Dosbox


hey sorry i wanted to help you at work, ive been reading this forum all day with no way to post!!! wish my pandora was here!!!


ok so as far as dos is concerned, a few things you should know


"cd " - this term means change the directory im in, to the 1 i just typed, eg: im in c:/ to get to c:/jazzy/ i would type "cd jazzy"


"cd.." go to the previous folder,eg: if im in c:/jazzy/ and i wanna get to c:/ then just type "cd.."


"dir" lists all the folders AND files in the directory ur in, also comes with 2 more acurate options, dir /p and dir /w, i dont exactly recall which way the // or \\ are or even whether there is a space inbetween the dir and /p, but p is page, it lists the files page by page with a press any key between pages, and w lines em up horrizontally


"."


":"


IN ANY DOS FOLDER there is these 2 things, they will always be there, im not exactly sure their use, but they are there and arnt folders!


if you dir and it just shows these 2 things, theres nothing in the folder u dir'd


i believe i read you saying that this was all that was in there, which means, no your game files are in the wrong place.


also spaces in names are not allowed in dos, so having "pandora 2" as a folder will not work!


there is a limit on how long a folder and file name can be, i cant remember how long it is but essentially it goes like this


if there is a folder name "turkeygobbledeegoo" in dos it will be called something like "turkeygo~1"


if you finally get into the jazz folder, in order to find your game executable, dir the directory, and it will show you all the files, and then look for the 1 that is EXE. then just type the NAME of that EXE file, eg: if the dir tells me jazz EXE is in the folder im in, i just write "jazz"


hope this helps
 
DOS was very basic. Filenames took the 8.3 format - maximum of 8 characters followed by the "." and three characters for the extension. This is why Jazz's main executable is JAZZ.EXE


Drives are identified by a letter - C would be your first hard drive, A and B are your floppy drives, and any further drives are D, E etc. CDROM drives typically started at letter D (or the first free letter after your hard drives).


To change to a drive, you use a colon as a drive specifier, eg



Code: 
C: <return>



<return> means press RETURN, don't type "<return>"!



To change directory, use CD.





Code: 
CD jazzy <return>



Would switch to the directory "jazzy", so long as it can be reached from your current folder. If you're not in C, then you need to switch with "C:" first, before switching to "jazzy" - you cannot simply type "cd c:\jazzy", without switching to "C:" first. So, assuming that you're in "Z:" (which is denoted by the prompt being "Z:\>" in the DOS window, you would type





Code: 
C: <return>

cd \jazzy <return>



The backslash specifies that you want to switch to the directory "jazzy" in the root of the drive. All directory separators are "\", as opposed to the linux "/".



When launching the game, you don't need to specify the ".exe" part of the filename (though it won't hurt if you do), so you just type





Code: 
jazz <return>



Assuming of course that the exe is "JAZZ.EXE"... You can find out by typing "dir <return>" when you're in the c:\jazzy directory. If you get no files listed then either you've gone wrong copying your files over, or perhaps you have some hidden files and folders. You can discover these if you type:





Code: 
attrib *.* -h <return>


to remove the hidden attribute, and then list the files again with "DIR <return>".


I don't have DOSBOX installed at the moment, but I will do tomorrow when I get home from work. When I get it on my panda, I'll post more specific instructions as to how to get things going.


D.
 
Okey, I think now most likely that the games are in the wrong folder, or DOSbox can't find the folder.


But ain't I supposed to make an own dosbox folder in appdata on my SD card, then inside there make a games folder?


And when I've run dboxfe and automonted C, do I have do write cd and all the folders from media to games?


We should really make a DOSBOX for dummies tutorial! :p
 
To make a colon, press shift-fn-<


The reason is DosBox uses the old keyboard mappings, rather than trusting the OS to tell it what character is being pressed, and if you look at your keyboard you'll notice that : is a shift-;.


To do a ~, you want shift-fn-H.
 
Incidentally, if you care to know the two directories which may be listed in an empty directory are


.


..


These are not the actual names of directories that exist within your current directory, but rather are standard references to other directories.


