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Considering MS-DOS (Users)

posted by Dennis, 31.07.2011, 02:28

> Dennis; thanks for your very full answer.

You're welcome.

One concern I don't have a clear feeling for is whether you'll be able to multi-boot DOS. A poster elsewhere was in high dudgeon because he bought a new Dell PC and discovered they'd removed the ability to boot MS-DOS from the BIOS. He returned it and is looking elsewhere. I'm less upset. Current machines are all 64bit boxes, and many current computer users weren't born or were toddlers when DOS was in regular use. The vast majority of users will have no need to boot to DOS, let alone run DOS apps, and won't miss the capability.

> Regarding your comments about the XP NTVDM environment, my understanding is
> that it is a less than full emulation of MS-DOS. For example if I run
> Javelin (an old DOS time series/financial modelling package) in XP's NTVDM,
> it doesn't 'see' any EMS. If I run it in DOSBOX, Javelin 'sees' 16MB of
> EMS.
Play with the values in CONFIG.NT. I don't need EMS, and don't care, but it appears to be possible to configure it.

I didn't post the full text of my CONFIG.NT file. The part left out was

:: EMM
:: You can use EMM command line to configure EMM(Expanded Memory Manager).
:: The syntax is:
::
:: EMM = [A=AltRegSets] [B=BaseSegment] [RAM]
::
:: AltRegSets
:: specifies the total Alternative Mapping Register Sets you
:: want the system to support. 1 <= AltRegSets <= 255. The
:: default value is 8.
:: BaseSegment
:: specifies the starting segment address in the Dos conventional
:: memory you want the system to allocate for EMM page frames.
:: The value must be given in Hexdecimal.
:: 0x1000 <= BaseSegment <= 0x4000. The value is rounded down to
:: 16KB boundary. The default value is 0x4000
:: RAM
:: specifies that the system should only allocate 64Kb address
:: space from the Upper Memory Block(UMB) area for EMM page frames
:: and leave the rests(if available) to be used by DOS to support
:: loadhigh and devicehigh commands. The system, by default, would
:: allocate all possible and available UMB for page frames.
::
:: The EMM size is determined by pif file(either the one associated
:: with your application or _default.pif). If the size from PIF file
:: is zero, EMM will be disabled and the EMM line will be ignored.

I have DOSBox under Linux and it works fine. My big complaint is that DOSBox is intended for running old MS-DOS games, and thinks of screen sizes in terms of graphics resolution. As a result, it appears limited in character mode to 80x25 screen sizes. I want 80x50 VGA mode, or at least 80x43 EGA mode if I can't get 80x50.

> I have considered MS-DOS in a virtual environment - Virtual PC, Virtual Box
> and VMWare Player - all of which work fine. The main problem is that you
> cannot run MS-DOS in such environments in full-screen mode. You just get a
> small 'window' containing the MS-DOS screen and, if you hit Alt-Enter, all
> that happens is the window stays the same size and the remaining screen
> space becomes a black boundary. The suggestion I've seen elsewhere of
> changing the host screen size (to the equivalent of a 80x25 screen) doesn't
> really appeal!
Er, why do you want to run DOS full screen? I prefer large monitors with lots of screen real estate, and the last thing I want is a DOS app filling the entire screen. I want DOS apps in a window.

In your position, I'd look at a VM solution, rather than trying to multi-boot.
______
Dennis

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