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First post, by gumpy

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I am trying to play some real old DOS games in DOSBOX and I want to know how to emulate the speed of an Intel 8088 running at 4.77 MHz exactly, so the old games will run at the right speed. I want exact speed emulation, not playing around with the DOSBOX cycles and turning it down until it seems around right.

Is there a setting in DOSBOX that I can set so I can emulate 4.77 Mhz speed exactly? Or is there an a DOSBOX cycle setting that will be the exact speed of 4.77 Mhz?

Or do I need a tool that I can run in DOSBOX? I tried Mo' Slow, but it dosen't work for me in getting the exact speed of 4.77 Mhz.

Reply 5 of 9, by gumpy

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May I ask why?

Other emulators emulate exact speed. The Amiga emulator, WINUAE, emulates at exact speeds and so do other emulators. Why can't this be done for DOSBOX?

Reply 6 of 9, by ih8registrations

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It could, but DOSBox currently doesn't track cycles. http://www.mess.org/ does, and it emulates several x86 PCs. Old systems would take x cycles to execute a particular opcode, accessing a bus, io, etc would take so many cycles to access, and so on. winuae, mess, etc. for every opcode they execute and access they do they keep a tally of the cycles it would have cost on the original system.

Reply 8 of 9, by ih8registrations

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DOSBox is better, but MESS handles a subset OK. If you need more cycle accurate emulation, though MESS still isn't perfect, and the program is old, aka CGA, it's something to check. There's others to try too, like http://www.hampa.ch/pce/index.html.

Reply 9 of 9, by Neville

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I wouldn't bother with MESS, the emulation may be more faithful to the original, but its use is far more complicated.

I've played very old stuff in DOSBox, and usually works fine between 400 and 700 cycles, depending on the game.