From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Harry Kalogirou Subject: Re: DOS .exe file support Date: 03 May 2002 19:59:19 +0300 Sender: linux-8086-owner@vger.kernel.org Message-ID: <1020421999.662.15.camel@cool> References: <200205030637.g436bBX20072@mailgate5.cinetic.de> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: QUOTED-PRINTABLE Return-path: In-Reply-To: <200205030637.g436bBX20072@mailgate5.cinetic.de> List-Id: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-7" To: Michael Kallas Cc: Linux-8086 =D4=E7=ED =D0=E1=F1, 03-05-2002 =F3=F4=E9=F2 09:37, =EF/=E7 Michael Kal= las =DD=E3=F1=E1=F8=E5: > Hi, >=20 > Harry Kalogirou schrieb am 29.04.02: > > Hi, > > I wonder from the first time I let my eyes on this project, what t= he > > EXE file support in the kernel configuration means? I simply don't= see > > any way of running a DOS .EXE executable in ELKS. Maybe if it was a= COM > > file but even then we should emulate all the DOS _system_ calls. Am= I > > missing something bigger here, or we should just remove it from the > > tree? > > If this should be considered for being implemented any time, I sugges= t > having a look at http://www.freedos.org because FreeDOS is in beta st= age > now already for quite a while and is quite advanced. > They even have FAT32 support now (but no LFN yet) and they also > support swapping. > Maybe ELKS could be something like a multitasking environment able to > execute linux/elks and DOS programs? >=20 ELKS will never be able to run .EXE files. Even if we emulate all the DOS system calls, the memory model is different. To that add that most of DOS programs - if not all - use directly the hardware and that is imposible to multitask on an 8086. DOS programs do all sorts of _wild_ things with the machine (from hooking to interupts, to reprogramming timers chips, etc) , that require the program be the only thing running= =2E About the swap thing you say, I don't see how they can swap out. Maybe they implement it in a _might work, might crash_ way. Harry - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-8086" i= n the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html