DOS ain't dead

Someone (Jose) posted here recently about having trouble getting VGAPaint 386 working on their old 486 w/ 16 MB of RAM in DR-DOS 5. Well, my 486 Sx/25 w/ 8 MB RAM running MS-DOS 6.22 runs it fine.

http://www.geocities.com/snoopimeanie/vp_486.bmp (captured via Snarf)

So, I can't see any major reason (besides OS) for it not to work. I suggested at the time (and still suggest) he try a FreeDOS bootdisk (see my homepage).

I've never really used VP386 before now, but it seems fairly nice and well done, honestly.

Oh, and VGAPaint 386 is freely available for download with sources here.

N.B. rr, it doesn't even need DOS/4GW available for download because VPLZ (included) can make it use PMODE/W instead. (Or maybe it's good since DOS/4GW, despite bloat, can support swapping in low-mem situations unlike PMODE/W?? I dunno.)

---
Know your limits.h

> Someone (Jose) posted here recently about having trouble getting VGAPaint

Let's hope, he finds a way back to this forum.

> http://www.geocities.com/snoopimeanie/vp_486.bmp (captured via
> Snarf)

Why not use GIF or PNG?

> So, I can't see any major reason (besides OS) for it not to work. I
> suggested at the time (and still suggest) he try a FreeDOS bootdisk (see
> my homepage).

ACK. I never used DR-DOS 5, but IIRC only DR-DOS 6.x is fully compatible to MS-DOS 5.0. Maybe VP386 uses some undocumented call...

> I've never really used VP386 before now, but it seems fairly nice and well
> done, honestly.

Except its source code.

> Oh, and VGAPaint 386 is freely available for download with sources
> here.

This is not new. Jose grabbed VP386 from my pages.

> N.B. rr, it doesn't even need DOS/4GW available for download
> because VPLZ (included) can make it use PMODE/W instead. (Or maybe it's
> good since DOS/4GW, despite bloat, can support swapping in low-mem
> situations unlike PMODE/W?? I dunno.)

I don't remember exactly, but I had a discussion with Eric Auer once. I try to remember soon.

---
Forum admin

> Someone (Jose) posted here recently about having trouble getting VGAPaint



> Why not use GIF

obsolete

> or PNG

Using PNGOUT

> So, I can't see any major reason (besides OS) for it not to work. I
> suggested at the time (and still suggest) he try a FreeDOS bootdisk

YES. He should try FreeDOS. Also, I suspect the "CPUID"ding code

> This is not new. Jose grabbed VP386 from my pages.

Really ?

Also, DOS/32A has a



7) hack (and NK could use PNGOUT as well )

> > Why not use GIF
>
> obsolete

It's not obsolete.

> > This is not new. Jose grabbed VP386 from my pages.
>
> Really ?

Yes. Where's the funny point here?

> Also, DOS/32A has a
>
>
>
> 7) hack (and NK could use PNGOUT as well )

Um, what do you want to tell?

---
Forum admin

> > Someone (Jose) posted here recently about having trouble getting
> VGAPaint
>
> Let's hope, he finds a way back to this forum.

He's probably just busy or (less likely) it worked perfectly in FreeDOS, and he's too busy having fun to respond.

> > http://www.geocities.com/snoopimeanie/vp_486.bmp (captured via
> > Snarf)
>
> Why not use GIF or PNG?

Snarf outputted to .BMP, and it was only 64k, so I didn't bother converting it. I actually debated whether mentioning the screenshot at all since it's unlikely that I'd lie about such (muahahaha, tricked a DOS user, my work is done!).

> > So, I can't see any major reason (besides OS) for it not to work. I
> > suggested at the time (and still suggest) he try a FreeDOS bootdisk
> (see
> > my homepage).
>
> ACK. I never used DR-DOS 5, but IIRC only DR-DOS 6.x is fully compatible
> to MS-DOS 5.0. Maybe VP386 uses some undocumented call...

DR-DOS 7.03 says it's "100% compatible with MS-DOS 6.22" and reports 6.0 via int 21h,3306h. However, I've never used older versions, so I dunno about them. But yeah, I think DR-DOS 5.0 came out before MS-DOS 5.

> (quoting Wikipedia)
>
> The most significant was DR-DOS 5.0 in May 1990. (The company
> skipped version 4, avoiding comparison with the relatively unpopular MS-DOS
> 4.0.) This introduced ViewMAX, a GEM based GUI file management shell,
> and bundled disk-caching software, but more significantly, it also
> offered vastly improved memory management over MS-DOS.
>
> MS-DOS 5.0 was released June 1991.

Just FYI.

> > Oh, and VGAPaint 386 is freely available for download with sources
> > here.
>
> This is not new. Jose grabbed VP386 from my pages.

I was just filling in people who may not have been previously aware of it.

