Ben C shared this interesting website that uses FreeDOS: "8BitWorkshop provides a web-based IDE that targets multiple systems. The x86 target runs FreeDOS in the browser and allows you to explore the memory map and watch memory contents in real time. It can export to github or .zip files." Retrocomputing enthusiasts will also want to check out the other hardware targets, including the Apple II+, Commodore 64, and Atari 2600.

SvarDOS is an open-source project that is meant to integrate the best out of the currently available DOS tools, drivers and games. SvarDOS aims to collect available DOS software, package it and make it easy to find and install applications using a network-enabled package manager (like apt-get, but for DOS and able to run even on a 8086 PC). Once installed, SvarDOS is a minimalistic DOS system that offers only the FreeDOS kernel and the most basic tools for system administration. It is up to the user to install additional packages. Care is taken so SvarDOS remains 8086-compatible, at least in its most basic (core) configuration. You can find it at the SvarDOS website.

I had a lot of fun in last weekend's virtual get-together. And folks said they'd be interested in doing this again, so I wanted to schedule the next one. Hold the date for the next virtual get-together: we'll gather on Sunday, March 21. Since the time works for most people, let's plan the next one for the same time (11am US/Central - use your favorite time zone converter to find your local time.) Just like last time, we'll do it on BlueJeans Meetings. You can join using the BlueJeans Meeting client, or join directly from any (modern) web browser. I'll post the meeting URL here when the meeting starts on March 21.

Tom Ehlert has released an update to FreeDOS FDISK. This version fixes a serious bug "when creating logical drives, using 'use maximum size', FDISK would allow to create an additional partition of size 0, trashing the complete disk partitioning." This bug appears to be resolved in FDISK 1.3.4. Please download the new version and test. You can download it from Tom's website as fdisk134.zip {zip file} or mirrored in the FreeDOS files archive under /dos/fdisk on ibiblio. Thanks, Tom!

Dos32pae is a program that is supposed to be added (by a linker) to a 32-bit PE binary - a so-called "stub". The stub is executed when the binary is launched in DOS. As Japheth describes it, "Using PAE paging, this tiny 'DOS extender' - although 32-bit and thus limited to 4GB of address space - is able to use huge amounts of memory. There's a sample supplied, Alloc.asm, that demonstrates this feature, backfilling 4092 MB of "linear" memory with physical memory allocated via XMS v3.5 beyond the 4 GB barrier." Dos32pae is under the open source MIT license. You can find it at Dos32pae's GitHub