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

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

Dear Steve,
> It's 1.4, the version you get with apt-get from Ubuntu 10.04 and the
> latest stable version, I believe.

Are you using 32-bit or 64-bit? I found 32-bit plays better generally.

> Although we have source code and suitable compilers, tweaking it much is
> probably not an option for business reasons. We are on a 2-week
> fish-or-cut-bait time frame for evaluating DOSEMU for this purpose. If
> we can't get this to work, we will look at rewriting instead, which is
> our preferred long-term solution. DOSEMU, if it proves out in the two
> weeks allotted, would be the short term solution. The reason for this
> whole effort is hardware exhaustion - we haven't figured out a workable
> way to replace the old hardware, and are running out of suitable
> replacements, which are no longer available.

If all you talk to are serial ports, then you can use a VM under Linux 
and have that run your software & MS-DOS in it, and pass through the 
serial stuff to the machine's hardware.

Only 'gotcha' I have found is VM's generally can't successfully set 
non-standard baud rates, where as dosemu can (particularly if its going 
via direct hardware I/O to the serial ports rather than emulation).

Re-writing, while a good long terms solution, should *not* be under 
estimated in terms of the effort needed!

Having the source code is a *major* bonus, and you might be able to 
re-compile for Linux by only replacing some of the I/O and user 
interface side of it. We still have a 19-year old DOS control program 
that we use 24/7 on several systems because:

1) It works reliably (a lot of debugging over the years).

2) There is little "value" in a new program. Given we have it happy 
under dosemu, there is no functional advantage to changing.

3) It is around 6 months effort to re-write, then at least another 6 
months to debug to an acceptably good degree of reliability. Given (2) 
there is a lot better use of our time on other projects (i.e. little 
"business case" for it).

Regards,
Paul