THE FREEDOS BETA 7 ("SPEARS") DISTRIBUTION

RELEASE NOTES

Jim Hall <jhall@freedos.org>
Jeremy Davis <jeremyd@computer.org>
07 September 2001

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Welcome to the Beta7 distribution!

Problems/updates with the official Beta7 may be found on the FreeDOS web
site at http://www.freedos.org/.  Please read the errata.
Updated versions of the the semi-official "Hot" releases may be found at
http://www.fdos.org/ripcord/.  Changes from Beta7 are noted in changes.txt

In the meantime, some things you need to watch out for:

* Floppy access under the FreeDOS kernel is still a little slow.  The
  installation will take longer than you may expect, and running
  programs from the Install Boot Floppy is slow.

* The install program really should ask you to insert the first disk
  of the first install set before it tries to do anything.  But I
  didn't fix that bug before Beta7.  If you have the Install Boot
  Floppy in the drive, the install program will correctly ask for
  the Base1 disk.  However, if you don't have ANY floppy in the drive
  at the time, you get a very odd error message from the kernel.
  Please watch out for this.

* The version of format included requires FreeDOS kernel 2024f or
  higher (or MS/PC/DR DOS).  Format no longer requires rebooting
  after formating.  Remember it still does not do bad sector checking
  (so for now, /U /Q is implied even if not specified).

* The MINI distribution is only provided with a boot disk image for
  3.5inch 1.44MB floppy and disksets that will fit on 1.44MB disks.

* The FULL distribution is provided with 3.5inch 1.44MB & 720KB
  floppy images and 5.25inch 1.2MB & 360KB floppy images.  The 1.44MB
  image and disksets are the suggested ones to use, however to assist
  those without a 1.44MB floppy drive the other disk images are
  provided along with several of the disksets split up so they may
  fit on 360KB or larger disks.  The 1.44MB disksets are available in 
  full\disksets and the 360KB disksets are available in full\disksets.360

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