pingvinen wrote on 2020-10-18, 13:07:

Hi all. I have a client that are running Windows 10/32 due to the fact that they have a legacy DOS (VB4DOS) application that th […]
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Hi all.
I have a client that are running Windows 10/32 due to the fact that they have a legacy DOS (VB4DOS) application that they can't port to modern architecture. No source code and the author is long gone. The app prints invoices and BOM for shipping directly to LPT1. So I have redirected LPT1 to a shared network printer, and that works great.

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1NET USE LPT1 \\127.0.0.1\shared-printer
2Note: The physical LPT1 port is disabled in BIOS for this  to work.

So, I would like to investigate if DOSBOX would help us to run the VB4DOS app in a Windows 64 bits host instead. I have played around with both DOSBOX and DOSBOX-MB6, and the app runs fine (when I mount the needed drives, C for local HD and F for a network drive where the database resides). However, I am completely lost when it comes to Printing.

A second issue might be that the database used by the app is on a network drive mapped to F:, shared by multiple users. So if DOSBOX is the solution, there must be support for networked drives (or other tricks).

I will continue to scan the forum, but if anyone have any guides or instructions for me, I would be so very grateful.

Dosbox is meant for games (non gaming use is not supported), so full netwotk drive support is almost certainly out of scope .

However, vdosplus (initially forked from Dosbox), might be an option.
It has direct printer support and the ability to print to pdf . It has file-locking and network support . http://www.vdosplus.org/

darry wrote on 2020-10-18, 13:28:

Dosbox is meant for games (non gaming use is not supported), so full netwotk drive support is almost certainly out of scope . […]
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pingvinen wrote on 2020-10-18, 13:07:

Hi all. I have a client that are running Windows 10/32 due to the fact that they have a legacy DOS (VB4DOS) application that th […]
Show full quote

Hi all.
I have a client that are running Windows 10/32 due to the fact that they have a legacy DOS (VB4DOS) application that they can't port to modern architecture. No source code and the author is long gone. The app prints invoices and BOM for shipping directly to LPT1. So I have redirected LPT1 to a shared network printer, and that works great.

Copy code to clipboard

1NET USE LPT1 \\127.0.0.1\shared-printer
2Note: The physical LPT1 port is disabled in BIOS for this  to work.

So, I would like to investigate if DOSBOX would help us to run the VB4DOS app in a Windows 64 bits host instead. I have played around with both DOSBOX and DOSBOX-MB6, and the app runs fine (when I mount the needed drives, C for local HD and F for a network drive where the database resides). However, I am completely lost when it comes to Printing.

A second issue might be that the database used by the app is on a network drive mapped to F:, shared by multiple users. So if DOSBOX is the solution, there must be support for networked drives (or other tricks).

I will continue to scan the forum, but if anyone have any guides or instructions for me, I would be so very grateful.

Dosbox is meant for games (non gaming use is not supported), so full netwotk drive support is almost certainly out of scope .

However, vdosplus (initially forked from Dosbox), might be an option.
It has direct printer support and the ability to print to pdf . It has file-locking and network support . http://www.vdosplus.org/

Thank you, vdosplus looks very interesting! I will try to follow that path instead of Dosbox. Thanks again.