How to Use DOSBox to Play Classic Games. If you want to make your classic games run on a modern PC, you'll have to become familiar with DOSBox, a fully configurable DOS PC emulator that is absolutely necessary for getting most pre- Windows XP games up and running. The first step is to download a copy of DOSBox that will run on your machine. Head over to the DOSBox download page and pick up a copy for your operating system of choice. For the purposes of this guide, we’ll assume that you’re running Windows and must download the Windows- compatible DOSBox version 0. Install DOSBox anywhere you please, and then set up a specific folder for all your old DOS games with a short name that’s easy to remember, like C: \DOSGAMES.

Create a separate folder in the DOSGAMES directory for each game you want to play, but be sure to keep all filenames as short as possible. In the days of DOS, all files had to conform to an 8. DOSBox. Since DOSBox emulates a self- contained version of DOS on your desktop, you need to fool it into thinking that your DOS game folder (C: \DOSGAMES) is really your root C: \ drive.

Introduction. Hi everybody, DBGL is a Java frontend for DOSBox, based largely upon the proven interface of D-Fend. DBGL serves as a frontend / Graphical User. START: How to start? At the beginning you've got a Z:\> instead of a C:\> at the prompt. You have to make your directories available as drives in DOSBox by using the. This guide should help you get on the way with using Windows 3.1x in DOSBox.

To do that, you have to mount the DOSGAMES folder as a virtual hard drive. Double- click the DOSBox executable in your Start menu, and when you see a black box with a Z: \ prompt, type the following command: mount c c: \dosgames. That tells DOSBox to treat the C: \DOSGAMES folder as the root C: \ drive. To get to your new C: \ drive (or any drive, for that matter), simply type c: at the Z: \ prompt.

This action will put you in the C: \ drive (which is actually C: \DOSGAMES), and from there you can navigate to any of your game directories by typing cd followed by the folder name. CD stands for “change directory,” and you can use it to navigate to any directory on your hard drive. For example, if you have a copy of Duke Nukem 3. D on your hard drive in the folder C: \DOSGAMES\DUKE3.

Windows 3.1. Adobe Reader for Win/3.1x PDF file reader for Windows 3.1. Video for Windows Allows you to play.avi files in Win 3.1. Internet Explorer 5.01 IE 5 for.

D, you can play the game by typing cd duke. You'll have to remount the proper directory every time you start DOSBox, which can become a pain if you’re just running the same programs over and over again. Here’s a shortcut: Open up the dosbox. DOSBox directory, scroll down to the .

Installing MS- DOS in DOSBox. Introduction. This article explains how to install a DOS operating system and run it using DOSBox. I’m using MS- DOS 6. Download Characters For Mortal Kombat 4 Games there. DOS, and for DOSes from vendors other than Microsoft. You might be wondering why you would want to do this. It’s a fair question, because DOSBox has its own DOS- like environment, and supports the DOS API which allows many applications such as classic games to be run without the user needing to own a copy of DOS.

But maybe there is something which is not currently supported by the DOSBox environment, or perhaps you just want to create a more authentic DOS experience. In my experience, DOSBox does run DOS much better than various virtualization products on the market, plus it emulates hardware such as an OPL3. But whatever your reasons may be, the fact that you’re reading this article suggests that this is something you want to do, so let’s get started. There are some details in this article which are specific to DOSBox running under Microsoft Windows, for example the paths in the screenshots and configuration files. However, the instructions should be easily adaptable for those who are using other operating systems such as Linux and Mac OS. Additionally, some of the commands and configuration files contain paths specific to my Windows installation, for example the user profile directory varies between versions of Windows—you’ll need to adjust these paths to suit your PC setup. What You’ll Need.

There are a few things you’ll need in order to install a DOS OS in DOSBox. All of these can be freely downloaded from the internet, except for MS- DOS, which you’ll need to have your floppy disk images handy for. You’ll need: A copy of DOSBox. A copy of bximage from Bochs.

Floppy disk images of your DOS installation diskettes. If you haven’t done so already, you’ll need to create the floppy disk images using a disk imaging tool and your original DOS installation disks. Creating A Hard Disk Image. Installing DOS in DOSBox requires that DOS be installed on a hard disk image. You will then use DOSBox’s internal boot command to boot from this image. The disk image can be created using bximage from the Bochs binary distribution (see the the “Advanced Topics” section for alternative methods): C: \Program Files (x. Bochs- 2. 4. 5> bximage - q - hd - mode=flat - size=2.

