Announcement: New Enhanced DR-DOS WIP version!

[Udo Kuhnt]

Hi folks,

I have released a new WIP version of the upcoming Enhanced DR-DOS
7.01.08. Key features include support for loading FAT32 device drivers
with DEVLOAD, LFN support for CD-ROMs and the increase of the maximum
length of the command line and PATH variable to 255 characters.

As usual, you can download it from the download page on the site
listed
below. Any problems with it should be reported in the Enhanced DR-DOS
Forum at http://www.drdosprojects.de/forum/drp_forum/ .

Regards,

Udo

-- The DR-DOS/OpenDOS Enhancement Project - http://www.drdosprojects.de

-- This mail was written by user of The Arachne Browser - http://arachne.cz/

[Day Brown]

Post by Udo Kuhnt
Hi folks,
I have released a new WIP version of the upcoming Enhanced DR-DOS
7.01.08. Key features include support for loading FAT32 device drivers
with DEVLOAD, LFN support for CD-ROMs and the increase of the maximum
length of the command line and PATH variable to 255 characters.
As usual, you can download it from the download page on the site
listed
below. Any problems with it should be reported in the Enhanced DR-DOS
Forum athttp://www.drdosprojects.de/forum/drp_forum/.
Regards,
Udo
-- The DR-DOS/OpenDOS Enhancement Project -http://www.drdosprojects.de

Just to letcha know, its been working well for me.

[Udo Kuhnt]

Post by Day Brown
Just to letcha know, its been working well for me.

Thank you! Most people only write when something does *not* work. ;-)

Regards,
Udo Kuhnt

-- The DR-DOS/OpenDOS Enhancement Project - http://www.drdosprojects.de

-- This mail was written by a user of The Arachne Browser - http://arachne.cz/

[Day Brown]

Post by Udo Kuhnt

Post by Day Brown
Just to letcha know, its been working well for me.

Thank you! Most people only write when something does *not* work. ;-)

i dunno if you've been following the comp.os.msdos.programmer
postings, but I think some enhancements of text mode are possible, and
extremely useful. Not only is it fast, but I dont see how you can
embed sabotage software in it. And so much of what the other operating
systems are doing to promote multi-media is adding clutter and getting
in the way of using a computer to actually work with data. To, of all
things, "compute".

I know there are systems out there to run two monitors at once, but
now, I wonder if the new wide screen wouldnt be more convenient if you
could split it into two DOS terminals. In a time of increasing energy
awareness, the single LCD would use 25% of the power of two CRT
screens. In a time of increasing energy awareness, the dos text mode
can provide faster performance on far fewer watts with much cheaper
hardware.

Part of what's going on at my website, http://www.dc-pc.org are
experiments in the dos text mode user interface and the effort to
produce a platform that will run as long as possible on backup
batteries. It looks like energy consumption will become a big issue. I
run DRDOS regularly on the VIA series of socket 370 CPUs which work on
less than 10 watts. The socket 370 mthrbds are cheap, but draw 40
watts all by themselves.

I've tried the mini-ITX, but there are hard drive recognition problems
with them, and they dont really save that much energy. I spoze there
are laptop boards that use less, but I look for open architecture,
with at least PCI slots. There's a lotta data acquisition apps out
there that'll run off DOS, and do it forever if there's a PCI slot,
and do it the longest on whatever the backup battery banks have.

But, for instance, being able to see the output from the app on one
panel and monitor the registers on the other, would be useful
debugging.

[William R. Walsh]

Hi!

I run DRDOS regularly on the VIA series of socket 370 CPUs which
work on less than 10 watts. The socket 370 mthrbds are cheap, but draw 40
watts all by themselves.
I've tried the mini-ITX, but there are hard drive recognition problems
with them, and they dont really save that much energy.

How about the recently announced VIA PC3500 board? It features a VIA
"Esther" 1.5 or 1.8GHz CPU, and seemingly you can build a computer from it
that consumes less than 60 watts of AC 110V power (much less at times).

http://www.via.com.tw/en/initiatives/empowered/pc3500_platform/index.jsp
(PC3500 platform)
http://www.viaarena.com/default.aspx?PageID=5&ArticleID=530 (60W PC article)
Loading Image... (709x620, resized from the VIA
media kit, 207KB)
Loading Image... (full size from VIA media kit)

I've had no trouble with either of mine. Gigabyte appears to be the builder.
Both seem to be reliable and stable. Temperature and fan speed monitoring is
available. The only trick might be getting one, as VIA only mentions this
board on their PC1 initiative web site and only seems to have formally
announced it on August 27th. I've had both of mine months prior to
that...they came to me in Everex GC3500 (innovative model name, huh?)
personal computer systems.

VIA also has slower models (including a fanless 1GHz variety!), but I
haven't seen them offered in any system or for sale at all.

William