DOSEMU too slow

gasodero · 06-22-2009, 08:24 PM

Hello guys,

I´ve just installed DOSEMU on a debian machine to run a text mode only program and it runs too slow. It´s a Pentium II 350Mhz I´m running in on. I´ve run the same software on a AMD64 computer and it is of course fast enough.
Can anyone think of anything I can do to make it run faster? I would really hate to have to buy a license to run this (it runs just fine on Windows 98). Buying a faster computer is also quite a problem for now.

Thank you for any idea you may have.

TB0ne · 06-22-2009, 08:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gasodero

Hello guys,

I´ve just installed DOSEMU on a debian machine to run a text mode only program and it runs too slow. It´s a Pentium II 350Mhz I´m running in on. I´ve run the same software on a AMD64 computer and it is of course fast enough.
Can anyone think of anything I can do to make it run faster? I would really hate to have to buy a license to run this (it runs just fine on Windows 98). Buying a faster computer is also quite a problem for now.

Thank you for any idea you may have.

You've got quite an old, slow machine, and you're loading one operating system, and having it emulate ANOTHER operating system. Yes, that IS going to be slow. Even on my system, which is fairly current, CPU usage goes WAY up when doing emulation like this. And you don't say what the program you're running is DOING, just that it's 'text mode'.

Given your hardware, I don't think there's much you can do, aside from upgrading.

MS3FGX · 06-22-2009, 08:49 PM

On hardware that old, I would have to ask...why not just install DOS in the first place? Is there some reason you have to emulate a DOS system on a machine that is already getting to the point that it can't handle modern software?

gasodero · 06-23-2009, 12:04 PM

The software runs pretty slow overall, but specially when reading the old btrieve database.
The thing is I have no DOS or Windows license and I want to be legal. I guess I'll just have to accept I need to upgrade the hardware (which I find more useful than buying the license).
I just hoped I was doing something wrong, because I read somewhere that a piece of software on DOSEMU runs up to 20% slower and this is running two or three times slower.

Thanks for the advice.

Telengard · 06-23-2009, 12:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gasodero

The thing is I have no DOS or Windows license and I want to be legal.

FreeDOS

Quote:

Originally Posted by http://www.freedos.org/freedos/about/

FreeDOS aims to be a complete, free, 100% MS-DOS compatible operating system
. . .
FreeDOS should run on any standard PC
. . .
FreeDOS is open source software; you can view and edit our source code. Most FreeDOS programs are distributed under the GNU General Public License ("GNU GPL").

rylan76 · 06-24-2009, 02:20 AM

Try DosBox - I've played some old Dos games with it quite satisfactorily on an eight year old (?) Pentium 1 running at 100mHz.

gasodero · 08-09-2009, 03:47 PM

Well, as a token of gratitude, I'll share my experiences with this issue.
I couldn't make FreeDOS work with the network card, so I had to discard that option.
DOSBox was actually faster and might, in the end, be chosen. The decision is not up to me.

Thanks again