This is the OpenDOS FAQ. The maintainer is DJ Delorie <dj@delorie.com>. The web page that governs this FAQ is http://www.delorie.com/opendos/.

The contents of this FAQ are offered with no warrantee, and do not represent commitments or opinions of anyone!

Caldera's Q and A can be found at http://www.caldera.co.uk/html/qanda.htm

Last updated Fri 7-Feb-1997 4:02 PM

About OpenDOS

OpenDOS is an operating system for IBM compatible PCs. It is compatible with Microsoft's MS-DOS. It will run on 8086 and above CPUs. It is a 16-bit OS.

Who owns OpenDOS?

Rights to OpenDOS are owned by Caldera (http://www.caldera.com/).

Is it vaporware?

No, go to http://www.caldera.com/dos/

The DJGPP development community was blessed with a pre-release version of the binaries for testing. It really exists, and the sources really will be available.

Is it stable?

Yes. Some users have been running it for over a month with no problems.

How big is it?

The full version is about 7 Mb; the base version is about 2 Mb. The difference is that the bigger one includes a complete copy of Personal Netware.

The kits are available as file archives or floppy images.

Estimates on source size are around 2900 files (53 Mb), plus another 2700 (78 Mb) for tools (until they can reduce the number of tools needed)

What parts will be available in source format? When?

The first parts to be released will be the basic OS, which is the boot loader, IBMBIO.COM, IBMDOS.COM, and COMMAND.COM. Caldera claims that all of the DOS utilities will be made available "as soon as we can get them out of source control" :-) Apparently, the sources are intact, but in a source control system that is difficult to deal with.

What about Caldera's other pre-dos products?

They are not included in this process; it is unknown if their sources can be found, much less freed. If they can be found, there's a good chance they'll be freed also, but no promises.

Who's Gene Buckle?

He's working with Caldera to locate and clean up the OpenDOS sources so that we can all have them. He also acts as a liason between the djgpp/opendos lists and Caldera.

What's the EDC?

European Development Center. That's where all the OpenDOS work is being done. (England)

What is GEM?

GEM stands for Graphical Environment Manager. If you've ever seen an Atari ST or used an early version of Ventura Publisher, you've seen GEM.

What is DJGPP?

DJGPP is a freely available 32-bit development system based on the GNU tools. See http://www.delorie.com/djgpp/

What is WINE?

A Windows Emulator for X running on Intel platforms. Written by the Internet Community.

What is WABI?

A Windows Emulator for X that runs on any platform. Written by Sun Microsystems.

What is an IFS (Installable File System)?

It's a file system module that can be installed after the system boots. For example, NWCDEX is an IFS, as would be any NFS software.

What is FAT32?

FAT12, FAT16, an FAT32 are all cluster-based disk layouts. FAT12 is usually used on floppies and FAT16 on hard drives (more clusters). FAT32 is new, and supports more (and thus smaller) clusters, making disk storage more efficient.

What is XFree86?

An X11 server that's available in source format. Runs on many platforms.

Marketing

Caldera has promised to make the sources for OpenDOS available to anyone, and OpenDOS may be used (modified or otherwise) without a license for any non-commercial use (i.e. your home computer). It is NOT freeware, public domain, shareware, or GPL. It is *copyrighted* by Caldera.

What about the License?

Caldera is still working on the final license; anything you read may not apply when the final release is made. They claim that for non-commercial use, you can do whatever you please with it, including modify it. For commercial use, they require a license for legal and libel reasons.

What about the lawsuit with Microsoft?

Caldera is suing Microsoft for antitrust, unfair practices, and monopolizing. See http://www.caldera.com/news/pr001.html

Is there an OpenDOS logo?

Not officially, but the unofficial page has, of course, an unofficial logo.

Is there a slogan?

