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DOSBox Sees Continued Success
KingofGnG writes "DOSBox, the emulator designed to run DOS games on modern operating systems (and not necessarily on a PC), has been chosen as project of the month for May on SourceForge. It's the latest award granted to a piece of software that 'simply does what it is supposed to do,' as the authors say. After having amassed more than 10 million downloads, it will soon be getting an update that's been awaited for almost two years."
I use it to play Masters of Orion 2. It has a built in IPX simulator, so it makes multiplayer very easy. You can also record your games using built in feature!
Can we get the comment count for each story back on the front page, please?
Can I play the original Oregon Trail on there? I know I can download it and play it on X, but it wouldn't be the same without running it from c:\
DosBOX also does a great job at virtualizing old programming languages, such as good old GW-BASIC. It even runs business apps well, and unlike NT's WOWEXEC.EXE, doesn't insist on hogging 100% of the CPU 100% of the time. Highly recommended, if you have a DOS fetish like me.
It'll never die.
How we know is more important than what we know.
No fullscreen mode for DOSBox :(
Is Windows 7 the same way?
Q&A for DOS was the best non-relational database of the pre-windows era. (Ok, so PSF/File and Alpha4 had their fans too.) When I needed to load a copy of Q&A to retrieve some old Q&A data, every version of the Windows Dos box would lock the system up. The early versions of DOS/Box would also crash on Q&A's nasty habit of directly accessing system video.
However, for the last three years (at least), DOS/Box now loads Q&A and at least the Q&A search and export features work just fine.
This is one fine product.
Live Long and Prosper - Thanks Leonard. You are missed.
Now what they need to do is make an app that will allow me to load all the old floppies with these games into DosBox in some way that it will act like floppies, virtual drives or such.
I had it working by setting display to "large" but no that is not displaying the comment count either.
Dosbox is fantastic for those times when you want to relive the moments when you first got into pc games (at least for anyone born before say 1984 or thereabouts).
Many of the games we now regard as classics, were written for DOS. Many of those games even pioneered whole genres of computer gaming.
Such games that come to mind include Wolf3D, Doom, Command & Conquer, Warcraft, Need For Speed, Microprose F1GP and the list goes on.
They may not have been the first in their genre, but they were certainly the games that defined the genre. Current game developers would do well to look to the DOS classics for inspiration, not so much for ideas, but for how to create a true classic.
Dosbox works incredibly well right now and I wish its developers every success in its continued development.
This seemed like a reasonable sig at the time.
I haven't been able to figure it out from the faqs if it is a sandboxed virtual machine or if it just provides an emulation layer. It would have been a lot easier for me to download it and try it out, but you'd also think that the docs would spell that out as well.
Some folks are doing amazing things with dos emulators on Linux:
http://www.melvilletheatre.com/articles/powerbasic-linux/index.html
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
What is a "millions download"?
A typo.
Next question, please.
that's alot of downloads, is what it is.
I'd sooner call it DOSArcade or DosGameBox or something of the sort, as unfortunately the focus is entirely on games. Nothing wrong with that - I like playing the odd classic that I can't otherwise (no such old hardware and all that).
Example.. Symphony.. old as dirt spreadsheet app and for whatever reason seemingly can't be replaced by the newfangled bits of Excel, Calc, etc.
It's currently running on an old, old machine that still boots Windows 98 and runs okay there.. but that old, old machine is going to die eventually. Already tried running it on a new machine under XP but no matter what, it always suggests there is not enough expanded memory.. despite there being plenty available in the exact same configuration as on the Windows 98 machine.
So DOSBox to the rescue? Well, yes, it will certainly run.. but not print. DOSBox doesn't do printing.
Very well, grab a special hacked up version that allows printing. Yay, it prints - but it prints garbage at the beginning of each page and fails to catch page breaks.
So remove the printer codes (remember those?) in Symphony - no more issues, but now the printed layout is all wrong, too.
I do realize this is just a single app - but for something that can emulate the wazoo out of a variety of graphics cards, video cards, etc. I found it disappointing that the state of printing (which one may tend to do from a business app) from DOSBox is what it is: experimental at best.
The "update that's been awaited for almost two years" will supposedly implement "the ability to save the state of the emulated game and to interact with the software through a GUI"
It snowcrashes my computer after less than a minute of playing Albion. White noise fills the screen, and bam.
No idea what's with that yet.
Doesn't he mean, "What's millions download, precious?"
rm -rf sig
DOSBox does not officially have printing support. People have added it, but it's not part of the main product.
http://vogons.zetafleet.com/viewtopic.php?t=19764
Why is this? Is it because most games don't require printing support?
I'm sure there are some people out there with Print Shop or something who would like to be able to use it... And I tried to help someone run a DOS accounting application under Vista using DOSBox. I couldn't figure out how to get printing to work and ran out of time. :-(
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
What's wrong with 'ls -X'?
Oblig: http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/taters
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
KingofGNG recently tried to plug his site by adding the download count to DOSBox's Wikipedia article. And now he's doing it here. The source for the download count should have linked directly to dosbox.com or sourceforge, not this spammer's personal page. The difference? Wikipedia's editors caught it and removed it. Slashdot's editors? ...
