FreeDOS - how i installed FreeDOS 1.0 with only a few floppy disks and a usb drive.

Installing FreeDOS normally is quite easy compared to MS-DOS. just insert the live CD and for the most part just follow the on-screen instructions.

But i had a problem a few years back when i decided to install freedos on my IBM Thinkpad 600E with its 400Mhz P2 and 224MB ram. The dvd drive was as dead as a doorknob.

But somehow i did it. and how i did starts with a special FreeDOS floppy i put together.


Ram disk, floppy disk.

Once upon a time, that thinkpad had windows 2000 on it. with an NTFS partition. so i wasn't exactly in a good place to actually setup freedos on it.

What i ended up doing at first is i took SRDISK and unzip and a freedos boot floppy to make a basic ramdisk of a very minimal freedos setup. (this is important later)

This ramdisk, once booted, is crazy-fast. and most importantly i can swap the floppy disk while its running. and even load extra zip archives off floppy disks into the ramdisk.

What this has to do with installing freedos.

So, with the help of my trusty ramdisk floppy, when i went to install freedos, i did the formatting, set aside an extra partition for a second os if needed, and installed a bootloader.

Problem: how am i supposed to get the utilities and such on this thing?
This computer only has a hard drive and a floppy drive to boot from. and out of the box that's all FreeDOS off a floppy disk sees, but it /does/ have a single usb port.

So. i took the packages off the freedos 1.0 iso and bundled then into 1 zipped filetree along with some other things, and put them on a usb drive. One floppy disk with usb drivers later and i copied the zip into ram. extract it to the freedos partition and after some tweaking everything went smoothly from there.

The ramdisk might not have been necessary, but i had already made it a bit before deciding to install freedos on that thinkpad, so i figured having a bit of extra workspace would help. 

web browsing... in DOS

Web browsing... in DOS

modern browsing in dos isn't exactly a cakewalk, i mean sure, being able to do some minimal things in, say links, can be a huge help, but you can only do so much on today's internet without HTML5, javascript, and ipv6...

Dillo

Dillo Splash screen - Dillo

Dillo, a super-lightweight browser that is mainly developed for unix-like systems, has a fork for dos, or rather a fork of a windows port that isn't associated with the main dillo development team, and that has various bugs, but at least has tabs and multiple windows... I give it credit for that much...

The user interface is similar to the standard *nix Dillo,  with FLTK, css, and the usual screen layout. the bookmarks work like a drop-down menu instead of a DPI-generated webpage. One thing not found in the "official" dillo, is a configuration dialog. a useful feature. though this version of dillo lags when the mouse is over certain elements of the ui like links and text boxes. noticeable even on a 397Mhz Pentium II, and can make dillo for dos nearly unusable in a slower VirtualBox vm.

unfortunately, even this ports upstream, unix-like cousin, is still working on implementing https, and this port has a few strange issues, such as the file loading dialog spitting out junk into the path box when you try to navigate or even press backspace, and on occasion the browser will just crash, leaving the user unceremoniously at a DJGPP fault screen...

Arachne

FreeDOS website - arachne

Arachne is an impressive dos internet suite, that has quite a few interesting features, and even its own add-ons, it has a file manager, a "desktop", bookmarks, ftp support, email, and even partial gopher support.

The user interface is responsive enough, even if it looks a tad dated in 2017. While links is designed with a minimalist UI, arachne is clean on the other end of the spectrum, with fancy features like "virtual screen" scrolling, an a huge sidebar to the right of the screen. Arachne is somewhat unusual in that most of its features and setup screens work like local web pages.

The problem is, the web browsing isn't exactly up to modern standards, lacking even https, and also suffers from some rather dated design decisions, decisions that might have made sense in its day, but in 2017... not so much...

jpeg and png images are converted to bitmaps before being cached, (yes you read that right) and if your system doesn't have its temp folder on a ramdisk, expect delays... and the lack of https support means that many webpages fail to load at all, even when they are ipv4...

links

FreeDOS website - links

links is by far my most-used dos browser, like the other browsers here, it can't do ipv6, (though thats actually a network stack limitation, as links on other systems can load ipv6 just fine)

The user interface is sparse, and can prove tedious for someone who doesn't know the keyboard shortcuts. images look fine, text is quite readable, though I'm curious, why the giant mouse cursor?

at one point links had javascript support, but it was disabled, but as far as both text browsers and graphical browsers, links tends to be the most usable, given its the only one of the three Ive mentioned here that actually can load https webpages... and its also the only one with an update within the past 4 years... considering links' dos port is considered beta quality, its surprisingly reliable and stable. and at least i can search DuckDuckGo using this one...

what i think a modern dos browser needs

• HTML5
• javascript (I know, but this thing is here to stay for a long time)
• file manager (this is one of the things i like about arachne, though a dedicated file manager component would be even better, and proper file load and save dialogs are even more so of a necessity)
• proper, windowed UI. (this is one of DilloDOS's strongpoints... perhaps that DOS FLTK port could be used?)
• support for http/https and ipv4/ipv6, ftp, ect.

Other Ideas:

• perhaps it should have a few tools, like a calculator and editor?
• irc client?

Feel free to share some thoughts in the comments.

screenshots captured from within virtualbox.

Fun: Controlling a FreeDos VM from a KolibriOS VM in VirtualBox

 

Overview:

Yea i know, "why?"

well. why not? ☺

The basic idea is the KolibriOS and FreeDOS VMs are connected over a virtual serial connection via a host pipe.

I type ctty COM1 into the FreeDOS VM and start the KolibriOS terminal utility. (found in the "system" section of the menu). its basically useless,
but that's the point :p

Old Tech: IBM thinkpad 600E

Specs:

397Mhz Mobile Pentium II Processor
224MB RAM
2.5MB MagicMedia graphics.
1024x768 TFT screen at 24bit color.
6GB HDD
1.44MB Floppy Disk Drive
PCMCIA CD-ROM drive
PCMCIA Ethernet networking
(working in Linux and FreeDOS)
Sound Blaster Pro II emulation
tri-booting:

• Linux
• FreeDOS
• KolibriOS

Overview: 

My old IBM Thinkpad 600E, what a machine.  Not even close to enough power to do things like youtube and such, but as far as FreeDOS and KolibriOS are concerned, its quite well, overpowered. having around 200MB XMS memory in dos is a bit excessive, yes it has a ramdisk for temp files. and as far as kolibriOS, goes, givin that that OS can run on a Pentium I with MMS, and 8MB RAM, This old laptop is naturally quite suited for it.

As far as dos GUIs go, it blazes through the likes of SEAL 2 and the far less developed OZONE, oddly, only one DOS gui i tried had trouble, ill give you a hint it starts with "W" :p

With games, it has the usual selection of Apogee shareware, and also games like Duke Nukem 3D, the DOS version of Transport Tycoon Delux, and a selection of many other games.

And like any avid DOS user there are various other programs too: such as The Links web browser (just about the only graphical DOS browser that still gets updated),  some media players, such as an Allegro+VESA port of MPLAYER, and yes, it can just barely play a 320x240 OGG Theora Voribis Video. pausing slightly when the buffer runs out.

To conclude, its not the most capable computer, but it does work, and still manages to out-preform DOSBOX.