Running an old DOS program

98 Guy wrote in :

Something that would affect the situation drastically for DOS on modern
motherboards is the change from the traditional BIOS to some new form of
bios that I hear is coming out (or is already out) on some bleeding-edge
motherboards (I forget what it's called).


That could ease the situation in the long run, but only when it has driven
people to make good low level virtual machines. But when they do, the idea of
any OS being 'obsolete' will vanish, because people will no longer need to
guard against hardware becoming unavailable to run them, and they can use
whatever suits them so long as some virtual machine will run it on the
hardware they want. This is an ideal method, just not one we have much of,
yet. Most VM's are still too high-level, too OS dependent. Silly really,
given that 32 bit protected mode (and the Tenberry version used by Partition
Magic, etc) are all low level, showing that it can be done.

I have nice dreamy visions of multiple cores running one HUGELY fast W98.
All that raw power there for programs instead of the OS chewing lots of it...
Or one fast new machine allowing two virtual computers to run on one VM
layer. The VM would in effect be one big complex static VXD driver, and the
computers running on it would have no idea they weren't on dedicated hardware
made for them.

Industrial One wrote in news:91a0ac82-87a9-4126-
:

So I download DOS 7.1, then what? Do I have to install this on a thumb
drive to boot from it, and then do I cd to the directory with the
program I wanna run?


Google for 'EBD' (emergency boot disk), you'll likely still find original
Microsoft guides for that if you can find them through all the noise on
Google these days.

Basically it amounts to having some new disk you can work on (you don't want
to wipe out an established one...). Boot to floppy, DC, or USB CF (or SD)
card adapter. Use FDISK to make partitions. Then format them. Use SYS C: if
you forgot to ask it to be bootable during format. Then install DOS or
Windows. Most good emergency boot disks will have CD drive support to let you
get at the big stuff you want to put on the hard disk.

Rather than use CD to change directory, set up paths in your autoexec.bat
file. Some DOS programs aren't good with paths and MIGHT need to run with CD
setting their own as workign directory, but that all comes after getting the
foundations in there.

Fritz Wuehler wrote in
. theremailer.net:

You can load it but it will not work 100%. Depending on what you need,
VirtualBox, QEMU etc. do not work very well with DOS. Many programs like
Borland TASM, and MS MASM crash the VM.




This is why we need proper low level i386 VM, instead of high level. That,
and the changes in hardware and BIOS likely to develop now that ARM cores are
getting popular.

Industrial One wrote in news:9e5c5ee4-32f1-45b1-
:

Its ironic
when I think that on the original platform it runs perfectly on 4 MHz
and my 3 GHz i7 can't run it in full FPS.


Which is also why we ned LOW level VM!

Lostgallifreyan wrote in
:

Sjouke Burry s@b wrote in
2.10:

The only problem I had with this solution, is that the graphics
cards/monitors mowadays have very few legal vga modes,
some only 640*480(16 cols).



Windows (98, anyway) has that limit too, natively. Allegedly it should
manage 800x600x16 too, with the same core support (native SVGA
driver), but it won't work for me. Maybe that's a monitor limitation
but doubtful given that once a full Windows install is built with
video driver added, it can do it.

(Technically anything above 640x480 isn't VGA anyway, and according to
Wikipedia the picture is a whole lot more complicated than the usually
assumed SVGA=800x600 and 1024x768, and XVGA=1280x1024 and perhaps
1600x1200, before all hell breaks loose in so many new formats that it
starts to look silly.)


Well, on my old computers i use svgacc.lib for graphics
in C and fortran, and i have 16, 256, and rgb color available,
and all without special drivers( et4000 and et6000 xvga cards).
It is downright disappointing to see a "mode not supported" square
floating across the screen.
Tried to load vesa software support on my XP, but that did not
improve things.
Back to my old computers....(60 Mhz pentium2,xvga vesa support and
ethernet package driver support, ISA video grabber and 8 channel 12 bit
ado, 4channel dao).
PS: I have to dump a few of those old machines, running out of space...
But nice for spareparts.

Ken Springer wrote:
On 3/8/12 2:35 PM, Fritz Wuehler wrote:
I know of no reason you couldn't load DOS 7.1 into Virtual Box.

You can load it but it will not work 100%. Depending on what you need,
VirtualBox, QEMU etc. do not work very well with DOS. Many programs like
Borland TASM, and MS MASM crash the VM.

Maybe a simpler and easier route would be to go to the pawn shop,
Goodwill, flea markets, etc. and buy a desktop that will run DOS without
jumping through hoops.

The other problem (which is often a big problem, particularly with games),
is being able to slow down the programs to run properly (i.e. usably) on a
current system. There are some programs that "steal" CPU cycles to try to
accomplish this, but they often don't work too well.

Sjouke Burry s@b wrote in
. 10:

Well, on my old computers i use svgacc.lib for graphics
in C and fortran, and i have 16, 256, and rgb color available,
and all without special drivers( et4000 and et6000 xvga cards).
It is downright disappointing to see a "mode not supported" square
floating across the screen.


