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Any way to set machine type on the fly?

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First post, by Og

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Hi,
I'm building a compilation of DOSBox(0.70, but also tried with CVS) with some games and a dos based menu to run them, so if I need to change a setting like cycles or core I just write "cycles=max" or "core=dynamic" at the DOSBox prompt and it works(actually it's in a batch file, but it's the same).
However, when I want to run Digger(original) I write "machine=cga"(I will probably have the same problem when I'll get to Gauntlet), but it doesn't work 🙁 .

So my question is: Is there any workaround to get machine type to change while DOSBox is running? Something like the "rescan" internal command only for the display instead of the file system?

A couple of things I'd like to point out:
* I am aware of frontends, I just don't want to use any for this project.
* I do not want to restart DOSBox for every game, I want to play all games from the same "instance"(hopefully this is the correct expression) of DOSBox.

BTW, this has nothing to do with my problem but I am just curios: If I run DOSBox with default settings and then close it and change machine to CGA in dosbox.conf and then I drag(I'm using Windows) a folder to the DOSBox executable the machine is still set to VGA. Once started without dragging once, CGA then works with dragging again. Is it a bug or intentional?

Thanks,
Og

Reply 2 of 8, by MiniMax

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Og wrote:

BTW, this has nothing to do with my problem but I am just curios: If I run DOSBox with default settings and then close it and change machine to CGA in dosbox.conf and then I drag(I'm using Windows) a folder to the DOSBox executable the machine is still set to VGA. Once started without dragging once, CGA then works with dragging again. Is it a bug or intentional?

Sounds like an impossible bug to me - and I can't reproduce it. I think you are misinterpreting something.

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Reply 3 of 8, by Og

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wd wrote:

Nope, too many machine checks scattered around i think.

Yeah, I figured as much. Thanks for the (very) quick reply though 😀

MiniMax wrote:

Sounds like an impossible bug to me - and I can't reproduce it. I think you are misinterpreting something.

Yes, it was my mistake... I don't know why I thought it was OK after starting DOSBox without dragging. Now that I checked again it seems that dosbox doesn't use dosbox.conf at all when dragging, I.E. console gives the message:
"CONFIG: Using default settings. Create a configfile to change them"
Instead of:
"CONFIG:Loading primary settings from config file dosbox.conf"

Hmmm, I have a theory(hypothesis?) about why this happens, is it possible that windows is setting a different "work directory" variable than the one dosbox.exe is in when dragging a folder(or an executable) to it? (as opposed to dragging a folder/exe to a dosbox shortcut(which works fine, I.E. loads dosbox.conf) which set the "work dir" to the location of the "start in:" field of the shortcut)?

Reply 4 of 8, by MiniMax

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Where do you keep your dosbox.conf? It worked perfectly for me with the config file in the same folder as DOSBox.

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Reply 6 of 8, by Dominus

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If I am not mistaken, when you drag'n'drop a game to Dosbox, Dosbox is looking into the game's folder for the conf.

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Reply 7 of 8, by collector

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Just use a DOSBox shortcut with a -conf statement added to it for dragging and dropping. This is what I do when I am experimenting with finding optimal settings for a new game.

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Reply 8 of 8, by Og

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This isn't a problem... I usually use the shortcut on my desktop for testing, and everything works fine, it's just that I stumbled upon this behavior and since I was already opening a topic about my real problem, I just pointed it out, but then MiniMax said that this doesn't happen to him so I got curious 😜

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