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DOS Emulation Under Linux - a Simple Guide
David Precious writes "With just a little work, it's possible to get your Linux system to run DOS applications with very little trouble. Whether you need to run some legacy corporate application, or just want to play some of those old classic DOS games, it's easy to get going. To make it easy, I've produced a simple guide to explain it. Hopefully it'll be of use to some people."
. . . you can also try DOSbox, which is a virtual DOS machine.
runs surprisingly well, as does duke nukem 2 :-)
Perhaps he's not aware of the many open source ports of these two for linux with improved EVERYTHING. I reccomend the freedoom wad replacement and legacydoom.
--- Justin Dearing http://www.justaprogrammer.net/ We're just programmers.
In real Linux distributions, click K (or G) > Configuration > Packaging > Install software
Enter root password
search for dos.
Tick the dosbox box. Click install.
All the depencancies are automagically resolved and your done in 10 seconds.
Then click
K > Applications > Emulators > Dosbox
Then volia, the c prompt is here haunt you.
Silly geeks, why do you make your life so hard when it can be so easy now days.
Dosemu does do com and lpt interfacing, and as for the dongles, I'd assume that that would be handled by your software.
Then again, I could be wrong... I need sleep.
stuff
DOSBox will also run on non-x86 machines. Got MacOSX or LinuxPPC? Works.
Something like User Mode Linux ?
No GNU has been Hurd during the making of this comment.
The same goes for all the games mentioned in the guide - Quake, Wolf3D, Doom all have versions that can be run natively on GNU/Linux and some are also greatly enhanced. Schorched Earth's original version isn't but several remakes are. The Linux Game Tome is a good starting place if you wish to obtain these.
It's interesting how it might be easier to run legacy Dos apps in GNU/Linux than in Windows (XP) these days. My friend's been dreaming of running a certain old dos game on his WinXP system, but all he has is Dosbox which doesn't run it and even if it did, it would be unplayably slow.
http://www.holwegner.com/software/ has a MacOS X binary of DOSBox.
There's still a dusty corner of systems design and programming that takes place on DOS: some embedded programming tools (compilers, flash burners, in circuit emulator debuggers) for some chips still work "best" on DOS.
Only now, we can use DOSEMU to run them under Linux and get the benefit of real development environment when supporting legacy apps. We can open a bash shell and use Perl, gnu make, emacs/vim, etc to drive development, then have a DOSemu / FreeDOS window to drive download and debug.
It can be quite difficult automating the Windows versions of these tools to that same level. Most of our projects use Windowes tool (running in VMware on Linux), but we did one two years ago hosted on DOSEMU and using Bytecraft's (now) excellent compiler for the PIC chips.
Best of both worlds, and many, many thanks to all the hackers that made it work so well.
- Barrie
I'm still playing DOS games from time to time, like Dune 2. Now the ironic part is that I can't get the sound to work in DOS directly (laptop with an SiS chip, no DOS usable driver avaible) neither does the sound work under Windows ME... but it works without problems in Linux using DOSEmu since it emulates an SoundBlaster 16 and a General MIDI card :-)
"By the way, does anyone know if there is a free program like DOSEMU/DOSBox for MacOS?"
There is a DOSBox package in Fink.
DOSEmu relies on a real x86 processor.
You could instead use Bochs to emulate an x86.
May I suggest vdmsound Allowed me to play Dune 2 no problems under windows 2k. Bonus points for it being open source and gpl'ed eh?
groklaw, wired and slashdot. The holy trinity of work based time wasting.
I thought it rather amusing that all the classic old DOS games that the guy mentioned are in fact available as source ports for Linux (and probably most other OSs).
But in case you didn't know, you can get a very damn cool version of Scorched Earth in 3d here: http://www.scorched3d.co.uk/ (Windows, Mac OSX, Linux, source, etc.)
I played it with a bunch of friends at a LAN party recently, several of whom had played the DOS Scorched Earth before (I hadn't). Fan-fucking-tastic game. 'Twas a very satisfying moment when I was the first to discover that you could buy mini-nukes as weapons... *evil grin*
Guy who had just been hit with the nuke (along with everyone else who just heard the explosion): "WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT???!?!??!"
Pete. :-)
IIRC, Apogee sell all their old games online on their website www.3drealms.com -quick check- Yep, if you go here: http://store.yahoo.com/3drealms/dowit.html you can find classics such as Duke Nukem (1&2), Commander Keen (various episodes), and lesser known games such as the "cute" Cosmo, Crystal Caves, etc. Those were the days!
Who needs a tutorial? Just type emerge dosemu.
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
Wp5.1 for DOS was, like all other WP DOS versions, was written in assembly language for "fast keyboard response" according to WP Corp. way back when.
I still use it on DOSemu (easy, start it with -c -k and all the function keys work as expected.)
Besides that, there were severe graphics issues, you had to have them in the arcane .wpg format.
.wpg is a well-documented format.
.wpg format. It wasn't too difficult because the docs were quite good. This was for vector graphics, though, which probably isn't what you want. There are free (as in beer) Windows programs which convert other formats to wpg; a quick Google turned up Paint Shop Pro, there must be others. On Linux there is ImageMagick which is also downloadable at no charge.
Actually
About 14 years ago I remember writing a library for outputting charts in
There were several versions of the graphical WordPerfect available for Linux.. google and you will find a guide to getting them running on a modern distro.
Unfortunately, only the very crippled personal version is available for free, and since Corel killed all their Linux stuff, you can't get it anymore.
Thinking about DOSemu and DOSbox remind me of an old article in Wired about the Turbo Switch on computers.
Actually, there were a large number of DOS applications that were coded in assembly for a 4.77Mhz PC. Faster computer would make these programs not work - and some were actual business applications and programs that interfaced with hardware that were written this way. The idea that PC archetecture would be around for 20+ years did not even cross the programmer's mind back then! Originally the purpose of the turbo button was to slow your blazing fast 10Mhz 8088 based PCXT clone to 4.77Mhz so you could software written for the stock IBM PC.
By the time the 386sx came out, the turbo button had lost it's function and the pinto analogy was appropriate. It was a great way to slow down games, though!
-- $G
[See "Boot CP/M!" link mid-page.]
MechWarrior II: 21st Century Combat
Commander Keen
Scorched Earth/TANKS!
Hugo Whodunit (wish I could find a copy of those!)
Raptor: Call of the Shadows/Raptor 2
Descent
Duke Nukem 3D
Command and Conquer (Gold)
Warcraft I and II
Oher than the games listed above, I pretty much missed out on the DOS gaming era - I didn't get a Nintendo until '93 or so, and quite a while longer until I got a PC ('96?).
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers