Hi Dennis, Thanks for the detailed response.
There is a bit of pressure from my IT dept to upgrade both the file server that the network share resides on and the win 7 laptops that we use to run the dos app in. When they recently upgraded another file server the dos app had to be moved to another server because it stopped working after the first server was upgraded. My concern is this will happen again. I don't know the exact details.. maybe the samba version the new server supports? Or maybe the os of the file server does not support dos? Again my knowledge is limited here. I can ask IT dept. The dos app contains a customer database so changes made by one user need to be seen by others and more than one person may be adding and updating customer info at the same time. This is why I think the dos app would need to be on a network share. I tried dosbox and vdos but they won't work. The dos app needs to print to net use mapped lpt ports and also there is a USB dongle that the dos app needs to communicate with to allow full functionality. Although in practice most functions work anyway even without that. I only tried the official versions of vdos and dosbox tho so maybe there are other versions that could work. Any more advice greatly appreciated! Sean On Tue 1 Mar 2022, 05:41 dmccunney, <[email protected]> wrote: > On Mon, Feb 28, 2022 at 8:41 PM Sean Warner <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > Not sure if you saw my more recent post... I now have a version of > FreeDOS 1.2 with the NIC and MS Client installed and working. I went with > v1.2 because after some googling I read that 1.2 is more stable than 1.3 > for network sharing and things. Maybe that is not true anymore? > > > > At my work I use a DOS application. It is "installed" onto a network > share on a file server and by mapping this share as a network drive I and > my colleagues are able to run that DOS application in Windows 7 32-bit > which we are still using as our daily driver OSs on our work laptops. > > > > My IT dept wants to upgrade the OS of that file server and our laptops > to Win 10. So I am trying to find a new way to host that DOS applciation > and make it available to the two or three people who still use it, > sometimes simultaneously. > > > My idea is to have Win 10 on my laptop and use Virtualbox to run FreeDOS > which would run this DOS application which would again need to be located > on a network share... or such is my understanding... in order that more > than one person can use it potentially at the same time as others using it > or maybe when no one else is around and their computers are turned off. > > I think you are making this far more complicated than it needs to be. > > Right now, you can access the DOS application and run it from a drive > which is mapped as a network share. If the company upgrades the > server OS on the machine mapped as a share, why would that change the > mapping, or the ability to access the network share and the DOS > application that lives on it? > > When you run it now, you are loading it from the network and running > it locally. How many must use it simultaneously is irrelevant. You > are each running a local copy of the application, that happens to be > run from a network server instead of being loaded from a local drive. > > You are using 32 bit Win7 because it still supports NTVDM, which > provides enough of the DOS environment to load and run a 18 bit DOS > application. Microsoft removed the ability to run 16 bit applications > in 64 bit Windows, so if you need to do that you need a VM of some > sort to run them in. > > One possibility is a 32 bit build of Win10. Those do exist, and will > still run 16 bit apps using NTVDM, but it isn't the direction I would > go,. What happens if you need to run a 54 bit Windows application? > > These days, the preferred method of running 16 bit DOS applications on > bit Windows is to use a VM, but it doesn't require VirtuaBox or the > like. What most folks here do is run DOSBox or vDOS Plus. DOSBox is > a VM designed to allow gamers to run DOS games on things that aren't > DOS PCs. It provides enough of a DOS environment to run the games. > and provides emulation for various graphics and sound functions that > aren't available on things like PCs that don't have a Creative Labs > Sound Blaster ISA card to provide the audio for games written to use > it, or a specidfic supported video card for EGA/VGA modes.. DOSBox is > cross platform. I used an ARM port to run several DOS apps on an > Android tablet using an ARM Cortex 7 CPU. (I had to find one that > passed Ctrl-key combos to the running app, as a WordStar style editor > was one of the things I wanted to use.) > > If your application is pure character mode, you can use a fork of > DOSBox called vDOS Plus. vDOS Plus only runs on x86 architecture, but > that's not an issue for you. It's specifically intended to run > character mode applications like editors and spreadsheets, and drops > the specialized video and sound support.. I use it here to run the > old VDE editor, a WordStar clone that originated under CP/M and was > ported to DOS, as well as some character mode games ported from Unix > like Larn and VMS Empire. > > I run them from a shortcut. The shortcut runs vDOS Plus, but starts > it in the directory where the DOS program is stored. Local config > files in the directory do the setup to run the program. Exit the > program and I'm back in Windows. > > And for that matter, I don't see the need to host the DOS application > your folks use on a network server. Does it ever *change*? Is there a > reason you and your coworkers can't each have a local copy you run > from your own PC, without needing to access a network share? You > likely want a master copy on a network share as a backup, but I see no > need to load and run if across the network. > > Tere may be specific things about the DOS app that will be problematic > herfe, but right now it sounds like you are way overthinking the > problem. > ______ > Dennis > > > _______________________________________________ > Freedos-user mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user >
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