Did you try core=dynamic, cycles=max ?

Yes, I did. Finally I decided to use core=dynamic and cycles=fixed 30000 because cycles=max caused unstability. Thank you for your answer!!

Where do you see it going slow while reading files? I only see any kind of long pause when it is "adjusting the speed", and that has nothing to do with reading files. Also, what do you mean by "external" files?

[Thread moved to DOSBox Games/Apps. Section]

There are several situations when the game tries to access the files and takes too long:

1. When you are playing, type the word, press ENTER and the program access PALABRAS.DAT ('words.dat') to check that the word exists. There's an annoying pause.
2. When you have finished playing a word and you press F4 to read the definition.
3. When you go to the Récords section, press F4, change the criteria and press ENTER.
4. When you go to the Récords section, press F3, press ENTER and you go to the Statistics section. Everytime you press DOWN or UP, the program accesses RECORDS.DAT to read the data concerning that specific record, and it takes too long.

In order to see all those problems properly, I should have included a full RECORDS.DAT. I can't find a way to attach the file here (is there a way?), so if you don't mind I'll send it to you as a private message.

Thanks so much for caring and for your help. It sucks that I worked so much on my game for nothing.

With an HD image and booting real DOS in DOSBox, the program does not go faster in the parts you mention, so there does not appear to be an issue with accessing files locally through folder mounts. I suspect you are comparing the speed to what you have seen in the Windows NTVDM, which can run x86 code natively (to some extent) on the host CPU. How fast your program runs on a 486 or Pentium system with DOS would be a more appropriate comparison with DOSBox's emulation.

With max cycles I see appreciably better speeds in the parts you identify as being slow. I know you've said you don't like using max cycles for certain reasons, but fixed cycles places a limit on DOSBox's performance.

Thank you so much for your time! I have tried different things and, following your advice, I have also tried again 'cycles=max'. It seems to work better than I remember it did in the past, although I'll need to make a little change on the code, because when 'fullscreen' is set to 'true' the programme sometimes shuts. I think I know where the problem is (it has to do with the delay function in Pascal).

I have noticed, though, that 'core=dynamic' works better than 'core=auto'.

I wanted to ask you another question if you don't mind. Dosbox detects that the keyboard is Spanish, but it doesn't allow me to write certain special characters. I changed 'keyboardlayout=auto' into 'keyboardlayout=sp' but the problem persists. Is there anything I can do?

Thanks!!

I forgot to say that when I started my game, in 1995, I had a 386, and that, when I resumed it, a few years later, I had a 2Gh processor.

You need to specify core=dynamic because core=auto will only automatically switch to dynamic core for protected mode programs, and yours is a real mode program.

AFAIK, there is only one built-in keyboard layout in DOSBox for Spanish. Which characters are you not able to type?

áéíóú, among others.

Those are acute accents. I'm no expert at using the Spanish layout, but after running "keyb sp" in DOSBox I get special characters with:

acute: ' then letter
diaeresis: " then letter

grave: [ then letter
circumflex: { then letter

Do these not work for you? What other characters can you not type?

There are two types of spanish keyboard: sp and la. Sp is for spanish (spain) layout and la is for spanish (latin american) layout.
Latin american layout works fine for me, sp probably too, but I haven't touched a spanish (sp) keyboard for years, so I don't really remember if the keys are correct, though they should be.

I will try this program after I return from work. I also use a Spanish keyboard.

EDIT: No problems for me for typing out acuted letters (áéíóú) at the DOSBox prompt. It also states that its using codepage 437...

Thank you all for your answers.

I have tried keyboardlayout=auto and keyboardlayout=sp, and I have even added "keyb sp" at the autoexec section, but nothing. The funny thing is that I can write the ñ, but not other characters such as, as I said before, áéíóú.

ripsaw8080, I have tried your combinations of characters, but they don't work for me. But even if they worked, that wouldn't be the natural way to write those characters. To write á, for example, we press ´ and then a. To write à, we press `and then a (althogh we don't have this character in Spanish: it's for French basically).

At the DosBox prompt the "natural" way works for me...

My keyboard has a key to the left of the number keys across the top that is ` unshifted and ~ shifted. Using this key does not result in grave accents or tilde diacritics for me, so there may be host environment requirements or so that are needed.

The layouts are dos layouts.

Sorry, I don't understand "The layouts are dos layouts". Also, could anybody told me what's wrong with the keyboard configuration? Thanks so much!