DOS ain't dead - NOKEYB Release 1

NOKEYB Release 1 (Announce)

posted by rr , Berlin, Germany, 16.03.2021, 22:41

> So good job you overcome that stupid obstacle. BTW does it have real
> (OTP)ROM or is it flashable? Maybe you could do a permanent mod by reflash,
> otherwise only by changing ROM chip by flashROM...

I have no idea. I didn't find tech specs at that level and haven't opened the housing of my Organizers so far.

> BTW I wondered why you not tried SHELL to point a different autoexec.bat
> but seems to be valid only for DOS 6.0 and newer (you had a luck that
> config.sys is editable).

There's a R/O C:\CONFIG.SYS and a R/W E:\CONFIG.SYS on a RAM disk.

Processing order on the Organizer is:
1) C:\config.sys,
2) E:\config.sys,
3) C:\autoexec.bat,
4) A:\autoexec.bat, (by C:\autoexec.bat)
5) E:\autoexec.bat. (by C:\autoexec.bat)

I had partial success now: I transferred COMMAND.COM from a German MS-DOS 5 installation disk to E:\. Then I added a line "SHELL=E:\COMMAND.COM E:\ /D /P" to E:\CONFIG.SYS. "/D" is an undocumented option in DOS 5, as I learned today. It skips processing C:\AUTOEXEC.BAT. Unfortunately that means, (A:|E:)\AUTOEXEC.BAT is also skipped. So on each boot you have to start E:\AUTOEXEC.BAT manually. Of course, you can rename E:\AUTOEXEC.BAT to something shorter, e.g., GO.BAT.

According to MEM maximum memory for executable program is 1,888 byte less than with my NOKEYB driver and built-in COMMAND.COM. COMMAND.COM from my installation disk takes more memory (4,832+256 bytes vs. 2,752+256 bytes). The ROM edition is a special build probably. And don't forget the 50K disk space on E:\ for COMMAND.COM...

> The DOS 6.0 COMMAND.COM option /K= sets the name of the AUTOEXEC.BAT
> file. COMMAND.COM /K=mybat.bat is a handy way to set up a DOS session from
> Windows.

I tried "/C" instead with DOS 5 COMMAND.COM and the Organizer is stuck in a boot loop now. :-| I have to restart from scratch. ;-) :-(

> Maybe you could try make your device driver to patch a specific memory
> location with "autoexec.bat" string, of course in case that DOS kernel is
> loaded to RAM and not executed directly from ROM.

"ver/r" says "DOS is in ROM".

My idea is a second device driver to ~~kill fopen() for C:\AUTOEXEC.BAT. Or even better:~~ redirect fopen() for C:\AUTOEXEC.BAT to E:\AUTOEXEC.BAT. This will render NOKEYB useless, but it's okay.

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Complete thread:

NOKEYB Release 1 - rr, 14.03.2021, 21:42 (Announce)
- NOKEYB Release 1 - RayeR, 15.03.2021, 23:05
  - NOKEYB Release 1 - rr, 16.03.2021, 22:41
    - NOKEYB Release 1 - rr, 17.03.2021, 22:37
      - NOKEYB Release 1 - RayeR, 19.03.2021, 04:49
- NOKEYB Release 2 - rr, 30.05.2021, 22:55
- NOKEYB Release 3 - rr, 17.06.2021, 23:23
  - NOKEYB Release 3 - rr, 18.06.2021, 18:44
    - NOKEYB Release 3 - rr, 18.06.2021, 23:29