This is an OEM FreeDOS 1.0 and comes with some installer batch files (you will be instructed which batch files to run when you boot the cd).
06/06/2011 12:05 AM 1,978,443,776 fdoem.iso %%%% HASHDEEP-1.0 %%%% size,md5,sha1,sha256,filename ## Invoked from: C:\os\fdos ## C : \ > hashdeep -c md5,sha1,sha256 fdoem.iso ## 1978443776,9ddf7b9aebcbfcd4d2e0f36428a8c8d0,c7b3e8290119e3565235dcee2d24e0896b97be5d,9c2ddde53b3cff31de59f51d75e636ac019f6ef7a7a8a98 e7db3af208ab7cbef,C:\os\fdos\fdoem.iso
12/24/2010. fixed bug in autoexec.bat for C: drive.
12/19/2010. I have updated the freedos with whatever's on the ftp area. finally got the ISO working again! I had tried the 2.88MB network boot disk, but that doesn't work. Still waiting for 1.1 to come out so I can have a new version of freedos to distribute. I am unsure how I am going to extract the boot sector off of a bootable cd ISO image though.
9/15/2009. I have updated the ISOLINUX/SYSLINUX that boots FreeDOS due to some boot priority problems I was having with the original FreeDOS RIPCORD distribution of the cd ISO build kit. Things seem to work better now. but not every BIOS boots DOS.
FreeDOS is one of the few available versions of DOS left (besides IBM PC DOS 2000 which is only available in stores as leftovers).
I think you can still buy IBM PC DOS 2000 which happens to work with Windows 3.1.
I have never tried FreeDOS with Windows 3.1, but I have heard that it is not compatible yet.
There is an OpenGEM gui that comes with FreeDOS that doesn't do anything (it's the core version).
A full version with office apps (including publishing) exists at Shane Land OpenGem.
install3.bat will install it for you.
I suggest you follow the install batch files in sequence.
| /fdos/bootdisk | all you need to make a FreeDOS boot floppy |
|---|---|
| /fdos/bootsave | saves MBR of hard disk to a file. |
| /fdos/bracematcher | brace matcher for text files. gives full report (long) on missing braces & matched braces. |
| /fdos/createfile | createfile. creates files containing the byte you specify and the filesize you specify and the name you specify. this program was just added. |
| /fdos/df | reports disk free space in SI units (MB/GB) with graph. has verbose mode that gives raw numbers of bytes free. also reports total, and total used space at the end. |
| /fdos/du | reports disk usage of a particular directory in SI units (MB/GB). |
| /fdos/wipe | what could be considered a secure disk wiping utility . doesn't wipe just files. wipes the whole disk w/confirmation. also includes ratldisk. uses BIOS disk number. |
| /fdos/dimm_id | third party utility for identifying DIMMs. getting old? |
| /fdos/dosvid | utilities for manipulating text modes in DOS. gives you 50 or 25 lines. |
| /fdos/mbr | saves and restores and prints MBR (master boot record) from hard disk (first sector). 3 utilities. |
| /fdos/phone | converts phone letters to digits. for instance, 1-800-Net-Zero to 1-800-638-9376 |
| /fdos/sha512 | calculates SHA-512 hash code of files. |
| /fdos/testdisk.69 | third party utility for recovering lost partitions (testdisk) and files (photorec). |
| /fdos/uniq | finds unique lines in text fed into stdin, outputs to stdout. a UNIX-style text filter. can optionally presort. |
| /fdos/whereis | finds files. can search subdirectories. |
| /fdos/which | given a full or base filename, tells which executeable in the PATH would be executed. |
| /fdos/zapdupes | deletes duplicate files starting at specified directory, operates on whole tree. |
| /fdos/extract512bytesfromfile | extracts the first 512 bytes from a file and puts it into another file. good for extracting boot sectors from rawrite2/rawrite for windows floppy images and making bootable cd's. |
| /fdos/kjvbible | King James Version of the Bible. every line is 1 verse, so you can feed it into grep to find verses. plain text. you can probably edit it with vi, vim, emacs, or some other 32-bit editor that can handle large files. |
| /fdos/phonelist | phone list/address database. can actually be used for anything where the search term is unique. has insert, update, delete, and search capability. uses text file (C:\etc\phonelst.txt) for the database. |
| /fdos/cdrtools | the UNIX cdrtools ported to DOS. |
| /fdos/cURL | the UNIX cURL URL file getter ported to DOS. similar to wget. I do not include wget for certain reasons. curl is far more flexible and works with more protocols. |
The freedos ripcord page is no more. fdos.org is gone and only freedos.org is left and the ripcord page is no longer there. I am hoping they will bring it back, since we need boot floppies to make cd's with!
These extras are all in the PATH when you do the install. In fact, all the executeables are in the path except for the GEM gui.
FreeDOS 1.1 is coming out some year, Real Soon, and so is a 32-bit version of FreeDOS called FreeDOS32 I think (alpha stage). [FreeDOS32 has been dropped due to lack of developers.]
Booting the cd is as simple as pressing Enter at the screens and prompts until you get to X:\> prompt where it instructs you to run one of the installation files. Start with INSTALL1 - after finishing with that it will instruct you to reboot your computer. Then you run INSTALL2 to format the hard disk and put the system files on it. Then you run INSTALL3 to install the files. you can skip to INSTALL3 if you already have the hard disk formatted and want to copy the files. It also installs FreeGEM/OpenGEM, a GUI for DOS that has an SDK. it requires that a mouse driver be installed.
What this distribution does not contain
on purpose (because I don't like spiders), this distribution does not contain the following programs:
- arachne web browser (because of the name)
- lynx (uses the word spider in the source code)
- bobcat web browser (uses the word spider in the source code)
- wget (I have included a substitution, cURL, which is MUCH more flexible and works with many more protocols)
If the programs are open source, and if I am able to rewrite and clean up the source code and documentation (that should be easy), and if I am able to compile the program, I may clean them up and offer one of these under another name like "wbrowser".