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First post, by BRCConsultations

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I'm tackling a few different issues on a software package that we have at my day job... (and let's not even go into the whole concept of why our ERP software is DOS based, or the issue of how we're moving to Windows7 - 64bit while we're on a DOS based ERP software). So, here's the issue... I'm mostly there, but these little quirks keep me from saying that I'm 100% complete.

Issue 1: We print (thanks to the Megabuild from h-a-l-9000), onto pre-printed forms and it worked great under XP DOS prompts, but somehow the virtual printer that we have with the Megabuild doesn't print quite the same way. We appear to need a single line feed at the top of any form that we print.

Issue 2: It seems that no matter that the system was set for Caps-lock and Num-lock prior to starting the program, we still have to turn it off and on to register that we want it on, otherwise it's lowercase...

I'm so close now, it's driving me insane... but then again, I haven't had to read any poetry on the board yet. Fortunately, I think I'm looking in the wrong place for the poetry.

Reply 1 of 6, by leileilol

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you're using dosbox for a day job. a bad idea to begin with.

QEMU, VirtualBox, VritualPC... ANYTHING else would be supported for your task, not DOSBox. DOSBox is for games. We only care about games.

apsosig.png

Reply 2 of 6, by Dominus

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The 2nd issue has been fixed in Dosbox svn. Whenever hal does a new megabuild that fix should be in.
Lei is rught though...

Windows 3.1x guide for DOSBox
60 seconds guide to DOSBox
DOSBox SVN snapshot for macOS (10.4-11.x ppc/intel 32/64bit) notarized for gatekeeper

Reply 3 of 6, by BRCConsultations

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First, thank you for noting that issue 2 is resolved. That leaves me with one less problem for the long haul.

Now, I do understand that you feel that DOSbox is not a buisness class software, however across the Internet, many folks have pointed towards DOSbox being the ideal alternative for people who are having problems getting a DOS application running under Windows 7 64bit, especially when you note that I'm also connecting to a Windows 2008 Server.

Explanation: An issue exists where Server 2008 does not trust DOS machines at all. One can go through, and make some serious reductions in the security of their network, and make DOS work, but that is also hit or miss with the individual PCs from my personal experience thus far. DOSbox provides the connectivity layer to the network through it's interaction with the host, negating the need for network drivers, or security loopholes in the overall system.

leileilol was kind enough to provide some suggestions for alternatives above, however each of them runs the same concerns as above. I've spent a good 20-30 hours working this one issue, and DOSbox has been the cleanest and best approach... and actually, it's the first one that actually gets me to the network consistently on multiple machines... forgetting about the fact that the others require greater risk to the network.

So, you like it for fixing games, and hey, I love to play games too, but if I could use an Xbox to fix this problem, or perhaps a bunch of Lego bricks, a yo-yo, tinkertoys, or even pink fuzzy bunny slippers... I would. (OK, let's pretend I didn't say anything about the slippers!)

Reply 4 of 6, by bloodbat

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BRCConsultations wrote:

Now, I do understand that you feel that DOSbox is not a buisness class software, however across the Internet, many folks have pointed towards DOSbox being the ideal alternative for people who are having problems getting a DOS application running under Windows 7 64bit, especially when you note that I'm also connecting to a Windows 2008 Server.

About 60 years ago lobotomies were also widely recommended for a number of problems.

Reply 5 of 6, by Jorpho

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On previous occasions, it has been noted that DOSBox is in some ways sufficiently inaccurate (such as in floating point math) that even though you may not notice anything wrong while running a game, it could feasibly make an error in some mission-critical application with drastic consequences. Thus, it is not recommended for business software.

Anyway, I'm not familiar with virtual printing in DOSBox, but if it came down to inserting a single line feed at the top of the output, I would use it to print to a PDF (using PDFill or one of many other free PDF generators) and then write a Python script of some sort to manipulate the PDF afterwards.

Reply 6 of 6, by Dominus

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Using Dosbox is discouraged, AFAIK, because as Jorpho wrote, dosbox is not 100% correct in some stuff and the developers want to make that very clear to businesses. No guaranty at all for mission critical stuff. I CAN understand that you want to use it though, it's easy to setup and copy that setup to other machines and and and... 😀
This is the part where I like to point business users that still want to use it despite warnings, that you can donate some money to the devs as you are saving much money through the help of dosbox 😉

Windows 3.1x guide for DOSBox
60 seconds guide to DOSBox
DOSBox SVN snapshot for macOS (10.4-11.x ppc/intel 32/64bit) notarized for gatekeeper