VDE under DOS emulation today

[Eric Meyer]

Hello everyone,

I've finally moved to a Win64 system myself, and am considering a new release
of VDE to better support DOS emulators and the ongoing use of DOS software
under them. I've tried out DOSbox, vDOS, and vDOS+ (2015 and 2016 forks).
The good news is that VDE basically works under all of them, as it's supposed
to. The bad is that glitches do occur, and I'll summarize some I've found
that you might notice, starting with the worst:

1. In most cases, CPU usage spikes quite high (~25%) while VDE is awaiting or
accepting keyboard input. This surely has to do with its use of BIOS input,
and I finally figured out that it's related to the emulated clock speed. I
have a way to moderate it when VDE detects an MSDOS/CMD window under Win32,
and you can avoid it in DOSbox by setting CYCLES= to 15000 or less. vDOS and
vDOS+ have no adjustment; the only variant that doesn't run too fast is VDOS+
2015, so I've settled on using that myself. It's actually quite nice, with
nearly 500k of memory available for loading files in VDE.

2. Under Win32 CMD, the cursor may initially fail to take the shape chosen in
VINST; VDE already has a delay built in for Win32 that should fix that.

3. Under VDOS+, new files created with VDE may unexpectedly get lowercase
names, and the file time shown by AltK for older files can be incorrect; I've
added fixes for both.

4. Various limitations: AltE won't work in a CMD, vDOS, or vDOS+ window. VDE
can't access the Windows clipboard from DOSbox or vDOS (and requires CLIPTEXT
under Win32). LFNs aren't supported under DOSbox or vDOS.

Many of you have been using emulators for years now, so I'd like to ask how
that's been going, and whether you've noticed other problems I should be aware
of, or have (modest) wishes for an updated version of VDE? (I've already
improved the handling of UTF-8 files in Notepad mode /T.)

-- Eric Meyer.

[John Woodruff]

Greetings Eric,

My vDosPlus package came with a config.txt that states: "this branch of vDosPlus [is] currently at build 2017.09.15." Time marches on, of course. My vDosPlus.exe is dated 3/1/2018.

For me, DosBox and vDosPlus are waiting in the wings. I'm running VDE in XP and, on a backup machine, Win2K. I have a Win64 machine, for sporadic use online. (This device is an Android tablet.)

The point of all that information being that I may not be an active customer for adapting VDE to the vDosPlus 2015 fork, but as always I'll be eager to try any new release and learn from any discussion.

John Woodruff

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[geneb]

On Wed, 18 Aug 2021, Eric Meyer wrote:

> I've finally moved to a Win64 system myself, and am considering a new release
> of VDE to better support DOS emulators and the ongoing use of DOS software
> under them. I've tried out DOSbox, vDOS, and vDOS+ (2015 and 2016 forks).
> The good news is that VDE basically works under all of them, as it's supposed
> to. The bad is that glitches do occur, and I'll summarize some I've found
> that you might notice, starting with the worst:
>

Thanks for your continued work on VDE!

Have you also tried DOSBox-X and 86Dos? DOSBox-X has a much better "user
experience" than the stock DOSBox and 86Dos is a pretty hard core machine
emulator.

> 1. In most cases, CPU usage spikes quite high (~25%) while VDE is awaiting
> or accepting keyboard input. This surely has to do with its use of BIOS
> input, and I finally figured out that it's related to the emulated clock
> speed. I have a way to moderate it when VDE detects an MSDOS/CMD window
> under Win32, and you can avoid it in DOSbox by setting CYCLES= to 15000 or
> less. vDOS and vDOS+ have no adjustment; the only variant that doesn't run
> too fast is VDOS+ 2015, so I've settled on using that myself. It's actually
> quite nice, with nearly 500k of memory available for loading files in VDE.
>

Wasn't there a mechanism years ago that was "common knowledge" on how to
give back cycles when in a multi-tasking environment? (It might have been
DesqView or DoubleDOS specific, but I no longer recall the details,
sorry.)

g.

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[Eric Meyer]

John Woodruff wrote:
> My vDosPlus package came with a config.txt that states: "this branch of
> vDosPlus [is] currently at build 2017.09.15."

