Release info for 0.0.3

At the time of writing, the latest release is 0.0.3 (alpha testing, unstable), date 2004-12-10.

The updated release notes of the latest release are available here.

Content of the floppy image

This release lets you boot FreeDOS-32, use some internal commands with a command.com replacement, start the SmartEdit text editor, and start the Bash command line shell.

At present all FreeDOS-32 releases are alpha releases for testing purposes, and may contain serious bugs that may corrupt your data. Test at your own risk.

name	description / link
fd32/	contains the FD32 kernel and modules
grub/	contains the GNU GRUB bootloader, web site
bash.exe	the GNU Bourne-Again SHell, binary (444 KiB), source (2 MiB)
command.exe	a command.com replacement by Centroid Corp., original source, our slightly modified version is available in the tests CVS module
smedit.exe	SmartEdit, a simple text editor, binary (81 KiB), source (43 KiB),
winhello.exe	two simple "hello world" programs to check the functionality of the PE loader for Windows console executables
wintest.exe

Due to the lack of disk space, we could not put the FreeDOS kernel and shell in the floppy, to let you try starting FD32 from real mode DOS.

How to test

Either use the floppy image directly with an emulator, such as Bochs, or copy the floppy image on a real disk and boot your system with it.

Warning: Due to possible critical bugs in FreeDOS-32, if you have important data on your hard disk(s) you may want to disable the IDE controller(s) in the BIOS.

The GNU GRUB bootloader takes care of the boot process. It will show an menu where you can chose one of the following options. All options boot the FreeDOS-32 kernel, with a particular combination of modules and test programs.

1. FreeDOS32 COMMAND

Loads the kernel, the native floppy driver, the clock driver, the FAT driver, the keyboard driver, the console driver, the DPMI driver and the command.com replacement by Centroid Corp.

Only floppy access is enabled. You can try some internal commands at the command prompt.

2. FreeDOS32 COMMAND (biosdisk)

Like 1, but the BIOSDisk disk driver is loaded instead of the native floppy driver. This will enable hard disk access (data corruption is possible!). Note: there is a typo in the kernel command line; if you get ABORT 64, please replace -tick with --tick (see FAQ 2.4 and Known Issues below).

3. FreeDOS32 SMEDIT

Like 1, but the SmartEdit text editor is loaded instead of the command.com replacement. You can try writing some text files.

4. FreeDOS32 WIN32

Like 2, but the wintest.exe console Windows test program is loaded. You can't do much with that option... if you can read "hello world", it works.

5. FreeDOS32 WRAPPER COMMAND

Like 1, but the command.com replacement is loaded through the Wrapper, a module to load executables in a segmented memory space. At present, it may take much longer to load due to a file system issue.

6. FreeDOS32 WRAPPER Bash

Like 5, but Bash is loaded as command line shell. You cannot do very much at the Bash prompt, since commands like ls are external programs.

Known issues

You may get the ABORT 64 error, especially inside an emulator. Please refer to FAQ 2.4 for informations. Some boot menu options already have the workaround.

The "Save" function of SmartEdit does not work for new files due to a SmartEdit bug, "Save as" works.

Due to a typo on the GRUB menu file (grub/menu.lst), the clock driver is loaded after the FAT driver. This causes the FAT driver to use empty time stamps (1980-01-01) when creating files. Please edit the GRUB menu file, moving the line of the clock driver before the one of the FAT driver.

Character devices, such as con, are not supported yet. Thus, commands like copy con foobar.txt will not work.

The floppy driver will detect drives A and B even if you have one. This is due to a bug in the detection code, and it is not a feature like the DOS disk swapping trick.

You cannot load programs from the command line (see FAQ 2.5).

Disk access can be very slow on a slow computer (including emulators). This is due to an inefficient file access loop that will be fixed in a future version.

Reporting bugs

After trying the release and playing with it, please go to our SourceForge project page, and start to fill bug reports (if you have not a SourceForge.net account, please write your e-mail address too). You can also use the developers' mailing list (but you must be subscribed to it in order to post and receive messages).

Please check the known issues first.

If you really want to help the project, feel free to have a look at some reported bug, to investigate it, and to try to fix it... Please ask in the mailing list before starting to hack, because we can have some useful informations.