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Thread: How-to: Playing old dos games with Dosbox. Guide for newbies.

  1. #1
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    How-to: Playing old dos games with Dosbox. Guide for newbies.

    DOSBox emulates an Intel x86 PC, complete with sound, graphics, mouse, modem, etc., necessary for running many old DOS games that simply cannot be run on modern PCs and operating systems, such as Microsoft Windows 2000, Windows XP, Linux and FreeBSD. However, it is not restricted to running only games. In theory, any DOS application should run in DOSBox, but the emphasis has been on getting DOS games to run smoothly, which means that communication, networking and printer support are still in early developement.

    DOSBox also comes with its own DOS-like command prompt. It is still quite rudimentary and lacks many of the features found in MS-DOS, but it is sufficient for installing and running most DOS games. http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/wiki

    Now, let`s move to the fun part:

    Dosbox is not installed in Ubuntu by default, so you have to install it yourselves. There are two ways to do this, either through System-->Administration-->Synaptic package manager (search for dosbox, mark for install and apply), or you could use the comand line interface. The command line interface - CLI for short - is located under Applications --> Accessories --> Terminal.

    Now, launch the CLI as shown above. Copy and paste the following command into the black box and press enter:

    sudo apt-get install dosbox
    You will now be prompted for a password. Type in the password and press enter. Dosbox should now be installed.

    Now, Dosbox is nothing without good old dosgames. This page contains many abandonware dosgames, but you can also find many more on google: http://www.abandonia.com/index2.php Pick one and download to your desktop. Press Alt+home to enter the home directory. This is where we want to place the games. Right click and make a new folder for your game. Double click the downloaded file, and extract the contents to the correct folder.

    Now, for my part I have extracted the game task force 1942 from an old computer of mine and made the folder TF1942 in my home directory. The structure on this computer looks like this:

    /home/ragnhild/TF1942

    Now, everything is ready. Launch the installed Dosbox by opening the terminal and typing
    dosbox
    You should now have this image:

    http://img456.imageshack.us/my.php?i...070cpucfo2.png

    Next, you need to mount a virtual drive c on your hard drive.

    I use the following command
    mount c /home/ragnhild/TF1942
    Remember that this command is case sensitive, so type every directory excactly as they are named.

    If you have done everything correctly, you should se something like this:
    http://img381.imageshack.us/my.php?i...070cpucsv3.png

    From the z: prompt, type
    c:
    http://img457.imageshack.us/my.php?i...070cpucou8.png

    Dosbox is now mounted inside your game directory and will respond to many of the common dos-commands. List the files in the game directory to find the executable file (usually an .exe or a .bat) by typing
    dir /p
    http://img463.imageshack.us/my.php?i...070cpucco0.png

    In this case, the executable is TF1942.BAT (It may also launch with TF.EXE, but I haven`t tested it.)

    That means you can launch the game by typing
    tf1942
    Now, the game should launch, and you`ll see the game in a little box in the middle of your screen:

    http://img400.imageshack.us/my.php?i...070cpucml0.png

    Toggle fullscreenmode on/off with Alt+Enter. Play the game!

    Advanced: If you want to automount a drive or change the default settings by editing the config-file, see this thread http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.p...ghlight=dosbox

    For additional settings, hotkeys and troubleshooting, see this page: http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/wiki/i...tion+of+DosBox
    Last edited by Hallvor; August 27th, 2007 at 05:24 PM. Reason: fixed images

  2. #2
    Join Date
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    Re: How-to: Playing old dos games with Dosbox. Guide for newbies.

    This is an excellent how-to! Thank you very much!

    N

  3. #3
    Join Date
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    Re: How-to: Playing old dos games with Dosbox. Guide for newbies.

    when I try to mount this comes out:

    admin@admin-desktop:~$ mount c /home/ragnhild/TF1942
    mount: only root can do that
    yo

  4. #4
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    Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon

    Re: How-to: Playing old dos games with Dosbox. Guide for newbies.

    Quote Originally Posted by marenkar View Post
    when I try to mount this comes out:

    admin@admin-desktop:~$ mount c /home/ragnhild/TF1942
    mount: only root can do that

    That command must be entered in Dosbox, not in a normal bash prompt.

    So open dosbox first.

    Then, you'll get a window containing a DOS like command prompt. Enter mount C /home/<username>/TF1942

    Ofcourse, replace <username> with your username. From what you pasted here, it appears it is admin.

    If you don't have the folder TF1942 in your /home/admin directory, then it will not work for obvious reasons..

  5. #5
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    Re: How-to: Playing old dos games with Dosbox. Guide for newbies.

    Are you trying to mount my local directory on your computer? You are supposed to mount the directory on your computer where you put your game, e.g. /home/<yournamehere>/games/mortalkombat

    It also seems like you are trying to mount the game on your root shell... You should type the command to mount your local game directory from this screen after launching Dosbox:


  6. #6
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    Re: How-to: Playing old dos games with Dosbox. Guide for newbies.

    sorry bout that, thought it was already there.
    Was able to mount already.
    I'm trying to run tt.exe but it wont run as I need Win32, where will I be able to get this and use it in ubuntu?
    yo

  7. #7
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    Re: How-to: Playing old dos games with Dosbox. Guide for newbies.

    If tt.exe is a compressed game file, then it could be a problem. I have not been able to play a couple of games myself, e.g. ROTT (Rise Of The Triad), because the only download available was an exe self-extracting archive. The installation failed. Fortunately, most of the games out there are already uncompressed (or in zip,rar), and they should be easy to run.

    A solution to your problem would be to open and install the game under Windows, and copy the game folder to your home directory, launching it with dosbox.

  8. #8
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    Re: How-to: Playing old dos games with Dosbox. Guide for newbies.

    Great How-to. thank you very much.
    never thought anyone would actually still need that, but... whatever.

  9. #9
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    Re: How-to: Playing old dos games with Dosbox. Guide for newbies.

    Is there any marked difference between a DOS box and booting DOS in a virtual machine?
    ch
    In Switzerland we make it other
    with apologies to Gerard Hoffnung


  10. #10
    Join Date
    Aug 2007
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    Re: How-to: Playing old dos games with Dosbox. Guide for newbies.

    The caps lock does not work (dosbox version 0,71) what is the solution.

    it's also does not work in vertual terminal (CTRL + ALT +1) does this mean it needs X-server to run.

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