Hi all,****
** **
I run DP on Win7Pro 64bit, using VMWare Player. It easy to do, and
you get great performance if you use say Windows 98SE as the Guest
operating system. You can of course use Win 7 32Bit as the Guest
operating system but that’s a lot of overhead to run a DOS app that
itself can easily fit a floppy diskette if anyone could ever find
one of those relics from the past. ****
** **
I have also had reasonable success with running FreeDOS/PCDOS and
MSDOS as the guest operating system, but there a few hurdles to
overcome. ****
** **
Firstly you need to create a VM Machine and hard drive and leave it
empty. ****
Then you have to create a DOS bootable virtual floppy boot disk, (I
am trying to think what software I used for that), but you can tell
VMWare to use this “floppy diskette image”, and its bidirectional,
you can read and write to the virtual image from within VMWare. You
need to configure the VM to use this image as its floppy diskette
(You can do the same thing with CD-ROM or ISO images, but since you
need to install drivers into DOS to read the CD-ROM it is something
of a Catch-22, you can add CD-ROM support later in the
configuration)****
** **
I should add that the Virtual Floppy Diskette image must contain
not just the boot files, but also you will probably need utilities
like Format.com, MSCDEX.EXE, XCOPY, etc etc, whatever you can fit
into 1.44Mb (I have never gotten the 2.88Mb Floppy image VMWare
supports to work)****
** **
The next hurdle is to get VMWare to boot this floppy, normally it
will want to boot from the virtual hard drive you originally create,
and the damn things runs so fast that you can’t press the F2 or F12
key to configure create a boot sequence so that it tries to boot
from the floppy first. If you insert “bios.bootDelay = "5000"“ as a
line in the VM’s VMX file then you will get a 5 second (5000
milliseconds) window of opportunity to get to the F12 key to choose
to boot from floppy. ****
** **
Ok, so here you are. Probably looking at a very familiar screen (for
older
members) where you are asked to enter today’s time and date,
followed by another familiar C:\> It all becomes very
nostalgic.****
** **
So then you have to do some work. The next thing to test your memory
and internet researching abilities is to set up the autoexec.bat and
config.sys so that you can configure the DOS memory, HIMEM UMB,
Files and Buffers (you need these to get DP to work, a minimum of 40
files). (DO NOT be tempted to load SHARE, it was never much use
anyway). You also need to add the Driver for the CDROM and
parameters into the config.sys, and MSCDEX and its parameters into
the autoexec.bat. ****
** **
But once you have that you have a virtual machine that boots up (and
very quickly if you remove or change the bios.bootDelay parameter,
and get to a comfortable C:\> in no time flat, unless you left the
boot sequence to Floppy diskette and still have the image in.****
** **
Ok now to whet your appetite you will need to get DP and say a DP
application on there. You can access shares, USB sticks. Floppies
are just a little slow, because you cannot change the virtual
floppy, so you could repetitively reboot the VM incrementally and
copy fragments from incrementally created floppy images. I chose to
put a large app and the DP files onto an CD ISO image, using
WinImage (I think) as the creator.
Then
XCOPY’d (if you remembered to install it and set the PATH so your
dos utilities), into a new folder. You can use the internal COPY
command, but my app had folders to contend with so XCOPY is far less
of a
headache.****
** **
Fire up DP and watch it fly. ****
** **
But, now the really difficult part starts. Its one things to have DP
working on a Virtual Machine island but to interact with the real
world is more difficult. First you need to install a network device
driver then TCP/IP stack, and then an MS NET Client or similar on
top. There are many of these. Then you have to tweak it to access
shares (remember that DOS will not connect to a share not in 8.3
name format. Also the Host needs some registry changes to allow the
type of authentication that the early DOS network clients used, and
then you need to set us shares for the printers, and redirect LPT1,
to use one of these shares. I got it working some time ago, and I
was pleased with how it worked, but it was way too much work. ****
** **
The Win98SE alternatively works wonderfully, and you do not have to
worry about Windows activation like with later versions, so you can
keep multiple versions of your appliance (remembering of course
Microsoft’s licencing arrangements J) printing works fine, I imagine
things like DPSpool etc will also work. Antiviruses are a problem
since there are not too many now for Win 98, but if you only ever
use it for DP then its probably not much of a worry. By using a
more lightweight Guest OS, there are few demands on late model
hardware so you will probably see Win98 work at speeds you never
thought possible. Sharing files either direction etc is also so much easier.
