How to run Fallout in DOSBox
 

How to run Fallout in DOSBox

I have seen this question multiple times around the internet. Even to the point of searching for the original DOS version of Fallout. It seems finding the original DOS version is impossible. However, with the help of some forums online, there is a way to "convert" a regular windows version of Fallout, and use it in DOSbox. I've decided to write a very detailed tutorial. Plus, this requires no warez, or illegal files. Just the original Fallout patch, and some system files.

What you need:
DOSBox 0.74 | Or equivalent
Windows version of Fallout 1.0

1. Download the Fallout 1.1 DOS Patch
This will patch the game, but will also contain the DOS version of the fallout executable.

2. Extract the contents of the archive, and copy all files into your fallout folder. If asked, overwrite everything.

3. Download dos4gw.exe and place it in the "Fallout" folder. NOT the "DATA" folder. It needs to be where your fallout exe files are located, in the main folder.

4. Download hmidet.386 and place it in the Fallout folder. Just like step 3.

5. Download hmidrv.386 and place it in the Fallout folder. Just like step 3.

Your Fallout folder should look something like this:

http://i55.tinypic.com/343hlab.png

I highlighted the important files. Ignore everything else.

6. Open your DOSbox configuration file, and change the value of "memsize" to "32".

7. Open the Fallout.CFG in your Fallout folder. This is a configuration file. Change the value of "art_cache_size" to "5".

8. In DOSBox, cd to the Fallout folder, and type "Fallout". The game will now run in DOSBox. You may or may not have sound. So if you want sound, you may have to tinker with the DOSBox settings.

Have fun, and enjoy your DOS version of Fallout. ^_^

Nice tutorial, very useful for anyone with newer Windows than XP :OK: I didn't even know there was ever a Dos version of Fallout :huh:
But, shouldn't there be Setup / configuration file(s) for a Dos version then, to select a card for music and sound?

Fallout had two original versions. Same game, just two executables. One a Windows NT executable (which DOSBox will not run) and the other an exe DOSBox will run (made for DOS).

As for the config file, someone online mentioned needing a file for sound.. a file that wasn't included with the Windows version of Fallout. Finding the "original" DOS Fallout is pretty much impossible. Believe me.. I've looked.

Nevertheless, people have had success getting sound to work. :max:

Really? I have it :max:
There's a Windows and a DOS installer on the same disk.

Only to confirm what zirkoni says:
http://img257.imageshack.us/img257/9...tdoswin.th.png

Install.exe -> MsDos version.
Setup.exe -> Win version.
CD release version is 1.2

Only to add some blahblah:
[Edit]
Nick02, PM.

Hmm, I also have Dos install part on my Fallout CD. Don't ask me how I never noticed that, probably never needed :p

Can't open the fallout.cfg data.Which programm does I need?

It's a plain text file, just with a different extension.
You can edit it with pretty much any text editor / word processing program. Notepad will do just fine.

I have followed the tutorial, Fallout is crashing to a C:/ prompt after a loading screen, please help!

I am running adosbox for android on my Asus Transformer Prime thats running Ice Cream Sandwich.

I have made the memsize changes and the art cache size changes, added the 3 files that were needed, but it still crashes.

I tried updating the fallout game to 1.1 with the dos file, and then run it using the windows exe to check the version and it is always ver 1.0, so i updated with both the dos and win ver updates and it run on windows as ver 1.1

I have tried just using the Dos update and running it on the TFP, but it keeps crashing back to C prompt.

Only difference between your screen shot of the file folder and mine is I don't have a fallupw1 folder.

How exactly it crashes? Does it say anything about reason of crash?

When I run fallout in dosbox, it will start up, show a picture that says loading and then just go back to dosbox like nothing was loaded, it doesnt say anything or give any crash report.

Dosbox isnt crashing just the fallout game.

I tried to do the exact same thing on my Samsung Galaxy Ace about an hour ago, with the same results. Goes into the loading screen and then just back to command prompt in dos box.

The same folder structure worked fine in my PC dosbox.

