Dosbox - play old DOS games
Intro
Dosbox is a DOS-emulator pretty much complete with everything (one can even record screenshots and/or video ingame!).
Download and install
Download and install dosbox. On most linux systems it's most likely in your repository so a quick emerge og aptitude should fix that problem.
On Windows one can download the newest version off sourceforge (0.70 as of now).
dosbox download page Should lead you right there; select the Windows - win32 installer.
Setup config file
Firstly decide where you want to store your dos-applications and create that dir.. like /home/$user/dos or just \dos under windows.
Now start dosbox and once you have the prompt (Z:>), type:
Z:> config -writeconf "/path/to/dosbox.conf"
This will create a generic config file - edit it with your favorite editor; it's just a normal textfile.
I only had to add a few lines which would automatically mount my dosdrive and enter it. At the very end of the config file, add something like:
mount C "/path/to/dos-dir" c:
Where one of course substitutes the path to the real path.. like /home/$user/dos on linux or \dos in windows.
I also had to change the keyboard layout to Swedish, since the default American keyboard doesn't really work for me.
In case you wonder why Swedish; there is no Danish layout atm, and the Swedish one is about 100% likewise to the Danish one.
I just changed the option keyboardlayout (in the dosbox.conf file) to use the Swedish charset instead (sv).
For explicit Danish keyboard add the @keyb DK 850 > null under autoexec bat like this:
keyboardlayout=sv [ ... ] [autoexec] @keyb DK 850 >nul
Keyboard shortcuts
Should be worth noting some shortcuts can be used to make life easier
| Shortcut | Description |
|---|---|
| ALT-ENTER | Full screen |
| CTRL-F5 | Snapshot (define this dir in dosbox.conf!) |
| CTRL+ALT+F5 | Start/stop Record video of the dosbox session |
| CTRL-F7 | Decreases frameskip |
| CTRL-F8 | Increases Frameskip |
| CTRL+F9 | Stop (terminate) the dosbox session |
| CTRL-F11 | Slows down the game |
| CTRL-F12 | Speeds up the game |
You can find much more about keyboard shortcuts here DosBox official FAQ
How to actually run games/applications
After starting dosbox you need to navigate to place, where you stored all your applications/games.
You can get a dir listing with
dir
Followed with
cd [dir]
You can just start to type a few letters of the dir you want to go into, and hit tab - it will then autocomplete the dirname for you.
Inside the dir, you'll most likely want to start any executable file; find these by
dir *.exe
In my case, playing Buck Rogers currently, there will be a file called START.EXE.
Just type st (without caps) and hit tab.. then it autocompletes it to start.exe and even gets the uppercase writing correct.
Download games (abandonware)
Now all you need to do is to find some games!
I host a few of my favorites myself you can grab if you want (docs/journals are included in the DOC dir in most of the files):
Else there are lots of abandonware sites flowing around the net - it's just looking for them.
I'll list a few here which I think is worthy of mentioning:
- Super nice site in Danish - just click in the Abandoned games section
- Very nice and clean site
- osel.sk - Dont have alot of games, but it's a nice site
- The House of Games - Okish site
Screenies
Lastly just a few quick screenshots I took of inganme contents:
Special
| File: Text |
Exec=/usr/bin/gnome-session |