Getting old DOS control software running in XP?

To my surprise the DOS software for proLIGHT mills will run under XP and it can communicate with the machines. I can hit F4 and manually jog the mill. The problem is no matter how I've tried setting the compatibility and memory settings using a shortcut, after I load an NC file and hit F6 to run, it crashes with a "Conventional Memory Exhausted" error despite showing plenty of free space.

That's odd because I've been running my mill from an old laptop booted off an unmodified DOS startup floppy made with Windows 7, no drivers for extended or expanded memory, just the 640K that a bare bones DOS environment has. The manual states that Quarterdeck QEMM works better with the PLM2000 program than the manager that comes with MS-DOS.

I don't have any specific knowledge related to what you are doing. Does the Dos floppy have an autoexec.bat and/or a config.sys? if so you might try duplicating the info on the XP machine. Here is some help with that... Troubleshooting MS-DOS-based programs in Windows XP

Also you can try using DosBox software. Check my post in this thread .... http://www.cnczone.com/forums/genera...-software.html Even though it references Anilam software the concept should apply.

I use Acronis Disk Director to install both XP and Dos7.1 which BTW is still available out there, The OP Sys is selectable at boot-up time.
Al.

I think Windows '98 was the last Windows version that gave you real DOS, capable of controlling a CNC machine. In subsequent versions, like XP, DOS is emulated, so control is indirect at best. If you really want to get this running on its original software, you need to run real DOS, not the emulated version.

AFAIK Dos 7.1 is not Microsoft endorsed, it has features that DOS 6.x does not have and does not run under a Windows platform and runs stand alone.
I have been running it for Galil based systems for a while.
Al.

to run my dos controller, I use the dos base from win98. Format the drive with a sys C function and then load the controller program. Don't even have windows installed. Above poster is correct, XP will not do the actual control function of the machine, but it will emulate and appear to run. I do this when making changes to my controller and recompiling to see if the appears to work before going live on a machine.

I was able to almost make it work. I found EMS Magic, which is now freeware. That took care of the memory limitations. The PLM2000 software can use as much Expanded Memory as there can be in DOS.

The next problem was getting exclusive COM port control. The software would communicate with the mill but XP kept butting in and fouling it up. I tried porttalk 2.2 but it made the control software run so slow it was unusable.

Also failed in pure DOS 6.22 to get EMS on this old MPC TransPort 2000 laptop due to upper memory being chunked up by some option RAM or ROM. Tried EMM386 and JEMMX and UMBPCI. I downloaded the last version of QEMM97 but it's in floppy images so I need to find some more floppy disks.

You can't have a reliable glitch-free motion control under Windows >98, i.e. multitasking OS. Or a special very high priority driver is needed (like the one Mach3 uses).
Need to boot into pure DOS to allow the control software to work in real time.