Dosbox-Guide

[ZoxFox]

hey guys,

do you know how to fire up a dos game with the dos command line?
does it differ from game to game or do you proceed always the same way?

a little tutorial or something would be very helpful

and what´s the official way to finish dosbox? i couldn´t help myself so i killed it

thanks in advance

 

[Prometheus]

Firstly, you need to put your games in the "games" folder that's located inside DOSBox's entry in /pandora/appdata - for the purpose of this example, let's say you have a game called Foo, in a folder called "foo", and the name of the MS-DOS executable is "foo.exe".

Once your games are in place, fire up DOSBox. It will mount the aforementioned "games" folder as its virtual "C:" drive. To switch directories to where Foo is located, type cd foo and hit enter. Then, to run Foo, type foo and hit enter. Foo should now run. Obviously, if the executable for Foo was instead named "runfoo", you would type that instead - check first.

As far as I'm aware, the official way to exit DOSBox is typing exit at the command line, and hitting enter.

I hope this helps you on your way.

 

[socket]

The front end seems to be a little buggy as I can't seem to save profiles... Some quick guides (like the above) might be helpful to include for some less savvy folk.

 

[Prometheus]

I should note that I can save profiles just fine - my card is formatted as ext2, though.

 

[ZoxFox]

@prometheus:
wow you are a real power-helper! thx a lot so far...

but i`ve got one more question again

how can i increase the dosbox cycles to max?

 

[Prometheus]

You need to do that in DOSBoxFE before you start your game - there's an option for this under the "System" tab.

 

[ZoxFox]

ok and are these the only oppurtinities:
- setting cycles to max
- overclocking the cpu

to achieve a better dosbox performance?


and i`ve got another problem in war craft2 and simcity 2000:
the cursor seems to be bad calibrated as soon i`ve started the game. the cursor detection is distorted so i`m forced to use the nubs....

 

[VRAndy]

and i`ve got another problem in war craft2 and simcity 2000:
the cursor seems to be bad calibrated as soon i`ve started the game. the cursor detection is distorted so i`m forced to use the nubs....

The Touch-screen is not likely to line up with emulated software. There's just no way for an "absolute" mouse to be seamlessly translated into a "relative" mouse.

 

[PsoBloke]

I'm having a small problem too with DosboxFE - I cant seem to be able to mount any iso's? I (think anyway) am filling in all the relevant settings and finding the iso and etc in dosboxfe when I click add it just seems to add a blank line - Any ideas? And with the colon not seeming to work, finding a way round this is proving quite difficult! Does anyone have any ideas? Or am I missing something obvious? Thanks

 

[xopher]

I'm having a small problem too with DosboxFE - I cant seem to be able to mount any iso's?.... And with the colon not seeming to work, finding a way round this is proving quite difficult! Does anyone have any ideas? Or am I missing something obvious? Thanks

^
what he said :unsure:

 

[dflemstr]

Btw, if someone has complaints about the UI for DosBoxFE; I created it so send bug reports to me.

 

[SirisC]

The touchscreen seems to work pretty well until you touch outside the rendered area of the screen.

Is there a way to force dosbox to scale a game from 320x200 to 768x480 ?

I've had pretty much zero luck getting any visible changes in how scaling is done.

 

[xopher]

Btw, if someone has complaints about the UI for DosBoxFE; I created it so send bug reports to me.

I figured out my issues, I wasn't observant enough to understand the UI at first, sometimes; people just don't pay attention. *cough* I figured out my issues, and thanks for the GUI....sending you a PM later if I don't think you see this. Still having difficulty with it regarding mounting an iso, the setting doesn't stay and will not add to the profilename.conf. I go to misc tab, autoexec button, mount as image, then select iso, next field iso, drive letter, then image file....I manually added it to conf file after. This is the same symptom johnM describes above.

 

[Eniko]

When the touchscreen goes wonky if you switch away from Dosbox and back it tends to get fixed for me.

 

[PsoBloke]

I figured out my issues, I wasn't observant enough to understand the UI at first, sometimes; people just don't pay attention. *cough* I figured out my issues, and thanks for the GUI....sending you a PM later if I don't think you see this. Still having difficulty with it regarding mounting an iso, the setting doesn't stay and will not add to the profilename.conf. I go to misc tab, autoexec button, mount as image, then select iso, next field iso, drive letter, then image file....I manually added it to conf file after. This is the same symptom johnM describes above.

I'm glad I wasn't the only one! When you were manually adding to the conf file did you manage to find a fix?

 

[Khan]

Well, in case there is someone still experiencing ISO mounting problems, just add a line like this under the autoexec tag in your profile conf file (tested with Gabriel Knight 2 ISO successfully)

mount c games
c:
imgmount D "GK2_CD1.iso" -t iso ("GK2_CD1.iso" located in root folder, being "c:\games" in this case)

Also check all the game cfg files (probably they don´t run because of wrong paths or incorrect CD drive letter)

Hope it rings a bell

 

[PsoBloke]

Thanks Khan, that's awesome! Will give it a go now

 

[milkshake]

Thanks Khan, that's awesome! Will give it a go now

is anyone else having problems with dos box keyboard layout as it doesnt match the pandoras also i cant type the colon : in dosbox or wavey dash key (cant remeber whats ts called) p.s. im using my pandora to write this.

 

[xopher]

I'm glad I wasn't the only one! When you were manually adding to the conf file did you manage to find a fix?

I did. In the newly created conf file located in SDCARD/pandora/appdata/dosbox/.dosboxfe/yourconfile.conf

My autoexec section has the addition to look like this to automagically launch Carmageddon......

imgmount d "/mnt/utmp/dosbox/images/Carmageddon.iso" -t iso
cd carma
carma

Hope that helps you out. If anyone reading this has any tips to make Carmageddon run better or get rid of the odd lines that appear during game rendering I´d be grateful.

 

[Azuma]

So, I have it set up like prometheus said. The dir looks like pandora/appdata/dosbox/games/arena/ but when I open dosbox and type "cd arena" it says "You are still on drive Z:, change to a mounted drive with C:". I know how to mount drives but my colon key on the pandora won't register. How can I fix this?