R1 - Yes. Filesystem is transparent to user.

R2 - Yes. Use ALT-ENTER to switch between windowed/fullscreen or edit dosbox.conf to always launch in fullscreen mode.

R3. Yes, you can use notepad, for instance.

Thanks. I edited my post, slipping in a new Q2. Can you also address that one?

I have editted my previous post.

Sounds too good to be true! I'll download DOSBOX and give it a go. Hope all goes smoothly, but if not it's nice to have a forum like this for help.

Thanks again!
Aaron

I'm sorry to report that DOSBox doesn't seem to work well in Vista. As much as I've tried, I can't get full screen to work. Even worse, after launching my app it isn't able to find my database subdirectory!

My son has WinXP on his PC, so I recreated the very same DOSBox environment with my database app on his PC. Full screen worked fine and my app had no problem finding my database subdirectory.

Any advice ...other than using WinXP.

blame vista

Try changing some parameters in DOSBox configuration. Edit dosbox.conf

Change output=xxxx to ddraw or overlay.
Make sure you have all required permissions.
Make sure your drivers are up to date.

If all else fails, get rid of Vista. It's a POS.

Make sure you have all required permissions.

This is really important when using NTFS. If the user that is starting Dosbox does not have the correct permissions to read and write a directory then you end up with your problem.
You could also tell us your exact mountings and where the directory is located onyour drive.

Aaron H wrote:

Question 3: Upon starting up DOSBOX to run Q&A can I write a batch file named 'QA' to automate DOSBOX's mount and change directory commands?

DOSBox has a section in its config file where you can put commands in. No need for a separate batch file.

JAL

Change output=xxxx to ddraw or overlay.

I tried that (and every other output value), but I can't get a full screen even though I set full screen and full screen buffer to 'true'.

Make sure you have all required permissions.

It's not a permissions problem (at least not with Vista) because I can run the app (and access its datatbase) directly from Vista (without using DOSBox), but only in a very small window and Vista won't allow me to open it to full screen with ALT-ENT. 😢

Make sure your drivers are up to date.

They are all up to date.

If all else fails, get rid of Vista. It's a POS.

Other than DOSBox issues, it has been working great for me (ever since SP1).

Any other ideas on my getting the app to display in full screen?

You could also tell us your exact mountings and where the directory is located on your drive.

My one (and only) DOS app is Q&A. QA.COM is located in C:\QA. Q&A's database directory is C:\QA\DB. Inside the DB directory are the database files. Please see actual mounting in the following post...

Seems rather straight-forward - and actually works quite well using DOSBox on WinXP, but not with DOSBox on Vista!

DOSBox has a section in its config file where you can put commands in. No need for a separate batch file.

JAL,
Would you please give me the procedure for doing that? My commands are as follows:

Z:\> MOUNT C C:\QA
Z:\> C:
C:\> QA

Thanks!

Aaron H wrote:

Would you please give me the procedure for doing that? My commands are as follows: […]
Show full quote

Would you please give me the procedure for doing that? My commands are as follows:

Z:\> MOUNT C C:\QA
Z:\> C:
C:\> QA

After you mount c c:\qa
you see once in c:
you already are in QA dir, you don't have to change dir anymore
(aside from the fact the good syntax ought to be cd QA anyway, not just QA, shouldn't it ?)

But the main reason I intervene here is to say :

I also have a Vista machine and I'm rather happy with it, especially as you notice after Service Pack 1.

I'd like to help, but actually I never had problems with running dosbox going full screen in Vista, it has worked for me, no special tricks 😀

Maybe you should post your [sdl] config settings, if there's something wrong with it.

gidierre wrote:

After you mount c c:\qa you see once in c: you already are in QA dir, you don't have to change dir anymore (aside from the fact […]
Show full quote

After you mount c c:\qa
you see once in c:
you already are in QA dir, you don't have to change dir anymore
(aside from the fact the good syntax ought to be cd QA anyway, not just QA, shouldn't it ?)

But the main reason I intervene here is to say :

I also have a Vista machine and I'm rather happy with it, especially as you notice after Service Pack 1.

