DOSbox

[Ivo]

Any DOSbox power users here? Or other DOS emulators (I mention DOSbox because I think it is the best DOS emulator out there, but just replace every instance of DOSbox with whatever emulator is best).

I'm slightly surprised that DOSbox is still slightly hard to use (blame DOS, I guess?)... I know there are frontends for it, but are there nice, easy ones? If Racket is up for it, I'd like to do an article on emulating DOS games in Windows PCs, but frankly I don't think it is worth it if people have to configure each game in over 90% of the cases. Despite a daunting task of emulating a myriad of arcade boards, MAME has frontends that make it essentially a question of selecting your game and pressing enter. Is there anything at least close to that for DOSbox?

Ivo.

[pixelbender]

I would love some articles on DOSbox!

I currently have it on my Intel Mac Mini, and the only good frontend for it I have read about has its website down.

I'm a huge DOS fan, but I can't tell you how many times I just want to pick up and play on an old machine, it just seems so much better!

[cowgod]

i wouldn't call myself a power user, but i setup 4 games successfully. i don't use a front end because i feel it isn't necessary for something like dosbox. i just created shortcuts to each of my dos games (just like they do for regular windows games) and it works flawlessly.

[Funk, E]

D-Fend is a fantastic and easy-to-use frontend for DosBox. I use it all the time.

[Ivo]

i wouldn't call myself a power user, but i setup 4 games successfully. i don't use a front end because i feel it isn't necessary for something like dosbox. i just created shortcuts to each of my dos games (just like they do for regular windows games) and it works flawlessly.

I'm not claiming it to be "necessary", but I know fairly well that if it's much beyond selecting the game you want to play in a menu, many people are instantly turned off. Considering Racket's site is mostly geared towards consoles, I'm not sure if a guide on how to config DOSbox games (once for each game) is worth it - this is why I was thinking instead on a guide on how to setup DOSbox with a frontend just ONCE, and let the frontend handle whatever the game is (similar to what happens with MAME, I believe). But perhaps it's just not possible because DOS games typically require installs, setups whereas with MAME you just need to get the hardware emulation right.

Ivo.

[Funk, E]

Installing is usually pretty much the same for every game, though--there are only a few games where the install program won't even run in Windows (XP, anyway..). For those games, I usually just run them inside Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 running Windows 95, works great.

That said, most games DO require a little individual configuration.