It could be that you have aspect=true. Try setting aspect=false. Maybe that will distort the picture and remove the black bar.

Tried that -- it didn't work. 🙁 Thanks for trying, though.

I noticed that I get the same problem in both DOSBox .70 and .72. I don't know why, but... maybe someone more knowledgeable than me might know what that means.

Did you try the calibration buttons on your screen?

No, but that'd be an awful lot of hassle just to play a game every now and then. 😀

I haven't changed the calibration since I bought it, though, and DOSBox was working fine on it as-is just a few days ago.

Boot into safe mode or vga mode and try it. If DOSBox works fine then you know it's something to do with your video drivers.

Either a driver update or some setting.

Hrm, guess that's the only thing that could make sense. I haven't tinkered with my video drivers lately, though... I wonder if Windows Update could have snuck something in when I wasn't paying attention?

I'll try updating my video drivers. I probably should've done that from the start. And I'll try your suggestion to see what happens if that doesn't work. Thanks. 😀

Well, I updated my drivers and rebooted into safe mode... it did the same thing there: big black bar along the bottom. 🙁

What is your fullresolution setting?

That black bar is about 80 pixels.

Normal 2x scaler in DOSBox would scale that screen from 320x200 to 640x400. Since you captured that screen you know it's not a monitor issue. So it's something to do with the software. Either in dosbox.conf or in video card settings.

Here's all my current SDL settings:

[sdl] fullscreen=true fulldouble=true fullresolution=original windowresolution=original output=surface autolock=true sensitivity […]
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[sdl]
fullscreen=true
fulldouble=true
fullresolution=original
windowresolution=original
output=surface
autolock=true
sensitivity=100
waitonerror=true
priority=highest,pause
mapperfile=mapper.txt
usescancodes=true

I've tried changing fullresolution to all sorts of things... most just lead to larger black bars, of course. Original is the least-worst.

I have a GeForce 8800GT, for the record, and I'm running on Vista32. I don't know if that helps narrow anything down.

Edit: Erm... apparently posting my .conf settings fixed the problem. 😖 I literally copied and pasted, didn't even save, and re-ran dosbox just to see what would happen. And now it works.

I'm totally baffled -- it started happening for no apparent reason, and just stopped for no apparent reason. I guess that's that, then. 😁 Hopefully it stays working now.

Thanks for all the help, at any rate. 😀

Nice that you somehow got it working. Either you changed something within the last few minutes, or your computer only displays DOSBox properly when it feels like it...

Nope, no changes. Though my computer and I have come to terms with the fact that I must occasionally sacrifice a jelly donut to its greatness in order to achieve results. I must have just fallen behind on my quota for the month. 😁