I just assembled a pure DOS system and i was thinking about the differences of an emulator and the real systems. I'm not saying anything against DOSbox, it's a great emulator, but i think you need the feeling of the actual system. At least I do. So what do you think?

DOSBox as I hate to reboot my pc and don't have room for more then 1 pc on my desk.

DosBox, altough if my old PC was still working I'd use it instead.

There is no option for both. :blink:

I use both.

DOSBox mostly to check the stuff, and real thing to play (DOS Mode).

Now that I have couple more toys, planning to install DOS 6.22 on one of them.


@Data - get your self KVM svitch. I bought 4 port one, and it really works sweet. You have a button to switch between 4 different computers, our you can use keyboard shotcut (press twice scroll button and number of computer you like to access).

I use DOSBox most of the time and it works almost perfect. I think the major advantage of DOSBox is the soundcard emulation. It's totally brilliant. I love to play games with Gravis Ultrasound or Tandy 3 Voice speaker. I never had a Tandy computer or a Gravis Ultrasound card. The only thing I miss is a MIDI IN feature. Why not use DosBox? With 70% of the games you'll get the same experience as with a DOS-only machine.

It is fine if you have nice computer, but on anything less then 1.5 GHz sound is not that great.

Speaking of emulators, I like much more interface of WinUAE. All other emus should learn from Tony. :)

Both, depending on which computer I'm on. On the whole I prefer DOS, though.

Speed is one problem but I run most of these slow games in VDMSound. When there is no other option running on a Dos machine can be good but it's always hard to get the sound drivers working.

I agree with you. WinUAE's Interface is really great! Toni (not Tony) have done a great job!!!

DOS Box becouse of Win XP and Pentium 4.

I use neither of them!

I play dos-games in pure windows(98).

Yeah same with me good ol win 98 with it's dos.

Thanks Mr.Modem. It is Toni, and this is not first time I had y instead of i. :)

DD and Choosen, Win 98 is build on the top of DOS 7.1, so I would say that either one of you are using DOS to play. (not all games will play with windows up :))

The best thing is to download the boot disk. Everything work just fine (of course if You have right drivers :bleh: )

dosbox or vdmsound

i built a dos pc but i never use it. the only use i can see for pure dos is if you have a slow pc, or a game just isnt supported any other way.

Have anyone tried other emulators like Qemu or DosEmu? I don't know so much about them.

the short answer is dont bother. for games, use dosbox. although obviously, it runs other things than games too.

Windows 98 DOS for me :bleh:

Both.

I have two machines with pure DOS on - a P200 with DOS6 and a K6-475 with WIN98. The K6 is my primary machine for DOS gaming - most of my games are located there. I use the P-200 mostly for games that won't work properly on the K6, and I eventually I plan to hook them up and set up some two-player games with friends.

Basically, if you have a machine with older, DOS-game-compatible hardware, then pure DOS is what I'd suggest.

However, if your PC is too new, too fast and too incompatible, then something like DOSBOX (or VDMS) is the only choice.

On my primary PC (P4-3GHz) I have WinXP and DOSBOX to play some DOS oldies. But mostly I use it to test whether games work (or if I want a quick game without changing PCs).

the short answer is dont bother. for games, use dosbox. although obviously, it runs other things than games too. [/b][/quote]
I second this.

Other then that I use VirtualPC, but it is way to slow for gaming.

I use to use DOSBox, but after I bought KVM switch, I have my Athlon XP computer for newer gamin, my PIII 450 for not so old games, and right now setting up P166/P133 systems for some very old games. (for example Privater 2 will not work properly on 450)

DosBox, many of the programs run there that didn't run in DOS...(soundcard problems etc.)

I use DosBox for the same reasons, but sometimes i use VDMsound, when i'm too lazy to start DosBox! :yawn: Unfortunately it doesn't work with all games...

I use DOS for my favourit games like wolf and duke3d, but for games I have never played before I use VDMSound. Dosbox is just too slow for me...

well im all for classics, but duke 3d has some great windows ports, one of them uses ken silverman's polymost tech, so that duke3d has proper 3d instead of that messed up warped perspective

http://jonof.edgenetwork.org/index.php?p=jfbuild

DosBox. Windows xp isn't built on dos and I have only this one computer with xp.

DOS, i would rather not play a game than to play it in dosbox.For me it's all about the genuine feeling :).DOSBOX is too... artificial

????!!!!!! i couldnt tell the difference, personally! dosbox is easy to set up to look and sound like if it was on a dos pc. noones forcing anyone to use windowed mode, or use scaling. i dont!

:max: The feeling is different

When the games look the same, acts the same and sounds the same the feeling is also the same. With most of the games you can't tell the difference between DOS and DosBox.

mmm...okay, your opinion, but for me it's clearly different

DOSBox....i have win xp...i have 2 other pcs though..486 and 386 LOL...but my desk space is filled up..so yeah DOSBox :Brain:

Well, this a sort of insulting question! It is like "Are you dump or not?".