But that's like my laser scanner on a sound card, where its WDM driver can
set exact 50000 (or 60000, even 90000) samples per second to emulate an ILDA
standard for a fast galvo scanner. But I could only justify the expense of
'Widemoves' that only do maybe 18000 points (or samples) per second. I can
have slightly faster, at narrower scan angle, which is directly analogous to
higher VDU refresh at smaller resolutions, a compromise most us are familiar
with.

In short, there's a lot of difference between driver and hardware capability.
I guess if drivers had ways to spot video performance and scale back when
they see degradation, any number of things may have worked better, but I
don't think it ever happened. But it would be frustrating to be denied what
we know damn well should work.

If drivers could take settings as freely as we can assign sizes and colours
to bitmaps, we'd be ok, but I think the makers didn't want the complexity or
the risk of people burning out raster scan drive transistors, then blaming
the supplier for the freedom they got to hang themselves with. All
changing now with DVI-D and TFT LCD pixels, but old habits die hard...

"Bill in Co" wrote in news:n6qdnQ-
:

The other problem (which is often a big problem, particularly with games),
is being able to slow down the programs to run properly (i.e. usably) on a
current system. There are some programs that "steal" CPU cycles to try to
accomplish this, but they often don't work too well.



I think this is another reason we need proper low level VM's. That way we
have a chance of easily switching something that gives accuracy for any need.

Timers in C, depending on hardware, can be a terrible problem. I don't know
much about it all yet, but I do know that it bakes the noodles of expert
after expert as well as mine. At one time it drove me away from learning C at
all, and it was more than a decade later when I tried again after learning
wxLua instead, mostly. I know it's a compiler problem rather than the
language, but if we can't trust a foundation, where is the incentive to build
on it?

On Thu, 8 Mar 2012 09:06:13 -0800 (PST), Industrial One
put finger to keyboard and composed:

So I download DOS 7.1, then what? Do I have to install this on a thumb
drive to boot from it, and then do I cd to the directory with the
program I wanna run?

The program is not a game, btw. It's an emulator that runs ROMs
(games).

You could boot DOS from a USB drive or CD, and then create a RAM disk
via a line in autoxec.bat. If your app requires TEMP space, then SET
the TEMP directory to your RAM disk. Otherwise, if your app writes to
some other directory on the disc, then copy your app to your RAM drive
and launch it from there instead. All this could be done automatically
via appropriate lines in autoexec.bat.

If you could be more specific, perhaps one of us could expand on this
for you.

BTW, how much disc space does your DOS app occupy and how much RAM
does it require?

- Franc Zabkar
--
Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.

On Mar 9, 2:36*am, Franc Zabkar wrote:
On Thu, 8 Mar 2012 09:06:13 -0800 (PST), Industrial One
put finger to keyboard and composed:

So I download DOS 7.1, then what? Do I have to install this on a thumb
drive to boot from it, and then do I cd to the directory with the
program I wanna run?

The program is not a game, btw. It's an emulator that runs ROMs
(games).

You could boot DOS from a USB drive or CD, and then create a RAM disk
via a line in autoxec.bat. If your app requires TEMP space, then SET
the TEMP directory to your RAM disk. Otherwise, if your app writes to
some other directory on the disc, then copy your app to your RAM drive
and launch it from there instead. All this could be done automatically
via appropriate lines in autoexec.bat.

If you could be more specific, perhaps one of us could expand on this
for you.

BTW, how much disc space does your DOS app occupy and how much RAM
does it require?

The application itself is around 300 KB, the roms are between 2 to 6
MB. RAM usage shouldn't be above 60 MB.

I set up DOS 7.1 with Virtualbox because this was more intuitive than
having to restart the comp every time to get around issues. This
virtualization **** is kinda cool, the only disappointing thing is the
fact that I can't browse my regular OS from it. The only way I could
copy files to the virtual DOS is making a CD ISO of the directory with
my app and loading from there.

This has failed, though. There is no sound and the emulator freezes
the moment I tried to load a game. How do you set color depth on
Virtualbox btw? It says its on 32-bit and needs 16-bit but I don't see
such option anywhere.

On Thu, 8 Mar 2012 09:06:13 -0800 (PST), Industrial One
wrote:

Okay so either boot into DOS or use a VM, which one would result in
faster performance? I'll assume DOS.

So I download DOS 7.1, then what? Do I have to install this on a thumb
drive to boot from it, and then do I cd to the directory with the
program I wanna run?

The program is not a game, btw. It's an emulator that runs ROMs
(games). Emulating an emulator with DOSBox was... an apalling
experience. Vegan hackers would probably nail me to a cross for
wasting so much energy.

On Mar 8, 3:24*pm, 98 Guy wrote:
Why is this so hard for people to do?

Because I have no floppy drive.

Adding a floppy drive is pretty easy as long as there is a space in your
case for it. You can buy one on ebay for probably $10 or less.

