4 ms·
Maybe it is for customers running weird old legacy hardware (e.g., lab devices, manufacturing, that only runs on DOS).
by mcculley 4y ago
Maybe it is for customers running weird old legacy hardware (e.g., lab devices, manufacturing, that only runs on DOS).
- ndiddy 4y agoWeird old legacy hardware that only runs on DOS generally requires real-time access to stuff like ISA cards or parallel/serial ports, so this wouldn't work for that use case since the computer doesn't have any of those.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- mcculley 4y agoI have a weird old nylon cutting machine connected to a DOS machine over a serial port. It would not work with a USB/RS-232 adaptor?
- zozbot234 4y agoUSB-serial conversion would add a measurable amount of latency, and the access to USB hardware would occur under a non-real-time OS. Whether the setup "works" would be highly hardware-specific. There are modern industrial "PC" boards that are essentially a i586 implementation in a SoC and can run these workloads far more reliably, while consuming a lot less power compared to old x86 hardware. (They're also of interest to retrocomputing enthusiasts, for largely the same reasons.)
- petre 4y agoThat's orecisely how we run our thread 3D printer. It even has a serial (UART) to USB chip on board and it's connected to a RPi3 boc running Linux and Octoprint.
- coryrc 4y agoIt probably won't if they do weird things with the flow control pins or if the timing really matters, but serial is far more likely than parallel to keep working.
- GekkePrutser 4y agoYeah this is why industrial PCs still have those physical ports.
- wildzzz 4y agoSpend no less than $20 on a USB to serial converter and you'd probably be fine. Anything with an FTDI chip in it are the best. Anything with a Prolific chip has a good possibility of being counterfeit will either not work well or the legit driver will try to brick it.
- 0x0 4y agoFTDI pushed driver updates that bricked counterfeits... https://www.theregister.com/2016/01/31/ftdi_accused_of_bricking_counterfeits_again/ https://www.theregister.com/2016/01/31/ftdi_accused_of_brick...
- arbitrandomuser 4y agoDepends on the adaptor too. Cheap ones only have Rx and TX pins . The rest of the pins are not connected. If your device only used Rx and Tx it would work fine . If it uses functionality of other pins make sure you get the right adaptor
- wmf 4y agoWould those apps work inside QEMU though? Is it configured to properly pass through the parallel port?
- walrus01 4y agoHighly unlikely, without really messing around with it.
- mcculley 4y agoMaybe, but wouldn’t the customer have to know how to run QEMU? I am imagining a customer who wants to just replace an old machine while changing as little as possible.
- djur 4y agoSince this install is based on QEMU running in Linux, it would not meet that need.
- mc4ndr3 4y agoFreeDOS is known to not run well inside of virtualization. A proper host install would be far more capable.
- mcculley 4y agoBut a proper host install is not possible on modern hardware.
- lproven 4y agoThat is not true. In fact, if you just boot FreeDOS 1.3 in VirtualBox, you'll see it detect the virtual NIC, load a TCP/IP stack and acquire an IPv4 address, then report it. It is mostly developed and run inside VMs these days, AFAICS.
- adrian_b 4y agoNo, the FreeDOS HP option has always been used by the customers who did not want to pay a Windows license, because they wanted to install a different operating system, usually some Linux variant (the option to install a pirated Windows variant was also popular in some parts of the world). Dell has the Ubuntu option for many computers, but for those who do not want to use Ubuntu, like myself, there is no difference between the Dell Ubuntu option and the HP FreeDOS option, because such customers will always install their own preferred OS, immediately after the purchase of a new computer.
- TMM2K 4y agoI'm the author of the article; It's not actually usable for that. The way the Qemu VM is setup there is no way to interface with the outside world at all. The only way to get any data in or out of that VM is through the keyboard and screen.