Re: LYNX-DEV 387 emulator

[Doug Kaufman]

On Thu, 12 Mar 1998, Ian wrote:

> Im new to Lynx ports although Ive used Bobcat a bit.
> Ive been trying to set up Lynx_386 but the 387 emulator
> supplied on www.fdisk.com ..emu387.exe crashes my 386
> every time (EMM386 stops the machine if its there. If
> its not the machine hangs anyway) Anyone had similar
> problems and overcome them?

I assume you mean emu387.dxe. This is not an executable that you run. To
have this work with lynx you need to set the environment variables
387=N
emu387=full_path_to_emu387/emu387.dxe

Lynx will automatically use emu387.dxe when necessary. The emu387.dxe
emulator has some problems, and does not completely emulate a 387 chip.
You might want to try the binary I built with emulation built in. This
uses the wmemu library ported from linux, and is said to do better
emulation. You may need to set 387=N in the environment but don't need a
separate emulator. You can get it from:

"http://www.rahul.net/dkaufman/lynx2.8pre.2-DOS.zip"; or
"ftp://ftp.rahul.net/pub/dkaufman/lynx2.8pre.2-DOS.zip";


> Secondly, Im puzzled as to the purpose of the DMPI
> program thats also needed before Lynx_386 will load.

This is the Dos Protected Mode Interface (DPMI). This allows the program
to access the system's full memory, instead of being restricted to
the first megabyte. Lynx_386 is compiled with DJGPP, which is a port
of the GNU gcc compiler. It produces 32 bit code which needs a DPMI
to run in a 16 bit DOS environment. If you put CWSDPMI (CWS is for
Charles W. Sandmann, who wrote this DPMI program) in your path, lynx
will automatically look for and run it, removing it from memory when
done. You don't have to do anything else with it.

I haven't gotten any feedback since I built in the wmemu emulation. Let
me know how this compares to emu387.dxe, if you can get the latter to
work also.
                                  Doug
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Doug Kaufman
Internet: address@hidden (preferred)
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