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Mac OSX DOSBox Function Keys

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First post, by Guest

Posted on 
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I am using an older PowerBookG4 and have tried the two different launchers and just the Darwin shell for launching DOSBox and it works GREAT!

However, I am unable to use the function keys to 'increase cycles' or 'decrease frames'. This prevents me from speeding up the emulation to play some of the games I want to play faster.

Funny thing is, the keys just don't affect period. By default, the emulator starts at 2500 cycles with 0 frameskip. CTRL-F12 does NOT increase the cycles, but CTRL-F11 does decrease them. Once I decrease them, I cannot even increase them back to 2500! All of my keys on my keyboard work! 😊

So instead I have been using frameskip to increase performance (would rather not). However, if I raise it too high for my liking, and want to lower it, the CTRL-F7 key does not lower it!

So, because I can only increase frameskip or lower cycles, there is no way to improve the default settings DOSBox starts with, anyone else have this issue?

Reply 2 of 10, by Qbix

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never heard of it.

Does your OS/window manager maybe steal the f12 key ?

You can always specify the amounf cpu cycles in the configfile.

Water flows down the stream
How to ask questions the smart way!

Reply 3 of 10, by Guest

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After doing some testing, there is no 'key stealing' by other background apps or the system itself.

The DOSBox application comes in a 'package' for the Mac, and there is no specific config file. I will look more into the app itself to see if I can find some configuration stuff, but there are no files included except a few *.icns files.

Reply 6 of 10, by Game_Hunter

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Mac laptops steal the function keys and map them to hardware keys by default. This means F5 is volume up, F6 is num lock and so on. You need to go into the system preferences and under keyboard click the button to turn the function keys to software control and then also to go into the keyboard shortcuts and turn off keyboard navigation. Then it should all work OK.

Reply 7 of 10, by Guest

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Hi,

I'm a reasonably veteran dosbox user, having played the odd good game of Civ with it on my laptop under OS X 10.3

But now I have Panther, I find the function keys - essential to controling dosbox's emulation - hijacked by Dashboard for its purposes, and I can't control the emu anymore!

I propose a solution: being able to assign whatever key-combos you want for frameskip +/- and cpu cycles +/-. If this is already possible, someone tell me! If not, then I beseech thee! 😉

Also, it'd be really nice if config options were in a nice OS X style preference pane, brought up by command sem-colon. But I know this is a cross platform project, and config files may be the best way to go ... you get my hint! 😅

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