I'd like to help, but actually I never had problems with running dosbox going full screen in Vista, it has worked for me, no special tricks 😀

Maybe you should post your [sdl] config settings, if there's something wrong with it.

The command C:\> QA is not to change to the QA directory (I realize I'm already there), but to run the COM file QA.COM in order to launch the app.

Here are my sdl config settings:

fullscreen=true
fulldouble=true
fullresolution=original
windowresolution=original
output=ddraw
autolock=true
sensitivity=100
waitonerror=true
priority=higher,normal
mapperfile=mapper.txt
usescancodes=true

Note that I've tried every other value for output, but didn't notice any difference between any of them!

Aaron H wrote:

The command C:\> QA is not to change to the QA directory (I realize I'm already there), but to run the COM file QA.COM in order to launch the app.

...oops, sorry.
So you have one QA dir with a qa.com within ?

Aaron H wrote:

Here are my sdl config settings: fullscreen=true fulldouble=true fullresolution=original windowresolution=original output=ddraw […]
Show full quote

Here are my sdl config settings:
fullscreen=true
fulldouble=true
fullresolution=original
windowresolution=original
output=ddraw
autolock=true
sensitivity=100
waitonerror=true
priority=higher,normal
mapperfile=mapper.txt
usescancodes=true

Note that I've tried every other value for output, but didn't notice any difference between any of them!

Here are mine (Alt+Entering to fullscr. and fro)

fullscreen=false
fulldouble=false
fullresolution=0x0
windowresolution=original
output=direct3d
autolock=true
sensitivity=100
waitonerror=true
priority=higher,normal
mapperfile=mapper.txt
pixelshader=none
usescancodes=false

HTH. Output's sure always change things a big deal for me!

i'm pretty sure that one of the problems is that the program expects to find its files in c:/qa but when you mount it the files are in c:.
so just for testing make a directory c:/qa/qa and copy the files from c:/ qa to that and run dosbox again and use the same mountings except cd to qa and then run qa

gidierre wrote:

...oops, sorry. So you have one QA dir with a qa.com within ? […]
Show full quote

Aaron H wrote:

The command C:\> QA is not to change to the QA directory (I realize I'm already there), but to run the COM file QA.COM in order to launch the app.

...oops, sorry.
So you have one QA dir with a qa.com within ?

Aaron H wrote:

Here are my sdl config settings: fullscreen=true fulldouble=true fullresolution=original windowresolution=original output=ddraw […]
Show full quote

Here are my sdl config settings:
fullscreen=true
fulldouble=true
fullresolution=original
windowresolution=original
output=ddraw
autolock=true
sensitivity=100
waitonerror=true
priority=higher,normal
mapperfile=mapper.txt
usescancodes=true

Note that I've tried every other value for output, but didn't notice any difference between any of them!

Here are mine (Alt+Entering to fullscr. and fro)

fullscreen=false
fulldouble=false
fullresolution=0x0
windowresolution=original
output=direct3d
autolock=true
sensitivity=100
waitonerror=true
priority=higher,normal
mapperfile=mapper.txt
pixelshader=none
usescancodes=false

HTH. Output's sure always change things a big deal for me!

Eureeka!!! Your config didn't get me a full screen so I changed the values of the first two entries to 'true' and the output value to 'ddraw' ... and now it works (full screen)!!! 😮

Here is the way my sdl config looks now:

fullscreen=true
fulldouble=true
fullresolution=0x0
windowresolution=original
output=ddraw
autolock=true
sensitivity=100
waitonerror=true
priority=higher,normal
mapperfile=mapper.txt
pixelshader=none
usescancodes=false

Dominus wrote:

i'm pretty sure that one of the problems is that the program expects to find its files in c:/qa but when you mount it the files are in c:.
so just for testing make a directory c:/qa/qa and copy the files from c:/ qa to that and run dosbox again and use the same mountings except cd to qa and then run qa

Right on!!! ...I just changed the path in my app from C:\QA\DB to C:\DB and now it finds my database! 😘

and as a shortcut you can put your commands in the [autoexec] section of dosbox.conf

Edit: see all sorted out 😀