I don't think Fallout was ever meant to be running on a mobile phone. DosBox emulates a lot, but not everything. The machine itself has to provide/support the right graphics resolution, which is 640x480 required for Fallout, and this is what a Samsung Galaxy Ace can not provide (having a vertical-shaped resolution of 320x480).
Some things simply aren't going to work where they don't belong to.

Hmm, interesting question... Try to set windowresolution=480x320 (or what is native for you) and output=[some hardware scaler]. It can shrink window on Windows, but of course I don't know what it will do on pad. :)

I would definitely recommend making a shortcut on the desktop to Dosbox, right clicking the shortcut and placing this in under target:

E:\DOSBox-0.74\DOSBox.exe -userconf "C:\Program Files\GSP\fallout\fallout.exe"
Assuming you installed in the default location.

The same thing works for any exe, just point it to your "dos games exe"


As for my experience with Windows 7, I copied the 1.1 Dos files over (the only difference being the exe file). Downloaded and placed Dos4Gw in the folder - Modified the .conf and the .cfg as Nick said ...but had to delete the 2 .386 files and reboot the PC.

Then it worked a charm (no sound)
If I place the .386 files back in the folder it won't work.

Going to try it on my softmodded Xbox now (dosXbox) which was the whole point of me trying to get the Dos version anyway.

Why anyone running windows wants to use the Dos version... kind of baffles me :S

Well, on my XP system Windows version have very strange timings for fade in/fade out... But I am using it anyway. :)

Also, I think there is no any need to reboot PC after removing files. :)

The point is that the game was released 15 years ago, when Windows 95 was state of the art. There's no guarantee it will work right (if at all) on modern Windows versions and hardware setups. There's 100% guarantee it will work in DOSBox. :)

Sometimes when you run a program, things happen that you don't know about.. temporary files might be made.. things reside in memory ...I don't really know..

I was talking from my experience earlier... I done everything minus the 2 .386 files and the modifying of the conf file and cfg file. It kept going straight back to a screen as mentioned (black screen displaying C:/) after the loading screen.

That's when i found this site and thought wow there's other weirdo's out there playing old games lol - I modified the files and put the 2 .386 files in the folder as explained, then i was getting just a plain black screen. I then deleted the .386 files... black screen..
I tried to run windows version, LOCK UP. Reboot... then dos version again. Success.

I know for a fact the windows version of this game runs on XP Pro fine, you might have to right click the exe and muck around with the compatibility tab like most old games.

& Most games from about the 2000era I have been able to make simple mods to cfg files and get to run on 1440x900 widescreen... when widescreens weren't even out then = D with fallout it just takes one fan with some programming skills and bam, mods galore.

No luck with getting it working on DosXbox, intro vid runs quite smoothly, can select a character... next video comes on but real choppy then nothing... :( For some reason you can only select 16m memory max and I think it needs 32 :( I have all the old apogee games working + Wolf3D though :)

You can set up DOSBox to use anywhere up to 64 MB of RAM by editing the config file.

This:
[Badmooded today]
What always baffles me is what peeps would try to get such game old game running directly on a modern OS.
You obviously have no idea how lucky you are that for example Win7 is smart enough to protect itself against dodgy programming.
Some of those old things would write anything everywhere, not to mention some came with 'adapted' or 'improved' *sigh* DLLs that would happily overwrite system files.
.... etcetera etcetera, add a long list here of possible catastrophic scenarios.

You obviously have no, but really no idea how much the structure of your modern OS has changed.

Ah well, at least you will be able to whine how bad windows is, and you will be able to nag how slow it becomes, and of course curse MS because you will need to reinstall windows ..... LMAO.
[/Badmooded today]

Well none of that ever happened to me :woot:

You can only select up 16mb in Dosbox through the configuration. Maybe I will re-copy fallout onto it and look for the config file to edit manually.

Just give it some time, you'll get what you deserve.

64MB.
Read the dosbox manual.

Well I'm trying to get it working on the xbox, dosXbox not dosbox. I can't find the config file to edit, and the settings only allow 8 or 16.

