Didn't it have Glide support in its earlier, mac-only incarnations?

First of all, my apologies. I must admit I'm a heathen since my application is not a game. It is an Electronic CAD application called PADS Perform DOS v6.0.1. However, I notice many questions from others with non-gaming applications, so I post this in the hope that it helps gamers and non-gamers alike. And gets DOSBox generally more accepted.

I have been searching for the Holy Grail and have finally found it. Or at least an excellent imitation. PADS Perform DOS was running on old systems in Windows 98SE. I was told that would no longer do. "Make it work in Win XP, or at least Win 2000". That seemed reasonable, as it would be nice to get rid of 98SE and have only XP to deal with. Right. I was to eventually come to the conclusion that "The program will not run natively in any Win NT series.". I am not posting the details of why I reached that conclusion since it will double the length of this post. If anyone wants to know, ask and I will post that part. To put the reason in one statement: I had to have, but I could never get, DPMI v1.0 support in Win XP.

Following are the processes I went through of getting PADS Perform DOS working in Virtual PC 2007 and DOSBox v0.7. I skipped VMware Workstation V6.0 for the reason listed below:

Target Application: PADS Perform DOS v6.0.1
Original OS: DOS
Challenges:
1. Uses Phar Lap 386|DOS-Extender v5.1,
2. Uses -REALBREAK command-line switch so it needs DPMI v1.0 host with
Map Conventional Memory in Memory Block function (INT31h AX=0509h),
3. Supports 21 different video cards at 1024x768 or 1280x1024, BUT NO S3 cards or VESA selections,
4. Uses a parallel port hardware key.

Numbers 2 and 3 are the biggest problems by far.

*** Virtual PC 2007 ***

Host - Win XP SP2, Retail
Guest - Win 98SE, Retail
Video support - S3 Trio32/64 PCI (732/764) (with VM Additions), VESA standard up to 1024x768 and 1280x1024

Main Problem: Lack of Video Support

I tried this since I thought I might get lucky and have one of the 21 supported cards be compatible with the S3 Trio32/64 or the VESA standard. I was of course dreaming. Only 4 selections even drew garbage on the screen at 1024x768: the Tseng Labs ET4000 and ET3000, the ATI VGA Wonder +, and the Paradise VGA. The IBM 8514A and the ATI Ultra (mach8) were well behaved, displaying "NO 8514 PRESENT" and exiting. All the others drew nothing and left the window blank and hung, needing an Alt-Del to get back to the VM Desktop. Only the IBM VGA setting worked which restricted the resolution to an unacceptable 640x480.

Aside from the video, it was easy to get PADS Perform running. After installing Windows 98SE and the VM Additions, the network was already working. So I copied all the PADS Perform application directory as well as my old System.ini, Config.sys, and Autoexec.bat files from the host which shows up in Network Neighborhood to the VM C: drive (I had copied the files from an old computer to the host ahead of time for this experiment). I copied the line needed by PADS Perform to the System.ini file in the VM C:\WINDOWS and the whole Config.sys and Autoexec.bat to C:\ of the VM 98SE. I remmed out lines that were only needed by other applications. Mainly I needed:

SYSTEM.INI [386Enh] - DEVICE=C:\PADS\PHARLAP.386

CONFIG.SYS - DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\HIMEM.SYS
DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\EMM386.EXE NOEMS
DOS=HIGH
DOS=UMB

AUTOEXEC.BAT - PATH as appropriate
Loadhigh C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\DOSKEY.COM /bufsize=1024
SET environment variables as appropriate for PADS Perform

(DOSKEY was only for convenience and not required).

I also set the LPT1 Setting to Physical parallel port: LPT1 (378h-37Fh) in the Settings for the Virtual Machine.

Final Results: Application runs perfectly, but only at an unacceptable standard VGA 640x480 resolution. Slower than DOSBox, but the speed is acceptable.

*** VMware Workstation v6.0.0 ***

Host - Win XP SP2, Retail
Guest - Win 98SE, Retail
Video support - VESA 2.0 standard

Main Problem: Lack of Video Support

I didn't try this since I thought it would have the same results as Virtual PC. It has the same type of video limitations for PADS Perform so I assume it will run but at an unacceptable standard VGA 640x480 resolution.

