Network drivers for FreeDOS image...

Message

as702 · #1 Post by **as702** » Thu Sep 11, 2008 7:27 am

I've been putting this off for a while now until I had a chance to properly examine/address the CDROM and ASPI components (almost wrapped up).

The question is, which set of drivers would you like to see included in the 2.88Mb FreeDOS image?
1)Novell ODI Drivers
or
2)Microsoft NDIS Drivers
??

I'm not too familiar with Netware's ODI specification (16/32Bit). I do know the memory/disk space footprint is considerably smaller when compared to the Microsoft/3Com NDIS. However, I'm not sure how easy it is to set up network drive shares between Novell clients and Windows-based systems (something I know NDIS will do easily).

The current image will only allow room for either NDIS or ODI. So, the choices are...

1) MSTCP/IP, ~50 NDIS drivers
2) Novell Netware , ~50 ODI drivers (16-bit)
3) Novell Netware, ~50 ODI, drivers (32-bit)

Thoughts??

#2 Post by **Victor Chew** » Fri Sep 12, 2008 8:38 pm

The question is, which set of drivers would you like to see included in the 2.88Mb FreeDOS image?

Or is it possible to expand the disk image to 5.76MB and include everything?

as702 · #3 Post by **as702** » Sat Sep 13, 2008 3:36 am

We could. Maybe a standalone 5.76Mb image...
At the main isolinux menu we could have...

"Launch DOS Environment..."
expands to submenu
"FreeDOS"
"FreeDOS w/ Network Support"

something like that(?).

The point being is there's enough space to squeeze ~50 NIC drivers on the basic 2.88Mb image; the NDIS packet drivers appears to be the obvious choice (but i could be wrong).

#4 Post by **Icecube** » Sat Sep 13, 2008 3:45 am

It is possible to make a hard disk image of the FreeDOS image, so you can include as many programs as you want (size limit = amount of RAM). The hard disk image can be easily edited with ImDisk Virtual Disk Driver. See: http://ultimatebootcd.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1410 for a link to the program and http://ultimatebootcd.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1404 for an example on how to use it.
Alternatively you can include one driver packet while the other driver packet can be loaded from the CD or USB drive, in a similar way than that the programs are loaded from the CD or USB thumb drive.

as702 · #5 Post by **as702** » Sat Sep 13, 2008 3:56 am

I was going to send you a PM, but I may as well address your question(s) here...

Icecube wrote:It is possible to make a hard disk image of the FreeDOS image, so you can include as many programs as you want (size limit = amount of RAM).

Not keen on this. Eventually, I want users to be able to download the update and customise it to their specification, independent of UBCD. If we start using hard disk images, it lessens the flexibility a floppy image affords (e.g. if you want to use a floppy disk or use diskemu).

Icecube wrote:Alternatively you can include one driver packet while the other driver packet can be loaded from the CD or USB drive, in a similar way than that the programs are loaded from the CD or USB thumb drive.

Again, not keen on this. I want to try and maintain as few dependencies as possible. The disk image should still be able to operate in standalone mode. I think the minute you start introducing such variables, the more complicated it becomes to maintain operability and to manage updates.

I'll think of something...

(-:

#6 Post by **Icecube** » Sat Sep 13, 2008 4:13 am

as702 wrote:I was going to send you a PM, but I may as well address your question(s) here...

Icecube wrote:It is possible to make a hard disk image of the FreeDOS image, so you can include as many programs as you want (size limit = amount of RAM).
Not keen on this. Eventually, I want users to be able to download the update and customise it to their specification, independent of UBCD. If we start using hard disk images, it lessens the flexibility a floppy image affords (e.g. if you want to use a floppy disk or use diskemu).

I don't like floppy images which are greater than 2.88MB. You can't test them in a virtual machine (using the image file as floppy disk). If you make it as a hard drive image, you can easily boot the image itself in a virtual machine. Using large floppy images requires that you add the geometry to memdisk, which is not user friendly. With Imdisk Virtual Driver you can mount the hard disk image in windows (will appear as an extra drive letter) to which you can copy and edit files very easy. Maybe WinImage can handle large floppies, but you can try it only for 30 days, after which you should pay for it. Imdisk Virtual Driver can be used for free.

as702 wrote:(e.g. if you want to use a floppy disk or use diskemu).

What do you mean with the first part? That you want to write the freedos image to a real floppy? I don't think that anyone has such large floppy disk nowadays. So this makes no sense. Diskemu only supports the following filesizes of the images:

Supported: 160KB, 180KB, 320KB, 360KB, 1.2MB, 720KB, 820KB, 1.44MB, 1.68MB, 1.72MB, 2.88MB

So if you make the floppy image large than 2.88MB you can't boot it anyway with diskemu (Diskem1x).

Maybe you can provide a floppy image of 2.88MB with 1 driver pack and a hard disk image with all drivers and some other stuff (like z7 for dos and unharc which can't be included for filesize reasons). So people who wants to use floppy images can use them. They always can extract some files from the larger hard drive image anyway.

Just my thoughts

.

as702 · #7 Post by **as702** » Sun Sep 14, 2008 12:15 am

Icecube wrote:I don't like floppy images which are greater than 2.88MB. You can't test them in a virtual machine (using the image file as floppy disk).

Test them in isolinux.

Icecube wrote:Maybe WinImage can handle large floppies, but you can try it only for 30 days, after which you should pay for it.

There are other programs users can use besides Winimage.

Icecube wrote:What do you mean with the first part? That you want to write the freedos image to a real floppy? I don't think that anyone has such large floppy disk nowadays. So this makes no sense. Diskemu only supports the following filesizes of the images:
Supported: 160KB, 180KB, 320KB, 360KB, 1.2MB, 720KB, 820KB, 1.44MB, 1.68MB, 1.72MB, 2.88MB

Lowest common denominator; I know of plenty of workstations without cd-rom support (really old, but they do still exist). And even though diskemu only supports images of up to 2.88Mb in size, the point remains it still supports them.

Icecube wrote:Using large floppy images requires that you add the geometry to memdisk, which is not user friendly.

Code: Select all

capacity = cylinders * number of heads per cylinder * number of sectors per head * 512

LABEL fd5760
KERNEL memdisk
APPEND initrd=/images/fd005760.img c=80 h=4 s=36 floppy

LABEL fd11520
KERNEL memdisk
APPEND initrd=/images/fd011520.img c=80 h=8 s=36 floppy

It's not rocket science; adequate user documentation should suffice. (-:

Icecube wrote:Maybe you can provide a floppy image of 2.88MB with 1 driver pack and a hard disk image with all drivers and some other stuff (like z7 for dos and unharc which can't be included for filesize reasons). So people who wants to use floppy images can use them. They always can extract some files from the larger hard drive image anyway.

As mentioned before, I'm not keen on complicating the distribution for the time being.