Ask the author of DOSBox Turbo.

collector wrote:

Ask the author of DOSBox Turbo.

Your non-helpful reply is ill informed at best and unnecessary hostile at worst.
I wrote in my post that this problem occurs in Windows and Linux versions of DosBox, I haven't even run this setup in DBT/Android yet.
You sound like one of those Forum bullies who never want to pass by an opportunity for a mud slinging flame war.
You got nothing helpful to say, so instead of just moving on you make some snide remark, then step back and wait for the fruit of your evil labour to blossom.
I will not apologise for using DB on more than one platform and everyone who keeps having a problem with that should just go and look the other way from here on out !

PS: This is getting ridiculous. If there are no adults left in this forum then I'd rather leave vogons.org behind altogether.
To be attacked for being flexible, for using a given technology across multiple platforms is just silly.
I thought vogons.org was about running legacy software via DB, period.
Instead it seems to be about "anyone who plays with the kids from the other block doesn't belong in here ...."
What crime did the DBT author commit by porting the DB platform to Android that could possible justify such hostility ?
I doubt Amiga users would treat someone running an A-Emulator on Arm hardware - rather than Intel - this way as well.

You misunderstand. Turbo is done by someone else. It is simply not supported here. These are the forums for official DOSBox. Many of the authors of these 3rd party variants actually charge for their version of DOSBox and then direct support to the official forums. How would you like to do something for free only to have someone else modify it, charge for it and then send support back to you? Not cool.

@collector: I think the point was that it happens with official DOSBox as well, which should be supported here.

@FatAgnus: Have you tried using DOS commands (within DOSBox) to access the files that MSSETUP is claiming aren't there? That would reveal whether it's a legitimate problem with accessing the files, or whether MSSETUP is doing something weird, like direct disk access and bypassing DOS.

Malvineous wrote:

@collector: I think the point was that it happens with official DOSBox as well, which should be supported here.

DOSBox Turbo support:
https://sites.google.com/site/dosboxturbo/
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id … ix.dosbox&hl=en

Even if it can be duplicated on the main DOSBox port, the main DOSBox devs would tell you that DOSBox is only for supporting games, and you are asking about Novell, and printing, which is outside of their supported use cases for DOSBox? DOSBox IS NOT SUITED TO RUN YOUR NON-GAMING DOS APPLICATION

@Malvineous: if it happens with official DOSBox, shouldn't he just come onto the forums and express that he's experiencing problems with official DOSBox? That would solve a lot of problems for the OP in the future if he did this... I don't think the added information ("well, _I_ experience the problem with DOSBox Turbo") is useful in this case. At best, it's non-essential information. At worst, it's a namedrop of a product that the developers here do not and cannot support.

Apart from the valid reasons this thread is close to being locked... One thing to test:
- try with a bare bone Windows 3.x install. Use my guide and try right after getting Windows to run, no fancy different mounts, just one c drive. Your Novel Network problem hints that your install might have gone bad...
If that works, hooray, if not... you might have luck going the boot image way.
Then there is of course that Dosbox is for games only thing..,

Dominus wrote:

Apart from the valid reasons this thread is close to being locked... One thing to test: - try with a bare bone Windows 3.x insta […]
Show full quote

Apart from the valid reasons this thread is close to being locked... One thing to test:
- try with a bare bone Windows 3.x install. Use my guide and try right after getting Windows to run, no fancy different mounts, just one c drive. Your Novel Network problem hints that your install might have gone bad...
If that works, hooray, if not... you might have luck going the boot image way.
Then there is of course that Dosbox is for games only thing..,

I'll let the dedicated DOSBox moderators handle a thread like this next time I guess? 😀

Looks like someone edited my first post. I only posted the suggestion that the OP ask the author of DOSBox Turbo.

collector wrote:

Looks like someone edited my first post. I only posted the suggestion that the OP ask the author of DOSBox Turbo.

Ah, I thought I was in my post in the other thread. Fixed.

FatAgnus wrote:

I thought vogons.org was about running legacy software via DB, period.

