Fixing mouse and VGA issues on FreeDOS

by TheOuterLinux (https://theouterlinux.gitlab.io)

Last updated: 2023/09/12


Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Original posting on https://reddit.com/r/dosgaming

Introduction

The following is an issue regarding the mouse and VGA (some how) that I had while trying to setup FreeDOS on a newer laptop. I asked https://reddit.com/r/dosgaming, but ended up finding my own solution. This issue comes up about once a year or so on /r/dosgaming and I'm tired of having to spend 30 minutes hunting links to old posts, so here you go...

Original posting on https://reddit.com/r/dosgaming

    
    FreeDOS software errors involving mouse and VGA on 2008 Acer netbook

   Games and graphic editor programs that require VGA and a mouse will not 
   run on my 2008 laptop/netbook. I have tried running ctmouse and changing
   the REM DISPLAY settings in the AUTOEXEC file, but it doesn't help. Has 
   anyone gotten FreeDOS to properly run on a newer computer? I'm guessing 
   there's a MOUSE.COM file I'm missing, but I haven't got a clue where to 
   look. Please no DOSBox suggestions. I'm well aware, but that's not the 
   point.

   SOLVED:

      dir mouse.com /s

      Pick one of the results and add to AUTOEXEC.BAT as "LH=C:\PATH\TO\MOUSE.COM"

      dir mouse.sys /s

      Pick one of the results and add to FDCONFIG.SYS as "DEVICE=C:\PATH\TO\MOUSE.SYS"

   In my case, I used MOUSE.COM from Visual Basic for DOS v1.00 and MOUSE.SYS
   from MS WORD 5.5. Even the touch to click works on my trackpad. Make sure
   to reboot. I picked the VBDOS version for MOUSE.COM because it was the 
   largest version of that file, so I figured it would have the most bang 
   per byte. It also seems to have fixed a lot of program's display issues.
   But, I also changed the EGA code numbers in DISPLAY="..." inside of 
   AUTOEXEC.BAT to 437 (US) instead of the default 8xx one (can't remember 
   the number).

2021/01/18 Edit: The EGA mode number was 858 before changing it to 437.




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