Getting DOSPLUS 2.1 running in DOSBOX-X
After getting a working DOSPlus v1.2 setup using DOSBOX-X after going down a help file related rabbit-hole using Turbo Pascal 3, I ended up using a BBC Master version of DOSPlus v2.1 to uplift the setup.
Having recently found a way to get DOSPlus v1.2 booting reliability with John Elliott’s excellent XIOS patches, there did not seem to be much information about the DOSPlus O/S itself from a user guide perspective on the internet.
So, I thought I might write myself a Turbo Pascal help utility program to act as a quick reference and acquired a copy of ‘Using DOS Plus on the Amstrad PC’ to help fill in some of the blanks in my knowledge.
Having gone down the route of getting the bones of this working using Turbo Pascal 3 (TP3) and the Database Toolbox package, which was a new to me with TP3, for some reason I ended up looking at BDOS calls and how to get the version number of the ‘CP/M version’ using this call.
I managed to get this working after a couple of false starts around the way the BDOS call works in TP3 so I was feeling good about the overall progress I was making as it has been a number of years since I really did anything using Turbo Pascal.
Out of curiosity I booted up DOSPLUS v2.1 in the BeebEm to see how different this version actually looked as I had never done this before. It was easy enough to do even though I’m not a real BeeB computer fan but the BeebEm is nice enough to able to use based on other virtualisation software.
Looking at the files after it booted there was already file included in that version, which does not seem to exist for v1.2 that I have ever come across. So I wondered if would not just be easier to see if this would run on DOSPlus in my DOSBOX-X setup as this would probably be good enough as most commands were the same and make writing an equivalent tool unncecessary.
So began my journey to try and find a way of getting the help files out of a BBC disk format. Searching the internet did not find a set of the files existing outside of a BBC .ADL format. so I needed to find a way to be able to get the file into a PC/DOS environment.
After a few false starts around OmniDisk, and shortly before trying to use Kermit between BeeBem and DOSBOX-X, I found that the Beeb Image utility which was available on the cowsarenotpurple Acorn related site (see link below), which was able to read and allow me write the files to my PC storage easily enough far better that a few other utilities I had tried which had not worked as easily as this one did.
Running the help program in DOSPlus booted up in DOSBOX-X worked and while is does have some entries specific to the BBC Master environment and utilities covers the basic set of DOSPlus commands well enough – so that was a good enough result to be able to stop (enjoyable as it was), working on the Turbo Pascal program.
Then I saw the dosplus.sys file sitting in the directory and I know I’d seen people posting about DOSPlus v2,1 boot disks so I though what if…?
Having another search on the internet I saw a post from John Eilliott himself saying that his XIOS patching utilities would support swapping in the DOSPlus v1.2, so it seemed worth giving this a try.
Copying the v2.1 of dosplus.sys into the folder with the rest of John’s DPGEN tool I started to split out this dosplus.sys file (DPSPLIT command) and then re-combine it with the MK_DPGEN batch file to re-assemble as a new.sys file with John’s patches included.
Copying the new.sys file to my existing DOSBOX-X config and renaming it to dosplus.sys I re-ran the FIXLDR program and sure enough after a reboot its was reporting DOSPLUS v2.1 and still booting into DOS from the initial boot prompt.
However, due to a line in John’s XIOS.A86 file it was still displaying the xios_signon message as DOSPlus 1.2 (JRE5), so making a change to the file and re-generating again fixed that quickly enough so that all matched up in screen messages.
Copying the rest of the v2.1 files from the BBC disk image as well, has worked so far without any issues alongside other v1.2 files, and removing the ones specific to the BBC Master such as the star command; hasn’t as yet caused any problems with booting, accessing the hard disk, running in DOSBOX-X (with a suitable .conf file) or running any programs with this version and setup.
I’m not sure there are any real benefits for a PC user in relation to DOSPlus v2.1 other than just being able to do it. Maybe time will tell but for now I was happy to learn some more background and inner working knowledge of this particular operating system.
So if anyone else fancies trying the same the links to the BBC related files are below, and the more detailed steps of how I created the initial DOSPLUS v1.2 setup that I added these files into are in my earlier blog post which you can find here.
