DOS ain't dead - Ranish Partition Manager revived

Ranish Partition Manager revived (Announce)

posted by boeckmann, Aachen, Germany, 17.11.2022, 11:42

> 100% agree. However, even if DOS is patched to support GPT, the raw
> partition limit will still be 2048 GiB, correct? No way around that limit,
> even with 4k sector-support, is there? And, further, the filesize limit
> shall always remain at 4096 MiB (or even 2048 MiB)?

Well I do not have insight into the FreeDOS Kernel, but if it could be patched on a source level to support GPT partitions natively chances are that the 2048 GiB limit would also fall, because that 2TiB limit is dictated by constraint of the MBR partition scheme. But I think there will be other limiting factors I am not aware of like 32-bit data types for storing LBA sector numbers etc in the kernel that had to be extended >32-bit, probably introducing compatibility problems and other stuff...

Older DOS will propably never support GPT natively but user Japheth is doing some interesting research on backward compatible workarounds according to this thread:

http://www.bttr-software.de/forum/board_entry.php?id=19502

This requires replacing the standard DOS boot loader with a loader capable of understanding GPT and doing some INT 13h trickery. Here the usual constraints (max. 2TB etc.) apply.

In my opinion the greater risk of DOS someday not beeing usable anymore on modern systems is not the large disk support but the removal of legacy BIOS API support from modern UEFI-enabled boards. But even in that field there is work going on to reimplement that. The guys from ArcaOS (OS/2) seem to have had some success with that:

https://www.arcanoae.com/uefi-support-in-arcaos-5-1-update-for-february-2022/

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Complete thread:

Ranish Partition Manager revived - boeckmann, 11.11.2022, 15:11 (Announce)
- Ranish Partition Manager revived - glennmcc, 11.11.2022, 18:40
  - Ranish Partition Manager revived - boeckmann, 11.11.2022, 21:53
- Ranish Partition Manager revived - bretjohn, 11.11.2022, 19:42
  - Ranish Partition Manager revived - boeckmann, 11.11.2022, 22:04
    - Ranish Partition Manager revived - bretjohn, 14.11.2022, 15:12
      - Ranish Partition Manager revived - Zyzzle, 17.11.2022, 03:20
        Ranish Partition Manager revived - boeckmann, 17.11.2022, 11:42
        Ranish Partition Manager revived - tom, 17.11.2022, 16:22
        Ranish Partition Manager revived - Zyzzle, 18.11.2022, 01:12
        Ranish Partition Manager revived - boeckmann, 19.11.2022, 21:03
        Ranish Partition Manager revived - ecm, 19.11.2022, 21:16
        Ranish Partition Manager revived - boeckmann, 19.11.2022, 21:46
        Ranish Partition Manager revived - bretjohn, 21.11.2022, 01:59
        Ranish Partition Manager revived - boeckmann, 23.11.2022, 15:38
        Ranish Partition Manager revived - boeckmann, 26.11.2022, 17:36
        Ranish Partition Manager revived - Zyzzle, 29.11.2022, 06:06
        Ranish Partition Manager revived - boeckmann, 29.11.2022, 09:33
        Ranish Partition Manager revived - Zyzzle, 29.11.2022, 09:35
        Ranish Partition Manager revived - boeckmann, 29.11.2022, 11:02
        Ranish Partition Manager revived - fritz.mueller, 09.01.2023, 20:09
        Ranish Partition Manager revived - boeckmann, 13.01.2023, 16:41
        Ranish Partition Manager revived - fritz.mueller, 14.01.2023, 11:41
        Ranish Partition Manager revived - boeckmann, 14.01.2023, 12:48
        Ranish Partition Manager revived - boeckmann, 14.01.2023, 13:06
        Ranish Partition Manager revived - boeckmann, 14.01.2023, 11:47
        Ranish Partition Manager revived - boeckmann, 14.01.2023, 13:22
        Ranish Partition Manager revived - rr, 14.01.2023, 14:56
        Ranish Partition Manager revived - fritz.mueller, 14.01.2023, 15:25
        Ranish Partition Manager revived - boeckmann, 14.01.2023, 22:26
        Ranish Partition Manager revived - ecm, 15.01.2023, 12:50
        Ranish Partition Manager revived - fritz.mueller, 15.01.2023, 15:32
        Ranish Partition Manager revived - boeckmann, 15.01.2023, 16:14
        Ranish Partition Manager revived - fritz.mueller, 15.01.2023, 16:49
        Ranish Partition Manager revived - boeckmann, 15.01.2023, 18:37
        Ranish Partition Manager revived - boeckmann, 15.01.2023, 18:49
        Ranish Partition Manager revived - fritz.mueller, 15.01.2023, 20:40
        Ranish Partition Manager revived - boeckmann, 16.01.2023, 13:44
        Ranish Partition Manager revived - fritz.mueller, 17.01.2023, 22:44
        Ranish Partition Manager revived - boeckmann, 17.01.2023, 23:11
        Ranish Partition Manager revived - boeckmann, 17.01.2023, 23:14
        Ranish Partition Manager revived - fritz.mueller, 18.01.2023, 12:50
        Ranish Partition Manager revived - boeckmann, 18.01.2023, 14:05
        Ranish Partition Manager revived - fritz.mueller, 18.01.2023, 14:48
        Ranish Partition Manager revived - boeckmann, 18.01.2023, 21:15
        Ranish Partition Manager revived - Japheth, 19.01.2023, 16:39
- Ranish Partition Manager revived - rr, 12.11.2022, 11:10
  - Ranish Partition Manager revived - boeckmann, 12.11.2022, 12:09
    - Ranish Partition Manager revived - rr, 12.11.2022, 21:08
- Ranish Partition Manager revived - roytam, 16.11.2022, 16:39
  - Ranish Partition Manager revived - boeckmann, 17.11.2022, 12:04
- Ranish Partition Manager revived - usotsuki, 27.11.2022, 10:00