:blink: whatchu talkin bout, willis?

:blink: whatchu talkin bout, willis? [/b][/quote]
I am sorry. I am not a native english speaker, so I didn't understand your question!

What's wrong with that question? I'll answer for you: Nothing. It's a normal question. Some people _DO_ still use pure DOS machines, you know...

KVM Switch will fix that...

http://webobjects.cdw.com/staticimg/full/7/0/9200.jpg

I have Belkin's 4 port KVM Switch, and I can only prise it. :)


@bahman - not all games will play in dosbox, not all of them play at full speed....

KVM Switch will fix that...

http://webobjects.cdw.com/staticimg/full/7/0/9200.jpg

I have Belkin's 4 port KVM Switch, and I can only prise it. :)


@bahman - not all games will play in dosbox, not all of them play at full speed.... [/b][/quote]
the slight display quality loss would bother me. even though i probably wouldnt notice it. it would bug me!

I am so sorry if I insulted anybody, I have never thought if anybody is still using the DOS. I still remeber how hard was to play a game under DOS. Well, first you have to be sure that you have correct hardwares which match with your game rquairements. Your machine shouldn't be so fast or so slow, otherwise it become impossible to play a game. You have to even know about your hardware setting to could setup the voice, music, and video properly. Finaly you need space to put that noisy computer somewhere in your place. I still remeber how much nosie my old computer produced when it was reading soemthing from a floppy ghhe ghhe ghhhee ghehh and sometimes I was faced with a error, a bad sector was found, ah helll after that trying to use a norton utiliy to fix the sector... why people buy such a mess and trouble when dosbox simply solve it all in a close and compact program. Well they can do it if they are happy with it.

I am so sorry if I insulted anybody, I have never thought if anybody is still using the DOS. I still remeber how hard was to play a game under DOS. Well, first you have to be sure that you have correct hardwares which match with your game rquairements. Your machine shouldn't be so fast or so slow, otherwise it become impossible to play a game. You have to even know about your hardware setting to could setup the voice, music, and video properly. Finaly you need space to put that noisy computer somewhere in your place. I still remeber how much nosie my old computer produced when it was reading soemthing from a floppy ghhe ghhe ghhhee ghehh and sometimes I was faced with a error, a bad sector was found, ah helll after that trying to use a norton utiliy to fix the sector... why people buy such a mess and trouble when dosbox simply solve it all in a close and compact program. Well they can do it if they are happy with it. [/b][/quote]
i think there is a certain amount of masochism with the real dos users ;) they like getting their hands dirty like the old days :D

U haven't noticed any difference in picture with or without KVM. And I use it for 3 computers at the moment.

At work I have old 8port KVM switch that will be replaced soon, and that one had some loos of quality, but the new ones are flawless.

I couldn`t play mane games in my XP, but I just recently find out for dosbox, and I love it
no need to tell for who I voted, right ;)

U haven't noticed any difference in picture with or without KVM. And I use it for 3 computers at the moment.

At work I have old 8port KVM switch that will be replaced soon, and that one had some loos of quality, but the new ones are flawless. [/b][/quote]
well there has to be some degradation in quality, be virtue of the fact the signal is going through more components.
it wouldnt be noticeable, but it would bug my obsessive compulsive nature ;)

I am going to sound like one of those Tv commericials at 4 in the morning but

Dos Box...it changed my life.

I don't have room for another computer or the funds right now, and I am glad something is out there to work with the old games.


Long live Abandonia and Dos Box :ok:

I've been thinking about making a dual boot system, however when I install DOS on a new computer will I face the problem of no drivers for the new hardware that I am using?

What kind of drivers would I need to install for old games to work? I can only think of Sound Card and CD-ROM drivers. Would I need video drivers too? :/

I don't think there are any drivers for DOS anymore. There might be some indie ones, but I doubt there are any commercial ones left...

Mouse driver is a must.

To play DOS games, you best to use old hardware, as you'll end up with a lot of issues, speed of the game in many cases being the biggest one, and no sound as second one. (CD-rom driver is easy to figure out)

In the case of new harware, you best to go with DOSBox, but in the case your PC is not powerfull enough, then Win98 would be my choice, as its DOS Mode is great and compatible with all DOS games.

Sound card drivers, depending on your sound card.For instance, if you have a SB compatible card, you need only to write the "SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 T6*" line in your autoexec file.
*=i'm not sure about the exact number after T.This value represents the type of sound blaster card your card is emulating ie SB FM, SB, SB PRO(old or new, etc), SB 16.I think T6 stands for Sound Blaster Pro, New(ie including the yamaha opl3 chip).
Cd-rom drivers; i recommend the standard mscdex dos driver.The latest version, 2.5 i think, comes with Dos 7.10.You can get other drivers of course, but this is the most used one.
Mouse drivers; i recommend Cutemouse, which also comes with Dos 7.10, and is commonly believed superior to other dos mouse drivers.

Also contrary to common belief many old Dos drivers can (still) be found at driverguide.com.

