How to "shell to DOS" from an app running in msdos-player

[emendelson]

This was probably obvious to everyone, but I only thought of it today, and it may be useful to someone.

If you're running a program that has a "Shell to DOS" or "Go to DOS" feature, you can make this work by downloading this FileOpen.exe (by Wengier Wu, originally named Start.exe), renaming it to COMMAND.COM, and putting it in the same directory with the 16-bit application that you want to run with msdos-player:

FileOpen.zip

It's basically a single-application implementation of Windows' internal START command.

When I Shell to DOS from an application running under msdos-player, using this method, a CMD window opens while the DOS application remains running. This is different from original MS-DOS, where control did not return to the DOS application until the shell-to-DOS instance was closed, but it's good enough.

I hope someone might find this useful.

[cracyc]

Fits better here.