4DOS

[Nick Stockton]

well if no one is able to find the last version of the ASAP demo/update from 
2001/2002 I still have it.
I got it off of the MicroTalk website before it went down years ago and now 
it appears the domain name was taken by a domain snatcher.
As far as running dos off of a USB thumb drive it wasn't that hard and I was 
surprised no one has ever done it before.
Still everyone I tell about it is very amazed and impressed so that's nice 
*grin*.
First of all the computer I did this on was made before USB was very popular 
it was running win 95 version A when I got it so it had no concept of how to 
boot from a USB port.
After I put a USB PCI card in it what I did was to take a win 98 boot disc I 
had lying around and put some USB mass storage device drivers for dos on it.
I also put some other things like generic cd drivers on it.
After that I used gnu/Linux to format the USB thumb drive with a fat file 
system.
I next took my USB thumb drive and copied to it all my old dos programs and 
utilities from my very first computer's hard drive which I still have even 
though my first computer it's self is long gone.
Lastly I booted from the floppy with the USB thumb drive plugged in and 
after typing "sys c:" I added "SET COMSPEC=C:\COMMAND.COM" to 
a:\autoexec.bat as well as adding the correct paths for everything to it.
Now when ever I want to boot it up I just have to be sure the floppy is in 
the drive and it will boot automatically.
After it is done booting I can remove the floppy and I won't need to stick 
it in again till the next time I need to boot dos.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Tony Baechler" <tony at baechler.net>
To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." <speakup at braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Sunday, February 24, 2008 8:20 AM
Subject: Re: 4DOS


> Hi,
>
> This is unofficial and you shouldn't take my word for it, but I have
> information from an undisclosed source that Larry Skutchan, (spelling?)
> doesn't really care what happens with Microtalk products anymore since
> they're long gone out of business anyway.  I didn't get this from him
> and this specifically didn't mention ASAP, but I doubt if anyone would
> complain if a registered version was floating around somewhere.
> Vocal-Eyes is still being sold for $250 but I wouldn't buy it.
> Fortunately I still have it from when my parents bought it for me
> several years ago.
>
> How do you play TADS and Glulx games in DOS?  I had to compile
> interpreters under Linux because the DOS programs worked so poorly.
> Mostly it's a problem with direct screen writes (apparently ASAP handles
> this better than most other screen readers) but it's also a memory
> issue.  TADS has a plain mode but that gives no status line and breaks
> menus.  It would be nice to find interpreters which support sound and no
> graphics.  Also, how did you set up the USB to boot and actually work in
> DOS?  What DOS version are you running?
>
> Nick Stockton wrote:
>> jaws for dos can be gotten from the following URL
>> http://www.freedomscientific.com/fs_downloads/jdosfree.exe
>> I do not like it ASAP is much better IMO but I guess if you can't buy 
>> asap
>> any more then jaws for dos is better than nothing.
>> I'm so lucky my mom knew her 5 year old son would one day be a hobbyist 
>> in
>> to old computer systems and bought me a copy of ASAP and a litetalk back
>> when they were still being sold in the 90s.
>> I have a giant old computer from the 90s in the other room I put a very 
>> old
>> USB card in and after some messing around with dos drivers and a win98 
>> boot
>> disc I still have, I now have a entire dos system running off of a cheepo
>> 1-gig USB thumb drive complete with loads of games mainly z-code as they 
>> are
>> best played in dos using ASAP.
>> You can play them under gnu/Linux using frotz but some times it wants to
>> reread messages it already read so playing using dos frotz with ASAP for 
>> me
>> is better.
>> ----- Original Message ----- 
>
>
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