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\title RxDOS version 7.20N notes

\copyright This document (2008-2011 by C. Masloch) is in the Public Domain.

This document has been sloppily compiled on \date{%Y-%m-%d}, release\_2011\-01\-14.

\C{} RxDOS license

This product is distributed AS IS and contains no warranty
whatsoever, including warranty of merchantability or
fitness for a particular purpose.

Copyright (C) 1990-1999 Mike Podanoffsky

This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License, see
the file LICENSE.TXT.

\H{} Contributions

C. Masloch ported the provided source code to NASM, and packed these files
up for the RxDOS 7.20N release. The associated work is released as-is,
without any warranty whatsoever, and is in the
public domain. This does not affect other copyrights as noted above.

\#{
\C{} Introduction

This is the free RxDOS operating system. The main programs are a widely MS-DOS
compatible DOS kernel (split into RxBIO and RxDOS) and a custom command line
interpreter/\cw{COMMAND.COM} replacement (RxCMD). The RxDOS distribution includes
some supplemental programs as well. These are a virtual file system driver for
use in conventional memory (RxVDISK), a boot loader that loads RxBIO (RxBOOT),
a master boot record that loads RxBOOT on partitioned disks (RxMBR) and a small
program that installs RxBOOT on a DOS drive (RxD_BOOT).

\C{} Bug reports

You may send bug reports directly to my e-mail address or register a account to
write it to the BTTR Software support forum. (I'm a member of BTTR Software,
and even if I can't help you there are some other DOS experts.) Contact data is
in \k{contact}.

\C{} Developers

RxDOS was initially written and developed for many years by the professional
programmer Mike Podanoffsky. He also wrote a book titled "Dissecting DOS" about
RxDOS that was first published in 1994. However he stopped his development on
RxDOS in 1999 or so, probably because he saw both MS-DOS and its best known
competitor DR-DOS stopping their activities. Fortunately he released RxDOS
version 7.1.5 on 1999-08-07 under the GNU General Public License.

I, C. Masloch, learned Assembly language (NASM) in 2007. I already used
parts of FreeDOS for a long time when I thought about programming a DOS kernel.
I didn't wanted to help with DOS-C (the FreeDOS kernel) because I can't write C
so well and I really like Assembly more. In 2008 I heard from RxDOS and got it
from the FreeDOS mirror servers. Later (2008-05 or so) I started porting the free
RxDOS version 7.1.5 from the MASM source to NASM. This port eventually became
RxDOS 7.20N.
}

\C{contact} Contact

\dt BTTR Software

\dd \W{http://www.bttr-software.de/}{http://www.bttr-software.de/}

\dt C. Masloch

\dd \W{mailto:cm -AT- bttr-software.de}{cm -AT- bttr-software.de}

\C{} Advise on usage of RxDOS version 7.20N

Do not use RxDOS version 7.20N. It tries to re-produce every bug of RxDOS 7.1.5
(as found on the FreeDOS mirrors). It is not usable currently. The release of
version 7.20N is only intended for developers.

\H{} Developing RxDOS

\n Do not take anything for granted.

\n Read and understand all the source code that you use from this release
 before claiming it works.

\n You can read the book \q{Dissecting DOS} for some advise on RxDOS's
internal structure, although it describes an older version. You will need
a deeper understanding for development though.

\n As described in \k{build} the build process currently uses tools
that run and build on DOS, are considered non-free, or require non-free programs
to build. Modifying the kernel and RxCMD to build using nothing but NASM should
be trivial for developers.