Nope. Actually, it's about running old (primarily PC) games on new systems, period, hence the name. (plus we gave the antique 90's hardware nerds a home a while back, so far as they don't attempt to take over the forums we're on good terms 🤣.)

The DOS forum is for support on how to get old DOS games to run on new systems, and the Windows forum for support on how to get old Windows games to run on new systems. If you've no idea what I'm talking about, here's the index: index.php

The threads there in those subforums specifically are meant to have a discussion that results in the staging of information and develop solutions towards a subforum we have for permanent solutions (called "The Guide") and/or the VOGONSWiki, with the only request as to not bump ancient outdated threads more than a few years old but continue the conversation in a new one. (Whether we actually function that way is debatable. 😉 ) Back when we started VOGONS, these subforums were basically "how do you apply compatibility patches or hack NTVDM to let DOS games and old Windows games run natively in Windows XP", and it still is that to some degree, but compatibility fixes between old games and modern OS's is a moving target. Hence, _some_ emulation discussion is permitted there, but only minor amounts, because we also have this generic "PC Emulation" subforum. DOSBox is only one possible solution towards emulating games. You can also use emulators such as PCem, BOCHS, MAME/MESS and ask for support in the "PC Emulation" section, and experienced users of those emulators can choose to answer your question. I assumed that extended to non-official DOSBox ports and their users/developers but the DOSBox subforum moderators seem to disagree?

But the main DOSBox subforums here are indeed different and have always been treated differently since we agreed that we'd host them very early on - that's the home of the official release's support forums, and the primary DOSBox developers still post there and have dealt with over 13 years of newbie posts and so on. Therefore they have "house rules" such as no asking about when DOSBox 0.75 will come out, no asking the main developers for support of non-official ports, no asking about how to get applications working (only games), and so on. And the original moderators here at VOGONS have no problem with them stickying posts making these requests.

So in the future, if you want to bring a DOSBox problem to the DOSBox developers' attentions, provided any post you make in the official DOSBox subforums sticks to their stickied "house rules", and it's something that you can duplicate on the main Windows release, I'd simply say that you found an issue with the main Windows release, and there shouldn't be any problem.

Whether or not the unofficial DOSBox ports can have support requests posted in the "PC Emulation" section, well, I don't see why not? I just think it likely that no one will answer you, and you'd still be better off asking the main support for that particular port.

Perhaps the above post (or one based on it) should be made a sticky for reference for noobies.

Maybe a bit fine tuned but yes 😉
(and I've suggested for a while that we could use a Dosbox subforum called "unofficial ports and forks" where we could dump all turbodaum-x threads 😉)

And such a subforum could be ignored by all of the DOSBox authors. I would also suggest that the DOS and Windows forums be retitled "DOS Games" and "Windows Games" to discourage all of the retro driver and configuration posts that have nothing to do with specific games. Of course all of this would be up to Qbix.

Dominus wrote:

Maybe a bit fine tuned but yes 😉

Go for it, I really don't have the time right now though I may have a few suggestions for it.

Dominus wrote:

(and I've suggested for a while that we could use a Dosbox subforum called "unofficial ports and forks" where we could dump all turbodaum-x threads 😉)

Well, you'll have to ask Qbix for that one.

Could it be that the MSSETUP or Dosbox/Windows is biting itself or each other? Also, maybe the application assumes it can open the files multiple times at the same time, which isn't allowed by Android(which runs under Linux afaik)?

Malvineous wrote:

@collector: I think the point was that it happens with official DOSBox as well, which should be supported here.

@FatAgnus: Have you tried using DOS commands (within DOSBox) to access the files that MSSETUP is claiming aren't there? That would reveal whether it's a legitimate problem with accessing the files, or whether MSSETUP is doing something weird, like direct disk access and bypassing DOS.

