That's pretty easy to do, actually. Drag-and-drop dosbox.exe to your desktop, but holding down the RIGHT mouse button instead of the left, then when you drop it, select "Create shortcuts here" from the menu that appears. This will create an icon on your desktop. Right-click on the icon and select Properties, then look in the Target field. It should have a path ending in dosbox.exe. Add a space at the end and then type "C:\Program Files\whateveritis\" for the directory your application is in. Make sure there are quotation marks surrounding this path, otherwise it will think that the space in Program Files marks the end of the path. Rename the icon to something you like and double-click and you should be off and running. Repeat the procedure for as many different directories as you need to use.

Oh.....great, I was trying to make it too hard, I guess. I thought I had to mount a drive each time I started DOSBox, THEN launch my application.
That works great.

NOW.....I need to find a way to fix a COM-1 propblem... The application needs to access COM1 through the DB9 serial port to talk to my radio. It hangs up at the point where it tries to talk to the radio, now.

Thanks for the info!!!

Which DosBox version are you using? 0.63 or a CVS ver? IIRC, DosBox 0.63 doesn't have direct serial support whereas the CVS does.

Note that if you want to you can even do "C:\Program Files\whatever\whatever.exe" instead of just "C:\Program Files\whatever\" if you want to run whatever.exe right when it starts up.

As for the serial port, DosBox 0.63 does seem to have direct serial support (I haven't ever used it), but you need to enable it in a configuration file. While you have DosBox running and the directory for the program mounted, type the command "config -writeconf dosbox.conf" (without quotes). This will create a file in that directory called dosbox.conf with all the default options.

You then have to open this file with a text editor (you can use File->Open in Notepad, just select All files instead of Text documents or it won't show up). Then, scroll down until you see a section starting with [directserial], almost at the end. There will be a line that says "directserial=false"--you need to change this to true instead of false. You may also need to change the values for comport and realport if the device doesn't hook up to COM1 (for example, if it's COM2, you should use comport=2 and realport=COM2). COM1 is the most likely though. It looks like you can only set up one port at once this way, but that will change in the next version of DosBox. Once you're done, save the file and restart DosBox or it won't notice the changes.

If you're using programs in more than one directory, just copy the finished dosbox.conf to the other directories once you get it set up.

The options for doing this are all different in the CVS (in-development) version of DosBox which you most likely aren't using.

Yes, I am using version 0.63.

I will try to manipulate the file for COM1.....my desire is to end up with something that will launch right into the application with the settings ready to go, from a shortcut on the desktop. Something that will retain the port settings for each powerup.

Thanks again for the tutorials!!!

well.....no joy yet.
I found the file entry to change for COM1, set it to TRUE, changed the speed and verified it is indeed COM1. No go, though.

Just so as I have the idea straight.....I make this change in the directory in which DOSBox resides. It will then take effect each time DOSBox is started, without regard to how many different old DOS applications I plan to run?
That makes sense, as all of my old applications expect a serial port at COM1.

I can then create shortcuts with the pathname and executable of the desired application in the TARGET line of the shortcut, and each launch will use the modified DOSBox.conf file........?

Thanks

No, dosbox.conf needs to be in the application directory you're adding to the TARGET, and if there's more than one application, you need a copy of dosbox.conf in each application's directory.

Using a recent CVS build will increase the chance of a working serial port application. However you set the com port differently:
Either type
serial1 directserial realport:com1
directly in Dosbox command line (serial1=emulated port, com1=port on your computer), no error message should appear,
or in dosbox.conf

[bios]
serial1=directserial realport:com1