HELP?!

I run deadbeatz BBS and have tried, again, to get trade wars 2002 running in Dosemu. I'm running a 64 bit kernel which doesn't natively support VM86 instructions but Dosemu is supposed to virtualize it just fine. All my door games run great in Dosemu/Dosbox/Qemu. I do only use Dosemu now though.
Anyhow, it appears that Trade Wars 2002 will just purely crash Dosemu when trying to run any of the EXE files. I spent an inordinate amount of time
trying to chase this down. My last hope is an older version, 3.09 which now only gives me a RUNTIME 200 error. This appears to be due to PASCAL compiled code running on faster CPU clock speeds. Unfortunately, TW2002 EXE files
appear to be packed so I'll have to unpack them before I can patch them for this bug.

1. Does anyone have TW2002 running in Dosemu on a 64 bit kernel?
2. If so, what are the settings or versions that work?

Thanks ahead of time
-Analog (deadbeatz.org)

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: deadbeatz.org (21:2/123)

1. Does anyone have TW2002 running in Dosemu on a 64 bit kernel?

Yes...sorta. ;)

2. If so, what are the settings or versions that work?

I run twgs in xorg via wine. It works very well. TW2002 won't run in dosemu, there's simply no way to disable dpmi, and dosemu doesn't actually emulate
dpmi as well as you'd think, unless you use a 32 bit kernel.

Also, it's worth mentioning I run my BBS in a cloud VPS and have xorg via
VNC. Works a treat :)

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: monterey bbs (21:1/168)

ryan,

thanks for the info. I run mine native linux on AWS. i have it wprking in dosbox nicely with fakeshar.exe. guess its time to get off dosemu.

nowto see if i can still register 3.09

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: deadbeatz.org (21:2/123)

Analog wrote to All <=-

HELP?!

I run deadbeatz BBS and have tried, again, to get trade wars 2002
running in Dosemu. I'm running a 64 bit kernel which doesn't natively support VM86 instructions but Dosemu is supposed to virtualize it just fine. All my door games run great in Dosemu/Dosbox/Qemu. I do only use Dosemu now though. Anyhow, it appears that Trade Wars 2002 will just purely crash Dosemu when trying to run any of the EXE files. I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to chase this down. My last hope is an older version, 3.09 which now only gives me a RUNTIME 200 error. This appears to be due to PASCAL compiled code running on faster CPU clock speeds. Unfortunately, TW2002 EXE files appear to be packed so I'll
have to unpack them before I can patch them for this bug.

I hate to be a spoiled sport but, when I was trying to get TW2002 running
under dosemu on a 64 bit machine, I was told that it cannot be done because TW2002 makes DPMI (or DMPI) calls and the newer linux kernels (even 32 bit)
no longer allow for this.

I really wanted it to work since I had registered it. After all sorts of tries, I finally gave up and installed TW2 instead.

I recently reverted my DOS BBS back to OS/2 / VMODEM and now have TW2002 running just fine. :)

Hopefully, someone will have an idea for you that was not known of when I
was looking for ideas.


... Gone crazy, be back later, please leave message.
--- MultiMail
* Origin: Possum Lodge South * possumso.fsxnet.nz:7636/SSH:2122 (21:4/134)

Yes, this is too bad. I also have gotten it running just fine in DOSBOX but redirecting the output is another story.

Too sad I guess. I'm thinking of just running a DOS vm with telnet server and hide the connection with some bash magic.

-Analog

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: deadbeatz.org (21:2/123)

thanks for the info. I run mine native linux on AWS. i have it wprking in dosbox nicely with fakeshar.exe. guess its time to get off dosemu.

I'd advise against using dosbox, it doesn't understand file locking. If you
do plan to use dosbox just know you can only use one node at a time.

Wine on xorg works fine on AWS. I use it on a headless server on
digitalocean. Virtualized servers are no problem at all.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: monterey bbs (21:1/168)

On 04 Nov 2019, Analog said the following...

Yes, this is too bad. I also have gotten it running just fine in DOSBOX but redirecting the output is another story.

I believe there are two versions of the latest TW2002. One of them has DPMI, and the other version doesn't. You may want to try both versions and see if
one of them still works.

On a side note, that older version you were attempting to use with the
runtime 200 error can be easily fixed with TPPATCH.EXE or one of the other derivatives. Just run something like that on each of the executables and it should get you a little further. However, I can't guarantee it'll work after you remove the error. ;)

Regards,
Nick

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: _thePharcyde telnet://bbs.pharcyde.org (Wisconsin) (21:1/200)

I got Trade Wars 2002 3.09 working with Mystic and 64 bit kernel!!!

