These pages contain up-to-date versions of my FreeWare and ShareWare
packages for DOS PCs, plus some other interesting files from the
Public Domain. You can also find detailed info on DOS internals,
including Novell DOS and Caldera OpenDOS / DR-DOS
here. Sorry, but some parts of these pages are
available in German language,
only. But you won't have any problems to download files, will you?
No special graphical features were used, so these pages should perform fine in any system's environment. To reduce download time and costs to a minimum, most files have been compressed to .ZIP archives. You'll need PKUNZIP v2.0+ (or any other compatible decompression utility) to unpack files before usage.
You can select any software for download by clicking on the highlighted
section of a chapter's headline (where file size and release date are
mentioned, too).
Please, check out what you want and have fun.
Matthias Paul
IMPORTANT: This homepage moved recently (2001-02). If you have links to my site, please update them to reflect the new location. Please note, that not all packages available here have been updated already to include the new address.
Also, feel free to contact me for support and consulting services or if you want me to put my hands on your (commercial) hardware / software projects in the DOS, Linux, embedded systems, etc. areas. ;-) As a recognized expert for documented as well as undocumented PC and DOS internals downto the bare metal I am one of the guys who took part in the development of the famous DR-DOS operating system. I participated to huge extend in the implementation of improved bootstrap loaders, many kernel, BIOS, and shell enhancements, loadhigh / relocation features and optimized memory allocation, file-system drivers like for example FAT32 & LBA, advanced NLS, Code Page, ISO 28601, and Eurocurrency support, worked on DOS 7 and Windows compatibility, and also contributed to Year 2000 support, low level disk drivers and utilities, and most other areas of the system.
Due to their focussing on Linux, Caldera & Lineo have recently officially discontinued active development of the DR-DOS product, unfortunately. If, however, you still need professional help or support, or are looking for rock solid research & development in this area you probably have found your man... ;-) BTW. I cannot promise anything here, but please keep in mind, that I'm still very interested in detailed problem reports and suggestions regarding DR-DOS. If you've sent reports like this to Caldera or Lineo in the past, I would appreciate to have a copy of it for my own data base. I'm still feeling committed to further advance this powerful, flexible, and economic, yet thin operating system, if ever possible...
For reasons of creating a globally accessable PC knowledge base,
I am also an active major contributor to
Ralf Brown's PC interrupt reference list project (INTERxx),
and a long-time advocat of the open source idea and the Linux and FreeDOS
open source projects in particular. If you can share info or
resources, I urge you to put them into these projects for the benefit
of all. This will for sure help creating more efficient, stable,
and secure operating systems in the future - so, in the end it will
be for your own profit as well... Well, if you still like to visit
my (currently rather outdated) pages, here they are... ;-)
The greatest part of my work is about Novell DOS 7 and Caldera OpenDOS 7.0x: Much more than 1.3 MegaByte (!!!) of text documents (more than 400 pages to print), highlighting hundreds of exiting, powerful, and undocumented features of these DOS editions, which cannot be found anywhere else! Therefore, MPDOSTIPs is an ideal completion alongside with the original documentation, and/or any 3rd party books.
The major topics:
The most up-to-date release of this collection can be found on this
web page, but
the FTP server of University Stuttgart, Germany, and
some other servers are
also being updated quite often.
From the OpenDOS / DR-DOS people I have recieved quite alot of eMails giving me
the impression that there was a strong demand for an English version
of MPDOSTIPs. Unfortunately, I don't have the time
to do it myself. Therefore, if you are a (natively) English
speaker, having a fair understanding of the German language, or are
in some other way enthusiastic enough to take part in a planned
future MPDOSTIPs translation project into English (mainly
the NWDOSTIP.TXT file) on a non-profit
basis, I'd like to hear from you for registering you
for this project. If we'd find enough people to divide the work load,
we could have an English version of MPDOSTIPs reasonably
soon to help all those not speaking German. (Please note, that at
present this query is in no way a permission to translate, transscribe, or
modify the files without my prior explicit written permission. All
rights reserved.)
It adapts to the internal structural file format (standard display FONT, standard printer FONT, and DRFONT compressed format, each in different flavours) and displays any valuable information from the file.
Additionally, CPI is able to extract the font data contained in a .CPI file in different ways. These font data files may be edited by common font editors. Also, you are now able to create your own .CPI and font files using these files.
Comes with full PASCAL sources, .CPI format descriptions, documentation, AddOn utilities, and example reports.
The beta version does not ship with documentation, but contains updated
format descriptions for reference, also covering Caldera OpenDOS and DR-DOS.
Using a NEC P5200/P5300 (P6plus/P7plus), P3200/P3300 (P20/P30), P6200/P6300 (P60/P70), P9300 (P90), P22Q/P32Q, P7200/P7300 (P62/P72), P3800/P3900 (P42Q/P52Q), P1200/P1300 (P2Q/P3Q), P2000/P8000 (P2X/P72X), P2000+/P8000+, or other compatible printer model, it features Code Page switching support for Code Pages 367 (7-bit ISO-646-US, US-ASCII), 437 (International, World Trade, IBM-2, PC-8), 850 (Multilingual), 860 (Portuguese), 863 (French Canadian), 865 (Nordic), and 1011 (7-bit ISO-7 German) (plus some more) for PRINTER.SYS from DR DOS 6.0, (DR PalmDOS,) DR DOS "Panther" & DR DOS "StarTrek", Novell DOS 7, Caldera OpenDOS 7.01, DR-OpenDOS 7.02, and DR-DOS 7.02-7.05.
