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List:       linux-msdos
Subject:    FreeDos, Dosemu, and WordPerfect 5.1
From:       Hugh Lawson <hglawson () nr ! infi ! net>
Date:       1999-12-20 18:13:01
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First the configuration information, then a question at the end.

dosemu-0.98.8-1
wp 5.1
FreeDos Beta 3

I've been experimenting with FreeDos, dosemu, wp 5.1.

First, some configuration information:

From dosemu.conf:
$_vbootfloppy = "frd-boot-img"  #boot this
$_hdimage = "freedos"           #available as C:\drive in dosemu &
                                #freedos

directory of /var/lib/dosemu/freedos:

drwxrwxr-x   4 root     root         4096 Dec 19 16:54 BIN
drwxrwxr-x  14 root     root         4096 Dec 19 16:54 DOC
drwxrwxr-x   2 root     root         4096 Dec 19 16:54 HELP
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root     root           25 Dec 19 21:19 commands ->
/var/lib/dosemu/commands/
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root     root            6 Dec 20 10:30 ddrv -> /mnt/D
-rw-r--r--   1 root     root          292 Dec 19 21:13 exitemu.com

WordPerfect 5.1 is at /mnt/D/wp51/wp #/dev/hdb1, msdos formatted.
WP documents are in same directory

WP runs, allows me to load and save documents, but there are two
problems so far.

1.  When I try to print a file loaded from c:\ddrv\wp51wp, wp
complains of an incompatible file format.  If I save the file to A:\
the virtual boot floppy, this does not occur; I can print the file
just fine.

2.  When I try to exit wp, the program asks me to insert the second WP
diskette into the A:\ drive; evidently the program doesn't recognize
that it is being run from a hard drive.

When I run dosemu & wp under msdos 6.2, this does not happen.

Does anybody have an explanations for this behavior in FreeDos?  Is
there a change I can make in dosemu.conf that will affect this.

Incidentally I could not get FreeDos to boot from the $_hdimage
directory, but it boots fine from a virtual or real floppy.  And it
recognizes the directory-name stored in $_hdimage as the C:\drive.

If you have WP 5.1 lying around unused, it seems to work perfectly in
xdos with msdos 6.2.  It's an excellent old character-based word
processor with great capability.



Hugh Lawson
Greensboro, North Carolina
hglawson@nr.infi.net

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