Running an old DOS program

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.

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.


--
Ken

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

I am not a Win98 user, I use XP, but I'm crossposting to the 98 group
because if there's anyone that would know about running old programs
on modern machines, I hope it to be you guys.

I was told that legacy DOS drivers are no longer made for modern mobos
as of like 5 years ago, but I constantly hear about nostalgic mofos
finding workarounds.

I do have a workaround which is DOSBox but it greatly slowed down the
performance. Indeed, only a weird mother****er like me would go out my
way to emulate an EMULATOR and expect the FPS to be smooth. 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.

So yeah, any way to run my program natively or at least a way faster
than running it through DOSBox?

If your hardware will run an OS that will run that program natively, that's
your best shot. This will mean you can't run it in a multitasking envornment
that also holds all your WXP stuff, but there are tools like Ghost that make
short work of shuttling OS images between disks, partitions and files. You
can also dual-boot.

The ideal virtual machine isn't a tool like DOSbox, good though that may be.
(I've seen it, I like it). Ideally it should run at LOW level. WIndows
'protected mode' for example, is a low lever virtual machine. It should
ideally run as close to the hardware as possible (in future there will no
doubt be a huge growth in virtual i386 machines running on ARM processors,
and such.)

If a lot of WXP is between you and the hardware, you will not get the same
performance you will get running a natively supporting OS. Nothing will get
round that. it may be better to get a KVM switch, and a cheap older computer
dedicated to running this task. Then you can use your keyboard to change the
mahine the keyboard, mouse and video get attached to with little more effort
that Alt_Tabbing between tasks. Just make sure that when each machine boots,
it 'owns' the monitor.

Sjouke Burry s@b wrote in
2.10:

I simply use a dos6.22 or 7.xx(win98) bootfloppy,
dos 6.22 simply ingnores the ntsf or fat32,

I did that, but on a 15 MB partition at the end of the first disk, in a dual-
boot using Scorpius. It also has a Datalight network stack and FTP. I ended
up not using it a lot, but it boots like lightning on the occasions when I
do. It has long filename support. Adding NTFS support is possible, but write
access isn't free. Most of its 15 MB is unused, I just let it have that much
because it was a neat leftover from some slice-sizing calculations.

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.)

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.