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Issue with DosBox handling of looping batch-files?

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First post, by kwisatz

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When installing "Gold Rush" (Sierra) for PC the game was on my hard drive and started with a batch file. When I first tried running this within DosBox it would essentially bring my system so much to a halt than it seemed to have frozen. The only way out of it was to hold down power and forcibly power-down the machine.

In running the batch file in a normal 'Command Prompt' (DOS VM) I found the problem was that the batch file was looping in error. I corrected the batch file and now the software works without issue from the Command Prompt and DosBox.

So I guess has anyone else experienced this - my initial thinking is that it should be submitted as a big (looping batch files bring the machine to a halt)... but wanted to check if anyone else had this first. Like I said, I fixed the issue but for future should this be a bug?

Thanks,
Dustin H

/dustin

Reply 1 of 4, by MiniMax

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Sounds like that loop was simply executing like crazy, making DOSBox suck up all the CPU power of your PC. Guess the real "DOS VM" (NTVDM) was a bit more sensitive to your attempts at breaking out of the loop than DOSBox was.

It is a hard thing to fix, except with some heuristic rule that tells DOSBox not to use more than X % of CPU power while executing its own internal commands.

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Reply 2 of 4, by Qbix

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there is allready a bug report for batchfiles that call themselves

a.bat

contents
echo hello
a.bat

but it's not a priority to fix as it is not a bug. more a stupidity of the user to create such a bat file

Water flows down the stream
How to ask questions the smart way!

Reply 3 of 4, by kwisatz

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there is allready a bug report for batchfiles that call themselves...
but it's not a priority to fix as it is not a bug. more a stupidity of the user to create such a bat file

Good to know that it's already logged - certainly low-priority. I dont know if 'stupidity' is the best word - everyone makes mistakes at times, and this case was an old prog looking for a dir that doesnt exist. Old programs are certainly going to have a higher chance of running into such issues I would think.

Great work on DosBox - love it! Making my old Sierra games come back to life...

/dustin

Reply 4 of 4, by collector

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I'm not sure why anyone would want to "install" an AGI game anyway. There is nothing to setup. Just copy the files to a folder on the HDD and run the executable in DOSBox, usually SIERRA.COM. No need for any batch files. There are no arguments paths that need to be passed on to the interpretor, like SCI games do.

The Sierra Help Pages -- New Sierra Game Installers -- Sierra Game Patches -- New Non-Sierra Game Installers

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