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[dipo]

Originally Posted by tommyLee

Just an update on this topic. I spent a few months testing old games in pure dos mode with Dos6.22, Dos7.1 and FreeDos.
I have a core2duo, 4GB RAM and gf9600. I booted the computer into realmode dos with a bootcd filled with around 150 games.
I was amazed and surprised, every single gamed worked perfectly. Dune 2, Alleycat, Return of the Jedi, Speedball 2, Star Trek a final unity, Weird Dreams, F1GP etc.
The oldest part of my machine was a SBLIVE! but the dos drivers worked in all games, even General midi worked and adlib for the older games.
I configured the system to have 624kb conventional memory (with mouse +cdrom +sbeinit).
In terms of compatability.
Dos7.1 all games worked + sound
Dos6.22 - same as above but no fat32 and only 64MB ram is visible to DOS.
FreeDos, - 10 games didn't work(Freedos has some time to go before it is 100% compatible with MS-DOS.

Dos7.1(taken from win98) is as compatible as 6.22. I have never come across a DOS game that has worked on 6.22 but not 7.1 on the same hardware.
From the boot cd I created a 2gb ramdrive and run games from that.
Dos6.22 only has fat16 and can only see 64MB ram. which is not large for ramdisks.
Dos 7.1 apart from fat32, it's himem.sys see's 4GB RAM which is good for hige ramdisks that you can use as a temporary hard drive to copy games from the CD to and run.

Thanks for the report. :thumbs:

I've also spend a lot time with forcing a new computer to do things he isn't made for. Now I got a big FAT32 partition where I multi boot FreeDOS, MS-DOS 7.1 and MS-DOS 8.0.

For sound I am now using also sb live.

Many games are now running better then in DOSBox!

The biggest issue I see with my next computers is that them will not have a PCI slot anymore, which means impossible to get SB16 emulation working.

[sgtboat]

I had someone give me an old 486 system that I use at home for all my old games.. You can usually pick them up for nothing or next to nothing. You would be surprised at the number of these that are sitting in peoples attics forgotten, because they put it there and forgot. If you ask some of your older fiends you might get lucky.

[tikbalang]

aside from games, is use DOS for troubleshooting PC's and as a simple point-of-sale system using dhpos.com.

[red_avatar]

Originally Posted by dipo

Thanks for the report. :thumbs:

I've also spend a lot time with forcing a new computer to do things he isn't made for. Now I got a big FAT32 partition where I multi boot FreeDOS, MS-DOS 7.1 and MS-DOS 8.0.

For sound I am now using also sb live.

Many games are now running better then in DOSBox!

The biggest issue I see with my next computers is that them will not have a PCI slot anymore, which means impossible to get SB16 emulation working.

Which games are running better than in DOSBOX? Names please .

I remember how I had to mess around to get games to work on my PIII 450. The worst trouble came from sound cards like the SB Live. The SB Live is NOT an ISA card and because of that, midi gets emulated and sounds pretty terrible. DOSBOX comes about as close as you can get to the original sound which is why I prefer it by far to my old retro PC.

There's many other problems which you neglected to mention:

- speed issues (Theme Park, Magic Carpet, Syndicate Wars, etc. - they all run WAY too fast)

- the detection of memory & hard drive space which goes beyond what the game expects. 16+MB memory make games crash on start up and several games refuse to install because they read a negative free space. There's no way to fix this in real DOS. Dosbox lets you do this in a second

- sound emulation: some games really didn't like the SB Live Legacy drivers and simply refused to work properly. DOSBOX supports SB Pro 1&2 and several other soundcards to fall back on in emergences.

- games that refuse to run with EMS: needs config.sys editing & rebooting. In DOSBOX this is a simple setting and with a front end = no problem

- mouse speed: I had this problem quite a lot in DOS. The mouse speed was not optimal and I had to download separate software to make it to work.

- VESA card incompatibility: a BIG problem with older games. Especially with Windows 3.1 it was a nightmare to get proper drivers to work with my Nvidia graphics card. ATI cards don't have any working drivers at all and many VESA games will refuse to run properly.

There's dozens more problems but I sure know what I'd prefer to use. I got a retro PC set up to run authentic DOS games but since Dosbox has been perfected where it runs 99% of all games perfectly, I rarely need it anymore.

[_r.u.s.s.]

well you have to admit that on slower computers, some more complicated games would run definitely faster. and there are probably not all "tricks" used by games tweaked out yet. of course, most games would run better in dosbox (on modern pcs), but not all

[AlumiuN]

Originally Posted by _r.u.s.s.

well you have to admit that on slower computers, some more complicated games would run definitely faster. and there are probably not all "tricks" used by games tweaked out yet. of course, most games would run better in dosbox (on modern pcs), but not all

Wrath Of Earth being one of these - in Dosbox, I've never been able to get the sound to work right, and sometimes the HUD screws up. It works nicely on my 486SL-25 laptop, except that the dynamic HUD colours look kinda weird and I only have a PC speaker, so the sound doesn't work. I guess that's what happens when you code an entire game in Assembler.

[bertoche]

Well, best point I see to run games on real dos is very strong: midi wavetables. Old Midi sounds all way different than today's does. Play Sim City, 2000 LBA(Relentless) or any other game with really great midi music from a win95 platform and you'll see my point. I think Soundblasters guys hasn't changed a lot their midi, but even with their soundboards, music isn't the same.

Got to config a PIII 486Mhz to run some games with native DOS from win98. Nice Experience. Long hours of Transport Tycoon.

My DOSBox frequently crashes when I run other tasks with heavy processment, or even not so heavy, like Firefox or screensavers. Ok, it runs 99,9% games, and I don't think it's possible to run, e. g. Lotus in DOS 6, and you'll not have to worry about sound drivers, mouse drivers, hi memory, conventional memory, EMS memory, EMM386, fat, dos mixers, Config.sys, Autoexec.bat, system.ini ... That's why I won't stop using DOSBox. Yet, need to get a good old machine to run some games that deserve it.

[marko river]

Still got old Pentium 100MHz... Playing Jagged Alliance, Quake more or less frequently, and rarely Master of Magic, Warcraft and few more... I have Civ2 and Pizza Tycoon but i don't dare to try them, i'll get hooked up again....

[BlueBMW]

For my old school needs I use the following...

Dosbox on a modern quad core rig.
Dos 6.22 original factory install on a Gateway P5-90
Win 98SE on a P2 400mhz (for the few Win 95/98 games that wont work right on XP)


I find that almost everything runs perfect in Dosbox anymore, so I dont use the dedicated machine as much. But its good to keep around for the rare few that just wont work.