yes and yes

Some apps work, some don't. Especially those radio programming things appear to be picky. You'd have to try.

Using my serial port fifo patch I could establish a dial-up connection with Win95 running inside DOSBox, using the built-in modem of the notebook. Other applications might not need a patch at all.

DOSBox targets at GAMES, please don't ever use it for stuff that might have real-life impact.

You'd hope they check their radio things after programming... especially as they seem to be using a PC 😉

I know it targets games, and my friend (lieutenant on the team) is aware of that. He will be testing it using his spare radio prior to making a decision, and all radios will be tested after each change and before being put into service.

If this works and the fire department, which is volunteer, decides to use DOSBox for this purpose, the DOSBox team may have just helped save some lives. A volunteer fire department in this area is FAR from wealthy, and the new software for Windows XP not only costs a high amount, but is also incompatible with their model radio, even though it works on older and newer models. This would equate to new radios and new software, which costs a ton of money. This is why DOSBox may be a valid solution to this problem.

As for accessing a real modem, which is for my personal knowledge, what document details doing so? I would like to read up on that for my own knowledge.

> As for accessing a real modem, which is for my personal knowledge, what > document details doing so?

There is not much to it... you set serial1=directserial realport:com1 in dosbox.conf and if you're lucky it just works (com1 is the port name your modem is on). If not and you get overrun errors add rxdelay=10 (or another value) to the line and/or try playing with the cycles. If it still doesn't work you can try builds from my homepage...

Oh alright! Didn't know it was the same as for plain old DB9 serial ports. Thanks for the information.

Ah one more thing and then I'll stop bothering you guys. Unless I am mistaken, one can emulate not only a mode, but also a null-modem connection through TCP/IP. I understand how to setup a serial port to act as a modem, and I know that you put in an IP instead of a phone number to "dial" a friend, but I am not sure how to perform the direct connection that a null-modem cable provided.

I know that I can use "directserial:com1" to use a physical null-model cable attached to my machine, but how do I do it over the net? Also, what does the "dummy" setting do? I know that disabled simply disables the emulation of a port, and I know that other settings allow it to access physical or emulated modems and such, but this one has me curious.

dummy is a port with nothing connected to it (yes there is some software that expects that)

Nullmodem:
at the command line (serial1 nullmodem) or in dosbox.conf (serial1=nullmodem)

Computer A ("server"):
serial1 nullmodem

Computer B ("Client")
serial1 nullmodem server:<ip of server computer>

Parameters are described in detail in the readme.

That's all I needed, thank you. The "nullmodem" parameter is not mentioned anywhere in the documentation or in the default configuration file and I was kind of lost! Thanks again for the help.

*EDIT*

Actually, can the client specify a port like in the following example?

1serial1=nullmodem server:192.168.0.1 port:9600

My launcher uses port 9600 for everything, and I'd like to use it this way if I can.