DOS BOX was ....Re: [DSP-10] DSP 10 without hardware

[kd7ts]

This is to report my efforts to get the UHFA.EXE to run 
under WIN98.

Spurred on by reports from Jeremy, KI4PRZ of success with 
Dos Box, I downloaded the latest version from

_http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/_

Using the tip provided by Jeremy, I set up the config file, 
dosbox.conf and gave it a try. It does work after a fashion, 
but performance was very poor. I checked the CPU usage as 
suggested in the "readme" file, and found CPU usage was 
running at 94%. Any additional actions caused higher numbers 
and usually ended the screen updates of the waterfall. The 
"on-screen" clock continued normally, sometimes. The session 
could not be recovered after this, and the Dos Box session 
had to be terminated, and restarted.

I am running a 450 MHz PIII processor and 128 MB of RAM. 
Ermie, W7LHL, was interested in trying this on his XP 
system, and followed the same procedure using the same 
config file I had been using for DOS BOX on my WIN98 
machine. He was totally successful on the first try.

DOS BOX emulates a DOS machine and runs in the widows 
environment. This eats up processor time like crazy ! If you 
are running other processes, like an internet browser at the 
same time, it will require more processor time. At some 
point, it just grinds to a halt.

Normal windows operation has the CPU usage around 2% for the 
  most common processes running. As I write this, I have 
E-mail, 2 browser windows, a dialer and 5 background 
processes running and sysmon shows an average of 12%, with 
spikes to 20%.

I don't know how much processor speed is required, but it is 
certainly more than 450 MHz. If your machine can run XP, it 
is probably fast enough to run DOS BOX and UHFA.EXE, and 
maybe something else.

And yes, this is a workaround for the DOS requirement of the 
DSP-10.

Hopefully this will inspire others to experiment and report 
on their results. There may be other programs that emulate a 
  DOS environment, but I haven't tried anything else. DOSEMU 
was mentioned in a few google search results.....

Used laptop machines appear quite attractive as opposed to 
upgrading. However, if you need an excuse to upgrade, this 
is as good as any.


73 Mike KD7TS