Actually, DOSBox is kind of on the money here. The resolution of the DOS prompt is determined by the graphics card, not the operating system.

DOSBox emulates Hercules Graphics, Tandy Graphics, CGA and VGA. The results of each mode are as follows:

In Tandy or CGA modes, the text looks exactly as it should, the effective resolution being 640x200.

In Hercules (MDA) mode, the effective resolution is incorrect. It should be 720x350, but DOSBox wrongly displays it at 640x350, which, incidentally, is the EGA's text resolution when using a 21kHz display.

In VGA mode, the effective resolution is also incorrect. It should be 720x400, but DOSBox wrongly displays it at 640x400, which, incidentally, is the MCGA's text resolution.

It is incorrect to say that you can't get any real MSDOS mode in DOSBox, just that you can't get the resolution most of us were used to seeing back in the days when we used DOS.

Also, it seems you are using an LCD monitor, so there will always be shortcomings because no modern LCD monitor has a native resolution of 720x400 or 640x400, so there will always be letterboxing.

Hello all!

Thanks for replying, first of all, and no, I dont have LCD monitor. I have Philips 201B 21'' monitor CRT, I dont like LCD because they are fixed resolution, and I play a lot MSDOS, windows , MAME, etc, so the flexibility of CRT is invaluable to me.

I have two systems, fx-60 with ati x800xt and 21'' crt and another with amd64 3400 17'' crt with ati 9800pro and just cant get dosbox 070 to display 640x400
no matter what I do. Real msdos is OK but I have serious problems to get sound working.
winxp DOS session displays OK, 720x400 and all, but sound is garbled and is really SLOOW, for whatever reason.

I have been trying dosbox since older versions, but have never been able to display like real msdos.

So I can play a lot of games, but letterboxed or stretched, nothing like real msdos.

Do the rest of you out there display without problems, or am I the only who would like to have a pixel perfect output (which should be possible with a CRT)

I anybody has gotten dosbox to display games like real dos I would like to know. ;.)))

It seems that with today's computers and OS'es its a question of trade-offs...
you can play msdos without sound
you can play winxp dos session with garbled sound SLooooW
or you can try DOSBOX, near perfect, except the display, which must be stretched over 1024x768 or whatever.

Again, thanks for trying to help, I hope someone has had the same problem and could come up with a solution....

Ertoil

fullresolution=original should work.

Well... I have tried several combinations of
fullscreen=true
fulldouble=false
fullresolution=original
windowresolution=original
with output= surface, overlay and ddraw
also with aspect=true and scaler=normal2x

The display is set always as 640x480 60Hz (dosbox prompt, and ingame),prompt with black bars and game mode stretched (full screen)

If I set aspect=false, ingame mode (I am using Anvil of Dawn game) appears
letterboxed or with black bar at bottom.
with scaler=none, it displays in a rectangle in the center (or side) of the screen, resolution being ALWAYS 640x480

I have tried also with
fullresolution=640x400
windowresolution=640x400

and the results are the same: 640x480 60Hz sometimes letterboxed, sometimes stretched.

When run (anvil.exe) from xp commandline, game displays correctly at
720x400 70Hz in game. Unfortunately game is really slow and unplayable.

So the question remains... I can set other resolutions and stretch, but is there any way DOSBOX 0.70 will be able to set a 640x400 mode, just like any other dos-prompt does?

Thanks for trying to help!

Ertoil.

I really think the graphic resolution options are too complicated in dosbox and should be simplified. For one, why cant i resize the window with just clicking and dragging the mouse? Works for MAME, ZSNES, EPSXE, and so on.

fullscreen=false
fulldouble=true
fullresolution=1280x1024
windowresolution=1280x1024
output=opengl
....
aspect=true
scaler=normal2x

with this config dosbox's DOS window (C:>) really does start up in 1280x1024 however once the game starts it downsizes to something much smaller.
Sure, by trial and error i found that using any ???3x scaler will make THE GAME WINDOW larger but what's the point of specifying resolutions for window and fullscreen if it only applies to black _dos_ window?
and what do i do if i want to rescale game's native 320x200 to something like 1600x1200?? there is no 5X scaler

DOSBox-0.70, all defaults (no config file) switches to 640x400 fullscreen on my machine (WinXP, Radeon x1900gt)

Have you checked using your monitor's OSD that the res. is
in fact, 640x400?

Anyway, maybe its a problem with the catalyst version I have: (5.7)
In the past I have seen that depending on the catalyst version you have installed, it will let you or not, select funky resolutions and refresh rates.
This I know because I have been trying to set up pixel-perfect resolutions to use with emulators, such as 704x448, 640x448 and such, and depending on the catalyst version installed I would get either the perfect resolution/refresh rate, or a 512x384 window(viewport) of the resolution I tried to set.
Some catalyst let me do it, other didnt let me, as simple as that.

Maybe that is the problem I have now.
But what I dont understand is why can WinXP select 640x400 and DosBox070 cannot.
This I have tried on two computers with X800xt and radeon 9800pro and nothing...

I should try dosbox 0.65 and see its behaviour...

Again, Thanks for helping out!

Ertoil.

5.7 seems a bit too old to me. The latest version is 7.4. Why don't you give it a try?

