Running WPDOS under Linux | Basic DOSEMU installation | Set up DOS | Install or access WPDOS | Refine or improve your setup | Troubleshooting | Restore Alt-F-keys to WPDOS | Printing | Start DOSEMU from a launcher or hotkey | Change or add drive letters | Change screen size | Full-screen DOSEMU | Create PDF files from DOSEMU | Copying and pasting with the mouse | Macros for copy/paste between Linux and WPDOS | Improved DOSEMU icons | Undelete for DOSEMU | DOSEMU under VMware Fusion | Appendix: Use MS-DOS with DOSEMU | Sound support | Note on Ubuntu 8.04 and 8.10 | Home page
Note (May 2013, revised August 2014): In the versions of DOSEMU available through some Linux distributions, with some of the setup options described on this page, all printed text in WPDOS is moved to the left edge of the page, both in Print Preview and on the printed page. As of 17 February 2013, this problem has been fixed in the development branch of DOSEMU, which is available through the project's git archive. If you experience this problem in your existing version of DOSEMU - or if you experience unacceptably slow performance in any WPDOS graphics mode - then download the current development version and build it on your own system. You will need to figure out for yourself how to accomplish this, but it is not difficult even for beginners. (Or you may follow the slightly more full instructions in this message posted on wpuniverse.com.)
Should you bother with this? Unless you have some powerful reason to run Linux, I don't think so. If you don't want a Windows computer, don't waste your time wrestling with Linux; run WPDOS on a Mac.
WPDOS can be run under Linux through the use of the DOSEMU software that allows DOS to be booted in a virtual machine. Almost all features of WPDOS work extremely well. You can open large files, print to any printer that works with Linux, and even view WPDOS 6.x graphics in high-resolution VESA modes. DOSEMU lets you run WPDOS either in a window on the Linux desktop (more or less as WPDOS runs as a window on the Windows desktop) or in a traditional full-screen mode. In modern computers, DOSEMU's full-screen (console) mode provides probably the closest possible match to the experience of running WPDOS on an ancient DOS-based computer.
The following instructions were developed under Ubuntu Linux 9.04 through 10.10, and briefly tested under Ubuntu Linux 12.10, but the basic details should work with any recent Linux distribution. I do not pretend to be an expert user of Linux, but these instructions should work as written. You must perform all the numbered steps before WPDOS will run under Linux. If you can provide improved or more detailed instructions, please contact me.
Before you begin, you must have the some basic knowledge of Linux. Do not proceed until you fully understand all of the following things:
Note: In Ubuntu Linux, you edit a file with the gedit program; other distributions might use kedit or some other program. In Ubuntu Linux, you perform an action with superuser privileges in the terminal by preceding it with sudo as in some examples below; in other distributions, you might need to use su instead of sudo or you might need to use some other method of applying superuser or root privileges.
Problems with WPDOS under DOSEMU: In general, WPDOS seems to work very well under DOSEMU, with these exceptions:
Frequently-asked question:
Q. What's
wrong with you? Why don't you recommend the
DOSBox emulation software for running WPDOS?
I mean, like, everyone knows DOSBox is better and cooler than DOSEMU! You
must be really out-of-date and really uncool. I mean, you must be totally twentieth-century
to recommend DOSEMU over DOSBox!
A. DOSBox is a superb platform for
running DOS games, but, under Linux, DOSBox is extremely difficult to set up so that it
can be used as a platform for WPDOS. Furthermore, DOSBox under Linux offers no simple, practical way to
print from WPDOS, so I haven't wasted my time or yours on
this incomplete solution. And, yes, I already know that some versions
of DOSBox claim to allow simple text-only printing; unfortunately, even these versions do
not let you print from WPDOS. If you find a simple, practical method for printing to a
currently-available printer from WPDOS under DOSBox under Linux, and only if you have
actually tested such a method, please
let me know.
Acknowledgments: I am grateful to Bart Oldeman, Charles Smith,Victor Warner, and Malcolm Wheatley for valuable additions to present and fomer versions of this page.
The following assumes that you understand basic Linux concepts.
First, use your Linux distribution's package manager or download manager to install DOSEMU 1.4.0 or later. The name of the package is dosemu and no other packages are required; do not try to download or install freedos or any other packages that were formerly required with older versions of DOSEMU but are now part of DOSEMU itself. Also, do not be tempted to install xfonts-terminus-dos, unless you want DOSEMU to look extremely ugly.
Next, run DOSEMU to make certain that it runs on your system. If nothing happens when you run DOSEMU from a menu, open a terminal and enter the command dosemu and note any error message.
Warning: Under Ubuntu 10.04 and 10.10, DOSEMU will not run until you perform the following steps. (This step is not necessary under Ubuntu 11.10; I do not know if it is required with 11.04.) With root privileges, edit the file /etc/sysctl.conf, perhaps by running this command from a terminal:
sudo gedit /etc/sysctl.conf
At the very end of the file add the following line:
vm.mmap_min_addr=0
Save the file and restart your system before attempting to run DOSEMU. (Note that it may be enough to enter the commmand sudo start procps but if DOSEMU does not run after giving that command, then restart.)
By default, DOSEMU uses a version of FreeDOS that runs many DOS programs reliably, but reliably runs WPDOS only if you perform the steps in section (2) of these instructions. (If you do not perform those steps, WPDOS will typically run once during a session, but will crash if you try to run it a second time.)
Note: If you use Ubuntu Linux 8.04 or 8.10 only, see the special note in a separate section.
The next step will vary depending on which Linux distribution you use. With Ubuntu 9.04 through 12.10, DOSEMU stores its system-wide configuration files in the directories /etc/dosemu and /usr/lib/dosemu and its user-based files in a directory under your home directory, ~/.dosemu. (This directory has a dot at the beginning of its name, so it is normally invisible to standard directory commands.)
Find the file dosemu.conf in /etc/dosemu (possibly somewhere else, depending on your distribution), and copy it to your home directory (not to ~/.dosemu) and rename it .dosemurc (note the dot at the beginning of the filename, which makes the file invisible to standard directory commands, and note that you must not add ".conf" at the end of the filename!). The commands that perform this action in the Ubuntu Linux terminal are as follows (other distributions will require different commands and different file locations):
cd ~/
cp -i /etc/dosemu/dosemu.conf ~/
mv -i
dosemu.conf .dosemurc
Open the newly-created .dosemurc file for editing in whichever Linux text editor you prefer.
In the Memory Settings section of the file, find the lines (a few lines apart from each other) that read:
# $_xms = (8192)
# $_ems = (2048)
and, in each case, remove the comment mark (#) and change the numbers in parentheses to (16384) in order to give WP all the memory it needs, so that the lines read:
$_xms = (16384)
$_ems = (16384)
If, and only if, WPDOS 6.x crashes when you try to run it, find the line that reads:
# $_cpu_emu = "off"
or some similar setting (which may be "vm86" instead of "off") and remove the comment mark (#) and change the string after the equals sign so that the line reads:
$_cpu_emu = "vm86sim"
Save the file when you finish making your changes.
DOSEMU automatically installs an open-source DOS clone called FreeDOS. With one slight modification (described below), FreeDOS works well with WPDOS.
Note: You may prefer to use an older, standard version of DOS such as MS-DOS 6.22 or 7.1 or IBM PC-DOS 2000 (the latter includes support for the euro symbol); if so follow the instructions in a separate section below.
