[mdlug] Anyone with FreeDOS and Virtualbox Experience?

[Robert Adkins II]

Hey all,
 
    I'm stuck on a problem. We have a piece of software that must be used
and it was written back in the 80's.
 
    About 4 years ago, I created a FreeDOS installation that ran it like a
champ inside of Virtual PC, both the first and second release after
Microsoft bought out the original developers. I was able to use the Virtual
PC Extensions to share a folder betwen the Host PC and the "MS DOS" (wink,
wink) VM Client.
 
    One of the problems with this setup is that Virtual PC pegs the CPU
utilization up to 100% when running FreeDOS (or any DOS for that matter),
depending primarily on the application being ran. This isn't something
that's great for the longevity of a CPU.
 
    Flash forward to now... 
 
    Virtual PC, that is built into Windows 7 no longer supports the DOS
Filesharing bit, along with plenty of other really sweet things that older
Virtual PC versions did. (It's almost funny that what everyone said
Microsoft would do with Virtual PC they ended up actually doing with Virtual
PC...)
 
    So, I've been looking at Virtual Box. It looks good, FreeDOS boots, I
can get it to network so that I can upload and download files into the
Virtual FreeDOS PC using an FTP Server running on the FreeDOS PC. However,
it flat out refuses to run the 800 year old program that we need. (DOSBox is
a no go, I worked around with that too, it doesn't like basic operations and
won't call the external executables that the main program needs with any
amount of success.)
 
    I have taken the original Virtual PC setup, opened that up on Virtual
Box, enabled just the networking and even setup a separate boot
configuration to keep the network packet driver and other networking bits
from stepping on the memory for the important program. I can transfer files
in and out all day, but once I reboot and go to the same exact configuration
that runs perfectly fine on the old Virtual PC install, the program we need
just craps out and runs roughshod over the FreeDOS memory system/kernel
which causes commands to fail and then it will kick out an Invalid Opcode
error refferencing a memory location.
 
    The only thing I can see different between the original working
installation and the setup I need on Virtual Box is the difference between
the Host Virtual Machine software.
 
    Any suggestions?    
 


-- 

Regards, 
Robert Adkins II
IT Manager/Buyer 
Impel Industries, Inc. 
586-254-5800