Robtek
As a programmer who works on both Atari and IBM
PCs, I was most interested when I saw the poster advertising MS-DOZ,
a software IBM PC emulator, on the rear wall of the Robtek stand at
the last Atari User show. My enquiries revealed that the arrival of
the demonstration disk at Heathrow was delayed due to fog, and so I
missed it. It was therefore a pleasant surprise to receive a copy
for review.
To use MS-DOZ, you place the (copy protected)
master disk in your drive A: and power up. After a while the screen
clears and you are prompted to put your MS-DOS disk in drive B:.
This is a requirement that I have not seen mentioned anywhere, least
of all in Robtek's adverts so if you do not have a copy of MS-DOS
you have problems already. Another problem is that if you want to
use 3½ inch disks, you must have DOS 3.2 (the latest version,
hereafter referred to as DOS) which is not very easy to get hold of.
Having armed myself with a copy of DOS 3.2, I
started again. When MS-DOZ finds a good DOS disk, it asks two
questions before starting operation and loading DOS, finally leaving
you at the DOS 'A' prompt. 'A:' in this case is the drive that is
normally drive 'B:' on your Atari. The disk drives are swapped to
make life easier for owners of 5¼ inch drives (me included).
The claimed speed of the MS-DOZ emulator is half
that of the standard IBM-PC. As a regular user of PCs, I have to say
that it feels slower. Certainly getting a directory takes a while,
long enough to make you think twice before getting one. (There is,
by the way, no support for hard disks.). The advertising mentions
'compatibility mode but I could not identify which mode this is.
Modes are set by the two prompts at startup. The first is 'Keyflip
(Y/N)?'. Keyflip is used when the program you are using 'appears not
to work', i.e. when you hit a key you cannot get it to respond. In
keyflip mode you have to press each key TWICE. That means that to
type the word 'the', you would have to press the keys 'tthhee' -
practical huh?. The other option is 'Interrupts (Y/N)?'. According
to the manual, interrupts need only be used when running programs
like Sidekick. No other information is given on this option.
I have referred above to the manual but I think
'manual' is a misnomer. The documentation is eight pages of what
must be about A6 size. Page 1 is the cover, page 2 & 3 are the
English instructions, 4 & 5 are German, pages 6 & 7 are the backup
order form (backups cost £14.95) and guarantee registration card,
and page 8 is blank. The English instructions are about as
informative as the German (which I don't speak). Three paragraphs
are dedicated to instructions for users with one drive, two drives
and a Microbyte 5¼ inch drive. The remaining paragraph and sentence
cover the keyflip and interrupt prompt respectively. Sparse is not
the word!
COMPATIBLE SOFTWARE
The advertising for MS-DOZ lists a selection of
software with which the emulator is said to be compatible. The first
I tried was Wordstar (3.30), which after just a few 'tthhiiss iiss'
type words came up with an internal error. Not too good. So I tried
Sidekick. Sidekick (the original pop-up utility) certainly loads
correctly, but I could not wake it. I thought that it may be the
mode I was in, but it still remained dormant in each of the four
possible modes. Turbo Pascal would not load at all, though that may
have been my copy at fault as I have not used it on a PC in months.
Also tried was the Microsoft C compiler version 4.00, but it failed
to compile. By this time I was trying to pin down anything that I
could definitely get to load and run. I have just spent 4 months
writing a PC program, and thus I could guarantee that I would have a
totally compatible program. It did run - very very slowly. The front
page which draws a border and title took about a second, while
normally it just 'appears'. When it got to the first input, it just
hung. So hung that the normal Ctrl-Alt-Del reboot would not work.
Again no mode made it work.
CONCLUSION
What can I say? MS-DOZ is a very clever piece of
programming but from my experiments, I think that there is still
work to be done, especially on the BIOS emulation (which would
explain the lock-up in my program). The manual could be much better,
and should give more detail on compatibility issues and options. I
cannot understand how Robtek have managed to run their list of test
software, yet I couldn't run any in the list that I have.
In general I would not advise anyone to buy this
emulator without having the opportunity to try it on all programs
you may wish to run. If you want to use a PC at home, it seems that
the answer is still to buy an alternative program written for the
ST, or buy a cheap PC compatible. If 'every once in a while' you
need a very slow PC 'slightly compatible', then check out MS-DOZ at
your local dealer and TRY OUT YOUR PROGRAM for at least half an
hour. If it worked perfectly all the time, then buy it.
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