For reading and writing the configs: http://www.tdubel.com/artikkelit/emu...dosxbox_v3.txt

"Error saving game. Unable to save game." on DOSBox 0.71 for PSP
 

Greetings, and first of all, sorry for coming to this thread after so many years, but I wanted to try anyways.

I did this in my PSP and put Fallout 1 working really well (the speed could just be a bit faster, but it's perfectly fine for me the way it is). But my problem is that I can't save the games. By now, I've saved about 3 or 4 times in 2 days. Sometimes it saves, but the BIG majority of the time, it doesn't. And I don't know what the problem is, since I start the game from the Memory Stick with DOSBox in my PC and it works perfectly. It's just on the PSP it doesn't work. I've tried everything that I read that could be the problem and that came to my mind, and nothing worked. It only saves when "it wants", and I don't know what to do for it to " want" to do it. Please, can anyone help with this? I've no more ideas. I wanted to play it on my PSP, since my phone's battery is not that good and my PC, I have another games first.

Thanks in advance for any help!

Do you have free place? Maybe, it cannot save because there is nowhere to save?

Thanks for the reply. But yss, I have enough space on it. 10GB free haha. nd I've thought in permissions, but only the SLOT0X folders have read-only in Windows when I connect the PSP to my PC, and I can't remove that. But the files are not read-only. And I learned that MS-DOS didn't have permissions, since nothing was protected. So I've thought in the problem being with something in the PSP. Maybe filesystem? (thought on this one now) Or not giving permission to create the files for some weird reason. Or this is a known bug of the game and the PSP just put it worse? And again about the space, I've put the free_space value equal to 20400 again to see if it had space and it gave no error... I've though in this being a RAM problem. Not enough to save, maybe. I don't know, just thought on it. I've put 40,35,32,16MB in memsize and 8,4,2,0 in art_cache_size. But it didn't change it. Just puts the game slower. Any ideas...?

Hmm. Actually, this _can_ be the problem for dosbox sometimes - particularly, when game tries to check this free space. DOS is never planned to go into GB area. I usually start DOSBox with -freesize 640 key, to limit it into "manageable" space. Try it if you can?

Thanks. I didn't think anyone would reply in such an old thread, but cool there is haha. But sadly, it didn't work... It still doesn't save... It's not because of max file load right? I read somewhere the PSP version only loads either 9 or 10 files at a time, and the PC version loads hundreds. But I don't know if that's needed for Fallout or not. I don't even know ehat MS-DOS version Fallout needs... I know the PSP version is 5 or something like that.

And it seems to only save when I create a new game. When I load a game, it refuses to save. Also, after the first save (after creating the game), it won't save anymore too. So basically, to save, I have to create a new game. And I can't undertstand what's causing this... I've already thought in learning how to make homebrews for PSP to re-port DOSBox to the PSP but with the correction on it, somehow. But I don't even know what the problem is... I've disabled all sound in the game (removed the .386 files and disabled everything about sound in fallout.cfg and dosbox.conf. This because of me thinkng theb probpem might be it trying to load more than 10 files (which I think it's the PSP max allowed files to load - really PSP, it's the memory card driver max, from what the developer said). But I read MS-DOS allowed only 8... And anyways, the experiment failed. The game still didn't save even with the game not loading both the files (and possibpy music and souns files too). Getting without ideas again... If I just knew the cause of this...

Though I have no experience with PSP, I'm very sure that Fallout would need a higher Ms-Dos version than 5. I don't know if you can edit DosBox options file, dosbox-x.xx.conf, but if you can, try putting the following line at the very end under [autoexec] section:


VER SET 7 10


That will set the Dos version to 7.10, which is what it was under Windows 98. Might try


VER SET 6 22



as well, since that was the last "Windows-less" Ms-Dos version I think.



Also have a look under the [dos] section at the bottom and whether you have XMS=, SMS= and UMB= values all set to true. If yes, it might be worthwhile to set each individually to false and see if that changes anything.