Here are the contenders (search the mail archives for attributions):

  286s!  They are $9.99/lb.
  Close Windows, OpenDOS
  Close those Windows, OpenDOS!
  Close your Windows - OpenDOS!
  OpenDOS - Where do you want to go NOW?
  OpenDOS - Where else would you want to go?
  OpenDOS - Why go through windows when you could have a !&$^&# DOOR?
  OpenDOS, Windows DOSn't
  OpenDOS: I want to go get the sources. When can I go THERE?
  OpenDOS: Now you will get actually there.
  Why open a Window when you can OpenDOS?
  Windows can break, invest in a solid 'OpenDOS'

Caldera's web site is http://www.caldera.com/. The "Caldera OpenDOS Unofficial Home Page" is http://www.deltasoft.com/. The mail archives and FAQ are at http://www.delorie.com/opendos/.

There's another Caldera site at http://www.caldera.co.uk/

What's the relationship between DJGPP and OpenDOS?

The DJGPP and OpenDOS groups expect to work closely together to "clean up" the OpenDOS sources and integrate the GEM, TCP/IP, and EMM386 APIs into DJGPP's development kits. While no official arrangements have been made, suffice to say that there will be many DJGPP developers with OpenDOS sources . . .

As for porting OpenDOS to DJGPP, remember that DJGPP doesn't support 16-bit machines, which will be a popular platform for OpenDOS.

Getting OpenDOS

Caldera's web site is http://www.caldera.com/. The "Caldera OpenDOS Unofficial Home Page" is http://www.deltasoft.com/. The mail archives and FAQ are at http://www.delorie.com/opendos/.

There's another Caldera site at http://www.caldera.co.uk/

Where's the FTP site?

Sorry, there isn't one yet.

Where's the IRC?

#opendos on EFNet

Why can't I find it?

You probably have an old page. You need to go to http://www.caldera.com/dos/

I can't download the whole thing! It keeps aborting!

This is due to the way that Caldera's web server is set up - it times out. If you have access to a high-speed network at your ISP or work, download it there and then transfer it over your modem.

Until Caldera modifies their license, no mirrors can be set up. Send email to Gene Buckle <geneb@web.wa.net> if you really need it to find out what the current best way to get it.

IBMBIO.COM and IBMDOS.COM are missing.

Please re-download the binaries.

What's the holdup on getting sources?

Caldera inherited a weird source control system that all the sources are stored in, and they use an even more weird build system. Getting them "releasable" is a two step process. First is to get all new makefiles written. At last estimate, there are about 120+ of them. After the makefile for each package is complete, it will be sent back to Caldera for approval. Gene assumes that they will release each package as the extraction/new makefile is done for each, but he's not sure. He really can't predict a timeline right now.

Will the CP/M sources be available?

Gene claims that Caldera _will_ release the CP/M sources _when_ they're found. The problem is that those (and other) sources were sent to an archiving company in Monterey. They're still sorting through the DRI assets, etc. trying to catalog and locate things.

Support

Run dosbook.exe

Is there online support?

http://support.novell.com/ is still around; it may also have information still useful to OpenDOS.

Where's the mailing list?

<majordomo@mail.tacoma.net> handles all subscriptions for the three opendos mailing lists - opendos, opendos-support, and opendos-developer - all at mail.tacoma.net

Some discussion happens on the djgpp mailing lists as well.

Is the mailing list archived anywhere?

http://www.delorie.com/opendos/archives/

What about a newsgroup?

Not yet, although a few options have been bantered about.

Does it support...

Yup.

Boot managers?

Yup. The OS files are IBMBIO.COM and IBMDOS.COM if you need to know. Current advice (as always) is to back up your existing stuff before trying anything; this also applies to OpenDOS.

One that has been mentioned is GRUB (http://www.uruk.org/grub/)

Booting from the second hard drive?

Nope. HOWEVER, once the sources are released, check out the IBMBIO.COM sources. "There ye will find the magic bit to twiddle."

DJGPP?

Yes, but you can't use EMM386's DPMI - it's buggy. Disable it and use cwsdpmi instead.

DPMI?

Yup, but it's buggy. Use cwsdpmi instead for DJGPP programming.

