#DOSweek
Here is a list of things that are not working quite right with my FreeDOS install on the Lenovo ThinkPad T440p:
1) Sound beyond PC-Speaker emulation. The motherboard chipset probably supports all kinds of synthesis and digitized sound playback, but I'll need some kind of driver to access that and make it available as a virtual SoundBlaster or similar device for older DOS software to use.
2) The default mouse driver loaded by some of the FreeDOS boot options sort of works with the built-in trackpad, but seems to randomly generate button presses when in the FreeDOS edit program, which can lead to random cursor jumps, which is really frustrating. Also in Arachne, the default pointer was almost useless with the trackpad. Plugging in a USB mouse seemed to help quite a lot, or maybe loading the mouse driver manually after other stuff loaded was helping. I may need to experiment a bit more to get stable mouse behavior. (š
I just realized that last sentence would make me sound like a animal neurologist or something like that 60+ years ago.)
3) Arachne is rather crashy. I may need better setup of extended memory or something. I could also try Dillo and see if it is better.
4) Installing software originally shipped for multiple floppies is a bit hit or miss. The simple installers, such as for the Borland Turbo dev tools, just create a directory for you then copy the files from the multiple disks. I can, and did, do that manually from downloads that have multiple disk .img/.ima files by using Linux to mount and copy them to a flat folder on an USB stick. But some apps have installers that manipulate the files, or generate files from your setup parameters, or modify you autoexec.bat and config.sys, etc. etc. I don't know if there is a way to have FreeDOS virtualize the insertion of floppy disk images (or file sets in folders) one by one so the installer can load them as it wants and then prompt for the next one. I'd really like to get PC/GEOS GeoWorks Pro installed, but the installer is doing some stuff I don't know whether I can manually reproduce.
5) It doesn't have a Forth on it yet!!! I can fix that real quick though. š