In this step, you will modify a startup file to prevent DOSEMU crashes that occur when the WPDOS 5.1+ or WPDOS 6.x "launcher" file is loaded into high memory; this launcher file is not essential but it allows many advanced WPDOS functions to operate normally.
Start DOSEMU, either by entering in a terminal the command dosemu or by using your distribution's menu system; in most Ubuntu versions, DOSEMU appears on the Applications | System Tools menu as "DOS emulator". DOSEMU will start up and present you with a C:> prompt.
Enter the following series of commands at the prompt (the first four commands are necessary in order to created editable copies of the DOS startup files):
rename autoexec.bat autoexec.fre
copy autoexec.fre autoexec.bat
rename config.sys config.fre
copy config.fre config.sys
edit autoexec.bat
The DOS text editor will open C:\Autoexec.bat for editing; in order to prevent WPDOS from crashing under FreeDOS, add a new line anywhere in the file (preferably as the second line in the file) that reads either:
set WP = /DL
or
set WP = /LL
You must include a space after the equals sign! The first of these alternatives (/DL) will prevent the launcher program from running at all; this may prevent some WPDOS features from working. The second alternative (/LL) will load the launcher program into low (not high) memory; you will lose a few KB for use by WP, but you will retain all features and prevent memory problems from occurring. Save the file when you finish editing it.
The contents of your C: drive in DOSEMU may be found as a folder (inside your ~/.dosemu folder), named drive_c. Remember this name; I will refer to it later as your "DOSEMU C: drive".
Note: If, as in some recent versions of Ubuntu, DOSEMU cannot access your CD drive, then, in DOSEMU, then open C:\Autoexec.bat for editing, and find the following line:
lredir e: linux\fs/media/cdrom c
and change it to read:
lredir e: linux\fs/media c
The effect of this change is that drive E: in DOSEMU will now contain subdirectories that correspond to whatever floppy disks or CD-ROMs that you may have in your system.
If you have a dual-boot system, and you want to use a WPDOS setup that already exists on your hard disk, proceed to part (b). If you prefer to install (or copy) WPDOS directly into DOSEMU, follow part (a).
Use either:
(a) Install WPDOS directly into DOSEMU: If you want to create a new WPDOS setup in your Linux system, you can either install WPDOS from floppy disks or a CD-ROM while running DOSEMU, or you can simply copy your existing WPDOS directories from an existing DOS or Windows computer. It may be easiest to copy these WPDOS directories (perhaps via a CD ROM or from directories on a dual-boot system) into your DOSEMU C: drive, when DOSEMU is not running. If you used the supplied FreeDOS system, as described in part (2) above, your DOSEMU C: drive will be the Linux folder ~/.dosemu/drive_c.
Note: If you have set up MS-DOS or some other standard DOS instead of FreeDOS, as described in a separate section below, your DOSEMU C: drive will be the Linux folder ~/.dosemu/dos622, or whatever name you chose during setup.
Alternatively, you can copy your WP installation files from existing directories on your hard disk, or from a CD ROM or floppies, into a directory in your DOSEMU C: drive. Or after starting DOSEMU you can install WPDOS from its normal installation program exactly as you would do under DOS or Windows.
If you have successfully installed WPDOS through this method, proceed directly to step (4).
(b) Access an existing drive with a WPDOS installation: If you have a dual-boot Windows-Linux (or DOS-Linux) system, with WPDOS already installed under DOS or Windows, DOSEMU can access the existing setup. The following instructions assume that you want read-write access to your DOS drives. (Warning: Be very careful when trying the following procedure, and maintain plenty of backups!)
I recommend this second method only if your DOS or Windows system has WPDOS on a drive letter other than drive C:, because you can easily assign your WPDOS drive the same drive letter inside DOSEMU that it has under DOS or Windows. In other words, if you have WPDOS on drive E: in Windows, then it can also be on drive E: in DOSEMU, but this is easy to do only if your WPDOS setup is on a Windows drive that is not drive C:.) (It is, in fact, possible to make DOSEMU treat your real DOS-based drive C: as if it were drive C: in DOSEMU itself, but the method is too complicated to describe here. If you want to use your real drive C: as drive C: in DOSEMU, see the section "Using Lredir" in the documentation at DOSEMU.org. I really don't recommend doing this, however.)
Warning: If you use this method, the CD (chdir) command sometimes fails you attempt to change the current directory on the drive. This is mostly an inconvenience, but it could be a serious one. If you create an entirely new "drive" in DOSEMU, this problem does not occur.
Note: If your already-existing WPDOS directory is on drive D: or drive E:, then you must change the default drive letters in DOSEMU by using the techniques described
Begin this method by creating a directory in your Linux drive with an easily recognizable name; you will use that name when you give the Linux command to mount your DOS/Windows disk. To create this directory, enter a command like this:
sudo mkdir -m 777 /dosdiskNext, use a Linux hardware-identification utility (such as gparted) to lists the Linux names of your disk partitions. Identify the Windows/DOS drive on your system that contains WPDOS. On my system, WPDOS is on drive E:, which Linux identifies as /sda3.
Then, using a text editor (and with root or superuser privileges) edit your /etc/fstab file. In recent Linux distributions, this file probably already lists DOS/Windows partitions, perhaps with a line that looks something like the following. (Remember that the following line is only example! Don't be clueless! If you simply copy what you see below instead of using what is actually on your system, you may destroy your Windows system! Do not proceed unless you understand what an "example" means!)
/dev/sda3 /media/sda3 ntfs defaults 0Place a comment mark (#) at the start of this line, then copy the whole line to a new line immediately below it; remove the comment mark from the newly-copied line and edit the newly-copied line so that the second item is uses the name of your new directory as the second item like this:
/dev/sda3 /dosdisk ntfs defaults 0Save the /etc/fstab file, then (still using root or superuser privileges) enter the command mount /dosdisk or mount -a (which remounts all the drives listed in the /etc/fstab file).
Now run DOSEMU and edit your C:\Autoexec.bat file to add a line like this at the end of the file (notice the backslash and forward slash)
lredir e: linux\fs/dosdiskRestart DOSEMU. You should be able to access your DOS disk in exactly the same way you access your disk under real DOS. You may use the same basic technique to access any directory in the Linux file system as if it were a DOS drive.
Note: By default, DOSEMU uses this technique to make your home directory appear in DOSEMU as drive D: by including in C:\Autoexec.bat this line: lredir d: linux\fs%DOSDRIVE_D% - but you can disable that line by adding rem to the start of the line , or change the drive letter to any other letter, or replace the line with something like the following:
lredir h: linux\fs/home/yourUserNameNote 2: As an alternative to adding the lredir command to C:\Autoexec.bat, you can add the following command (modified to suit your system) to C:\Config.sys, but this has the disadvantage that you cannot specify a drive letter:
device=c:\dosemu\emufs.sys /dosdisk
Proceed to step (4).
In many Linux distributions, the desktop window manager seizes the Alt-F7, Alt-F8, and other Alt-function keys for use in managing windows on the Linux desktop, and does not let the keystrokes be read by WPDOS. When working in WPDOS, you may possibly be able to use Shift-Alt-F7, Shift-Alt-F8, etc., instead of Alt-F7, Alt-F8, etc., and WPDOS will detect them as their Alt-function key equivalents. But this procedure is inconvenient and does not always work. If you intend to use WPDOS often, you should reclaim the Alt-function keys from the desktop window manager, by using the following procedure. The changes that I recommend will let you use Shift-Alt-F-key combinations to control windows in Linux, while leaving the Alt-F-key combinations available for use with WPDOS.