> > N.B. rr, it doesn't even need DOS/4GW available for download
> > because VPLZ (included) can make it use PMODE/W instead. (Or maybe it's
> > good since DOS/4GW, despite bloat, can support swapping in low-mem
> > situations unlike PMODE/W?? I dunno.)
>
> I don't remember exactly, but I had a discussion with Eric Auer once. I
> try to remember soon.

You can also maybe(??) use CWSTUB.EXE (Causeway, 47k) instead if you want to have HD swapping enabled (doesn't work in DOSBox 0.70, though, and I haven't tried "real" DOS).

---
Know your limits.h

> He's probably just busy or (less likely) it worked perfectly in
> FreeDOS an he's too busy having fun to respond

I just quit using VP386. It does cause a general protection fault
when selecting "Info" from the top menu and some unrecoverable
fault when attempting to start with an options file . Maybe later
DOSes have better fault handlers, having been designed to work with
Windows.
I am using NeoPaint for DOS (www.neosoftware.com). Compared with
VP it has the advantages:
1) Worked without a glitch from day 0 until now.
2) Has an user interface much like other (graphics video mode)
DOS programs.
3) Use no DOS extender, working in low memory and swapping overlays
and data to/from XMS or EMS. I think this an advantage because all
mysterious crashes and incompatibilities between programs I met
under DOS did concern programs which use DOS extenders.
and the disadvantage:
It is shareware, US$40 registration.

> > He's probably just busy or (less likely) it worked perfectly in
> > FreeDOS an he's too busy having fun to respond
>
> I just quit using VP386. It does cause a general protection fault
> when selecting "Info" from the top menu and some unrecoverable
> fault when attempting to start with an options file . Maybe later
> DOSes have better fault handlers, having been designed to work with
> Windows.

You know you can dual-boot DOSes, right? (See MetaKern). This way, you're able to use, say, FreeDOS and Datalight ROM-DOS (free for private use) or whatever.

If you don't mind shareware, try Pixel.

---
Know your limits.h

Hi ,
someone know changing the font of text in VGA paint?
Some text fonts are supplied, but i can'yt found the command for load another font.

Thanks

Roberto

EDIT by rr: Removed full-quote. Please don't do that!

> someone know changing the font of text in VGA paint?
> Some text fonts are supplied, but i can'yt found the command for load
> another font.

These are system fonts and not meant to be changed by a user.

---
Forum admin

> just quit using VP386. It does cause a general protection fault when selecting "Info"

There were some attempts to debug (see above and below)

> Maybe later DOSes have better fault handlers, having been designed to work with Windows

It's definitely not fault of DOS and not everything coming from "Windows" is good at all. Finally, HDPMI has a very good fault handler ... unfortunately there is no good way to run VGAP386 on it

> Use no DOS extender, working in low memory and swapping overlays
> and data to/from XMS or EMS. I think this an advantage because all
> mysterious crashes and incompatibilities between programs I met
> under DOS did concern programs which use DOS extenders.

This is definitely NOT true. It might fit for your special case (because VGAP386 is more buggy than NEO) and you had luck with your XMS&EMS, but generally DPMI32 is more stable than XMS, even even than EMS. EMS is crap (except 8086's EMS via additional memory cards, maybe)

rr wrote:

> Um, what do you want to tell?

That DOS/32A has a feature to "switch to text mode on crash" and this could be used to debug this problem

Rugxulo wrote:

> If you don't mind shareware, try Pixel.

Thanks, but did you test it ? It's unusably buggy

At least, topic starter (from "old" forum) is happy with NEOPAINT now

---
This is a LOGITECH mouse driver, but some software expect here
the following string:*** This is Copyright 1983 Microsoft ***

> > If you don't mind shareware, try Pixel.
>
> Thanks, but did you test it ? It's unusably buggy

ACK

---
Forum admin

> > > If you don't mind shareware, try Pixel.
> >
> > Thanks, but did you test it ? It's unusably buggy
>
> ACK

No, never tried it, didn't need to (don't do gfx editing). But yeah, the port should indeed be updated (I wish! But last I checked, the author didn't have DOS access; however I did try to remedy that via pointers to FreeDOS ...).

---
Know your limits.h

This is going far astray from the original topic. If anyone would like to discuss these matters, I think we should start a new thread.

> and not everything
> coming from "Windows" is good at all.

I never said the contrary.

> This is definitely NOT true.
> ... and you had luck with your
> XMS&EMS, but generally DPMI32 is more stable than XMS, even even than EMS.
> EMS is crap (except 8086's EMS via additional memory cards, maybe)

Maybe, but as far as a program does all its memory management trough standard calls to a memory manager built together with the OS, it is very unlikely to cause a crash. On the other side, every DOS-extended program will in turn take control of the whole machine memory management, each one working in a way somewhat different from any other.