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RF Toolbox from Teledyne

This is an old DOS program that is still very handy with lots of RF functions.

It workd fine from the command prompt in Win7 32 bit, but I can't get it to play inside DOSbox on Win 10 64 bit. [Also can't get it to play inside DOSbox on Win7 32 bit.]

Has anybody on here been down this route and made it work on Win 10 64 bit, either with tweaks to RF Toolbox or DOXbox settings?

I feel the isssue is a video display issue as Toolbox first runs a program called Speedscreen, then Toolbox prog, then remove Speedscreen.

You can find it here and in several places:

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Thanks for any ideas.

fred

Reply to
fred
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Toolbox.shtml

There was another old DOS one called RFsim99 that also had some useful functions IIRC. Shame they're less and less easily run as time goes on.

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Reply to
Cursitor Doom

Buy a cheap old laptop with win98 ? Just done that for myself. Too much legacy stuff that just wont run on W7 or 10

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Reply to
TTman

If it works fine from the cmd prompt on Win7 32bit, why do you need it to work under DOSbox?

What fails when you try to run it?

The stock DOSbox 0.74 gave me problems running some long forgotten program. When I switched to the SVN daum version at: things improved. Sorry, but I don't recall the details. One important detail is to have more than one version of DOSbox installed. I've had it try to read the wrong dosbox.conf file.

I've been running RFtools for many years on my Windoze XP machine in an MSDOS cmd window without any changes or tweaks. Just tried it, and it works.

Running it under XP and DOSbox SVN Daum also works. See screen grab: I tried some of the functions and they all work.

No clue, but my guess(tm) is that you have multiple copies of DOSbox installed. Clean up and try again. It should work. I have a Windoze

7 64 bit machine available, but I just ran out of time. If you want me to try it, it will need to wait until late tonite or tomorrow. 
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Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
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Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

On Sat, 24 Mar 2018 10:17:38 -0700, Jeff Liebermann wrote: (...)

Also, I suggest that you try AppCAD 4.0 for RF calcs:

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Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

I don't have multiple copies of DOSbox running/installed. Your lower screenshot is exactly what I want. I'll find DOSbox SVN Daum and try it on Win10, 64bit..

Thanks. fred

Reply to
fred

Appcad does a lot of that stuff.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics
Reply to
John Larkin

...or run it on a virtual machine like virtualbox.

Reply to
aioe usenet

When the x86 processors are running in the 64 bit mode, some of the 16 bit virtual 86 mode 16 bit opcodes are replacing with 64 bit opcodes, thus 16 bit DOS programs can't be natively executed in x86 64 bit mode.

One work around is to install a 32 bit Windows virtual machine into the 64 bit system. In the 32 bit Windows, the DOS program is then emulated in the VDM (Virtual DOS machine) as in any 32 bit Windows system.

Reply to
upsidedown

I've had problems getting fairly simple MSDOS programs to run on machines running various 64 bit Windoze mutations. For example, the fairly simple 1980's dBase III works just fine on 32bit Windoze, but likes to hang and prints only when the program exits on 64 bit Windoze. That's both running the dBase III interpreter and compiler. I finally had to setup a 32 bit XP virtual machine in order to make the customer happy. I suggest you try to make it work on your Win 7

32 bit machine before attacking the 64 bit problem.

I don't have a Windoze 10 machine available for trying DOSbox. In general, MS likes to break things every 6 months with their monster roll-up updates so I'm not surprised that you're having problems.

Also, you didn't answer my question... what happens when it fails to run on Windoze 10 64 bit under DOSbox?

If Win 10 64 bit looks hopeless, try installing MSDOS 6.22 on a virtual machine (VirtualBox VM): etc...

Good luck.

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Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
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Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

On Sat, 24 Mar 2018 13:08:01 -0700, Jeff Liebermann

Dosbox closes !

Reply to
fred

I don't think there has ever beeen a windows appcad, so again I would have to determine it runs ok inside DOSbox

Reply to
fred

Appcad for Windows:

formatting link

It does pcb trace impedances very well, much better than most silly online calculators.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics
Reply to
John Larkin

Ahem... That's AppCAD 3.0.2. Try AppCAD 4.0.0. at: which fixes some problems.

Incidentally, the download from Broadcom doesn't provide a version number. Same with the setup program. I had to install it to see what version was provided. Now, I have to download 4.0.0 to get it back to my previous setup. Grumble.

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Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

Ooops, I was wrong. The Broadcom download is 4.0.0. I had both installed on my machine got them confuse. Sorry.

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Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

Ok. I'll be equally terse. It works for me.

Perhaps you see a problem here? The more info you provide (i.e. version of OS, version of DOSbox, version of RFtools, how you ran it, were there any error messages?, anything interesting in Event Viewer?, contends of dosbox.conf, etc) the better an answer you'll get.

I don't have a Windoze 10 machine handy, so I fired up a Win 7 64 bit machine. After updating the OS (yawn) I installed DOSbox SVN DAUM, copied RFtools to C:\RFTOOLS, and appended the following to the bottom of the stock dosbox-SVN-DAUM.conf file: mount R C:\RFTOOLS R: I then started DOSbox using the icon provided by the installer, and ran RFT.BAT, which resulted in: Looks like it works on Win 7 64 bit.

If I should blunder across a Win 10 machine, I'll do it again, but I think this is sufficient to demonstrate that it works in a 64 bit environment.

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Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
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Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

Sorry, I didn't mean to sound terse.

I'm running it the same way as you, ie; mount c c:\dos-prog [each DOS prog then has its own subdirectory] cd toolbox RFT [All my other DOS progs work work this way] [Here's the message:] EXIT to error unhandled INT17 call 61 [then DOSbox closes]

As it works for you with DOSbox SVN Daum, I will download and try that. Thanks.

Reply to
fred

I seem to recall that mounting C was considered a bad idea. I don't recall why. Try it like this instead: MOUNT H C:\DOS-PROG H: CD H:\TOOLBOX RFT.BAT

INT 17h is a ROM BIOS printer interrupt Interrupt 17h -- Printer I/O: the printer driver supports 3 functions, given by AH=0,1, or 2 Function 0: writes character to the printer Function 1: initializes a printer port Function 2: gets printer status

Hmmm... no function call 61. Yet another mystery.

I had a hell of time getting dBase III to print inside of DOSbox. I gave up and installed a VM in order to get around the problem. My guess(tm) is that you have something misconfigured in the dosbox.conf file that involves a printer. Run: NET USE to see if any printer ports have been re-directed. Otherwise, I suggest you reset the your dosbox.conf to defaults.

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Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
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Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558
Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

The other things I use are TXline and, when desperate, ALTC/ALTC2.

TXline does diff pairs, which Appcad doesn't.

My PCBs usually have measured trace impedances within 20% of the simulated values, which is about all you can expect in real life on regular multilayer FR4, and is good usually enough. One can pay the board houses for impedance control if it really matters, which it might in RF or something.

The Saturn PCB Toolkit is great too. It does asymmetric stripline and a lot of other stuff. It seems to agree with other programs reasonably well.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics
Reply to
John Larkin

Brown lists it.

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could be this:

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seems like a bug in dosbox. it should probably be be ignoring unexpected calls instead of quitting.

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Reply to
Jasen Betts

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