VOGONS


First post, by Jacsoft

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Hello,

I am new to dosbox, but I wanted to try to use it for a program (not a game actually). It is called Exact for Dos. We need to run it on a terminal.
Now we used tamedos to speed it up and use fullscreen, only tamedos cant cope with graphics. Therefore it only runs if we turn the logo off. But now also the preview doesn't work.

Thats why we tried DosBox. Now dosbox has a big advantage because it is capable of showing the logo even on a terminal. The only problem is that when te logo is gone normally one gets a screen where they need to login.
This screen is not complete. I see the header , but the part where i need to input the credientials is just missing. Even if I start typing and then try to logon nothing happens.

Does anyone have an idea what could be the problem? I know it is rather vague this way, but is there any other to debug what is happening or something?

Thanks in advance

/edit: Added screenshot

This is what dosbox makes of it
dosbox%20exact.JPG

This is what it should be
tamedos%20exact.JPG

Reply 1 of 15, by Qbix

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The error screen at the background of dosbox is unrelated to the missing textfiled on the other screen.
The error at the background can probably be solved by installing newer video card drivers,
The other error is more tricky. You might want to play around with how you mounted your folders
(e.g. try the evil mount c c:\ )

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Reply 2 of 15, by Jacsoft

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Thanks for the reply. Well the video card driver is not the problem, because it looks good at the beginning. About the other error. The C was already mounted. I have attached the conf file maybe you see something that is not right?

Reply 3 of 15, by wd

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Try loadfix before starting the program, and try reinstalling the prog
into a new directory (create something like c:\test, then mount that
in dosbox, mount the installation files as d: or something).

Reply 4 of 15, by Jacsoft

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I already use loadfix but thi doesn't solve the problem, also removing loadfix doesn't work. I am unable to install it again, because it is an old package and the license number must be entered at install. These numbers are unfindable and we cannot retrieve them. So it is licensed with a file but the installer needs the codes.

But other programs (like tamedos) also do not require an install and it works out of the box. The only thing is that tamedos has a crappy display drivers, where DosBox has real good. Are there any other options that I can try? Can I make logfiles or something?

Reply 5 of 15, by Qbix

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okay.
your autoexec section is a mess.
drive T: What is under tamedos this ?
scrap the
cd windows,system32
files is 6000 is highly unlikely. try a 127 (dosbox it's own amount)
share might be a problem.

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Reply 6 of 15, by Jacsoft

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Wow, real fast respons here. Awesome.

You are right the autoexec was a mess, sorry, because of all the testing.
I removed the code.

The T under tamedos is exactly the same as under DosBox
(net use T \\localhost\t)

The autoexec part is now:
[autoexec]
mount t "c:\t"
mount c "C:\"
loadfix
T:
cd/
cd exact65
share.exe /f:6000 /l:100
EMENU.EXE
loadfix -f
exit

Share is an MS-DOS program. The program Exact explicitly ask for this file to be loaded, otherwise I get an error message. So I can't remove this share.

Reply 7 of 15, by MiniMax

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I agree with Qbix - try trimming that autoexec section down a bit. Something like

mount T "C:\T"
mount c "C:\"
loadfix -5
T:
cd /EXACT65
EMENU.EXE
exit

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Reply 8 of 15, by Qbix

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a small weirdness
(exact dutch accountancy program I think (I'm dutch as well)
version 6.5 but the screenshot shows 7.21

If that share line is really needed then that might be a problem.

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How to ask questions the smart way!

Reply 9 of 15, by Jacsoft

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You are right about the program, it is the accountancy program.
The directory where it is installed is Exact65, but it is later upgraded to version 7.21. As you can see in the screenshot tamedos also runs 7.21.

But how can I be sure that share is the problem. And how come that tamedos does not require this file?

Reply 10 of 15, by wd

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Well we can't do much more than guess. Especially as it's an already-installed
program, which in several cases leads to path problems.
Do you know where the license file is stored? Does it have any flags set?

Reply 11 of 15, by Jacsoft

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the license file is in the program root folder, and no special flags are set.
There is also a ini file with the path settings and these are all good working paths.

I understand it is difficult for you, therefore I was wondering i there is some kind of log system where I can see the lo to find out what is wrong.

I have a complete test environment created, so if someone is interested I could give the info and you could look for yourself on the machine. I was originally created for the support guys of tamedos but these are really slow.

Reply 12 of 15, by wd

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There is also a ini file with the path settings and these are all good working paths.

Did you double-check that all paths are good with respect to the dosbox mounting?

Reply 13 of 15, by Jacsoft

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Yes, numerous times. This is the data from the ini file:

[EMENU]
RootDir=T:\EXACT65
BinDir=T:\EXACT65\BIN
DllDir=T:\EXACT65\DLL
EtcDir=T:\EXACT65\ETC
HomeDir=T:\EXACT65\HOME
UsrDir=T:\EXACT65\USR
LngDir=T:\EXACT65\NL
RbstmpDir=T:\EXACT65\USR\RBSTMPL
UserddDir=T:\EXACT65\HOME\EXACT
CmpbaseDir=T:\EXACT65\USR\CMPBASE
CmpdemoDir=T:\EXACT65\USR\CMPDEMO
LOGBOEK=0

Reply 14 of 15, by MiniMax

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Jacsoft - have you tried changing the machine setting in dosbox.conf? Default is machine=vga. I wonder if the login screen will work if machine=cga ?

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Reply 15 of 15, by Jacsoft

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yes, I have done this, have even tried the hercules mode and the beta vga driver that recently got released.