A visitor to this site reports that the following instructions (not tested by me since 2010) continue to apply to Ubuntu Linux versions that use either the MATE desktop or the Gnome classic desktop. Your distribution may require a different procedure!
To make the Alt-function keys accessible to WPDOS in versions of Ubuntu that use the MATE or Gnome classic desktops, go to the top-line menu, choose System, then Preferences, then Keyboard Shortcuts. In the list of shortcuts, scroll down the list until you find an Alt-F-key combination that you want to use in WPDOS. Click on the name of the key (for example, Alt-F1), then, press the new key combination that you want to use instead (for example, Shift-Alt-F1). The new combination will appear in place of the old one. When you are finished, click the Close button, and your new key combinations will take effect.
Note: You may also use the standard WPDOS function keys by switching DOSEMU to graphics-based full screen mode by pressing Ctrl-Alt-F in DOSEMU. See further details on graphics-based full screen mode elsewhere on this page.
To regain the use of the F-keys when running DOSEMU in windowed terminal mode, as described in a separate section below, see the notes on that mode.
Install a VESA graphics driver: DOSEMU supports VESA graphics internally; no matter what video card is actually installed in your computer, DOSEMU can use the WPDOS 6.x VESA VBE graphic driver or the third-party WPDOS 5.1 VESA graphic driver available elsewhere on this site. When installing WPDOS 6.x, always select the VESA VBE graphics driver that is supplied with WPDOS 6.x; if you use an already-existing setup, add the VESA.VRS graphics driver to your WPDOS directory (a copy of the file may be downloaded from this site's graphics mode page) and under Shift-F1/Display/Graphics Mode, select VESA VBE and choose a screen size suitable for your system.
Increase DOSEMU's speed: By default, DOSEMU uses only a limited amount of your computer's processor (CPU) time. You can increase DOSEMU's share of the computer's CPU power by editing your ~/.dosemurc file and changing the line that reads
# $_hogthreshold = (1)
Remove the comment marker (#) and change 1to a higher number, perhaps 3 or 5 to start with, but you might experiment with much higher numbers. The default setting (1) claims the least amount of CPU power; higher numbers claim more. A setting of zero claims all the CPU power, which is probably not something you want to do (I have not tried it). You may change these settings while running DOSEMU by giving the command:
speed 10
Replace 10 with any other number that you might want to try.
Change other DOSEMU settings: While editing your ~/.dosemurcfile, you may wish to make further changes. For example, you can change the default title in the window bar from "DOS in a BOX" to anything you like.
Ways to start and close DOSEMU: You may close DOSEMU by pressing Ctrl-Alt-PageDown, or by entering the command exitemu at the DOS prompt, or simply by closing its window.
If you want to start WPDOS every time you boot into DOSEMU, and you want DOSEMU to close when you exit WPDOS, you can write a batch file that looks something like this:
c:\wp51 /r
exitemu
and insert at the end of C:\Autoexec.bat a line that runs the batch file. (But you may prefer to use an alternate method of achieving the same thing by starting DOSEMU from a launcher or hotkey as described below.)
Note that you may add the essential /LL or /DL startup switches to this or any other batch file that launches WPDOS, but you need not do so if you have set these switches in your C:\Autoexec.bat file, as explained in an earlier section.
Force DOSEMU to pause: You can force DOSEMU to pause its operations, for whatever reason, by pressing Ctrl-Alt-P. Press the same keys again to make DOSEMU resume normal operations.
Capture the keyboard in the DOSEMU screen: If you want the keyboard to be available only to DOSEMU, and not in any other Linux application while you are running DOSEMU, press Ctrl-Alt-K. All keystrokes will go only to DOSEMU. Press the same combination of keys again when you want to use the keyboard in both DOSEMU and the rest of your Linux setup.
Capture the mouse in the DOSEMU screen: If you use the mouse in WordPerfect, and you do not want the mouse to be available outside the DOSEMU window, press Ctrl-Alt-Home to "capture" the mouse pointer for DOSEMU. You will not be able to move the mouse pointer outside the DOSEMU window until you press Ctrl-Alt-Home a second time or close DOSEMU.
Note: You can change the mouse-capture key from Ctrl-Alt-Home to Ctrl-Alt-ScrlLock by editing your ~/.dosemurc file and editing the line that reads # $_X_mgrab_key = "Home". Remove the comment mark (#) and insert the keyname "Scroll_Lock" between the quotation marks in place of "Home". You may also use other keynames such as "a" to enable Ctrl-Alt-a as the mouse-capture key. If you leave the quotation marks empty ("") the mouse-capture function is not available.
See also the sections below on changing or adding drive letters, changing the screen size and on running DOSEMU in full-screen mode.
If WP or any other program that you run under DOSEMU gives you an error message that says the program cannot find a directory, then you need to create the relevant directory in your DOSEMU system or you need to make the existing directory (on a dual-boot system) accessible to DOSEMU. If the directory does not exist (for example C:\temp), then simply create it at the DOS prompt with the MD dirname command. If the directory is on a drive on your system that is not available to DOSEMU, then make it available with the lredir command, as described in section (3), part (b).
You can print from WPDOS under DOSEMU if, and only if, you can print from Linux applications. Set up your printer within Linux before you try to print from WPDOS. Important: If you use a recent version of Ubuntu, you must install the package cups-bsd if you want to print. Use Synaptic Package Manager or some other utility to install this package. Do not omit this step if you want to print from DOSEMU!
If your distribution does not include the lpr command, then you must install that package also. (To determine whether lpr is installed, open a terminal and enter the command which lpr and if no path appears - you merely return to the command prompt - then you must install lpr.
By default, DOSEMU allows WPDOS to print to the default Linux printer, however that printer is attached to your computer (on a network, through a USB or parallel port, etc.). For simplicity, I strongly advise you to use a PostScript-compatible printer with Linux, and I strongly advise that you choose a standard PostScript printer driver in WPDOS (for example, Apple LaserWriter IINTX). If, and only if, you have an HP LaserJet or compatible printer that supports traditional PCL-based printing from WPDOS, you can use a LaserJet PCL printer driver in WPDOS (instead of, or in addition to, a PostScript driver) to print to your Linux printer.
Note: The preceding sentence is also true when printing from DOSEMU under VMware Workstation and VMware Fusion. In other words: If, and only if, you have an HP LaserJet or compatible printer that supports traditional PCL-based printing from WPDOS, you can use a LaserJet PCL printer driver in WPDOS (instead of, or in addition to, a PostScript driver).
I cannot help you to use any kind of non-PostScript or non-PCL printer with WPDOS under Linux, but you may wish to experiment with the settings in the ~/.dosemurc file.
See a separate section below on creating PDF files from WPDOS under Linux.
Ubuntu and other distributions let you create desktop "launcher" icons which run applications when you double-click on them; Linux also lets you create keyboard shortcut "hotkeys" that similarly run applications. Search the web for up-to-date documentation on the procedures for creating launchers or hotkeys. This section describes the commands that you can use in these launchers.
