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From: "A. Wik (awik32 AT gmail DOT com) [via djgpp AT delorie DOT com]" <djgpp AT delorie DOT com>
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 2020 17:04:25 +0000
Message-ID: <CALPW7mTz2W7KNELU-PFGeTw_+r-55t3Y3-BJDuZ7uCVU-3xTPA@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: Contemporary DOS environments
To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
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Reply-To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com

Greetings to all.

This is an important topic, and warrants a thread of its own, but it
started it as a reply to the recent GCC 10.2.0 announcement.

On Sun, 26 Jul 2020 at 18:01, Andris Pavenis (andris DOT pavenis AT iki DOT fi)
[via djgpp-announce AT delorie DOT com] <djgpp-announce AT delorie DOT com> wrote:
>
> Binaries are built and tested in Windows Vista Business SP3 bit. Unfortunately Microsoft has broken
> DPMI
> in Windows 10 32 bit since March 2018. There is also no improvement in recent Insider builds of 32 bit
> versions of Windows 10.

NT-series Windows support for DOS programs has always been pathetic,
and with 64-bit versions of Windows, it is non-existent.  Likewise,
64-bit Linux no longer supports DOSEMU.

Yet it is not practical to run DOS or Win9x directly as a main
operating system on modern hardware.

Fortunately, there are alternatives.   You don't have to give up Linux
or WinNT to use DOS (16- or 32-bit), even at the same time.

You can set up a fine 16- and 32-bit DOS environment using a Win98SE
(or any Win9x) install under VMWare.  (The freeware VMWare Player is
sufficient for the purpose.).  Importantly, you get long filenames and
pre-emptive multi-tasking as part of this package.  The VMW guest
addons for Win9x provide clipboard synchronisation with the host OS,
and you can use Samba to set up file sharing.  I use Linux, but I
don't see any reason why you couldn't set up this environment under
Windows NT, including Vista or later versions, including 64-bit.  The
performance is more than good enough.

I use the Vim editor, in the form of a 32-bit DOS application, and it
supports the Win9x clipboard, so I can copy text (or other data) in
the editor running under DOS and have it immediately available for
pasting on my Linux desktop.

I'm using this setup for DOS software development, and it is just
about as good as running Win98SE directly (on older hardware in the
late 90s early 00s).  Indeed, in some ways it is better: when the
DOS/Win98 crashes, I don't have to restart the whole system, I just
restart the virtual machine, and I am back up and running within a few
minutes.

I run this under 64-bit Linux Mint 19.3, which is based on Ubuntu
(which is based on Debian).

You can use QEMU to run Win9x in a VM, but the shared clipboard
support is not available, and it is somewhat slower.

I encourage you to share your own solutions for running DJGPP and
other DOS software in this day and age.  I'm sure further refinements
over those reported above are possible.  In fact, there is one that
comes to mind immediately: CMDEDIT, which in addition to the features
provided by DOSKEY also implements filename completion with Tab; see
http://adoxa.altervista.org/cmdedit/index.html

Regards,
Albert.