DOS emulator for linux?

[Kooldino]

Originally posted by Ribbit
DosEmu needs a copy of DOS to run.

(Can't really help you much more with that, haven't used it myself. Sorry.)

Yeah, i'm trying freeDOS but it's not going too well.

[Ribbit]

FreeDOS has some limitations and incompatibilities. I recommend using MS-DOS, especially if you're trying to run games or other complex software.

[Ribbit]

Well, I've spent some time playing with Dosemu, and I've installed MS-DOS and got UFO running on it (hooray!).

Now, this game ran at IMHO just the right speed on my 486 at 160MHz. But now I'm running it on a dual Athlon at 1.6GHz. It's unplayably fast. At the start, where you pick a location for your first base, rotating the globe will just show you alternate hemispheres flashing past. Once you've picked a base, a few days will go by in a couple of seconds and a UFO will appear before you've had a chance to click the 'Base' icon (and disappear just as fast). I think it'll be a while before I get to assault one on the ground...

Anyway, no real point to this post, just a note to Kooldino that this stuff does actually work.

[Marshmallowman]

but can you play dukenukem 3d with it

[Belwarrior]

like ribbit.. i too need to slow down the game ... which dos emulator can emulate say a pentium 166mmx?

currently too busy at work.. will try out Bochs this weekend.

[Zao]

You could try running the games together with MoSlo in the emulator.
Moslo enables you to slow down the computer in 1% steps.

[Ribbit]

Originally posted by Marshmallowman
but can you play dukenukem 3d with it

Apparently you can but now the source has been released and there's a Linux port, so why use Dosemu for it?

Zao - thanks for the MoSlo idea - why didn't I think of that? Sure would be nice if you could just tell Dosemu "run slower" though, that way there's more CPU time left for other things.

[Kooldino]

Originally posted by Ribbit
Well, I've spent some time playing with Dosemu, and I've installed MS-DOS and got UFO running on it (hooray!).

Gah, how did you get it to work? Gonna start playing w/ it again.

[Kooldino]

GRR, still stuck on this:



Linux DOS emulator 1.1.5.0 $Date: 2003/06/07 $
Last configured at Thu Sep 4 09:30:14 EDT 2003 on linux
This is work in progress.
Please test against a recent version before reporting bugs and problems.
Submit Bug Reports, Patches & New Code to linux-msdos@vger.kernel.org or via
the SourceForge tracking system at http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/dosemu

DPMI-Server Version 0.9 installed


Sorry, there is no operating system.
Have a nice day!

----------------------------
Can anyone w/ it installed run these commands for me?

ls /usr/local/share/dosemu
ls /usr/local/share/dosemu/freedos
ls /usr/local/share/dosemu/freedos/dosemu


Thanks.

[Kooldino]

Here are my outputs, btw...

[root@winchester freedos]# ls /usr/local/share/dosemu
commands dosemu-bin.tgz.bak dosemu-freedos-bin.tgz keymap
dosemu-bin.tgz dosemu-freedos-bin freedos Xfonts


[root@winchester freedos]# ls /usr/local/share/dosemu/freedos
dosemu dosemu-freedos-bin


[root@winchester freedos]# ls /usr/local/share/dosemu/freedos/dosemu
aspi.sys comcom.com eject.com fossil.com speed.com vgaoff.com
bootoff.com dosdbg.com ems.sys generic.com system.com vgaon.com
booton.com dumpconf.sys emufs.sys isemu.com uchdir.com xmode.com
cdrom.sys ecpuoff.com emumouse.com lredir.com ugetcwd.com
cmdline.com ecpuon.com exitemu.com mgarrot.com unix.com

[Ribbit]

Originally posted by Kooldino
Gah, how did you get it to work? Gonna start playing w/ it again.

Hi KD, sorry it took so long to reply. Ribbit was very busy this past week, and saturday he, um, just couldn't be bothered to type out a long reply. But now he's waiting for a big download, so he's going to stop referring to himself in the third person and try to remember what I did (I haven't played with it since my last post).

A few points: I'm running DosEmu 1.1.5, the latest development release. I'm trying to have all the DOS files on a redirected Linux filesystem rather than in a virtual partition - that way I can manipulate everything easily within Linux, get the benefits of a fast journaled blah-blah-blah filesystem instead of FAT16, and (theoretically) run more than one Dosemu session at once safely. Also, I'm running the X version rather than the console version, so I don't have to bother with all that video adapter stuff. I haven't bothered to set up the X font either, so I get odd characters instead of IBM graphics characters in text mode.

First step was to install MS-DOS. I've got backups of my MS-DOS 6.22 floppies as image files, so I just added $_vbootfloppy = "/blah/blah/floppy.img +hd" and $_floppy_a = "threeinch" to dosemu.conf, and copied the appropriate image file to floppy.img as needed (Note: symlinking didn't work). MS-DOS wouldn't install to a redirected drive though, so I had to install to a virtual partition and copy the files over.

Actually, that was by far the biggest hurdle. Once DOS is installed, you can edit config/autoexec to remove things like himem (won't work, DosEmu provides XMS memory by itself) and smartdrive (what's the point?).

The files in your /usr/local/share/dosemu/freedos/dosemu are little utilities and drivers. You'll want to copy them into say C:\DOSEMU and add that to your path. Then you can add, say, EMS.SYS and CDROM.SYS to your CONFIG.SYS. Hope you remember all that stuff!

Problems I've had:
- Haven't got sound to work yet. I've basically just turned the appropriate options on and watched it fail. I haven't bothered to do any more than that (haven't even set up a BLASTER variable!)
- There seems to be a bug where Dosemu hangs while doing a lot of file copying. This might be something to do with copying from CDs, or to redirected drives, or maybe specific to v1.1.5. I've also noticed that the copy operation seems to finish anyway, so it might be that it's just the screen updating that stops (I think I saw this while playing X-Com:Apocalypse as well).
- One or two others which I can't remember right now.

Successes:
- UFO seems to run fine (way too fast to play though).
- X-Com:Terror From the Deep will probably run great-but-too-fast as well, since it's the same game with different graphics (haven't tried it)
- X-Com:Apocalypse ran for a little while (still a bit fast, but quite playable).
- Pray for Death works great, no speed problems.

Hope this helps. Hopefully I won't be quite so busy this week as well....

[runderwo]

Hmm, that reminds me, I had been working on a patch that simulated a slow video card that provided acceptable, smooth slowdown for games under DOSEMU. I guess one day I should get around to cleaning up that patch and getting it worked in.

[Kooldino]

"runderwo
Registered: Oct 1999
Posts: 84"

Holy LURKER, batman.

[runderwo]

Hey, that's about two posts a month! Honestly, I dont really visit here that often besides to check for *nix news involving Matrox.