Took me a while to find my way back in here, as I am still miffed at the hostile reactions I got from some about using DB on more than just the Wintel platform.
As it turns out the error wasn't caused by DB at all, but by a faulty setup disk.
Years and years ago I had purchased Corel DRAW! for Win3.1 legally, but since then that CD has vanished in time together with so many other memories.
So I went to winworldpc (is it permissible to mention other vintage boards in here?) to download me a copy of CDRAW! and some other vintage software.
Originally it looked like the images hosted there where just 1 to 1 copies of the original disks, but when I looked closer into the setup and INI files there (as an old Windows programmer I can read those verbatim), I saw that in a few cases they were not in sync with the underlying media - and in case of e.g. Aldus PageMaker and CDRAW! outright faulty.
On more than one occasion someone had "frankensteined" the installation sets from multiple media and obviously got his wires crossed in the process.
Thus INI and INF files from one set of setup disks ended up in another.

Now I did do extensive anti-virus and malware checking on those files, and came up empty handed.
Therefore I don't think there was any evil intention here, but as soon as I choose the correct set of setup images, the same version of Corel DRAW! and Aldus PageMaker installed w/o any problems.

Also, I found out that the latest S3 video driver offered for download on vogons.org causes the Linux version of DosBox to crash under WfW3.11 when running Calmira.
There seems to be an issue with certain fonts when running under that S3 video driver with more than 256 colors in 1024x768 rez or higher.
Switching to the Tseng Labs driver resolved the problem - didn't had a chance to test this on DBT as of yet (but I doubt I'll even bother to mention that version here anymore anyway)

But just to annoy the heck out of certain people in this forum I am going to note that I got in touch with the author of DosBox Turbo and offered to sponsor the inclusion of the (likewise unsupported??) NE2000 patch for the Android platform.
I am always one to push the limits of technology and the last two weeks have proven to me how much life can still be squeezed out of a rock solid 16bit WfW install.
Scream and curse me for daring to do the "unsupported" - but I've never been one to obey the "thou shall not peek under the hood" sign atop the machine.

which S3 driver exactly? And which version of Dosbox? 0.74 or SVN?

Dominus wrote:

which S3 driver exactly? And which version of Dosbox? 0.74 or SVN?

Hi Dominus,

All my DB versions are 0.74 (even the dreaded DBT is based on that release).
I don't have the link to the S3 driver page anymore, but somewhere on this board I had found a thread that dealt with S3 drivers for DosBox.
I think you might have even posted a WfW install guide there yourself Dominus.
In any case, the thread also claimed to have the latest driver for the S3 card available and at least by comparing the version number of that driver with all the others I had accumulated that claim seemed to be true.
But shortly after I had installed it, DB (and I always say DBT when referring to the dreaded Android version) started to crash when opening WfW dialog boxes with small system fonts in them.
So I did some trial & error and that way I found it it only happened when using the S3 driver with 32k colors or more and in high rez (beyond 800x600).
The Tsend driver worked w/o such problems, but it doesn't offer any high colors in higher resolutions.
Trying to downgrade the S3 only resulted in WfW Setup getting stuck, and even so I remember there was a way to get passed that I didn't want to waste more time with it.
So right now I am running with 256 colors, just for stabilities sake, but will try to find out which driver allows me to run safely with 32k colors or more at higher resolutions once I got my setup finalized.
I managed to get a lot done during these last two weeks, and the video driver issue is a bother but not a show stopper for me.

FatAgnus wrote:

(is it permissible to mention other vintage boards in here?)

Sure! But we'd prefer not if they provide easy access to warez, like WinWorld. Remember the sentence at the bottom of every page here: "There is no material that is knowingly illegal here." 😀

FatAgnus wrote:

But just to annoy the heck out of certain people in this forum I am going to note that I got in touch with the author of DosBox Turbo and offered to sponsor the inclusion of the (likewise unsupported??) NE2000 patch for the Android platform.
I am always one to push the limits of technology and the last two weeks have proven to me how much life can still be squeezed out of a rock solid 16bit WfW install.
Scream and curse me for daring to do the "unsupported" - but I've never been one to obey the "thou shall not peek under the hood" sign atop the machine.

Dude, that's all we've been saying - talk to the author of DosBox Turbo, don't bother the devs here unless you can duplicate the issue on DOSBox proper. There's no need to dramatize the request. 😀