DESQview ?

Or Windows 3.x. That's what it's designed to do.

rgart wrote:

i have always used dos 6.22 on my retro machines and never tried dr dos, pc dos or dos 7.x etc. Often im using a dos console and wishing i could play a midi file through the mt32 or sc55 and crash back to my command prompt with it playing in the background. Is there a program that allows this? Why hasnt someone mastered the dos code and given us multiple command prompts similar to liunx with the alt-fx keys.

And this is not what DOS is designed to do. There are unspeakably terrible hacks out there that might get the job done, but you can expect that things will not run at all smoothly if you try to use them.

The old MS-DOS Shell introduced in DOS 5, for instance, incorporated rudimentary task switching.

Or the official, mythical multitasking MS-DOS 4.0 from 1985...
http://www.os2museum.com/wp/?p=1769

Multitasking in 1988 (Computer Chronicles):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKzleg4AcXg

There's also "Multiuser DOS", which had various incarnations:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiuser_DOS

That reminds me, I think some of the later versions of DR-DOS had some kind of task switcher as well.

Thanks for the links. Fascinating.

I cant be the only one doing a large xcopy and itching to check a readme.txt at the same time......

there was TSR MOD player, you can listed to a single mod music while doing another DOS stuff.
the MOD was limited 4-channel only & max 56 KB in size.

rgart wrote:

Thanks for the links. Fascinating.

I cant be the only one doing a large xcopy and itching to check a readme.txt at the same time......

You're not.

But DOS is a fundamentally different OS than Windows or Linux. What you're looking at is not a virtual terminal or anything of the sort. It's the READY prompt of a single process running in a single memory space in a single thread with the CPU in real mode. (Notwithstanding EMM386 or QEMM putting you in V86 mode)

Unless you're running a DOS Shell within something else like DOSSHELL, Windows, Desqview, etc. But in those cases, technically the multitasking environment becomes the OS, managing the scheduling of thread execution, memory pages, etc.

Hey rgart,

You might find these handy. The ZIP contains a MIDI file player (as well as a CMF file player, simply for completeness sake) that came with the Creative Labs sound cards back in the day.

I'm not 100%, but you just MIGHT require a true Sound Blaster card for these to work, but then again, maybe not. Note that each player requires it's own small-footprint driver loaded in order to use the players.

1Creative MIDI Driver Version 1.23
2---------------------------------
3Copyright (c) Creative Labs, Inc., 1990-1993. All rights reserved.
4
5SB16 / SB Pro 2 / SB Pro 2 MCV Version
6
7Usage: SBMIDI [/X] | [/Y] | [/U] | [/?]
8
9Where:
10
11[/X]: /G - General MIDI.
12      /E - Extended MIDI (default).
13      /B - Basic MIDI.
14
15[/Y]: /1 - Sound Blaster Music synthesizer (default).
16      /2 - External Music Synthesizer.
17      /3 - External Music Synthesizer (MPU401 Interface).
18
19[/U]: Unload the driver.
20
21[/?]: Display this help message.
22
23Example: SBMIDI /G /3

1Creative MIDI File Player Version 1.03
2--------------------------------------
3Copyright (c) Creative Labs, Inc., 1992. All rights reserved.
4
5Usage: PLAYMIDI midi-filename [switches]
6
7Available switches:
8
9/Q         : set quiet mode.
10/S:command : execute the command specified.
11/FMT:type  : set MIDI format type. By default follow the
12             current format type set by the MIDI driver SBMIDI.
13             "type" specifies General/Extended/Basic MIDI.
14/DRUM:nn   : set drum channel. By default is channel 10.
15             "nn" specifies the drum channel, 1 to 16.
16/?         : display this help message.
17
18Example: PLAYMIDI MUSIC.MID /S:COMMAND.COM

1Creative Sound Blaster FM-Driver Version 1.32
2---------------------------------------------
3Copyright (c) Creative Labs, Inc., 1990-1991. All rights reserved.
4
5SB Pro 2 / SB Pro MCV Version
6
7Usage: SBFMDRV [/U]
8
9/U : unload driver
10
11Example: SBFMDRV /U

1Creative Music File Player Version 1.05
2---------------------------------------
3Copyright (c) Creative Labs, Inc., 1990-1993. All rights reserved.
4
5Usage: PLAYCMF music-filename [/Q] [/S="execution command"]
6
7/Q : set quiet mode
8/S : execute the execution command specified.
9
10Example: PLAYCMF MUSIC.CMF /S=COMMAND.COM

Anyhow, the "COMMAND.COM" command line for the players is what does the magic... start the player, and it will start a new instance of "COMMAND.COM", where you can then do whatever you wish 😀 Of course, you'll have to EXIT <ENTER> when the song stops playing though.

