SuperDos -- can anyone advise me?

[Graystar]

Ok This lady calls me last night as she was leaving Fry's with her old computer and a new computer and still can "NOT" run her SuperDos system.

She has a Dry Cleaning Business and her custom software system is written in SuperDos. The Fry's guy told her that the motherboard was bad and sold her a new computer less an OS. He installed the old hard drive in the new tower and could not get it to boot the SuperDos OS.
She called me on the way home wanting to know it the old mother board could be repaired. I told her "no guarantees" but lets look at it over the weekend.

I checked it out and the computer would not boot at all. I tested and found the power supply was dead, (replaced it) It would then would start to post but would not finish. I found a bad capacitor on the MOBO and replaced it and now it boots through the POST and asks to press F1 to continue it also shows a keyboard failure, I tested the keyboard on another computer it's ok and I took a new keyboard and tried it and I get the same keyboard error. (yes I am sure I have it plugged into the keyboard port and not the mouse port)
Then I plugged a usb keyboard in and it shows on the boot screen that it detected the USB keyboard and still stops at a Keyboard failure.

Now I am thinking maybe it is a bad PS2 port as the plastic piece inside the metal frame moves just a little (like a bad powerjack) but the solder points are very solid. I could desolder this one and replace....

But before I do this I wanted to ask the Technibble crowd if there is a way to boot a old SuperDos OS in a newer set of hardware?
I don't see anything on the net indicating this is a possibility hence my reasoning for repairing the old MOBO.

The Computer system is old 1999 i believe.
Here are the specs
Pa-2011 motherboard by FIC with Pent 233 MMX
32MB memory

This system was purchased 10 years ago from this company.
http://www.dccs.com/product_info_superdos.cfm
They brought two keyboards one regular one and the one in the photo on the DCCS site along with a dual keyboard "Y" adaptor. The custome keyboard has none of the traditional keys on it they are all unique to the OS.

The customer does'nt seem comfortable contacting the manufacturer (maintenance agreement cancellation maybe?)

Anyway I am looking for suggestions.

any offers or input would be greatly appreciated.

Jim

 

[rusty.nells]

I'm not familiar with Superdos, but I'm guessing it's a 16 bit OS. If the new machine has a 64 bit CPU, it won't boot it.

 

[Graystar]

I'm not familiar with Superdos, but I'm guessing it's a 16 bit OS. If the new machine has a 64 bit CPU, it won't boot it.

I tried it on a Pentium II that I keep around that still works great and it would get to the screen asking me to select either DOS or SuperDos, I would select SuperDos and it would just sit and sit.

Thanks again.

Jim

 

[rusty.nells]

Isn't legacy hardware wonderful? (sarcasm)

I would first backup/clone the hard drive to preserve the data. (you probably did)
Then set up similar hardware. (you did)
And keep hammering away at it. Check the hard drive. Check the requirements for SuperDos.

I'm guessing she has no backup, correct?

 

[basic]

Have you tried using a VMWare product or VirtualBox and running SuperDos as a VM on the new machine?

 

[Graystar]

Update:

I finally got a PII MoBo to start working "somewhat"
Now the system will go to a screen and ask to load either Dos or SuperDos.
If I select SuperDos it goes to a screen stating that Super Dos is provided under a license agreement from BlueBird Systems. Then it just sits there.

The customer tells me that the next step is where the system verifies the date and time. I dont get there.
**BUT**
If I select to boot into Dos it starts MS-DOS and I get a C prompt.
I did a dir and saw Super.exe
so I type super.exe and the prompt and it starts Superdos as above but it will get me to the Date and time confirmation screen. I verify the date and time and then it states Starting all tasks.
And it never moves from there.

Any advise?

Have you tried using a VMWare product or VirtualBox and running SuperDos as a VM on the new machine?

Not a bad idea but it appears that I can not get the OS to completely load now. May be a solution once I get this beast to start up again.
Thanks again!

 

[basic]

Update:

I finally got a PII MoBo to start working "somewhat"
Now the system will go to a screen and ask to load either Dos or SuperDos.
If I select SuperDos it goes to a screen stating that Super Dos is provided under a license agreement from BlueBird Systems. Then it just sits there.

The customer tells me that the next step is where the system verifies the date and time. I dont get there.
**BUT**
If I select to boot into Dos it starts MS-DOS and I get a C prompt.
I did a dir and saw Super.exe
so I type super.exe and the prompt and it starts Superdos as above but it will get me to the Date and time confirmation screen. I verify the date and time and then it states Starting all tasks.
And it never moves from there.

Any advise?



Not a bad idea but it appears that I can not get the OS to completely load now. May be a solution once I get this beast to start up again.
Thanks again!

You could just try pulling the drive and capturing an image of it and loading it into a VM on the new computer. If the data on the drive or the hd, itself, isn't corrupted, it should work. That's if you are sure it's not the hd, at this point, that is the problem.

 

[Graystar]

You could just try pulling the drive and capturing an image of it and loading it into a VM on the new computer. If the data on the drive or the hd, itself, isn't corrupted, it should work. That's if you are sure it's not the hd, at this point, that is the problem.

I will give this a go as there is nothing I can find on how to troubleshoot superDOS start up.

Thanks again.
Jim

 

[Graystar]

UPDATE

Victory is mine, I found that there is a hardware KEY that plugs into the printer port that the customer was not aware of. This is what was keeping the system from booting.
Once the Key was in place I adjusted the bios and got the system back on to working. it has been a while since I fiddled with a smoking fast PII MMX with 256MB of memory.


The customer was very happy with the increase in speed from a Pentium MMX to a PII.

Anyway I now have been SuperDOS'd

Thanks to all who helped.

 

[Blues]

Those hardware keys are a pain we have some SCSI cards that use those for the scanner software I hate these things fortunately the new ones work on USB and just use a normal license key

 

[AtYourService]

software dongles suck

 

[Graystar]

Those hardware keys are a pain we have some SCSI cards that use those for the scanner software I hate these things fortunately the new ones work on USB and just use a normal license key

Agreed, the issue with this one was unique though, thank goodness I called the software company support line as I was told not to start the computer with the key in place without taking the printer port out of bi-directional mode as it would have damaged the key.

The customer was not aware the key even existed as it was at the end of a printer cable extension! Basically is was in the middle of the printer cable.

I like the USB Hasp style keys better too.

Jim

 

[joydivision]

I would just write a new custom software for her Load up Visual Basic Express, use MySQL as the database how hard can it be? It is an area I am looking into but I am not sure there is such a market.