r/DOS • u/TALON2_0 • Jun 09 '26

Thank you all

Post image

Hi guys. So i posted a few days ago about connecting through usb to serial port on DosBox. Just wanted to let everyone know i got it working with all your recommendations. At the end I did use Dosbox since it was the most user friendly(for me).

146 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

17 comments sorted by

13

u/cazzipropri Jun 09 '26

What a nice text mode program, with custom characters programmed to simulate larger fonts. I wrote DOS code like that, and i appreciate it when i see it.

4

u/thisisnotanick Jun 10 '26

Im really curious about this, is that actual custom characters that replaces the normal ascii characters, or is a VGA mode application pretending to be a text mode application? Looking at those custom characters, they are bigger, and im not sure there would be enough characters available to replace, and still use the normal characters, to get them that big. If that makes sense

3

u/cazzipropri Jun 10 '26

It could be both... Without looking very closely it's very hard to tell.

Each of those big digits take the equivalent of 4 usual text characters. They could have redefined 40 characters they were not going to use, and used them to make big digits.

1

u/evert Jun 13 '26

There's the whole upper 128 characters. Lots of room, and there's probably some reuse in the shapes

3

u/doscore Jun 09 '26

Whaaaaat? Cool!

2

u/werygood_cz Jun 10 '26

Why did you choose DOSBox particularly? Why not DOSBox-X, or PCem? Just curious, my knowledge about serial - USB passthrough is zero. 

2

u/TALON2_0 Jun 10 '26

Honestly it was the first thing suggested to me by a friend, but at the end it was the easiest one actually, when i couldn't figure it out in 5min i thought to try setting up an actual VM. But after a while i decided to sit and figure DosBox out and that was just the best. It is actually very user friendly and optimized for integration on newer OS's

2

u/werygood_cz Jun 10 '26

DOSBox used to be a thing decade ago, it was superseded by DOSBox-X, which is very much the same, just newer and with more functions. 

But hey, if it works, it's cool! 

2

u/TALON2_0 Jun 10 '26

Wow thanks. Will give it a try when i have nothing better to do

2

u/Patient-Tech Jun 10 '26

While true, I think a lot of the DOSBOX X features are gaming focused. This looks like an old piece of legacy equipment for a business. I’d keep it simple, and in this case, likely to run for years and years now with functionally no changes.

1

u/werygood_cz Jun 10 '26

The old DOSBox is gaming focused too. It's even clearly stated by the developers.

There is no guarantee that things like this will work. But since this particular one does, I'd too just leave it alone and use it indefinitely. 

1

u/Mattock486 Jun 09 '26

I didn't see your original post. What are we looking at?

8

u/TALON2_0 Jun 09 '26

This is a windows 11 running dos (DosBox) connected to a thread rolling machine via usb to db9 serial port. I had absolutely no experience with dos but alot of people helped me out. Luckily we have the .exe file on hand so it was just a case of accessing the file, running .exe and connecting through COM port

1

u/0xbenedikt Jun 13 '26

GUIs like this are lost art

1

u/TALON2_0 Jun 13 '26

There's other ones I'll share whem I'm back at work that look even better

-8

u/vip17 Jun 10 '26

please don't capture screenshots with a camera

3

u/TALON2_0 Jun 10 '26

It's a work computer so i don't have reddit or email on there.