First post, by XenaPortland
Hello,
I have a client who is partially successful at using DOSBox to run an old database/terminal application I wrote many years ago. I have tried other emulators (including running WinXP mode under Win7), but nothing works quite as well as DOSBox. That being said, I'm having a serious problem with DOSBox and my application as described below:
1) Due to size limitations, the DOS program I'm trying to run is broken up into four separate executables (TELECOM.EXE, TRAFMAN.EXE, TRAFDBSE.EXE, and TRAFPRNT.EXE).
2) These four separate programs work together, each able to exit entirely and run the next program without the user being aware.
3) During normal program use, the user may jump from TELECOM to TRAFMAN to TRAFDBSE and then back to TRAFMAN and finally return to TELECOM. All the switching happens with one program exiting as it spawns the next program with certain command line options to maintain sync. The user is often not even aware of these switches, it all happens in the background as they select different program options.
4) Unfortunately, DOSBox chokes on this. It will run any individual program just fine, but the moment one exits and it tries to spawn a new program, DOSBox crashes with the message: "DOS: Not enough Memory for Internal Tables".
5) Researching this issue has led me to the conclusion that this is a shortcoming with DOSBox itself, and any solution requires modifying DOSBox (something I have no experience with). I've seen comments about this which note that DOSBox does not release it's "Table Memory" from application to application, and that other users would also benefit from modifying DOSBox to handle this issue differently.
I'm making this post in the hope that either (a) there is a solution already available for this problem and perhaps someone can point me in the right direction to see it, or (b) a developer with extensive DOSBox experience would be interested in earning a reasonable fee for updating DOSBox to overcome this issue. Please reply to this post or contact me through my company website www.detllc.com if you have anything helpful. Thank you!
- Rebecca Taylor
Sr. Engineer, Diamond Edge Technology, LCC