I spent four days getting FreeDOS to work as a guest OS inside a VirtualBox
machine. The path to success was a rocky and time consuming trial and
error process. Once the particular console program was running it was not
very fast. The customer deemed it to be usable.
Later in the day the customer cancelled a small DOS software install in
preference to a larger native Windows 7 development. The customer had
decided to purchase an older computer to run the DOS application from hard
disk. It amounts to a lost increment of business for myself that is not
significant.
This situation indicates to me that efficient execution of FreeDOS in
Virtual Machines must be made to be transparently easy. VMs are a way to
make FreeDOS available as 16-bit support withers away. The industry
leader's 64-bit OS does not support 16-bit DOS programs directly as in
prior versions. Open source software developers, unfairly, have more
pressures on them to prove the results.
I've seen the form discussions as do others about run-away keyboard polling
and other such issues. Solving these nagging issues may not look to be
glamorous but can swing perceptions of FreeDOS substantially. There are
commercial utilities claiming to control problems but I ask are there
equivalent features or settings within FreeDOS?
FreeDOS did not create these wild-hare programs but is being painted with
their behaviors. It is FreeDOS's burden in life:(i.
The tweaking of the FreeDOS VM with networking in VirtualBox...0
General>Basic: OS = Other, Version = DOS
System>Motherboard: 32 MB, Chipset PIIX3,
...Processor: Cap 87%
...Acceleration: uncheck Enable VT-x/AMD-V
Storage: IDE Controller, FreeDOS...vdi image
Network>Adapter 1: Enabled, Host-only Adapter, Name=VirtualBox Host-Only
Ethernet Adapter
USB: Enabled for 1.1, Addon Extensions not used
The virtual machine network adapter choice was the 'VirtualBox
host-only Ethernet adapter'. I used that to establish a CIFS/SMB LPT1:
printer redirection to the host's, Windows 7, USB attached HP C4400
printer. The computer is an HP laptop with i5 CPU with 8 GB of RAMM.
If there is a list of well-known issues, I would like to see if an altered
configuration would help performance.
I have taken a few minutes to install DOSBox which seemed fairly snappy. I
have yet to try the customer's program. I'll be giving that a try.
Cheers
John S Wolter
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