can read disks formatted with any type of FAT12, but *DOS 1.2 and later can no longer read disks using the early FAT12* The second case was eventually fixed: FAT12 and the early FAT16 supported partitions up to 32 MB, but *DOS 3.0 was designed to use FAT16 from 16MB onwards so it couldn't read FAT12 partitions between 16 and 32 MB created by DOS 2.x* DOS 3.1 and later were fixed to support again FAT12 partitions bigger than 15 MB. Compaq DOS 3.1 and IBM/MS-DOS 4.0 also included support for FAT16B which supported partitions up to 2GB if the computer BIOS supported such big drives, as many computer users during the 90s -still remember- *will never forget* I guess Compaq designed FAT16B with SCSI drives in mind so they didn't had to care about the primitive IBM compatible BIOS limits, but since SCSI never became cheap as IDE most people had to suffer all kinds of BIOS size drive limits, buggy ECHS and LBA translations, lack of INT13 support for drives over ~500 MB and all kinds of combinations of those problems.
@@kFY514 Indeed, 3.3 was for a long time the defacto minimum compatibility standard. Even DR DOS before 7.0 reported internally to be DOS version 3.31 fore the sake of compatibility.
![A gaming classic - Lemmings for the Macintosh [#TPCXmas24 Part 19]](/img/1.gif)
Very nice video and thanks for sharing the floppy images too for us to try.
Wow
I would argue that the .BAS files are the best thing about IBM DOS 1.1 😆
@@grappydingus True. I was thinking about including them, though the problem was, which BASIC interpreter to use then?
BASIC from FreeDOS was way too large.
I could have included the OSS version of GW-BASIC though.
Or the OSS version of BASIC from MS-DOS 1.25?
I miss BASIC being included by default in Windows / Linux. Back in the DOS days you could just write a small - quick program and everyone could use it and / or learn / modify it. Simple days.
@@stevedegeorge726 most Linux installs will at least have python. Likely even some others like perl or maybe even node.js
@@stevedegeorge726on Linux and Mac Python comes loaded by default. It can easily play the role that BASIC played back in the day.
@@mudi2000a I have started switching over to Linux this year (4 PC's and NOT buying new machines just to make MS happy) and have settled on PopOS for myself and the wife likes LinuxMint. A few quirks but overall happy with Linux. I had no idea Python came loaded by default. There really should be an icon or something pointing to a STANDARD IDE / editor or something like that. Anyway, Thanks for the info.
Size of FreeDOS is humongous. It is definitely not optimal for genuine PC AT era.
Making Homage edition is interesting, but I can't believe people requires you to try FreeDOS on that.
That's why it's just an homage, some fun with DOS; nothing more, nothing less, and not too serious either ^^
That is shocking that FreeDOS is not compatible with authentic DOS floppy images, what an obvious oversight and defect. After how many decades nobody thought to fix this??
Probably prioritizing keeping the memory footprint as small as possible and not including functionality which would likely rarely be used. It'll support any relatively modern FAT12 format disk, just not the earliest ones.
Because it cannot be a defect. It seems you know nothing about early (< v3) DOS world fragmentations that you say 'authentic'....
Nah, I wouldn't say so. FreeDOS was meant to be compatible to contemporary DOS versions. At the time, when FreeDOS was first released in 1994, PC/MS DOS 6 was current, and a good baseline for compatibility.
DOS 1.x was obsoleted since 10 years by then already, and so was the early FAT12 disk format. Why bother, as propably nobody used those in 1994 anymore.
Although I didn't check; it could be that early FreeDOS kernel did actually support it still, and it eventually just fell out.
And I furtherly didn't check, if MS-DOS could read the old disk format.
It might be even thinkable, that only IBM DOS did support it still, because of some weird 10-years enterprise warranty contract obligations.
I shall revisit the topic eventually again, as it would be actually interesting to see, how for back it goes with the original disk format compatibility.
Microsoft and/or IBM did the same at least twice, with DOS 1.2 and with DOS 3.0:
When 86-DOS was finally good enough to be released as PC-DOS it supported two types of FAT12.
The early FAT12 was an 86-DOS upgrade of the original 8 BIT FAT that was limited to 6.3 filenames to add support for 8.3 filenames like CP/M, but since it used 16 BIT directory entries it was still very limited in file size to 16 MB and didn't had space to store the file dates and some other features.
The definitive 86-DOS FAT12 was upgraded again with 32 BIT directory entries so it could already store file dates while reserving space for future features and the partition size and the file size could be up to 1GB in theory, but I think FDISK limited it to 32 MB per partition or maybe per drive.
This first case was never fixed: 86-DOS and PC-DOS 1.1x can read disks formatted with any type of FAT12, but *DOS 1.2 and later can no longer read disks using the early FAT12*
The second case was eventually fixed: FAT12 and the early FAT16 supported partitions up to 32 MB, but *DOS 3.0 was designed to use FAT16 from 16MB onwards so it couldn't read FAT12 partitions between 16 and 32 MB created by DOS 2.x*
DOS 3.1 and later were fixed to support again FAT12 partitions bigger than 15 MB.
Compaq DOS 3.1 and IBM/MS-DOS 4.0 also included support for FAT16B which supported partitions up to 2GB if the computer BIOS supported such big drives, as many computer users during the 90s -still remember- *will never forget*
I guess Compaq designed FAT16B with SCSI drives in mind so they didn't had to care about the primitive IBM compatible BIOS limits, but since SCSI never became cheap as IDE most people had to suffer all kinds of BIOS size drive limits, buggy ECHS and LBA translations, lack of INT13 support for drives over ~500 MB and all kinds of combinations of those problems.
Anything older than DOS 2.1 is mostly useless.
directories are bloat
@@toxicfem69floppy disks are bloat
Growing up in the mid-to-late 90s, I remember most DOS programs in that tail end era when they were still commonly used requiring at least DOS 3.3.
@@kFY514 Indeed, 3.3 was for a long time the defacto minimum compatibility standard.
Even DR DOS before 7.0 reported internally to be DOS version 3.31 fore the sake of compatibility.