Hi Dennis, Dosbox normally uses a built-in simulation of DOS, not a real separate DOS. For sound in DOS boxes, I think there was something called NTVDM. If you have Linux, you should use Dosemu, which is a virtual PC specialized for running DOS fast. You can boot a real DOS in recent Dosbox versions, but that does not affect how well it does sound.
> Was thinking of using DOS 6.22, but then saw FreeDos. > What reasons might I chose one over the other? FreeDOS is free and can use more modern hardware. For example MS DOS only can use the first 8 GB of your harddisk and cannot use FAT32 partitions... On the other hand, MS DOS has better compatibility with 32bit modes of the Windows 3 family (note that WfW 3.11 is relatively useless in 16bit mode). You can also try DR DOS or spin off variants, which have reasonable licensing even though not fully free. Talking about other free software, some people say that MS QBASIC is free - but you can also try the FreeBasic.net FREE alternative. FreeDOS itself has many of the tools you know from MS DOS, but it does not include QBASIC, DBLSPACE, DOSSHELL, BACKUP/RESTORE, INTERLNK, maybe others. For some other tools, there are non-MS-style alternatives included. For example DOSFSCK is somehow similar to SCANDISK (interactive filesystem check and repair) but has a different user interface; While SCANDISK can create undo-disks, DOSFSCK has a mode to simulate the changes without actually writing. > Does FreeDos work under XP or needs to be booted separately? You can use the tools / apps of FreeDOS in XP, but of course with some limitations. For example XP will not let DOS tools FORMAT harddisks. And you cannot boot the kernel of FreeDOS in XP itself, only in an emulator like Bochs, Qemu, VMware, VirtualPC, Dosbox, etc. So without our kernel, most of your DOS compatibility in the DOS window of XP simply depends on how much DOS compatibility XP gives your DOS window. > My music app needs an mup401 or a serial port, so that's an issue. Only hardware can solve this if you boot DOS separately. If you run DOS in some sort of window, the sound will depend on the virtual hardware of that window, and will still be independend of your DOS version. One exception is that SBLive / SBPCI come with DOS drivers (which only work when you boot DOS separately afair?) which create a sort of emulator with virtual SoundBlaster16 hardware while DOS keeps using your real hardware for everything else. Eric ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by DB2 Express Download DB2 Express C - the FREE version of DB2 express and take control of your XML. No limits. Just data. Click to get it now. http://sourceforge.net/powerbar/db2/ _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
