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Re: DOS development hardware?

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> >> I run DOS on my mac under virtualbox and it works very well.
> >Do you notice it pegging the cpu? It uses one of my cores at 100%.
> 
> Yeah, IIRC Win98 did the same thing. Basically VirtualBox doesn't
> know when the hosted system is idle.

I had a funny thing happen today. I was trying to setup an environment on
DR-DOS 7.03. I noticed while it was doing heavy work it only drove one of my
cores to 10%. At the command prompt it drove one core to 100%. It's a lot
better doing something than "nothing" under emulation!

> >> Are you asking which version of windows is better for running DOS
> >> software? or which is better for running a virtual machine?
> 
> >I was really asking (I think) which Windows is the best DOS development
> >platform. As far as hosting, I never use Windows. I have several Linux
> >boxes. 
> 
> I'd do development under real-DOS (quick to reboot when it dies), or
> under an emulator - Win98 is probably not the best choice as it's too
> easy to kill it, and it takes a while to reboot.

I found a lot of truth to your words today. Following MASM's directions to
update my config.sys crashed my machine. I reinstalled DR-DOS and made a
backup. I can reboot in less than 5 seconds. If I could only get MASM
working! I will try a brand-name DOS next, I think the memory managers for
DR-DOS are not compliant with what MS is expecting. I also tried DJGPP and
it worked but had a few quirks. Not sure if it's my version of DOS or
them. I'll know more after I try MS-DOS and IBM-DOS.

Update: it's emulation. NASM, specifically PWB does not like running under
DR-DOS or MS DOS 6.22 under either QEMU or VirtualBox. Bummer.

BTW I really like QEMU for DOS work so far (aside from MASM crashing DOS).
You can enlarge the screen and it actually works. I have a huge screen and
everything seems a lot nicer. You don't get more lines but the display is
scaled with big letters and you don't need to use a magnifying glass like
you do running it under VirtualBox.

> >I'm going to need this to move files around. Someone else posted some
> >links to his ftp software, after I get a copy of 98 I will start looking
> >for stuff to create my environment. I played around with DR-DOS today on
> >QEMU and VirtualBox. I was ok until I needed to copy over some big
> >files. Had no way to do it.
> 
> There are many ways to move files to and from DOS machines, here are
> some ideas, and notes on the DOS software I've successfully used:
> 
> FLOPPY: standard across platforms, good for up to 1.4MB, not supported
> on most new hardware. You can use USB floppy drives under windows, and
> some systems have mainboard FDC support even if no floppy drive(s) are
> installed (so all you need is a drive and cable).
> No special software required.

Yeah this is what I was doing but it's not a good solution except for
installation disks that already exist because most of the stuff I am trying
to install won't fit on one disk. Watcom is like 80M just for the C
installer!

> HARD DRIVE: Moving a hard drive between DOS and other machines can be
> a very easy way to move large files - I use removable IDE carriers to
> make it easy to move drives - you can also use a USB enclosure or drive
> cable to interface the drive to more modern systems.
> No special software required.

This is what turned out to be the easiest for me right now using emulation.
I'm sure you guys know all this but I will say it in case any other hapless
DOS-newbie like myself is reading this.

DOS will automatically add hard drives if they are formatted with a valid
partition table. I am using QEMU so I copied my existing (too small btw)
512M installed system over to another file and booted QEMU with -hda
pointing to my live system and -hdb pointing to a copy. When DOS came up the
second drive was available on D:. I used xdel to delete everything on the D:
drive which gave me a nice 512M to work with.

I shut down the emulator and started up a WinXP system under VirtualBox with
the D: drive from my DOS system attached. I copied all the files I wanted to
install on my DOS system from my Linux host box onto the D: drive via the
virtual WinXP system and shut it down. I could have skipped the previous
step (and I will next time) but I did it because I wasn't sure DOS would
find the drive until I tried it. Now that I see how it works it gets easier.

I booted DOS under QEMU again and now I was able to get to all my files.
Pretty neat stuff and easier than real computers.

> CD/DVD: Easiest way to get large files into DOS, but basically one-way
> (no viable DOS CD writing software that I know of), and requires burning
> disks. Needs CD/DVD driver and MSCDEX (or equivalent).

This would be fine under emulation but I still haven't gotten far enough to
try to see if I can get a CD mounted. When I get a real box going I will try
your hard drive suggestions.

> USB mass storage: Can be tricky to setup and use under DOS. There are
> several drivers available - I've used the panasonic drivers: USBASPI.SYS
> and DI1000DD.SYS with reasonable success.

Thanks, good to know.

I think your ftp suggestion will be the best on a real system.

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Re: DOS development hardware? Kulin Remailer <remailer@reece.net.au> - 2011-02-01 09:06 +0000

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