AFAIK, DOSBox keeps the data which it needs for administrating file control blocks in its own memory (outside of the emulated DOS machine memory) and it doesn't push anything on the emulated program's own stack either. Thus, the commands are not needed.

So the question ist, how many FCBS Dosbox is supporting by default?
The thing is, that DOS originally as default is supporting 4 FCBS only, but I need FCBS=250, as well as stacks=18,256, originally writtne in the config.sys.

You may need to boot MS-DOS inside DOSBox. See Install DOS in DOSBox .

Are you sure that you don't need
FILES=250 instead ?
As that comes up quite often here.

DOSBox allocates FCBs dynamically. The number is limited only by the amount of (real, not emulated) memory that you have. If I understand the code correctly, you can use many thousands of FCBs if you want.

And for what do you need STACKS=18,256? If I understand the code correctly, DOSBox handles interrupts differently from real DOS, it does not push interrupt handling data on the application's own stack. STACKS= is to protect applications with marginals stacks against stack overflow caused by interrupts. In DOSBox, these stack overflows simply will not happen.

In short: You do not need these commands. Your program will work without them.

Some programs may check for a config.sys with an fcbs= line. If this is the case, you could create a config.sys to fool the program. DOSBox will not configure itself by it, but your program may then be happy.

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

Qbix wrote:

Are you sure that you don't need
FILES=250 instead ?
As that comes up quite often here.

you are correct, files are only 50, but FCBS are 250.
I use in the config.sys/config.nt the following (for WIN XP as well for WIN 7 32bit):

fcbs=250,8
stacks=18,256
files=50

unfortunately this does not work anymore for WIN7 64bit and I don't know why, except MS want me to bury MS-DOS apps. So I tried to overcome the issue with DosBox, so far without success. So I currently still need to have second Computers with XP running.

Did you try booting MS-DOS inside DOSBox, as I suggested earlier?

Jorpho wrote:

Did you try booting MS-DOS inside DOSBox, as I suggested earlier?

yes, but did finally not succeed,
HDD img establishing worked so far after a couple of Trials
but
1. I did not find anywhere on the net the img files of the 3 MS-DOS Floppies to install MS-DOS
2. I succeded to find the iso Image of a boot CD and could start FDISK from there. But FDISK is crashing after confirming [Y] to whole disk space to be formatted. Then I found MS-DOS Floppy 1 as img, but this did not boot from there, however could alos start FDISK from this floppy. But same result crashing after confirming Y.

Use the empty images attached to the first post in Windows 9x DOSBox Guide (Not officially supported) . You will not have to format those or use FDISK on them. (You might even be able to do everything you need with the FreeDOS image.)