*** DOSBox v0.7 ***

Host - Win XP SP2, Retail
Guest - None, DOSBox emulates MSDOS 5.0 inherently
Video support - VGA and VESA built-in; Tseng Labs ET4000, S3 Trio32/64, and Paradise VGA (with Vasyl's SVGA Additions)

Main Problem: Slight color problem at 1024x768, corrected with ANSIPLUS

This program is really impressive. The hardest part is collecting the pieces you need from various sites. Sourceforge handles the official build, currently DOSBox v0.7. There is a site for "unofficial" CVS builds posted daily which have fixes and possible additions. This is mainly for beta testers and comment. Then there are builds produced by people in the DOSBox community which use the official source and add various features in code contributed by other people in the DOSBox community. Three often used ones are:

Gulikoza - with Direct3D, OpenGL-HQ, Vasyl's SVGA support, plus others
ykhwong - with Direct3D, OpenGL-HQ, Vasyl's SVGA support, plus others
HAL 9000 - Direct Parallel and Serial Port access

For PADS Perform DOS, I needed to download the following:

The official DOSBox v0.7 Win32 installer,
The latest build from either YKHWong or Gulikoza,
ANSIPLUS v4.06 from Kristofer Sweger,
PortTalk v2.2 from Beyond Logic

I ran the DOSBox installer. Then I unzipped the YKHWong and Gulikoza builds so I could try each one. I copied the YKHWong files into the DOSBox directory and replaced DOSBox.exe and DOSBox.conf and any other files that were older. Then I studied and edited the default .conf configuration file to make changes as follows:

[sdl] - fulldouble=true
fullresolution=1024x768
windowresolution=1024x768

[dosbox] - memsize=64

[vga] - svgachipset=et4000
videoram=1024

[dos] - ems=false

[autoexec] -
mount c c:\
path=C:\;C:\BAT;c:\pads;c:\pads\files; c:\pads\cam;C:\DOS;C:\WINDOWS; C:\WINDOWS\system32; C:\Programs\ANSIPLUS; C:\Programs\PortTalk;C:\ECED;C:\XTGOLD;

SET dosx=-swapdir C:\PADS\SwapFile
SET TMP=C:\temp

C:\PROGRAMS\ANSIPLUS\ANSIPLUS.exe

C:
cd C:\PADS
C:\PADS\PERFDOS6.COM
del c:\PADS\SwapFile\PP*.SWP
C:\pads\PPERFORM.EXE /S

Then create a shortcut from the DOSBox.exe and set Start in: to C:\PADS. Compatibilty is all default, nothing checked. Copy the edited DOSBox.conf file to C:\PADS. DOSBox looks for a DOSBox.conf in the Start in: directory.

When I first started, I wasn't using ANSIPLUS and there was a problem with having some colors wrong at 800x600 and 1024x768 in PADS Perform. The colors were perfect without using ANSIPLUS in XTree Gold v3.0 and an editor called EC which both run at 640x480. The first thing I thought of to fix the colors was ANSI.SYS but I couldn't load it in DOSBox even with loaders like Devload and CTload. So I started going through loadable ANSI.COMs. None worked until I came across the program ANSIPLUS, which is loadable as a device driver or a TSR. I loaded it in DOSBox before the application and the colors were almost perfect. I had to configure ANSIPLUS from the default palette to the "I" option of IBM-OEM colors and then the colors were perfect. (I'm not sure why the author didn't set the IBM-OEM colors as the default). Both Gulikoza and ykhwong builds worked equally well and had the same color problems. Both were fixed with ANSIPLUS.

One thing was odd, I had to run the original bound PPERFORM.EXE without the TNT.EXE loader. When I tried to start PADS Perform with the TNT.EXE loader, it and PADS loaded and PADS was at its initial graphic screen ready to go. But then it would exit back to the DOS Prompt and display a message about not being able to read the key. This never happened when using just PPERFORM.EXE. Perhaps it has something to do with not having the matching PHARLAP.386 driver loaded since Win XP can't use a VxD.

One thing that didn't work was the Paradise VGA support. PADS Perform has a selection for "Paradise VGA" which I selected. I set the DOSBox.conf to:

[vga] - svgachipset=pvga1a
videoram=1024

PADS would display a line of text as usual before it normally goes to its graphic screen. But then the cursor would sit at the left under the text line and never get any further. PADS was running, just not able to display the correct thing. I could use the keyboard exit sequence "blind" and PADS would exit and return to the DOS Prompt.

Finally, with the ET4000 support, I have PADS Perform DOS running in Windows XP SP2. Now the old hardware and Win 98SE can be retired.

Final Results: Application runs perfectly at 1024x768. Faster than Virtual PC.

DOSBox is the program that worked for me, rather than Virtual PC 2007 or VMware Workstation, because of the ET4000 video support. Both run PADS Perform DOS. Virtual PC was easier to find and setup than DOSBox. But only DOSBox will let me run at 1024x768, which is a MUST have item. And DOSBox is faster.

A big thanks to the DOSBox Team and especially Vasyl!!!

For VPC to be competitive for my category of program, VPC must find a way to increase the video support. My program won't run in VPC solely because of the lack of video support. Only a few more cards need to be supported in order to cover the vast majority of legacy programs from this era. The ET6000 (which also runs any ET3000 and ET4000 program) and the ATI mach64 GX with ATI Spectra RAMDAC (which also runs any VGA Wonder + program) were high volume chips that dominated the market in their era and cover multiple chips due to their family compatibility.

