Official DOSBox does not support shared file access. It may seem to work, but file corruption is bound to happen sooner or later.

The vDos project (a fork of the DOSBox source) claims to support shared file access and the necessary locking mechanisms, but you'll have to ask the developer of that project for help with any problems you might have with it.

Firefox complained rather loudly when I tried to navigate to their web site. I guess Windows thinks they are a virus. 😮

http://sourceforge.net/projects/vdos/

collector wrote:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/vdos/

if you try to download from there, you will see they replaced their binaries with a PDF stating they had to removed their project from sourceforge. That's OK, I'll just move on.

Did you actually understand what the pdf states? They didn't have to remove it, it's now available at vdos.info.

(Otoh, I'm not sure vogons can just pass along users to vdos anymore. Bundling stuff like 4dos seems a bit no-go)

Dominus wrote:

Did you actually understand what the pdf states? They didn't have to remove it, it's now available at vdos.info.

(Otoh, I'm not sure vogons can just pass along users to vdos anymore. Bundling stuff like 4dos seems a bit no-go)

Yes, and vdos.info throws up all over the place in Firefox, and the fact that "The 2015.10.01 version has a major bug; it stops working on November 1st ! It is replaced by version 2015.11.01. " It's actually quite scary. 😉

I even tried Freedos in VirtualBox, but they don't provide mounting folders as drives or a virtual modem. I'm happy with DosBox and if I run into any share issues I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

I just wan to say I love DosBox. The ability to mount folders from the host and access a virtual modem are indispensable.

No reports came in about Firefox having trouble with the vdos.info site. I just opened it w/o problems in Firefox. If you look at the discussion forum on SourceForge, you can read what that 2015.10.01 bug was about. And get an idea that vDos is used by many, not some scary stuff.
The binaries and source code were moved to vdos.info because I didn’t get a clear answer if it was allowed to include third party (w/o source) programs to the vDos distribution on SourceForge. So I had to prevent the vDos distribution would be suddenly blocked.

Some DOS (mostly database) programs need sharing support and will complain if it isn’t enabled. But that isn’t the mean reason why your files could get corrupted. DOSBox caches file reads and writes; if one instance modifies a file, it isn’t detected by a second instance, possibly overwriting other changes!

Jos Schaars

Ok, so I went and got vDos installed. Unfortunately, they don't support a virtual modem the way DosBox does. I need to set up a listening port in 3 different DosBox windows. However, vDos does have built in share.exe protection so for me it becomes a choice between do I want my files protected when being accessed from multiple clients or do I want to be able to run those clients at all. Since my software is all mmdem-related software, having the virtual modem is a must.

@Jos, in firefox I got a window saying the site was known to contain malware or something like that and I had to click a button to ignore the warnings before Firefox would display your web page. You can find out more on the Firefox web site. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-does … protection-work

I am sorry if I pissed you off. I meant no disrespect. All I want is a DOS emulator that can run share.exe and run my software using virtual modem.

I am now looking into an OS/2 solution - though that is not looking good. So far the best I have found is DosBox. Maybe I can write my own TSR or driver or something that can lock files when in use. I don't really know.

Share.exe doesn’t do anything on its own. Your program has to call explicit its functions and use a locking scheme to safeguard (regions) of files against concurrent changes. If it doesn’t, share.exe won’t add anything to the programs functionality. Mostly a program that needs share.exe will warn it isn’t installed and just quit. Are you sure your program will use the share functionality at all?

Tried Firefox on another computer, still no warning whatsoever. However if I try HTTPS//… , I get a warning that the sites certificate isn’t valid. If I remember correctly, that is a Firefox only issue. Nothing to do about that, just wait until Firefox comes with an update.

Jos Schaars

No problems here accessing vdos.info using Firefox 42.0 or 43.0b2.

I am using 42.0 as well.

Perhaps your AV?

nope.

What about using a virtual machine (i.e.: VMWare, Virtualbox) with a real MS-DOS?

xucaen wrote:

Firefox complained rather loudly when I tried to navigate to their web site. I guess Windows thinks they are a virus. 😮

Don't pay it no mind - vDOS is a project by academics, and they haven't bothered to fix up their code signing certificates. Academics continually churn out free code and don't bother with the proper details like normal developers do.