Welcome! This is readme.txt for c55dos as linked to at the yoga6d.org/economy.htm EcoNomy column by Aristo T. We support the http:// style of free and open internet, and this package is given in that sense. c55dos.ova is composed of legal free sofware and runs in a 800x600 frame in VirtualBox. Cfr our rh8.ova readme.txt -- as also linked at near the top of yoga6d.org/economy.htm -- for hints of how to install VirtualBox smoothly. USE ALL SUCH CLASSIC STUFF VERY CAREFULLY, ONLY WITH A SELECTED FEW TRUSTED SITES, WHEN INTERNET IS ENABLED; AND NOT FOR SEVERAL HOURS AT A TIME. YOU MUST TAKE RESPONSIBILITY WHEN YOU HAVE THE POWER OF FREEDOM; AND YOU HAVE IT! ;-) JUST TO BE CLEAR: A VIRTUAL PC WITHIN A PC CAN REACH OUT INTO THE REST OF THE PC. IT IS MUCH SAFER THAN USING NONFIREWALLED SOFTWARE DIRECT, BUT WITH PLENTY OF OPENINGS NONETHELESS. SO BEWARE HOW YOU DO IT! Use this packages only if you respect their licenses, as included. ******************************************* * ADDED NOTES, pls read both of them! ;-) ******************************************* * Added note: this worked as specified * in VirtualBox as installed in Ubuntu 15.04 * the way described for rh8.ova. A somewhat * quicker install of VirtualBox in Ubuntu * 14.04 did run rh8.ova just fine. However, * this c55dos.ova didn't start its linux part * properly when using VirtualBox in that * somewhat earlier version of Ubuntu, and * some experimentation with settings * didn't seem to make it start either. * Perhaps it is just as well to go for * the very newest Ubuntu and the very * newest Virtualbox, installed most * carefully (e.g., after wine, and all * from command line the way indicated * with the rh8.ova readme.txt). The * rh8 is a marvel, be sure to look * up yoga6d.org/newmo.txt also, which * refers to yoga6d.org/newmo.zip * freeware and runtimes. ******************************************* * Added note: good news! and again, * good news! Ie, on two accounts. * First, it DOES work splendidly * with the earlier version of * VirtualBox in the earlier version * of Ubuntu AFTER ALL. You just have * to adjust one setting each time * you want C55 rather than DOS: * Go into the Settings -> System and * click on ENABLE APIC I/O or whatsitscalled. * That's all! * And more items of good news: * not only does the G15 PMN progamming * language start and also finish * well inside the present VirtualBox * with its whole 1024*768 screen * enabled, and its funny mouse pointer * enabled as it should, when mouse * is called on, * but the whole notion of * transferring files via FTP as * described in * norskesites.org/firth-up.txt * works so that you can get files both * into and out of both CentOS 5.5 and * into and out of Red Hat 8.0, when * you use VirtualBox on one computer, * or on more than one computer when * connected to the same router. * In fact, THIS update of the readme.txt * was written in RH8 running in ONE * frame of the VirtualBox while the * DOS part of C55DOS was running in * ANOTHER fram of VirtualBox. If you * bother to read and install all that * firth-up.txt speaks about connected * to firthftp.iso and autoexec.bat, * and adjust the network settings * of VirtualBox to Bridged Adapter * as it is spoken about in the Linux * section of firth-up.txt, then the command TOP FTPSRV * inside Firth works so that both * Red Hat 8.0, the RH8, on the same * PC, or C55 on another PC if you * like, can communicate with it, * where you can use commands on the * Terminal such as, in this example I used * to output THIS very readme.txt (in a * mind-boggling example of self-reference ;) ): ftp open 10.0.0.5 (use the number ftpsrv tells) 123456 123456 put readme.zip /DRIVE_C/README.ZIP quit * to get a zip file over. Then I used exactly * the same style of command, but with 'get' * instead of 'put', in Ubuntu, to get * the readme.zip out there. Finally, you * get to read it! ;-) The number 10.0.0.5 is * just an example, the ftpsrv tells you if you * read its output carefully after some lineshifts, * and the number may vary each time. The uppercase * and the /DRIVE_C/ prefix is mandatory when * you refer to files in Firth via this FTPSRV. * This setup, as described in firth-up.txt, * is due to works acknowleged in the ftp files * and gathered and suggested for VirtualBox * by the excellent work done by FreeDOS.org folks * (their FreeDOS is however a later version * than the modified early FreeDOS used in * Firth and with essential incompatibilities * in how files are structured on the disk, * so watch out as for any blending of the two; * it must be done with care). * Let me complete this freshly added note * to the c55dos's readme.txt by reaffirming * this: don't use any ftp from a very early * platform against the real net out there, * it may block your IP if you do so. That's * why this FTPSRV (which is best to use with * .zip files to protect lineshift differences * in style in text files and such) approach * makes lasting and enduring sense. * GOOD LUCK WITH c55dos AND rh8 ALWAYS! * And, VirtualBox folks, you're the top! * Keep up the good work and work towards * maintaining FULL Dos-compatibility! * Note also that DosBox provides