Re: Hoo boy! This is going to be interesting.

[Paul Crawford <psc@sat.dundee.ac.uk>]

On 08/10/10 21:22, Frank Cox wrote:
> What version of dosemu are you trying to use?
>
> Is the problem with dosemu or with freedos?  Have you tried running your
> application under "native" freedos?  Have you tried running your
> application under dosemu with ms-dos (or whatever dos version you run it
> under now)?
>
> What language is your application written in?  Do you have the source
> code and a suitable compiler?  If so, are you sufficiently familiar with
> the programming that you can play with the source code for your
> application and find out exactly what's causing it to blow up?
>
> What kind of application are you using?  Process control?  Database?
> Custom hardware driver?  Something else?

There are a number of things you need to try as outlined above.

However, you should also be aware that dosemu 'plays better' on a 32-bit 
OS than a 64-bit version, at least in my experience of trying the MS 
C6.0 compiler for our legacy applications.

As outlined above, try your application on 'real hardware' using freedos 
and whatever other DOS versions you have. Try and establish what it is 
happy with first. If it is only happy with, say, MS-DOS 6.22 then you 
can try that inside dosemu and see if it is then happy.

Finally once your app is not crashing dosemu, remember that some DOS 
applications, and our primary reason for using dosemu, need direct 
hardware access. Don't give dosemu a blank cheque though, find out what 
your app needs and enable just that, remembering also you need to edit 
the dosemu.conf file to allow such access *AND* to start dosemu / 
xdosemu with the '-s' option as well (and to be a sudo'er, as this 
punches a huge hole through the OS' security model!)

If you don't allow direct access you won't crash dosemu, it emulates the 
(wrong) results, so it is unlikely that a crash can be fixed by enabling 
this. Do it only *if* you need some special hardware to work, and you 
already have things kind of working OK (at least to the level of 
starting and stopping an application fairly normally).

And you are testing on a machine with no unique/valuable data I trust? :)

Regards,
Paul