dosemu and dosbox fail

When trying to run dosemu I get an sdl error in connection with a mouse 
that can't be found.  I use a usb mouse not a serial mouse and defined it 
as pnp since a logitech IFeel mouse wasn't one of those available directly 
in the mouse daemon list.
This error happens whether or not the mouse is connected.  Use of the -m 
switch on the command line when starting dosemu also makes no difference.
Does this package require a serial mouse or is there an undocumented 
dependency that ought to have been installed along with dosemu when dosemu 
got installed?
The difference in behavior with dosbox (which may be off topic for this 
list) is mostly identical failure except an error 13 gets thrown.
Systems I have tried these packages on include slint 14.2.4 and debian 10.