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First post, by schultzd

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I apologize if this is the wrong place for this question. Sorry this doesn't have to do with games. I'm a molecular geneticist trying to run some old dos linkage programs on my Mac using dosbox. The authors of the programs state that the config.sys file in the root directory of the boot drive (I assume this is equivatent to dosbox.config) must contain the following two lines:

FILES = 20 (or some higher number, preferably 40)
DEVICE = ANSI.SYS

However, when I try to add these to dosbox.config and try to run dos box using the configuration file as outlined in the wiki, I get the following error messages for these lines,

Illegal command: FILES
Illegal command: DEVICE

Is there someway to add these commands or does dosbox just not support them, and I am screwed.

Thanks,
dennis

Dennis W. Schultz

Reply 1 of 2, by mirekluza

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CONFIG.SYS is not supported (unless you boot from a disc image).
FILES should be high enough for you in DOSBOX.
Subset of ANSI.SYS functionality is supported as well by default (if it is not enough, there exists an ANSI driver which can be run as program, so it is usable in DOSBOX).
Search VOGONS.

Mirek

Reply 2 of 2, by MiniMax

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@schultzd - Like many others, the authors of that program are unable to distinguish between the REQUIREMENT's of their program, and how to IMPLEMENT the requirements. What they are saying is, that

1) The program will be working with a lot of files (20 to 40 files or so),

and

2) The program uses a set of special character sequences (as defined by ANSI - American National Standards Institute) to draw graphics and/or to colour the text - and the screen needs to understand these ANSI characters.

That is the requirements.... Next is how to implement those requirements. In the good, old days, when MS-DOS ruled the PC, the solution was to put those two commands in CONFIG.SYS - a configuration file read by MS-DOS during its initialization.

But with DOSBox, there is no need for such trickery since DOSBox by default is able to cope with many, many open files (I think it is 50) and it (by default) fully understand ANSI codes.

My suggestion would to just run the program and see what happens....

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