TL;DR The long short is I did a serial redirect with qemu.

I'll do a full right up once I have multinode working stably. I'm worried
about sharing.

Basically, I installed MS Dos 6.22 (the real stuff) using QEMU. Added X00 fossil driver and SHUTDOWN.COM I grabbed from the internet. I then installed TW2002 v3.09 with DPMI no problem. Then in Mystic, I
just call a bash script that creates a "run.bat" file for the node (standard stuff here). The script then launches qemu and redirects the serial I/O to STDIO (the terminal program you're using).

Works like a champ. I am actually stoked because I am running on REAL DOS. FreeDos was way too slow to boot up and shutdown. It was hard to pretend it
was a door game and not spinning up a virtual instance of a computer in the background. With MSDos, it's a couple seconds (2 maybe) to launch.

Cheers,
Analog

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: deadbeatz.org (21:2/123)

I got Trade Wars 2002 3.09 working with Mystic and 64 bit kernel!!!

TL;DR The long short is I did a serial redirect with qemu.

That is registered coolness. I wondered if qemu might be a solution but
have not looked at it yet. I think qemu can be used on a Pi as well?

I'll do a full right up once I have multinode working stably. I'm
worried about sharing.

I'll be looking forward to reading that and trying that out myself.

Ttyl :-),
Al

--- MagickaBBS v0.13alpha (Linux/x86_64)
* Origin: The Rusty MailBox - Penticton, BC Canada (21:4/106)

I'm literally copying the image to my RasPi3 now to test. Yes, QEMU works
great on the Pi's but FreeDos was slow. THis should move faster with real
Dos.

More to follow soon...

-Analog

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: deadbeatz.org (21:2/123)

Confirmed QEMU with Trade Wars 2002 working on RasPi 3. Takes about 7 seconds to load but the method works exactly the same for both my AWS 64 bit kernel
and the ARM 32 bit kernel.

-Analog

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: deadbeatz.org (21:2/123)

I'm literally copying the image to my RasPi3 now to test. Yes, QEMU
works great on the Pi's but FreeDos was slow. THis should move faster
with real Dos.

Awesome. On my debian 10 here dosemu isn't available as a package but I
see several qemu-* packages. I'm hoping one day to get a menu full of
Operation Overkill ][ maps.

More to follow soon...

I'll give that a read and see if I can get that going here. Gryphon also
wrote an FAQ for qemu that he was working on with his banana pi if I
remember right. I've been planning on getting a Pi of some sort for a
while myself so this sort of info will be handy for many I am sure.

Ttyl :-),
Al

--- MagickaBBS v0.13alpha (Linux/x86_64)
* Origin: The Rusty MailBox - Penticton, BC Canada (21:4/106)

ryan wrote to Analog <=-

thanks for the info. I run mine native linux on AWS. i have it wprking in dosbox nicely with fakeshar.exe. guess its time to get off dosemu.

I'd advise against using dosbox, it doesn't understand file locking. If you do plan to use dosbox just know you can only use one node at a
time.

Does dosbox work ok if you run SHARE? I had that in my dos door bat files
when I was running under dosbox and did not notice any issues. Had it in my
DOS bbs bat files, too, as I was running 4 nodes of the same software. It seemed to work ok but maybe I just got lucky!



... Gone crazy, be back later, please leave message.
--- MultiMail
* Origin: Possum Lodge South * possumso.fsxnet.nz:7636/SSH:2122 (21:4/134)

On 05 Nov 2019, Accession said the following...

I believe there are two versions of the latest TW2002. One of them has DPMI, and the other version doesn't. You may want to try both versions
and see if one of them still works.

The non-DPMI version uses VCPI which is even less likely to work if DPMI doesn't.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Subcarrier BBS (21:2/140)

On 05 Nov 2019, Blue White said the following...

Does dosbox work ok if you run SHARE? I had that in my dos door bat
files when I was running under dosbox and did not notice any issues. Had

Dosbox doesn't support file locking and therefore a real share.exe, hence the need for fakeshare to trick applications into running without file locking.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Subcarrier BBS (21:2/140)

I used FAKESHAR.EXE and that worked fine to run SHARE required software. Not sure if it would eventually lead to a file handle collision and I/O faults or data corruption.

