The FreeDOS Project News

X-VESA is a DOS diagnostic program for in-depth analysis and verification of VESA interfaces on real hardware, written entirely in x86 assembly language. Thanks to Marco for sharing this program. See X-VESA on GitHub for more information, including a full list of features and source code. X-VESA is available under the GNU GPL v3.

If you want to play DOS games on modern hardware, another option to emulate SoundBlaster is VSBHDA, the Virtual Sound Blaster for HDA sound cards. Thanks to Japheth for releasing an updated VSBHDA with several fixes, including: fixed regression in v1.8: sound may have been distorted in Open Cubic Player, and contains preliminary hdpmi v3.24. Download the latest release from VSBHDA on GitHub or more directly from version 1.9.

Classic DOS games talk directly to sound hardware, such as a SoundBlaster. Modern systems don't have SoundBlaster cards, but you can use SBEMU to emulate one on DOS, so your DOS games will work on new hardware. DOS developer Crazii is doing some new work in VDPMI with dynamic switching of PVI that helps against some stuttering. VDPMI and SBEMU both have several fixes. Check out the latest updated via the Vogons message board for more news.

Mathias Eberle wrote: "I created a single-pass self-compiling BASIC compiler for DOS, targetting 8086/8088 and size optimized COM files as output. The compiler itself generates NASM-compatible code. But since NASM usually generates 386+ code, I have also included a special assembler written in BASIC, so that the toolchain is complete. The language is pretty compatible (subset) to GWBASIC and QBasic/QuickBASIC." You can find it at BASCOMP on GitHub. Note that "development was assisted by a coding AI" so we are unlikely to include this in FreeDOS. Mathias has shared BASCOMP under the CC0 "public domain" license.

NetHack 5.0 is an enhancement to the dungeon exploration game NetHack, which itself is a distant descendent of Rogue and Hack. NetHack 5.0 was released a few weeks ago, and includes some general architectural improvements to the game and to its build process. You can read the announcement or download the new version via the NetHack website. Most importantly, the binary releases include a DOS version.

FDNPKG16 is a 16-bit network-enabled package manager for FreeDOS. Victoria Crenshaw (sparky4) has announced a new version v0.99.8254 with several new fixes and updates: A new download feature means you can download files into the current working directory. And you can now press y or n for the force package install choice. This version also fixed the no packet driver issue, it will quit if there is no packet driver. Find more details and download the new version from Victoria's FDNPKG16 package page. FDNPKG16 is open source, under the MIT license.

Volkov Commander is a small but powerful file manager for DOS. Volkov Commander was originally shareware, but Vsevolod recently released the Volkov Commander source code as open source, using the 2-clause BSD license. You can find the original sources for Volkov Commander 4.05 and Volkov Commander 4.99.09 alpha on Vsevolod V. Volkov's website. Danila Sukharev has also created a VC on GitHub project to archive the sources.

If you use EtherSlip to get your DOS system online, developer Michael Brutman has released EtherSlip 11.8, based on EtherSlip 11.7 from the Crynwr packet driver collection. This new version of EtherSlip fixes two bugs: 1. The incorrect MAC address was being set in the simulated Ethernet header. This broke mTCP NetDrive and possibly other programs. 2. The code in EtherSlip that simulates ARP responses has a pointer bug in it. This can cause data corruption or crash your program any time it tries to send an ARP request. Get the updated EtherSlip 11.8 from Michael's Device Driver collection. EtherSlip is open source, under the GNU GPL v1.

DOS-era games expect to use a SoundBlaster or other sound card, which aren't available on modern hardware. Instead, if you run DOS on a modern PC (like a laptop) then you need to emulate a SoundBlaster. That's what SBEMU does: "Emulate Sound Blaster and OPL3 in pure DOS using modern PCI-based (onboard and add-in card) sound cards." DOS developer crazii released a new 1.0.0 beta.rc6 version last week, with new fixes and features, including performance improvements. Find the new release at SBEMU on GitHUb. SBEMU is open source, under the GNU GPL v2 license.

