DOS ain't dead - MS-DOS Player for Win32-x64 (WIP)

Berlin, Germany,
30.06.2010, 22:23

MS-DOS Player for Win32-x64 (WIP) (Announce)

While looking for web sites about the LSI C-86 compiler, I found MS-DOS Player: '16bit MS-DOS compatible commands can be executed on Win32-x64 envrionment.'

Maybe someone wants to try it. Comes with full source code.

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Rugxulo

Usono,
01.07.2010, 10:18

@ rr

MS-DOS Player for Win32-x64 (WIP)

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> While looking for web sites about the LSI C-86 compiler, I found
> MS-DOS Player:
> '16bit MS-DOS compatible commands can be executed on Win32-x64
> envrionment.'
>
> Maybe someone wants to try it. Comes with full source code.

Not sure about LSI C-86, never tried it. What's so special about it? I know LHA used it, so it must've been popular in Japan.

Anyways, I think I've seen this MS-DOS Player before (or something very very similar), but I don't have (or want, heh) Win64.

Long story short, when searching for Pascal stuff, I found Cabezon (w/ srcs), which outputs for MASM/LINK, TASM/TLINK, or LSI's R86/LLD. Just in case you're curious. ;-)

Berlin, Germany,
04.07.2010, 22:21

@ Rugxulo

MS-DOS Player for Win32-x64 (WIP)

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> Not sure about LSI C-86, never tried it. What's so special about it? I know
> LHA used it, so it must've been popular in Japan.

I just like C-86, because it's very small (e.g., <30 Kbytes for the assembler), produces small code, and it's a challenge to work around its limitations. Like with DOS in general. ;-)

> Long story short, when searching for Pascal stuff, I found
> Cabezon
> (w/ srcs), which outputs for MASM/LINK, TASM/TLINK, or LSI's R86/LLD. Just
> in case you're curious. ;-)

Thanks, but I was already aware of Cabezon. I've already played with its RTL.

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Khusraw

Bucharest, Romania,
04.07.2010, 22:27

@ rr

MS-DOS Player for Win32-x64 (WIP)

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> I just like C-86, because it's very small (e.g., <30 Kbytes for the
> assembler), produces small code, and it's a challenge to work around its
> limitations. Like with DOS in general. ;-)

LSI C-86 is a relatively good compiler, the code it produces is not far behind the one produced by Turbo C 2.0. But its library functions have poor code, you may anytime disassemble and look for yourself.

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Rugxulo

Usono,
05.07.2010, 16:05

@ rr

MS-DOS Player for Win32-x64 (WIP)

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> I just like C-86, because it's very small (e.g., <30 Kbytes for the
> assembler), produces small code, and it's a challenge to work around its
> limitations. Like with DOS in general. ;-)

C in general seems to be a challenge to do what you want. (Well, for me anyways.) Re: working around limitations, that could especially apply to many subset C compilers: Small C, Micro C, Desmet C, DJ's heavily-incomplete 16-bit GCC hack, Dev86DOS, etc.

BTW, 30 kb isn't that surprising for an assembler. One guy ported/heavily hacked one from Minix to DOS. Admittedly, only 8086 flat binary support, but it can assemble itself, and it's only 7 kb. (Other assemblers are small too, esp. those written in themselves, but it all depends on what instructions and output format you want because that affects the overall size and complexity, e.g. OBJ/OMF.)

> Thanks, but I was already aware of Cabezon. I've already played with its
> RTL.

Well, like many tiny subset Pascals, it chokes on some really basic stuff (eoln, I think) which makes it kinda useless for obvious things. Still cool but not really worth playing too heavily with.

BTW, just for completeness, I can't find P32 anywhere except one place: here, which I think is where I found Cabezon.

> LSI C-86 is a relatively good compiler, the code it produces is
> not far behind the one produced by Turbo C 2.0. But its library
> functions have poor code, you may anytime disassemble and look
> for yourself.

We had a long thread a while back about various DOS compilers. IIRC, Japheth said MS VC 1.52 was the best for 16-bit DOS (esp. C++ ???). Some people still rave about BC 3.1 as the best. Others (Tom Ehlert?) say OpenWatcom produces tiny and fast code. I don't have any experience with Digital Mars, but from what I've heard he does many things quite well also (esp. for C++).

bretjohn

Rio Rancho, NM,
01.07.2010, 18:09

@ rr

MS-DOS Player for Win32-x64 (WIP)

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Interesting, but _very_ limited usefulness. I tried running several simple MS-DOS command-line utilities, and not a single one of them worked. I got lots of INT 2Fh error messages (the programs checking for installed MS TSR's like PRINT), incorrect DOS version, and illegal INT 21h function calls. MS SETVER won't install to get past the incorrect DOS version errors, either.

Some of the FreeDOS utilities might work a lot better, but I don't normally use them.

On the whole, I'd say you're much better of installing a virtual machine (QEMU, BOCHS, DOSBox, Virtual PC, VMWare, etc.). Those all have problems and issues as well, but should be far less frustrating than trying to use a simple MS-DOS player with such limited capabilities.

If you really want to use the same computer for both DOS and Windows (which I always do), I would suggest avoiding Win64 as long as you possibly can. I manage to do it, but it causes me all kinds of grief.

Rugxulo

Usono,
03.07.2010, 17:43

@ bretjohn

MS-DOS Player for Win32-x64 (WIP)

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> Interesting, but _very_ limited usefulness.

Of course! :-) But here's another to try (untested by me but he claims it works on Win64, IA64, etc):

http://virtuallyfun.blogspot.com/2010/05/pcemu-for-windows.html

> On the whole, I'd say you're much better of installing a virtual machine
> (QEMU, BOCHS, DOSBox, Virtual PC, VMWare, etc.). Those all have problems
> and issues as well, but should be far less frustrating than trying to use a
> simple MS-DOS player with such limited capabilities.

I have never tried compiling any of those, but they're much more complex!

Rugxulo

Usono,
03.07.2010, 20:29

@ Rugxulo

MS-DOS Player for Win32-x64 (WIP)

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> > Interesting, but _very_ limited usefulness.
>
> Of course! :-) But here's another to try (untested by me but he claims
> it works on Win64, IA64, etc):
>
> http://virtuallyfun.blogspot.com/2010/05/pcemu-for-windows.html

Quite tiny! Does indeed weakly work (8086 only???) but not much (not even all included stuff!). Also has some keyboard issues (some keys don't work).

Included ("ST506": 5 MB HD image): ZORK1, DOS (OpenDOS), TP (TP 5.5).

Not 100% perfect to include those, IMHO, but hey, "kosher enough" I guess since they are all free for non-commercial use.

EDIT: This thread should be moved to the "Emulation" subforum.