****
** **
If I ever have time, and that’s rare with two kids around the house,
and if I can make a pre-made appliance which does not breach
Microsoft licencing I will upload one so anyone can use it.****
** **
Bye****
Brian****
** **
** **
*From:* [email protected] [mailto:
[email protected]] *On Behalf Of *Gerard van Loenhout
*Sent:* Saturday, 16 February 2013 7:31 AM
*To:* Jon Ong
*Cc:* Dataperfect Users Discussion Group
*Subject:* Re: [Dataperf] Screen size win7/32****
** **
Jon, I find dosbox a bit too slow building up, especially with data
from
links.****
And we are 5 people using it on a network, that's why I chose not to
use
dosbox.****
** **
But I guess a relaxed person like you ;-) would probably be okay
with dosbox. You can always try it. It's free.****
** **
I know other people that are happy with dosbox on Win7/64.****
** **
Gerard ****
** **
2013/2/15 Jong <[email protected]>****
Gerard, Geert & Tim:****
****
Really nice to get continued support for our DP dinosaur from the gang.
****
****
I've considered switching to Access or other databases but I still
believe simple is better, especially with complex data sets that I
deal with in a medical practice.****
****
Full screen really only a concern for the portable netbooks I have
to carry around at work, I realize that's not too much of an issue
on the big
screen.****
****
From what I've seen so far, someone (excuse me for forgetting who
it
was)
said win7/32 pro allowed XP emulation with full screen so it looks
like that's the easiest way to go for me. ****
****
As for win7/64, (which unfortunatley I have on one of my laptops),
it looks like best solution is creating a virtual PC using VMware
and then WinXP -- lots of work there.****
****
Jon****
-----Original Message-----
*From:* Gerard van Loenhout [mailto:[email protected]]
*Sent:* Friday, February 15, 2013 12:26 AM
*To:* [email protected]
*Cc:* [email protected]; Dataperfect Users Discussion Group
*Subject:* Re: [Dataperf] DOS in Win 7/64 questions****
Hi Jong! ****
** **
I use DP Win7 / 32 Home. The window is not bigger than the dosbox in
XP.**
**
I find it quite comfortable to work with. ****
With these big screens nowadays I haven't actually tried
fullscreen.****
** **
Geert probably knows more.****
** **
Gerard ****
** **
2013/2/14 Jong <[email protected]>****
Geert & everyone:
Thanks for the latest info on Dp in Win7/32, just a few clarifiers:
1. Do you have pro or home version Win7/32?
2. Does DP run in full screen mode?
3. How do you print up your HTML output from DP?
4. Is there a print spooler we can use similar to DP Spool to make
printing seamless?
Jon****
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of [email protected]
Sent: Thursday, February 14, 2013 6:49 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [Dataperf] DOS in Win 7/64 questions
Hi all,
I can only agree with Gerard : I am running DP 'straight out of the box'
without any problem on a Win7/32 system. NB: I don't even use Tame !
All my reports are saved into html-files, which solves all possible
printing problems...
Regards,
Geert.
On Wed, 13 Feb 2013 09:03:25 +0100, Gerard van Loenhout
<[email protected]> wrote:
Don, I was the one who started the most recent discussion about Win7.
DosBox is too slow. I bought a couple of Win7/64 PCs at Dell. I
bought a CD from them with Win7/32 for the same PCs so I had the
right drivers. Now DP works fine.
2013/2/12 Don Friedman <[email protected]>
I know that there has been discussion about this but I can't seem
to find a way to search it out on the main site. Is their a trick
to that?
I've finally "grown up" and put a couple of Win7/64 boxes in the
office.
I'm assuming that I can run dosbox to run DP without much trouble
- I never have a need to print from DP and if I remember right
that was part of the problem. Am I on the right track here? I'm
assuming that it will
still
be
faster to run DP via dosbox on my newer machines than to run them
on
my
older XP machine.
Don
--
*Don Friedman
ProfessionalRecords.Com LLC
PRS Data Systems
Liveport WiFi*
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** **
** **
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