DosFreak wrote on 2020-02-03, 20:19:
To run on Windows 95 or NT4 without Active Desktop requires a modification to DOSBox so that it doesn't store the dosbox.conf in the user profile, see my thread here where I am wiriting guides on compiling DOSBox: DOSBox Compilation Guides
Thanks! This is absolutely awesome to know!!! ...I was literally thinking of building an even slower computer to run older DOS games if I couldn't get it to work on my current retro build - and I REALLY don't need another project!
....you lost me a bit though. I visited that thread, and dosbox.conf it says "Need to look into setting dosbox.cfg or dosbox.ini in dosbox code although dosbox still reads "dosbox.conf" as "dosbox.con" in DOS anyway" - then links to a Github which doesn't mention dosbox.conf anywhere so I don't quite know what exactly I have to do to modify this to run on my Windows 98SE system...
DosFreak wrote on 2020-02-03, 20:19:
The reason DOSBox currently still supports Windows 95,98,NT4 and 2000 is that it currently uses SDL1.2 and is compiled with MinGW w/GCC or MinGW-W64 w/gcc. The unofficial DOSBox builds you see on the Internet are usually compiled with Visual Studio 2008+ which does not work with 9x without workarounds which most don't bother to implement or with clang which is XP or Vista+ (Newer version of msvcrt dependency) depending on the version used.
Also good to know - I'll stick with the builds from your Google link in that topic - and I'm VERY happy I don't have to compile it myself (as I've never, ever, been able to do that before and it's put me off of a lot of projects over the years...I'm just not that technical - I can get DOSBox to run, and I have before, but that's about it 🤣).
So I'm six levels deep in your folder structure: DOSBox > Windows > Releases > Mingw (kinda guessed here, I saw "64" in the other Mingw-w64 folder, and I know my system isn't 64 bit...) > 5-2-2018 > i386+ >
Which release do I want there? The options which may pertain to me are: dosbox351x32.exe, dosboxx32.exe, (NT one isn't for me as I'm running 98SE), or dosbox95x32.exe (which I assume will work on Win98SE)? I browsed the documentation folder and didn't see what the difference is between versions. Struck out in googling all those mentioned on the same page too (sorry if I'm asking stupid questions...I'm trying to be proactive and find the answer myself but I struck out...)
DosFreak wrote on 2020-02-03, 20:19:
You shouldn't get the "run it on a modern computer" responses here (within reason, i.e. Crysis on a P2 or original game was a buggy POS) and if you do let us know so we can ban them 😉
Yeah, people are actually saying that I need a SLOWER computer 🤣. Love it.