However, since at this point DOSBox is working perfectly at 1024x768 and it is faster at 1024x768 than VPC at 640x480, I'm inclined to give up on VPC. Unless of course, I have to do this again when Vista becomes mandated. Let's see: that would be Grails, Holy...

By the way, Wikipedia has a nice table comparing virtual machines. Search for "Comparison of virtual machines". I'm not sure how accurate the details are.

One thing I could use is a build with official DOSBox v0.7, Vasyl's latest SVGA additions (dosbox-svga-patch-20070528), and HAL 9000's latest Parallel Port additions (directlpt6_diff-20070623). Making a build is well out of my league, I'm afraid. Could someone point me in the right direction?

Thanks

(PC: Athlon XP 3200, 2GB PC-3200, Asus V9999GT (6800GT), 500GB RAID 0 made of 2 Seagate NLS series 250GB).

Hello Plan9FOS - welcome to VOGONS. Dear DosFreak have already posted the 2nd part of your PADS adventure here: PADS Perform + DosBox and ANSIPlus

As to your question of how to make your own builds, try looking here:
Topic 16120

OBS: I took the liberty of breaking a loooooooooong line (a PATH setting) in your post that messed up the page wrapping.

leileilol wrote:

Didn't it have Glide support in its earlier, mac-only incarnations?

Yup.

WOW. DosFreak, how did did you ever find it? I posted similar reports at VPC and VMware, but I thought they would be well buried in the community forum sections. I'm encouraged that they are available. As you might have noticed, my quest really got on a roll when I started posting questions about VM video card support at those two sites.

MiniMax, the 16120 link about builds seems out of commission. I must admit though, I was hoping to find someone with experience to make a build. When I'm testing my program to see if it runs and prints, I would be more confident about my conclusions if I knew DOSBox were made correctly. I have a small budget and could make a contribution to the team or whoever does the build such as Gulikoza, ykhwong, or HAL9000. Is this ever done?
(Printing is not working, but I assume I need a build with HAL9000's Parallel Port code in addition to Vasyl's SVGA code).

Sorry about the text. I copied it out of Notepad and thought that pure text with no formatting would be OK. It seems there are still some spaces in the Path line. I don't know what happened.

Thanks

DosFreak wrote:

leileilol wrote:

Didn't it have Glide support in its earlier, mac-only incarnations?

Yup.

This isn't entirely true. I was a VPC user back in the MacOS classic days when this support existed. I even used this support. Essentially the glide support of VPC required that you place an unused Voodoo card (i.e. Voodoo 2 in my case) into a PCI slot on your G4/G3 and software from which VPC would be allowed to access the card directly. This feature was only available in a few MacOS Classic versions before being removed and it never made it into the OS X version of the software.

This would only work if the card you used was meant for PCs and it wasn't being used by the host OS at all. I was able to meet these requirements as I had a lot of old PC parts lying around 😀

Plan9FOS wrote:

MiniMax, the 16120 link about builds seems out of commission.

Huh?? Link works for me. The thread is in DOSBox General.

Plan9FOS wrote:

It seems there are still some spaces in the Path line. I don't know what happened.

The spaces are mine. Did that to allow the line to wrap.

MiniMax: it~s the beta Testers only General Discussion board you are linking to 😀

Ahh - damn!! My powers are blinding me from the problems facing the mortals 😀

I haven't yet learned how to make my own build. Reading through the process at

http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php? … =BuildingDOSBox

it looks like a lot to learn and a whole project unto itself.

Main Wiki page:
http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php? … 09b8b0ee4d76668

Luckily, I haven't had to do a build since I've had a lot of help. Gulikoza made a build which added HAL9000's Parallel Port code and it printed properly from within PADS Perform.

Then HAL9000 made a "CAD Edition" build which solved two problems. It combined his Parallel Port code and Vasyl's SVGA code AND it added a fix for the color problem. That build runs PADS Perform at 1024x768 with the correct colors without using ANSIPlus and it prints properly from within PADS. Thank you, thank you.

I'm having some trouble with the keyboard numeric keypad operation. But I've been able to find a liveable solution by using the KeyMapper.

http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php?page=KeyMapper

Thanks to all for the help

I left out a couple of things in the previous post.

For anyone who still needs ANSIPlus see:

Kristofer Sweger
http://www.sweger.com/ansiplus/

The full version is now free.

There is a better description of the KeyMapper in the README.txt file in the Official DOSBox release files from SourceForge.

I'd highly recommend at least scanning through that README.txt file for anyone getting started using DOSBox and reading it completely if you're having any problems.

That's why it was called README.

Yes, agreed. But maybe new users and potential users might be more inclined to read it if it was called the User's Guide or User's Manual. Just a thought.

It's directly under the link to dosbox, doubt renaming helps.
Maybe having three links to the readme or so.