Just a shot in the dark at the possible realistic reasons here, since I have no experience with running DosBox on PSP.


Edit: Thinking on it, it also indeed might have to do with loading / writing only 10 files. Ms-Dos actually allowed more than 8 files, which was the minimum, through a files=x command which was used back in Ms-Dos by a config.sys file, loaded at the very startup. It allowed more files to load at a time, dunno what the maximum was, maybe 255. Reasonable amount back in these days was 20 or 30 files, also depending on maximum RAM available.

Don't think DosBox supports anything like that, though, at least not by default.


Have a look on those Dos parameters here, if you like:
https://www.computerhope.com/ac.htm

Thanks for the reply. Though, none of the ideas worked... About the edit, I didn't know it was the minimum, nor that it could be changed. I thought it was a fixed value. And thanks for the link. Very interesting actually. I'm not from MS-DOS era (or at least with enough age), but I find thse things kinda interesting. Sadly, the max file load seems not to be possible to change... (unless I rewrite PSP's kernel and drivers to do this and I have no idea how to do it, nor I'm an experienced programmer or hard-coder, I'm only a beginner haha). I've thought in putting the game in an img file, but I'm not quite sure how to do it yet... I think it would solve the problem is the cause is the max file load being 9 (not 10, my mistake - so including the DOSBox executable, the remaining are 8 files to load). But I can't do this now. I don't have a PC. I'm changing configuration and those things from my PSP and putting other DOSBox versions on it through my phone. I'll not be at home for days... So I'm open to any more suggestions since I can't test the img one. Btw, the Android DOSBox has DOS 5.0 and Fallout 1 works there (I've seen videos showing it working), and also, the PSP version of DOSBox is 0.71, if it helps in any way. But Fallout works on the PC version 0.71, so versions of DOSBox and DOS should not be the problem I think. Any more ideas.......? haha

EDIT: If it helps, I read the img part here: https://www.pspmod.com/forums/psp-ho...t-written.html. The person seems to have my problem and on the PSP, and I found the img idea interesting. I just don't know if it won't put the PSP slower by being loading an operating system... (if I understood their ideas right)

I've read a bit more about DOS and DOSBox. Seems that DOS has a default number for a single processnto open files, and that's 20. 5 of them are for stdin and those commands, and the rest are to open any files. The FILES=XXXX is the TOTAL amount of files that can be opened in the system. But each process opens only 15 files at most. And this was written by a DOS programmer in 2002, so at minimum, older versions of DOS had 15 or less files to open by a single process (and Fallout is a single process). Source of this: http://www.faqs.org/faqs/msdos-progr...ection-12.html.

---About the img part---

1 - If I create an ISO wity the game CD (which I own, btw - version 1.2 though, but at least it's the officially most updated one), will it load only the ISO file, or will mount it as in Windows and load the files individually? Because I could install with the Minimum Installation option and run everything from the CD, it it would load only the ISO and all fikes individually (I don't think this would work this way, but doesn't hurt to try asking haha).

2 - In case the point 1 doesn't work as I wanted it to, if I modify a Windows image to have the game on it, can I save the games in a drive out of it? For example, mounting Windows 3.1 (the most light one of the 3 I saw) in C (as it would be an image -file .img -, I wouldn't be able to modify it **** saving games on it) and saving the games in E in a folder, mounted normally in a folder of the memory card. Would this work?

3 - If none of the 2 ideas work, would there be another one?

Thanks again for any help that anyone can provide (and thanks for those who already did).

