Port access and keyboard emulation w/ dosemu

[Richard White <Richard@qc.edu>]

Hi!

I'm trying to set up dosemu to run a couple of applications:

a) DBASEIII
b) XPRESS a proprietary (well-behaved as far as I know- at least it has always 
worked well under WinNT4) application that controls a home-automation 
computer via a serial port.

Current status:

RedHat Linux 9 (kernel 2.4.20)
installed dosemu 1.0.2.1 and freedos -b8p from tgz binaries per instructions 
to a subdirectory of my personal directory (instructions worked 
EXACTLY as written- thanks developers!)

Basically the emulator and apps seem to work as they should, and, most 
importantly seem stable and preserve the integrity of data.  But there are a 
few problems:-

1) keyboard emulation.  'Auto' does not seem to work well (these apps need the 
full keyboard with function keys and CTRL/, SHIFT, and ALT/, char sets.  
Setting 'ibm' for keyboard emulation seems to work best, but that is just by 
experimenting.  Are there any rules/suggestions for this?

2) More seriously, I can not manage to get the dos apps to see the printer.  
Printing is set up (CUPS), and the 'lp' command works from linux.  The default 
lp printer is a networked HP laserjet. In dosemu.conf, $_printer is set to 
'lp', printer timeout to 20 sec, and $_ports has no settings.

3) And finally, COM1 seems to be invisible.  $_com1 is set to /dev/ttyS0, but 
no luck.

Any advice on how to diagnose and fix this?

Thanks so much!

Richard White