-Analog

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: deadbeatz.org (21:2/123)

Re: Re: Dosemu - Trade Wars 2002
By: Al to Analog on Tue Nov 05 2019 10:45 am

That is registered coolness. I wondered if qemu might be a solution but have not looked at it yet. I think qemu can be used on a Pi as well?

It can.

I used it for my 1995 BBS - and it was away of getting around those RTE200 issues as well :)
...δεσπ

... Never marry a man who hates his mother because he'll end up hating you.
--- SBBSecho 3.10-Linux
* Origin: Alterant | An SBBS in Docker on Pi! (21:2/116)

TL;DR The long short is I did a serial redirect with qemu.

Does this work with multinode? Is file locking a thing?

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: monterey bbs (21:1/168)

Awesome. On my debian 10 here dosemu isn't available as a package but I see several qemu-* packages. I'm hoping one day to get a menu full of Operation Overkill ][ maps.

Is this debian for arm or for x64? If the latter, you just need to change
your sources.list to include non-free and things like that.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: monterey bbs (21:1/168)

Does dosbox work ok if you run SHARE? I had that in my dos door bat
files when I was running under dosbox and did not notice any issues. Had it in my DOS bbs bat files, too, as I was running 4 nodes of the same software. It seemed to work ok but maybe I just got lucky!

Not really, in fact I think if you check out vogons message forum the dosbox devs warn against trying to do anything like share. They argue that dosbox is built strictly for gaming and not for running applications that require multitasking.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: monterey bbs (21:1/168)

Ah, good question. I'm currently working that issue. QEMU can mount a
directory as a drive and provide it to DOS. However, the file table is locked once DOS has launched so there are issues. Supposedly, you can move the game files to another computer (I'm thinking local share on same computer) and run it multinode that way. This is as per the old ass BBS website I found.

http://www.tw-attac.com/docs/MainMenu.html
See Synchronize Local Session

For now, here's what I've done beyond a perfectly fine single node:
- Created a small tmpfs ram drive for each node (SizeOf DOS Image ~10 MB).
- Created a pristine DOS install, with SHUTDOWN.COM, SLEEP.EXE, X00 Fossil driver.
- Copy that into a CORE tmpfs ram drive that is for reading only.
- In my bash launcher, I copy the MSDOS.DISK from CORE ramdrive to node ram drive. This is only for launching DOS. This should never change and is ok to blow away after the game is exited.
- Mount a local directory with all my DOOR games in QEMU.
- Mount a local directory for DOOR.SYS that is created with NODE number
- Call TW2002 TWNODE=X (X=Node Number). Using TEDIT, I pointed each node to
the D:\ drive which is where I host my DOOR.SYS.

This is stomping on a ton of work I've done, but it's the gist. Still having issues sharing one directory for games between multiple instances of QEMU
Dos. Game starts fine but I feel like there is data corruption.

Tired, worked way too hard on this, but hey at least we're running in Single node now.

Also, there are some other avenues that can be used such as QEMU can redirect output to a local telnet server it creates. I believe it can at least support around 5 serial port redirects, so in theory you could have 5 local servers redirecting output. Then Mystic can either use a direct Telnet menu option or
a BASH telnet call to connect to it.

This obviously requires a wrapper in DOS and running a multitasker or TSR application to listen on serial and spawn doors give some simple protocol.
Bash has a nice functional library called "Expect" that works well for the client side.

...think about it...


Cheers,

-Analog

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: deadbeatz.org (21:2/123)

Confirmed QEMU with Trade Wars 2002 working on RasPi 3. Takes about 7 seconds to load but the method works exactly the same for both my AWS 64 bit kernel and the ARM 32 bit kernel.

I just wanted to also clarify that my RasPi is running Ubuntu 18.04 for Pi

Cannot comment on any other RasPi distro.

-Cheers,
Analog

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: deadbeatz.org (21:2/123)

Confirmed QEMU with Trade Wars 2002 working on RasPi 3. Takes about 7 seconds to load but the method works exactly the same for both my AWS 64 bit kernel and the ARM 32 bit kernel.

I just wanted to also clarify that my RasPi is running Ubuntu 18.04 for
Pi

Sorry I'm late to reply to this (and it sounds like you have it
sorted)... if you don't mind only running on one node at a time you
might be able to get dosbox working with mystic using a shim I created
for magicka, the shim basically when launched listens on a specified
port and launches dosbox (which is configured for the serial port to
connect to localhost on said port) the shim then just relays traffic to
and from the port to stdio.

