• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

Looking for Borland's TMAKE.EXE for PTS-DOS

Ruud

Ruud

Veteran Member
Joined
Nov 30, 2009
Messages
1,414
Location
Heerlen, NL
I found my old CD with PTS-DOS that I bought some 30 years ago. To compile the sources it needs specifically TASM 3.0, TLINK.EXE and TMAKE.EXE. The last one is giving me troubles: I simply don't have it. The Help file states it is part of various Borland C and C++ compilers for example and I have several of them, 2.0, 3.1, 4.5, 5 and 6, but no TMAKE.EXE.

Can anybody point me to it, upload it somewhere or PM it to me, please?

Just popped up, has anyone maybe experience compiling the sources of PTS-DOS with other MAKE programs?

Thank you in advance!
 
If it cannot be found, I'll try MAKE of course. But see here a PrintScreen from the Help file:

TMAKE.jpg

You also can read that TASM 3.0 is needed, just the one I didn't have. But I was able to find it on Internet.

But now the weird thing: I just noticed the green "list of tools". I clicked it and....

TMAKE2.jpg

I have Borland C 3.1 and the TASM and TLINK that came with it have exact the size as mentioned her above. The weird thing: this TASM is version 3.1. The size of this TASM 3.0 that I downloaded is 112 KB. The DPMI stuff of C version also has the same length as mentioned above. But no TMAKE to be found. MAKE is present but about 90 KB instead of the 59 mentioned above for TMAKE.

All together: quite confusing IMHO.
 
I'm playing too with Paragon PTS-DOS sources (S/DOS) The files they mention are a mix of TASM 3.1 and 3.0 ones. The make they are using is MAKER.EXE from TASM 3.0, simply rename it as TMAKE.EXE (in the kernel build batch they use the name MAKE.EXE). The rest of the files (DPMI*.*, TASM, TDSTRIP and TLINK.EXE, this is the only DPMI-aware tool) are from TASM 3.1.

BTW, COMMAND.COM has several bugs that somebody fixed long time ago: https://almnet.de/ptsdos/files/cmdptc19.zip
but only for the German version. I'm trying to reconstruct that fixes for the English version.
 
I do have the above MAKER and Dieymir, thank you for the tip of renaming it; never thought about that.
 
Perhaps TMAKE is for "traditional make" or something like that. Essentially a MAKE from before they decided to replace it with the protected mode version.
 
That is possible but: why can't TMAKE be found? At least you came up with a file that is a MAKE utility and has the same files size. Did someone at PTS rename it for whatever reason? Anyway, I have enough material to give things a try.
 
A quick update: I used MAKER, TASM and TLINK as mentioned above to create DISKCOPY.COM and that worked, although not right out of the box. I had to rename the file MAKE.MAK to MAKEFILE to make things work. I will be gone now for a few days for a little vacation so I have no idea when I can continue this.
 
1688330392778.png

You can use this

MAKER -fmake.mak
-or if you renamed it-
TMAKE -fmake.mak

And not have to rename the make.mak to makefile
 
I read the above but after this:

First: I copied all file to a project directory so if I do something wrong, it is just a matter of deleting everything and make a fresh copy. This also involves copying MAKE.EXE, MAKER,EXE, TASM.EXE, TASM.TAH (needed?) and TLINK.EXE to this directory. I also removed all references to "russian" and "german" to simplify matters. Yesterday evening things didn't work out using the renaming as mentioned above. After a good sleep I refreshed the directory, removed all references, then renamed MAKER to TMAKE, ran MAKE and.... things went fine :)

To be continued.....
 
Usually you must run REMAKE.BAT to build the programs Everything builds just fine
 
You are correct but REMAKE.BAT just contains:
tmake german
tmake russian
tmake english
And I don't want/need the German and Russian version. If I manage to get everything running as it should, I'll probably make a Dutch version :)
 
Update:

I renamed my first DISKCOPY directory and I did another run another using REMAKE (only tmake ënglish): worked out fine as well!
 
Ruud said:
Update:

I renamed my first DISKCOPY directory and I did another run another using REMAKE (only tmake ënglish): worked out fine as well!
Click to expand...

Simply remove/add the required languages to REMAKE.BAT By the way Jenz has done an impressive work of fixing bugs and add very cool features to original COMMAND.COM, contact with him to get them Absolutely recommended!!
 
Sort of hijacking the topic, but what became of PTS-DOS in the long term? A lot of the English language info peters out before the end of the millenium, and I suspect current political trends means it's not something you can go and buy off the shelf anymore. ISTR they had moved to some 32-bit product, which if you're in the market for 'MS/PC/DR/FreeDOS further alternatives' is not really a match anymore.
 
Hak Foo said:
but what became of PTS-DOS in the long term?
Click to expand...
Not sure if you can still buy PTS-DOS 32/2000 from PhysTechSoft (the original manufacturer) in Russia, since the website is from 2017 and may not be related to the company at all ... seems that Paragon still exists, but no longer offers PTS-DOS (aka PT$/DOS) ...
 
Last edited:
dieymir said:
By the way Jenz has done an impressive work of fixing bugs and add very cool features to original COMMAND.COM
Click to expand...
Thanks for your kind words! :) Attached is the latest (2023) diff to the original source of COMMAND.COM ... of course there are still bugs ...
 

Attachments

  • cmdpatch.diff.zip
    52.7 KB · Views: 3
OK, I had some free time to have another go at the sources. I ran into multiple problems that have the same background: wrong names of the directory or file in the MAKEFILE. For example: MAKEFILE points to src\utilities\... but the directory has been named "utilitie". "utilities" is nine chars long, "utilitie" eight. After renaming "utilities" to "utilitie" things ran fine. I could have renamed the directory "utilitie" to "utilities" but I presume that the TASM, TLINK, etc. won't dig it. This is confirmed by an error I just ran into it: TLINK could not open the file himem286e.obj although it was there.

Another thing: nice to able to compile COMMAND.COM but to be able to create a bootable disk you need at least PTSDOS.SYS and PTSBIO.SYS. The sources of these could not be found. After some searching I found out that SDOS.SYS and SBIO.SYS could be compiled. They have different sizes compared to their PTS versions. The screen dumps above mention S/DOS and Wikipedia also mentions that PTS-DOS 6.51 = S/DOS 1.0.

My goal: I want to end up with a bootable system using only files that are compiled by me

To be continued.....
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top