Some things do not work on virtual box

[fritzmueller]

I noticed some problems with Costa in virtualbox: I ran FreeDOS FDT2405 in virtualbox - and inside Costa. The mouse is almost unusable as it sometimes splits into two mouse symbols, especially when moving out of the vbox window.
The combination ALTL+character to select a choice marked with underscore also does not work. So it is hard to work with Costa.

Thx.

[jacobpalm]

Hi,

I'm not sure I understand the mouse issue completely. The mouse splitting into two mouse cursors sounds like your own Cursor from Windows or whatever OS you are running, is being shown over the Window at the same time as the one in Costa? That might be related to your VirtualBox settings, try configuring VirtualBox to capture the mouse when clicking in the window and see if that works for you.

You don't have to press ALT or CTRL or any other key when using underlined characters as hotkeys - just press the underlined letter and nothing else, and it will activate.

Hope this helps, let me know if not.

[fritzmueller]

Hi,

I just installed Costa on a real old machine and there mouse works fine. No need to use ALT or CTRL for using underlined characters is a little new for me, but it works fine on your software.

So I will have to find out what's the problem with virtualbox.

 

Fritz

   

Sent: Thursday, May 30, 2024 at 9:25 PM From: "Jacob Palm" @.> To: "jacobpalm/costa" @.> Cc: "fritzmueller" @.>, "Author" @.> Subject: Re: [jacobpalm/costa] Some things do not work on virtual box (Issue #44)

 

Hi,

I'm not sure I understand the mouse issue completely. The mouse splitting into two mouse cursors sounds like your own Cursor from Windows or whatever OS you are running, is being shown over the Window at the same time as the one in Costa? That might be related to your VirtualBox settings, try configuring VirtualBox to capture the mouse when clicking in the window and see if that works for you.

You don't have to press ALT or CTRL or any other key when using underlined characters as hotkeys - just press the underlined letter and nothing else, and it will activate.

Hope this helps, let me know if not.

— Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or unsubscribe. You are receiving this because you authored the thread.Message ID: @.***>

[Axle-Ozz-i-sofT]

fritzmueller The problem occurs within the drivers in virtualBox. Remember that VitualBox does not officially support DOS.

You may notice that your OS mouse is no longer synced in the x.y with the mouse in VirtualBox FreeDOS, especially windowed mode. This will happen with most GUI applications in FreeDOS as the window scaling gets messed up. Most often when changing between GUI apps of different screen resolutions. DOS expects a full screen monitor rather than windowed :) There is very little that you can do other than reset the mouse drivers default scaling for the x,y between VitualBox and DOS.

Usually you can correct it by using the right [Ctrl] to remove the mouse from the VirtualBox window and then re-clicking the OS mouse inside of the window. This resets the VirtualBox screen scaling x,y sync.

There are some other mouse tricks that can be done by swapping to the CTMOUSE driver as well, but they are slightly different issues effects :)

[Edit] VitualBox uses hardware emulation of later era cards and chips. DOS does not have drivers for the later hardware used in VirtualBox, so you have to kind of persist with the default drivers in DOS which are mismatched to the hardware. You will notice this especially with graphics and screen modes as you are kind of trapped in an EGA/VGA default. Most GUI Applications will expect some kind of compatible hardware, or fall back to the default. You can attempt to use something like ScTech Display Doctor to create an emulation layer between DOS and VirtualBox, but it's tricky to set up and buggy in use.

The ultimate answer is to move to a dedicate DOS emulator such as DosBox. I use Virtualbox mostly though.

If your mouse is too jumpy install the CTMOUSE drivers and add CTMOUSE /R44 in the config.sys or autexec.bat The /R44 is the x,y speed scaling for the mouse /Rx,y where the speed is between 0 and 9. Check the CTMOUSE docs ;)

[fritzmueller]

Thanks for response:

Just to clarify: Costa does not support WIN 3.1 programs?

 

Fritz

   

Sent: Sunday, June 02, 2024 at 6:17 AM From: "Axle" @.> To: "jacobpalm/costa" @.> Cc: "fritzmueller" @.>, "Author" @.> Subject: Re: [jacobpalm/costa] Some things do not work on virtual box (Issue #44)

 

fritzmueller The problem occurs within the drivers in virtualBox. Remember that VitualBox does not officially support DOS.

 

You may notice that your OS mouse is no longer synced in the x.y with the mouse in VirtualBox FreeDOS. This will happen with most GUI applications in FreeDOS as the window scaling gets messed up. DOS expects a full screen monitor rather than windowed :) There is very little that you can do other than reset the mouse drivers default scaling an x,y.

 

Usually you can correct it by using the right [Ctrl] to remove the mouse from the VirtualBox window and then re-clicking the OS mouse inside of the window. This resets the VirtualBox screen scaling x,y sync.

 

There are some other mouse tricks that can be done by swapping to the CTMOUSE driver as well, but they are slightly different issues effects :)

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[jacobpalm]

No, Windows 3.x programs are not supported. That would be a massive undertaking, far too much for the scope of Costa. If you want to run Windows programs, you're probably better off just running Windows. Or running both - Windows for using Windows programs, and Costa for running DOS programs without any potential Windows compatibility issues. That's what I personally do on my DOS computers.

[jacobpalm]

Since this is more of a VirtualBox thing than a Costa thing, I'll go ahead and close the issue.

Thanks for taking the time to create it in the first place, and thank you for using Costa!