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Collector · 09-05-2008, 01:42 AM

I, too, once wanted a dinosaur to play my old classics on, but no longer. DOSBox has improved so much that I can get most DOS games to run in it with little trouble. I can get far more game to run in DOSBox than I could ever get to run on any one PC. There was always some games that refused to run on certain configurations or hardware. And let's not forget about speed and memory issues. There are earlier games that run too fast to play on newer machines or are prone to "speed bugs". You can have problems from games that choke with too much memory or won't start with too little, to games that refuse to run on certain hardware (i.e. some soundcards or graphics adapters).

DOSBox is like having an array of old PCs from an old "trash 80" to a high performance 486. You can easily and quickly configure it to match most game requirements or whether you want a Gravis Ultra Sound, AdLib or several different versions of SoundBlaster. There are various CVS builds that will let you choose between different graphics cards or using a Glide wrapper to emulate an old 3D FX card. With Munt you can emulate an MT-32 for optimal sound for the games that have MT-32 support. If you are lucky enough to own a real MT-32, DOSBox will pass the raw MIDI commands to your MT-32. You can even do the old Sierra work around for the infamous "Unable to initialize your audio hardware..." SoundBlaster driver error of starting the game with the Turbo button off and turning it back on after the driver has started to be able to play the game at full speed by changing CPU cycles with Ctrl+F11/F12.

Though it is easy to use once you become familiar with it, if you have a lot of games to configure or you are not comfortable with using DOSBox, I would suggest a frontend like DOSBox Game Launcher, written in Java so it will run on Windows, MacOSX and Linux. It also serves as a nifty database program for your old DOS games. It will let you create Windows shortcuts that you can use to launch your games automatically in DOSBox as if they were native Windows games.

There is a wealth of information and help to be found on the DOSBox boards at VOGONS. Some of the DOSBox devs have even been known to made special builds of DOSBox to address specific problems that some posters have encountered with their games in DOSBox.

On top of all that, you don't need to put up with having a door stop taking up room in your living room that it might have already seen the better part of its lifespan. Old electronics can become flaky and unstable.

09-05-2008, 01:42 AM	#3
Collector Senior Member Join Date: Jun 2007 Posts: 775	I, too, once wanted a dinosaur to play my old classics on, but no longer. DOSBox has improved so much that I can get most DOS games to run in it with little trouble. I can get far more game to run in DOSBox than I could ever get to run on any one PC. There was always some games that refused to run on certain configurations or hardware. And let's not forget about speed and memory issues. There are earlier games that run too fast to play on newer machines or are prone to "speed bugs". You can have problems from games that choke with too much memory or won't start with too little, to games that refuse to run on certain hardware (i.e. some soundcards or graphics adapters). DOSBox is like having an array of old PCs from an old "trash 80" to a high performance 486. You can easily and quickly configure it to match most game requirements or whether you want a Gravis Ultra Sound, AdLib or several different versions of SoundBlaster. There are various CVS builds that will let you choose between different graphics cards or using a Glide wrapper to emulate an old 3D FX card. With Munt you can emulate an MT-32 for optimal sound for the games that have MT-32 support. If you are lucky enough to own a real MT-32, DOSBox will pass the raw MIDI commands to your MT-32. You can even do the old Sierra work around for the infamous "Unable to initialize your audio hardware..." SoundBlaster driver error of starting the game with the Turbo button off and turning it back on after the driver has started to be able to play the game at full speed by changing CPU cycles with Ctrl+F11/F12. Though it is easy to use once you become familiar with it, if you have a lot of games to configure or you are not comfortable with using DOSBox, I would suggest a frontend like DOSBox Game Launcher, written in Java so it will run on Windows, MacOSX and Linux. It also serves as a nifty database program for your old DOS games. It will let you create Windows shortcuts that you can use to launch your games automatically in DOSBox as if they were native Windows games. There is a wealth of information and help to be found on the DOSBox boards at VOGONS. Some of the DOSBox devs have even been known to made special builds of DOSBox to address specific problems that some posters have encountered with their games in DOSBox. On top of all that, you don't need to put up with having a door stop taking up room in your living room that it might have already seen the better part of its lifespan. Old electronics can become flaky and unstable.