Notices by The FreeDOS Project (freedosproject@fosstodon.org)

It's not DOS, but I really enjoyed reading this explanation of the Windows 95 setup program:

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20241112-00/?p=110507

> “So that’s why Windows 95 setup is really three setup programs chained together. It allows a single copy of the code to be used for all three of the installation scenarios. Each program takes you one step closer to the goal. And everything got implemented only once.”

From the website:

mTCP provides TCP/IP applications for DOS. Mike Brutman recently released a new version:

"Version 2024-10-20 is available. It has a few bug fixes. It also allows mTCP programs to operate at the same time NetDrive is active."

The mTCP NetDrive programs are also now included.

Details at
http://brutmanlabs.org/mTCP/mTCP.html

Sad to learn that Bruce Wayne Bastian, co-founder of WordPerfect, died recently at the age of 76.

WordPerfect was an excellent desktop word processor, and was a mainstay of DOS throughout the 1980s. During that time, having “WordPerfect” on your resume made it easier to get an office job.

I used WordPerfect as a student in high school and university, until the upgrade became too expensive.

If you're a university student, it's the end of the semester!

I teach a few university classes, and I use a spreadsheet to calculate final grades.

Here's how to do the same grade lookup and conversion in #LibreOffice Calc, #QuattroPro and #AsEasyAs

https://youtu.be/Mqgxc7BoJUQ

I wrote this Toy CPU to help teach students about machine language. It's a FreeDOS program that runs in graphics mode.

https://github.com/freedosproject/toycpu

Version 3.1 is a bug fix release. (In version 3.0, the accumulator could hold values beyond 255 but would display zero.)

FYI: In the original DOS era, you needed an add-on sound card (such as the SoundBlaster16) to get sound and digital music in games like DOOM.

But the AC97 replaced the add-on cards, and the old DOS games don't know how to talk to AC97.

SBEMU provides SoundBlaster emulation with OPL3 for AC97, and could be a way to play classic DOS games on newer PC hardware.

You can find it at SBEMU on GitHub:

https://github.com/crazii/SBEMU

It's not #opensource but still cool😎 to see people still writing DOS software. There's a new version of NDN, Necromancer's DOS Navigator:

2022-12-26 - v3.00.0008

http://www.ndn.muxe.com/download/

Here's another way you can support FreeDOS:

Subscribe to our #YouTube channel. It's a small thing, but it means a lot for the channel and increases our visibility.

https://www.youtube.com/freedosproject

FreeDOS is on Mastodon now!

We'll continue to tweet to our Twitter account, and post items to the FreeDOS group on Facebook, but Mastodon is our focus right now. ☺

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