Welcome to FreeDOS

Bernd has shared Chksum, a new checksum tool for DOS. Bernd writes: "The following checksum algorithms are supported in this first release: Cryptographic checksum algorithms: - md5 (default) - sha-1, sha-224, sha-256, - sha3-224, sha3-256, sha3-384 and sha3-512. Non-cryptographic checksum algorithms: - bsdsum (16-bit BSD checksum) - fletcher16 (modulo 255), fletcher32 (modulo 65535) - adler32 - crc32 (polynome 0x04C11DB7) and crc32c (polynome 0x1EDC6F41)." Chksum should work on all systems, from an 8088 upwards, and is released under the European Union Public Licence (EUPL) version 1.2. You can download Chksum from Disroot, which also includes a copy of the Fossil repository.

Blocek is a text editor for DOS. Unlike other text editors, Blocek works in graphical mode, can work with very large files and can edit texts in Unicode UTF-8 format, which makes it very useful especially for non-English texts. Laaca would like to release a new version by the end of August, and is looking for feedback on a work-in-progress version. "The two main news are monospaced editing mode: 'i' and 'O' have the same width and improvement in the internal keyboard handler which allows you to create layouts with use of Alt+key." Download the new version {zip file} and try it out. "If you are interested, you are encouraged to find bugs and update the translations of the keyboard layout files. Information which text strings have changed since last version you can find in file translat_2_trans.txt".

Oberon is Niklaus Wirth's successor to Pascal and Modula-2 — a small, strongly-typed systems language. This project implements a practical DOS dialect of Oberon-07: the core language "plus what real 16-bit systems programming needs." Programmers who are interested in experimenting with a programming language that was meant to succeed Pascal, find it at DosWorld's Trubo Oberon at GitHub.

Michael Brutman created an interesting project, a basic packet driver that enables you to use the DaynaPORT SCSI/Link Ethernet device under DOS. These devices were usually used on early Macintosh computers which had SCSI controllers but not much else for expandability. Today these devices are somewhat hard to find but they are emulated by devices like BlueSCSI and ZuluSCSI. If you would like to use the DaynaPORT for networking on FreeDOS, download it at the project on GitHub.

We set up a FreeDOS store on Zazzle in 2011 so folks could buy stickers, tshirts, mugs, ties, and other items with the FreeDOS logo on them. However, maintaining the store is starting to become a hassle, so we're planning to close the Zazzle store a month from now, in August. This is your last chance to buy stickers and tshirts if you want them.

NASM is the Netwide Assembler, an assembler for the x86 CPU architecture. NASM 3.02 was recently released with updates and fixes which should be interesting to assembly programmers. Read more in the change log. Download the new version from release build 3.02 on the NASM website. We've also mirrored the new release in the FreeDOS files archive at Ibiblio, at /devel/asm/nasm