Running old C 'Marv Klotz' programs in Linux

      In a video about springs in youtube channel "this old tony" he recommends (at 4:35) a program that calculates mandrel sizes to make springs. The suggested program is written by Marv Klotz, and can be found in 

http://www.myvirtualnetwork.com/mklotz/

      Looking at Marv Klotz website I found a lot of interesting programs that can help in the shop. The drawback is that the programs runs in 32bit DOS. 

      Now, Is this a big problem ? Well, not a all. To run the programs in Ubuntu linux is pretty easy. 

First open the terminal ( Crtl + Alt + T ), then type: 

sudo apt-get install dosbox

      Put your password, and you'll install a DOS emulator in your computer. Now lets suppose you want to run the "bend" program, and you've downloaded and extracted it into the "download" folder.  With DOSbox  application open, type:

mount c /home/user/downloads

and then, 

c: 

        Know you have a virtual c: drive in downloads folder, in wich you can run the program typing the *.exe name, in the case of the example, BEND. 

        A final note: user is your computer name. As you can see in the print screen, using my computer as example, I've typed "mount c /home/eddie/downloads" 

Finally, a print screen of the BEND program running: 

Testing Fusion 360 - A Wine Rack

     At the moment I'm moving to switzerland and It's been a long time (3 months) without my desktop computer. The laptop computer I'm using runs windows, so, as always, I'm trying design softwares that fit the operational system and my tastes.

     This time I did some testing in autodesk fusion 360. I found it to be friendly, from the interface, to being free for low budget engineers. I like the team project features and the work versioning. The drawbacks is that I found it to be slow. At least in my computer the screen is always freezing for some time, which is annoying. 

     Veridict: It's cool, mainly if you're going to do some teamwork.

The simple project I did to test the software: A wood wine rack.

Of course I needed to bring this to real life. Not that hard, but not that easy with just a $10 saw, and a rock as a hammer. 

     Final word: I still prefer some opensource CAD programs out there. 

     I still need to test drive Onshape, though. I really think this cloud plataform is promissing, because we can use it in windows or linux both, and besides, it has teamwork features as well.