First post, by DosFreak
- Rank
- l33t++
http://www.classicdosgames.com/interviews/peterveenstra.html
So, today I'm talking to Qbix, who (to the best of my knowledge) has never worked on a game. Instead, he works on the DOSBox pro […]
So, today I'm talking to Qbix, who (to the best of my knowledge) has never worked on a game. Instead, he works on the DOSBox project which lets all of us play DOS games! Awesome! So, what is your role in the development of DOSBox?
I'm one of the two project administrators. I'm the one who does most of the non-coding stuff like answering these questions. I try to keep DOSBox in a healthy state. So that includes doing (within the time constraints): answering emails, reviewing code patches, managing the forum (code wise) and coding on DOSBox itself.
How and when did the DOSBox project get started?
DOSBox was started around the time Windows 2000 was released. Windows 2000 didn't allow DOS games to be played very well, but it was a real improvement in terms of stability and security compared to Windows 98 SE. So it was bound to stay. This was bad news for both long time DOS game collectors and players.
Harekiet was at the time playing around with creating a few emulators. He had a z80 emulator and a few others. So he decided to create a DOS emulator. Windows 2000 didn't have an easy to use visualization API. So he decided to go with full CPU emulation. After a short time I joined up, as he had made me enthusiastic during all the talks we had.
How does DOSBox actually work? I mean, I know that it allows me to play DOS games, but how does it do that? Is it a Virtual DOS Machine (VDM) that allows real and protected mode DOS software to be run in a non-DOS operating system, which also emulates system, sound and video hardware?
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