[mdlug] Anyone with FreeDOS and Virtualbox Experience?

[Jeff Hanson]

Using some command-line applications on Wine on Ubuntu would fail
because the kernel wouldn't allow conventional memory (<1MB) access.
There was some memory protection option that had to be disabled
through /proc, IIRC.  No idea if this has anything to do with your
problems but I can't think of anything else.

On 4/11/12, Robert Adkins II <radkins at impelind.com> wrote:
> 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
>
>
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