Running VDE on an Android tablet under Magic DOSBox Free (was Re: [VDE] Re: Newbie)

[dmccunney]

On Tue, Apr 26, 2016 at 1:05 AM, dmccunney <dennis....@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 5, 2016 at 1:56 PM, dmccunney <dennis....@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Tue, Apr 5, 2016 at 10:02 AM, Derek Frost <derek...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> I've just discovered Magic DosBox Free on Android which seems to work with
>>> control characters: I haven't tested extensively but it works with vde!
<...>
>> I have Magic DOSBox Free on Android here, but haven't tried to get VDE
>> running on it. The last attempts I made were using a different port.
>> I'll have to try VDE again.
>
> And Lo! I did try it, and it appears to work. Magic DOSBox Free is
> passing Ctrl-key combos to VDE. There are quirks on my device where
> suddenly Ctrl-keys are apparently not passed through, but it's far
> better than any previous attempt has been. I looked at several other
> DOSBox ports for Android which were not passing Ctrl-chars and made
> VDE effectively unusable.

To illustrate, here are a couple of screenshots from my 7" Android
tablet, with VDE up under Magic DOSBox free. I have a keyboard case
with a keyboard that attaches via a supplied cable to the microUSB
port on the tablet I use for this, but I can also connect a Logitech
Portable USB keyboard via an OTG adapter, and have done so at other
times. he quirks mentioned above with Ctrl-char combos not getting
passed through didn't bite this time, and may have been Operator Error
in my first tests.

One screenshot is VDE with the help menu displayed by F1, and the
other is a paragraph or so of sample text to prove it works.

> Thanks for the pointer!

And thanks again.
______
Dennis
https://plus.google.com/u/0/105128793974319004519

[dmccunney]

On Thu, May 5, 2016 at 6:15 PM, dmccunney <dennis....@gmail.com> wrote:

>>> I have Magic DOSBox Free on Android here, but haven't tried to get VDE
>>> running on it. The last attempts I made were using a different port.
>>> I'll have to try VDE again.
>>
>> And Lo! I did try it, and it appears to work. Magic DOSBox Free is
>> passing Ctrl-key combos to VDE.

And I've been fiddling a bit, exploring what else works.

The biggest lack is that DOSBox doesn't support pipes, so I can't do
something like "dir /s | list". to get a scrollable capture of a
listing too long to fit onscreen. (DOSBox doesn't implement "more",
either, but the old DOS LIST program, and a DOS port of Unix less both
work.) I *can* do "dir /s > dirlist.txt", and examine dirlist.txt in
LIST, less or the like.

LOADHIGH is implemented, so I can load TSRs high. In this case, that
means Tom Almy's NNANSI.COM, a faster and more powerful replacement
for MSDOS ANSI.SYS, and Ashok Banker's CMDEDIT, an old PC Magazine
utility that adds command line edit/recall, aliases, and other things
to COMMAND.COM.

The FreeDOS mode command also works, with a quirk. I can do things
like set the console window it produces to 43 or 50 line mode, but if
I do it, the cursor disappears.

VDE's mode switching works, and on my 7" tablet, I find 33 line mode
in VDE a good setting. (50 line VGA mode is too cramped.) If I use
mode to set a higher number of lines in the console, then run VDE,
when I exit VDE the cursor is back. Curious.

Next step is likely to copy 4DOS over to the tablet and see if it runs
under DOSBox. (I don't know a reason it shouldn't.)

The free version of Magic DOSBox Free has a limitation. It only sets
you configure one application. If you want to configure more than
one, and create a collection, you need the donate version

For my purposes, that's not a concern. I'm not trying to play DOS
games, each with their own icon under MDF. I'm running character mode
applications like VDE. So the entry I defined opens DOSBox in the
directory where the MSDOS programs are installed. I can cd to the
directory where the particular app lives and run it, like

cd vde
vde <filename>

When I quit VDE, I'm back at the DOSBox DOS prompt, and can cd to a
different directory and run the app that lives there.

This is fun.
______
Dennis
https://plus.google.com/u/0/105128793974319004519

[dmccunney]

On Fri, May 20, 2016 at 8:33 PM, dmccunney <dennis....@gmail.com> wrote:

> Next step is likely to copy 4DOS over to the tablet and see if it runs
> under DOSBox. (I don't know a reason it shouldn't.)

And it fact, it does. Binaries from the 8.0 open source release
Luchezar Georgiev created, based on Rex Conn's 7.50 source release,
run under DOSBox on Android. The installation routine can't create
various things 4DOS ideally wants, but 4DOS.COM runs and features
appear to work. I can even run VDE from it. :-)

4DOS under Android on an ARM7 platform. Whee!
______
Dennis
https://plus.google.com/u/0/105128793974319004519