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Dr DOS 7.03 won't run F16Combat pilot

ibmapc

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When trying to run the Game F16 Combat pilot in Dr DOS 7.03 on my IBM 5155, the following error comes up immediatly:
Not ready error writing device AUX
Abort, Retry, Ignore, Fail ?
The only answer that the system accepts is F and it goes back to the DOS prompt.
If I boot any version of MS or PC DOS 5 and above, the game runs perfecly. Anyone know how to configure Dr DOS to allow F16 to write to AUX (which is the same as COM ?) Right now I have the system set up so that I can boot to PC DOS 7 or DR DOS 7.03 so that if I get the urge to play F16, I can boot the PC DOS, but I tend to like Dr DOS better for most other tasks because it leaves more base memory if configured correctly than PC DOS.
 
When trying to run the Game F16 Combat pilot in Dr DOS 7.03 on my IBM 5155, the following error comes up immediatly:
Not ready error writing device AUX
Abort, Retry, Ignore, Fail ?
The only answer that the system accepts is F and it goes back to the DOS prompt.
If I boot any version of MS or PC DOS 5 and above, the game runs perfecly. Anyone know how to configure Dr DOS to allow F16 to write to AUX (which is the same as COM ?) Right now I have the system set up so that I can boot to PC DOS 7 or DR DOS 7.03 so that if I get the urge to play F16, I can boot the PC DOS, but I tend to like Dr DOS better for most other tasks because it leaves more base memory if configured correctly than PC DOS.

I wonder if "AUX" is not defined under DR-DOS?...
 
Dr DOS online help specifies that AUX and COM are reserved device names and can not be used as a file name. Thats the only reference to AUX that I can find in Dr DOS help.
 
The real question is, why is your game writing to AUX in the first place?

I suspect that F16 Combat Pilot really isn't interested in looking for your auxiliary console. It probably made an assumption about a DOS data structure that is different between MS-DOS and DR DOS. That assumption is leading to the bogus access of the AUX reserved device, and your reply to that bogus access is what terminates the game.

Sorry, not all DOSes are created equal. There are significant 'under the covers' differences between most of the major versions that MS produced. And DR DOS and FreeDOS are clones and will have different implementations for some functions. Unless you can figure out what F16 Combat Pilot is doing and correct it you should just plan on running MS-DOS.
 
References to AUX in my experience are usually program errors--often, just attempting to close and re-open a file seems to result in using 3 as the file descriptor.

If you really suspect that the program is trying to write something meaningful to AUX, there are a couple of TSRs in the SIMTEL library that will redirect AUX reference to the console.

And the citation in the help for DR DOS simply means that certain names are mapped to physical devices, not files, and so cannot be created, deleted, renamed or moved like a "regular" file can. Other such devices are CLOCK$, PRN and NUL as examples.
 
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