[LispM-Hackers] Who is doing what?

[Nyef]

On Sun, 24 Feb 2002, John Morrison wrote:

> Hi;
>
> Paolo Amoroso wrote:
> > There should be at least one free (speech & beer) MS-DOS
> > implementation--i.e. a complete rewrite. If I recall correctly, it's called
> > FreeDOS or something like that.
>
> Yes, thank you, that is the one I had in mind.
>
> Do you happen to know off the top of your head whether it can run DOS
> drivers?  While aesthetically, I would prefer not to run on any other OS
> (and whether DOS counts as an OS would be a highly entertaining
> discussion), writing lots of drivers doesn't seem like a whole lot of
> fun (I have written UNIX drivers in the past, and while Etherboot would
> make this a lot less painful than the "login, edit, compile, reboot,
> kdb" loop), I still do not relish the prospect.

I believe that FreeDOS can use DOS drivers. Unfortunately, last time I
tried to install it the command shell choked after I created the partition
but before I formatted it (they may have fixed this since).

I'd _much_ rather see a stand-alone stand-alone system, rather than one
that lies upon DOS or a Linux kernel... But if you're doing that, why not
write a Lisp more suited to running on the x86 instead of just emulating
the explorer?

And writing device drivers should be a lot less painful in Lisp. Write
them in Lisp where you can (basically everything except the disk driver,
and maybe even that).

> -jm

---------------------------
All programming can be viewed as an exercise.
---------------------------
Alastair Bridgewater
e-mail: nyef@softhome.net