>May I humbly suggest looking into whether some of your contributions
>might be applicable at the FreeDOS project? Using DOSBox for file
>management tends to be discouraged and I fear these tools may not get
>the attention they deserve here.
I think some of my earlier stuff did make it into FreeDOS. I was quite keen
on the project near the beginning, I don't recall the details but there was
some sort of misunderstanding or other reason we didn't do great and I parted
ways from it and haven't really looked back.
>>WCMD
>I mean, doesn't the ability to run host Windows commands within DOSBox
>suggest a highly problematic security vulnerability?
It could certainly be abused, but it won't happen unless you are well aware
that it could go on. WCMD communicates with a Windows program that you not
only have to start, but need to set up a link to run it specifying the location
of the temp file used to communicate with it .. (I put it on my RamDisk but
you can put it anywhere DosBox can also access it). I think highly unlikely
to happen "by accident".
>Also, please be advised that the use of Megabuild 6 is discouraged. You
>may enjoy DOSBox-X, which is much more up to date and should include the
>same extras assuming in this instance that you do "need/want 'the best'
>bloated software you can find". winking face
I've just started looking at DosBox-X and it looks good. I'm hoping they will
finish the Android port - It has one "new" feature I love, which is the
ability to mount a RAMdrive. I know that on a busy system this might get
swapped to physical storage, but that shouldn't happen unless you have a
lot of "stuff" running - and a big advantage of a RAMdisk is temp storage
that always "goes away". And unless you get into "rooting" there isn't a way
to make a normal RAMdrive on a droid (that I know of).
Incidently (again, not really relalated) one motivation for posting the updated
DBUTIL archive and announcing it here was that I just recently did "KEYSUB" and
I find it very useful on Tablet verssions (Turbo DosBox, IDosBox and Magic
are the one's I've used)
KEYSUB differs from most key remappers because It installs a very tiny TSR
which substitutes complete keycodes - not just scancodes.
I tend not to like on-screen tablet keyboards with DosBox because either it
covers hald your DOS screen, or you have to make the DOS screen so small it
is hard to read. So I like to use physical keyboards which take on screen
space. My S5E has a "keyboard" cover and I also have several tiny Bluetooth
keyboards for other tablets. But mapping ScanCodes (like DosBox can) doesn't
easily let you cross Normal/Shift/Ctrl/Alt boundaries. These keyboards don't
have enough "spare" keys to implement F1-F10, Ins/Del/Home/End/PgUp/PgDn etc.
But most of these keyboards send unique keycodes for Alt-1 to Alt-0.
I wanted to make these F1-F10 -- but ran into a problem: I could for
example make Alt-1 send the F1 scancode, but because I had to hold Alt
to enter it, DosBox applications were seeing Alt-F1... A valid but
rarely used DOS key.
I first though about rebuilding all my stuff to accept Alt-1 - Alt-10
for the same functions as F1 - F10 - but then I decided to write KEYSUB
which lets the application see the code for F1 when I press Alt-1. In
addition you can substiture any Alt/Shiift/Ctrl code for any other-state key.
With this I have been able to make DosBox on my tablets very workable.
>>DVM
>(I confess I thought this was coming across as some sort of tease at first
>glance. If anyone else reading this is wondering, it is apparently...
It IS very real, and I use it daily. It's purpose it to make it very simple
and portable to run simple to moderatly complex "stuff" in any environment
where DVM has been ported. Currently I have Win32/Win64, but I'm looking at
doing a Linux port and may eventually do Android as well.
It's not an X86 VM - It implements a CPU I designed a few years back called
"C-FLEA" which is a tiny 16 bit CPU which is a pretty optimal target for my
compiler. The actual CPU implementation is <200 lines of C (with no library
calls etc). The bulk of DVM is emulating enough of DOS to make my DOS
library workable.
Just FYI!
Dave