I want to try compiling PAL equations or decompiling JEDEC files more often than I need to read or program devices.

It is much more convenient to do this on my Linux PC than my small Win98 PC.

The tools can be run by an MSDOS emulator called DOSBOX.

I have a small USB stick I use for transferring PAL work between the two machines. On my Win98 machine it appears as drive F, and on my Linux machine as drive /media/keith/USB DISK.

The USB drive has the tools in F:\MSDOS\Opal

The first thing to do is to start the DOSBOX application, which will open a DOS window with this prompt:

Z:\>

The next step is to make the USB drive look like a disk drive inside the DOS. I use the command:

Z:\>MOUNT F "/media/keith/USB DISK/MSDOS"
F:

This mounts the Linux directory in the virtual PC:

F:\>dir
Directory of F:\.
.              <DIR>        17-09-2025 20:41
..             <DIR>        01-01-2098  1:00
OPAL           <DIR>        20-09-2025  2:00

So now I can go to OPAL and run all the tools from there.

Irritatingly, I can't copy and paste text into the DOSBOX window. Also, if I change file or directory names in the Linux directory, they are invisible to the dir command but I can still cd to them. All the names are 8-characters, so it is helpful to choose short names.

It defaults to a US keyboard, so I have to run this command to get a UK keyboard:

keyb uk