The board is pleased to announce that the engineer who suggested that Visual DOS 2024 Tech Preview must be experienced in a single session has been terminated.
Visual Basic was an awesome drag-and-drop app builder for early Windows. (If you wanna try, I recommend version 3.0 - works on Windows 3.x)
I've only learned as an adult that there was a DOS version of it, porting Windows apps' UI-UX into a text-based environment. I find these ASCII components and multi-window apps infinitely cool!
Below a few mins footage of me playing around with it.
NEW on We
Open Source
Nuclear engineer Paris Karahalios co-created As-Easy-As—a DOS-based spreadsheet that empowered scientists and engineers. In Part 1 of this series by Jim Hall, we explore how it all began.
Read now: https://allthingsopen.org/articles/as-easy-as-paris-karahalios-part-1-software-founder
Remember that one post from a week ago (https://ohai.social/@skrzyp/114869983737781401) when I had my #WTF moment at #FreePascal compiler for 16-bit #DOS and actually filled a detailed bug about this? (https://gitlab.com/freepascal.org/fpc/source/-/issues/41337)
I’ve just had a sudden urge to check something a little bit different and, to no surprise, GUESS WHAT.
I have no words.
I am this old...
all operating systems suck uniquely. find the one that sucks the least for you and use it. also, shut up about it.
EDIT: "shut up about it", is about OS proselytizing. share all you like, just don't pressure me to use what you use. it'd be hypocritical to say this as I certainly don't shut up about my love for OpenBSD.
I thought it might be a good idea to reach to the basics trying to debug that #FreePascal bug which makes even simplest programs fail to run on i8086/msdos (my #TP7 game port still “”works””, until it reaches #DOS API calls). So thought it might be possible to target the #8086 and run #MartyPC by @gloriouscow
While I pretty much know that the code jumps somewhere randomly and then goes along executing emptiness, I still need to find out why…
and how to set breakpoints on INTs :p
Do you know if it would be possible to put many different #DOS versions (#msdos 4.x-8.x, #FreeDOS 1.4, #SvarDOS ) on a single FAT16 partition, each one in its own subdir (MSDOS5, MSDOS6, FDOS14, etc.) and have a boot loader that’s loading each variant of MSDOS.SYS + IO.SYS (or others) for every DOS version?
Just because FPC community doubts validity of DOSBox (i.e https://forum.lazarus.freepascal.org/index.php/topic,71748.msg561036.html#msg561036 but not only) and rambling about everything except what I report on their GitLab ( https://gitlab.com/freepascal.org/fpc/source/-/issues/41337 )
You had ONE JOB.
WTF
Trying to port Mario & Luigi (1994) by Wiering Software from Turbo #Pascal to #FreePascal trunk (i8086), ofc on #DOS: https://wieringsoftware.nl/mario
Posted on https://forum.lazarus.freepascal.org/index.php/topic,71748.html but got nowhere
I can build it on FPC, but can’t run. Removing call to ReadConfig shows gfx issues and input gets messed. I can’t find a way to debug the realmode properly
May I ask heroes from my feed for some helping hand? @foone @wyatt @root42 @nina_kali_nina
Made a new release of #OpenCrystalCaves!
https://congusbongus.itch.io/opencrystalcaves/devlog/984248/040
This release includes playable levels 1 & 3, both with unique mechanics, as well as features like sound!
The game has likely hit an inflection point, as work on laying groundwork tapers off while the pace of features and polishing pick up. Hopefully episode 1 will be playable before too long!
As promised: PartUtil a limited partition editor that makes dual booting DOS and Win 9x without a boot manager easier.
Hide, unhide and make partitions active. Save and restore MBRs to files. And a few extra tricks that help with initial setup. Runs on any PC compatible and any version of DOS. Source code included.
(I've been using an earlier version of this for years on a PCjr. This is a complete rewrite that is finally worth sharing.)
@cyningstan ... But one thing I am not sure about, CGA allows each pixel to appear in 1 out of 4 colors, Hercules is only black or white (green, amber, ..), but on Hercules each CGA pixel is mapped to 3 Hercules pixels by average. Does one do some dithering to represent the 4 colors?
Great laptop:
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/07/going-deep-with-the-book-8088-the-brand-new-laptop-that-runs-like-its-1981/
An IBM-compatible Turbo XT! My first PC, of 1989 was such a thing, but a huge box with a tiny 12-inch green CRT monitor. 640kB RAM, 10MHz in turbo mode, and a Hercules-compatible graphics card, 640x350 pixels, for games one used a software CGA emulator, mapped the 320x200x4 colors of CGA onto the 640x300x3 gray levels of Hercules ...
And with locally installed DoS ...
Programmed #Pascal on it.
A few weeks ago I wondered what it takes to turn a small LISP-1 into a LISP-2. Turns out it takes just a few hours to get most things right, then some days to iron out a few subtleties, and then a couple of weeks to polish it into a piece of art.
MICRO COMMON LISP is a tiny, purely symbolic, microscopic subset of #CommonLISP. It runs in less than 64K bytes of memory, even on #DOS (tiny model) or CP/M. Here it is:
http://t3x.org/mcl/
#CPM #LISP