comcom64

comcom64 is a command.com-alike 64bit shell for DOS.
This repository also contains the build recipe for 32bit version.

building

Install the needed build tools.
You can see the list of them for ubuntu or for fedora

Then just run make. It will build src/comcom64.exe and src/32/comcom32.exe. comcom32.exe can work under any emulator, while comcom64.exe is currently specific to dosemu2.

Alternatively you can run make fetch that will download the pre-built executables to the same aforementioned directories.

installing

Running sudo make install installs both executables for the use with dosemu2. dosemu2 chooses 64bit version at boot if both versions are installed.

running

Just run dosemu and it should boot the installed comcom64.

Alternatively download comcom32, unzip it and run with dosbox-staging ./comcom32.exe.

You can also download comcom64 in case you have problems building it. Put it into ~/.dosemu/drive_c after unzipping, and symlink as command.com - dosemu2 will then happily boot it.

mouse control

You can navigate the command history with mouse wheel.

Each button have 2 functions: one activates when you click on a text area outside of a cursor row, and another activates when you click inside the cursor row.

Left button:

1. if Ctrl pressed: type the clicked char; otherwise do nothing
2. move the cursor to the clicked location

Middle button:

1. Enter
2. BackSpace

Right button:

1. Tab completion
2. truncate or clear line

There is a mouseopt command that controls mouse behavior. It has the following switches:

• /M - initialize mouse (if /M was not passed to comcom on start)
• /E[1|0] - enable/disable mouse
• /C[0|1] - enable/disable external control

External control allows to control other programs with mouse. For example you can execute mouseopt /c, then run freecom and control it with mouse similar to comcom64, even though freecom is mouse-unaware by itself.

terminal emulation support

Terminal emulation is supported, and under dosemu2 you can run unix vim and get vim properly rendered. Under other emulators you may need to use djterm /e1 to enable terminal support, but this is rarely needed because djterm is not ansi-compatible, and ansi is the only DOS-relevant terminal protocol unless running host programs via unix.com.