Japo sez

DOSBox is the best way to run old DOS games in modern machines (with Windows, Mac, Linux...) as they were intended to be run. It's very powerful but we'll keep it simple here, and you'll see that it can be very easy to use.

First we must install it, so we go to www.dosbox.com and download the first, "Windows" installer, and run it. Beware, the (as of now) default DOSBox install location in \Program Files\ will create problems to Vista users and to users of previous Windows versions logged into limited accounts. I recommend you to install DOSBox somewhere inside the Shared Documents (if you want any user to be able to use it, or in your private Documents if you want DOSBox to be unaccessible to every other user besides you).

Once installed a shortcut will have been created on the Desktop by default, which will come in handy. If we double-click on it, there will appear a window with a command line--likely a second window will also appear underneath. We could work from here but we're going to describe a much easier way, so if you opened DOSBox close it.

Leaving DOSBox aside for a moment, DOS games are made up of many files, but only one of them must be executed to start the game. We're looking for an executable file (program) so, either it has a special icon, or more likely Windows shows it with one of these:




There can be more that one executable in a single game, the one that we're looking for is usually named something related to the game's title; if you don't know you can try different ones until the game works.

Going back to DOSBox, what we must do is, instead of double-clicking on this executable, simply drag'n-dropping it onto DOSBox's shortcut:



(Copying the executable and pasting it onto DOSBox's shortcut is the same thing, and works as well.) This simple, as you see DOSBox can be really easy and nobody must feel intimidated. Now we can already start playing!

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Some keyboard functions we may want to use:

• Ctrl+F11 / Ctrl+F12 Reduce / increase the game speed, if it's too fast or too slow.
  
  
• Alt+Enter Toggle between fullscreen and windowed.
  
  
• Alt+Pause Pause DOSBox.
  
  
• Ctrl+F10 Switch mouse control between Windows and DOSBox.
  
  
• Ctrl+F5 Capture a screenshot, that will appear in "Start > Programs > DOSBox-X.XX > Capture folder":
  
  
  
  
• Ctrl+Alt+F5 Capture a clip--press once to start recording and a second time to end it. Clips will appear in the same folder as screenshots, and in order to be able to play them we'll need to install the codec in the "Video" folder (see above).
  
  
• Ctrl+F9 Exit DOSBox at any time--even in the middle of a game.
  

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If a game's lacking sound, chances are that it's not DOSBox's fault, but because we need to configure the game itself. Hardware interfacing was a pain in DOS compared to Windows, and every single game must be informed on where to find our sound board (not our computer's real one, but the DOS-compatible "virtual" one that DOSBox "emulates"). Some very old games ask it every time they're started, whereas most not-so-old DOS games include a separate configuration program that allows us to save the information so we don't have to enter it more than once. This program is usually called SETUP, INSTALL, SETSOUND or something like that.

So if we're having no sound, we run the configuration program, in DOSBox too, drag'n-dropping it the same as the game itself:



And whether there's such program or the game asks about our sound board every time, these are the (virtual) parameters that will get us sound if we haven't changed DOSBox's default settings (we needn't be asked about all of them):

• Sound board: Sound Blaster 16. Many games are too old to know this card, but that's no problem because it's backwards-compatible with the following, older cards: Sound Blaster Pro (both versions), Sound Blaster, and AdLib. It also includes a MIDI device that some games use for music.
  
  
• Memory port/address: 220 (or 330 for MIDI). It's possible to find this number preceded by "0x", as in "0x220".
  
  
• IRQ 7.
  
  
• DMA 1. We may be asked about a second DMA ("high" or "16 bits"), it would be 5.
  

That's all!

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A small tip for the road. Maybe you like to play in fullscreen, but when you try you see a small game image surrounded by a big black frame. To fix this go to "Start > Programs > DOSBox-X.XX > DOSBox.conf". Here you can change DOSBox's settings, but we didn't mention it to keep things simple. Right now don't worry about all the garble inside and just search (Ctrl+F) for "fullresolution", and change what's to the right of the "=" to "640x480":



Make sure to save the changes. When you run DOSBox in fullscreen again, the image should occupy the whole width, if your hardware supports the 640x480 resolution. (You can eliminate the black strips that may appear along the top and bottom of the screen depending on the game, by changing "aspect=false" to "aspect=true" instead; but I don't recommend that because it can be very processor-consuming, and what's worse you'll lose image definition. Besides what in the world's wrong with those cool retro Cinemascope strips?)

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I hope this helped you, if you didn't manage ask away in the comments, otherwise please have fun!