GRCDOS improvements

  • SpinRite v6.1 Release #3
    Guest:
    The 3rd release of SpinRite v6.1 is published and may be obtained by all SpinRite v6.0 owners at the SpinRite v6.1 Pre-Release page. (SpinRite will shortly be officially updated to v6.1 so this page will be renamed.) The primary new feature, and the reason for this release, was the discovery of memory problems in some systems that were affecting SpinRite's operation. So SpinRite now incorporates a built-in test of the system's memory. For the full story, please see this page in the "Pre-Release Announcements & Feedback" forum.
    /Steve.
  • Be sure to checkout “Tips & Tricks”
    Dear Guest Visitor → Once you register and log-in please checkout the “Tips & Tricks” page for some very handy tips!

    /Steve.

  • BootAble – FreeDOS boot testing freeware

    To obtain direct, low-level access to a system's mass storage drives, SpinRite runs under a GRC-customized version of FreeDOS which has been modified to add compatibility with all file systems. In order to run SpinRite it must first be possible to boot FreeDOS.

    GRC's “BootAble” freeware allows anyone to easily create BIOS-bootable media in order to workout and confirm the details of getting a machine to boot FreeDOS through a BIOS. Once the means of doing that has been determined, the media created by SpinRite can be booted and run in the same way.

    The participants here, who have taken the time to share their knowledge and experience, their successes and some frustrations with booting their computers into FreeDOS, have created a valuable knowledgebase which will benefit everyone who follows.

    You may click on the image to the right to obtain your own copy of BootAble. Then use the knowledge and experience documented here to boot your computer(s) into FreeDOS. And please do not hesitate to ask questions – nowhere else can better answers be found.

    (You may permanently close this reminder with the 'X' in the upper right.)

D

DarkwinX

Well-known member
Sep 17, 2020
114
26
Melbourne, Australia
Those of you who were testing in the earlier days would remember an incarnation of freeDOS that was titled SpinDOS.

It had a few extra features such as power commands which I feel might be useful especially for those of us who are using Zimaboards with no power buttons.

Is it worth merging the two together?
 
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I'm not recalling things the way you are, @DarkwinX.

To the best of my recollection, “SpinDOS” was never more than my tweaking FreeDOS to be tolerant of non-FAT formatted drives and partitions. There was some of that early on, but I added more a few months ago.

There is a FreeDOS command “fdapm” (which stands for FreeDOS Advanced Power Management) that comes in quite handy when it's combined with a few "aliased" command shortcuts. For example, my autoexec.bat files always contain:

alias reboot=fdapm warmboot
alias shutdown=fdapm poweroff
alias off=fdapm poweroff
Click to expand...
(I also have...)
alias eda=edit c:\autoexec.bat
alias edc=edit c:\config.sys
Click to expand...

So, this allows me to perform a reboot with the command "reboot" or to power off the machine with the command "off". And if I want to edit the autoexec.bat file, the command "eda" does that. :)
 
I guess I remembered it being more than the Blue themed DOS. I tried to spin it up again to see if there was anything else but I could not get it to load.

Oh well!

For those looking to add fpadm to their GRCDOS USB you can grab it from the FreeDOS archive GitLab
gitlab.com

Base · GitLab

FreeDOS BASE packages
gitlab.com gitlab.com
 
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