FreeDOS as an embedded system

On our website, we say that one way you can run FreeDOS is an "embedded system." But what does that mean? What is an embedded system? Let's take a look at how to set up FreeDOS to run only one dedicated application.

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[dennisdoherty]

I just started taking a look at FreeDOS again, more for retro gaming. I was wondering if the project had died off but seeing a release candidate for 1.3 i'm glad to see its still being actively developed.

[RetroTechChris]

Very nice, and a great idea for an embedded system!

[FMever]

A couple of years ago I used FreeDOS to recreate the functionality of the MS-DOS environment used for a machine used in a food production plant. Mosty to work around the limits of FAT16, as it was getting increasingly hard to get small storage mediums.
The original MS-DOS installation, on the old hardware, used config.sys, loading a memory manager. Autoexec.bat for a mouse driver, a serial port driver and a program that uses the serial port to receive and send commands.

I was surprised how easy it was to confige freeDOS. I had to swap the memory manager, edit some paths in the config files and of course add the main program to start. But when I had things set up, surpringly it worked in one try.

[MsDuketown]

embedded is GPL v2 and old style C, often with autotools instead of cmake. And it mostly uses binutils and M4, instead of full GCC. But many tools remain shared, like gettext and readline.

It's how appliances are made out of services, like Proxmox, Hyper-V, Vmware and Virt-man. And Docker, Kubernetes, and Podman. etc.

In Linux terms we're talking FireJail and Apparmour and stuff.

[primeseal]

I tried compiling the kernel but i get upx error

[Dw_Tek]

How can you restore the autoexec.bat and the config.sys?

[rikoomika]

Can freedos can run in very old tablet ?