Ask Slashdot: DOSBox, or DOS Box?

An anonymous reader writes "Are DOS game emulators like the highly-respectable DOSBox good enough now, or is there still no substitute for the real thing? Like a lot of Slashdotters I'm getting older and simplifying, which means tossing out old junk. Which means The Closet full of DOS era crap. And I'm hesitating — should I put aside things like the ISA SoundBlaster with gameport? Am I trashing things that some fellow geek somewhere truly needs to preserve the old games? Or can I now truck all this stuff down to recycling without a twinge of guilt? (Younger folk who didn't play DOOM at 320x200 should really resist commenting this time. Let the Mods keep them off our lawn.)"

Comments

no substitute for the real thing

[Drogo007]

Not for DOS-era games, but the ones that came just after that (Dungeon Keeper 2, Roller Coaster Tycoon, Need For Speed 4, etc)

I've spent a lot of hours trying to get those games running reliably in a Win7 environment with no success (compatibility mode, virtual machines, etc).

Re:no substitute for the real thing

[Anonymous Coward]

W98 gaming is a different pile than my closet of DOS crap.* With 98se you're pretty good well into about 2004 for hardware.

These are the last vidcards with support.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_6_Series
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radeon_R420
The ATI x800/x850 only have beta support on the Catalyst 6.2 driver. Beta because they didn't make the 2004 cutoff for MS Certification. Also you'll have to search around to find the link to that driver's page -- you can't get there from ATI's front page.

W98se can recognize over 2 gigs of RAM, but will seldom access it.

There are hacks to deal with most any size IDE drive. SATA depends on whether your controller chip has a w98 driver though. Also note this page on same site as the "real thing" for actually installing 98 on a SATA. (That guy has great stuff. I hope he enjoys the /.ing.)
http://www.flaterco.com/kb/W98.html

There doesn't seem to be a CPU limit in 32bit. Basically it seems you can use the fasted chip you can fit in an AGP motherboard.

Look for PCI Soundblaster cards with gameport. Some w95 era games may not like USB joysticks, and gameports are _very_ rare on AGP motherboards.

That's the basics. With any w98se install, the most stable system is /don't/ use the official upgrade packs. Search around for the unofficial one. Also /don't/ install any major MS software like Word or IE updates -- those always make a dicier machine. And for godsakes keep it offline 'cause it's insecure as heck now. But you'll have a terrific gaming box for all sorts of classics from about 1995 to 2004. Enjoy.

Oh -- and also look for the patch to make w98se recognize USB memory sticks. That's way useful.

*yup, I'm the story submitter, though of course as AC no proof.

Try FreeDos with VirtualBox

[Billly Gates]

Get a copy of VirtualBox for Linux or Windows and fire up the ISO download. I doubt FreeDOS can read modern SATA drives so running it through a virtual machine is ideal. FreeDOS is the most MS DOS compatible OS. Not to mention with virtualbox you can share files with a shared folder. I do not know if the guestadditions for Dos are available as I use Linux under it but it is worth a shot for sure.

What is great about FreeDOS is it comes with a TCP/IP stack and gnu tools like gcc and a nice editor so you can at least transfer files and old files from the internet to it to have the old experience back if you want to run DOOM shareware for example

Re:VMWare?

[black3d]

While you can certainly install DOS on most VMs, the problem isn't the CPU being emulated, but other hardware. And even the CPU isn't being directly emulated in most VMs like VMware or VirtualBox, but rather utilising virtualization tech on your main CPU, but I digress - back to the hardware issues.

Sound in most VMs, for instance, is a virtualized AC97 or similar codec. Sure, there are some 16-bit and virtualized sound drivers (in VMware) for instance if you want to install original OS/2, but predominantly what we're talking about is a software-driven sound card as opposed to an entirely hardware based controller. If you've been around a while, you'll recall the difference between real modems and "win modems". One can be polled directly via its own interrupt/DMA (the real one), and the all the others sit on IRQ11 (not necessarily true, example) and wait for a higher-level driver to sort out what goes where.

DOS relied on "real" sound cards with addressable interrupts, etc, which simply aren't emulated in almost all VMs. DosBox does, emulating almost every function of the actual chipsets of SoundBlasters/Adlib/GUS/etc. It's exactly what real emulation is, as opposed to virtualization. VMware, VirtualPC, VirtualBox etc, provide virtualization. DosBox provides emulation. And there is a difference. :)

Likewise, CGA, EGA, VGA cards. Most virtualizers provide a VESA compatiable SVGA driver(think, an S3 Virge, or similar). DosBox actually emulates the individual functions and quirks of the different graphics adapter chipsets. CGA for instance, isn't just "4 color graphics, 16 color text". It's a very broad specification, and DosBox has to emulate how each aspect of that specification can be used, and abused, to provide the various graphical effects that programmers coaxed out of the original systems, and graphical trickery.

And most virtual machines don't support protected run-time mode, which you can look up. :) I've written enough already!

So yeah - you can run DOS on a VM. You just can't play many games on it. :)