Dosbox Support for GPIB

[GaryNeal]

Hello,

New to the board but have been using NI GPIB bus technologies for five years in my line of work.  I am currently underway in rewriting some DOS based applications into Windows so that we can support later operating systems but we still have a lot of legacy code written.  I've been exploring the possibility of using DosBox to give some of these applications new life under Windows 7 and later operating systems.  One particular application is a work horse and very versatile app written and maintained by one of our application's engineers.

Currently, I've found that DosBox does not provide support for the GPIB interface board.  However, I downloaded the source to DosBox and found it was written in Visual C++.  Given my prior experience in porting applications to this platform, I feel confident that I could 'enhance' DosBox to provide GPIB support for DOS apps through some form of emulation.  I'm thinking something along the lines of a DOS app running in DosBox calling the GPIB functions which are translated by DosBox into calls into the Windows drivers.

Has anyone ever attempted this before?  I was thinking that the first step would be to understand (and perhaps disassemble) the code contained in some object libraries used by these programs (QBIB.OBJ, MCIB.OBJ, MCIBL.OBJ, etc.).  I've tried looking for the sources for these but my searches have come up dry.  Has anyone been down this path and have had better luck?  If not, would it be possible to get more information on how the DOS driver works to help with this effort?

Thanks in advance.

[Michelle_N]

Hi GaryNeal,

There may be some options depending on what OS and interface you are using. Are you on Windows 7 32-bit or 64-bit? What interface are you using?

In our next release of NI-488.2, we will be adding support for DOS on 32-bit Windows 7. If you're using 64-bit Win 7 and GPIB-USB-HS, we currently have a beta that adds support for XP Mode.

[GaryNeal]

Have you released the next version of your driver that support GPIB for DOS applications under Windows 7 32-bit?

I originally requested the 32-bit variant of Windows 7 from IT for our test stand machines because I knew that the 64-bit variant does not support DOS at all.  To my surprise, I later found out (the hard way) that the current NI driver does not support DOS at all under Windows Vista or 7 (even 32-bit).  Therefore, I ended up having to install XP mode on some systems anyway.

Emulation works fine with the GPIB-ENET devices though I have found that sometimes I am forced to use the internal cards because some NI drivers have bugs when it comes to emulating the GPIB card over the network.  In addition to that, we've also come across timing issues using them that aren't present using local cards.

While I am in the process of rewriting this code my time is often diverted to test stand support which includes supporting this legacy DOS stuff.  Some kind of 'bridge technology' that would be helpful today would be great.

[Michelle_N]

No, it is not released yet. When it gets released and uploaded to the web, I will post back to this forum thread with a link.

Aside from timing, what kind of issues are you running into when emulating with GPIB-ENET? Is this ENET/100? ENET/1000? And what version of the driver are you using?

[Michelle_N · Accepted solution]

NI-488.2 v3.0 is now released and available for download.

For version NI-488.2 version 3.0: Previous versions of NI-488.2 for Windows did not install DOS and Win16 support on Windows 7 or Vista. It is now installed on all 32-bit versions of Windows. The feature is enabled by default, but may be disabled through Measurement and Automation Explorer.

[GaryNeal]

This driver solves our immediate problems, thank you.  Hopefully I will have the software rewritten by the time we move to Windows 8 or higher.

[Michelle_N]

Thanks for the update GaryNeal. Glad to hear this resolves your issue.

[SparkyOne]

Sorry for digging-up such an old post.

GaryNeal,  I'm running into almost the exact same issue with a DOS GPIB program that we have.    Did you have to any special modifications/settings to DosBox in order to use your application?    Our program is using an old version of Microsoft Advanced Basic, but it does not seem to be communicating via GPIB.

I'm in the process of updating to the latest driver listed as the solution...so that may solve my issues.

[GaryNeal]

No, I did not do any modifications to DOSBox to run my application since the NI driver linked on this thread supports DOS applications running in 32-bit Windows Vista or Windows 7 OS's.

Another work-around for me was to run the DOS applications under Windows XP mode on Windows 7 with the NI drivers loaded in the VM and use a GPIB-ENET device for the instruments.

[SparkyOne]

That's what I was afraid of.   I'll have to deconstruct the program code to see if I can figure out why this is no longer talking to our Unit Under Test.