4 ms·

I remember painful memories of late 90s and early 2000s. Until DosBox, it was impossible to run DOS applications under Linux. DOSEMU was unusable. It couldn't

I remember painful memories of late 90s and early 2000s. Until DosBox, it was impossible to run DOS applications under Linux. DOSEMU was unusable. It couldn't run anything. I've wanted dos emulation to play my favorite DOS games, DOSEMU couldn't run a single game I've tried. Actually, as far as I remember, it couldn't run any DOS application that I've tried. Even wine at that time had less issues than DOSEMU, although I suppose implementing windows API is more complex task. They've probably done a lot in 20 years (and even changed the name/forked the project), but no, I'll stick with DosBox.

kristopolous 5y ago
Wasn't it also where the suite of FAT filesystem tools came from, I believe all starting with "d"? I remember those not being broken. It's a lower ask then a video game, sure. But it seemed to work.
- dark-star 5y ago
  mtools... mdir, mmd, mtype, mdel, mcopy, etc.
  - kristopolous 5y ago
    Oh of course! Those used to be quite handy. I believe I remember them having remarkably simple and comprehensible source code. I had some old book by like dr dobbs or someone about dos internals in the 90s and I remember seeing all the technicals laid bare in the source back when I was in high school. It was one of the earliest memories I have of seeing what true software competence looked like. Apparently it's still maintained. I wonder where it's being used, fuse and things like that I had assumed replaced all this. I need to find a way to remember that passion and capture it again
jz_ 5y ago
> I remember painful memories of late 90s and early 2000s. Until DosBox, it was impossible to run DOS applications under Linux. I seem to remember playing Commander Keen under DOSEMU seamlessly on a p200mmx with 64mb of ram. If this mail from 1999 is anything to go by, others were able to play similar vintage games: https://web.archive.org/web/20000118171326/https://www.mail-archive.com/linux-msdos@vger.rutgers.edu/msg00456.html https://web.archive.org/web/20000118171326/https://www.mail-...
rleigh 5y ago
It was painful, but it did work. In the early 2000s I worked for a company selling a DOS-based 4GL product, which was part of an "embedded" system running Novell DOS. This became hard to continue with due to lack of support for e.g. SATA, USB, new networking hardware. So I moved the product onto Linux+DOSEMU with Samba and CUPS replacing the DOS network drives and printing facilities. It took some time to configure DOSEMU correctly such that raw access to the video hardware, serial ports, parallel ports etc. worked as needed. But once done, it worked perfectly, and last I heard it was still in use, so it kept a company with a niche product in business for an additional decade at least. For all I know, it's still in use today, nearly two decades later. I have also run games with it, but only older stuff like Keen. As you say, for gaming purposes, DosBox is a better choice. But if you want a full emulation with real hardware access, then DOSEMU is (or was) better. That said, I know nothing about what the aims of DOSEMU2 are, the documentation is rather sparse and it looks like it's had big regressions from DOSEMU (1) looking at the changes. Region locking is a big deal, I required this for running multiuser 4GL database applications. Looks like that was broken for a significant period of time. I'm also unsure what the purpose of "64-bit DOS" is, particularly within an emulator used to run legacy applications. Hard to know without knowing what the requirements are that drove this, but I do wonder if this isn't an itch being scratched rather than being useful for real-world end use.
AstralStorm 5y ago
Said full VM being 86box or PCem right? That has plenty of issues of its own. Using something emulating a modern PC like QEMU does not quite work compatibly enough. Which is why both DosBox and DOSEMU and DOSEMU 2 have problems. 86box does the virtualization the oldfashioned JIT compiling way together with virtualized devices, cycle compatible as much as possible. PCem, its precursor, is even slower and has a bit less supported virtual hardware.
Zardoz84 5y ago
DOSEMU was blazing fast compared against DosBox, because isn't wasn't a emulation. It used the virtual x86 mode of the CPU. Like the old good dos mode of Windows XP and Windows 9x.

kristopolous 5y ago

Wasn't it also where the suite of FAT filesystem tools came from, I believe all starting with "d"? I remember those not being broken. It's a lower ask then a video game, sure. But it seemed to work.

dark-star 5y ago
mtools... mdir, mmd, mtype, mdel, mcopy, etc.
- kristopolous 5y ago
  Oh of course! Those used to be quite handy. I believe I remember them having remarkably simple and comprehensible source code. I had some old book by like dr dobbs or someone about dos internals in the 90s and I remember seeing all the technicals laid bare in the source back when I was in high school. It was one of the earliest memories I have of seeing what true software competence looked like. Apparently it's still maintained. I wonder where it's being used, fuse and things like that I had assumed replaced all this. I need to find a way to remember that passion and capture it again

jz_ 5y ago

> I remember painful memories of late 90s and early 2000s. Until DosBox, it was impossible to run DOS applications under Linux. I seem to remember playing Commander Keen under DOSEMU seamlessly on a p200mmx with 64mb of ram. If this mail from 1999 is anything to go by, others were able to play similar vintage games: https://web.archive.org/web/20000118171326/https://www.mail-archive.com/linux-msdos@vger.rutgers.edu/msg00456.html https://web.archive.org/web/20000118171326/https://www.mail-...

rleigh 5y ago

It was painful, but it did work. In the early 2000s I worked for a company selling a DOS-based 4GL product, which was part of an "embedded" system running Novell DOS. This became hard to continue with due to lack of support for e.g. SATA, USB, new networking hardware. So I moved the product onto Linux+DOSEMU with Samba and CUPS replacing the DOS network drives and printing facilities. It took some time to configure DOSEMU correctly such that raw access to the video hardware, serial ports, parallel ports etc. worked as needed. But once done, it worked perfectly, and last I heard it was still in use, so it kept a company with a niche product in business for an additional decade at least. For all I know, it's still in use today, nearly two decades later. I have also run games with it, but only older stuff like Keen. As you say, for gaming purposes, DosBox is a better choice. But if you want a full emulation with real hardware access, then DOSEMU is (or was) better. That said, I know nothing about what the aims of DOSEMU2 are, the documentation is rather sparse and it looks like it's had big regressions from DOSEMU (1) looking at the changes. Region locking is a big deal, I required this for running multiuser 4GL database applications. Looks like that was broken for a significant period of time. I'm also unsure what the purpose of "64-bit DOS" is, particularly within an emulator used to run legacy applications. Hard to know without knowing what the requirements are that drove this, but I do wonder if this isn't an itch being scratched rather than being useful for real-world end use.

AstralStorm 5y ago

Said full VM being 86box or PCem right? That has plenty of issues of its own. Using something emulating a modern PC like QEMU does not quite work compatibly enough. Which is why both DosBox and DOSEMU and DOSEMU 2 have problems. 86box does the virtualization the oldfashioned JIT compiling way together with virtualized devices, cycle compatible as much as possible. PCem, its precursor, is even slower and has a bit less supported virtual hardware.

Zardoz84 5y ago

DOSEMU was blazing fast compared against DosBox, because isn't wasn't a emulation. It used the virtual x86 mode of the CPU. Like the old good dos mode of Windows XP and Windows 9x.