First post, by emendelson
MegaBuild5 is an amazing achievement that makes many things possible in DOSBox that were otherwise difficult or impossible. I am very grateful for it.
I have two questions about parallel-port support, one simple, one more complex.
1. When using the option Parallel1=file, is it possible to specify the location and filename of the output file? And is it possible to specify that any new output REPLACES (does not append to) any exisiting file? If so, how can that be done?
2. This question is not a specific MegaBuild5 problem (as I'll explain below), but I hope MegaBuild5 may make it easier to solve it. Here is the question
In MegaBuild5 LPT1-->file works perfectly when printing directly from an application like WordPerfect. However, I can't figure out how to use one application that captures output from WordPerfect and then passes printer data to LPT1. It's called TrueType for WordPerfect, and is legally available here: http://www.columbia.edu/~em36/wpdos/tools.html#primetype
When I print from TrueType for WordPerfect, printing begins, but never completes, and no output file is written. The console does not report that anything is happening; the DOS application locks up, and I have to shut down MegaBuild5 entirely.
As I said, this is NOT a specific MegaBuild problem. The same problem occurs with the current SVN version when I use the old PRN2FILE utility to capture output to LPT1 and send it to file. I tried using MegaBuild5 in my application in the hope that it would not have this problem, because of its extensive LPT1 support, but it seems to produce the same result. I've studied the LPT1 options in the conf file, but I don't see anything that might help. (Of course I may have misunderstood something.)
Any suggestions would be very welcome. I understand that this question will probably only interest people who enjoy tinkering with the code.
P.S. I've tried this with MegaBuild5 under XP SP3 and Windows 7 32-bit.
Edit: Additional details for TrueType for WordPerfect. This program can be set to send its output to a file instead of to a printer. Unfortunately, this option causes the same lockup described above when used in SVN or MegaBuild5. To turn on this option, edit the TTWP.CFG file in the WordPerfect directory and change the line Port1=LPT1 to Port1=LPT1,C:\PATH\FILENAME.EXT. (This works correctly in an NTVDM and in VirtualPC 2007, but not in DOSBox SVN or MegaBuild5.)