It is in fact possible to boot for a DOS disk image in DOSBox (and thus load things in a config.sys) with the BOOT command. But whether or not it will work at all depends on what exactly these things loaded in config.sys are supposed to do. Can you post the specific lines?

I am a real novice about DOSBox and am trying to explore using it as a option to solve a problem with potential new computers that run Windows 7. I have a .VHD virtual hard drive from Virtual PC 2007 that includes MS DOS 6.22 as well as a complete installation of Orcad and various other programs that I use. Is there a way to run this with DOSBox? The reason why I need to do this instead of use Virtual PC is that Windows 7 will not support file sharing with DOS running in the VPC. How can I make all of this work so that I can share files with the Host OS and DOSBox?? I guess I am very confused about how DOSBox works.

The BOOT command is documented in the readme. It is not generally used in DOSBox aside from certain specialized applications. I doubt it works with VHD disk images, but odds are you can use WinImage to convert a VHD to something DOSBox can use. You might have to experiment a bit.

But as I said, this may all be quite moot - DOSBox is generally meant for playing DOS games and it is quite possible that whatever Orcad is doing is not now and will never be supported by DOSBox. That's why you should post the CONFIG.SYS from the configuration you want to use.

Jorpho wrote:

It is in fact possible to boot for a DOS disk image in DOSBox (and thus load things in a config.sys) with the BOOT command. But whether or not it will work at all depends on what exactly these things loaded in config.sys are supposed to do.

Can you post the specific lines?

Here is what would be in the entire config.sys for the Orcad installation:

DEVICE=C:\DOS\HIMEM.SYS
DEVICE=C:\DOS\EMM386.EXE NOEMS X=CB00-CFFF
BUFFERS=40,0
FILES=55
DOS=UMB
LASTDRIVE=Z
FCBS=4,0
DOS=HIGH
DEVICEHIGH /L:1,32944 =C:\SCSI\ASPI8DOS.SYS /D
rem DEVICE=C:\SCSI\ASPICD.SYS /D:ASPICD0
DEVICEHIGH /L:2,12048 =C:\DOS\SETVER.EXE
SHELL=C:\DOS\COMMAND.COM C:\DOS\ /E:2048 /P
STACKS=9,256

None of that appears to be unique to Orcad. All that does is set up memory and the CD-ROM drive; DOSBox takes care of all that more or less automatically.

Thus, it seems you do not need your VHD at all - just copy the program's files out of the VHD into some directory on your hard drive, and mount the directory in DOSBox. If you need more details beyond that, there are plenty of tutorials and such forth on these forums.

for example
http://www.dosbox.com/tut

I have been running Orcad V3.22 in DOSBox for ages now. Standard Orcad installation works fine - no problems re Autoexec or Config. Just make sure Orcad is using a graphics driver that DOSBox understands - I use VGA640. Printing is a problem but my workaround is to use Orcad's 'print to file' option in DOSBox then send the file to the printer in Windows.
Hope this may help with your Orcad 4.2

When I launch ORCAD 4 from DosBOX , I can see the ORCAD graphics but when I click I loose the mouse and I have to kill the box.

I dont see any pulldown menu ,
should I define config.sys?
should I define the mouse ?and driver

any hint on this ?

"Killing the box" shouldn't be necessary – you should be able to get DOSBox to release the mouse either by pressing CTRL-F10, or simply by using alt-tab to switch to another window.

As I have no idea what ORCARD does I do not know what the mouse is supposed to do. However, its lack of functionality is unlikely to have anything to do with DOSBox's mouse support, particularly in view of Mr. vicg's comment above.