[TriLUG] OT: legacy 16bit DOS programs on Win2k

[ryan.wheaton at attbi.com]

Sup y'all.

I know that this is off topic, but i'm googled out and i figured maybe someone 
here has run into this as well.

we have an old 16bit DOS app that management has decided to bring back and 
employ company wide (tomorrow), and I'm trying to figure out a way to best do 
this.

The program (EasyRes) is a CPU HOG.  I mean, when you're in it and running, 
NTVDM (the win2k dos virtual machine) uses 100% of the processor 100% of the 
time.  I'm googled around and I'm trying to find a more efficient way to run 
this program.  However, it's not as important to get performance to a 
reasonable state on our local users desktops as it is for our 3 remote users 
that log into our Terminal Server (2k)...  Imagine 3 users using a program that 
uses 100% of the processor 100% of the time simultaneously.  I think that the 
Terminal Server just might spontaneously combust.

I've thought about a few ways of doing this, but they all seem really far 
fetched, and I hope to God there is a simpler solution.  What one person 
suggested is to have 3 seperate terminal servers, so each can be his/her 
processor hog.  I don't really like this idea.  I've never used the DOSEMU 
program with linux, so i have no idea of it's performance, but I was going to 
check that out, and if it was reasonable, run EasyRes on the linux box and have 
a remote X session through the Terminal Server.  This also seems a bit far 
fetched, and would probably take a little while to set up.

Ideally, I'd like to just work with what I already have.  I've read some about 
a windows app, wowexec.exe (windows on windows), but haven't found much 
documentation about how to implement it, or how much of a performance gain it 
would give.  Most of the things i've read have said that wowexec will help with 
your memory issues, but had no mention of CPU cycles.  One thing i was going to 
check out tomorrow was to run EasyRes through VMWare on my win2k box, and see 
if it still ate up the processor.

so, that was my extended SOS.  is there something i overlooked?(there usually 
is)  anyone got a better solution/idea?[please]

-rtw