Many of us would like to be able to manage our system, including current modern FAT32 or NTFS extra large hard disks and partitions, in a full native DOS version, like 6.22, as complement to Windows 32 graphic operating environment or systems.

The main obstacle are, however: inability of full native DOS versions (prior to 6.22, included) of booting, recognizing and working with such extended advanced formats, due to a lack of proprietary DOS routines or calls in its own kernel of system. I think, however, this can be technically solved by substituing all native DOS disk routines by direct access to BIOS, and operating through them at low level, the same way many 32 bits protected mode DOS games does (through classic driver utilies such as DOS4GW); capabilities that, with its highest resolution graphical and hardware modes, were not superated, with a list of inconvenients, until Direct X introduction and development, in its successive versions.

I'm sure there'd be no problem to work in FAT32 (through a pre-programmed specific routine) if 32 bits protected mode was activated at boot time, by directly accessing BIOS. I guess a hacking/reprogramming of IO.SYS would be, at that purpose the best vacune; only the Boot Sector shoud be able to physically reach and read IO.SYS in such format.

It would be like assemblying a DOS4GW.EXE routine into DOS kernel (IO/MSDOS.SYS).

Has anybody ever tried it? Has someone else achieved some positive results, related to this field?

I'm very interested to be informed about any advances in this direction.

DeepQuasar

DpQsr

The Open Source FreeDOS, compatible with MS-DOS 6.22, can access FAT32 natively but without LFN support. Take a look at www.freedos.org to know more.

For LFN in dos you can use DOSLFN http://www.geocities.com/jadoxa/
If you want somethink like 32 bit dos, you can take a look at FreeDos-32
http://freedos-32.sourceforge.net/

I was referring to original MS-DOS versions.

I've been using FreeDOS since a while, and it's excellent, since it adds much updated support to many modern computer features, hardware and apps. Anyway, it has some important problem, it's lack of compatibility with DOS-based Windows 16 and 32 bit versions.

Also FreeDOS-32 is an option, though it's very scarcely developped, and remains unstable.

So they're hardly an alternative to current NT-based Windows versions, unlike Linux is.

Another important feature could adapting graphic API-equivalent DirectX compatibility for FreeDOS, or some other advanced DOS versions, to be able loading Windows DirectX based applications not needing to load and pass through the whole heavy and problematic/conflictive Windows 32 environment, but mainly from direct calls to BIOS or console, by translating API functions to them, and with a tiny 32 bit protected mode DOS kernel that fits on 1st conv. 640 KB RAM mem. (mantaining compatible with old 386 16/32 bit soft).

DpQsr

About running Windows applications from the DOS prompt take a look at

http://www.japheth.de/HX.html

I run this extender under FreeDOS and, while limited, find it very effective.

The developer, Japheth, is higly interested to exchange suggestions and to implement them if really promising.