If there were a standard way to control ambient light from a program (through a specific system API, for example), from FreeBasic the best way to do it would be to use the third parameter of the COLOR instruction (in original GWBASIC, and on MSX BASIC, it was supposed to control the border color, or...

There was some discussion of TSRs and FB on the forum last year sometime. You might use search to pull up that discussion. I'm pretty sure that FBC under DOS, and the executables it creates are 32-bit extended-mode programs, so they can't run on 16-bit chips like the 80286 or the 8086. Also I don't...

I guess FreeBasic would have to be enhanced with some commands to be able to manipulate the underlying computer hardware. This almost sounds like a pseudo OS, but who wants to go that route? I guess maybe I would. There is no need for commands to manipulate the hardware: most of these "pseudo ...

String concatenation changes the amount of memory occupied by a string variable, and this may require a reallocation. Reallocations are managed by the operating system, so there is no way to make them more efficient. The only way to speed up things is to reduce the number of reallocations, by preall...

In theory, the runtime library could be modified to run even in those conditions: it would be necessary to add memory handling (allocations/deallocations), and a rudimentary file system management, at least (basically, the rt library would become what is called a library OS) In that way, it would be...

jj2007 wrote:(and I doubt that FreeBasic can run on a machine that has not yet booted...)

It actually can: https://wiki.osdev.org/FreeBASIC https://wiki.osdev.org/FreeBasic_Bare_Bones

But it would be almost unusable, since the runtime libraries would not work.

A command like PAINT was supposed to work either in B/W or in a 16 color mode (it was used on BASIC dialects supposed to work on home computers like the MSX, or on PC with a CGA, or at best an EGA). Under Quick Basic it was much less useful in 256 color mode, since it was unable to recognize a borde...

caseih wrote:Ever played with Geoworks Ensemble? Amazing environment/mini OS that ran on top of MS-DOS in 16-bit real-mode.

Yes, it is now under Apache License, free and open source: https://github.com/bluewaysw/

I rather say minimalistic than lowlevel. And working through a firmware (BIOS), rather than managing the chips themselves is also not exactly lowlevel. The other OS in the same category (abstraction is done more by firmware than OS) are the older versions of Classic MacOS (say before 6/7 after whic...

DOS is a low level OS, and it offers much less abstraction than other operating systems. It can be a good thing in terms of speed and memory usage, but it also makes porting more troublesome. A programming language like GCC, FreePascal, or FreeBasic can be ported to a different platform: one would o...

Switching to V86 mode from 32-bit pmode is not slow at all. That was by design. 64-bit is not impossible. With newer VT-X, you can do many things. "Not impossible" doesn't mean "usable in everyday situations". There are plenty of "not impossible" tricks that have been ...

FreeDos is not supposed to work on a system that has no BIOS, and a port is not planned. DOS uses too many calls to BIOS INTs, and those INTs will be removed on a system that has no BIOS (the reason is that a BIOS INT calls to a 16 bit piece of code, that in 32 bit mode slows down the processor (vor...

There are some examples in QuickBasic that allow to open a .MOD file. Some can be ported to FreeBasic (but accessing the audio card is more complex in DOS FreeBasic)

Otherwise, a multiplatform library that does what you need is LibMikMod, there should be a version for DOS too

@fxm There is no real limitation in my code about the zoom factor. The maximum possible zoom depends on screen resolution, and (I guess) on the OpenGL implementation, so there is no way to document it @dodicat the flip command renders the FreeBasic screen on a square over the OpenGL mode, covering e...

I just want to remind that, if main changes are made in the runtime, the file fbc/src/rtlib/dos/symb_reg.txt must be updated, for the dos version, or dynamic linking wouldn't work. To update it, one has to build the runtime, run the file maksymbr (that will update the file symb_reg), and then recomp...