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Help setting up FreeDos/Dos (Users)

posted by karmashock, 07.07.2014, 04:48

Its not for commercial programs and shows with its poor support for network shares, printing, etc.

They go to great pains to say its for games and will often outright refuse to help you with anything that isn't a game.

They direct you to alternatives like vDos which I did install and try.

vDos appears to work but throws up some weird errors on some operations that I'd like to avoid having to debug. The program doesn't need to be debugged if run on an XP system. And sadly only a native XP system not a VMed guest version of XP.


In any case, I'm hoping to run a version of FreeDos or MS DOS in a VM with windows share support and the ability map shared printers to the LPT1 port.


This was easy in XP... just a couple NET commands. But DOS is of course its own special animal.

I'd love it if I could get my hands on a VM image that just worked. Short of that, I'll install one from scratch but its not an OS that I have a deep understanding for beyond whatever is similar between windows Batch script and DOS. I know the batch script is based on dos but I suspect they've diverged over the years

> I have never run dosbox in Windows because I got rid of Windows here on my
> systems quite a few years ago.
>
> However, I _can_ say that dosbox works like a charm in Linux.
>
> So perhaps this is what you might like to try.
> http://www.dosbox.com/download.php?main=1
>
> > I have a very old DOS based database. dBaseIV. And it's run just fine up
> to
> > MS deciding to stop supporting 16 apps for 64 bit operating systems.
> >
> > So I now need to emulate this database.
> >
> > I've tried lots of things. I can't run the database in Virtualbox or
> VMware
> > under and XP guest.
> >
> > So I'm now interested in trying a DOS guest. That is, loading an
> emulated
> > DOS operating system inside of a VM where I'll run the database.
> >
> > The database makes use of network shares, network printers, etc. And so
> to
> > set up this guest operating system in the VM, I need to be able to get
> DOS
> > to do these things.
> >
> > I've played around with some programs that appeared to give FreeDOS
> access
> > to network shares. But while the dos operating systems appear to have
> the
> > NET command and can ping the server... they cannot map the network share
> to
> > a drive letter or share their own file system with the network.
> >
> > I always get one of a couple different errors.
> >
> >
> > The VM people threw me at your forum. So please don't throw me back at
> > those guys. I'm getting bounced around here.
> >
> > I'd be perfectly happy with a downloadable drive image for Virtualdub
> with
> > Freedos and functional SMB file sharing capability.
> >
> > I've tried to download those in the past and while they appear to work
> they
> > fail to actually either share or access shares on the network. Which is
> > really the whole point.
> >
> >
> > I'm trying some other programs such as vDos with some success. Let me
> know
> > the options.
> >
> >
> > I appreciate this is an usual request but we're trying to keep an old
> > database functional in an increasingly hostile computer environment.
> >
> > Currently, we're only keeping it working by putting it on a 32bit
> terminal
> > server and then having people RDP into an XP host... where they then run
> > the database.
> >
> >
> > Its not a viable long term solution. The 32bit host won't be compatible
> > forever. Any help keeping the database going in the 21st century would
> be
> > appreciated.

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