DPMI 1.0?

Nope.

DPMS?

Yup. (it's Dos Protected Mode Services)

FAT32 partitions?

Nope.

Loading high?

Yup. More than MS-DOS, too; there are reports of a 629K TPA. How? It uses the HMA as well as UMBs for loadhi.

MSCDEX?

Yup, but it comes with NWCDEX which can load 100% into high memory.

Multi-config? (config.sys)

In banging around the IBMBIO code, Gene discovered that it supports SWITCH, GOTO, GOSUB, and labels. Check DOSBOOK.EXE to find more info on it. IBMBIO will also process DCONFIG.SYS _before_ config.sys if it is present.

OpenDOS sets the OS environment variable to OPENDOS and VER to 7 while processing autoexec.bat; you can use that to help keep the two straight.

Multi-processor machines?

Nope. OpenDOS can do multitasking and multithreading, but there is no multi-processor support. Of course, that doesn't mean that *your* program won't support it!

NDOS?

Yup.

Netware with 802.3 packets?

Apparently not, as checksums are not supported. However, see http://www.delorie.com/opendos/archives/browse.cgi?a=opendos&p=1997/01/29/14:56:10

Norton Utilities 8?

Yup, but not under the multitasker. You might need patches from semantec's web site.

TCP/IP?

Yup, but the driver isn't ready.

Windows 3.1?

Yup. You need to install himem.sys before you can install windows, but you can remove himem.sys afterwards.

Windows 95?

Yup, but the long file names confuse CHKDSK, so don't try it.

You must install OpenDOS before Win95 in order to boot to "a previous version of dos"

Windows NT?

Yup, but read the README.TXT first.

Setting it up

Edit autoexec.bat manually; it's just the setup tool.

My games crash when EMM386 is installed!

EMM386 is known to be buggy. Hopefully, the source release will let us fix it :-) The HIMEM/EMM386 from MS-DOS will work.

If DOOM2 locks up at IStartupTimer(), it's EMM386.

Also, try "EMM386 PIC=Y" (or PIC=ON) at the dos prompt (it doesn't work in config.sys), although that didn't fix everyone's problems. Use "EMM386 /?" to see a list of options.

How do I get GRUB working?

http://www.delorie.com/opendos/archives/browse.cgi?a=opendos&p=1997/01/20/20:09:04 http://www.delorie.com/opendos/archives/browse.cgi?a=opendos&p=1997/01/31/19:50:15

I can't uninstall!

Make sure that delete protection is disabled before running uninstall, or you'll have lost clusters (run chkdsk to fix it). Also, you must DELPURGE before running chkdsk or scandisk.

Programming

Each part is built with a different development package. To build everything (once the sources are found and cleaned up), you'll need nine different development packages to build it all. The hope is that this list can be reduced to two or three.

Quote from Gene:

    Turbo Cv2,v3, BCC v2,v3.1, Watcom C v7, 3 versions of MASM, 2
    version of TASM...and a partridge in a pear tree.....

EMM386 is all in assembler.

What are the future development kits?

One, of course, will be DJGPP. The other will probably be some free 16-bit DOS compiler, or maybe someone will make gcc produce 16-bit code finally.

Will OpenDOS be ported to DJGPP?

Well, the core OS can't be (IBMBIO.COM, IBMDOS.COM, and COMMAND.COM) but there's no reason why the utilities couldn't all be 32-bit DJGPP programs. However, that means that a 386 is required, which otherwise wouldn't be true.

Where do I get specs for EMM386's extra stuff?

Ralf Brown's Interrupt List contains contains all the API calls for the task interface to EMM386. Gene hopes that better docs will show up eventually.

Caldera has found the MRS for the EMM386 API docs. There should be both an Adobe Acrobat and html versions arriving _very_ soon. Gene's understanding (as of 29-Jan-1997) is sometime within the next week or so.

DJGPP doesn't work!

Make sure you aren't using EMM386's DPMI. Use cwsdpmi instead.