Q&A Database for MS-DOS \ VOGONS

Q&A Database for MS-DOS

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First post, by Herman

Posted on 2013-04-19, 21:42

Herman Offline

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THANK YOU... all you geniuses who helped to create DOSBOX. I want to share something here in case it helps another old-timer like myself.

Q&A for DOS is the ancient database from the 1980s which also had a well integrated word processor. None of the fancy new stuff can touch it for speed, once you got used to it.

After using it at least 25 years I thought I'd have to ditch it because of hardware and OS incompatibilities. But DOSBOX came to the rescue. I now have Q&A running on three machines... and printing through the parallel port LPT1. Full screen too.

One computer, a desktop (Dell Precision) with a Lexmark printer attached has Windows 8 pro, 32 bit.

Another machine, a brand new laptop (Dell Latitude) has Windows 7 pro, 32 bit, also connected to a Lexmark printer. This laptop has the legacy adapter that Dell sells for their Latitude line. It provides a parallel port.

The third machine is a Toshiba laptop, a year old, which I have upgraded to Windows 8 pro, 64 bit. This machine does not have a parallel port, but Q&A runs fine so long as I don't want to print.

I could not get DOSBOX 0.74 to print (probably my fault) but found that DOSBox SVN_MB6 printed fine once I added the necessary code to the configuration file. Here, in case it will help someone, is what I changed in the configuration file:

fullsreen=true
cputype=386

At the very bottom of the configuration file I added the following lines which enable printer access and automatically mount the disc and load the Q&A program at start-up:

parallel1=file dev:lpt1
mount c c:\data
c:
qados50\qa1.exe

The reference to the data and qados50 directories are of course specific to my directory layout but they serve here as an example. You will have to adapt those commands to your own path leading to the qa1.exe file.

Regrettably I don't remember from where I downloaded
DOSBox SVN_MB6. I found that version late one night when I was very tired from fiddling with this setup. If one of you could tell me again from where that particular flavour of DOSBOX can be downloaded, I'd appreciate it.

Reply 1 of 6, by Herman

Posted on 2013-04-19, 23:55

Herman Offline

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Peter V. just reminded me where to find the MB6 build of DOSBOX that I used. Here is the link to the download site
http://home.arcor.de/h-a-l-9000/

Reply 2 of 6, by Norton Commander

Posted on 2013-04-20, 22:11

Norton Commander Offline

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Q&A was DOS truly the best word processor/flat-file database combo for DOS. I also used the word processor exclusively for years until Ami Pro came along.

Herman wrote:
I could not get DOSBOX 0.74 to print (probably my fault) but found that DOSBox SVN_MB6 printed fine once I added the necessary code to the configuration file. Here, in case it will help someone, is what I changed in the configuration file:

fullsreen=true
cputype=386

The standard DOSBOX build can't print as DOSBOX is geared primarily for games.

I ran Q&A V2 on a Leading Edge 8086 clone with DOS 3.3 so you should be able to leave the cputype parameter to AUTO and fullscreen shouldn't matter either, purely personal preference.

Herman wrote:
parallel1=file dev:lpt1

This is the only one that matters for printing in the SVN build of DOSBOX.

Reply 3 of 6, by Herman

Posted on 2013-04-20, 22:49

Herman Offline

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I did what you suggested, set the cputype=auto on one machine here and it seems to work just fine that way too. It is a Toshiba laptop running Windows 8 pro, 64 bit.

But I left fullscreen=true because it saves me having to press Alt - Enter each time I start Q&A.

I have this same configuration on a new Dell Latidude with Windows 7 pro 32 bit and it is the only one of the three machines were the whole display is NOT fully utilized by Q&A. I use the same settings in the config file. On that one machine the Q&A window does also expand, but there is a wide band of unused real estate all round it. Do you have any idea how that might be remedied?

Reply 4 of 6, by Bakers

Posted on 2013-09-07, 02:42

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Hi Herman
As you suggested I changed my details at the bottom of the config file as below.
Then I try to print some labels in Q&A 4, but nothing happend - please help!
Thank you, Bakers

[autoexec]
# Lines in this section will be run at startup.
# You can put your MOUNT lines here.
parallel1=file dev:lpt1
MOUNT c c:\users\snyman\desktop\qa\
c:
qa1.exe
exit