The "." directory is actually a reference to the directory you are in, so if you type



Code: 
.\jazz.exe

then you are specifically executing the jazz.exe file in the current directory rather than one that may be elsewhere in your path.



The ".." directory is actually a reference to the directory above the directory you are in, so if you type



Code: 
cd ..

It will take you to the directory above your current directory.


Also, you could assign any unused drive letter to your CD ROM, but the drive letter usually assigned to your CD drive was X: until Windows 95 days, when D: became more common. So some old DOS games may expect your CD drive to be X:
 
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Man, this thread reminds me of when i was younger and had to switch from Atari ST (grew up with that) to DOS and windows 3.11. Only difference, in those days common, no internet. The progress in this thread up to now took me weeks :p


Nice read though :)
 
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Viking said:
Okey, I think now most likely that the games are in the wrong folder, or DOSbox can't find the folder.


But ain't I supposed to make an own dosbox folder in appdata on my SD card, then inside there make a games folder?


And when I've run dboxfe and automonted C, do I have do write cd and all the folders from media to games?


We should really make a DOSBOX for dummies tutorial! :p
Click to expand...
Hey there!


I've found it very convenient to mount my sd card folder with my dos games via the configuration.


To do so you'll have to edit the "dosbox.conf" file.


Under "[autoexec]" add the following:


mount C:\ ~/media/[LABELNAME of SD card]/[Foldername of your dos games]


C:


So you'll have your games allready mounted to C: and you'll be allready in C: when you start up dosbox (no need to type a ":" :) )


One comment to the combination for ":" -> you'll have to press the keys in the right order.


So hold shift first, then fn and then <. If you try to push them all at the same time you'll end up like me, wondering why it doesn't work ;)
 
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For the visual...


HUdDil.jpg



This is how things should look in Thunar. Your Jazzy folder would appear here as a blue icon like my games do. (Note the path as shown by the 'buttons' at top: /media/CARD_NAME/Pandora/Appdata/dosbox/games)
 
Okey, but then it seems my folders are in right order. And NOW I know how to use : and ~ .


What about [.] and [..]? when I type cd . I go back a directory, right? And opposite of cd ..?


Do I need the Dosbox.config file in Dboxfe? And also change autoexecute to where my games are there? and how do I do that if I need to?
 
Ok, I've just deleted my whole setup (completely deleted /appdata/dosbox, including all games and configs) and started from scratch. I suggest you do the same. Here's the process when starting from a clean slate:


- Launch DBoxFE. Then close it. It will have created a fresh /appdata/dosbox folder.


- Copy your DOS game folder (let's assume it's called 'jazz') to /appdata/dosbox/games


(Tip: Rename all your game folders to something 8 characters or less before copying them over. No point typing "JazzJ~1" when you can just type "jazz")


- Launch DBoxFE again


- Highlight 'default' profile


- Click start


You are now at a C:\ prompt.


-Type cd jazz


-Type jazz (or whatever your exe is called)


There is no reason it shouldn't work if you start from scratch and follow these steps. :)
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Gruso said:
Ok, I've just deleted my whole setup (completely deleted /appdata/dosbox, including all games and configs) and started from scratch. I suggest you do the same. Here's the process when starting from a clean slate:


- Launch DBoxFE. Then close it. It will have created a fresh /appdata/dosbox folder.


- Copy your DOS game folder (let's assume it's called 'jazz') to /appdata/dosbox/games


(Tip: Rename all your game folders to something 8 characters or less before copying them over. No point typing "JazzJ~1" when you can just type "jazz")


- Launch DBoxFE again


- Highlight 'default' profile


- Click start


You are now at a C:\ prompt.


-Type cd jazz


-Type jazz (or whatever your exe is called)


There is no reason it shouldn't work if you start from scratch and follow these steps. :)
Click to expand...
Wow, found out what I did wrong.. should have mentioned that I have TWO! SD cards :p


IT WORKS!!! Thanks Gruso and everybody for your help! Not gonna see the outside world for a while now :D
 
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Post removed due to distraction by wife which caused serious system reboot in my brain...
 
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