EDIT: Now I thought about idea 2 again... The game doesn't ask for a place to save! It's always in FALLOUT/DATA/SAVEGAMES. Then I can't save this in another drive....... Cool...... Maybe if I use Minimum Installation and choose to install in another drive and keep the CD being the way to load the game? Still, this would have to be loaded with an img operating system, to overcome the 9 max file loads problem on the PSP (minus one for the DOSBox executable - DOSBox for PSP has only 2 files: the executable and dosbox.conf, and I imagine it will unload the conf file after reading it). So, have a system inside an img file, mount the CD files in another drive and mount a drive for the installation. The last 2 drives would be with locally stored files in the memory card. Windows would be in an img file and wouldn't be possible to change anything on it. As I read in the thread I linked before, it's possible to make a custom image. So, I'd have to install Windows 3.1 in DOSBox for Windows, do what I wrote, save the system in an img file with the installation already made and the shortcuts changed to point to the PSP folders, and put everything running on the PSP. Does this sound it could work? Or I'm missing anything? OR THERE'S AN EASIER WAY?????? Because this is crazy!!!!!! (but if it's the only way, when I get home in a week or so, I'll start looking on how to do this...)

Unfortunately, I am familiar with Windows-version only, so I have no idea how it must work on PSP, sorry. :(

No problem :). I'll keep trying until I get without more ideas. The best idea would to reprogram the game to use less than 8 files... But no one has the source of it, so.... Not gonna be done it seems. If it can be done without the source code, I have no idea how it's done. I'll see if this Windows idea works. I've read bad news about it which say that it won't detect CD drives... (so probably not HDD drives also) And if it's true, then the idea won't work at all, since it was about creating a virtual HDD to run the game on... If it doesn't work, then it seems I got the game working on the PSP fast but just as a Demo hahaha, since no one can save the games with it................... :(

I think, you are over-complicating things. If image of Windows system will work, image with DOS system will work the same, as Win3.1 is simply elaborate DOS-program. Make it DOS.

Ah yes, sorry. I forgot to mention I think. Not Windows 3.1 anymore. I had read it runs in DOS, so it's the same thing. Now the idea is to run Windows 95 and run Fallout in it, as it's not a DOS program anymore, DOS will just run it and and run only one file: the .img file. I thought this would work with 3.1, but I didn't know it run on DOS before.

Be careful with Windows 95. Although it's been one of the simpler "pure" Windows versions, it's also the first Windows to boot right from the start, even if through Ms-Dos 7.1. You'd have to edit a file in the root directory of the drive Windows 95 is on, to stop it from loading directly after start and to stay in Ms-Dos prompt.
It can also mess up your booting sequence with PSP, whichever operating system that console natively loads.


Also Windows 95 still requires Ms-Dos drivers to be loaded for many things, including CD-ROM drives. One of them is MSCDEX.EXE command in autoexec.bat file which is provided natively with Windows 95' Ms-Dos, the other is your CD drive's provided drivers, loaded in config.sys file - required. If you don't have the latter, Windows 95 won't recognize the CD drive.
And it should be drivers which are compatible not just with Windows XP and older as usual by now, but compatible with older Windows 95, and that is the hard part.

An update on the error
 

So only 8 months after the last time hahaha, I FINALLY have something to try! Not much though. I came across an idea to debug the game (use some debugger or something), and something came up on Google which was Fallout's Debug Mode. Though, only for Windows. So in 3-4 hours, the second time I used reverse engineering (the biggest one at the moment hahaha), I did the same that was done to the original Windows executable, I did it to the original DOS executable and enabled Debug Mode on it. I ran the game as normal and did what was supposed to do in order for the save game to fail. I failed twice on purpose to try to see a pattern (idiot idea, should have been more - pattern of 2, wow XD). Anyways, this is what came on the debug file. Would anyone recognize something useful from here that could help knowing what the problem is? The fails I think it's the ones in the end, but look in the entire file if needed. I've no idea what's the problem with the game...

Hmm, looking at the debug file dump, let me ask you something - have you ran other games in DosBox on the PSP aside of Fallout 1? If so, did they have similar problems to save games, or there were none?
Can't pinpoint a solution, but my gut feeling says that there's an incompatibility problem between DosBox' emulated file system, and the PSP's file system. In that when Fallout 1 is trying to save the game, it fails to be able to write the necessary data on PSP's internal storage. But it's just a feeling, I'm not technically skilled enough to decipher the debug file info.