Hi John, you probably chose the latest (2016) fork at the time you got it;
both now have latest build dates in 2017. (For the 2015 fork it's 2017.03.15,
for 2016, 2017.10.17.) The 2015 fork runs a bit slower and has 4DOS; 2016 is
faster (which is a bit of a problem for VDE), has a plainer COMMAND.COM, and
built-in printing. There must be other differences (er, "improvements") too,
but not all programs benefit so both forks are still available for download.
I don't know how they plan to resolve this clock-speed issue in DOSbox-X; one
size does not fit all. My guess would be that they've reverted to the
variable speed of DOSbox, and are trying to improve its auto-sensing.

> For me, DosBox and vDosPlus are waiting in the wings. I'm running VDE in XP
> and, on a backup machine, Win2K.

They'll serve well when you need them. I have just two programs that require
the graphics in DOSbox: the GEOCLOCK world-clock program I'm still fond of,
and STSC APL*PLUS (which uses a special character set). Everything else does
well in vDOSplus. You can even try it on your XP system and see how it
compares to CMD! (I should have done that myself before now.)

-- Eric.

[Eric Meyer]

geneb wrote:
> Have you also tried DOSBox-X and 86Dos? DOSBox-X has a much better "user
> experience" than the stock DOSBox and 86Dos is a pretty hard core machine
> emulator.

Hi geneb, and welcome to the VDE list. No, I haven't tried DOSbox-X yet, as
it sounded much too complicated (even trying to run Win 3.x?), and I hadn't
heard of 86Dos. Do they support LFNs, and how do they cope with this clock
speed issue?

> Wasn't there a mechanism years ago that was "common knowledge" on how to
> give back cycles when in a multi-tasking environment? (It might have been
> DesqView or DoubleDOS specific, but I no longer recall the details,

There was. Both DESQview and Windows had time-sharing mechanisms for this
purpose, and VDE used them. It mitigated the problem in CMD/MSDOS windows
under 32-bit Windows, but for some reason has no effect in these emulators today.

-- Eric.

[geneb]

On Thu, 19 Aug 2021, Eric Meyer wrote:

> geneb wrote:
>> Have you also tried DOSBox-X and 86Dos? DOSBox-X has a much better "user
>> experience" than the stock DOSBox and 86Dos is a pretty hard core machine
>> emulator.
>
> Hi geneb, and welcome to the VDE list. No, I haven't tried DOSbox-X yet, as
> it sounded much too complicated (even trying to run Win 3.x?), and I hadn't
> heard of 86Dos. Do they support LFNs, and how do they cope with this clock
> speed issue?
>

DOSBox-X is DOSBox on easy mode. There's othing fancy to do - you just
install it and go. It's got a nice built-in configuration manager too.

DOSBox is more of a virtual environment whereas 86Box is a true emulator.
You "create" a machine by choosing the cpu you want, the motherboard
chipset, etc. and go from there. The clock speed is entirely dependant on
how you configure the system. If you've set up an IBM PC/XT, it's going
to trundle along at 4.77Mhz.

>> Wasn't there a mechanism years ago that was "common knowledge" on how to
>> give back cycles when in a multi-tasking environment? (It might have been
>> DesqView or DoubleDOS specific, but I no longer recall the details,
>
> There was. Both DESQview and Windows had time-sharing mechanisms for this
> purpose, and VDE used them. It mitigated the problem in CMD/MSDOS windows
> under 32-bit Windows, but for some reason has no effect in these emulators
> today.

It might work in 86Box where it doesn't work in DOSBox.

[Mark P. Fishman]

If 86Box is emulating a machine, i.e. hardware, do you need to install an operating system separately? And does it pass clipboard contents in/out of the host OS?

I will look up this software, but if you have answers already, please fill in some blanks for the rest of us. Thanks -- m.

"While the rest of the species is descended from apes, redheads are descended from cats."

   -- Mark Twain

[Eric Meyer]

geneb wrote:
> DOSBox-X is DOSBox on easy mode.

OK... I just downloaded and tried it (ignoring Microsoft's warning, not
provoked by previous incarnations). I see two immediate problems:

(1) It still has the tiny DOSbox window that I see no way to enlarge, whereas
vDOS+ gives as many lines as desired without resorting to a smaller font. The
config menu has 40 options half of which I neither recognize nor care about,
none of which do this simple thing. DOSbox didn't care about the command
window itself, and "X" doesn't seem to either. That's a deal-breaker right there.

(2) Setting any reasonable clock speed makes DOSbox-X a CPU hog itself, even
before I try to run VDE!

