Re: Resurrect DOSEMU

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

Dear Devyn,
> 3. What is we spoke with the DOSbox developers about merging the two
> projects? Why have two DOS emulators for Linux? Why have to separate

I am not very sure about how DOSbox is implemented, but I think they 
have rather different approaches to the issue of running DOS 
applications under alternative operating systems. There is also the 
option of booting MS-DOS, etc, in a VMware virtual machine, etc, to add 
to the list of options for DOS software.

However, in our case the attraction of dosemu for Linux comes down to 
two points:

1) The option for direct hardware access, thus allowing old software to 
communicate with old hardware, but under the management of a secure 
networked system (e.g. access to NFS drives, remote log-in via SSH, time 
keeping accurate using NTP, etc).

2) Good emulation of file system access, so DOS applications can work 
with Linux file systems and see them in a reasonably sensible manner 
(e.g. all file names mapped to lower case on the Linux side, upper on 
DOS side, etc). VMware's shared folders do not work very well in this 
aspect (though using Samba you can get something reasonable, but then 
with Windows networking, so not really a DOS solution).

These are not generally requirements for running an old DOS game, but 
they are exceedingly useful for keeping tried & trusted hardware & 
software going where the alternative of a new system involving a 
complete re-write may be either impossible (no source code, etc) or 
simply impractical.

Regards,
Paul
-- 
Dr. Paul S. Crawford
Satellite Station
Dundee University
Small's Wynd, Dundee,
DD1 4HN, U.K.
Tel: +44 (0)1382 38 4687
Email: psc@sat.dundee.ac.uk
The University of Dundee is a Scottish Registered Charity, No. SC015096