[COLUG] Dosemu, qbasic, Linux

[William Yang]

charles morrison wrote:
> It is qbasic program. Since it is supposed to work, why doesn't
> it? This IS a Linux question. This is a Linux users group.

Attitude, my friend, is everything.  Remember that you have no
entitlement to free assistance.

Do you know whether you can talk to the serial port directly from Linux
(using cu, minicom, or some other package) -- that is, does the port
work properly under Linux for NORMAL operation?

If not, then you have a different problem to solve first.  If the port
isn't accessible under Linux, it almost certainly won't be accessible in
an emulator running in Linux.

Once you have it working, you'll need to see how the emulator is trying
to address the serial port.  Using a standard communications program
(something old, standard, and DOS-based -- think a Telix, ProComm, etc)
see if you can get serial communications working there.  Take your
program out of the mix, because your program may be the problem.  You
may need to use multiple terminal programs to ensure that the problem is
in the program you're using.

Finally, once you know you have your dongle and your emulator working
for serial communications, look at how your program works.  Some
programs are written poorly, or at least written such that they don't
act well under emulation.  Attempts to directly access the BIOS, bypass
device drivers, and so forth.  Re-writing is a last resort, but may be a
necessary step.

I'm sensing your growing frustration... but I also seem to see that
there are going to be steps required to isolate the problem, which don't
seem to be happening (or at least I'm not picking up that they've occurred).

	-Bill
-- 
William Yang
wyang at gcfn.net