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# GWFetch
GWFetch is a screenfetch/neofetch/etc. system information tool, but it
is written in GW-BASIC for use on DOS-based systems. The little tool
should output some reasonably accurate information about your MS-DOS,
FreeDOS, DR DOS, or PC-DOS computer with some caveats, of course.
Because we're talking about MS-DOS and work-alikes, there are drastic
variations in CPUs with only complicated ways of detecting them combined
with the simplicity of older PCs (i.e. no "packages" per se).
## Requirements
To run GWFetch, you'll need the following:
* GW-BASIC
This script has been tested again GW-BASIC versions 2 and 3, nothing
more. It may run under QBASIC, but it hasn't been tested.
The script will call common DOS commands, so please make sure your DOS
directory is on the path.
## Running
To run GWFetch, simply enter:
```
gwbasic gwfetch.bas
```
or whatever your GW-BASIC executable is named (I simplified it to *gw*
on my computer...).
### Customization
If you really want your machine to display a name, you can set an
environment variable *HOSTNAME* to what you'd like to see displayed.
The first few lines, specifically 10-100, have two other options:
**SHOWUPTIME**
The script uses GW-BASIC's TIMER command to calculate uptime for the
current day. MS-DOS and its cousins do not have a concept of uptime
beyond one day natively. Additionally, the output of TIMER becomes even
more useless if the system has a working, battery-backed clock or the
user has entered the time via the DOS *TIME* command, in which cases
TIMER just reports the time since midnight. Maybe you want to turn off
displaying this potentially useless information by setting that variable
to 0 (zero).
**SYSTEMONEND**
When set to 1 (one), the script will call *SYSTEM* just before *END* so
that you're not dumped into the GW-BASIC interpreter. Maybe you prefer
that.
## Limitations
The CPU detection is pretty thorough except that it stops once it thinks
a 386 is present. It will report 386 if you're on a 486, Pentium, K5,
etc. Detecting a 486 might be possible, but that's how it works right
now. Because I was mostly interested on lower-than-386 computers, I
wasn't particularly interested in continuing down that road.
Furthermore, other than NEC CPUs, everything is reported as Intel. This
decision is, for the most part, accurate since 286 and earlier CPUs were
effectively just second-sourced Intel designs as opposed to novel
designs from other chip companies. I believe detecting different
manufacturers of 386s starts to become possible, but that seems a bit
much.
No memory will be reported under DR DOS. Their *MEM* output is bananas.
## How It Works
Most attempts to classify the system are achieved through calling known
DOS commands, such as *MEM*, *VER*, and *CHKDSK* (in the absence of
*MEM*).
CPU detection follows a winding assembly path that detects 386 and
earlier CPUs based on CPU characteristics, bugs, and other hacky means.
GWFetch contains the machine code to execute these checks starting
around line 12000. The machine code is written to memory, modified
slightly, and called. Likewise, there is a DOS version and provider
section around line 12500 that relies on a DOS interrupt along with some
additional hacks.
System hardware detection is pretty basic. An initial check is made to
detect Digital Rainbow 100 video memory. If that fails, the BIOS system
ID is read. Unless you're on a true, early IBM system (yuck) or DOSBox,
your machine will be reported as an AT or compatible.
The assembly source code for the machine code routines is stored in the
"asm" subdirectory. The assembly is included to build the machine code,
which requires the *INLINE* tool, a program used to convert assembly
into Pascal inline machine code. The "support" directory contains a
Python script to subsequently convert the Pascal inline machine code
into valid GW-BASIC *DATA* statements.
## About
GWFetch is Copyright 2024 Jeffrey Armstrong <jeff@rainbow-100.com>, and
is licensed under a JSON-style license. Please see LICENSE.txt for more
information.
If you like the software, have comment, suggestion, patch, complaint,
etc., let me know by email or at:
* Fediverse: @jeff@toot.rainbow-100.com
* Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/fortranjeff
* Twitch: https://twitch.tv/fortranjeff
* Itch: https://printstar.itch.io/
Thanks for looking!
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