Well, if you take your concerns to the vDOS developers, they may be willing to accommodate you.

The second thing I should point out is that you can adjust the "cycles" on the fly by pressing CTRL-F11 (to slow down) and CTRL-F12 (to speed up).

But as for your specific problem, obviously if the same DOSBox config works in another environment, it seems unlikely to be a DOSBox problem. Did your previous computer have a dedicated serial port on the motherboard? Are you now using a USB-to-RS232 device?

My previous laptop also used a usb-to-serial conversion. Would you know if any of the settings in compatibility mode might make a difference? Or, perhaps changing the settings on the com port? I am not a technical person, just a long-time user. Thanks.

Judy

Compatibility mode - I don't think so. But I'd look for serial-usb settings AND try different output modes in the confg of Dosbox.

It sounds to me like some sort of serial flow control problem. Ordinarily I might suggest using a PCMCIA serial card instead of a USB-to-serial converter, but if it worked before, it ought to work now – assuming it's the same converter and it wasn't using some exotic configuration before.

If you're using the official DOSBox 0.74, then I think there was at least one small but significant change made to the serial port code since then. It might be worth trying an SVN version, specifically the "clean" EmuCR build from http://www.emucr.com/search/label/DOSBox .

Otherwise, I'm afraid all I can suggest is playing with the Cycles some more. As I said, it is relatively easy to do so while DOSBox is running by using CTRL-F11 and CTRL-F12.

I'm the person who suggested that Judy should visit here. I originally suggested that vDos might be more suitable, but the developer (Jos Schaars) explained that vDos can't work with a Windows screen reader because its window is entirely graphical (it uses Windows fonts to generate the screen image, but then displays it graphically); and vDos can't use a DOS-based screen reader because it doesn't have the hardware support. So it seems as if DOSBox is the only answer.

I'm posting this only to make clear that the vDos alternative was tried, and doesn't work, unfortunately.

EDIT: @Jorpho - the change to the serial code that you mentioned: do you know if that was made after around May 2016? If so, I would want to update my project to include it. I've looked through the history on SourceForge and I don't see anything that seems relevant in 2016-17, but probably I'm too ignorant to see it.

emendelson wrote:

@Jorpho - the change to the serial code that you mentioned: do you know if that was made after around May 2016? If so, I would want to update my project to include it.

No, I'm pretty sure it's significantly older than that. 2011 or 2010, I think. (My, is 0.74 really that old now..?)

Thanks, Jorpho!

And I've heard from Judy that she got her DOS-based screen reader to work with DOSBox under Windows 10 by using a slightly older part of the software. I don't know the details, but it's certainly working now.

YEAH!!! 😀