Because DOSEMU lets you "feed" keystrokes to the emulator from the command line, you can create launchers or hotkeys that launch DOSEMU and run different commands. For example, you might create a batch file inside DOSEMU that first runs WPDOS and then, after WPDOS exits, runs the exitemu command to close the emulator; name this batch file something like startwp.bat. To launch DOSEMU and then start that batch file from (for example) a WP51 directory on drive E:, you would create a launcher or hotkey (following the directions above) with this as the command (follow the dashes, spaces, single and double quotation marks, and upper-case and lower-case letters exactly, and type the entire command on one line):
/usr/bin/dosemu -I 'keystroke "e:\r cd \\wp51\r startwp.bat\r"'In the string within the double quotation marks, \r sends the Enter key, \\ sends a single backslash, and the spaces after the Enter key (\r) are present for readability only. For further options (including a code that speeds up the keystrokes) see the section on "Running a DOS-application directly from Unix shell" in the documentation at DOSEMU.org.
Note: I believe the -D switch indicates that a command-line follows; the -a switch turns off the debugging that otherwise would be turned on with -D, and the -I switch parses the following string as a command. For a summary of DOSEMU command-line switches, see this documentation page.
You can set up a launcher or hotkey that will automatically launch DOSEMU, run an application (such as WP) and close down DOSEMU when you exit the application. You should set up the autoexec.bat file described in the installation instructions above, because the unix -e command at the end of that file will automatically run the DOS command fed to it during a launcher, and then close down DOSEMU after running that command. For example, a launcher or hotkey command that simply runs DOSEMU might look like this:
/usr/bin/dosemu
But this can be modified to run wp.com in the directory \wp51 by adding a string in quotation marks at the end of the command, like this:
/usr/bin/dosemu "\wp51\wp.com"
In its default installation, DOSEMU uses three drive letters: C:, for the main disk, D: for your Linux home directory, and E: for the CD-ROM. If you want to use additional drive letters, whether for new virtual drives that are actually folders in your Linux system, or for accessing an existing Windows drive on your hard disk, you will have to make some changes in your DOSEMU setup. Two methods are possible.
The basic method:
Edit your C:\Autoexec.bat file. To change the drive letter of your home directory from D: to (for example) H:, find the line that reads:
lredir d: linux\fs%DOSDRIVE_D%
and change "d:" to "h:" (no quotation marks). Or place the command "rem" (no quotation marks) at the very start of the line to disable it entirely and make your home directory unavailable to DOSEMU. Restart DOSEMU.
To change the drive letter of your CD-ROM from E: to (for example) G:, find the line that reads:
lredir e: linux\fs/media/cdrom c
and change "e:" to "g:" (no quotation marks). (Note the c at the end of the line, which tells DOSEMU to recognize the drive as a CD-ROM.) Or place the command "rem" (no quotation marks) at the very start of the line to disable it entirely and make the CD-ROM unavailable to DOSEMU. Restart DOSEMU.
Now you may add drive letters by adding a command like this to the end of the file:
lredir d: linux\fs/home/yourUserName/someFolderInYourHomeFolder
If you want to add an external USB drive on which you store your WP documents, you will need to know the volume name of the drive. This name may appear under the desktop icon for the drive when you plug it in to your system, but it is your job to figure out what it is. For example, the name might be something like "CORSAIR" or "HP" or some similar name; this command may not work correctly if the name includes a space. If you don't know the volume name of your USB drive, ask someone to help you figure it out. To add the USB drive to your DOSEMU system, enter a command that looks something like this, but with actual USB drive volume name instead of "YourUSBDriveVolumeName":
lredir u: linux\fs/media/YourUSBDriveVolumeName
You do not need to restart DOSEMU when adding an external drive with this command.
To undo an existing drive letter assignment enter this command:
lredir del x:
where x is the driver letter that you actually want to undo.
A more complicated method:
If you want to change the location of drive D: on your DOSEMU system, follow the "basic method" immediately above. If you want to change drive E:, you may either follow the "basic method" or follow these instructions immediately below, which may also be used for adding drive F: and other drive letters:
In a terminal, navigate to the .dosemu/drives folder in your home directory by entering the command
cd ~/.dosemu/drives
This folder already contains a folder named "c" and a link named "d" that match drives C: and D: in DOSEMU. Now, create a "dummy" drive letter "e" that will not conflict with the existing assignment of E: to your CD-ROM by entering this command:
sudo ln -s /tmp e
Finally, create a folder that you can use as drive F: in DOSEMU by entering this command:
mkdir f
You may of course repeat this process with higher letters in order to create a drive G: or other drives for DOSEMU. Exit the terminal and restart DOSEMU. The new drive will appear as drive F:
See also the separate section on DOSEMU in full-screen (console) mode.
This is a preliminary report that I hope can be expanded and corrected in the future.
If you followed the setup instructions above, and the further steps described below, you can make further changes that will allow you to run DOS and WPDOS in screens with 25, 28, 43, or 50 lines and 40, 80, or 132 columns, while retaining the highly legible standard screen font. If you choose any screen size other than 25x80, WPDOS may return to a 25 line mode after returning to text mode from graphics mode, but this seems to be a bug in WordPerfect.
(1) Experiment with different settings:
Start by experimenting with different settings while running DOSEMU itself. To enable resized screens enter this command at the DOS prompt in DOSEMU:
xmode -font vga
Next, change the screen size by entering one of the following:
mode con lines=60 cols=132
mode con lines=43 cols=132
mode con lines=60 cols=80
Next, experiment with a graphics-based full-screen mode, still using the same graphic bitmap fonts which DOSEMU uses in a window. You can switch to this mode (and switch back again to windowed mode) by pressing Ctrl-Alt F. (This mode is not the same as full-screen (console) mode described elsewhere on this page; the entirely different "console" mode uses the fonts that are built in to your video card.) You may also switch to full-screen graphic-based mode by entering the following command:
xmode -fullscreen on
I was never able to find a full-screen graphics-based mode that worked entirely satisfactorily with WordPerfect, but your luck may be better.
You can return to windowed mode either by pressing Ctrl-Alt-F or by entering:
xmode -fullscreen off
And you can return to a normal screen size by entering:
mode co80
which is the equivalent of:
mode con lines=25 cols =80
You can change to other font sizes and styles by entering a command like the following:
xmode -font vga8x19
Fontnames that you can use include vga, vga8x19, vga10x24, vga11x19, and vga12x30. You will see different results with different fonts, and some are more suitable to your actual monitor size than others.
If you start DOSEMU from a terminal you may enter dosemu -w to start the program in full-screen mode (if it normally starts in windowed mode).
(2) Make your changes semi-permanent by writing them into the preferences file:
To enable resized screens by default, close DOSEMU, and edit your ~/.dosemurc file, and find the line that reads:
# $_X_font = ""
Remove the comment mark (#) and change the rest of the line to read:
$_X_font = "vga"
Save the file. When you next open DOSEMU, use the FreeDOS MODE command, as in the examples shown above (for example):
mode con lines=43 cols=132
Start WPDOS. If it fails to open in the correct screen size, try using the command-line switch /f2 which forces WP to respect the existing screen size. You may also want to try the switch /ss=#,# (where #,#should be the rows and columns, as in /ss=43,132).
You may now specify the screen font that you want to use in DOSEMU by removing the comment mark (#) from this line in your ~/.dosemurc file and adding a fontname between the quotation marks:
# $_X_font = ""
Possible settings (between the quotation marks) include vga, vga8x19, vga10x24, vga11x19, and vga12x30.
