From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Frederic Herman Subject: Re: Resurrect DOSEMU Date: Thu, 11 Jul 2013 08:31:47 -0600 Message-ID: <51DEC1D3.20604@inferential.com> References: <51DC0C1B.9030108@Gmail.com> <51DD3460.4060202@Gmail.com> <51DD37C3.1010809@list.ru> <51DD4B0A.1040505@adinet.com.uy> <51DEB6A7.3090508@Gmail.com> <51DEB983.5020109@sat.dundee.ac.uk> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: In-Reply-To: <51DEB983.5020109@sat.dundee.ac.uk> Sender: linux-msdos-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format="flowed" To: Paul Crawford Cc: Devyn Collier Johnson , linux-msdos@vger.kernel.org I am hoping that whatever is decided, that the result is an emulator that works properly in a 64 bit, particularly AMD, environment. I have an old reliable accounting package which I rely on, that crashes with op code errors under the 64 bit environment. I have given up sometime ago with running it under x86_64,and have resorted to using another machine with 32 bit hardware and OS just so I can run the accounting package via a remote ssh session. I have been using Fedora Linus, but recently tried a Ubuntu linux (64 bit) and have the same problem. I think I tried DOSbox, but I remember a show-stopper, maybe lack of printer support. DOS emulation is not just for running games. There are legacy business packages such as the one I use, that require a good emulator. These packages were typically written in assembly language. In my case, switching to a modern accounting package is not a just a matter of the cost of software. The greater cost is the huge amount of time I would need to spend to manually convert about 10 business general ledgers to a new accounting package. Fred On 07/11/2013 07:56 AM, Paul Crawford wrote: > 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