General questions \ VOGONS

General questions

Topic actions

Post a reply

First post, by Merlin

Posted on 2003-10-25, 00:55

Merlin Offline

Rank Newbie

Rank: Newbie
Posts: 4
Joined: 2003-10-24, 23:55

I'm new here and I was just wondering about a couple of things in the emulator. It's made in a different style to most I've used (having tried almost every pc emulator for mac that's been released).

First, I was wondering how registry emulation is handled (if at all)? I know emulators (well not really an emulator) such as wine use a fake registry, does dosbox do this, or is it a windows function? (not knowing a huge amount about pc systems...) if it's a windows function, then I suppose it would be taken care of if I installed windows under one of my directories...

Second, I've seen several mentions of launching windows formatted files. Does this mean that dosbox supports windows? (I don't have anything to test it with otherwise I'd find out for myself) I know it's an emulator focusing on dos support, but if dos then why not windows (please don't laugh I have no idea about the challenges between the two)?

Third I'd just like to say this piece of software has some brilliant ideas that I'd like to see in some of the other emulators I've used. Launching from native filesystem is a beautiful solution (as opposed to creating disk images). I also like the way it installs itself as a console tool, it makes it very handy to switch between functions.

As I said, I'm using a mac - it's a G4/800 chip and it runs dosbox quite well. There are a few minor glitches but I'm not sure whether that's because my version of SDL is on the fritz at the moment or because of endian issues. It runs native on Aqua, which is nice - I have Xfree86 but it's not needed. ( Just in case you wanted to know how portable your code is 😁 )

Reply 1 of 6, by Snover

Posted on 2003-10-25, 00:56

Snover Offline

Rank l33t++

Rank: l33t++
Posts: 5474
Joined: 2002-06-30, 04:47

The System Registry is another terrible Windows "feature". Wine is a Windows emulator. DOSBox is a DOS emulator. Hence the "DOS" part. It can't run Windows.

Yes, it’s my fault.

Reply 2 of 6, by Merlin

Posted on 2003-10-25, 01:06

Merlin Offline

Rank Newbie

Rank: Newbie
Posts: 4
Joined: 2003-10-24, 23:55

Yes I thought that, but I was just curious. What problems would there be in trying to install windows? I've never really found out about the differences...

Is it just the increased memory/hard disk address needs (such as vmem) that prevents windows running? (I'm referring to the older dos based versions such as 95 and 98) Or does dosbox integrate the dos commands into the emulator?

Reply 3 of 6, by HunterZ

Posted on 2003-10-25, 04:32

HunterZ Offline

Rank l33t++

Rank: l33t++
Posts: 6171
Joined: 2003-01-31, 19:04
Location: Seattle

DOSBox emulates both the PC hardware required to run real-mode DOS programs and also emulates enough of DOS itself to run real-mode DOS programs. It doesn't emulate enough of either at this stage to run useful versions of Windows (not even Windows 3.11 will run yet, from what I understand). Windows 95 & 98 would be even harder to add support for because they require a special version of DOS (MS-DOS 7) that has extra bloat in it to help Windows work.

To put it another way, DOS and Windows 95/98 are on totally different levels of complexity. DOS was designed to run on the original 4.7MHz (or so) Intel 8086-based IBM PC, whereas Windows 95 was designed to run on Intel 80486s and Pentiums (a good 3-4 processor generations newer than the original IBM PC). DOSBox is currently geared for running games that were designed for the 8086, 80286, as well as some early/simple 80386 titles.

Reply 4 of 6, by Merlin

Posted on 2003-10-25, 04:45

Merlin Offline

Rank Newbie

Rank: Newbie
Posts: 4
Joined: 2003-10-24, 23:55

Right.... so some dos commands are translated instead of emulated? I see. Kind of like the approach realpc took when emulating then... hardcode as many of the commands as possible to be natively compiled and emulate the rest...

This is a very interesting emulater, I'll have to keep my eye on it. I suppose you won't bother trying to support windows for some time yet (if at all, although 3.11 may help in playing some older games)? Probably a good move until it runs all dos games at a reasonable speed....

Reply 5 of 6, by iampiti

Posted on 2003-10-25, 07:46

iampiti Offline

Rank Member

Rank: Member
Posts: 137
Joined: 2003-09-04, 10:30

Merlin wrote:

Launching from native filesystem is a beautiful solution (as opposed to creating disk images).
[/B]

Yeah, that's very nice. Having to have a disk image to use dosemu turned me away from it (I hope this means what i mean 😀). Anyway it may have it's advantages, maybe they allow low level disk access but I don't know.

And as people has said don't count on DosBox being able to run win'9x ever, 3.x *may* work in the future

Iampiti

Reply 6 of 6, by Snover

Posted on 2003-10-30, 01:57

Snover Offline

Rank l33t++

Rank: l33t++
Posts: 5474
Joined: 2002-06-30, 04:47

Merlin wrote:

Right.... so some dos commands are translated instead of emulated?

No, dear. That's not what he said. EVERYTHING is emulated, INCLUDING DOS.

Yes, it’s my fault.

Go to top of page Go to top of page

Back to DOSBox Development

Main menu

Common searches