Open pamoroso opened 3 months ago
I forget where they came from, but the files in the interlisp/DOS repo includes a DOS.md which describes a successful run by @alexshendi of Medley on DOS. @ekaltman that he was going to try to run it so please coordinate if you can.
I’ve got a couple of ISO’s that used to run under Virtualbox when I had an Intel Mac, if anyone wants them.
On Jul 20, 2024, at 10:28 AM, Larry Masinter @.***> wrote:
I forget where they came from, but the files in the interlisp/DOS repo includes a DOS.md which describes a successful run by @alexshendi of Medley on DOS. @ekaltman that he was going to try to run it so please coordinate if you can. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or unsubscribe. You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread.Message ID: @.***>
@Anzus Do you mean ISOs that contain the files of Medley's installation floppies?
The files in the Interlisp/DOS repo unzip correctly.
I'm making some progress with the floppies in the DOS repo and DOSBox-X.
Mounting disk 1 and running INSTALL.BAT
works. Then the installer prompts to insert disk 2 and I mount it, but pressing any key just repeats the prompt without proceeding. Pressing Ctrl-C
has no effect and I have to force-quit the emulator to end the session.
Here's the installation process after mounting disk 2 and pressing a few keys:
The next thing I tried with DOSBox-X and the floppies in the DOS repo is to run the installer of disk1, end the session, mount disk 2 from a new session, and run INSTALL.BAT
on disk 2. But the session repeatedly prints this error so fast it's hard to read. It's something like "bad command or filename".
Another thing I tried was to copy to C:\MEDLEY
the files listed in item 3 of section "Installation" of DOS.md and execute MEDLEY LISP.SYS -M 31 -VGA
from C:\MEDLEY
, but this crashed DOSBox-X.
Read through the install.bat so you know what it should be doing. Check if the "pause" command in a .bat file works on the DOS emulator you're running.
PAUSE
works as expected on DOSBox-X but I tried something different. Since INSTALL.BAT
contains simple commands available in DOS or on the installation disks, I ran the commands manually to copy the installation files to C:\MEDLEY
and join the ones that are split into parts.
Now I need to run UNCOMP.EXE
and feed it the right password to uncompress the password-protected ZIP files. I don't have a registration code, so I'm trying a number of ZIP cracking tools but so far without success.
keymaker.c
is the source for making keys - but I wouldn't have expected that to be used for password protected zip files, and I'm surprised they appear to be password protected, since:
briggs@macrobiotic DOS % cat floppy/dsk*/sysout*.zip >/tmp/sysout.zip
briggs@macrobiotic DOS % unzip -l /tmp/sysout.zip
Archive: /tmp/sysout.zip
Length Date Time Name
--------- ---------- ----- ----
5350400 09-24-1992 15:31 LISP.SYS
--------- -------
5350400 1 file
I can unzip
with no password these ZIPs too: FONTS.ZIP, LIB.ZIP, and SYSOUT.ZIP. But EMUL.ZIP requests a password:
paolo@lispmachine:~/medley/dos$ unzip EMUL.ZIP
Archive: EMUL.ZIP
[EMUL.ZIP] MEDLEY.EXE password:
You could copy medley.exe and emul.exe from the https://github.com/Interlisp/DOS/dos486/ directory.
On July 22, 2024 10:21:40 PM GMT+02:00, Paolo Amoroso @.***> wrote:
I can
unzip
with no password these ZIPs too: FONTS.ZIP, LIB.ZIP, and SYSOUT.ZIP. But EMUL.ZIP requests a password:***@***.***:~/medley/dos$ unzip EMUL.ZIP Archive: EMUL.ZIP [EMUL.ZIP] MEDLEY.EXE password:
-- This ain't no signature.
Success! Here is Medley on DOSBox-X launched by the command MEDLEY LISP.SYS -M 8 -VGA
:
Thanks @alexshendi, I hadn't noticed those files. I copied MEDLEY.EXE
and EMUL.EXE
(i.e. the contents of EMUL.ZIP
) from the DOS repo to C:\MEDLEY
, unzipped the other ZIPs there, removed the ZIPs from C:\MEDLEY
, and added PATH=%path%;C:\MEDLEY
to complete the actions of INSTALL.BAT
. To dismiss the initial request Please enter name of system init file
I just press Ctrl-E
.
By default Medley doesn't seem to detect all the available RAM, 16 MB on my emulated system, and I have to run it with the option -M 8
or -M 16
, otherwise it yields the error sysout_loader: can't allocate Lisp 32MBytes VM
.
