DHES

I tried to run DHPOS on Windows Server 2008 32-bit Edition, and I received this error message: From what I have looked up, NTVDM is disabled by default on Windows Server for security reasons.
Has anyone been able to run DHPOS on Windows Server, or do you have to go with DOSbox to make it work?
-Chris

I had this tested on Win Server 2003 and works fine. You may have to create a shortcut on your desktop, then change the compatibility mode by right clicking the shortcut, then clicking on properties. Let me know how you make out.

From what I have looked up, NTVDM is disabled by default on Windows Server for security reasons.
Has anyone been able to run DHPOS on Windows Server, or do you have to go with DOSbox to make it work?

NTVDM is the 16 Bit emulation subsystem which all NT-based versions of Windows need in order to run DOS/16 Bit Windows software.
If it's disabled, DHPOS (along with all DOS and Windows 3.1 programs) won't run natively. Simple as that.

If you want to stick with Win Server 2008 (which is surely more than a little overkill to run a DOS-based EPOS system???!!!) your options are either to enable NTVDM, or run DHPOS inside a virtualised environment such as Dosbox.

The only reason I was using Server 2008 was because I was trying DHPOS on Amazon EC2. I wanted to see if I could create a network setup of DHPOS on one EC2 instance, and deliver it as a virtual application. Just experimenting.

The only reason I was using Server 2008 was because I was trying DHPOS on Amazon EC2. I wanted to see if I could create a network setup of DHPOS on one EC2 instance, and deliver it as a virtual application. Just experimenting.

I've done similar experiments using Telnet and SSH to deploy across a network in a similar way both to clients on PCs and to actual dumb terminals. I went down the SSH route mainly so that I could have remote access with a high level of performance. How have your experiments with EC2 gone?

cwathen wrote:

The only reason I was using Server 2008 was because I was trying DHPOS on Amazon EC2. I wanted to see if I could create a network setup of DHPOS on one EC2 instance, and deliver it as a virtual application. Just experimenting.

I've done similar experiments using Telnet and SSH to deploy across a network in a similar way both to clients on PCs and to actual dumb terminals. I went down the SSH route mainly so that I could have remote access with a high level of performance. How have your experiments with EC2 gone?

Nothing special with Server 2008 on EC2.
When you were running Telnet/SSH, what were you running on the back end?
-Chris

For most of the time I played with that configuration I ran KPyM on the server. This supports either true Telnet or SSH in a variety of terminal emulations. The free version includes a nag screen which makes you wait 5 seconds before you can log on but apart from that it's no different to the registered version. Out of the box it's optimised to run the DOS command prompt without corrupting the screen display which causes terrible lag in full screen applications. It's easy to tweak the settings though to make things run better (at the expense of the screen being a bit garbled when logging on and if you do any command line work).

The main problem KPyM had was that it doesn't support more than one key being pressed at a time (apart from shift), so ALT+ this and CTRL+ that weren't usable.

The client machines connected to the server using either the PuTTY client on a Windows machine (or the Symbian port of it on a mobile phone) or used Platine Axel AX3000 dumb terminals.

I later tried moving to freeSSH as the server which gave slightly better performance but didn't fully resolve all the keyboard problems.

Then I gave up using Client/Server for regular deployment, moving instead to a DOSbox-based solution, with Telnet/SSH in being retained only for remote access.

For what it's worth, I was able to get DHPOS running on Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition 32-bit using Rackspace Cloud.