Huge performance issues

[Gwenn Boussard <gwenn@talc.fr>]

Hi,
We've got tens of standard PC's running an old Dos app' with Dosemu
(Trustix Linux distrib) since years.
Since a year or so, customers start complaining about performance on new
machines.
In fact browsing the text menu is slow that it's painfull !
A 'top' show that dosemu.bin use constantly 99% of CPU whatever I do.
On old machines it soars up to 40% at startup, then go down to 0% during
inactivity, and again up to few % during menu browsing.

The machines have various kernel and dosemu versions...

So I made some tests on two machines, a Fast and a Slow :
Put Fast dosemu binary on Slow
Put Slow kernel on Fast
Put Fast Dos image on Slow
Modified Slow dosemu.conf to look like Fast one
Verified final binaries were the same on Fast and Slow
And some other test I don't remember.

Whatever I do Slow stays slow, and Fast stays Fast.

There are tests I can't do because Slow is an off-site in production
machine, but I feel I tried all steps unsuccessfully.

Does anybody see another test I can do, any part that can go wrong ?
We don't use sound, nor mouse, just plain Dos emulation with IPX
support.

Regards,
Gwenn