Is this about DOSBox?

Yes, I have the latest release on all 4 systems and get the same error. Is there any hope? 🙁

[Moved to DOSBox Games/Apps. Section]

Please keep in mind that DOSBox main target are games not applications. Maybe someone else could help you further, anyway.

Try a SVN build

Thanks for your help...! I am a school teacher that is teaching a course in Basic Electronics that is way old... Heathkit Educational Systems. The program that came with the course is on 3.5 floppy and is DOS Based. I bought the full course off of eBay and had no Idea just how old it was. These kids at one time or another had dropped out of high school and are working on getting diplomas/GED's. I wish I knew more about exactly what to do with your program to make it work, but I don't have the time to experiment with different builds to see which one might work. I may see if I can get a version of Dos 6.22 off of eBay and have the IT staff install it for me so that the systems can dual boot. Thanks again!

Instead of DOS 6.22, you could also use Windows 98SE, which contains a full featured DOS 7.1 inside it, in case you still have a 98SE CD around somewhere. In fact you can disable the loading of the Windows GUI in 98SE and use it as a "better DOS than DOS". Your IT people will be able to do that for you if they're worth their money. Note that this doesn't really work with any newer version of Windows than 98SE.

The advantage of this is that 98SE is a bit more compatible with newer hardware, such as supporting larger hard disks than 6.22. Also it's easier to get more free "conventional memory" with it. (i.e. Bill Gates compatible memory below the infamous 640 KB boundary). Many DOS programs, especially from the 1990s, need as much as 600KB of conventional memory to be free, which can be a problem in 6.22 depending on your specific hardware and software configuration.

Thanks for the info... sounds like you may have saved the day for me and my students! 😀
I'll pass this on to the IT staff.

Thanks Again!
Scott

int 14 is the serial port iirc
do the pc's your using have serial ports ?
is the program looking for a serial mouse ?
a lot of those educational programs required a dongle does he prog your using ?

This program came out in 92... I assume that it is looking for a mouse, the mice we have are all USB. What do you normally do when it calls for a serial mouse and your using a USB mouse?

Scott

Like your profile picture by the way...

Well, *most* DOS programs with mouse support access the mouse through the standard INT33 mouse driver interface of DOS, which is the same no matter what kind of mouse (USB, PS/2, serial, bus mouse) there is. This driver interface is what's created by loading the MOUSE.SYS or MOUSE.COM program in the CONFIG.SYS or AUTOEXEC.BAT of a real DOS. This interface is fully emulated by DOSBox.

The one important exception is DOS programs that support more than one mouse; because the INT33 interface handles only one, such programs usually deal with the second mouse by directly accessing the serial port (serial because no PC I know of had or has more than one PS/2 mouse port, and of course USB mice didn't exist yet during the DOS era).

Does your DOS program support two or more mice connected to one and the same PC? If it does, that's the likely culprit. If it doesn't, the likelihood that it wants to talk to a mouse directly (rather than through INT33) isn't all that high. In the latter case, I'd suggest thinking about whether your program does anything else through the serial port; for example, does it support connecting to a serial printer, or some dongle, or some kind of special hardware, or via modem to another copy of it running on another PC, or to some kind of server?