I know quite a few companies that spent a killing in DOS applications back in the days, and who are either too cheap or too strapped for cash to replace those apps with newer ones, so they're stuck with having an ancient box around that still runs DOS. If you happen to have an old machine, don't throw it away, companies will pay for those machines if, and only if, they run DOS 6.22 (3.something, I forgot which one, would even be better) fine.
Now DOSbox would be the saviour... IF it could print! Of course those ancient machines need to output their data somehow, and while the ones that fortunately just store data and spit it on discs can actually benefit from DOSbox, apps that need to create a hardcopy are just out of luck (at least about 9 out of 10 times).
Print support in DOSbox would end the aera of legacy machines littering offices worldwide. THEN it would be the absolute app. And another foot in the door of offices for free software.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Now that MT-32 emulator code has been included in ScummVM and bunch of other places, I really hope that they include it directly in Dosbox. There are some builds that contain the Roland thing, (such as http://www.si-gamer.net/gulikoza/ ) but I'd rather have those included with the project itself.
I like DOSbox because it lets me play Shadow of Yserbius on ImagiNation Revival. A first-person perspective (but still-frame) multiplayer RPG world originally offered by Sierra On-Line and called The Sierra Network and later ImagiNation Network. A group has gotten a server running that simulates the old dial-up systems, but over TCP/IP, enabling many players at once.
For me, Shadow of Yserbius was the first MMORPG I played, and still may favorite. It is a fairly short game, and cheating is trivial to do (your character data is stored on your local machine), but if you play it fairly it is quite enjoyable and challenging.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
The source is available. If the people working on it now don't have the printing itch to scratch, there's nothing stopping those who need this feature to add it or to hire someone to add it.
So basically all that a piece of call-home spyware has to do is offer you some advantage... compared to other DRM's that shouldn't exist in the first place, either?
Reminds me of a joke some eastern-european coleague told me some years ago. Went something like, the constant state surveillance and phone taps weren't all bad. If you forgot what hour you're supposed to meet your girlfriend, you could call the police and ask them.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
You can use the typoinsummary tag to alert the posters to fix the grammar issue.
You can use the tyopintag tag to be humorous.
I'm playing Master of Orion 2, Battle at Anteres, with Dosbox, right now. For some reason, the DOS version works much better under Dosbox than the Windows version does under WINE.
There's a slight sound stutter at times and a slight effects lag, but everything else is perfect. Still one of the best turn-based strategy games.
Funny that a project that hasn't had a release since august 2007 and that seem to collaborate by posting patches to a discussion board instead of using vcs branches is chosen for "project of the month" in may 2009... That said, that version (0.72) is still a damn fine piece of software. Let's hope for another release soon.
My other account has a 3-digit UID.
I love dosbox, it works really well for me.
Maybe the dosbox developers could fork the wine codebase and make a wine that actually works the way it is supposed to.
Afaik DOSBox supports emulating standard lp qeues as printers, so printing from it shouldn't be a problem.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
I discovered DOSBox only a year of so ago when my brother brought back the memories of one of the first DOS games we used to play on our first computer - Zed for DOS by Bitmap Brothers. We had a lot of fun playing that game back then. ( For me it simply is the best game ever made.)
I thought it would be revive the good old times and see if the kids enjoy the game as much as we did - but a) I did not had the game installer any more and b) I had read on forums that the game won't run on modern hardware/os without going thru a lot of hoops.
I solved the first problem by going to ebay and buying a Zed CDROM for $1.99 + SH. Second problem was solved by DOSBOX.
I was expecting to do a lot of stuff (like setting up sound card, giving up on multiplayer, living with instability etc.) but amazingly enough - it was a breeze to get the game working in its full glory - including multiplayer. And it worked on everything - on XP initially and then on Linux on my kids HP Mini and recently on Windows 7 when I upgraded! And the best part is it is so reliable.
Kudos to the guys working on this.
(Heads to dosbox.com to donate)
Especially to those who cry for better printer support and such for non gaming application should try it out.
It might not be perfect and isnt updated since 2 years, but it did finish a lot of work on those issues.
Before the time when dosbox was enabled to use the virtual mode of the cpu's, dosemu was way more effective on x86 hardware (while also supplying full software emulation for those on non x86 hardware)... nowadays its worth to try both on problematic apps though
If your DOS app. will print to a file, you can print from DosBox. I use DosBox to run an old DOS based Cadd Program. When I want to plot a job to our HP plotter, I select HPGL/2 and plot to a file. I have a little script invoked by a launcher on my Fedora desktop which will copy the file to the plotter que, and then delete the file. Same trick works with a postscript printer.
By the way, Dosemu supports both printing and networking, and has better support for fullscreen graphics. Dosemu is easy to install on Ubuntu. Not so much on Fedora.
Kurt
So where can I buy this DOSBox? As a good capitalist I have my credit card ready for purchase, but I can't seem to find a price list anywhere. All I hear is that it opens sauce, or something like that.
