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Alternative Operating Systems

All Links are at the bottom !
Revised: Nov 16, 1998.
Idea Copyright © 1998 by Thorleif Bundgaard.
All trademarks or product names mentioned herein are the property of their respective owners.

If you have any comments, corrections, or additions to this page, or any of these links then send me an E-mail:
E-Mail and Mirror page.

- FRAME -

The FRAME operative system is a novel idea for an alternative PC operating system by (Thorleif Bundgaard)

A view of the DESKTOP

A view of the DESKTOP.FEX

Use PC-BIOS with extended support for rudiment floppy, harddisk and CDROM driver parts to boot all needed components.
ALL components are Concurrent multitasking.

Booting sequence
Application layer for multiple concurrent applications

FrameDOS is multitasking

Device drivers are selected from a large range, to fit the actual hardware on the machine, and is therefore optimised for the configuration.

Anti virus security.

All applications are kept in a frame, NO common files.
App's may Read/Write freely in own frame
App's may read Whole disk, but only write if given this right by the OS.
Data may be redirected to a user data area.

Installation

All programs install in their own directory, and may NOT share any common setting or driver files, unless specifically instructed so. (Package programs may install in subdir's to a common directory and share files in the common dir)

IO

All IO is driver based:
Screen. Key. Printer. Floppy. Serial. Harddisk. Modem. Scanner. CDROM.

There are 3 driver types:

Byte based
Block based(Record) With/Without realtime interrupt option
File based With/Without realtime interrupt option

Nagging

Any greeting images or nag-text is prohibited
Greetings and hello's are placed in the about box

Folders may:

Show [Move, Size, Min, Max, Close, Switch to, About]
Minimize to a holder at the screen bottom, The width may change to show program info like time or %done but may never exceed 1 line of max 64 pixels
Maximize to whole screen
Close back to their Icon

Additional 3.9.1998:

An other approach to the concept, adding specifics to the above You start with an empty desktop, always in graphic mode.
Clicking anywhere will bring up the Commander. The commander will initially be showing one directory, a Button in top right may expand it to a 2 directory view.
Folders contain user correctable documents in any tree structure
Packets contain programs and their associated config and data files. if we open a packet, it will (by default) show the programs only
Any file is described by: Name(20 char) Extension(3 char)[Linking it to its creator] Date of modification, Protection (RO,RW), Version no xx.xx, ident no xxxxx Ident no is the producers free choise, but mus te unique for the product lifetime.
Packets may be deleted all together, but no individual files in a packet may be deleted or overwritten, except it may be updated by another file if: The new file have the same Name and Ident no.
Deleting and updating of packet files can ONLY be done from the commander.
To install a PACKET, you use the commanders Install option.
Files may be dragged unto the desktop,
When packet programs are dragged, Only links are established, Programs dont move
On the desktop the links may be deleted by selecting their properties (Right click)
Folders may also be dragged onto the desktop
Any file may be moved to/from the desktop and folders. To move a copy of a file, right click, select COPY. drag the shadowy copy icon to its destination

FOLDERS have a clipboard, any object may be stored in the multipage clipboard on its way between applications.
Standard supported filetypes: GIF, JPG, DRW, CAL, HTM, TXT, DAT(database), SCR, MP3, WAV, MID
Independant of the internal formats of a program, Once you clip/copy, the data must be in one of these formats.
All programs MUST accept the relevant types.
There is NO close button, because you just turn off the power.

FRAME Explorer is the internet browser.
when running in Advanced mode, it gives virtually the functionality of Microsoft browser 4.
Running in 'Simple mode' the browser will give the following buttons:
Back, Forward, Home, Print, Email, write URL, FTP transfer, and ZIP-PAGE: pressing this button will pack the whole page including pictures music etc to a compressed page copy.
when activating, user may select to zip what is currently on screen (For later inspection and printout) or to fetch and zip to a certain depth, trying to get all link references. A flag may be set to limit link fetches to "The same basic URL" so as not to branch away from the current page due to a hit on a links page.
Favorites: may receive the current page URL (Or a manually entered URL) and will allow you to jump to the requested page. Favorites are saved in HTML format, and may as such be copied to other PC's using Microsoft or Netscape. A small utility program is included to read 'M' or 'N' favorites, and to update them to the current FRAME favorites.
The browser support Frames, midi and Javascript, extensions may be added for mp3, video, live audio/video, wav.
Cookies may be: Enabled, Ask for permission, Denied.
The computer may set a firewall on a cookie/download directory. so that ALL disk writes are disabled if anything is read from this directory.
FRAME explorer support a NEW semafor (Cookie replacement) allowing a server to send a small semafor file (Max 256 byte of text) and to read a semafor file, the 20+3 letter filename is used for accessing the semafor. The semafor file can then hold the information needed by the server, as to - what was the last access, what is your favorite language etc. but by being passive text files, they present no risk to the system.

