From: jwaters@deepthought.unm.edu (Joe Waters) Subject: Re: Opening a DOS shell Date: 29 Jun 1992 06:30:17 GMT
In article <bibhas.709786050@femto.engr.mun.ca> bibhas@kilo.engr.mun.ca (Bibhas Bhattacharya) writes:
> Would it be possible to have a DOS shell escape from linux in near
> future, or is it already there? The best would be if X can open DOS windows.
> Gee, do I have to throw out all my DOS products or what?
Well, we HAD a "working" (not fully functional yet, but well on it's
way) MS/DOS emulator running on Linux. The problem is, with the new kernel
(anything above 0.96a patchlevel 1) the kernel patches for vm86 mode no longer
work because Linux has moved from using an alarm system to an itimer system
(much better for BSD portability)... The real problem is that why I undestand
the MS/DOS emulator very well at the software, I don't understand some things
about the vm86 kernel patches, and have been unable to make the conversion from
current->alarm to current->it_real_value successfully... The code compiles
into the kernel but the emulator crashes with an exception 22 (vm86 mode not
working right). If anybody wants to fix the vm86 patches to run with the
new kernel, we could start working on the emulator code again...
As for running it out of an x window (assuming I or somebody else groks
the vm86 code and fixes the kernel patches), yes, that would work. Right now,
it works, although it doesn't support text color in an xterm (only because we
don't have a color xterm; if we got one that was ANSI color code compliant,
it would support color -- I understand one exists but it hasn't been ported
yet). Any graphics that MS/DOS decides to do would cause the program to take
over the processor (I was working on a hack to let you run graphics on one
virtual console and switch to text on another, but I hadn't gotten real far,
though in theory it should work) but text stuff, such as PKZIP or TELIX (which
I got to run under the emulator :-> ) works.
Any volunteers to work on the vm86 kernel stuff? I've got the original
patches if anybody wants them...
Joe