Technology/Android/DosBox, (sdf.org), 03/11/2019
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A while back I purchased the latest Amazon Kindle Fire
tablet, when it was on sale for cheap. Around the same time
I purchased a bluetooth keyboard/case, and a bluetooth
mouse. The combo was meant to be a super-cheat laptop-ish
setup, which I thought I might be able to use while fishing
or whatever, to do some work (I gave my other small laptop
to my daughter, and I didn't want to lug around my main
system.)

Step one was to disable the amazon alexa nonsense.

Step two was to continue to disable the amazon alexa
nonsense.

Step three was to install f-droid and a slew of "Simple"
apps. Love those things.

Step four was to install UserLAnd, LibreOffice, and Gimp
(all needful.)

These steps were not done in a timely manner (except for
steps one and two.) I've fiddled with the thing and used it
for other stuff (like note taking with QuickEdit, and ssh
with Terminus and ConnectBot.) Recently, however, I did get
all the way through step four, with what I feel are
excellent results (for the price.) It's not "perfect," but
it works.

Today, I added "Step five" just for fun: install DosBox and
get Windows 2.03 running.

For DosBox I installed "Magic DosBox Free." I don't know if
there are any better types of DosBox for android (that you
don't need GooglePlay to get) or not, but this one is
actually quite nice. The icon artwork is wretched (sorry
authors) but the setup and use is great. Keyboard works
perfectly, screen scaling is OK (not exceptional, it's a
little grainy.) Mouse "works," but isn't great so far (I've
only fiddled with the settings a tiny bit.) All said, they
did a very good job with it.

Windows 2.03 was a simple matter of copying over a working
setup from my local dosbox, and remembering to "ver set 4"
before firing up the "win.com" executable. Now I can access
archaic versions of Word and Excel (wait, I already have
Libreoffice in UserLAnd!) as well as a few of the other
Win2.03 programs.

If you don't have a working dosbox setup of Win2.03, all you
really need to do is visit WinWorldPC.com and download a
copy. It sets up very easily.

Windows for Workgroups 3.11 also works in DosBox, if you
have the right video driver. I have a working instance of
that, which I may copy over to the Kindle if I get
exceptionally bored one day. It's quite a bit nicer than
2.03, but I *think* it runs in Real Mode when in DosBox, so
the library of software isn't *that* much more impressive.

Life hasn't let me go fishing lately, so there's nothing to
report on that side of things.