DUGL is a super fast, 32bits/DOS only/ C, Assembly Game library using software rasterizer. This project is an attempt to create a new version of DUGL that provides much of the same functionality as the Dust Ultimate Game library. DUGL version 1.0 alpha 3 was released last week with these features: - Add experimental sound decoding/support using Sound Blaster 16 driver - Improve config file with new sound audio paramters, true|false to enable/disable - Add reverting to 640x480 if selected config file video resolution isn't available - Keyboard 'P' now pause continue playing current video. Tested successfully with freedos/csmwrap/vsbhda. Download the new version from DUGL on GitHub or download directly as a zip file

If you're interested in learning a new programming language, you might be interested in XPL0. From the website: "XPL0 is essentially a cross between Pascal and C. It looks somewhat like Pascal but works more like C. It was originally created in 1976 by Peter J. R. Boyle, who designed it to run on a 6502 microprocessor as an alternative to BASIC." XPL0 is available under the GNU GPL2. More information at the XPL0 website.

MicroWeb is a web browser for DOS that runs as a 16-bit real mode application and is designed to run on minimal hardware. To run it, you will need at least an 8088 CPU, CGA/EGA/VGA/Hercules graphics, network interface, at least 640k memory. Basically, any DOS machine should run this. The latest release is version 2.1, which includes XMS memory support, simple file download support, optimized memory usage, and several bug fixes. Get it from MicroWeb 2.1 on GitHub

Victoria continues to update the FDNPKG command-line network-aware package manager. The newest release includes an updated Kitten library to support multiple languags, and now has / support so you can use more DOS-like command line options. The latest version is at FDNPKG16 releases. Please download and help with testing.

Stefan Mader created a very interesting editor that programmers may find useful: VCode is a Text/Hex-Editor and NC-like file manager for DOS. Stefan notes that it's "not yet optimized for performance or stage space" but it works well on real hardware. The editor runs in graphics mode, so you get a higher resolution, which means more lines of text. And I find it is clear enough for writing code. You can find it at VCode on GitHub

You can help test FreeDOS by downloading the monthly test release. This is a "preview" or "test" version of the FreeDOS distribution that we release every month (thanks to Jerome for making the distributions!) The monthly test releases are named like Tyymm, like T2603 for "March 2026," and contain all of the latest updates so you can see how things work together. Read the "changes.log" file to see what's changed in each test release. The big changes in T2603 include: new versions of fdnpkg16, country.sys, ldebug .. and notably, the new FreeDOS Kernel with support to run Windows 3.x. We've updated the FreeDOS Download page with a link to get the monthly test release.

Ben Collver has been working to compile the BCC compiler in 16-bit DOS. BCC is "Bruce's C Compiler," an old "barely ANSI" C compiler that produces 8086 assembler for tiny/small models. Ben recently shared versions for testing. He adds: "The 32-bit version requires HXRT to run on DOS" and "0.6.21 and 1.0.1 are both OpenWatcom builds. The compiler is too large to compile itself." Version 0.16.21 is probably the one to try, as Ben notes that "1.0.1 has a bunch of changes, some good, and others i don't trust yet. So i am keeping both copies around for now." You can find it at Ben's BCC page. We've also mirrored it on the FreeDOS Files Archive at Ibiblio under files/devel/c/bcc. Note: Ibiblio is currently running very slow.

CSMWrap is an EFI application designed to be a drop-in solution to enable legacy BIOS booting on modern UEFI-only (class 3) systems. "It achieves this by wrapping a Compatibility Support Module (CSM) build of the SeaBIOS project as an out-of-firmware EFI application, effectively creating a compatibility layer for traditional PC BIOS." That means you can boot classic operating like FreeDOS directly on newer EFI-only laptops and PCs. The developers "highly recommended that the partition table used is MBR" for compatibility. Find it at CSMwrap on GitHub. Version 2.0.0 was released in February.