an alternative * approach for running the elements of Firth * which doesn't work in such a VM. ********************************************** * COMPLETED ADDED NOTE WITH GOOD NEWS! ********************************************** This gives you a bridge to running a Linux that is a little later than the RH8 Linux in a small graphical window. It gives you also literally countless of DOS programs, as a library, and a lot of early work by the undersigned, into the format which is called Firth. This is the exact Firth as released April 10, 2006, and while it's entirely compatible with several later productions for DOS from the undersigned, this hasn't been added since the original platform (at a time when yoga4d.org and yoga6d.org had the names yoga4d.com and yoga6d.com, and before Aristo Tacoma was a main pen/artist name of the undersigned) constitute a whole of its own. And many newer productions I've done and am doing are beyond DOS; and only elements of Firth come forth in VirtualBox as the present implementation (May, 2015) of VirtualBox is. Use the rh8.ova first if you have no experience with Virtualbox for everything is more easy there as for startup and compatibilities and such (rh8 gives 1024*768 which is really a full screen). Firth by the way includes the divided- into-many-text-files EARLY scifi erotic manuscript The Manhattan Transformation by the undersigned written and rewritten in 1997 in New York and for several years and for -- after which the same adopted as artname the main character name those writings. It was during this scifi work -- in this included manus -- that the notion of the past being a kind of simulation arose -- in this context, to honor the beauty of the muses, in a way which could accomodate the limited minds of humanity. Perhaps a bit wild thinking, you might say, but it has surely led to a lot of productive thinking to view some of the past this way -- consult the Archive Page #10 as linked to from the Yoga6dOrg EcoNomy column for more terse philosophical and meta-scientific presentations of the same view. As indicated, this c55dos.ova isn't quite as easy to start as the rh8.ova, but getting at least some out of this doesn't require programming skills at all, only a little patience operating some menues and such. The present readme.txt you are reading reflects some rewriting and there are some repetitions, but it's anyhow good to read it all before doing anything with c55dos. c55dos -- moderate graphical capacities and moderate compatibilities with present-day VirtualBox -- this is free software including CentOS 5.5 and Firth DOS -- provided as a 4GB .ova for Oracle Virtualbox and compatible, divided into 8 smaller files for greater ease of download: c55dos.ova.001 .. c55dos.ova.008 These can be combined by a simple but excellent file split / merge program called GNOME Split by G Mazoyer at www.respawner.fr which normally is available at the Ubuntu Software Center and which is also avilable here: http://linux.softpedia.com/get/Desktop-Environment/Tools/GNOME-Split-52980.shtml Use the 'generic' way of merging files, as this is the standard setting and used to split the 4 GB .ova into these 8 500MB files. SoftPedia.com provides other programs which can handle this job, if you search on it -- for other platforms as well; which makes sense, as VirtualBox works for other platforms also. Be sure that when you use this file split merge program, which may has some instabilities in it, that you store the new file that you make, which gets the name c55dos.ova, in such as /home/YOURUSERNAME folder, in other words, a place where such a program has the right to write to. Then you can import it into the VirtualBox by selecting Import Appliance. At starting up, you get to select between two different operating systems. Read this whole text before you do it, for there are some settings in VirtualBox that ought to be fixed on each time you shift between the two platforms (connected to sound, and to speed/RAM-size). c55dos is a direct way to run a classic Mozilla Firefox in a 800x600 small graphical window with SOME elementary javascript enabled in it without java (compare the rh8 which has no javascript to speak of, but which has larger screen and which also runs Java applets when started with the Konqueror browser, rather than the Mozilla browser there). enabled in a straightforward manner and a selected elements from the 2006 Firth, unchanged from then, and a library of exceptional stuff for those with talent to explore such DOS-stuff (but really it should be explored in a more compatible way than with the present VirtualBox as for any DOS-stuff; VirtualBox is good with a definite set of Linuxes, though.) The DOS has sound when the setting is SoundBlaster, but CentOS provides a few bits of sound here and there when the soundcard is set, in VirtualBox at present, to the standard option "ICH AC97". The Mozilla browser included, while it has enough Javascript for all essential display in sites which aren't hooked checking the Javascript version number, isn't configured very much. With a little (or, more likely, a lot) probing you might find on the net just what browser