Well, the PSP can save as long as it's done after creating the game. A second time it won't work. Only the first time. And I must create a new game, not load the game and save - that won't work either. I MUST create a new game to save, and at most only once.

My thoughts keep going to the max files of the PSP which seem to be 8 at a time (load(/write?) 8 files at a time), but I'm not sure because I don't know how to test that outside the PSP. On DOSBox documentation it's said one must recompile DOSBox to change the FILES thing (max load/write files at a time), and I've no idea where that's written in the source to even try to change and recompile. So I seem to have no way to replicate the thing outside the PSP... Though, I thought maybe someone could be sure of something having that logfile (which actually doesn't tell me much - there are no error codes >> ???????).

EDIT: but no, I haven't tried any other game. I guess I could try, but I'm not sure on what that would help, since DOSBox can write to the PSP memory (both the character and the game). Though, save the game, only one time alone, unless I create another game. With the character, I seem to be able to save various times (if I remember correctly - I forgot to write that haha, but I believe I could, because I didn't write I couldn't). Also it was able to write the debug file in-game >> while not being able to save........ Hmm...... New information just arrived hahaha.

It can't write a save file, but can write a debug file.... Right.... Wtf?? I also saw on PC with the help of Process Explorer, I ran Fallout 1 on PC with DOSBox (and the Windows version too) and I saw it needs to write the save file (SAVE.DAT) and another one which is the region where I'm at (Vault Entrance, V13ENT.SAV). It wasn't shown on Process Explorer (possibly the it was made too fast to be seen there), but I also see an AUTOMAP.SAV. So I'm guessing it could need to mess with 3 more files. But... Supposing this is sequencial, it wouldn't need to open the 3 at the same time, only 1. So I'm more confused hahaha. Supposing thegame didn't create threads (no idea how that's done in C), then it's sequencial, and it would need to mess with one file at a time - why leave a file open for writing after writing to it? Open, write, close, times 3. Supposing it's sequencial and it closes after writing, then it doesn't make sense to me to be the max files (FILES=XXXX of config.sys). Supposing it leaves them opened for some reason or it created threads or something to do things in parallel, then could still be the max files. At least from what crosses my mind. If someone has any better guesses, maybe it could be fixed somehow. Or if not, it's a pity and I'll have to give up...

Actually that resembles a behaviour I kept noticing in playing Fallout 3 on Windows 10 PC. When you first start Fallout 3, in some areas it crashes if directly trying to load a savegame in that location, however if you start a new game, then load that savegame in question, it loads without any problems.
So technically it looks like when starting a new game, Fallout 3 loads the entire data together, which is not the case when just loading a savegame. This is also supported by the fact that when loading savegames later during playing, they load much faster than starting a new game right at the start of F3 OR directly loading a savegame which loads just fine. Both of those cases take longer time to load, than when loading games later during gameplay.


It might be a similar problem with PSP - starting a new game in Fallout 1 loads the entire game data, and saving a game first time works just fine. However I wonder if the problem with failing to save next time is because PSP doesn't empty "something", maybe memory cache, after saving, so the available memory in PSP remains occupied and the game fails to be able to perform a save due to lack of memory.
I "do" seem to remember that PSP had very small working memory, being a handheld console, and very dated by now as well. I mean the memory used by PSP when playing games, not the storage space. That might be the root of the problem, but like I said earlier, I'm really not technically skilled to know, just guessing here.


Well if other games can't save normally either, it would show that DosBox doesn't work entirelly correct on PSP after all, and it's not just a problem of Fallout 1 by itself.

Hmm I'll try playing with available RAM on DOSBox for PC. I'll put less on PC to simulate the PSP not having enough memory to save the game or something. See if the same errors appear. If it's that, not exactly sure what I could do haha. The PSP, the Slim, Super Slim and Street models have 64MB of RAM. The Fat model has only 32MB. I'm testing this on a Slim model. And on DOSBox I have memsize=40. More than that I think it didn't work or something. I don't exactly remember. I'll try putting 20-30 on PC or some ideas about memory and see what happens. Had not thought on that part of the PSP not freeing memory. If it could be that, if AUTOMAP.SAV is only an image or something (I don't know, just saying), I could try disable Fallout to change it, so it would skip it (trying to get a bit into Reverse Engineering haha) - maybe that could help, being the max files or memory, because a file less and less memory used to mess with the file. Either that or one of the other files, I don't know.


