CODEWITHSUNDEEP
windowsdos
Tetragrammaton
Tetragrammaton

Reputation: 166

Converting a DOS Application to a Win32 Console Application?

Is it possible to convert a DOS Application to a Win32 Console Application? I have an old program I wrote a long time ago, lost the source to it and asked myself now if it's possible to convert the DOS Binary to an actual Windows Binary, which runs in Command Line Prompt?

Upvotes: 3

Views: 1403

Answers (2)

pts
pts

Reputation: 87201

See other answers about running a DOS program under Windows.

To convert a DOS program to a Win32 console application, one would have to convert the 16-bit (8086) code within the DOS program to 32-bit (i386) code. This is a very hard task to do right, and probably that's why there is no converter readily available. (Alternatively, an emulator can run 16-bit code without conversion, see the other answers and comments.)

However, not all DOS programs contain 16-bit code, for example programs using DOS extenders built with the Watcom C/C++ compiler (or, equivalently, with OpenWatcom: owcc -bdos4g prog.c) contain only 32-bit code. Windows can run 32-bit code directly, but API calls (e.g. opening and reading a file, allocating memory, getting the current time, writing colorful text to the console) have to be converted from the DOS+DPMI API to the Win32 API. Such a conversion is technically possible and feasible (even on the final .exe file, without access to the source code), and it is much easier to do correctly than the conversion of 16-bit code to 32-bit code. However, I still don't know of a converter readily available.

Please also note that conversion graphics and audio code to the Win32 API is very hard, but that's out of scope in this question.

Upvotes: 1

David Heffernan
David Heffernan

Reputation: 612794

This is not possible. The DOS program will attempt to use DOS system calls that do not exist under Windows. The program will need to be updated and rebuilt for Windows. You might have some success running the original program in a DOS emulator.

Upvotes: 1

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