New FreeDOSers Bi-monthly Reminder

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MONTHLY REMINDER FOR THE FREEDOS MAILING LIST

Hi! If you are a new reader of freedos-devel (or the other FreeDOS
lists) then, welcome! If you have already been a list member for some
time, then you can skip this as you probably are familiar with its
content anyway.

We have only a few rules for posting to the FreeDOS Mailing list:

1. Please don't swear. We don't want this mailing list to become what
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2. Don't post off-topic. Remember, we set up this mailing list to
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3. No flame wars. If you feel really strongly against what someone has
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It would also be nice to send only plain text email messages, rather
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Also provide a bit of context for your reply. Don't be afraid to cite
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FreeDOS beta9 sr#2 install troubles

Hitting walls while attempting to install FreeDOS beta9 sr#2.
From the full install CD it hangs with 5 Invalid Opcode errors. A search
shows me that others have been having this problem.

Booting with freedos boot floppy and installing from CD: Setup can't find a
cdrom device. I choose #1 (ATAPICDD.SYS) and it starts to run but ends up
with 1 Invalid Opcode error.

Attempted to install using only diskettes.
I choose "Dont use a cdrom for installing..." and then "Install FreeDOS
Distribution from Diskettes". A bunch of info flashes by way to fast to read
and it ends up with A:\ prompt with "Some files not found. Aborting setup
now.."

This is silly. I have recently installed more than several versions of DOS
on this system and had no problems what so ever. ...including DRDOS and
enhanced DRDOS, Real32, MSDOS 5,622 & 710, OpenDOS, PCDOS2K, PTSDOS32 and
PTSDOS2K. FreeDOS is the only one to give me trouble.

Any ideas what I could be doing wrong? 
--
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/FreeDOS-beta9-sr-2-install-troubles-t1535405.html#a4171588
Sent from the FreeDOS - User forum at Nabble.com.

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re: FreeDOS beta9 sr#2 install troubles

Hi,
I am sorry that the known bugs in the install CD have not been
fixed yet. A solution should be to use another config sys menu
item than the default: As soon as the DOS kernel boots, you have
to select option 1 or 4, because the default option 3 tries to
be too clever about automatically configuring things, usually
resulting in invalid opcodes. I think the menu is only shown for
two seconds, but when you KNOW that you have to select option 1,
two seconds will be enough 

When booting from floppy (which should not be necessary), you
should use smart boot manager to continue the boot from cdrom.
As said, this is only needed when your BIOS cannot boot directly
from cdrom. The option to do most of the booting from floppy
and open the cdrom with atapicdd is not recommended. By now, you
can use the better xcdrom or qcdrom drivers - much better than
atapicdd - but booting from the cdrom itself is a lot simpler.

Installing from diskettes is indeed only supported for the old
beta9sr1 distro and will be supported again in beta9sr3. This is
partly because for diskette users, the "many good FreeDOS components
on a single diskette" distro ODIN is a better choice than having to
deal with a pile of diskettes. Note that ODIN does not contain an
automated installer: Simply copy the files to a directory on your
harddisk, do the usual SYS C:, all the classic manual install .

You can normally get ODIN "7.2 beta 5" from
http://xdev.codigolivre.org.br/odin/ but I am
having connection problems with Brazil at the

Booting FreeDOS from a SCSI Hard Drive

Good day, all:

Steve is trying to use my dual-boot procedure on a computer with a SCSI
hard drive.  The repartitioning went fine, as did the installation of
FreeDOS.  The installation was done with the "SYS" command booted from
CD.  When he first tried booting from the hard drive, he got this error:

Error in the DJ mechanism!
Error in the DJ mechanism!
IO error: cylinder 1023

Bad or missing Command Interpreter
Enter the full shell command line:
command.com /P /E:256

The development kernel fixed the "Error in the DJ mechanism!" but still
doesn't find the shell.  Any suggestions?  Is there a problem with SCSI
drives?

Thanks.

Mark Bailey

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Re: Booting FreeDOS from a SCSI Hard Drive

At 09:04 PM 5/2/2006 -0400, Mark Bailey wrote:

>Bad or missing Command Interpreter
>Enter the full shell command line:
>command.com /P /E:256
>
>The development kernel fixed the "Error in the DJ mechanism!" but still
>doesn't find the shell.  Any suggestions?  Is there a problem with SCSI
>drives?

Does it successfully boot "naked" without memory managers loaded?

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Xcopy Command Problem

"Xcopy" command doesn't work (distro: fdbootcd.iso). Any ideas how to fix  
that?

Here is example of what I'm trying to do:

XCOPY C:\TEMP\TEST E:\TEMP\TEST\ /S /V

Thanks

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Re: Booting FreeDOS from a SCSI Hard Drive

Hi Michael:

I will have Steve try removing himem.exe/emm386.exe from
config.sys and running "naked.".  He is not very
knowledgeable about DOS and I don't have a SCSI computer,
so this may be a slow process.

He says he is seeing the following:

-----

Booting FreeDOS with kernel version 1.1.35 gives me the following 8 line error 
message at the bottom of the screen when the boot process fails:

Illegal Instruction occurred
CS=14C2 IP=FFFF SS=14C2 SP=01DC DS=0000 ES=0AEC
EAX=00008826 EBX=00760011 ECX=00000000 EDX=000001F6
ESI=00000000 EDI=00000000 EBP=000001F8
Opcodes  <at> CS:IP 00 FE A2 9D 01 89 EC 5D
Aborting program
Bad or missing Command Interpreter: command.com /P /E:256
  Enter the full shell command line:

At that prompt I tried entering a:command.com and a:\command.com and got the 
"Bad or missing Command Interpreter /  Enter the full shell command line" error 
message.

Ditto for d:command.com and d:\command.com.

Entering c:command.com or c:\command.com produces the 8 lines noted above.

Re: Booting FreeDOS from a SCSI Hard Drive

On Wed, 03 May 2006 08:36:06 -0400, you wrote:

Hi Mark,

>Booting FreeDOS with kernel version 1.1.35 gives me the following 8 line error 
>message at the bottom of the screen when the boot process fails:

Can you ask Steve press F8 and trace line by line?
Or this happened before FreeDOS 2 sec pause?
Will the SCSI base address conflict?

Rgds,
Johnson.

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KEYB UX has unexpected results

The default DOS configuration created by the SR 2 bootable CD distro 
included this line in FDAUTO/AUTOEXEC.BAT:

    LH KEYB UX,,C:\FDOS\bin\keybrd3.sys

As I was working with a machine and checking out the installation, I thought 
I had a bad keyboard, since the apostrophe/quotation mark and grave 
accent/tilde keys were not working for me.

What I finally figured out was that the keyboard was fine, but that the 
keyboard command above installed an International US layout rather than a 
standard US layout, and that these two layouts differ on their handling of 
these keys.

I expect that this is by design, and that perhaps the brutish American (that 
would be me), should just develop better international DOS skills.

I also understand now that KEYB, like NLSFUNC + CHCP, and DISPLAY + MODE CON 
CODEPAGE, (and probably COUNTRY) are part of the provision for FreeDOS 
International support, and that if I am happy with FreeDOS defaults - which 
are probably US standard - then I can simply delete all those devices and 
commands.

I imagine that the FreeDOS team will include ample documentation of the 
installation defaults and FreeDOS International support as development 
continues toward v1.0.  But I thought it might be useful for someone to know 
how the default installation played for one user.

--John Hupp 

DISPLAY does not load high