[Oberon] Re (2): Copy or reinstall A2?

[Pablo Cayuela]

Liam, I'm interested in Oberon under DOS, it was the first one I've used
more than 20 years ago.
Right now I have several versions working on Dosbox.
I do not have plenty of modern hardware to experimenting but some, at least
until the return to the university, because we are still under a lockdown
on higher education institutions since 2020.
I did not have nor get to find the sources but the executables of several
versions of DOS Oberon.
I've shared them in my GitHub:

https://github.com/pcayuela/DOSOberon

I've asked the sources to the original developer of DOS Oberon to no avail.

I'm really glad to help you whatever I could.

Best regards,
Prof Pablo Cayuela



El vie., 23 de julio de 2021 08:15, Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com>
escribió:

> On Fri, 23 Jul 2021 at 00:08, Michael Schierl <schierlm at gmx.de> wrote:
> >
> > You wanted to say, an OS with no direct Hard Disk support on its own.
> > (It is the same if you boot from an IDE/SCSI/SATA hard drive).
>
> No, I really did not. Please do not try to put words into my mouth :-(
>
> DOS has hard disk support, and has since version 2.0 in 1983.
>
> Yes, it is reliant upon the ROM BIOS supporting them, but this an
> inherent aspect of the MS-DOS/PC DOS design.
>
> Originally DOS primarily supported Shugart ST-506 interface hard
> disks, but over the years this evolved into RLL, ESDI, IDE, EIDE, PATA
> and finally (so far) SATA,
>
> Secondarily, SCSI went through parallel evolution of its own but most
> PC SCSI host adaptors included an auxiliary ROM BIOS that extended
> support for SCSI drives to DOS.
>
> (I would say "and to other PC OSes that used the BIOS" but I can't
> think of any. Most of them just ran on top of DOS. Maybe DR CP/M086,
> Concurrent CP/M, Concurrent DOS and DOS Plus?)
>
> > (The emulated USB hard disk can be quite slow, but probably does not
> > really matter for DOS anyway.)
>
> True.
>
> > In case the DOS PC has one of the three common pre-USB3 host controllers
> > (UCHI, OHCI or EHCI), you can load USBASPI.SYS in DOS and access USB
> > storage devices that way.
>
> This is true. However, the start-off-a-USB-disk method needs no
> modification to the DOS OS or config files. You can copy an installed
> copy of DOS (with no USB drivers or support) onto a USB key, boot off
> the USB key, and suddenly DOS can see and use the USB drive.
>
> > May work, but not guaranteed. It may even depend on whether both drives
> > are connected to the same root hub or not (in case your machine has many
> > USB ports and more than one root hub). Guaranteed is only that the
> > device booted from is emulated as disk 0x80.
>
> Yes, true.
>
>
> > What is your experience with support of contemporary mice/touchpads in
> > DOS? Oberon without mouse would not be much fun.
>
> So far, I am mostly using various laptops, and everything just seems
> to work. Since DOS doesn't support things like scroll wheels anyway,
> all you can really rely on being there is pointing and left-clicking.
> They seem to work OK, on internal and external mice, trackpoints, and
> touchpads. If the app understands right-clicking and middle-clicking,
> then those seem to work too.
>
> > Using some of the Oberon versions that run on Linux/X11 may be even
> > simpler. Run them on a contemporary Linux kernel, and you should have
> > better hardware support than the BIOS provides.
>
> I am aware of that, but my interest is primarily in operating systems,
> not in programming languages or environments (except inasmuch as they
> are used to implement the OSes).
>
> I am interested in using DOS on modern hardware because 30+ years ago
> I acquired a lot of specialist DOS knowledge, which is now totally
> obsolete. However, as hobbyists grow interested in running DOS on
> modern hardware, both natively and under VMs, my obsolete knowledge
> becomes of some value again. That is enjoyable to me.
>
> There are also DOS-like OSes, and environments that run on top of DOS.
> Very few people today know about these or have the knowledge to get
> them working. I do. So I am experimenting with them.
>
> For instance, in VMs, I have DESQview, DesqView/X and DR OpenGEM
> running on top of modern DOSes. I hope to extend this to
> GeoWorks/Breadbox Ensemble soon, as this is now FOSS.
>
> DESQview was the state of the art in DOS multitasking. Unfortunately,
> it depends on the QEMM memory manager, and so far I have failed to get
> this working on modern hardware. (In VMs it is fine.) However, I have
> read that GeoWorks can directly support DR-DOS' built-in multitasking,
> and I *have* got that working.
>
> That's why I was asking -- to see if Oberon enthusiasts would be
> interested in Oberon for DOS running on modern hardware. It seems not.
> :-(
>
> I may try it anyway, though... :-)
>
> --
> Liam Proven – Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
> Email: lproven at cix.co.uk – gMail/gTalk/gHangouts: lproven at gmail.com
> Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn/Flickr: lproven – Skype: liamproven
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