My review of the Wyse Cx0

[johnnycontrario]

USB support seems one area where FreeDOS has broader functionality, because while a USB device can't 'hot swap' it is at least seen and accessed after a reboot.

I forgot to mention, I think this is the BIOS presenting the USB drive as something that DOS can talk to. I'm guessing FreeDOS sees the drive because it supports FAT32, but DOS 6.x can't. I bet if you format a USB stick as FAT16, it would work in DOS 6.

 

[AndyO]

I forgot to mention, I think this is the BIOS presenting the USB drive as something that DOS can talk to. I'm guessing FreeDOS sees the drive because it supports FAT32, but DOS 6.x can't. I bet if you format a USB stick as FAT16, it would work in DOS 6.

I hadn't even thought of that - I'd totally forgotten, and I shouldn't have since a system formatted USB stick will boot this machine if it is given priority in the BIOS. And it does have USB support in the BIOS, hence it works nicely with USB keyboards, mice and floppy drives so with BIOS support enabled, it knows the ports are there and can read and write data through them.

I'd planned a bit of playing around in MS_DOS on the spare one using maybe DOSUSB, which may work, but I'll try FAT16 too because that's a rather neater idea.

That said, I'm getting more adjusted to FreeDOS, even if it does have a slight air of linux distro about it, and with a 2Gb DOM it isn't as if I need to be concerned about there being enough capacity to spare. Still, experimenting to see what works and what doesn't is why I got two of these.

Anyway, I need to shut up, but many thanks for the pointer!!

 

[AndyO]

.....I bet if you format a USB stick as FAT16, it would work in DOS 6.

It turns out that this is exactly right. A FAT16 formatted stick works perfectly in DOS 6.22, but FAT32 doesn't of course. In FreeDOS both are recognised.

The hardware recognises FAT32 formatted sticks - they show up in the BIOS correctly enumerated. And I suspect a suitable USB driver would probably work in MS-DOS too, but as is, with your nudge in the right direction I now have a working MS-DOS box to go with the FreeDOS one.

I can't believe I'm saying this about a Microsoft product, but I think I prefer MS-DOS!

 

[johnnycontrario]

I can't believe I'm saying this about a Microsoft product, but I think I prefer MS-DOS!

Yeah, I can't fault you for that, and I banished Windows on my personal systems over 20 years ago. The installer leaves you with a fairly sane system and programs of the day all targeted it.

For FAT32 support, I think your options are FreeDOS, stealing DOS from Windows 98, or IBM PC-DOS 7.1.
For both FreeDOS and Win98 DOS I like to install by running fdisk c: /s, copying files, and creating autoexec.bat and config.sys manually. This avoids a lot of bloat and complexity that I don't care for.
It's been a while since I did PC DOS, but I think I did it by installing PC-DOS 2000 and then replacing files with new versions from PC-DOS 7.1 (7.1 is not a retail release like 2000).

Why the choices?
I find the FreeDOS kernel to be bigger & slower and works best on faster PCs.
I think Win98 DOS has good compatibility? Maybe I'm wrong, but my gut says it's as good as MS-DOS 6.22. It does not boot on older processors though.
PC-DOS has a smaller memory footprint while retaining the features of a moden DOS. Not usually a big deal, but this is why I use it on my 8088.

...of course, you could be reasonable and simply use a FAT16 USB stick for file transfers LOL

 

[AndyO]

...of course, you could be reasonable and simply use a FAT16 USB stick for file transfers LOL

I would, but on the other hand, that's why I have two of these; one to use and the other to experiment with, so I quite like the idea of trying a later DOS as you suggest.

Admittedly, FreeDOS works quite nicely on these machines, other than that it boots fairly slowly compared to MS-DOS. But it does have a bit of a flavour of over-complication about it. Maybe that's what you get when you engineer for 100% DOS compatibility but with a few extras thrown in too. And really, how fussy should I be about what exact DOS I use if firstly it works perfectly well, and secondly, my prior excursions into DOS use on modern/modernish hardware have been the likes of DOSBox-x, which is rather less 'real' DOS than FreeDOS - which has been rock solid in the time I've been playing with it. Once it's booted it seems as responsive as MS-DOS so I can't help but think I should be happy with a reliable bare metal DOS platform which in total cost about $20, and has far more operational flexibility than an era correct DOS machine which would cost a lot more, and need treating with some care.

Of course that's why I thought I'd try a Cx0 and see what I thought of the experience. So far I've been almost entirely delighted, with the only issue being that with my 15-inch portable HDMI monitor I get the entire screen squashed into the top half of the display. It works fine with a 17-inch HDMI panel (and VGA of course), so not a big deal. And I can always drop the original 4Gb DOM back in and sort-of rejoin the 21st century by running Windows 7 embedded and DOSBox-x on the thing.

Overall though, with no great expectations going in, and knowing the hardware is not up to much in comparison to modern systems, I've been quite surprised by how adaptable the Cx0 seems to be for so little cost.