IIRC, they both support loading multiple music files on the command line. But, I don't really remember if you have to exit the second instance of the command shell in order for the next song to advance.

Heh, I still remember the jug.cmf file. Yeah, I have a faint recollection of trying to play a cmf file and doing something else, just for the sake of it, since doing two things at the same time in DOS seems "new" and "interesting" at that time.

I think I was playing a CMF file and editing my config.sys or autoexec.bat file at the same time. Just maybe. Can't remember well.

For the sake of completeness, it is probably worth pointing out that it is fairly trivial even in DOS to start playing an audio CD and keep it playing while doing other things, as that's just a feature of the CD-ROM hardware.

Malik wrote:

Heh, I still remember the jug.cmf file.

Hehe... 'da-da-da da da da' 🤣! Man, those were the days... I myself am a bit partial torwards "THECLOUD.CMF" though 😀

(Edit) (re: the topic at hand) You know, I do seem to recall a DOS TSR MIDI player though, but I can't for the life of me remember what it was called.

Hey guys. Sorry for resurrecting an old thread, but I gave a try at the TSR midi player posted above by rfnagel, and even though I got it to work, the midi files I tried either didn't play (some didn't, most did) or sounded not very good. I suspect a different player could maybe give better results (could be wrong). Does anyone knows of any other music player (midi, mp3, whatever) that will work in the background, allowing for us to do something else at the same time? TSR or not.

Thanks!

Jorpho wrote:

For the sake of completeness, it is probably worth pointing out that it is fairly trivial even in DOS to start playing an audio CD and keep it playing while doing other things, as that's just a feature of the CD-ROM hardware.

Yeah. The cool thing is that you can start playback in DOS, then reboot the system, enter BIOS and what not, and it won't stop the disc from playing until power is cut. 😀

firage wrote:

Jorpho wrote:

For the sake of completeness, it is probably worth pointing out that it is fairly trivial even in DOS to start playing an audio CD and keep it playing while doing other things, as that's just a feature of the CD-ROM hardware.

Yeah. The cool thing is that you can start playback in DOS, then reboot the system, enter BIOS and what not, and it won't stop the disc from playing until power is cut. 😀

Uncool thing is it requires you to use the CD drive. If your machine has no CD drive or you don't want/can't burn your musics to a CD, you require a background player. But, yeah, I used to play CD's a lot back in the day too 😉

Jorpho wrote:

There's also "Multiuser DOS", which had various incarnations:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiuser_DOS

That reminds me, I think some of the later versions of DR-DOS had some kind of task switcher as well.

Cool! My dad used PC/MOS 386 way back in the 80s.. ^^
If I recall correctly, DOS Plus also had some rudimentarty multi-tasking capabilities, thanks to its CP/M-86 nature (multi-tasking stuff borrowed from MP/M).
And then, there's also OS/2. It was orginally meant as some kind of hi-end DOS, so it isn't that unrelated. 😉

ratco wrote:

Hey guys. Sorry for resurrecting an old thread, but I gave a try at the TSR midi player posted above by rfnagel, and even though I got it to work, the midi files I tried either didn't play (some didn't, most did) or sounded not very good. I suspect a different player could maybe give better results (could be wrong). Does anyone knows of any other music player (midi, mp3, whatever) that will work in the background, allowing for us to do something else at the same time? TSR or not.

Thanks!

Hey:
Those are ancient tsr midi players.
Game Midis Help @ Mirsoft
Cheers

lightmaster wrote:

Hey: Those are ancient tsr midi players. Game Midis Help @ Mirsoft Cheers […]
Show full quote

ratco wrote:

Hey guys. Sorry for resurrecting an old thread, but I gave a try at the TSR midi player posted above by rfnagel, and even though I got it to work, the midi files I tried either didn't play (some didn't, most did) or sounded not very good. I suspect a different player could maybe give better results (could be wrong). Does anyone knows of any other music player (midi, mp3, whatever) that will work in the background, allowing for us to do something else at the same time? TSR or not.

Thanks!

Hey:
Those are ancient tsr midi players.
Game Midis Help @ Mirsoft
Cheers

Hum... what do you mean? I know they are old, but that is not to say that they are not good. It's just a shame we don't have more TSR players outthere 😀