DOS 6 SOURCE BUILT

edited October 2021 in Offers & Requests
Is anyone at WINWORLD ready for my contribution a ZIP file with built I would say about 98% of DOS 6.0 built ?

Comments

  • edited October 2021
    I have actually ran it on an actual PC that I had Windows XP installed in. I took XP out and redid the Drive and Booted it up then dumped it in and ran it. tested almost all of the files. then I installed Windows 3.1 in it and it's running on it!
    MAGIC DRIVE SETUP and the SHELL are not done yet I have more work to do for that, to got them going.
  • Nice Work @z8coder. Yes. I want it.
  • You guys want the steps to build it now?
  • Feel free to discuss your custom build here on the forum. Please remember this is a forum, not Twitter. If you have something to add to a post within a couple of hours, please edit your previous post rather than making more small posts.
  • Well I'll give everyone enough time to digest the download and then I'll tell them how to properly build it. I have been bouncing from site to site getting this out there so the most amount of people can have it. I've had it for over 25 years I believe but never had the time to devote to just that. I am retired now so guess what I'm doing? He! He! I got it on a legal download site so I just burned it to a CD and then put it up for the proper time to be able to do it! More about it to come all the particulars
    so to speak.
    Have FUN guys and all the best to everyone

    z8coder
  • I'll give you guys all a really simple VERY LARGE CLUE as to how to do it. Think how the Build environment is constructed and works for NT 4.0 if you've done that one before.
    DOS 6.0 is done the same way! Remember MS had a way to do it with DOS right? WHY WOULD THEY CHANGE THAT? It worked, the only thing to change is the ENVIRONMENT, DOS or NT!
    Environment variables and all!!!! Also there were some folders missing that I found and I created them and there you go.

    The way it sits in the original setup it is only going to spit out the Finished stand alone files but that's if you get past the ERROR of the .IDX on the Message files not matching in size, I did it took me only 3 minutes and I was running in the Build.

    To me it was the challenge of the thing! to get the stuff figured out and working! Look I was selfish in it I've had this source code since it first got dumped onto the internet over 20, 25 years ago I just put it all aside and worked on other stuff.

    FUNNY how life takes turns when it's time for crap to actually happen. So I'm retired now and this was the perfect time to do it. Besides it's the challenge, that's a lot now for me I have the DOS source DONE, and now I have a system running that and Windows 3.1 on top of it now and I have the KERNEL code ,GDI and all that source also and I am unwinding Windows 3.1 as we speak .

    FUN is FUN. Very SOON none of 3.1 will be a mystery anymore! OH by the way I write in C a lot, BUT I have to admit I write A LOT more in ASM in Windows 3.1. My code is FASTER and A lot tighter and easier to read . Call me OLD fashioned I guess I am I just like the OLD stuff so I use it and make it do new things that they didn't do then or even know about then.

    The only other thing that I did was to edit some stuff in a lot of files, MAKE FILE'S that were commented out and I readjusted it to not spit out IBM TYPE of CRAP. OF COURSE I could just upload the ZIP file of the whole project as I have it now and then that would take all of the FUN out of it for EVERYONE.

    Look it's very simple to see IF you recognize PATTERNS , if you can't connect the two then your lost.I DID absolutely " NO NO NO PROGRAMMING AT ALL" to get this done!

    So what I've just TOLD you ALL is exactly how I did it. No more no less. Concentrate on making the ERROR messages disappear, don't worry about the WARNING messages you just want it to build right? then you can TWEAK it to get A lot of them to disappear, I mean if you know anything about how Microsoft wrote a lot of their stuff they didn't make a lot of them be gone they lived with it.

    I got it ALL to BUILD first then worked on what I wanted it to do for me! Look it's a very complicated BUILD I think MORE SO then NT4.0. WHY? Because they are using a Bunch of compression Decompression software that they wrote and that's in the build first OFF when the build first starts, That's the BASE for this build.

    When you start the build the way it sits when your looking at it after dumping it out of the ZIP file.I've seen what it is doing as it builds. GENERATING files on the FLY so all of those files that you thought were missing their built into the build. that's the OLDEST WAY to do it.
    Remember BACK then SPACE was limited, so you had to plan and be very clever about how you did things to make everything work in very tight confines.

    It's taking out of a lot of APPS that it needs as it builds it and then copies that stuff to other directories, for later in the build why you might ask? well when it's all done then they build the setup program and write on the "FLY" all of the stuff for the setup to use to build the files layouts and disk arrangements. Very complicated stuff!

