DataEase for Dos and Windows 7 x64

Too good to be true?

Of course not! Everything is possible if you try hard enough so perhaps we haven't really tried that hard before!

More than ever our goal now is to make DataEase work and by that we mean work in every sense of the word - in all possible versions and implementations of DataEase.

We are currently planning new versions of all our products so everyone that has invested in DataEase can feel secure that their investment is safe. 

We don't want to force you to move to DG3, we want to "entice" you to move.

An important part of our strategy is to make you secure where you are in whatever version of DataEase you use. When you can stop worrying about the future of you applications and the future of DataEase, we hope and think that you will be ready to move on with us.

As you most likely already know, DG3 can share tables and data with DFD 5.x, DFW 6.x and DFD 7.x, and as long as you have a working application in either of these versions, you can leave it alone to do its work and start developing your new stuff in DG3.

We have already solved the problem with Windows 7 and DataEase for Windows 6, so now it is time for a solution for all you DFD users.

We know that you have tried everything to run DFD under the 64-bit Windows 7, but as far as we know no one has succeeded....

So now we present the solution. It is simple, it is easy to configure, and best of all... IT IS FREE!

Below you will find a download link for DOSBox 0.74.

When you have installed it, go to the Start Menu, find DOSBox, chose the subfolder Options, and select DOSBox 0.74 Options.

When in edit mode, change the following sections:

[dos] 

xms=false 

ems=false 

umb=false 

keyboardlayout=auto # T

his will switch off the built in dos extenders in DOS and allow DE16M room to use its own.

This is all it should take to get 5.53 to work, but if you want an older version of DFD to work like 5.16, 4.53 or 2.53 (We have tested them all), you will also need to slow your emulation down a little. This you do by editing the following section:

[cpu] 

core=simple 

cputype=486_slow 

cycles=fixed 4000 

cycleup=10 

cycledown=20

# Feel free to try to tweak this setting on your computer to get the optimum result. This did the trick for us, and we have now been happily running every DFD version from 2.53 to 5.53.

You should be able to figure out the rest, but at the end of the Options file there is an "Autoexec.bat" section, where you can set dename, mount the correct directories as drives, set national keyboard support etc. Our section looks like this:

[autoexec] # Lines in this section will be run at startup. 

mount c 

c:\de453 

# this mount the catalogue on physical drive c:\de453 to the logical drive c:\ set dename=SomethingUnik z:\keyb no #this set the keyboard layout to norwegian, if you are using DFD you know what I am talking about...

c: de16m

Enjoy!

Update 04.01.12 We have had some feedback from people that has had trouble running DFD 5.16 and below with these settings. Believe it or not the problem is that your computer is too fast. Tweak the [CPU] switches further to slow down the process, and it will work :-)

Download DOSBox 0.74 here!

UPDATE 18.04.2012

We tested a little further today, and as far as we can tell the following configuration file is all you need to run DFD in Dosbox:

[cpu] core=simple cputype=486_slow cycles=fixed 4000 cycleup=10 cycledown=20

[dos] xms=true ems=false umb=false

[autoexec]

mount c c:\dfd516 set dename=SomethingUnik c: DE16M

The stuff under Autoexec is of course individual to your computer/setup.

This is to run DFD as a single user. If you want to run DFD in a Network, you will need to configure Dos network drivers to be started under Autoexec. Network handling is not supported automatically in DosBOX since DosBOX is a complete DOS computer emulation with no interference from the OS on the computer you run it on.

Published: 16/11/11 - 10:03:03 (Ulrik Jacob Høegh - Krohn)