Oh I said that because DOSBox can still write to the PSP memory card. But I'll try when I can. I'll search for some random game.

I think I managed to pinpoint the root of the problem with Fallout saving in PSP: the minimum requirements for Fallout under Ms-Dos dictate that it needs 32MB available RAM, double of which it requires under Windows - 16MB there. Have a look here.
As a matter of fact, PSP does also have exactly 32MB RAM, for example you can look here - using its memory for some of the PSP's system workings already takes away some amount of it. Seeing as DosBox itself also needs some amount of memory for operating, not sure how much exactly, you can see how that puts Fallout at a disadvantage - the setting memsize=40 could not even go above the actually available memory after all the factors, which would be somewhat lower than 40MB. And that might explain the troubles with saving game more than once. Fallout 1 simply runs out of memory to operate correctly.


I suspect that playing other games in DosBox on PSP, which (usually for Ms-Dos games) require less memory, shouldn't be a problem unlike with Fallout 1.
P.S. having said that, since I don't know how PSP handles the writable storage (the specs page mentiones just the disc drive which is playback only), and what size it is, that might be also a cause of the problem, lacking enough space to handle saving games.

There is just one problem haha. The site you saw has wrong information. Not all the PSPs have 32MB. I've no idea why they still have that information, but it's not correct. See this Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_Portable. Wikipedia is not wrong, as I've heard that many times, so I think the site has outdated information (referring to the Fat model, which was the first one), even though it was updated last year (XD). I can also confirm that myself because if I put memsize too high, DOSBox will stop working (must be trying to use memory which the system doesn't have). So with 40MB it works. And the PSP I'm using is a Slim model, so it's one of those that have 64MB total. I went MB by MB from 30-50 to see what value would be the maximum to work, and I found 40MB to be that value. So supposedly it has the RAM it wants.

The part of the storage, it's a memory card. In my case, I'm now using an 8GB one, which has about 20MB free. Though, before this one I was using another one of 64GB and I had at least 10GB free. I also used the -free command with some values as suggested by Smiling Spectre to put it seeing free space on the "disk".

EDIT: forgot to write this part, so, also thank you for the requirements, which I didn't know about. And it also says it needs MS-DOS 5.0 at least, so that's not a problem too (DOSBox 0.71, which is the one the PSP has ported to it, emulates MS-DOS 5.0).

Guess then for now I'm out of ideas, except one. Frankly I never played Fallout 1 in Ms-Dos / DosBox, always in Windows, thankfully it ran stable in any Windows version I've had so far. However, long time ago I've been trying to play another Windows / Ms-Dos crossbreed game, Lands of Lore II: Guardians of Destiny, and it's Ms-Dos always crashed in DosBox no matter which settings, while the Windows part had no problems.
So maybe, it's just a bug in Fallout 1 Dos part of the game. Admittedly your case is the first I've read about playing the game in Ms-Dos environment, I've always only ever seen on the net about it being played in Windows, seeing as it came out during the Windows 95 & 98 time and was a full-fledged big Windows game. It is possible that the backwards-compatible Ms-Dos port of the game was just an afterthought with less rigorous bug testing.

Hi again. I just thought I'd update this here (why not, I guess). The problem was with DOSBox. A person updated DOSBox for PSP, I used it, and the game started saving finally (https://www.reddit.com/r/PSP/comments/crfeuf). Thank you again those who tried to help!


(The game is also running or at least starting up much faster with a mod I made for the DOS version of Fallout to include most Windows patches on it (F1DP), so I think it's finally playable (still slow, but at least doesn't take infinity booting up). Not too interested in playing it there anymore though. Maybe some other time)


Cheers! May the thread die in peace now ahah.


Edw590