Difference between revisions of "DOSBox"

Revision as of 00:40, 5 April 2006

DOSBox is an emulator which creates a DOS-like environment primarily intended for running older, MS-DOS-based PC computer games which may not run properly on newer PCs. DOSBox is open source and available for many operating systems, such as Linux, FreeBSD, MS Windows, Mac OS X, OS/2 and BeOS.

Features

• DOSBox is a full CPU emulator, not just a compatibility layer like dosemu or the VDMs of Windows and OS/2, which rely on virtualization capabilities of the Intel 80386 family processors. It requires neither an x86 CPU nor a copy of MS-DOS or any other DOS to run, and it can run games that require the CPU to be in real mode or protected mode.
• Graphics emulation: Text mode, Hercules, CGA (including composite and 160x100x16 tweaked modes), EGA, VGA (including Mode X and other tweaks), VESA and full S3 Trio 64 emulation. It contains its own internal DOS like shell, rather than being a fully virtual PC emulator like Bochs.
• Sound emulation: Adlib, PC speaker, Tandy, Sound Blaster, CMS, Disney and Gravis Ultrasound.
• Network emulation: modem simulation over TCP/IP, allowing for DOS modem games to be played over the internet. IPX network tunneling, which allows for old IPX Dos multiplayer games to be played over the internet. Finally, Win32 builds support direct serial port access.
• Dynamic CPU core: On systems which have the i386 instruction set, dynamic instruction translation is used, and on systems which are not x86 compatible, full emulation occurs, resulting in a significant slowdown. A 1.6Ghz PowerPC G4 system is capable of coming close to emulating a 50Mhz 486 system with the standard emulated hardware; whereas this same speed can be acheived on a far slower Pentium III era x86 system.

Issues

As with most programs that emulate systems, DOSBox requires substantially more computing (particularly processor) power than the original systems, greatly affected by what software the user is running in the emulated system at the time.

External links

World Wide Web links

• Official website
• DOSBox wiki – With FAQs and more
• Official DosBox Forum

Freenet links

Note: These freesite links cannot be viewed without prior set up. For explanation on how to set up a connection see ways to view a freesite.

localhost is assumed as the base for the freesite

• DOSBox on Freenet