Using a flat image is very important, as this is the only format supported by DOSBox—growing images are not. Although a flat image results in the image taking up disk space equal to the size of the image, you can use NTFS compression if your disk is formatted using the NTFS filesystem. In fact, bximage will use NTFS compression by default if it’s supported, and it’s a great space saver.

You should also avoid creating a disk image larger than 5. MB, as this results in the number of cylinders being greater than 1. MS- DOS. If you try to do this then certain nastiness will happen, such as the disk appearing to be much smaller than it actually is. There is a workaround for this which is mentioned in the “Advanced Topics” section. Setting Up DOSBox. I would recommend creating a new DOSBox configuration file for your MS- DOS installation, so that you can easily switch between configurations. It’s probably also a good idea to use your existing DOSBox configuration as a starting point for the new one.

On my computer running Windows 7 Home Premium (x. C: \Users\mpayne\App. Lucky Luke Western Fever Cracked. Data\Local\DOSBox”, but the exact location may depend on factors such as your operating system version and language.

You should also remove everything under the “. We will be specifying our own configuration there later.

Once you’ve created the new configuration file, you’ll probably want to create a copy of the DOSBox shortcut and modify the target so that it uses your new configuration file: The “- userconf” option from the original shortcut has been replaced with “- conf . I also specified the “- noconsole” switch to hide the console window, but this is just a personal preference of mine and is not essential here. From this point onwards in the article, all configuration changes are made to this new configuration file. Installing MS- DOSIn order to install MS- DOS, we need to tell DOSBox to mount our disk image. You can do this by putting something similar to the following under the “.

You should put this ! You will need to change the size parameter so that the number of cylinders matches that of the output of the bximage command—notice that the “5. The boot command tells DOSBox to boot from the floppy image “U: \mpayne\DOSBox\Images\Floppy Disks\MS- DOS 6.

MS- DOS setup disks. DOSBox will boot from the first disk specified here, but you will need to specify the paths of all of the setup disks in order to switch disks once DOSBox is up and running. Now the configuration is ready, you can start DOSBox up using the shortcut we created earlier. The MS- DOS setup should start: If your disk hasn’t been already partitioned or formatted (as is the case if you created the image using bximage), the MS- DOS setup will perform this task for you. Alternatively, you can shell out to DOS, run fdisk, reboot, run format, and then resume with the setup. Once the disk is formatted, the setup will run, and after a short while you’ll be requested to insert the second floppy disk: You can switch disks by hitting Ctrl + F4. Each time you switch disks, it will mount the next image you passed to the boot DOSBox command, until you cycle around to the first disk again.

The setup will now complete itself, prompting only when it requires the next floppy disk to be mounted. Booting MS- DOSNow that MS- DOS has been installed on your disk image, all that remains is to boot from the disk image rather than the floppy images. You can remove (or comment out) the existing boot command from the “. It should now look something like this: imgmount 2 . You are now free to perform tasks such as installing the MS- DOS supplementals, tune your autoexec.

Things To Be Aware Of. By running MS- DOS from a disk image, you will lose some of the niceties of the DOS environment which DOSBox provides.

Some such examples are the ability to mount and unmount drives whenever you like, and the ability to run DOSBox’s internal commands. Also, if you need to use the mouse in MS- DOS you will need to load a suitable mouse driver. DOSBox does not emulate CD- ROM hardware, so you won’t be able to load CD- ROM drivers and access a CD- ROM drive or ISO image. An alternative could be to use a hard disk image and attach an additional IDE drive to DOSBox. You will still be unable to switch between disk images while DOSBox is running, however.

One thing to be very careful of is to avoid having multiple DOSBox instances mounting the same disk image. Writing to a disk image simultaneously from different DOSBox instances can cause the disk image to become corrupted. I would also recommend always specifying the disk geometry when mounting disk images. Failing to do this can result in DOSBox being unable to determine the disk geometry under certain circumstances, for example in the case that the number of heads is not 1. Advanced Topics. These are some topics which I didn’t mention in this article because they are more advanced than I intend to cover here.

You might want to investigate these further: The hard disk images created by bximage are just empty files of a certain size, with all bytes set to zero. You could alternatively calculate the required disk size and geometry, and then create it using a tool such as the Unix dd command. You can use various Unix tools to create a partition table on the disk image, format it, and mount it in order to transfer files to and from the image. It’s possible to create a hard disk larger than 5. MB. Just set the number of heads to 2. When doing this, you must always pass the geometry to the imgmount command using the “- size” option.

Of course, this will only work for new disks which have not yet been partitioned. I hope that this article has helped you get MS- DOS up and running under DOSBox. If you have any questions or suggestions, don’t hesitate to get in contact. Related Pages. All rights reserved. Privacy & Cookies.