DosBox...

[AndrewB]

After many months, they have recently released a new version of this DOS game emulator for 2000/XP. It now has stereo sound, less sound artifacts, and about 2 dozen other fixes that seem to fix things that I didn't know were broken.

The thing is, the system requirements have conveniently doubled. Now to run a 386/25MHz game, you need a 1.7 GHz PC instead of a 900 MHz.

Also conveniently enough, their message board has some cryptic denial of access error.

[Lord FlatHead]

How 'bout a link ?

[Szymanski]

http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/news.php?show_news=1

[Opulent]

I thought this was the emulator that someone mentioned had a tough time with DOOM.
Perhaps that is fixed now.

[Sephiroth]

how about better programing. no reason why u need a 1.7Ghz to run DOS stuff. and its the same family of CPU's, X86.

words of adive for DOS fans, use freeDOS.

all u need is a boot disk and the files on the hard drive. i have a similar setup

[AndrewB]

It is somewhat bad programming. Not a very dedicated project.

[Grazza]

I tried running Doom2 with this, and it pretty much lived up to its billing speedwise - it ran about as smoothly as Nuts3.wad does under glboom or zdoom. I also got a crash when I put it in fullscreen mode (part way through watching map01 of 0711nm01.lmp).

The sound emulation might well be an improvement over what happens when you run Doom2 under Windows XP, but it's difficult to judge when you're getting just a frame or two a second.

OK, it's interesting and maybe useful for some applications, but it's no solution for Doom as yet. FYI, my computer is a 2.2 GHz P4.

[AndrewB]

It's definitely not meant for Doom. You probably shouldn't use it for anything fancier than Wolf3D. The latest version can't even run Duke Nukem 2 smoothly on a 1GHz.

[geekmarine]

Heh, actually, I think Wolf3d still works in XP. Not that it matters, 'cause Wolf3d has horrible level design and the controls are screwy, and it's only redeeming quality is it's a milestone game (and Nazi killing).

[Sephiroth]

like i said, freeDOS. make a small partion, or use an exsisting fat partion. load it and there. DOS

i have gotten my SB16 soundcard to work in it(486 system). i have yet to try and get the SBlive(current system) and i have sound on my laptop.

i would say it is fairly shitty programing. i mean come on, we still use X86 based CPU's!

so just use freeDOS or MS-DOS, make a partion.

yes wolf3d runs in winXP/2K but still not very good. sound emulation in winXP is like SB-8. sadly there is no good emulator for DOS that runs in windows. just make a partion and boot to it for classic fun. or drag out that old DOS box

on a more comic note we use a device at work that scans barcodes. it uses a 386CPU, 1024K ram. a 10MB flash drive and freeDOS. a guy at work was dicking with it and got keen4 to run on it as a joke. things run exactly like an old laptop

http://www.freedos.org/

[AndrewB]

geekmarine said:

Heh, actually, I think Wolf3d still works in XP.

It runs, but not with sound. VDMSound's sound is pretty lousy.

[mewse]

this is a great emulator, you couldn't even run doom or other protected mode games with the last version.

anyone who's saying "it's obviously shoddy programming because of how slow it is" doesn't know what they're talking about. vmware's probably faster but it can't run on processors other than x86.

this emu is probably going to be my main method for playing the original UFO in the future.

[AndrewB]

Doubling the required processor power upon the release of a new version is what's shoddy.

[Grimm]

id re-released Wolf-3D about a year ago. It was meant for teh newer Windows, and presumably ran on them. Bought Wolf-3D along with Spear of Destiny for $9.99--not bad, considering the original price.

[Opulent]

Sephiroth, that is a good idea, but is probably already outdated.
Most soundcards that are built onto the motherboards intended for WindowsXP machines will probably not play sound in DOS.
That is the main reason you will need an emulator.