Dos emulation for Windows 2000 or XP?

  • Thread starter Thread starter howard schwartz
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howard schwartz

As one author wrote:
--------------------------
Cygwin is a DLL which provides a Unix emulation environment for Windows.
The Cygwin environment provides a complete port of such development
utilities as gcc, binutils, gdb, make, etc., as well as a vast number of
useful utilities
------------------------

In this regard, I would like to ask, if there is a decent dos emulation for
windows 2000 or XP (boo, hiss) that are based on windows NT rather than
sitting on top of dos like windows 9x?

Why do I care? I was recently provided with a copy of windows 2000 which
is occasionally handy for something or other that requires IE, some MS dill
or some such. I am told, the NT based windows is more reliable and secure
than win 9x. However, I dislike working with both an MS OS, and their NTFS
system, which rules out a lot of programs between them. I have tried dosbox
and it does not seem to work very well. I do knot know the specific limits
of MS's dos emulation in 2000 or XP, except there is wide agreement the
emulation is not very good.

Although I started on BSD unix, I still like to use some favorite dos programs
for file management, file editing and such.

Thanks for any tips.
 
howard said:
As one author wrote:
--------------------------
Cygwin is a DLL which provides a Unix emulation environment for Windows.
The Cygwin environment provides a complete port of such development
utilities as gcc, binutils, gdb, make, etc., as well as a vast number of
useful utilities
------------------------

In this regard, I would like to ask, if there is a decent dos emulation for
windows 2000 or XP (boo, hiss) that are based on windows NT rather than
sitting on top of dos like windows 9x?

Why do I care? I was recently provided with a copy of windows 2000 which
is occasionally handy for something or other that requires IE, some MS dill
or some such. I am told, the NT based windows is more reliable and secure
than win 9x. However, I dislike working with both an MS OS, and their NTFS
system, which rules out a lot of programs between them. I have tried dosbox
and it does not seem to work very well. I do knot know the specific limits
of MS's dos emulation in 2000 or XP, except there is wide agreement the
emulation is not very good.

Although I started on BSD unix, I still like to use some favorite dos programs
for file management, file editing and such.

Thanks for any tips.
Click to expand...
If, by DOS emulation you mean "allowing direct access to the hardware",
(and I'm pretty sure that's what you want) then no, there is no DOS in
NT and its descendants.

There is a DOS-like command interpreter, called cmd.exe, but it's not DOS.

Cheers,
Gary B-)
 
As one author wrote:
--------------------------
Cygwin is a DLL which provides a Unix emulation environment for Windows.
The Cygwin environment provides a complete port of such development
utilities as gcc, binutils, gdb, make, etc., as well as a vast number of
useful utilities
------------------------

In this regard, I would like to ask, if there is a decent dos emulation for
windows 2000 or XP (boo, hiss) that are based on windows NT rather than
sitting on top of dos like windows 9x?
Click to expand...

[snip]

There are several ways to emulate DOS (or any other PC operating
system) inside Windows or Linux, and one notable package is free and
open-source. It is called Bochs, available from here:

http://bochs.sourceforge.net/

This software completely virtualizes an entire PC, and all of its
hardware.

First, you would set up a file that exists in the Windows 2000 file
system that contains an entire virtual hard drive. Then you would
write a configuration file that tells Bochs what kind of PC you want
to emulate, where all of its virtual drives are located, where the
BIOS files are, etc. Then you would start up Bochs with a DOS (MS-DOS
or FreeDOS) boot disk (preferably a 1.44 MB image of one), and install
DOS inside of it as if it were a real computer. As soon as DOS is
installed on the virtual hard drive, you can boot from it, and install
any other software you need. You can also move files to and from the
virtual hard drive with various utilities that run under Windows 2000.

I have done this kind of emulation myself, and can confirm that it
works well once you get everything set up properly. Its compatibility
is quite high.

There are other PC emulators which are not free. One is called Virtual
PC. That package uses a different method of emulation that is faster
than Bochs because it does not completely virtualize the processor. If
you have a Pentium 4, VPC will emulate a P4. Bochs can emulate a 386,
486, etc. regardless of what the host CPU is.
 
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