Email will open a mail window, allowing to: Send New mail, a Mail import function allow copying of a mail to a new mail. New mail is always sendt as HTML, and support attachments and a NEW DRAW function similar to WORKS draw
Reply
Send and Receive mail.
Received mail, is always converted to a HTML-ZIP file and stored in a directory
Received mail, can be set up to store in one of 15 folders, depending on 'If a certain word is present in the contents line'
If a folder is on a networked machine that is not yet on, then the mail pendles in the INBOX waiting for the target PC to sign on to the net.
Received mail, can be set up to always COPY all mail to a directory, acting as the backup directory. Independantly of where it is sendt by other commands

NETWORKS

FRAME support ethernet (on a file basis), but also support a small RS232 ring packet net, allowing upto 10 (15) users on a cheap connection.
All connected computers may share their printers, internet access or other equipment.
The network is FLAT, assuming that NO hostile persons have access. FRAME is a personal system for one user, upto small compagnies (Shops) with max 15 users, assuming that all users behave good.
NO firewalls are available, and the only protection is the directory locks.

SHARING directories require security against inadvertant actions, thus any directory (and its branches) may be set to:
Free Read/Write, No R/W, Read only, Read only+Write but no delete or overwrite, Read only but write allowed by a certain program-ie the email program.
Changing the directory accesses can only be done on the PC having the directories, after having entered a password.

- FreeDOS Links -

Here are links to other suppliers of Free and alternative DOS systems

Best

Ok

Other's

FreeDOS Links Page

from freedos@sunsite.unc.edu Of course, here is the obligatory list of stuff that is either free, or DOS, or both. Have at it.
If you are after FreeDOS mirror sites please see the info page.
If you would like to have a link added here send me bundgard@post8.tele.dk an Email
Or contact my source of data at mtoal@crsd.k12.ak.us

RxDOS Home Page - RxDOS is another MS-DOS compatible operating system
SuperDOS - Bluebird Systems high-performance multitasking DOS system
Yahoo! DOS - See? FreeDOS is rated as a cool site!
DOSEMU - DOSEMU for Linux Home Page
Digital Research - The Untold Story - Why Novell bought DR-DOS?
DJ Delorie's 16-bit DJGPP - A work in progress for a 16-bit DJGPP for DOS development

Other Free OS information 

JOS Home Page - developing a free Java based operating system
NASM - The Netwide Assembler Project
Dunfield Development Systems - Home of the MICRO-C freeware C compiler
Free Systems Journal - New magazine devoted to covering free OS scene

DOS Software Archives 

Simtel.net MS-DOS page - The grandfather of archives for MS-DOS net-wide
Point Mudge BBS DOS_Internet Collection - Essential Internet for DOS utility archive
Tvdog's Internet Archive - Extensive DOS-Internet software archive with great "how-to" info
Setting up Email in DOS with today's ISP using  PPP - Excellent tutorial DOS-Internet setup
The FDISK.COM DOS Internet Pages - Home of Bobcat DOS WWW Browser
PPP & Internet Applications for DOS - Nigel's "unfinished list" of DOS-Internet apps
RealmSpace for the DOS - Another DOS/Internet archive
C/C++ Users Group (CUG) Home Page - Tons of source code!

FreeDOS People 

James Hall - Founder of the FreeDOS Project
Steffan Kaiser - Another long time contributor (FTP directory)
Tim Norman - Original author of the FreeDOS COMMAND.COM
Yury Semenov - Long time FreeDOS contributor
Morgan "Hannibal" Toal -
Pat Villani - Author of the DOS-C kernel
Bill "BearHeart" Weinman - Long time supporter and gracious provider of www.freedos.org GEM, NewDeal, NeoSoft, Quikmenu, Volkov.