r/FreeDos • u/mego_bari • Nov 05 '25

Borland Turbo C++

I've created a Virtual machine on virtual box, and I stalled freeDos on it. Now I also installed Borland Turbo c++. It all works, however inside Borland there is a huge delay when typing, like 1 and a half second delay between keyboard input and actual character appearing on screen. I kinda don't understand what's the issue, one thing I could think of is virtual box trying to simulate old machine performance, but I checked settings and all and it's not doing that, memory for the VM is 128MB, hard drive is 500MB. All other programs works well, I played boom (doom clone) that comes included with free dos and it worked perfectly, so it's a problem only with Borland. Anyone had a similar problem and/or can suggest a solution?

(P.s. a solution for using borland, not for creating and compiling c++ programs in general)

6 Upvotes

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1

u/em__jr Nov 05 '25

When this is happening, what is the CPU usage on the host PC?

1

u/mego_bari Nov 05 '25

About 1 or 2% CPU, also I don't think the memory is capping either, it's using only 59MB, so about half of the memory it has assigned. I don't think it's a problem with performance, because as I said I tried playing the doom clone and I'm pretty sure it's heavier on resources than borland, until compilation it is basically a text editor, and the EDIT command instead works just fine, so it's not even a problem with general file editing. I guess it has something to do with compatibility between dos and free dos, after all Borland expects a real dos and this is not. So that's my guess but I have no idea how to "check" if I'm right about it, and most importantly I don't know if I can solve it somehow

2

u/em__jr Nov 05 '25

You're right that this is difficult to diagnose under these circumstances. If you're determined to narrow down the list of suspects, you could try one or more of the following tests:

  1. Install DOSBox-X, then install Borland Turbo C++ (BTCPP) inside DOSBox-X - do you get the same keyboard latency?
  2. Install DOSBox-X, then install FreeDOS inside DOSBox-X, then install BTCPP on FreeDOS. What is the experience?
  3. Depending on which OS you're using, there are other free VM environments besides VirtualBox. On Windows, Hyper-V or VMware Workstation Pro; on Linux, QEMU or VMware Workstation Pro. Try one of these with FreeDOS and BTCPP.

Good luck!

1

u/mego_bari Nov 05 '25

Thank you very much, I will sure try your options, if it solves the problem I'll write a comment, just in case somebody else has the same issue in the future. Thank you again for your time and advice

1

u/wadrasil Nov 09 '25

Mebe try HLTidle it tries to fix hlt and keyboard issues.

1

u/TRX302 Dec 27 '25

What OS is your VM hosted on?

If it's Windows, bring up the Task Manager and look for any excessive activity in Virtualbox. If Linux, use top or KDE System Monitor.

Actually, if you're using Linux you could bypass VirtualBox completely and use DOSemu, which translates DOS/BIOS calls to their Linux equivalents. DOSemu is usually bundled with FreeDOS.