Emanuele,
I just arrived in this community and (sorry for that) I'm already starting a long story. I'm not yet familiar with the use of this forum, but maybe you might be posting in the wrong forum, since I understand this section (according the Index name) looks as only for issues "Games/Applications".

Maybe Operating Systems are not considered as applications, but anyway like you, I'm anxious to get some info how to install DosBox under Windows-XP(SP2), but even more I'd like how to install within "DosBox" a fully operational Dos version, ready to use other applications as games

The primary build-in Dos of DosBox does not give the impression to be sufficient to operate as normal Dos does to run all applications. But how to make it more powerfull ?

(I understand you would like install all those OS's "under DosBox", meaning running...inside Dosbox ?) I don't kow if your concern is the same as the questions I have in mind. In case you are only interested in installing Operating systems on a HDD, there is another interesting post going on in this forum, about partitioning and multibooting on different OS's.

In case there would be no other choice as to install a separate partition for DOS, (or even better install Win98-SE, which has his own box that works fine for older Dos progs which I still use), this other post is more relevant to follow. Note : Win98 has advantage of using FAT32,instead.

In fact, do we have the choice ? Can we create a full adequate dos in DosBox, (under Windows-XP) that can operate for older applications, ... or not ? I fear that the command-shell of DosBox will never accept to live together in harmony with most of the other imported external Dos commands, injected from other versions into DosBox.

Blackbird wrote:

Can we create a full adequate dos in DosBox, (under Windows-XP) that can operate for older applications, ... or not ? I fear that the command-shell of DosBox will never accept to live together in harmony with most of the other imported external Dos commands, injected from other versions into DosBox.

IMHO built-in DOS shell in DOSBOX should be enough for 95% of people.
However if you do not like built-in DOS shell, you can install real MS DOS (I tested MS DOS 5, 6, 6.2) in DOSBOX (see commands IMGMOUNT, BOOT). Search forum/wiki/README for details.

W3.x work in both built-in DOS and in real MS DOS in DOSBOX. However there are some limitations and problems - search forum for more details. W3.x was discussed here quite extensively.

Mirek

mirekluza wrote:

IMHO built-in DOS shell in DOSBOX should be enough for 95% of people. However if you do not like built-in DOS shell, you can install real MS DOS (I tested MS DOS 5, 6, 6.2) in DOSBOX (see commands IMGMOUNT, BOOT)

Thanks Mirek. My old application "Smart" (Innovative Software) should probably run ok using Dos-6.22 in a "DosBox inside Windows-XP". Hope to get there, without encountering those "limitations" you are mentioning.
- Maybe a list of the native Dos-6.22 commands which cannot be used does exist ?
(I hope that the keyboard command works ok)
- Any experience with FreeDos also ?

The main problem with external MS DOS commands is that they check the version number of the underlying DOS and refuse to run on other versions (even when they would work otherwise!).
DOSBOX internal DOS reports itself as version 5.0. So naturally external DOS commands from MS DOS 6.22 are not happy...

FreeDOS commands do no not do this nonsense checking, so they work better. For example the recommended way to get national keyboard in DOSBOX is to use KEYB from FreeDOS (see README, search forum).

I did not try to install FreeDOS in DOSBOX, but I do not see reason why it should not work.

Mirek