If you want DOSEMU always to open in full-screen mode (and toggle back to windowed mode by pressing Ctrl-Alt-F) then modify the line in your ~/.dosemurc file that reads
# $_X_fullscreen = (off)
Remove the comment mark (#) and change (off) to (on).
Warning: In my system, if I make the change described above (i.e., I specify $_X_font = "vga" instead of the default setting $_X_Font = "") and I then turn on WordPerfect's 512-character text screen mode, the wrong characters appear when I type one of the characters that are normally visible on screen with the 512-character mode. This problem does not occur when the default font setting ($_X_Font = "")is specified in the DOSEMU configuration file. (However, see the list of problems in the opening section of this page.)
Alternative method for WPDOS 5.1: When running in a window, DOSEMU emulates a Trident video card. Two WPDOS 5.1 video drivers are available for Trident video cards, one for text mode, available in a corrected version elsewhere on this site (TRIDEN_T.VRS) and one for graphics mode (TRIDENT.VRS), available from Corel's web site. The text mode driver lets you select among a number of screen sizes for WP in text mode; use Shift-F1, Display, Text Screen Type to select the Trident VGA driver and select a font size; the larger screen sizes will produce unreadably small text, but the 80x30 mode is ideal. (Warnings: Use only the Trident VGA text mode driver, not the TRIDENT.VRS graphics mode driver, which instantly causes DOSEMU to crash; instead use the new VESA driver for graphics mode. Also, do not attempt to use the Trident VGA driver when running DOSEMU in full-screen console mode.)
DOSEMU in windowed (not full-screen) terminal mode: By entering dosemu -t at a terminal prompt, you can run DOSEMU in a non-graphic mode that uses only the standard fonts available in your terminal. DOSEMU opens in the screen size of your terminal when you start up DOSEMU, and WPDOS will start in the same screen size. (Do not try to resize the terminal window while DOSEMU is running; you will only confuse things.) In my setup, DOSEMU started out with a blank, black screen, and I had to type the command cls (blindly) before I could see the DOS prompt. WPDOS graphics features (print preview, etc.) will not work at all in this mode, and will produce a blank screen if you attempt to use any of them; if you accidentally try to use WPDOS graphics, simply press F7 to return to the text screen. 512-character text mode does not work at all in this mode; nor do the navigation keys on the numeric keypad of most keyboards. Note that these problems do not occur in full-screen console mode.
The DOS window screen size may also be adjusted through the use of two utilities available from this site's text mode page. David Manthey's VMODE.EXE can set the screen to many standard video modes; experiment with 50 through 57 and 108 through 10C (hex). Jason Hood's TM.COM program can set the screen any practical number of rows, but the option to set the screen to 90 columns does not work.
Most terminal programs use the F-keys for their own features, and you will need to perform some additional steps before you can use the F-keys in WordPerfect when running in a windowed terminal. For example, in the Gnome Terminal, go to the Edit menu, then Keyboard Shortcuts, and remove the checkmarks next to the first two options (which concern the F-keys in general and F10 in particular); then, on the same menu, disable the function keys F1 and F11 in the list of keyboard shortcuts (click on the accelerator key, then press Backspace to disable the shortcut). In some distributions, the settings you choose here also seem to affect the xterm terminal program. In Roxterm, use Edit Current Profile and edit the keyboard tab.
DOSEMU can be run in full-screen console mode (character-based, not in a window). Press Ctrl-Alt-F1 (or F2 through F4) to open a character-based terminal window, and log in. Enter the command dosemu -s to start DOSEMU; do not omit the -s switch, and be certain to use a lower-case "s". You will be prompted for your password. (The procedure described here works correctly under Ubuntu 9.04 and 9.10; with other distributions, you may need to log in as root in order to run dosemu -s.) You can return to the normal Linux graphic-interface mode by pressing Alt-F7 or Ctrl-Alt-F7.
Note: The method described above does not work when Linux is run in a VMware "virtual machine"; depending on your distribution, it may or may not be possible to run DOSEMU in full-screen "console" mode in a virtual machine.
If your video hardware supports VESA graphics, you should be able to use VESA graphics in WPDOS; otherwise ordinary VGA graphics should work normally. You may exit DOSEMU by entering the command exitemu at the DOS prompt; the Ctrl-Alt-PageDown keystroke will not exit DOSEMU in full screen console mode.
After using DOSEMU, you may (or may not) want to log out of full-screen console mode by entering the command logout; if you use this command, you will be obliged to log in again with a password if you return to full-screen mode.
Warning: If you use VESA graphics in WPDOS, be certain to set the screen size (1024x768, 1280x,1024, etc.) to be the same size as your actual physical monitor. If your VESA graphics screen size is different from that of your actual monitor, WP may crash when you switch from text mode into graphic mode. Also, you may need to use this site's patched version of the WPDOS 6.x VESA driver instead of the one supplied with WPDOS 6.x
In full-screen mode, do not run DOSEMU without the essential -s switch, because many WPDOS features will not work, including keyboard navigation, compose, and graphics!
Note: Read this note if your system uses a Matrox video card, and you use a "kernel parameter" to set the video mode when launching Linux. (If you do not know what a "kernel parameter" is, then you almost certainly do not use one, and you need not read this note.) If your kernel parameter specifies any video mode other than "normal" (for example, if you use something like vga=0x317), then you may see a blank screen after exiting DOSEMU in full-screen (console) mode. You will need to press Ctrl-Alt-F7 to return to an existing X (graphic interface) session, or, if no X session is running, enter startx (you will not see anything on screen while typing), which will launch a graphic session. When you return to the full-screen console session, the text on screen will again be visible. This is not a bug in DOSEMU but a problem in the Linux framebuffer driver. If you do not encounter this problem, then you need not worry about it. (Information from Lutz Reuter.)
To create PDF files by "printing" from WPDOS under DOSEMU, perform the following steps (tested under Ubuntu Linux 9.04 and 9.10).
(1) Make sure that cups-pdf is installed in your distribution, and install it if it is not; it is not installed by default in some up-to-date distributions, including recent versions of Ubuntu. Also make absolutely certain that lpr is installed; it seems not to be installed in some distributions.
(2) Note: This step is not required with Ubuntu 9.10 or later. In your home folder (not your desktop folder) create a folder named PDF (all capital letters), if this folder does not exist already. This ~/PDF folder will contain the PDF files created by this method.
(3) After installing cups-pdf you may already have a printer named PDF available in your list of Linux printers. If you do not see such a printer, use whatever method your distribution provides for creating a cups-pdf printer that will print to a PDF file. Typically, you should use your distribution's printer setup utility and find the option to create a PDF printer. It may be listed as "CUPS-PDF" or "Print into PDF file" or some similar name. When you create the printer, name it "PDF" (no quotation marks). Test the printer to make certain that a PDF file is created. The output file will be created in the PDFfolder in your home folder (~/PDF)·
(4) Edit your ~/.dosemurc file, and find the line that reads:
# $_lpt3 = ""
Remove the comment mark (#) at the start of the line, and change the line to read:
$_lpt3 = "lpr -P PDF"
Of course, this procedure will work only if lpr is installed, as it is in most recent distributions, but not in all. Save the file.
(5) Run DOSEMU, start WordPerfect, select a standard PostScript printer (such as Apple LaserWriter IINTX), name the driver something like "PDF Printer", set the printer port to LPT3. Print a document to this printer. A PDF file with an arbitrary filename (something like job_16-_stdin_.pdf) will appear in your ~/PDF folder; the number in the filename will be different for each print job. This method absolutely requires that you use a PostScript printer driver in WPDOS; it will not work with a PCL printer driver.
