Re: FreeDOS caveats

On 2024-04-25, Ben Collver wrote:

 > It looks as though some effort was put into composing this
 > message.  Nice work, assuming it is human generated.

When working time and again as a part-time university
lecturer, I'd typically feed bits of my students' works to
Duckduckgo to detect plagiarism.  Makes me wonder if this
approach can be adapted for detecting AI-generated texts.

 > Do you seriously think that vim 7.3 is going to reformat your
 > flash drive?

I didn't seriously think that an xz-utils upgrade would
compromise my SSH setup, and it still happened.  (Or would
have happened, were I to have any Debian testing installs,
as was my intent.)

 > I don't think DOS is a supported platform for vim any more, so
 > unless someone steps up to the plate, there never will be a newer
 > version than 7.3.  FreeDOS is the wrong platform for anyone for
 > whom that will be a deal breaker.

JFTR, I think I'd be fine with Vim 7 so long as it's
maintained.  I'd probably be able to contribute to the
effort, too; just not a task I'd try to pull all by myself.

 > It's the right platform for someone who would enjoy that
 > challenge, or for someone who can deal with dead/stable software.

That's one of my points: depending on what you're aiming
at, using FreeDOS might come with its own set of challenges,
including software- and hardware-related ones.

For instance, it took me some time to get a working multi-IO
card for my Am386 (though perhaps the issue was with me
misinterpreting the silkscreen configuration reminders and
configuring the jumpers the wrong way on the card I did have.)

Then I had to replace the dead onboard 3.6 V NiMH rechargable
battery; I was unable to find an exact replacement so had to
use a 1 F 5.5 V supercap instead.  (It does hold the CMOS
settings awhile, but the RTC stops within 24 hours of the
machine being powered off.)

The old "AT" PSU had a faulty 80 mm sleeve bearing fan.  It also
had to be replaced, with a ball bearing Jamicon JF0825B-
something.  (Given my prior experience with such fans, I'd
expect it to outlast the PSU itself.)

Then there was the issue of my CompactFlash drive having no
CHS geometry data on the label, and the 386 BIOS not having
the IDE HDD autodetection code, either; solved by plugging
the card into a Pentium box and copying the autodetection
results from there.

Supposedly weeCee is runnable off an SD card (SDHC, I hope),
but my understanding is that it's only available in what's
effectively a "kit": you'll need to do the soldering yourself
if you're going to go that way.

 > One could also opt for an editor that IS still supported on DOS,
 > such as sved or xvi.

I can't say I'm aware of many Vi-like editors for DOS.
If there's a list somewhere (other than the already mentioned
FreeDOS' listing.gz), I'd appreciate a pointer.

FreeDOS comes with a build of Elvis from 2003, and on the
one hand, it seems workable (I don't use /that/ much of the
Vim functionality; I mostly rely on the vim-tiny build from
Debian, http://packages.debian.org/stable/vim-tiny ), though
I do recall having trouble finding alternatives to some of
the things I came to take for granted with Vim.

On the other hand, it doesn't seem to be maintained, either.

--
FSF associate member #7257  np. HTTP by Master Boot Record