Having it listen on a fixed port means only one node can use the door at
a time (which isn't an issue because with dosbox not having file
locking, you can only run on one node anyway).

For multiple doors, you just make multiple scripts with different ports
for each door.

Andrew

--- MagickaBBS v0.13alpha (Linux/x86_64)
* Origin: HappyLand - telnet://magickabbs.com:2023/ (21:1/126)

I used it for my 1995 BBS - and it was away of getting around those
RTE200 issues as well :)

That is good to know. I don't have any emulating going on here at the
moment but I'd like to get OO][ going if I can. I have done that before
with dosemu but I am thinking qemu may be a better option today.

I see many qemu-* packages available but I'm not sure wich ones I need.
Once I get a few details taken care of here I'll have a go.

Ttyl :-),
Al

--- MagickaBBS v0.13alpha (Linux/x86_64)
* Origin: The Rusty MailBox - Penticton, BC Canada (21:4/106)

Awesome. On my debian 10 here dosemu isn't available as a package but I see several qemu-* packages. I'm hoping one day to get a menu full of Operation Overkill ][ maps.

Is this debian for arm or for x64? If the latter, you just need to
change your sources.list to include non-free and things like that.

I never realized that dosemu was non-free. I haven't actually looked at
the deb lines on this new instal I am running. I'll add non-free and
contrib and have another look.

When I installed I chose the debian 10.0 x86_64 images but I am not sure
what type of cpu is running the show here although whatever it is it
seems to do a good job.

Running file on the magicka executible that I build here file says it is
an ELF 64-bit LSB pi executible.

Ttyl :-),
Al

--- MagickaBBS v0.13alpha (Linux/x86_64)
* Origin: The Rusty MailBox - Penticton, BC Canada (21:4/106)

On 05 Nov 2019, Analog said the following...

locked once DOS has launched so there are issues. Supposedly, you can
move the game files to another computer (I'm thinking local share on
same computer) and run it multinode that way. This is as per the old ass BBS website I found.

Early multinode systems normally used file shares in this way so you should find most DOS doors amenable to that solution.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Subcarrier BBS (21:2/140)

I'm literally copying the image to my RasPi3 now to test. Yes, QEMU works great on the Pi's but FreeDos was slow. THis should move faster with real

For a linux noob I'll be looking forward to following your doc on how to install and using qemu and dos doors. I have been reading a little on qemu
but no one has anything in the wild on using qemu.

Thanks for being the person to offer help. Soon as I get it going on mint 64 then I'll try it on pi.


|07-= |15H|07a|15v|07o|15k =-
|08We'll leave the modem on for you!

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/03 (Windows/32)
* Origin: After Hours|The Villages,FL|afterhours-bbs.com (21:4/119)

Tired, worked way too hard on this, but hey at least we're running in Single node now.

I feel compelled to advocate for running TWGS on wine in xorg. It's stupid
easy to set up and it's foolproof, will work multinode with no issues forever :)

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: monterey bbs (21:1/168)

I never realized that dosemu was non-free. I haven't actually looked at the deb lines on this new instal I am running. I'll add non-free and contrib and have another look.

Yep - add those to your sources.list, sudo apt update, sudo apt upgrade, sudo apt install dosemu

After that you get to actually set it up, which is a pain in the butt, but it works pretty well.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: monterey bbs (21:1/168)

I feel compelled to advocate for running TWGS on wine in xorg. It's
stupid easy to set up and it's foolproof, will work multinode with no issues forever :)

Hello Ryan

I'd like to see some text on the Internet or here on how to set this up.
If and when you have the time.


|07-= |15H|07a|15v|07o|15k =-
|08We'll leave the modem on for you!

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/03 (Windows/32)
* Origin: After Hours|The Villages,FL|afterhours-bbs.com (21:4/119)

I'd like to see some text on the Internet or here on how to set this up.
If and when you have the time.

Posting from ipad in ftelnet with no ability to copy+paste, but if you google "digitalocean vnc" you'll see how to get xorg working. Once you can vnc into your server, install wine ('sudo apt install wine'). Then unzip the TWGS package wherever you plan to install it and 'wine <executable>' from a
terminal window in your vnc session.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: monterey bbs (21:1/168)

Does this require a Desktop linux environment or installing a window manager?

How does it work with serial redirection?


