DOS ujnder Windows XP

[Richard Steinfeld]

There are three excellent old DOS programs that I'd like to be able to
use on my "new" Windows XP system. The system is saying, "tough luck;
they're too old." I've been able to run them under every generation of
Windows 9x.

These programs are PC-Write, XyWrite, and Rapid File.

Does a program exist that will be able to run these programs by creating
a virtual DOS computer within XP's memory, be able to copy material (as
keyboard emulation), and send output to the printer using either the
applications' universal-type printer drivers, or by sending the output
via native embedded Windows drivers?

Richard

 

[Man-wai Chang]

There are three excellent old DOS programs that I'd like to be able to
use on my "new" Windows XP system. The system is saying, "tough luck;
they're too old." I've been able to run them under every generation of
Windows 9x.

These programs are PC-Write, XyWrite, and Rapid File.

You could use dosemu under linux to run them. Or you could use VMWare
Player.

http://linux.wolphination.com/?p=18

There is a program called DOSBOX for Window$.

--
.~. Might, Courage, Vision. SINCERITY. http://www.linux-sxs.org
/ v \ May the Force and Farce be with you!
/( _ )\ (Ubuntu 5.10) Linux 2.6.15
^ ^ 18:03:01 up 47 days 1:31 load average: 0.00 0.00 0.00
news://news.3home.net news://news.hkpcug.org news://news.newsgroup.com.hk

 

[Phred]

There are three excellent old DOS programs that I'd like to be able to
use on my "new" Windows XP system. The system is saying, "tough luck;
they're too old." I've been able to run them under every generation of
Windows 9x.

These programs are PC-Write, XyWrite, and Rapid File.

Does a program exist that will be able to run these programs by creating
a virtual DOS computer within XP's memory, be able to copy material (as
keyboard emulation), and send output to the printer using either the
applications' universal-type printer drivers, or by sending the output
via native embedded Windows drivers?

Interesting. Mate of mine has a lot of old DOS stuff (mostly written
by himself in C and Pascal) which runs well under XP. In fact, he
says he has less trouble running them under XP than he did
previously under either Windows 95 or NT.

Maybe there's something you need to adjust to run yours on XP?


Cheers, Phred.

 

[Mark Carter]

Does a program exist that will be able to run these programs by creating
a virtual DOS computer within XP's memory,

Never used, don't entirely know if it's suitable, but a higly likely
candidate might be DOSbox:
http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/news.php?show_news=1

 

[Gary R. Schmidt]

There are three excellent old DOS programs that I'd like to be able to
use on my "new" Windows XP system. The system is saying, "tough luck;
they're too old." I've been able to run them under every generation of
Windows 9x.

These programs are PC-Write, XyWrite, and Rapid File.

Does a program exist that will be able to run these programs by creating
a virtual DOS computer within XP's memory, be able to copy material (as
keyboard emulation), and send output to the printer using either the
applications' universal-type printer drivers, or by sending the output
via native embedded Windows drivers?

Richard

Have you tried setting the "behave like an old version" flag?

Really known as "Compatibility Mode".

I haven't used it, it's a tab on the "properties" window of a shortcut,
setting it to win95 _may_ let an executable work.

Cheers,
Gary B-)

 

[badgolferman]

There are three excellent old DOS programs that I'd like to be able
to use on my "new" Windows XP system. The system is saying, "tough
luck; they're too old." I've been able to run them under every
generation of Windows 9x.

These programs are PC-Write, XyWrite, and Rapid File.

Does a program exist that will be able to run these programs by
creating a virtual DOS computer within XP's memory, be able to copy
material (as keyboard emulation), and send output to the printer
using either the applications' universal-type printer drivers, or by
sending the output via native embedded Windows drivers?

Richard

Make a shortcut to the executable and under the Properties of the
shortcut go to Compatability mode. Choose your version of Win to run
under and see if it works.

 

[Lou]

There are three excellent old DOS programs that I'd like to be able to
use on my "new" Windows XP system. The system is saying, "tough luck;
they're too old." I've been able to run them under every generation of
Windows 9x.

These programs are PC-Write, XyWrite, and Rapid File.

Does a program exist that will be able to run these programs by creating
a virtual DOS computer within XP's memory, be able to copy material (as
keyboard emulation), and send output to the printer using either the
applications' universal-type printer drivers, or by sending the output
via native embedded Windows drivers?

Richard

Put a dos icon on the desktop i.e. for cmd.exe
Right click the icon.
Properties then compatibility tab.
play around.

