DOS Emulator

[ainwood]

I found a Dos emulator called "Dos Box":

http://dosbox.zophar.net

Apparently it lets you run old DOS games under a win 32 environment. Anyone ever used it? Can they recommend a better emulator?

The reported advantage of this one is that it also allows access to the sound card hardware.

Hopefully I can get Privateer to work

 

[Lucky]

The best emulator and my recommendation would be a small, REAL DOS partition. Or an old HD which you connect when you need DOS.

Win95 or Win98 would also do, but not as well as plain DOS. Emulating is always a step back.

 

[ainwood]

Well, I tend to agree that making a real dos partition would be the best solution, but trying to get the right drivers for my CDROM and soundcard could be a nightmare.....

Actually, the real bummer is that for Privateer in particular, it won't run under win 95 or win 98 DOS - it needs native.

Going to give the emulator a try anyway

 

[GenghisK]

No, the best one is VMWare, without a doubt. It really emulates perfectly a PC. With an outstanding memory management.

 

[ainwood]

Looks good - am I right in thinking that you just run it, then in the WM window you then install the OS you want (DOS in my case), then just configure the sound, video and memory for it via the hardware wizard?

THe only downside seems to be the $300 price tag

 

[GenghisK]

Indeed, indeed, but you can find it for cheaper
Btw, Speed ball 2 works damn great on doxbox! thanks!

 

[Civddict]

does it emulate music in windows NT enviroments?

btw with windows 95/98 you can run in clean dos mode, not many peeps know to do it.

 

[ainwood]

Originally posted by Civddict
does it emulate music in windows NT enviroments?

btw with windows 95/98 you can run in clean dos mode, not many peeps know to do it.

Yep - but if you have an onboard sound and video card, getting drivers can be difficult....

 

[gonzo_for_civ]

It's easy, just change bootGUI to 0 and add logo=0

Bonus point if someone can tell me what file you make those changes in

But ainwood is right..getting the drivers for onboard sound and video pretty much..sucks

 

[munzy76]

win.ini?

 

[watto]

i heard of a version of DOS called freedos (www.freedos.com) but I have never tried it.

 

[Lucky]

Originally posted by gonzo_for_civ
It's easy, just change bootGUI to 0 and add logo=0

Bonus point if someone can tell me what file you make those changes in

MSDOS.SYS in your root path.
But of course you don´t have that file available under XP, not sure about NT.

 

[munzy76]

Originally posted by watto
i heard of a version of DOS called freedos (www.freedos.com) but I have never tried it.

I have. It is a bit difficult to setup....more difficult than MS DOS.

 

[GenghisK]

I tested dosbox. runs almost fine. But speed ball2 seems slow.

 

[Rheinmetall]

I'd say an old 486 with original DOS and SB 16 does it best. I have one right here.

 

[onejayhawk]

OK I downloaded DOSBox. Now what?

J

 

[GenghisK]

Lol, hey it's easy to use Plus, there are readme files...

 

[Jeratain]

Okay, I'm having a problem. I downloaded and am running DOS box.

Now, I want to be able to access my C: drive, however it tells me that the drive is not available. It loads up on the Z: virtual drive. Any help would be great.

 

[catullus]

RTFM?
There's a readme-file there (without file extension).
Short version: You don't really have access to drives, but you can mount any number of virtual drives. Z:\ is a logical RAM-drive containing the dosbox files, and the only default drive you see.

To get access to c:\ as c:\, type (within dosbox)
mount c c:\

More elegant: To mount your old civ folder as d:\, type
mount d c:\oldgames\microprose\civ
since you almost never need access to the whole drive.
Or something like that.
At least you'll find civ.exe at the root of a virtual d:\

You can also do that from the command line. So make shortcut or a bat, and launch dosbox with options, or with a special conf file containing all mount info and environment settings you need.
It's a very cool progra,m.

C.

 

[Jeratain]

I read the readme file - it didn't say the same thing. But after I posted I went to their site and read the discussion board there (lots of other people posted the same problem) and I got the solution. There's still some bugs with running a few games with this program, but it works.