Printers which can be configured to accept a 256 char download font also support Code Page 858/8501 (Multilingual with EURO SIGN), representing the PC DOS 7 & 2000 and OS/2 FixPak variant of Code Page 850.
Except for the very first two printers mentioned, these printers optionally support Code Pages 667/991 (Polish, Mazovia), 852 (Slavic, Eastern Europe, Latin II), 855 (Cyrillic I), 866 (Russian, Cyrillic II), 867/895 (Czech, Kamenicky), and some more (737, 853, 857), also covered by NECPINW.CPI.
In addition to these Code Pages, variants of Code Pages 437, 667/991, 850, 863, and 865 are available for use with the FreeDOS EUROTSR extension.
NECPINW.CPI provides a large set of "pseudo" Code Pages in the IBM CDRA user definable range allowing to switch to any internal, EPROM, download, or external cartridge character set and/or font regardless of an offical Code Page assignment in existence or not. This brings the total number of charsets provided by NECPINW.CPI up to 90!
Since older DR DOS versions and MS-DOS/PC DOS may need minor changes, the assembler source code plus some extra hints are included.
Note:
The printers mentioned above accept NEC specific enhancements of Epson's ESC/P standard and IBM's escape sequences, enabling use of "mixed-language" programming. Many other printers need to be explicitly set to either Epson LQ or IBM/X24 Proprinter emulation mode. Unfortunately, while most of a printer's features are bound to Epson LQ emulation, the majority of them supports Code Page switching in IBM-mode, only. However, if your printer is as flexible as the NEC Pinwriters, chances are good, that NECPINW can be used as a prototype for your own .CPI files with only minor changes. (A similar file for the Epson LQ-570+/LQ-1070+ already exists.)
Additionally it provides means to list all the countries, actually
supported by your system's configuration. Also, it allows to set a
country code by its name (most often identically to the corresponding
phone code), and allows for setting the errorlevel to the country code
(useful for batchjob programming).
Contains comprehensive reference sheets of DOS country codes and
the COUNTRY.SYS file formats used by DOS (including Caldera OpenDOS
und DR-DOS), IBM OS/2, and MS Windows NT (in English).
For any DOS 2.0+.
It contains several DEBUG/SID/SID86 scripts to patch your DOS system's
COUNTRY.SYS file. For Novell DOS 7 and
Caldera OpenDOS 7.0x users there are automated batchjobs included,
guiding you through the procedure for both,
Novell DOS/Caldera OpenDOS and all releases of
DR DOS. It won't take you more than one or two minutes to
complete the patch.
With German country settings active, the system now uses the more practical
'Japanese' date format "yy-mm-dd" and "hh:mm" instead
of the former European
format "dd.mm.yy" and "hh:mm"/"hh.mm".
Even if you do not live in Germany and don't run a German DOS environment,
JPDATE49 still might be of interest to you. If you are
in the international business for example, your applications might demand
specific data about Germany. Of course, JPDATE49 does
not patch country data other than for Germany.
For any DOS 3.3+ (the former Digital Research-, the Microsoft- and
the PTS-families), plus IBM OS/2 and MS Windows NT.
DR-OpenDOS 7.02 and DR-DOS 7.02+ do not require this patch any
more, because they come with enhanced NLS support that directly supports
these new settings with country codes > 999.
SETENV.COM provides means to hide and later restore the
contents of this pre-environment, giving you a chance to squeeze the
last bytes out of your system. (Unfortunately, Microsoft implemented
CONFIG.SYS SET= differently, when they copied this DR DOS 6.0
feature, so SETENV.COM currently cannot run with
MS-DOS/PC DOS 6.0+).
By using SETENV.COM you can save some KiloBytes of rare
DOS memory (typically amounting to 1-3 KByte with many advanced
system configurations), depending on the number of drivers loaded by
INSTALL=/INSTALLHIGH=/HIINSTALL= and the current size of the
pre-environment.
Since SETENV.COM is very easy to use and changes to
CONFIG.SYS can be done in some minutes, there is no reason, why not
to optimize your configuration. Mind, how much effort has to be
done or money has to be spend to get some KiloByte reduced size
by extreme code optimizations or improved memory managers...
So far, this original SETENV.COM feature cannot be
found in any known memory manager/optimizer.
For studying purposes, the archive contains the ASM source code.
Easy to use.
Now, this new version is able to support versatile include lists and list files
and allows for absolute/relative paths in the file specs, including
wildcards.
(4DOS/NDOS required.)
Besides COMBINE.BAT still is a nice (but frustrating)
example for the 'fine arts of batchjob programming'. You may
study how to use advanced 4DOS/NDOS and/or DR DOS/Novell DOS
COMMAND.COM features while still maintaining compatibility with
MS-DOS/PC DOS COMMAND.COM.
This release has been updated to run fine with Caldera OpenDOS and
INTER53. Don't expect any further updates...
More about Ralf Brown's interrupt list INTERxx
[Deutsch]
Written in German language!
Depending on the HTML-browser you use, this form could be
misshaped. If this is the case, the browser is most probably
not able to create a valid mail out of this form. Also, a classical
email is usually saver and more reliable in general. If you are
unsure, you should better write a normal email
(<Matthias.Paul@post.rwth-aachen.de>)
instead. (Refer to any of my software packages for my mail address.)