No Joy?
try setting an icon using command.com and playing with that.

There are DOS batch groups.

Lou
Google is your friend. Try it.

 

[Morten Skarstad]

Mark Carter skrev:

Never used, don't entirely know if it's suitable, but a higly likely
candidate might be DOSbox:
http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/news.php?show_news=1

Seconded. It seems to be mostly geared towards retro gaming, but
downloading it and testing how your applications fare in it shouldn't
cost you much.

A couple of other alternatives:

- Boot DOS from floppy or CD. http://www.freedos.org/ or
http://www.bootdisk.com/ should be good places to look for viable
alternatives.

- Run MS-DOS or FreeDOS under QEMU. Both should be supported.
http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/qemu/ossupport.html

 

[Richard Steinfeld]

Never used, don't entirely know if it's suitable, but a higly likely
candidate might be DOSbox:
http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/news.php?show_news=1

This is an answer to three replies that came in within a few hours
(which I appreciate!):

The program "DOSBox" looks very promising, but it's not quite "there"
yet, judging from the material that I found on the associated sites.

Trying the compatibility route in XP was where I struck out in the first
place. Trying Windows 95 was the first thing that I thought to select
from the options. Actually, I've never used these DOS programs under
Windows 95, but they've run perfectly in Windows 98SE and Windows ME.
The only problem that I ever had with them under Windows 9x is that
PC-Write was unable to handle enough levels of nested directories --
it's a very interesting problem. The issue is not whether the program
can actually handle the nesting, but simply that the user runs out of
space on the filename line that's presented on the screen!

This hasn't been a problem with XyWrite: the program was _the_ worldwide
industrial strength publication package for newspapers such as The New
York Times, so it could handle typical office networking.

Speaking of PC-Write, I have not yet found any text editor program that
can handle plain text writing (rather than programming) needs as well as
this old share-free standby.

UNIX isn't an option for me at this time.

Keep those cards and letters coming. Thanks Y'all.

Richard

 

[Richard Steinfeld]

Thanks, Lou, but I don't understand what you're saying. Please explain
in greater detail for each step that you've suggested.

When you say, "There are DOS batch groups," what do you mean? Groups of
DOS batch commands? DOS user groups on the Web? Usenet groups devoted to
writing DOS batchfiles? And would batch language be suitable for the
tasks that I want to accomplish?

Richard

 

[Mister2u]

This may work http://www.dosprn.com/ .Warning Shareware/nagware

 

[Lou]

Thanks, Lou, but I don't understand what you're saying. Please explain
in greater detail for each step that you've suggested.

When you say, "There are DOS batch groups," what do you mean? Groups of
DOS batch commands? DOS user groups on the Web? Usenet groups devoted to
writing DOS batchfiles? And would batch language be suitable for the
tasks that I want to accomplish?

Richard

Usenet groups
There are folks in those groups that should be helpful in general (not just
for writing batch files)

Lou

 

[Lou]

Thanks, Lou, but I don't understand what you're saying. Please explain
in greater detail for each step that you've suggested.

When you say, "There are DOS batch groups," what do you mean? Groups of
DOS batch commands? DOS user groups on the Web? Usenet groups devoted to
writing DOS batchfiles? And would batch language be suitable for the
tasks that I want to accomplish?

Richard

If you do not understand this stuff get a friend who knows how Windows works
Put a dos icon on the desktop i.e. for cmd.exe

Right click the icon.
Properties then compatibility tab.
play around.

No Joy?
try setting an icon using command.com and playing with that.

Lou

 

[r3bol]

I don't know if you can run it under XP, but have a look at FreeDOS. It
aims to be 100% MSDOS compatible.

 

[Bill Bradshaw]

There are three excellent old DOS programs that I'd like to be able to
use on my "new" Windows XP system. The system is saying, "tough luck;
they're too old." I've been able to run them under every generation of
Windows 9x.

These programs are PC-Write, XyWrite, and Rapid File.

Does a program exist that will be able to run these programs by
creating a virtual DOS computer within XP's memory, be able to copy
material (as keyboard emulation), and send output to the printer
using either the applications' universal-type printer drivers, or by
sending the output via native embedded Windows drivers?

I have one DOS program I still need to run. Had to play around with
Compatibility Tab and Memory Tab but finally got it to run. Also had to
create a FAT16 partition to install it on and run it from. By the way I
think the FAT partition had more to do with it finally working than anything
else.