Thanks

-Analog

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: deadbeatz.org (21:2/123)

ryan wrote to Blue White <=-

Does dosbox work ok if you run SHARE? I had that in my dos door bat
files when I was running under dosbox and did not notice any issues. Had it in my DOS bbs bat files, too, as I was running 4 nodes of the same software. It seemed to work ok but maybe I just got lucky!

Not really, in fact I think if you check out vogons message forum the dosbox devs warn against trying to do anything like share. They argue
that dosbox is built strictly for gaming and not for running
applications that require multitasking.

I am sorry. Everywhere I typed "dosbox" I meant dosEMU. :)


... 2 + 2 = 5 for extremely large values of 2.
--- MultiMail
* Origin: Possum Lodge South * possumso.fsxnet.nz:7636/SSH:2122 (21:4/134)

Posting from ipad in ftelnet with no ability to copy+paste, but if you google "digitalocean vnc" you'll see how to get xorg working. Once you
can vnc into your server, install wine ('sudo apt install wine'). Then unzip the TWGS package wherever you plan to install it and 'wine

Thanks, I'll have to check it out!


|07-= |15H|07a|15v|07o|15k =-
|08We'll leave the modem on for you!

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/03 (Windows/32)
* Origin: After Hours|The Villages,FL|afterhours-bbs.com (21:4/119)

Does this require a Desktop linux environment or installing a window manager?

Yeah, but these can be extremely lightweight, and there are some benefits of having a VNC-able server with xorg.

How does it work with serial redirection?

TWGS runs its own telnet server on port 2002. So to launch it, from your BBS, you just have an outbound telnet to localhost port 2002.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: monterey bbs (21:1/168)

I am sorry. Everywhere I typed "dosbox" I meant dosEMU. :)

Gotcha :) dosemu ain't perfect by any stretch but can support multiplayer in most instances.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: monterey bbs (21:1/168)

I'm not too interested in running a desktop OS. I guess if that's your perogative, then you could do that. The problem is you still have to run multiple instances of the DOS OS since you're not running the BBS inside of
the emulator. If you run the Telnet version of TWGS, that is probably fine. I guess you could simply install Ubuntu Desktop, install some emulator (WINE, DosBox, ETC) that can run Win 3.1. Then launch multiple TWGS in Win 3.1 and have it sit on multiple telnet ports for multinode. I don't know how WINE
works so don't bust my balls here.

My route is to have a real linux headless setup, running minimally qemu with
a tiny DOS image to host the environment for TW2002 3.09. Then, using a
network share (either MSClient or NSF for dos, yes this is a thing), connect
to the instance and run a node with a simple network share for the game
files. This alleviates file lock issues between emulator instances and is
more realistic to how old DOS shares worked.

At some point it's your preference. I like headless, hate XORG and VNC on linux. I use X-forwarding a lot and it works great over SSH but for a bbs I like the command line and text only. Not graphical interface.

Good points in all these comments though for anyone wanting to go the desktop or cli route.

Cheers,
Analog

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: deadbeatz.org (21:2/123)

I'm not too interested in running a desktop OS. I guess if that's your perogative, then you could do that. The problem is you still have to run multiple instances of the DOS OS since you're not running the BBS inside of the emulator. If you run the Telnet version of TWGS, that is probably fine. I guess you could simply install Ubuntu Desktop, install some emulator (WINE, DosBox, ETC) that can run Win 3.1. Then launch multiple TWGS in Win 3.1 and have it sit on multiple telnet ports for multinode.
I don't know how WINE works so don't bust my balls here.

Wine is just a simple windows emulator (in spite of it being called "Wine Is Not an Emulator" :P but it's stupid easy and should "just work". No muss, no fuss. You don't have to install Windows inside of it, a 32 bit program will likely just work easily. And if you google digitalocean ubuntu vnc you will have everything you need to get VNC set up in about 3 minutes, and then you
can 'sudo apt install wine' to get wine installed. It's a five minute process that will work forever :)

And my linux setup is 100% headless. This is a cloud VM. There is no monitor attached to this machine, nor has there ever been.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: monterey bbs (21:1/168)

Do the instances of applications running in wine share a filespace? Can you launch WINE from the CLI and redirect the serial output to the console?

Just curious

-A

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: deadbeatz.org (21:2/123)

Do the instances of applications running in wine share a filespace? Can you launch WINE from the CLI and redirect the serial output to the console?

It's not serial output, it's a server with a GUI, and lives in xorg. It does understand shared filespace, that's not a problem. But it has to be launched from within xorg. That said, it's all pretty seamless, xorg starts on boot
and this is launched to hit display :1 which puts it in the VNC session.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: monterey bbs (21:1/168)

On 05 Nov 2019, Analog said the following...

