as i keep trying to tell everyone

You said "create a small 500mb ram drive".

Davros wrote:

ok heres your solution
create a small ramdrive run your program from it

Since you keep insisting: How do you create a RAM-drive in DOSBox?

The program and its data files require 250MB.

I created a 300MB ram disk, copied in the program and data.

I start DOSBox and mount the ram disk. It matters not whether the mount parameters say I have 4GB (the max I can get) or 8MB - the program still complains.

Bottom line - I'm pretty sure that unless a "dir" command will show more than 4GB free, then the program will complain.

MiniMax wrote:

Since you keep insisting: How do you create a RAM-drive in DOSBox?

personally i would do what wcwdca did and create it outside of dosbox then mount it 😉

Hmm..
can you try real dos ?
you can make a dos bootcd if your pc doesnt have a floppy drive (many dont now)

another suggestion!
there was/is a windows version of dataflex could you somehow get that and import your data ?

another suggestion
maybe something like virtual-pc

Do you mean the version of "dos" that comes with XP Pro? That works, except for the display - the program is supposed to run full screen. It only fills about 1/4 of the height of the screen, the remainder is blank. That is why I'm here. DOSBox solves the display problem - but then introduces the "disk space" problem.

no i mean the propper dos 6.22 (bootdisk.com)

this is strange iirc that program would of been designed for dos 6.22 at most
and doesnt fat16 have a 2.15gb limit so why would a program designed to run under it complain that it needs over 4gb ?

have you tried setting your desktop to 640x480 and mesing about with the font, compatability and screen settings ?

ps: when you say youve ran it in dos that comes with xp you mean by double clicking on the program ?
have you tried run then type in cmd
then right click on the titlebar and select propeties and mess with those settings ?

Changing the font size gets the display a little larger. Changing the screen resolution has no effect. The behavior is the same regardless of how I launch the program. I can't get the program to display in even half the screen when in full-screen mode.

I think the issue here is mainly due to the new hardware - screen / video adapter and driver.

The "windows" version of dataflex may be a possibility. I suspect it won't help unless I re-develop the app with the windows version. Since I'm not a dataflex guy and I don't' have the source - I'm SOL.

I'll look for "virtual-pc". This is basically what I was looking for when I found DOSBox.

have you tried dos 6.22 ? (you can make a boot cd if you dont have a floppy drive)

ps: in cmd have you tried running it in a window and resizing it
and changing the windows size width to 120 or something
what about turning off fast rom emulation

what res is your monitor is it lcd
and also did you select compatability then run in 640x480 ?

I had initially tried all the command window settings including window size, compatibility, etc. The LCD monitor supports resolutions up to 1600x1200. Changing the windows resolution has on effect on dos mode display.

I tried to create a dos 6.22 boot cd, but I failed. I got the 6.22 bootdisk from bootdisk.com. I used a program called winimage to extract a 6.22 bootable image and I used roxio to burn a bootable cd. 1st attempt, computer started to boot and hung; I repeated (what I thought were) the same steps to burn the CD- 2nd attempt computer said it was a non-system cd. Perhaps you can point me to good instructions for creating a 6.22 cd?

try here:
http://www.bootdisks.us/ms-dos/5/ms-dos-boota … -cd-images.html

just made one with nero (dos 6.22)
and it works although it has no config.sys or autoexec.bat maybe you need to add your own to the iso (im sure there are tools to do that)

i also noticed that it couldnt see my hard drive possibly because my hdd is sata
also i dont know how it will deal with ntfs formatted drives you may need to create a small fat 16 formatted partition

Davros - so you read something. Now, did you also try your own suggestion? Have you tried mounting something small in DOSBox and checked how much free space DOSBox reports?

no - legacy machine ftw 😁

Then I will tell you a secret: IT WON'T WORK.

No matter how much space there is on the underlying folder (e.g. on a small RAM-drive) used in the mount command, DOSBox will ALWAYS default to 110 MB of free space.

How about mounting a hard drive image? I happened to have one of those sitting around; DOSBox appears to report the proper amount of free space when it is mounted using imgmount.

I think you can make those with WinImage; otherwise, Bochs comes with a utility for making them.