Note: A moderately expert Linux user can easily create a shell script that creates PDF files from the output from a WPDOS PCL printer driver by converting the output with the Linux version of GhostPCL. If you write such a script, please let me know and I will add it to this page.
Warning: When editing the cups-pdf.conf file you may be tempted to change the output folder from ~/PDF. Don't do it. In some distributions, you will also need to change the output location in another file used by the "apparmor" system, and it is difficult to keep track of file locations that need to specified in two separate files.
Note: An alternative to the Apple LaserWriter IINTX printer driver mentioned above is the Xerox DocuTech 135 driver, which gives access to many different sheet sizes. For color printing, try the Tektronix Phaser ColorQuick driver. If you do not see any of the original WordPerfect PostScript drivers on the list of additional printers in your copy of WPDOS, you can install the drivers from the original WordPerfect installation disks, or download drivers from Corel's page for WPDOS 5.1 printer drivers or its page for WPDOS 6.x printer drivers.
When DOSEMU is running in a window (not in full-screen console mode), you can copy text from the Linux clipboard into WPDOS by pressing the middle mouse button (or whatever equivalent button or button-combination used by your mouse).
To copy text from WPDOS to the Linux clipboard, drag the mouse over the text in WPDOS that you want to select; do not press any keys; next click in the Linux application where you want to copy the text, and press the middle mouse button to paste the text.
You may also use macros described elsewhere on this page in order to perform these tasks.
Note: If you perform this paste-from-WPDOS action often, you may want to prevent WPDOS itself from selecting text when you drag with the mouse in DOSEMU; to do this, you should disable the mouse in WPDOS. One convenient way to do this is to use Setup Shift-F1, and go to the Mouse menu; select a driver that you do not have, such as "Microsoft Mouse (Bus)", and this will prevent WPDOS from detecting mouse actions.
You may use macros for keyboard-only copying and pasting between the Linux X-system clipboard and WordPerfect 5.1 or 6.x. To use these macros, download the following archive files:
For WPDOS 5.1, download LinClip5.ZIP. Then:
For WPDOS 6.x, download LinClip6.ZIP. Then:
If you skipped any of the above steps, then these macros are guaranteed not to work! You must perform all the above steps!
Next, perform the following steps, and, yes, they are all essential.
1. Install the Linux program xsel into your Linux system. Use your distribution's package manager or other program installer to install xsel . Do not skip this step! It is absolutely essential! If you do not perform this step, the macros are guaranteed not to work!
2. Make sure that you have the iconv command installed in your Linux system. (It is almost certainly there already.) Open a terminal and type the command iconv and press Enter. If no error message appears, then press Ctrl-C to close iconv. If an error message tells you that iconv cannot be found, then install it in your system. This step is absolutely essential!
3. Open a Linux terminal and enter the following command:
chmod +x ~/clipcopy.sh
4. If (and only if) you have modified your default DOSEMU setup so that drive D: in DOSEMU is not the same as your home folder, then you must edit each of the macros change the User Variable "Home Drive" in the macro file itself. You must have a drive letter in DOSEMU that is the same as your home folder in Linux. This is essential! If you ignore this step, the macros are guaranteed not to work!
You may assign each of the the two macros to a keystroke by editing a keyboard definition in WordPerfect. I recommend that you assign the copy macro to Alt-C and the paste macro to Alt-V. If you do not know how to do this, study your WordPerfect manual.
The icons supplied with DOSEMU can be replaced with higher-resolution icons. Download this dosemu-icons.zip archive and copy the icons (with root privileges) to whichever folder your distribution uses for application icons; this folder is typically /usr/share/pixmaps . The icons replace the existing dosemu.xpm and dosemu32x24.xpm icons, and add new icons named dosemu.png and dosemu-scalable.png.
The first three icons are based on a freely-available icon by Iconica Custom Icons; the scalable icon is from the Mac4Lin Gnome theme for Linux. You may want to experiment by renaming dosemu.png to some other name for safekeeping, and then copying dosemu-scalable.png to dosemu.png.
In most situations, the improvement offered by these is only aesthetic, but the replacement icons have practical value in at least one situation. With Linux running in VMware Fusion running on a Macintosh computer, with Fusion's "Unity" mode turned on, the icon of the current Linux application normally appears in the OS X dock; unfortunately, the default DOSEMU icon does not appear in the dock in Fusion's "Unity" mode, leaving a blank space in the dock instead. The replacement dosemu.xpm or dosemu.png icon will appear in the dock, as expected. (However, the scalable dosemu-scalable.png icon will not appear in the OS X dock in this situation, even if renamed to dosemu.png.)
The FreeDOS operating system that comes with DOSEMU does not include an undelete command, but the MS-DOS 6.22 Undelete.exe works perfectly in FreeDOS. (The MS-DOS Undelete.exe was licensed from Central Point's PC-Tools utility package, and was designed to work in any DOS system.)
To use Undelete.exe in DOSEMU's FreeDOS, find a copy of Undelete.exe on your old DOS disks, or download a copy from the Internet; if you owned a copy of MS-DOS 6.22 at any time, you probably have a legal right to have a copy of this program. Move the downloaded file into your Linux home directory.
Start DOSEMU. Create a new folder on your C: drive; give the folder a convenient name, for example C:\UTIL. By default, your Linux home directory is drive D: in DOSEMU; copy Undelete.exe from drive D:\ to your new C:\UTIL directory.
Edit your C:\Autoexec.bat file. Add your new directory (C:\UTIL) to the path statement. Add the following line at the foot of the file:
c:\util\undelete /sc
(Of course, if you created a folder with a name other than c:\util use the actual name instead.) The /sc switch turns on the "delete sentry" feature for drive C:, so that all files deleted on drive C: are stored in a hidden \Sentry folder. If you also want to use the "delete sentry" function on another drive, add a space and then another switch, for example /sf to use the "delete sentry" feature on drive F:. Do not attempt to use the "delete sentry" feature on drive Z:, which is a read-only drive.
Restart DOSEMU; Undelete.exe will load into memory and begin tracking deleted files.
To restore a deleted file, either enter the command undelete for a list of deleted files from which you can select the ones you want to recover; or enter the command followed by the path of the specific file you wish to restore, as in this example:
undelete c:\path\filename.exe
Of course, use the actual path and filename of the file that you want to restore.
Acknowledgment: Malcolm Wheatley pointed out to me that Undelete.exe can be used in DOSEMU.
This section is now obsolete, because WordPerfect for DOS can be run much more efficiently under OS X through this site's DOSBox-based WPDOSBox system for OS X.
Visitors who wish to run WordPerfect for DOS under the Macintosh OS can do so quite effectively by running it inside the VMware Fusion "virtualization" program. WPDOS, when run in Linux/DOSEMU in VMware products, can use high-resolution VESA graphics effectively, more or less in the same way that it can when running in DOS or Windows 98 inside Virtual PC. I cannot help you set up your own VMware Fusion installation of Linux, but you can find ample guidance on the web, and this page provides a prebuilt VMware installation, as described below.
Note: The method described here can also be used in VMware Workstation on Windows systems, although I do not recommend doing so. If you want to run WPDOS under 64-bit Windows, or under Windows system that does not support full-screen WPDOS graphics, I strongly recommend that you use the Virtual PC method instead.