QBASIC for some quick-n-dirty programming when linux shell scripts or spreadsheets aren't enough, but C or PERL is overkill.
dBASE IV, complete with DOS 4GW extended memory manager runs just fine. Woohoo.
I also have the original floppies for Chessmaster 3000 (yeah it's ancient). I could not get it to run under WINE. But CM 3000 is so ancient that it supports Windows 3.1 and Win95. When they were throwing out old computers at work, they threw out the Windows 3.1 floppies with them. I took a set home with me. I couldn't install from the floppy drives, but I was able to image the floppies as disk files, and tell DOSbox to treat the image files as floppies.
Win 3.1 was a graphical shell that installed on top of DOS. DOSbox's emulation is good enough that Win3.1 installed properly on top of DOSbox. Now I can pull up the DOSbox prompt, "CD \WINDOWS" and type "WIN", and up comes ye olde Program Manager.
I also run the original Tetris under DOSbox. I use a cheat. Tell Tetris that you're using a joystick, even if you don't have one. That slows down the game to make it more playable.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
I wish they improved the rendering. While the speed is enough for quests, when it comes to old-school "beat-'em-up" it's too slow.
Strangely, but DosEMU works better.
If these companies were really that hard up for a DOS machine, they could always install FreeDOS or use DOSemu (which I believe has printer support). DOSbox is an awesome project (I use it all the time to play games) but it's not really geared toward office work.
Win 3.1 was a graphical shell that installed on top of DOS. DOSbox's emulation is good enough that Win3.1 installed properly on top of DOSbox. Now I can pull up the DOSbox prompt, "CD \WINDOWS" and type "WIN", and up comes ye olde Program Manager.
Yep. I've used this to play old 3.1 games that don't work under Wine. Star Trek: Klingon comes to mind. One of the best FMV games there is, which means it's still awful, but in a fun way.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
How about one of the several fine virtual machines out there?
that's alot of downloads, is what it is.
And what's an "alot"?
I installed Windows 3.1 on DOSBox just yesterday, amusingly enough. For a friend... and now I need to get the setup discs from him so I can do the same for myself.
I put the best of windows entertainment package (bowep) on there, too, just in case he'd like to play some of those games... of course, they'd run on Vista, come to think of it, so I don't really know why I did that. lol.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
I've had better results with DOSEMU than with DOSBox. Despite it's name, DOSEMU seems to be more virtualization and less emulation (see wikipedia), which means there's less overhead. The downside is it can only run on x86(-64) and I think it only works on Linux at the moment.
I think I'll go install XCOM again now...
I use dosbox to replay MOM every two years!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
DOSBox is for games. If a company needs to run DOS applications with printing support, they should be running a virtual machine like VMWare.
the hard part is converting output that was designed for dot-matrix to something that can easily be up-converted to output useful to modern printer drivers of various flavors
It was kind of an "interactive storytelling" sort of game, you were a cowboy, all I remember about it was walking around the town and the extremely simplistic gunfights. Haven't played it since I was like 10. WTF was the name of this game?
(Also, it's cool to see this make the front page. I've actually been rocking DOSBox real hard these last two weeks, replaying Roadwar 2000.)
Hey, I finally got my first freak! Took you long enough!
What's wrong with 'ls -X'?
Doesn't solve the same problem. lf(1) packs more information into the same size screen, by being terse; all the files with the same extension are printed together, with the extension printed just once (at the beginning of the line) and then omitted to save space. If you have a big project with a whole bunch of files, lf(1) helps you see the forest; ls -X just gives you a listing sorted a different way.
See the screenshot on the Sourceforge page.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
The real question is:
"Will System Shock 2 and Eleventh Hour run under it?"
I know those games are old, but I'm coming over all nostalgia-like. :) /Serious question though.
The Digital Sorceress
Ah yes, the grand old place where a minority takes their own comprehension problems as some claim to glory and superiority.
Did I claim that the former was worse? Well, blimey, no, that's your own strawman.
Come on, you can do better than that.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I already replied, but I didn't see this until now:
dBASE IV, complete with DOS 4GW extended memory manager runs just fine. Woohoo.
You should really be using Dos32/a with Dosbox. It almost always improves performance.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Where's my DARK AGE??!?!
I don't really need to hear PacMan sounds. No, really. Because then they would come in my sleep. And the ghosts. And not having enough power pills. So please, can I start it without sound?
ALso I need those resources for something else.
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
My company has some pretty old legacy dos programs used for a variety of tasks such as loading firmware, calibration and testing. Our computers are dying fast and replacements, whether new industrial ones or 'new in the box' motherboards have various issues with bios, the right interface slots etc.
Dosbox just works. It works better than a clean dos 6.22 install up to a clean 98 install. We will be able to preserve the systems that are still working for the legacy interface cards software and PC needs and use new Windows XP systems for the dos applications we still use. It's incredible that this is so stable on XP.
Now I'm on a quest for a working frontend so I can get several hundred DOS applications working without too much user drooling.
I will be trying very hard to get my company to donate. I may have to talk to the maintainer and get them to relicense it and have the company buy a few licenses. One of the big wigs is convinced it will help when claiming the 'purchase' on taxes.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty