VOGONS


First post, by GlacialPatience

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Hi
I have very little computer saavy, but have managed to run sega and other emulators with very few problems in teh past.
I had downloaded a few games from another site (underdogs) before i realized i needed MS DOS to run most of them. Instead of downloading the entire program, i found DosBox and decided to give it a try.
Unfortuantely, i can't seem to figure out how to use it, and i have scoured these forums for just a basic "how to" guide with no luck.
Can anyone tell me how to use this program?
I have tried running oregon trail by opening it with the program then pushing start, but nothing happens. i have also tried 'run' and other commands in the 'command' bar to no avail.
I have a Dell Latitude running Windows XP, but past that i don't know anything else (the school gives us these comps, it is not mine).
Any and all help is GREATLY appreciated!

Reply 1 of 18, by Kain

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do "mount C (drive letter here w/o ()'s, like C:\ or D:\)" then

cd c:\duke3d (if you have duke nukem 3d)

then duke3d to run.

All you need is basic knowledge of DOS.

Type intro then help.

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Reply 2 of 18, by GlacialPatience

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Unfortunately i don't have basic knowlege of DOS, i haven't even SEEN it since i was a little girl 15 years ago when our pc still had a green screen...
*scratches head sheepishly*

Reply 3 of 18, by icemann

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A gamer whose a chick. Now theres something you don't see everyday 😀 (no offense).

Anyways heres a quick basic intro on how to use dos / dosbox:

Firstly if you want to get to a specific directory you would have to type:

cd blah (which in this case would get you into a directory called "blah").

Or if you wish to go back to where you were before you would need to type:

cd ..

or

cd \ (if you want to get back to the root directory).

Now if you want to know whats within a directory you`ll need to do whats called a directory listing which you`ll need to do the following command to do:

dir

Lastly, if you want to run a specific file, simply type the name of it without the extension. For example:Blah.exe is a file you want to run, so you`d simply type

Blah

to run it.

The rest is just icing

[edited by Snover: your commands were all wrong, 🤣]

Reply 4 of 18, by Kain

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The guy above me was real nice but he forgot DOSBox specific commands.

CTRL + F11 = slows down the game
CTRL + F12 = speeds up the game

CTRL + F8 = Increases Frameskip
CTRL + F7 = Drecreases frameskip

If you have windows 2000/xp press ALT+CTRL+DELETE and go to task manager, then go to performance. Then go to the menu above and select "Options" then uncheck always on top. After that open dosbox and do the "mount c ?:\" where ? is the harddrive letter where the game is. Usually C D or E.

If you dont know the short name for the game, type "dir" and look for it in the list.

Afterwards with the performance thing open and the game running press CTRL+f12 until the CPU Usage is 90% to 99% because if its a 100% it'll skip music. Now if it still slow, press CTRL+f8 and repeat the ctrl+f12 until you have good speed.

Thats it and hope it helps!

Athlon Xp 1700+ @ 1.833ghz
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Maxtop Case w/ 350w PSU

Reply 5 of 18, by HarvestMoon

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It's always amusing how, when postes on various forums mention that they're women, they trigger an instant change of attitude and receive polite replies instead of "RTFM, n00b" and so on...

That's why I often pretend to be a girl when asking for help online. 😁 😁 😁

Reply 6 of 18, by GlacialPatience

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Yeah, it can be pretty nice! 😁

Reply 7 of 18, by eL_PuSHeR

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😁 🤣!

Reply 8 of 18, by Yun

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Ok I still cant get the dosbox window to stay on the screen, I went into task manager and unchecked always ontop but when I run dosbox it appears then disappears

Im running 2000

please help

thanks

edit: when I run from the command prompt I get this message

exit to error: an unsupported feature

Last edited by Yun on 2003-10-14, 06:27. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 9 of 18, by Qbix

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change your colordepth to 16 bbp.

dosbox doesn't support 24 bit colordepth.

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

Reply 10 of 18, by Yun

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thanks that did the trick

thankyou for a quick and helpful reply

cheers

😁

Reply 11 of 18, by HunterZ

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Is there a performance difference in DOSBox between 16-bit and 32-bit color? Just wondering.

Reply 12 of 18, by Qbix

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sure. always.
32 bits always uses more memory and therefore more bandwith when updating the screen. Inside dosbox there is a performace penalty as well.

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

Reply 13 of 18, by icemann

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Interesting. Never knew that before.

Two stones, two crosses, the rest is just icing. - 7th Guest

Reply 14 of 18, by eL_PuSHeR

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Size of a 1024x768x32 screen:

1024 pixels wide * 768 pixels tall * 32 bits per pixel = 25.165.824 bits

25.165.824 bits / 8 = 3.145.728 bytes

3.145.728 bytes / 1024 = 3.072 KB

3.072 KB / 1024 = 3 MB

... And the same for a 16bits per pixel screen:

1024 pixels wide * 768 pixels tall * 16 bits per pixel = 12.582.912 bits

12.582.912 bits / 8 = 1.572.864 bytes

1.572.864 bytes / 1024 = 1.536 KB

1.536 KB / 1024 = 1,5 MB

Obviously at higher colour depths the graphics card has to move a lot more data. In this case the memory penalty is exactly TWICE for using true colour (32bpp / 16bpp = 2)
Also using lesser resolutions like 800x600 may reduce the overhead.

That's why running windows desktop at 1024x768x32 is so slow. You need at least 6MB of video card memory to have two screen buffers at the same time.

NOTE: This is just for a plain 2D screen. In 3D modes you need even more memory because there are a lot of back buffers, etc.

Reply 15 of 18, by Daveybaby

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6MB isnt very much these days (nor has it been for at least 5 years). Also, IIRC, there really isnt a significant performance hit when running a windows desktop at 32bpp - most of the gruntwork is handled by the graphics card itself.

Anyhow, it would be nice if DOSBox at least ran in 32bpp mode so we didnt have to fanny about with our OS settings every time we ran it. I'm a semi-n00b with regard to SDL but i'm certain its pretty straightforward to detect the colour depth in use and configure the graphical output appropriately.

Edit: Lifted wholesale from http://cone3d.gamedev.net/cgi-bin/index.pl?pa … als/gfxsdl/tut1 :

void DrawPixel(SDL_Surface *screen, int x, int y,
Uint8 R, Uint8 G, Uint8 B)
{
Uint32 color = SDL_MapRGB(screen->format, R, G, B);
switch (screen->format->BytesPerPixel)
{
case 1: // Assuming 8-bpp
{
Uint8 *bufp;
bufp = (Uint8 *)screen->pixels + y*screen->pitch + x;
*bufp = color;
}
break;
case 2: // Probably 15-bpp or 16-bpp
{
Uint16 *bufp;
bufp = (Uint16 *)screen->pixels + y*screen->pitch/2 + x;
*bufp = color;
}
break;
case 3: // Slow 24-bpp mode, usually not used
{
Uint8 *bufp;
bufp = (Uint8 *)screen->pixels + y*screen->pitch + x * 3;
if(SDL_BYTEORDER == SDL_LIL_ENDIAN)
{
bufp[0] = color;
bufp[1] = color >> 8;
bufp[2] = color >> 16;
} else {
bufp[2] = color;
bufp[1] = color >> 8;
bufp[0] = color >> 16;
}
}
break;
case 4: // Probably 32-bpp
{
Uint32 *bufp;
bufp = (Uint32 *)screen->pixels + y*screen->pitch/4 + x;
*bufp = color;
}
break;
}
}

There are more efficient ways of handling this of course, but it would be nice to at least have the option, if only with a -32bpp command line option.

Last edited by Daveybaby on 2003-10-20, 11:38. Edited 1 time in total.

Crumbs!

Reply 16 of 18, by Harekiet

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You have absolutely no clue what your talking about do you?

Reply 17 of 18, by Daveybaby

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Hmmm... yes i did post a complete load of garbage there didnt i? Confusing 24bpp and 32bpp was a good start.

Crumbs!

Reply 18 of 18, by Nicht Sehr Gut

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Originally posted by Harekiet You have absolutely no clue what your talking about do you?

C'mon Harekiet, cut him some slack. At least he's putting some thought into it... better than a "how do I make it run faster" post anyday.