Mark P. Fishman wrote:
> If 86Box is emulating a machine, i.e. hardware, do you need to install an
> operating system separately?

Hi again Mark! That's how this sounds to me. It was fun looking up "86DOS"
(aka "QDOS", "MSDOS", "PCDOS") because it reminded me how badly Digital
Research fumbled that c.1980, and that Bill Gates never developed anything
useful himself; Microsoft always just bought, renamed, and repackaged stuff
(often second-rate) as it continues to do today.

-- Eric.

[geneb]

On Thu, 19 Aug 2021, Eric Meyer wrote:

> geneb wrote:
>> DOSBox-X is DOSBox on easy mode.
>
> OK... I just downloaded and tried it (ignoring Microsoft's warning, not
> provoked by previous incarnations). I see two immediate problems:
>
> (1) It still has the tiny DOSbox window that I see no way to enlarge, whereas
> vDOS+ gives as many lines as desired without resorting to a smaller font.
> The config menu has 40 options half of which I neither recognize nor care
> about, none of which do this simple thing. DOSbox didn't care about the
> command window itself, and "X" doesn't seem to either. That's a deal-breaker
> right there.
>

I'm surprised it opened up for you like that. Mine opened up as a huge
window...

> Mark P. Fishman wrote:
>> If 86Box is emulating a machine, i.e. hardware, do you need to install an
>> operating system separately?
>

Yes. You'll have to install MS/FreeDOS on the virtual machine before you
can use it.. (or OS/2, SCO Unix, QNX, etc. :) )

[Lofgren, Charles]

Hi Eric,

I've been using VDE under vDOS and vDOS+ in Win7 and Win10 (both 64 bit) for some years, more now and then rather than on a regular basis--mainly for doing short plain text files and also for converting old WordStar files to something readable in Word (ugh!).  I can't report anything useful, except perhaps that the fork of vDOS+ I'm using (and I forget now which one it is) will give me a full screen rather than the somewhat smaller one with vDOS.

The only real problem I've had wasn't with VDE but with vDOS.  I wanted a blinking cursor in the various programs I was running under it, and asked the originator how it could be accomplished.  He was not a happy responder--he really, really, really hates blinking cursors.  But he allowed that there was an option in the uncompiled C++ code to change to the blinking cursor.  I had to teach myself enough about C++ to go in and make the change.  (That's not​ a natural activity for an old historian.)

In short, I'm just a user, but in the old days it was always exciting to get a new version of VDE.  Please undertake the project!

Charlie Lofgren

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Charles A. Lofgren

Roy P. Crocker Professor Emeritus of American History and Politics

Kravis Center 334

Claremont McKenna College

850 Columbia Avenue

Claremont, California 91711

clof...@cmc.edu 

909.607.2931 

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From: vde_e...@googlegroups.com <vde_e...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Eric Meyer <xor...@gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, August 18, 2021 4:55 PM
To: VDE_Editor <vde_e...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [VDE] VDE under DOS emulation today

 

[Eric Meyer]

Lofgren, Charles wrote:
> The only real problem I've had wasn't with VDE but with vDOS.  I wanted a
> blinking cursor in the various programs I was running under it, and asked the
> originator how it could be accomplished.  He was not a happy responder--he
> really, really, really hates blinking cursors.  But he allowed that there was
> an option in the uncompiled C++ code to change to the blinking cursor.  I had

> to teach myself enough about C++ to go in and make the change.  (That's *not*​

> a natural activity for an old historian.)

Hi Charlie, thanks for this story. I see a clear improvement in vDOS: Jos
Schaars cared how it looked and operated as a working environment, while
DOSbox was just concerned with running games. Unfortunately he was a bit of a
purist in some respects including LFNs, so I admired vDOS for a day or two and
then went with vDOS+. Congratulations on getting your blinking cursor
working; things like this really should be user options. (Blinking video
really is horrible, but in a cursor it's useful.)

I'm getting the impression that others haven't been bothered by the high-CPU
issue as I have. Perhaps that's due to the normal quietness of my new little
computer (MSI Cubi, similar to Intel NUC), so an increase in fan speed is
noticeable. It makes me more irritated at Windows updates too.

-- Eric.

