Some time ago, not long after Vista made its presence known in several bizarre ways, I tested The Electric Astrolabe with DOSBox. I noticed it was gradually losing time compared to the system clock, starting at just a few seconds but losing a little time continuously. It just gets worse the longer you run it. That is, it never catches up regardless of what you do with the timer.
I corresponded with the developers about it. The discussion gets all wrapped up in the technical differences between how native DOS handles the timer and how DOSBox does it. The short answer to the outcome was that the developers are really more interested in running DOS based games, which rely heavily on elapsed times, and never really tried to make the time retreived from a DOS call match the system value and they had no plans to work in this area. I just download and tested version 0.74, which says it has some timer changes, and I see no difference in the behaviour.
It is not dreadful for my uses since I can set The Electric Astrolabe to any time I want, but it does lose the ability to have an accurate display that is updated automatically and the "Now" function to set the display to the current date and time is not correct.
I am not aware of any solution on the horizon.
Best regards,
Jim
James E. Morrison
janus.astrol...@verizon.net
Astrolabe web site at http://astrolabes.org
------------ Forwarded message ------------
From: Fred Sawyer <fwsaw...@aya.yale.edu>
Date: Jun 6, 2009
Subject: DOSBox and Dialist's Companion
To: Sundial List <sundial@uni-koeln.de>
In the current issue of The Compendium, I pointed out that DOSBox portable can be easily used to keep the Dialist's Companion running in Vista, both 32 and 64 bit versions. However, Don Snyder has done some tests and points out correctly that DOSBox seems to introduce a lag time in the value for the current time. I've tried it for comparison and I also get a lag time - but significantly different from Don's.
As a result, I would have to say that DOSBox is, after all, NOT a good alternative for keeping the Dialist's Companion running.
Fred Sawyer
As a result, I would have to say that DOSBox is, after all, NOT a good alternative for keeping the Dialist's Companion running.
Fred Sawyer
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