Is it possible to access wikipedia from DOS? Accessing it via a DOS web browser would probably be the best bet, since the database is over 20GB zipped and DOS can only handle 2GB partitions. Having a local copy of it and accessing it offline in DOS sounds amazing but I think it's probably not doable. What are your thoughts?
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Wikipedia access in DOS
- Thread starter Syntho
- Start date
XOWA is an offline Wikipedia project, and they have a thing they call "Simple Wikipedia" which is 180,000+ article. It's 200MB for the text version.
I don't know how they curate which articles to select, not even sure if they still maintain it. The one they say to download hasn't been changed since 2014.
I think with the 2GB limitation combined with how many volumes DOS can mount (I assume it's limited to A-Z? 26 volumes?), makes getting the Wiki challenging.
You also have the problem of long file names, if you tried to just do a direct copy of page to files.
I would take a DOS based text browser, and replace it's URL resolution with a Hash based scheme to distribute the files across the 10+ volumes, as well as to reduce their file names to 8 characters (I guess 11 if you include arbitrary extensions).
Or, get a Rasperry Pi Pico, a flash card, some double stick tape, a 9V battery, and glue it to the side of your computer, and serve it all up from there for under $10.
Crazy...just crazy times we live in.
I don't know how they curate which articles to select, not even sure if they still maintain it. The one they say to download hasn't been changed since 2014.
I think with the 2GB limitation combined with how many volumes DOS can mount (I assume it's limited to A-Z? 26 volumes?), makes getting the Wiki challenging.
You also have the problem of long file names, if you tried to just do a direct copy of page to files.
I would take a DOS based text browser, and replace it's URL resolution with a Hash based scheme to distribute the files across the 10+ volumes, as well as to reduce their file names to 8 characters (I guess 11 if you include arbitrary extensions).
Or, get a Rasperry Pi Pico, a flash card, some double stick tape, a 9V battery, and glue it to the side of your computer, and serve it all up from there for under $10.
Crazy...just crazy times we live in.
Chuck(G)
25k Member
I wonder if a version of this is available on DVD.