with just which plugins work best on this platform. The rh8.ova which is a forerunner of the CentOS 5.5 works with larger screen in the present VirtualBox, it handles 1024*768 pixels. Username: root Password: helloyou When you know what you are doing, and watch over security, doing things as Administrator in Linux is pleasant. This has been a little more configured in this case, by me, than this one: Username: patricia Password: helloyou Check out selected elements of completing parts of firth-up.txt and g15sp_f.txt and also texts linked to in various ways at yoga4d.org for tips on extensions and how to do things. The firth-up is linked to at yoga6d.org/economy.htm while the g15sp_f.txt is linked to at norskesites.org/fic3. The CentOS doesn't provide a screen driver that fits with VirtualBox in its present form beyond 800x600. See the rh8.ova readme.txt on our yoga6d.org/economy.htm page for notes about how to try to restore to correct video if you happen to change it to something which doesn't boot up the video correctly -- however the file setup in CentOS is different. It isn't something you should normally want to do, because it too easily stops this linux without any obvious easy recovery option. But if you are positive that the virtual PC you have can fit with some of the video drivers of the CentOS, by all means try it if you are ready to maybe reinstall to get the video to work again in it. In this regard, the RH8, though earlier, fits much better with VirtualBox. TO SWITCH BETWEEN C55 AND DOS IN VIRTUALBOX: When you also want to call on Firth: Get used to going into VirtualBox Settings and shift platform type between DOS and Fedora and shift RAM size between 16 MB and 256 MB when you do some Firth and CentOS 5.5 with this package. However the Unknown setting, though slower, is compatible with some of the Firth things and in some cases better than the DOS setting eg for CD handling. The reduced RAM size is better for higher speed with early platforms. Be sure that SoundBlaster16 is the right soundcard setting for those packages in Firth that do use such. This is called c55dos -- CentOS 5.5 Linux with Firth DOS -- because it also has, for those who have a certain enthusiasm and interest, the Firth DOS. However individual packages such as the programming language works from our hands, and which can -- however not in a stable way -- perform in DosBox -- doesn't work in VirtualBox in its present form, although there may be other virutalisation packages that can do it. All Vesa 1024*768 256 color handling in DosBox is correct but nothing of it is correct in the present form of VirtualBox, which however handles Red Hat 8.0 so splendidly that we forgive it and recommend this package to all. Oracle has done a splendid job with it. It is better to install some DOS-things using 'Unknown' rather than 'DOS' as category but once installed they will perform fastest when the O.S. is by VirtualBox categorised as 'DOS', and this can handle Linux as well. So you have a dual-boot system with c55dos. However DOS works faster with RAM set to around 16MB but this Linux works good with e.g. 256MB and so you should find the place in Settings in VirtualBox to change RAM and be ready to do that. For a better understanding of DOS, get also DosBox and try and do experiments with running DOS straight on PC hardware -- the best obviously is a classical machine with 1024*768 (or 4"3, as it is called) format monitor with Vesa-compatible 4MB Ram videocard and, for several Firth-packages, SoundBlaster16. This free CentOS 5.5 is a classic one, which has the same structure, more or less, as our RH8 but has some more years of Linux development in it. It run Mozilla Firefox on the net with a little more javascript stuff than in the Red Hat 8.0 -- quite a lot of javascript, but not the overdone flash-like type of javascript of versions of later years. Unlike RH8, this doesn't have any Konqueror browser installed, and if you want to view a page with an applet you will have to use the command ./appletviewer http://whatever.com and find the folder where it is contained -- start by looking into cd /usr/java if I remember correctly. There are no plugins to speak of in this Mozilla, no flash, etc. So in a way, that makes it more safe and that weighs up some of the way against the fact that it hasn't the later improvements as for safety. In any case, prefer trusted pages with it, and also because any early browser and any early linux of course has many more aspects to them that can be exploited; however when you do it within a virtual PC, that has a shielding, to some extent, to most of the environment of that PC, and so it is to a certain extent safe, but only when you use it cautiously and moderately much each time. * Right-ctrl-F shifts between fullscreen and 'within-a-frame' mode in the present VirtualBox. * There are usually messages of minor issues of various types, especially from Linux, which can be ignored, during bootup and also during startup and completion and such of programs. * Go into settings and adjust RAM to 16MB for a bit improvement of the speed of the VirtualBox Firth. Put it up again for CentOS