First post, by dozer
howdy,
Have any of you guys ever tested DosBox with any dongles or dongle-eliminator software?
I spent some time reading the FAQ, and looking through a number of the forums here; but I couldn't find anything related to Apps....just games. The forum titled "Games/Apps" didn't seem to cover Apps either.
I'm trying to run an old PCB-layout software called PCAD 4.55; which I have owned for many years; and in which I have done almost a hundred circuit-board layouts since the 1980's.
Now I am trying to get it running so that I can modify an old board design and make another small batch. I need to modify it because some of the parts aren't even available any more <grin>.
Anyway, originally this software used some stupid dongle-system; where there was a "chassis" which took up to a dozen plug-in "keys". The damn thing never did work right; and the keys had a nasty habit of failing after a while. So everyone who used this software back then always bought the "dongle eliminator" software called PSAVE. A company called "Safesoft" made it....out of Canada I think.
I'm not sure what this PSAVE does exactly, but it can't be much, because it is -tiny-...only about 3K. I've run it on a dozen different PC's; from a 386-25, to 486's, to a dual Pentium-Pro, to the last one, an HP Visualize dual-Xeon workstation. Never had a lick of trouble with it. You run PSAVE, then you start PCAD.
All I have for a PC now is an HP6000 Omnibook laptop (we're living off-grid in a cabin in the mountains now); running windows2000. I've downloaded and installed DosBox, and was pleased at how smoothly it went. And PSAVE -looks- like it's running fine. And PCAD -starts- fine.
But when it leaves the initial menu and goes into graphics-mode to actually edit a board, I get the "Security device not found" message, or the "Security device port not found". Two different graphics-mode programs; one for schematics and one for board-layouts....two different messages.
I'm wondering if one of you guys would be willing to take a quick look at this PSAVE thing and see what it's trying to do, that DosBox isn't emulating quite right.
thanks much!
dozer
edit: PS, I meant to include that I went through each item in the DosBox config file; turned off the sound-emulation to save cycles, tried several settings for the 'cpu type' all the way to dynamic, and made sure that the 'direct serial' emulation was set to 'true'. (I can't remember for sure, but I think this was a serial-port type dongle system). I didn't really see anything else in the config that I thought would affect things.
edit2: I checked PCAD's own config, and there's a field for selecting which COM-port the dongle is on; so it was definitely a serial-type system. I also noticed that if I type "PSAVE" at the dos prompt after it's been loaded once, it tells me: "PSAVE 1.3b already in memory!"....so it's obviously some kind of TSR that probably intercepts I/O to the COM-port. I don't think it's anything that modifies the actual app EXE's.
Anyway, I thought there might be a conflict between the mouse usage in windows being on COM-1, and the PSAVE/PCAD trying to use COM1 (although I never had problems in that regard on native DOS), so I changed PCAD's config to look for dongle on COM2. No difference.