Unofficial guest additions for MS-DOS/FreeDOS/Windows3.x

Third Party Applications related to VirtualBox. This forum is moderated.
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javispedro
Posts: 58
Joined: 29. Jan 2022, 15:31
Primary OS: openSUSE
VBox Version: OSE other
Guest OSses: Old & New Windows, Linux

Unofficial guest additions for MS-DOS/FreeDOS/Windows3.x

Post by javispedro »

I have extended my Windows 3.x mouse driver into a more complete suite of "guest additions" for DOS guests.
Note: don't expect miracles, this is not professional-level, mostly for fun, I only tried with a couple programs overall.
But they work for me and would like to hear if they worked for you!

There are basically 3 pieces:
  • VBMOUSE.EXE -- a DOS mouse driver. This allows seamless mouse integration to work with many DOS applications. E.g. MS-DOS EDIT. For the applications where it doesn't work, you can still disable mouse integration from the VirtualBox menu. It can also simulate scroll wheel by faking arrow key presses.
  • VBSF.EXE -- a client for Shared Folders. This allows shared folders to be mounted as drives inside MS-DOS (and Windows 3.x) directly, without any network stack.
  • VBMOUSE.DRV -- a Windows 3.x mouse driver (requires VBMOUSE.EXE to be loaded first). This allows seamless mouse integration with MS Windows 3.x, or even with DOS applications running inside MS Windows 3.x.
Here is the current website with some extra screenshots, videos and documentation: https://git.javispedro.com/cgit/vbados.git/about/
Or you can directly download a floppy image to play with: VBADOS.FLP.
Just insert the virtual floppy into your DOS VM and run VBMOUSE directly from the floppy. Or VBSF (but you'll need to configure some shared folders first!).
To "install" just copy them to C: if you like them. The Windows 3.x driver needs some extra steps.

The source code is also available under a GPLv2.0 license (that is also the git clone URL). Should build with OpenWatcom 2.x on any platform.
If you are interested, I have written also some pointers to the source code.
mpack
Site Moderator
Posts: 39156
Joined: 4. Sep 2008, 17:09
Primary OS: MS Windows 10
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Mostly XP

Re: Unofficial guest additions for MS-DOS/FreeDOS/Windows3.x

Post by mpack »

The "Third Party Applications" forum is heavily moderated and does not lend itself to discussion. So, I've created a new topic to contain the related discussion:
Discuss: Unofficial guest additions for MS-DOS/FreeDOS/Windows3.x.
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