SVGA mode has rendering issues, here is MEDLEY LISP.SYS -M 16 -VESA104
:
The prompt window and the Exec are duplicated, there are two mouse pointers that move in sync, and sometimes moving the mouse corrupts the desktop. I'll play with the DOSBox-X settings to see if I can improve things.
The system is pretty barebones and the background menu has only these options:
Idle
SaveVM
Snap
Hardcopy
EXEC
PSW
ROOMS.ZIP
is supposed to be on disk 5 of the installation floppy set but it's missing from our repos. Are the relevant files in DOS/rooms?
Finally, unlike what the manual of Medley for DOS states, INSTALL.BAT
doesn't update AUTOEXEC.BAT
.
The prompt Please enter name of system init file
can be dismissed also by pressing ENTER
.
For your convenience I gathered all the necessary DOS files of the MEDLEY
directory in their uncompressed and ready to run form and packed them as this ZIP file MEDLEY-DOS.ZIP:
To install it unzip the file at the root of a DOS drive, for ecample C:
, and add this to AUTOEXEC.BAT
:
PATH=%path%;C:\MEDLEY
Now Medley is ready to run:
C:
CD MEDLEY
MEDLEY LISP.SYS -M 8 -VGA
Medley runs fine on DOSBox-X also in SVGA 800x600 mode, i.e. option -VESA102
:
MEDLEY LISP.SYS -M 8 -VESA102
As is Medley can't access library files. For example, evaluating (IL:TEDIT)
yields the error:
Undefined car of form
IL:TEDIT
I added this code to the site init file C:\MEDLEY\LIBRARY\SITE-INI.LIS
:
(setq directories
'("{dsk}c:/medley/library/"))
(setq lispusersdirectories (copy directories))
But evaluating (IL:FILESLOAD TEDIT)
yields the error File TEDIT not found
.
By the way, to reflect the latest developments I'm renaming this issue to "Installing and using Medley for DOS". It may be converted to a discussion if needed.
The problem is IL:DIRECTORIES
is NIL
. Adding this to AUTOEXEC.BAT
makes Medley load the site init file correctly at startup:
SET LDEINIT=C:/MEDLEY/LIBRARY/SITE-INI.LSP
Now (IL:FILESLOAD TEDIT)
no longer fails because of the empty load path. However, loading and running TEdit fails with break windows and errors related to missing fonts and other issues I'm investigating.
Sorry, been dealing with a lot of stuff post-hurricane, haven't been tracking here, so I'll gather up a bunch of responses.
It helps to think of DOS Medley as being not really a development environment but a delivery environment. i.e., the intended use was for people to develop on another faster device, and then be able to deliver their applications on DOS by transferring the sysout or files over. There was a shell script for converting files into the 8.3 form, if memory serves. The pricing was where it was to compete with GCL, if I remember. The Wayback Machine shows the following price sheet: https://web.archive.org/web/20020207052000/http://top2bottom.net/venue_pricing.html The "run-time" version basically removed the file system code.
Re: Memory. I don't think 16 Mb of memory was available on PC's back in the early 90's. You might be better of with only 4Mb. And even that required high/low memory finagling.
Re: accessing files. Is IL:DIRECTORIES correctly being set? Is your init being loaded?
When evaluating (il:filesload tedit)
I get this break window with the error:
FONT NOT FOUND (coerced to)
(HELVETICA 8 (BOLD REGULAR REGULAR) 0 DISPLAY)
On my Linux Mint 21.3 system I'm trying to install Medley for DOS on DOSBox-X. The installer hangs and the installation files seem corrupted.
I started from the installation disks in the dsk1 to dsk5 folders of the history repo under 1990s/1993-envos/users-maiko/DOS/floppy. I
git clone
ed the repo and moved the dsk1 to dsk5 directories to a convenient location.Then I started DOSBox-X, mounted the dsk1 directory as the
A:
floppy, and ran theinstall
batch file. The installer hung the DOS session like in the screenshot, with the only option being to force-quit the emulator asCtrl-C
didn't work:The files in the installation disk folders seem password-protected and/or corrupted. Running
unzip -t
on Linux reports errors for all of the files in all of the installation disks. Here are the reports for the.zip
s on the first disk:git clone
is supposed to preserve binary files, right?Are there working DOS installation disk files or images that don't require ZIP passwords? Also, the DOS installer requests a registration code: any available codes?