Porting DOS Applications to Unix?

jgbustos asks: "I'm the manager of a small software development company. For the last five years we've been managing a communications network consisting of several thousand PC terminals which connects to an NT server over the phone lines. The terminals run a console application on a light DOS. Everything is fine so far. So what's the problem, then? We have a hard time finding parts to maintain the network. Our client says that he's willing to invest in hardware upgrades, but we should move to a Windows-like environment, however he doesn't want to pay for more than 4000 Windows licenses. What's the best alternative for porting our app to Linux/? Please bear in mind that the terminals are small PC's having 16MB RAM, less than 2GB HD, less than i586 CPU, and a 33k modem. Thanks in advance"

Comments

too many open ends

[ka9dgx]

#1. Where is the hardware that's falling apart? If it's a server... use GHOST and copy the image of the system to a new, better, faster machine, and be done with it.

#2. What's the DOS app, do you have source? What does the DOS app do?

#3. Why not just roll out replacement terminals as needed, instead of en-mass? You could probably use FreeDOS instead of MS-DOS, and set up a new machine ($200 walmart variety) to do exactly what you need.

Re:Parts?

[JAZ]

maybe it will be easier to start over from scratch

as we're fond of saying on my on my architecture team when folks try to fix application problems with more hardware... "$$$ will buy a lot of developement."

I guess in this case, "4000 windows licenses would buy a lot of nice OSS code." =]