DOSLFN with 4DOS? \ VOGONS

DOSLFN with 4DOS?

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First post, by Kahenraz

Posted on 2022-11-20, 12:50

Kahenraz Offline

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Joined: 2004-01-22, 04:57

I've been experimenting with 4DOS and found that it supports LFN. This is convenient, except that it only seems to work with the much older STARLFN and not with DOSLFN, which is otherwise the most up-to-date software available for this, last updated April 2022.

The functionality is enabled automatically, so long as STARLFN is loaded. It can be seen by DIR producing two columns, with the long file names appearing on the far right side.

Does anyone know why 4DOS doesn't work with DOSLFN?

There also seems to be a problem with dates when using STARLFN with MS-DOS 7.1 COMMAND.COM. It does not appear to be an issue for 4DOS though. Very odd.

STARLFN can be found here:

https://sta.c64.org/starlfn.html
https://sta.c64.org/starlfn.zip

DOSLFN here:

http://adoxa.altervista.org/doslfn/
http://adoxa.altervista.org/doslfn/dl.php?f=doslfn

and 4DOS here:

https://4dos.info/v4dos.htm
https://4dos.info/4dvers/4dos800.zip

The attachment DOSLFN_4DOS.jpg is no longer available

The attachment STARLFN_4DOS.jpg is no longer available

The attachment STARLFN_MSDOS.jpg is no longer available

Reply 1 of 2, by Kahenraz

Posted on 2022-11-20, 13:59

Kahenraz Offline

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Rank: l33t
Posts: 4520
Joined: 2004-01-22, 04:57

I found the answer here:

https://sourceforge.net/p/freedos/mailman/message/18370790/

The solution is to add "win95lfn=yes" to 4dos.ini. How is this feature normally enabled? I don't see anything relevant within "option".

Reply 2 of 2, by Gmlb256

Posted on 2022-11-20, 18:42

Gmlb256 Offline

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Posts: 2342
Joined: 2018-04-11, 15:33

The LFN feature in 4DOS gets normally enabled if installed within a Windows 9x environment.

STARLFN has a hack for certain DOS programs that fools them into thinking that it is running within Windows 95 and MS-DOS 7.0. 4DOS (especially older versions) is one of them as mentioned on the STARLFN homepage. However, it seems to be abandoned and doesn't have complete VFAT support unlike DOSLFN.

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