[Gary Welles]

Hello Eric,

I've been using dbDOS <https://dbdos.com/>, with earlier versions based on DOSbox and the latest vDOS based, without any problems that I can now recall. I've been sticking with the earlier DOSbox based version because the display windows are smaller. I'll be editing in WordStar or VDE in one window and executing in another and don't need windows hogging the display. I suppose I should contact tech support about that.

--
Best regards,
Gary Welles

[Eric Meyer]

Gary Welles wrote:
> I've been using dbDOS <https://dbdos.com/>, with earlier versions based on DOSbox and the latest vDOS based, without any problems that I can now recall. I've been sticking with the earlier DOSbox based version because the display windows are smaller. I'll be editing in WordStar or VDE in one window and executing in another and don't need windows hogging the display. I suppose I should contact tech support about that.

Hi Gary, thanks for bringing dbDOS to our attention. It's interesting to know
of a retail product in addition to the open-source emulator series. (How did
it come to your attention?) Can you briefly describe what it looks like in
operation, i.e. what the window looks like that programs have to use, whether
its height/lines are flexible, LFNs, etc? I now find the 50(+) line window I
first got in WinXP CMD indespensable when working with VDE.

-- Eric.

[Gary Welles]

Hello Eric,

I'm dependent on one or two dBase V for DOS programs so when I switched to Win7 I looked to dBase and their dbDOS then based on DOSBox. Mostly a case of getting dBase V, WordStar, and Managing Your Money for DOS working. I use WordStar to print to a PostScript file and then GhostScript to convert to .PDF. WordStar inserts PostScript run instructions for letterheads, signature graphic, i.e. "(c:/bin/ws/rtmltrhead.ps) run", created or edited with VDE.

Once working I'd forget about it and just haven't spent time with the new dbDOSv. Thanks to your prodding I sat through the help video <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lw5K-7lDScU> and discovered how to create a desktop icon and how to adjust the size of the window. Aside from a DOS configuration (Autoexec.bat/Config.sys) file it relies entirely on Windows. In the earlier DOSBox based versions of dbDOS the configuration file included the detailed DOSBox settings.

Passing data in files between REXX, Managing Your Money, dBaseV, Wordstar, Ghostscript, etc. LFNs would get me nowhere.

[John Woodruff]

Running on 4DOS / vDosPlus / Windows 10, VDE seems to access the clipboard via ^[ and ^] with no problems.

John Woodruff

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[Eric Meyer]

John Woodruff wrote:
> Running on 4DOS/vDosPlus/Windows 10, VDE seems to access the clipboard via

> ^[ and ^] with no problems.

(I think Gary was saying that LFNs don't matter to him, not that he couldn't
exchange data between various programs.)


I do now intend to upload another release of VDE, and am finalizing it.
Besides offering more information and tips on emulators in the docs, and an
accumulation of minor changes, new features include:

* ^PgUp/Dn can cross a segment boundary in large files when the cursor is at
top/end of a segment (rather than having to use AltB/N then move the cursor)

* /T mode now works like recent versions of Notepad, auto-recognizing UTF-8/16
files if they have a byte order mark, and saving to disk the same way.

* Filename case is handled correctly in vDOS+, and the mouse wheel can be used
to scroll text.

-- Eric.

[Eric Meyer]

geneb wrote:
> I'm surprised it opened up for you like that. Mine opened up as a huge
> window...

I do see now on the wiki that DOSbox-X allows selecting more screen lines, but
only when using TrueType font output, which isn't the default, so I saw the
same small 25x80 window that DOSbox had. And it would take too long to
discover this.

DOSbox-X just looks and feels much too complicated for me, and has high CPU
use itself even with no program running. I'm comfortable with vDOS+.

[Gary Welles]

Hello Eric,

Monday, August 23, 2021, 7:19:15 PM, you wrote:

(I think Gary was saying that LFNs don't matter to him, not that he couldn't exchange data between various programs.)

Instead of porting my over three hundred lines of Personal REXX for DOS code I use to convert downloaded transaction histories to a form Managing Your Money for DOS could import to Open Object REXX, I wrote a line of batch code to rename them from LFN to the 8.3 names they used to download as:

historynnnnnnnn.csv -> nnnnnnnn.csv

for %csv in (history*.csv) do move %csv c:\oak\%@right[12,%@filename[%csv]]

 

Once ported the ooREXX code should work fine except that I've grown accustomed to writing and revising my REXX code with VDE.