I got Trade Wars 2002 3.09 working with Mystic and 64 bit kernel!!!

Basically, I installed MS Dos 6.22 (the real stuff) using QEMU. Added X00 fossil driver and SHUTDOWN.COM I grabbed from the internet. I then installed TW2002 v3.09 with DPMI no problem. Then in Mystic, I
just call a bash script that creates a "run.bat" file for the node (standard stuff here). The script then launches qemu and redirects the serial I/O to STDIO (the terminal program you're using).

Nice work. Now with multinode do you plan on trying to spin up multiple instances of DOS? If that's the only option - and to cut down on the worries
of sharing and back doors, maybe think about making it so that it can only be ran on one node at a time? It's not like there's going to be a huge wave of players wanting to play it at the same time anyway. ;)

With that said, since you've been able to spin up DOS successfully, have you thought about possibly trying to run less BBS/door specific and more DOS based games? I mean, if you could actually get multinode to work the possibilities may include setting up a small DOOM or Quake server accessible right from the BBS.

Regards,
Nick

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: _thePharcyde telnet://bbs.pharcyde.org (Wisconsin) (21:1/200)

On 05 Nov 2019, Al said the following...

That is registered coolness. I wondered if qemu might be a solution but have not looked at it yet. I think qemu can be used on a Pi as well?

I believe QEMU is one of the _only_ worthwhile options for the Pi at the moment.

Regards,
Nick

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: _thePharcyde telnet://bbs.pharcyde.org (Wisconsin) (21:1/200)

On 05 Nov 2019, Al said the following...

Awesome. On my debian 10 here dosemu isn't available as a package but I see several qemu-* packages. I'm hoping one day to get a menu full of Operation Overkill ][ maps.

Dosemu may not be available in the current Debian repositories, but if you
are able to enable an old repository it should be available. Looks like the last migration of dosemu was for the Britney testing branch back in 2015?

According to their pkg tracker, dosemu hasn't been worked on in ages so has failed their standards due to being outdated, which may or may not introduce bugs in regards to newer packages.

Regards,
Nick

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: _thePharcyde telnet://bbs.pharcyde.org (Wisconsin) (21:1/200)

Nice work. Now with multinode do you plan on trying to spin up multiple instances of DOS? If that's the only option - and to cut down on the worries of sharing and back doors, maybe think about making it so that

Yes, I have succesfully run multiple instances of qemu with Dos for
multinoding my games. Here's the crux, if you run TW2002 type multinode games, they need access to the game files simultaneously. Since QEMU snapshots all directories you pass into it, this negates the ability of an instance of DOS
to share common files with another instance.

My magic workaround was NFS. The NFS for dos worked beautifully. For anyone interested, here's what I did:

1. Setup NFS for dos, see here: http://www.toughdev.com/content/2018/08/using-nfs-to-transfer-files-between-win dows-and-ms-dos-6-22

Word wrap issue so you'll have to copy paste and cleanup that link.

2. Setup NFS server in Ubuntu. I had to allow all "*" but I don't have external access to my NFS ports so it's safe.

3. Then what I did was mount that share in the dos image on boot. Next, copy all game files for each multinode game to the NFS mount/gamedir. This is the key.

4. Edit game to point to NFS mount for game files. Easy with TW2002.

5. Then I created a clone of the dos.img file (dos image) for each node. This is because qemu will lock the image, so if multiple nodes are playing, they need their own img. It was 10 megabytes so no biggie.

6. The next thing I did was setup my autoexec.bat in each image to call a file on the NFS share "run.bat". This file is created dynamically with a complex bash script called from mystic. I posted it in my tutorial on deadbeatz.org. Basically, it creates the runner for any particular game you want to play.
When the dos image is loaded, it simply runs that file which can dynamically load any game you have in the image. I hope this makes sense.

7. Profit...

That's about it. Pretty complex for running dos multinode in linux but once you get it working, it works fine. I wanted to run FreeDOS instead of Dos 6.22 because FreeDOS has great power management which helps cut down on CPU railing. MsDOS has power.exe you can load, but it isn't graceful and tends to rail the cpu sometimes. However, FreeDOS did not mount any NFS shares. It would run, but no drive was actually present. If I can get this working, I would be much happier with the setup.

Cheers,
Analog

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/03 (Windows/32)
* Origin: deadbeatz.org (21:2/123)