Serious warning: I wrote this section of this page only for visitors who want to run WPDOS on a Macintosh under OS X, with additional instructions for those few visitors who may have some special reason for using this method on a Windows computer. I do not recommend that you use the method described here unless you have a very specific and fully thought-out reason for doing so. Please do not ask me to help you use any of the methods described on this page.
A prebuilt VMware virtual machine that runs Ubuntu Linux and DOSEMU: If you wish to use a prebuilt system that runs Ubuntu Linux with DOSEMU, I have prepared a virtual machine that you can download in this 1GB ZIP DosemuLucid.zip archive (revised 17 July 2010 to support printing; apologies to anyone who downloaded an earlier version). The archive contains a complete VMware virtual machine that runs a minimal version of Ubuntu Linux 10.04 ("Lucid Lynx") with DOSEMU installed in it. It does not include WordPerfect itself, which you must install by yourself, using your own copy of WordPerfect. This minimal Ubuntu installation contains no application software; you should feel free to install Firefox or AbiWord or some other software that can be used to convert WordPerfect files into more modern formats, but there is no need to do so.
The instructions that follow are deliberately brief. I cannot help you use this virtual machine! You must study the VMware documentation and search the web if you do not understand its features. The virtual machine has a working copy of the VMware Tools installed, so you can drag files between the Mac (or Windows) desktop to the virtual machine; you can share text between the host and virtual machine by using the clipboard; and you can enable the Shared Folders feature that lets you open a folder on the host machine inside the virtual machine. The easiest way to add files to your DOSEMU setup is to use the Places menu on the Ubuntu top-line menu, and choose Drive C:; this will open a Nautilus window into which you can drag folders or files from the host machine.
Note: A C:\WP51 directory already created in DOSEMU includes the VGAVESA.VRS high-resolution graphics driver that you can use with WPDOS 5.1, but you must install your own copy of WPDOS.
If you use VMware Fusion on a Mac: To use this system on a Mac, download the ZIP archive and extract its contents to your desktop. The contents are a single package file named DOSEMU (or DOSEMU-Karmic or DOSEMU-Lucid or some similar name, depending on when I uploaded it). Move this file to the folder that contains your VMware Fusion virtual machines (typically Documents | Virtual Machines), and double-click the DOSEMU (or DOSEMU-Luric or some similar name) package file to launch it in Fusion. When Fusion presents a dialog asking if you copied or moved the virtual machine, choose either one (in this situation, both choices have the same effect). When the Ubuntu system starts up, it will automatically open a DOSEMU session that displays some explanatory text. Shut down the DOSEMU session; shut down (do not suspend) the Ubuntu machine, and change the settings of the virtual machine to suit your needs. I recommend that you turn on Shared Folders and enable Printing. You may also want to enable the CD/DVD option if you plan to install WPDOS from a CD or CD disk image.
To use the Shared Folders feature, when assigning a name to your shared folder, be careful to assign a name that has no more than eight letters and includes no spaces or punctuation. Do not use "Documents on Roscoe" but something like MyDocs. Then, in DOSEMU, at the C:\ prompt, if you want to assign (for example) drive F: in DOSEMU to your MyDocs folder, enter a command like this:
lredir f: linux\fs/mnt/hgfs/MyDocs
If this command works as you want it to work, you may add it to your DOSEMU Autoexec.bat file.
The following notes contain brief instructions for printing from VMware Fusion; I cannot give you more detailed instructions, and different versions of VMware Fusion require different methods. Study the other sections of this page and search the web for advice.
Note: If your printer is attached to your network via an Ethernet cable (not connected by a USB cable to your Mac or another machine), you can easily set it up to work with DOSEMU by following this procedure. In the Linux system, choose System | Administration | Printing. Click New; when the Select Device menu appears, expand the line that reads Network Printer; select your printer; click Forward; the next steps will vary with different printers, but click Forward until you reach the Apply button; then print a test page, and press OK until you return to the Printer Configuration dialog. Use the Printer menu to make sure that your printer is selected as the Default printer (if offered a choice of the default System-wide or User printer, choose System-wide).
Note: If your printer is attached directly to your Macintosh computer, then the setup procedure is more complicated, and the results will be less reliable, and printing may require that you press a Go button on your printer before a print job will print at all. In your OS X host system, use System Preferences, then Sharing; enable Printer Sharing and add a checkmark next to the printer that you want to share with your Linux system. Close System Preferences. In the Linux guest system, , choose System | Administration | Printing. Click Server, then Settings; in the Basic Server Settings dialog, add a checkmark next to Show Printers Shared by Other Systems; click OK. Your shared OS X printer should appear automatically in the list of printers. If it does not appear automatically, click New; when the Select Device menu appears, expand the line that reads Network Printer; click Windows Printer via Samba; click the Browse button and navigate to your shared printer (you may need to enter your OS X username and password) and click OK. Back in the Select Device dialog, under Authentication, select Set Authentication Details Now, and enter your OS X username and password. Click Forward. After Linux searches for drivers, choose the correct driver for your printer. The next steps will vary with different printers, but click Forward until you reach the Apply button; then print a test page, and press OK until you return to the Printer Configuration dialog. Use the Printer menu to make sure that your printer is selected as the Default printer (if offered a choice of the default System-wide or User printer, choose System-wide).
For information on running WPDOS in a virtual Windows XP system under Fusion, see another page.
If you use VMware Workstation on a Windows system: (Remember that I do not recommend this method! Don't ask me for help with a method I do not recommend!) The same virtual machine can be used on a Windows PC with VMware Workstation 6.5 or later. (I cannot provide detailed advice on VMware Workstation; you must already know the basic procedures for using it.) Create a new folder in your VM Machines folder in which to store the virtual machine. Open the downloaded ZIP archive; find the folder named "DOSEMU.vmwarevm" and extract to your new folder the four files named DOSEMU.* (but not the included folder and not the file named Applications if it is present). Add the virtual machine to VMware Workstation and launch it. When VMware Workstation presents a dialog asking if you copied or moved the virtual machine, choose either one (in this situation, both choices have the same effect). You will need to enable the Shared Folders feature if you want to use it.
To use the Shared Folders feature, when assigning a name to your shared folder, be careful to assign a name that has no more than eight letters and includes no spaces or punctuation. Do not use "My Documents" but something like MyDocs. Then, in DOSEMU, at the C:\ prompt, if you want to assign (for example) drive F: in DOSEMU to your MyDocs folder, enter a command like this:
lredir f: linux\fs/mnt/hgfs/MyDocs
If this command works as you want it to work, you may add it to your DOSEMU Autoexec.bat file. See the instructions above for setting up printing on a Mac system and adapt them, if necessary, to work on a Windows system.
After you have installed your Linux and DOSEMU system in VMware Fusion or Workstation, install WordPerfect for DOS exactly as described elsewhere on this page; make sure to use the recommendation to improve DOSEMU's speed. Experiment with DOSEMU and WordPerfect's font and screen size settings until you find a mode that suits your needs. You should experiment with VMware's full-screen and "unity" modes.
With WPDOS 6.x, you can switch into graphics or page mode for editing in high-resolution VESA graphics. The speed and clarity tend to be superior to the VESA graphics available in any Windows-based system.
Warning: Do not try to run DOSEMU in full-screen text-based console mode under VMware! It will not run, and you may need to restart your emulated Linux system in order to return to the ordinary graphics-based Linux desktop. However, you may, of course, switch DOSEMU to its graphics-based full-screen mode while running on the Linux desktop.