The LABEL command creates, changes or deletes the volume label of a disk. Version 1.6 is a release of changes from Andrew Bird from a few years ago. It adds support in the CATS enabled version to use language specific response characters for Yes and No. Functionally it is otherwise the same as v1.5, only Open Watcom build is provided, but it still supports all previously supported compilers. You can find it at LABEL on GitHub, and the new version is the LABEL 1.6 release tag.

Victoria Crenshaw has been working on updates to FDNPKG16, a network-aware package manager for FreeDOS. Version 0.99.8253c was released last week with fixes and updates: * Updated translations. * Polished some things with the code. * Functionally should be the same as previous minor version. You can download it from the Package FDNPKG16 page on Victoria's server.

DUGL Player is a GUI video player for DOS systems, released by developer 'ffk' on February 28. The player uses external libraries LibOGG, LibVorbis and LibTheora, and supports WEBM and MPEG4. It's still in "alpha" status, and is missing several features including video sound, video seeking, detecting and handling orientation, and aspect ratio. You can find it at DOS-DUGL on GitHub.

Jemm is an "Expanded Memory Manager" (EMM), based on the source of FreeDOS emm386. Jemm386 is the standard version which needs an external eXtended Memory Manager (XMM; examples: HimemX, MS Himem, XMGR ) to be loaded, and JemmEx is the extended version which has an XMM already included. Japheth has released Jemm version 5.86, with several fixes and features. Read the details at the Jemm release page on GitHub. We've also mirrored this on the FreeDOS files archive at ibiblio, under /files/dos/emm386/jemm

The FreeDOS Kernel (kernel.sys) is the core part of FreeDOS. Jeremy Davis has been collecting changes to the FreeDOS kernel, and recently announced a new version. Jeremy writes: "I haven't had the time to have this where I'd like it to be, but there are so many improvements from others since the last release .. I recommend using the latest release (or even automatic builds from GitHub for testing)." Kernel 2044 is an incremental maintenance release with a mix of build fixes, boot/runtime edge‑case fixes, and compatibility updates. Thanks to everyone who contributed to this version, including Andrew Bird, Bernd Böckmann (boeckmann), Jeremy Davis, C. Masloch (ecm), Tee-Kiah Chia (tkchia), Sava (lpproj), Stas Sergeev (stsp), Jiri Malak (jmalak), Tom Ehlert, and others!... read more

Victoria Crenshaw has been working on updates to FDNPKG16, a network-aware package manager for FreeDOS. Victoria shared version 0.99.8253a with these updates: * fixed a bug in dumpcfg with install sources flag being inverted * httpget.exe unlinks files that fail to download * fixed a lot of copyrights headers and variable names * fdinst16.exe has multi-package install and remove features. You can download the latest version that is stable at fdnpkg16.zip (4ch.mooo.com) {zip file} or you can try a development version {zip file}. Victoria is looking for people to test the latest version, and to suggest changes or improvements.

Ben Collver recently announced an update to the Calvin vi editor. If you like Unix vi editor, you might like Calvin. The changes in this version are key mapping: * End -- Map to $ instead of L * Home -- Map to 0 instead of H * R -- Replace mode * :previous -- edit the previous file from the argument list * { or }-- move backward or forward by paragraph. This editor requires 128K of memory, and also supports EGA 43-line and VGA 50-line modes. Get the new version from Archive.org and the source code from the Ben's Calvin repo.

Thanks to Laaca for sharing a new version of the Fontana font editor. Laaca writes: "Fontana is tool for developers. It is a bitmap font editor (with ability to import from some vector formats) which allows you to create, convert and edit fonts stored in many file formats. It shares some portions of code with my older project Kasmar which also was a font editor much simpler and with many limitations." Changes in 1.2 include: + support for unproportional (monospaced) mode + CPI archives can be saved also in WinNT subformat + default font for cp852 now contains euro symbol + overview of undefined characters in given range. You can download the new version from Laaca's website