Re: UMB and 386/486 --> status of FreeDOS emm386 etc.

> And finally:
> The code is hard to read because it is based on a monolithic ASM version
> without UMB that was published by a German PC magazine. 
in fact, it was a *mostly* working TSR, which would give you EMS, and run
DOS in V86 mode.

I made it a driver, made the int15/87 stuff, UMB memory, removed a few
bugs,
added some C startup code,....
the protected mode stuff has been more hacked, then changed.
thats it. 

> Tom has a rough understanding, too, but he cannot do much more than add
> stuff to the protected mode part -or- the v86 part. 
Tom has a pretty well understanding of protected mode.

> He is unable to do
> bigger changes to the interface between both, and just using the one used
> in the magazine version. 
he isn't unable.
he is unwilling.
the changes he did, required far more then 100 hours of work;
and he will not put another 100's of hours into a project (or result), 
he simply isn't interested in. 
BTW: tom thinks, that DOS32 is bullshit (has ever been, and will always be)
he likes DOS16 and WIN32, but thats his very own opinion, NOT to be
discussed.

this is open software.
it's like the freedos kernel, which has had about 10 different maintainers
so far.
feel free to do the work, I certainly won't object.

> Excuse me if I do false claims here. However, you
> can be sure that initializing protected multitasking paged mode and a v86
> task inside it, plus managing its needs from protected mode is quite
> tricky.

and - what makes it worse - if you don't get it right (every thing and each
single bit),
you mostly end up staring at a rebooting PC.

maybe eric starts to translate the comments, ...

tom