360K diskettes support
mateuszviste mateuszviste new problem: the COMMAND.SVP package is 580K big, so even alone it won't fit on a 360K floppy.
replacing FreeCOM by SvarCOM will solve this, since the SvarCOM package will be at least 10x smaller.
in the meantime I will strip the FreeCOM package so it does not contain any NLS in the 360K build.
Hi,
A 360 KB image will be much appreciated! And a functional fdisk (0r simiaar) will be useful.
For example I want to use SvarDOS on a empty XT-IDE with compact flash card. But I have only a 360 kb floppy.
mateuszviste Hi,
The builds in the "files" section of the website have a 360K version, but without any guarantee. I announced it two days ago on the mailing list, let me paste the original message:
Some of you asked for a 360K build. I made it today (...) This build has one limitation: it is EN-only. I assume that if a machine has a 360K drive, it is unlikely to have a NLS-compatible video card (EGA+) anyway. And it allowed to reduce the set of 360K floppies from 9 to "only" 6 disks. That being said, I have no 360K drive or even diskettes, so I can't test this myself. I can only say that "it should work".
If you'd have the chance to test it, I'd really appreciate some feedback :)
Link to the "files" section: http://svardos.org/?p=files
Hi,
Thanks for the images. Actually I am using an IBM 5160 with a VGA card and 360 kb floppy and also Amstrad 1640 with VGA card.
Reply To (Anonymous)
Thanks for the images. Actually I am using an IBM 5160 with a VGA card and 360 kb floppy and also Amstrad 1640 with VGA card.
Would you please provide any feedback here or on the mailing list? :-)
Hi,
I could not understand. Does this 360 kb version support VGA games?
mateuszviste Reply To (Anonymous)
I could not understand. Does this 360 kb version support VGA games?
Hello, yes of course. The 360K version of SvarDOS is almost exactly the same as other versions. The only difference is that the installer is available in English only, due to size limitations.
Additionally: DOS programs either use video BIOS interrupt calls and/or write directly to video memory (= RAM on the video card mapped into the 1M address space) to support VGA, i.e., support for VGA games just depends on your PC's BIOS and VGA card. It does not depend on (Svar)DOS or disk size.
Is SvarDOS based on FreeDOS 1.3?
Is the first floppy disk enough to boot and execute the sys command ?
Thanks.
Reply To (Anonymous)
Is SvarDOS based on FreeDOS 1.3?
No. It's based on the packages listed (incl. version number) at http://www.svardos.org/?p=repo&cat=core
Is the first floppy disk enough to boot and execute the sys command ?
First floppy holds: SYS.COM, KERNEL.SYS, and COMMAND.COM. So, yes, disk 1 is enough.
(But at first, you probably have to create one primary partition on your HDD and format it. FDISK.EXE and FORMAT.EXE are also on disk 1.)
mateuszviste Closing this, since I have added 360K support back in February 2022. I tested it on a VM and it appears to be functional.
requested in 2021 by two SvarDOS users via the project's mailing list. Below I paste the initial answer I had given back then:
The first SvarDOS installation disk requires some basic tools and files to set itself up. These files can be grouped in 3 categories:
SYSTEM (kernel, format, fdisk, sys..) = 250K
NLS (EGA*.CPX, MODE, DISPLAY) = 150K
USER TOOLS (edit, mem, more) = 100K
All this adds up to more than 360K. The only reasonable solution I see is to trim out "NLS" from the 360K install set. This means that the installer would be English-only (but it would still be possible to install the target system in another language).
It's also worth noting that a SvarDOS install set on 360K diskettes would take quite a lot of disks: a grand total of 9 floppies. (!)
I looked at it again today. Removing the following items from the startup diskette:
mdel -i disk1.img *.cpx
mdel -i disk1.img install.lng
mdel -i disk1.img display.exe
mdel -i disk1.img mode.com
mdel -i disk1.img edit.exe
I ended up with a diskette that has 295K on it.
This means it would be relatively easy to have a functional EN-only set for 360K computers. Such computers are probably unlikely to have an EGA+, so displaying anything non-US wouldn't be possible anyway.
How this would be implemented:
- build system must take care to remove the above files from the floppy template when building the 360K set
- installer looks for install.lng and if can't load it goes into "EN-only" mode
- one day, when we have a leaner replacement for edit.exe, it could land back on the 360K set (65K still available, should be enough for a basic editor, but not for FreeDOS edit which is 67K big)