Peter Naulls and Alan Buckley have been hard at work again, this time producing a lovely port of the 286/386 PC emulator
DOSBox. One of the main aims of the DOSBox project was to enable old PC games to run on new PC hardware, and now that it has a
RISC OS port we can run them too.
Although I have yet to try it myself (Having had enough trouble trying to get the native version running on a PC), feedback on the Unix Porting Project mailing list has been good - the RISC OS port supports mapping of any RISC OS filing system/directory to a DOS drive, and works in either windowed or full-screen modes. The only real problem is the speed (Or lack thereof), so I'd recommend using an Iyonix if you are planning on playing any action games.
DOSBox for RISC OSThe Unix Porting Project, under which the RISC OS port of DOSBox falls
The DOSBox website, and
game compatability listdosgames.com and
dosgamesarchives.com, two of many websites offering old DOS games to download.
Source: Unix Porting Project
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DOSBox on your ROSBox |
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(14:38 10/3/2004)
Andrew Weston (17:13 10/3/2004)
Guest (17:53 10/3/2004)
Guest (13:14 11/3/2004)
Guest (08:34 12/3/2004)
Guest (19:25 15/3/2004)
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Andrew Weston |
Message #87598, posted at 14:38, 10/3/2004 |
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Worth trying Elite on! |
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Andrew Weston |
Message #87599, posted at 17:13, 10/3/2004, in reply to message #87598 |
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The worst part of course is having to face working out how to do it ;)
Anybody with any experience of DOS, please post hints here! |
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Guest |
Message #87600, posted at 17:53, 10/3/2004, in reply to message #87599 |
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The speed of emulation is a little odd.
Running a game like DigDug which should run on the oldest of PCs the speed is about 1/4 of normal.
Yet running a game like Elite 2 Frontier which has much more demanding system requirements, it still manages about 1/4 speed (I'm guessing about the speed but they both seem to be as slow as each other).
Cheers! |
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Guest |
Message #87601, posted at 13:14, 11/3/2004, in reply to message #87600 |
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Is there an easy way to get it running or have I got to go through the stack of documents that come with it? |
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Guest |
Message #87602, posted at 08:34, 12/3/2004, in reply to message #87601 |
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The !Help file should give you a good idea of how to get it going, but a summary is:
Copy the game files to a RISC OS directory.
Run !DosBox.
Mount the directory in DosBox. e.g. Mount c /ADFS::HardDisc4/$/Games/DosGames/MyGame
(note you need to use slashes instead of dots and add an extra slash at the beginning)
Change to the newly mounted c drive. Type "C:"
Type the name of the game executable to run it.
You can also mount a directory above and then after typing "C:" type "cd MyGame" to get into the correct directory.
The other useful DOS command is "dir" that gives a list of the directory.
The !Help file also tells you how to set up an application directory to run a game directly in DosBox. |
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Guest |
Message #87603, posted at 19:25, 15/3/2004, in reply to message #87602 |
| Unregistered user
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That's great, thanks.
It's a bit too slow on the RiscPC sadly though. |
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