    The way it sits then is not for it to make the whole thing someone set it up just to do ALL if the stand alone stuff for rebuilds. and they also removed a lot of lib file statements as well as include statements from a lot of the make file's .

    So the OAK for it is all ready installed in the proper folders so don't bother looking for an OAK for it. that's why you see all of the make file's with the extent .oak .

    When they ran the OAK to it, it copied all of the files to the correct directories, look in the first one and you'll see the .key files , that's you first clue! Right?

    Another thing is watch your ERROR messages. you'll need PKLITE it uses it in the build, and in several folders
    I just made another file called "CFILE.bat" that after I do a CLEAN on it for the next run I run CFILE for copying files to the needed DIRS and that finishes the setup to the build.

    Very "KEY" to this is to look in the MAKE FILES and Batch files a lot of clues will be given in there! can't stress that enough. .INC and .h include files as well.ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES are VERY VERY important in any build so don't be afraid to set new ones or rename some.

    A lot of the way the build does it's work is like VERSION or OS type VARIABLES None in this build that you can see if you look, at least not for a PURE MSDOS build at least.

    The way I do it is if I get a lot of good stuff done I rename the main FOLDER to like DOS6-1 so it is saved . That way I can always have a fresh copy an not loose all of the work that I have done to get it to that point. And every time I move further forward with the build I do it again. ALWAYS FORWARD never BACK.

    OK If anyone has any questions leave a message. I sometimes check here from time to time, I'll give some more information to help out.
  • Well I finally figured it all out. The ORIGINAL RIP OFF of this CODE from MS who ever done it or someone recently after that screwed this project up ON PURPOSE.

    For what reason I don't know. But I think it was also a TEST to see who out here on the NET. Had the where with it all to get the most of it untangled! I don't believe that the SETUP install program will ever get done, unless someone takes the time to actually recreate the .DES files for all of the DIALOG BOXES in the build. They were deleted, GONE.

    I am slowly remaking them it's going to take A lot of time. This is a very complicated stage in this as I have to install the 6.0 as it was shipped and use all of the DIALOGS and then use a program that I wrote to give me exact screen coordinates of the dialog boxes on the screen so I can reconstruct them so that the build can actually work.

    Besides that there were A LOT of other programs that they took out of the tools directories so that it would not build correctly and I had to find them all out on the internet so the build would keep going foreword. there were actually 3 compiler versions used on this source C5.1, C6, C7. I actually found it documented in the Source.

    There were a lot of folders that were deleted as well, they didn't want any traces as to why the build wouldn't work. but I scoured the code and make files and created them and then the build took off. They had to be there for all the files that were to be generated during the build.

    I have a VERY LARGE list of Environment Variables for the build now and the list is growing every day. A lot of the WARNING messages that I was getting are now disappearing.

    I have already started to work on a new side project and I am sourcing out the character windows lib files complete with their messaging manager so I could actually make my own windows programs in dos and run them in DOS,which I think is great! LOST technology revived.

    The ZIP I uploaded here is different then what I have now. I have every file in the build now with no PRIVATE declarations anymore, I've made them all PUBLIC so they show up in the SYMBOL tables after the build is done.

    The only way I can unlock Windows 3.0, 3.1 is to have it pointing to everything that I know about in Windows and in DOS then I will see what is left over. Remember that Windows was built on top of DOS and uses it VERY EXTENSIVELY.

    The programs that came with the SOURCE I am changing for my personal use to do things that no one else has access to doing with any software now! All I needed was all of the extra information that I got from the source to get it all done.

    FDISK and FORMAT , and SYS.com will be very very different when I'm done. with the extra stuff that I've been working on also I am working on HOOKS into the BIOS USB STACK that's on almost all systems now so I can get away from MOUSE.com and for other uses as well built into the DOS as I go. The size of the build now is about 120MEGS now and I'm not done yet.

    Still not done yet, but each step brings me closer to the finish and I get conformation and more information in the source after I get it all to build. Adding my own Comments in the source to more explain it. I truly have the UNDOCUMENTED DOS information more so now then before.

    So I'm going to close with this little tid bit. NO ONE knows what they are really capable of doing unless they actually put everything into it and take the shot at doing it with everything that they have and can muster to get the job at hand done. Plain and simple.
  • Very interesting, is anyone else looking to compile the code?
    I would like to so I can run a debug version of DOS.
  • In order to have a Complete DEBUG version of DOS you have to manually edit ALL of the Files Source. Every SOURCE FILE in it and change ALL of the PRIVATES to PUBLIC and you'll be busy for a long time. Just write a program and dump it in ALL of the Folders and have the program do it for you.
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