Yes it's 640x400 😀
I use 7.4...

Maybe I will give it a try, but I have already tried several versions 5.4 to 6.1 and it seems to me that older versions are better able to
cope with funky resolutions and refresh rates than newer ones. Also, i dont like catalyst control center (CCC) and the need to install
the .NET framework only to have a display driver. I prefer the classic display driver/control panel, less bloated, less memory used, thank you very
much.
Unfortunately the new versions come with CCC forced, or else its only display driver and no CPanel, but I guess trying several catalysts
will be the only way I will be able to come up with 640x400.

I *REALLY* hate these problems each time you upgrade your display drivers. In win9x was the same. You had perfect resolutions/modelines for games or emulators
and then you upgrade your display driver and none of these work.

Oh Well... I understand that 640x400 70Hz is not a commonly used resolution, but also 640x480 isnt officially supported by WinXP anymore and, besides, if WinXP NTVDM can set 640x400 for compatibility I just dont get why in DOSBOX it jumps to 640x480 each time I try to select it.

Driver problem, I suppose, as usual..

Well, thanks again.

Be sure when testing some configuration you always cycle through
all the output= settings.

I use ATI Tray Tools from the moment CCC came out. Never had a problem 😀
The resolutions are a different story however. I suspect, that since windows ntvdm switches into real text mode, that still works, but some resolutions don't. For instance, none of the recent drivers seem to properly switch into 320x200 with opengl and d3d. In my d3d patch, I double the resolution in this case (320x200->640x400) and that seems to work for the most cases. But Vista doesn't seem to want to go below 640x480...

and you can download the latest ATI drivers with the old Control Panel from ngohq. Not sure how compatible the CP is with the latest drivers (probably missing features which is why you use ATI Tray Tools) but the CP works with the last ATI drivers I tried which were v7.2.

I also use Omega drivers that don't have the CCC. They seem to work just fine.

Well, I guess I should try the new catalyst and see what happens...

I'll post here with my findings when I change drivers.

Thanks for helping!

Ertoil.

Hello!

I have been investigating this, and it seems that you were right after all: With no Dosbox.conf file, dosbox will display 640x400 but with incorrect refresh rate, so the monitor will show no resolution and the screen is off-centered. Trying to fix the refresh rate issue with refreshfix or with reforce utilities will not fix the problem: real dos displays 640x400 70Hz okay, dosbox tries to set 640x400 75hz which results in not recognized video mode,off centered and squished.
Only using Powerstrip will allow me to force dosbox into setting 640x400 70Hz correct video mode, also ingame.

Curiously, with powerstrip I have been able to see which videomodes dosbox has been trying to set, as I tried to replicate the correct settings with a valid Dosbox.conf file.
The game I used for testing is Anvil of Dawn, a game like EOB series.

With resolution set to original these are my results:

With scaler=none and aspect true, dosbox tries to set 320x480x75Hz ingame, not recognized by monitor, off center and squished.

With scaler=none and aspect false, dosbox will try to set 320x400x75Hz, again not recognized, off centered and squished.

Only with aspect=false and scaler=normal2x I am able to replicate perfect settings: Dosbox prompt in 640x400 70Hz(forced by powerstrip) and 640x400 70Hz perfect ingame.

I guess I will have to try new catalyst to see whether this inability of dosbox 0.70 to set 640x400 70Hz is a bug or a problem with the catalyst version i'm using. All this has been done with catalyst 5.7 on radeon x800xt.

Will try cat 7.4 and we will see then.

I think I have my problem solved, thanks to you all for helping out!

Ertoil.

dosbox tries to set 640x400 75hz

No it doesn't, it sets 640x400 through SDL and your OS/gfx card/monitor
are responsible for the refresh rate. SDL1.3 (which is not really available yet)
is said to have the ability of choosing refresh rates though.

Here I am again,

I have recently installed catalyst 7.4 and after some testing the results are: The system is somewhat faster in 3d games (windows, direct3d) but in Dosbox the situation is the same. No way to get 640x400 70Hz without programs like powerstrip.

Maybe there is a catalyst that will work better but I'm not going to try each and every version just to see if it lets me set 640x400 now that I can do it with Powerstrip.

The nice side-effect is that the driver is somewhat faster in Windows 3d games, gaining some fps over previous ones.

Well, that are my findings, you may or may not have the same problem as I did.

As always with computing, if you dont have a problem then it's ok but if you indeed have a problem, finding a solution will not always be obvious or even easy.

Thanks again and see you !

Ertoil

Just FYI - some modelines for VGA emulation. You should be able to adapt these for Powerstrip after a bit of head-scratching.

1# Modes for VGA emulation
2
3   Modeline "720x400_70"      28.321678    720  738  846  900    400  412  414  450   -HSync +VSync
4   Modeline "640x480_60"      25.174825    640  656  752  800    480  490  492  525   -HSync -VSync
5   Modeline "640x400_70"      25.174825    640  656  752  800    400  412  414  450   -HSync +VSync
6   Modeline "640x350_70"      25.174825    640  656  752  800    350  387  389  450   +HSync -VSync
7   Modeline "320x200_70"      12.587413    320  328  376  400    200  206  207  225   -HSync +VSync Doublescan