use. The Centos has the same usernames (root, patricia) and the same password (helloyou) as the RH8 package that we also link to high up in the yoga6d.org/economy.htm column. You can open a terminal and write mount /dev/hda1 /c ll /c And do various cp copy actions back and forth, and then do umount /c And in that way you have a connection with a Centos that can do decently safe Firefox operations when you think it through. To exchange files between a Virtual run O.S. and the surrounding O.S., please see the readme.txt for the rh8.ova, which is linked to at the same page, yoga6d.org/economy.htm. Do not run ftp from within a virtual run old O.S. to the real net unless you are willing to risk that firewalls of servers out there are triggered. Obviously, ftp can be used in given circumstances when one is running virtual O.S.'s -- this is done all over the place, but this is not something to experiment with -- it must only be done when one know which configuration is exactly right, and what software, set up in what way, can do it. The C55DOS contains the free open source CentOS, which is a rework of the free open source Fedora, and this is made several years later than the Red Hat 8.0, which, instead of becoming 9.0, became Fedora. So, compared to our rh8.ova, this c55dos.ova has a Linux with somewhat more powerful Mozilla Firefox and such. It also has a DOS-part, the large work we put in to gather legally free independent packages and, as completed somtime in 2006, for the first time woven together as coherent as can be, and with very early language developments compared to what is now the G15 PMN language, several big programs and menu approaches as well. However: Virtualbox in its present form simply doesn't do DOS very well. It should be twenty times faster and it should do the VESA Video standard instead of just blue-ing or blacking the screen in most interesting cases. (Here, DosBox is generally better, although DosBox is an unstable program during certain mouse-operations in Allegro.) It should allow the text mode screen to be twice as big. But this .ova can be imported into other virtualisation packages and some of them might do the DOS thing far more correctly and fast. The value of the rich Firth nonetheless: When we include this original unchanged vast form of an early-and-strongly-modified FreeDOS with the hundreds of DOS-packages, it is intended as a reference background for those who wish to work out things, and who has a particular interest. * After some lineshifts and such, during the wait for Firth to start up, type XO to get to command line instead of typing NOW as it suggests. Type U to get the text menu and B for another. Many commands here have no practical function in the present VirtualBox. They are also hard to read the way VirtualBox handles the text mode in DOS. Type u6 and press enter and enter again to search the disk for all its free sound bits, including Vivaldi and Bach mp3's. Press the letter a to alternate selection until they arise. Press the letter q and lineshift to exit back to the U menu. * You can power off the virtual Firth without upsetting the file structure typically even in the midst of most programs. * Change the AUTOEXEC.BAT by the editor which comes up with the command E (all acknowledgements for the gigantic Firth package are included all over the place, very faithfully!) * Those programs which give no output can usually be exited by trying out such as Enter, ESC, Alt-X, Spacebar or Ctr-C. * The firth was changed several times as for its startup and names of its main menus so some of its messages and suggestions are a bit confusing. * Running firth.iso directly on a Y2000 style of PC can be extended fruitfully by all the g15sp_f.zip at the norskesites.org/fic3. * At norskesites.org/fic3 is a new AUTOEXEC.BAT (cfr the 'Autonati' section there), which can be a starting-point for modifying this Firth so it starts better. The firth-up.txt linked to at the yoga6d.org/economy.htm page has useful extra information and also shows where the firth.iso exists, which is this unchanged. * In archived pages linked to from norskesites.org/fic3 there is stuff about firthftp which can be used to exchange files between VirtualBox and the surrounding platform without going through the CentOS on top. The CentOS on a physical PC -- and there it often installs on more videocards than RH8 (though most newer videocards require newer linuxes) has been tested to run the y6.zip package flawlessly enough, as it has compatibility enough to run the standard classic SDL 1.2 library. It is an excellent Linux. It will usually often come with an 'updates available' poster, it turns out that there aren't much meaningful updates to this done in THAT way, but you can find individual packages, also some of those which work for RH8, that you can extend it with as much as you want. As said, To install Virtualbox most elegantly, check out the readme.txt for the rh8.ova at our yoga6d.org/economy.htm. And try and keep links to these giant files so that we get only moderate quantity of people accessing them, in order not to put too much pressure on our dear servers. A.Tacoma 3 mai 2015