Sound card drivers, depending on your sound card.For instance, if you have a SB compatible card, you need only to write the "SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 T6*" line in your autoexec file.
*=i'm not sure about the exact number after T.This value represents the type of sound blaster card your card is emulating ie SB FM, SB, SB PRO(old or new, etc), SB 16.I think T6 stands for Sound Blaster Pro, New(ie including the yamaha opl3 chip).
Cd-rom drivers; i recommend the standard mscdex dos driver.The latest version, 2.5 i think, comes with Dos 7.10.You can get other drivers of course, but this is the most used one.
Mouse drivers; i recommend Cutemouse, which also comes with Dos 7.10, and is commonly believed superior to other dos mouse drivers.

Also contrary to common belief many old Dos drivers can (still) be found at driverguide.com. [/b][/quote]
I have a Sound Blaster PCI64. I think it has DOS drivers.

Pure dos feels diffrent to dos box good combo for old pentinum 75-90 is ms-dos 6.22 or win98 would run slow though or dos 6.22 and windows95 or windows3.1 windows for unziping games in winzip

Sound card drivers, depending on your sound card.For instance, if you have a SB compatible card, you need only to write the "SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 T6*" line in your autoexec file.
*=i'm not sure about the exact number after T.This value represents the type of sound blaster card your card is emulating ie SB FM, SB, SB PRO(old or new, etc), SB 16.I think T6 stands for Sound Blaster Pro, New(ie including the yamaha opl3 chip).
Cd-rom drivers; i recommend the standard mscdex dos driver.The latest version, 2.5 i think, comes with Dos 7.10.You can get other drivers of course, but this is the most used one.
Mouse drivers; i recommend Cutemouse, which also comes with Dos 7.10, and is commonly believed superior to other dos mouse drivers.

Also contrary to common belief many old Dos drivers can (still) be found at driverguide.com. [/b][/quote]
As far as I know, for ISA PnP Sound Blaster cards you need to run CTCM.EXE (part of the SB drivers) to initialize the card, or else it won't work.

For CDROM, MSCDEX is not enough. Prior to that you need a driver in CONFIG.SYS. The driver I recommend it VIDE-CDD.SYS (you can find it online). It's small (only 5K in memory) and works with almost any CD drive.

Have my own dedicated DOS-machine:

P166
Tseng Labs 4000 1MB
Voodoo 2 8Mb
Voodoo 2 4MB -->All SLI'ed together
128MBRam
1,1GB HD
DOS & Win95

Every DOS-game I have (200+) works perfectly.

My main-computer doesn't have what it takes to run ALL my DOS-games, so I don't use DOSBox very often, but I do believe that DOSBox is the way to keep DOS-games alive.

btw, I modified my msdos.sys so I get a nice menu which asks me what to do: DOS, Windows, Safe mode etc etc. The same menu you get when you hold F8 during boot-up.

I use DOSBox but a dedicated DOS PC would be great.

IT IS!

Right now, I'm browsing Abandonia on my laptop and I have a game of Jagged Alliance running on the pc next to me.

It is nice to do work/homework/brose internet while on the other PC settler is running. (And you gain more knights :D)

Great combination. :D

I would like to have both. But DOS doesn't detect my soundcard. Yes I know, the soundcard was just released and DOS is about 10 years old :bleh:

It's much older then that. Win 95 is 10 years old.

lets jsut say if you have a 286 386 486 or pentinum clocked at under 133 mhz dos is best eg 6.22 and then add windows for workgroups 3.11 :ok: :Jesus: :pissed: :sniper: :SPAM: :karate: :cheers:

Dosbox. Nothing more to say. Its just the first program I learned about, and it suits me fine, so thats what I use.

dos defintley is better than dos box it will run games better

totally agree win98. dosbox is great, but a dedicated dos machine is the one and only way. maybe not the one and only, but still a veeerryyy good way.

Personally, I think the best way to run these old games is on old hardware. But building a new (or rather, old) machine is alot of hassle when there are good emulators around.True DOS also lacks the ability to switch to another task with the flick of an ALT+TAB. The simple configurability of DOSBox makes it easy to change the emulated hardware to suit different games, weather they are quite recent or made before I was born. This gets round the problem of Pacman running as if he were on steroids.

In my eyes, there really is no choice, DOSBox wins hands down. :D

well, in the old days i used t fiddle about in AUTOEXEC.BAT & CONFIG.SYS a lot. and most of the times got my games running...

today i don't even have a floppy drive in my PC, so i use dosbox, and i must say: :respect: ! i just LOVE the donotcareaboutsoundcard-feature and the alt-tab-change-config-tab-back... :w00t:

my only prob is: i have to install a floppy anyway, because i have to install OS/2 for this lame 180KB game... *sigh*

i use dosbox with dfend. becuse its the nice quick way to edit configs. if its a game i own the cd for though i use deomen tools and vdms. i heard the other dos emulators are steaming piles of poo compared to dosbox.