[LinuxBIOS] Booting into MSDOS

[MARTIN WOODHOUSE]

Hello Stefan and Darmawan and all

Stefan wrote :

Since it comes with Linux preinstalled, it should be
easier to use Linux than to try getting MSDOS working on there..!?

Stefan

That may very well be true.   But I have a program already written for MSDOS (not Windows)
  which would be a truly major task to rewrite and recompile to run under Linux --- as SJ has alreeady pointed out to me.

A presentation of this program can be found on my own Web site

www.martin-woodhouse.co.uk

-- and I do urge everybody to take a look at it.     If I cannot persuade you all to allow the XO to boot into MSDOS, my current alternative is to load both MSDOS itself, and a complete library of Illumination e-books, onto a USB flash drive --- there should be room for around a thousand or so such books on a 1 gig flashstick as well as MSDOS -- and arrange for the flashstick itself to be bootable.

But this is rather an awkward way round of doing things; I'd much rather the XO could be dual-booted into both Linux and MSDOS.  And since you're already contemplating using Windows an an alternative OS,  ( ! ) this shouldn't really present too much of a problem, should it?

Cheers and luv to all,

Martin

[Ceri Coburn]

MARTIN WOODHOUSE wrote:
> Hello Stefan and Darmawan and all
>
> Stefan wrote :
>
> /Since it comes with Linux preinstalled, it should be
> easier to use Linux than to try getting MSDOS working on there..!?
>
> Stefan/
>
> That may very well be true.   But I have a program already written for 
> MSDOS (not Windows)
> which would be a truly major task to rewrite and recompile to run under 
> Linux --- as SJ has alreeady pointed out to me.
>
> A presentation of this program can be found on my own Web site
>
> www.martin-woodhouse.co.uk http://www.martin-woodhouse.co.uk/
>
> -- and I do urge everybody to take a look at it.     If I cannot 
> persuade you all to allow the XO to boot into MSDOS, my current 
> alternative is to load both MSDOS itself, and a complete library of 
> Illumination e-books, onto a USB flash drive --- there should be room 
> for around a thousand or so such books on a 1 gig flashstick as well as 
> MSDOS -- and arrange for the flashstick itself to be bootable.
>
> But this is rather an awkward way round of doing things; I'd much rather 
> the XO could be dual-booted into both Linux and MSDOS.  And since you're 
> already contemplating using Windows an an alternative OS,  ( ! ) this 
> shouldn't really present too much of a problem, should it?
>
> Cheers and luv to all,
>
> Martin
>
> /
> /

Correct me if I'm wrong here guys, but LinuxBIOS as it currently stands 
does not setup the old BIOS interrupts that DOS uses, which means 
booting DOS from LinuxBIOS would be a big change

Martin - booting Windows/Linux is a different as they have their own 
drivers for various hardware that is present within the machine

Ceri

[Janek Kozicki]

Ceri Coburn said:     (by the date of Fri, 18 May 2007 16:08:34 +0100)
> Correct me if I'm wrong here guys, but LinuxBIOS as it currently stands 
> does not setup the old BIOS interrupts that DOS uses, which means 
> booting DOS from LinuxBIOS would be a big change
>
> Martin - booting Windows/Linux is a different as they have their own 
> drivers for various hardware that is present within the machine

That's true: linux does not use BIOS to read the hard drive or display
text or graphics on the monitor. It's logical to assume that
LinuxBIOS does not provide them.

DOS uses BIOS for all that basic functionality, in such a way, BIOS
acted by providing a "generic" driver that DOS used. "Generic"
because the interrupts and their arguments were the same regardless
of their implementation which varied from one manufacturer to another.

OTOH LinuxBIOS is able to print text on the monitor, so if Martin's
software does not require graphics (like good'n'old int 13h) then
perhaps it wouldn't be too difficult to add a simple redirection
layer that can execute some common BIOS interrupt calls.

An alternative is to use dosbox (very slow, about 50% of processor
speed). I'm afraid that dosemu will not work here (very fast, about
95% of processor speed - I used it to run DOS version of fractint to
calculate mandelbrot set).

[Stefan Reinauer]

* Janek Kozicki  [070518 18:07]:
> An alternative is to use dosbox (very slow, about 50% of processor
> speed). I'm afraid that dosemu will not work here (very fast, about
> 95% of processor speed - I used it to run DOS version of fractint to
> calculate mandelbrot set).

Why does dosemu not work?