Read this section only if you have a extremely convincing reason to use a standard version of DOS in DOSEMU, instead of the supplied FreeDOS. The only reason I can imagine is that you need the support for the euro symbol in IBM PC-DOS 2000.
To install a standard version of DOS in DOSEMU, instead of FreeDOS, follow these instructions instead of those shown above in step (2).
WordPerfect under DOSEMU seems to be stable with MS-DOS 6.22 and IBM PC DOS 2000, but only if you use the /LL or /DL startup switch recommended throughout this page. With older versions of DOSEMU, Windows 98 DOS (MS-DOS 7.x) tended to crash when WPDOS was launched, even when the /LL or /DL startup switches were used, but the DOSEMU version supplied with Ubuntu Linux seems to work well.
Note: If you insist on using Windows 98 DOS with older versions of DOSEMU, make sure that your MSDOS.SYS file (which is an ordinary text file) consists entirely of the line ";SYS" (note the initial semi-colon) or only the following three lines: "[Options] | BootGUI=0 | Logo=0". To edit the MSDOS.SYS file, you will need to remove the system, hidden, and read-only file attributes; search the internet for information on how to do this. When editing the file, you may ignore any instructions to pad it with the character "x" or anything else.
The following steps can be performed in either in a terminal or a file manager, depending on which feels most comfortable to you. You must already know the Linux commands needed for performing these steps. These instructions assume that you have either (a) a bootable DOS disk created under MS-DOS 6.22 (or MS-DOS 7.x or IBM PC-DOS 2000) or (b) a disk file that contains an "image" of a bootable DOS disk created under MS-DOS 6.22 (or MS-DOS 7.x or IBM PC-DOS 2000) or (c) copies of all the files normally found on such a disk. The instructions below apply to MS-DOS 6.22, but are easily adapted to MS-DOS 7.x or IBM PC-DOS.
In your ~/.dosemu folder, create a folder named something like dos622 (or any other name you choose). Remember this name; I refer to it elsewhere on this page as your "DOSEMU C: drive".
Copy into this dos622 folder the following files from your MS-DOS 6.22 boot diskette (or image of that boot diskette), or from any other suitable source (you may use the Linux mcopy command to copy from a DOS floppy): io.sys, msdos.sys, and command.com. Copy only these files, and no others, into the root folder of this dos622 folder (and do not copy config.sys or autoexec.bat). I strongly recommend that you create a directory named dos inside the dos622 folder, and copy into it all other standard DOS 6.22 files such as edit.com and other standard DOS features.
Note: If you have IBM PC-DOS 2000, you may choose to name your DOSEMU C: drive something like ibmdos. The files that you should copy into it are named ibmio.com, ibmsys.com, and command.com, not the filenames mentioned above for MS-DOS.
Next, copy from the folder /usr/lib/dosemu/drive_z to your dos622 folder all of the following: all the subdirectories (and their contents) and, from the root folder, the file autoemu.bat only, and not the other files in the root folder. Do not copy the other individual files from the root directory.
If your dos622 folder contains an item named doc , delete that item; it is a broken link which you do not need anyway.
Edit your ~/.dosemurc file; find the line that reads:
# $_hdimage = "drives/*"
and add a new line immediately below it that reads:
$_hdimage = "dos622"
Note that the comment mark (#) is not present in the added line.
Start DOSEMU, either by entering in a terminal the command dosemu or by using your distribution's menu system; in Ubuntu 9.04 and 9.10, DOSEMU appears on the Applications | System Tools menu as "DOS emulator". DOSEMU will start and DOS will prompt you to confirm the time and date. At the C:\> prompt, enter the following command (this time only; you need not do this again after performing the following steps):
path = c:\bin;c:\dosemu;
Create and edit C:\Config.sys: Now, enter the command:
edit c:\Config.sys
In the editing window, type the following lines, and save the file.
dos=umb,high
files=60
lastdrive=Z
device=c:\dosemu\ems.sys
device=c:\dosemu\cdrom.sys
shell=c:\command.com /p /k autoemu.bat
Warning: If you use devicehigh= statements rather than device= statements, DOSEMU may become unreliable.
Edit C:\Autoemu.bat: Now use the edit.com program again to edit the existing file C:\Autoemu.bat. First, make these changes to the file:
Next, in order to avoid DOSEMU crashes that result from problems with the WP "launcher" program, add (anywhere in the file) a new line that reads either:
set WP = /DL
or
set WP = /LL
The first of these alternatives (/DL) will prevent the launcher program from running at all; this may prevent some WP features from working. The second alternative (/LL) will load the launcher program into low (not expanded or extended) memory; you will use a few KB for use by WP, but you will retain all features and prevent memory problems from occurring.
Save the file when you have finished making these changes.
Close DOSEMU by pressing Ctrl-Alt-PageDown, or by entering the command exitemu , or simply by closing the DOSEMU window (you may use the same methods of closing DOSEMU in any future session). Restart DOSEMU to make sure that everything is working correctly. While DOSEMU is running, you may, if you want, setup a full DOS installation by installing DOS from floppy disks in drive A:. Proceed to step (3).
DOSEMU (like DOSbox) is one of the few modern environments that makes it possible to use the sound-clip feature in WPDOS 6.x. DOSEMU emulates an original SoundBlaster card, and you may be able to use the SoundBlaster or SoundBlaster Pro support in WPDOS 6.x With older versions of Ubuntu Linux (through 7.10, perhaps), WPDOS sound works perfectly without any special effort. With more recent versions, sound may cause WPDOS either to stall briefly or lock up. Depending on your distribution, sound may not work at all unless you change a setting in .dosemurc so that the line
# $_sound = (on)
reads instead (note the removal of the comment mark at the start of the line):
$_sound = (2)
In WPDOS, when setting up hardware, make sure to match the IRQ setting to the setting shown in .dosemurc.
Also, if sound does not work correctly, you may need to replace the ALSA sound system in Linux with the older OSS system. Instructions for making this change in recent versions of Ubuntu Linux may be found on this Ubuntu support page. Do not attempt this unless you are prepared to restore your Linux system from a backup in case of problems!
Note for users of Ubuntu Linux 8.04 and 8.10 only: If nothing happens when you start DOSEMU from a
menu, try to start it from a terminal with the command dosemu ; if you see an error message that says
something like "LOWRAM mmap: Invalid argument Segmentation fault", then run the
following command from a terminal:
echo 0 | sudo tee /proc/sys/vm/mmap_min_addr
and then start DOSEMU again from the terminal. You may prefer to make the change permanent,
so that you do not need to enter the command (and type your password) every time
you restart Linux. To make the change permanent, open a terminal, give yourself root
privileges, and edit a settings file whose name and location will depend on
your Linux version. Under Ubuntu 8.04, the file that must be edited is /etc/sysctl.conf ; under Ubuntu 8.10, the file is
/etc/sysctl.d/10-process-security.conf . In either
case, find the line that reads
vm.mmap_min_addr = 65536
and change the number from 65536 to 0 (zero). Save the file. Now, in a terminal enter the
command
sudo /etc/init.d/procps restart
and close the terminal. DOSEMU should now work. If you are
not running Ubuntu, but some other distribution, then this final step may
not be relevant to your system, and you may need to restart Linux before DOSEMU
will run.