Another option. There are old computers everywhere for free or a couple
bucks. Most still work. It's only MS that makes them worthless with
their newest bloated OSs. Just get a second computer. Watch craigslist
and local garage sales and auctions.

I'm posting this from a Win98 computer. I still have Dos. I refuse to
use any MS bloatware without dos. I have XP on one computer and never
use it. You couldn't give me Vista or Win7 for free. I still use lots
of Dos apps.

---
Just because MS wants me to throw my old computer in the trash and
upgrade to their latest bloatware, dont mean I will. MS is not my
employer, school teacher, or parent! Win98 is the only OS made by MS
that was worth anything. After 98, they began creating garbage!

Industrial One wrote in news:c3c3567f-40ee-4646-
:

I set up DOS 7.1 with Virtualbox because this was more intuitive than
having to restart the comp every time to get around issues. This
virtualization **** is kinda cool, the only disappointing thing is the
fact that I can't browse my regular OS from it.

No way to mount external partitions and disks in it? I remember that DOSbox
can do that. it just doesn't do it by default, I had to ask.

wrote in :

Just because MS wants me to throw my old computer in the trash and
upgrade to their latest bloatware, dont mean I will. MS is not my
employer, school teacher, or parent! Win98 is the only OS made by MS
that was worth anything. After 98, they began creating garbage!


I agree. But I'm posting to say somethign slightly different on the basic
theme... M$ 'deprecate' stuff, and even if you look up API details on their
site they try to tell us that stuff is only applicable to WXP, etc... This is
nonsense, most of it comes from W95's time, and runs equally well on every OS
since. And on Wine in Linux too. Hopefully M$ will realise that it's stupid
to 'deprecate', in a world wher firms generally trade on any solid history
they can get. Never mind the fact that code doesn't improve with age like
wine and whisky, it's still nearly 20 years of well-established code base
that they could be proud of, and acknowledge that past as a strength instead
of trying to make us all throw it away. If they don't value it, eventually
profit will go to those who do. At which point, W98 might be seen as a very
desirable system in some contexts, rather than a curiosity that many let
themselves beleive meant nothing anymore.

In article ,
says...

On Thu, 8 Mar 2012 09:06:13 -0800 (PST), Industrial One
wrote:

Okay so either boot into DOS or use a VM, which one would result in
faster performance? I'll assume DOS.

So I download DOS 7.1, then what? Do I have to install this on a thumb
drive to boot from it, and then do I cd to the directory with the
program I wanna run?

The program is not a game, btw. It's an emulator that runs ROMs
(games). Emulating an emulator with DOSBox was... an apalling
experience. Vegan hackers would probably nail me to a cross for
wasting so much energy.

On Mar 8, 3:24*pm, 98 Guy wrote:
Why is this so hard for people to do?

Because I have no floppy drive.

Adding a floppy drive is pretty easy as long as there is a space in your
case for it. You can buy one on ebay for probably $10 or less.

Many newer computers do not have a floppy controller on the
motherboard, so it isn't always quite that easy. Also, the last
company that makes one of the critical components necessary to
manufacture floppy drives has discontinued that product, so the floppy
drives currently on the market right now are all that there are ever
going to be (unless someone commissions them to make another batch,
which seems unlikely).

--
Zaphod

The secret of flying is to hurl yourself to the ground, and miss.

Lostgallifreyan wrote in
:

That could ease the situation in the long run, but only when it has
driven people to make good low level virtual machines. But when they
do, the idea of any OS being 'obsolete' will vanish, because people
will no longer need to guard against hardware becoming unavailable to
run them, and they can use whatever suits them so long as some virtual
machine will run it on the hardware they want. This is an ideal
method, just not one we have much of, yet. Most VM's are still too
high-level, too OS dependent. Silly really, given that 32 bit
protected mode (and the Tenberry version used by Partition Magic, etc)
are all low level, showing that it can be done.

I have nice dreamy visions of multiple cores running one HUGELY fast
W98. All that raw power there for programs instead of the OS
chewing lots of it... Or one fast new machine allowing two virtual
computers to run on one VM layer. The VM would in effect be one big
complex static VXD driver, and the computers running on it would have
no idea they weren't on dedicated hardware made for them.


Yes, decoupling the computer from the hardware! That's where I thought
the industry was headed when I began using VMs 7 yrs ago. I've been
sadly disappointed. We should have been there by now.

I had visions of everyone carrying around their own personal "computer"
as a VM on a flash drive of some fashion, with the hardware computer
being merely a VM shell that the BIOS would boot straight into. You
could carry your own "PC" in your pocket, plug it into a VM shell at any
library, kiosk, coffee shop, or friend's house, and you'd instantly have
your own computer with your own OS and your own apps and everything.

Maybe I'm pessimistic, but now I feel we'll never get there. The
lemmings are stampeding to the Apple strategy of walled gardens, app
stores, and abdicating control of your machine to the corporate
establishment. Microsoft is following suit, as evidenced by their UEFI
BIOS and their change of course with Windows 8. Once the desktop PC
market becomes entrapped in the mobile way of doing things, it will be
too late to change.