From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Paul Crawford Subject: Re: Hoo boy! This is going to be interesting. Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2010 19:21:16 +0100 Message-ID: <4CBC901C.1010003@sat.dundee.ac.uk> References: <4CAF7029.8020304@comcast.net> <1286569332.11941.13.camel@mutt.melvilletheatre.net> <4CBC876A.90204@comcast.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: In-Reply-To: <4CBC876A.90204@comcast.net> Sender: linux-msdos-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format="flowed" To: Steve Cohen Cc: Frank Cox , linux-msdos@vger.kernel.org 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