muhahaha, dosbox has a speed control.
But anyway you can't compare a VM to Dosbox...

Speed control? What?

Does DOSBox utilize/emulate a version of Soundblaster or not. If so, which version is it?

All of them except awe 32/64

If you use a VM you will not get even close to the compatibility that dosbox has in regards to dos games.
If you have speed troubles with dosbox it is recommended to ask here for help.

Dominus wrote:

All of them except awe 32/64

All of them? How does that work? I'm confused.

Dominus wrote:

If you use a VM you will not get even close to the compatibility that dosbox has in regards to dos games.

Running natively is less compatible than emulating it? What?

Dominus wrote:

If you have speed troubles with dosbox it is recommended to ask here for help.

Don't bother, I don't just want it fast enough to play in full FPS, I want to be able to speed up as well to get past boring parts.

Romeo wrote:

All of them? How does that work? I'm confused.

it doesn't emulate all of them at the same time, they're selectable from the config file.
DOSBox doesn't try to faithfully simulate a real machine internally - it aims to support games, and to save you the trouble of configuring DOS HDD images and loading drivers. Mouse for example is handled completely internally to bypass the need for a driver. Not applicable to how things work on a real machine.

Running natively is less compatible than emulating it? What?

Natively you don't have the hardware that DOS games expect, so of course you'll get more compatibility if you emulate the hardware too.

Don't bother, I don't just want it fast enough to play in full FPS, I want to be able to speed up as well to get past boring parts.

see the readme on ctrl+F11, ctrl+F12, alt+F12. And note that not all "boring parts" are created equal (they don't all depend on machine speed for timing).

Good luck with your "native" VM - it obviously is turning out great for you.

VileRancour wrote:

it doesn't emulate all of them at the same time, they're selectable from the config file.

Config file shows me nothing interesting, just sb16 address 220, the same Soundblaster I installed in DOS. I don't remember having to set up Soundblaster config in Dosbox either.

DOSBox doesn't try to faithfully simulate a real machine internally - it aims to support games

Exactly why I'm using DOS in a VM.

, and to save you the trouble of configuring DOS HDD images and loading drivers.

But its not worth the added trouble of the extra slow speed to emulate an emulator that emulates games that originally run on 4 MHZ but can barely run at half FPS on a 3 GHZ i7. No thanks.

Also, drivers only need to be installed and loaded once as you can save machine state with a VM.

Mouse for example is handled completely internally to bypass the need for a driver. Not applicable to how things work on a real machine.

"Internally"?

Natively you don't have the hardware that DOS games expect,

Yes I do, I could've just installed a DOS 6.22 partition but I'm using a VM so I don't have to be confined to it and can do other things on my windows machine simultaneously, like a real emulator does.

see the readme on ctrl+F11, ctrl+F12, alt+F12. And note that not all "boring parts" are created equal (they don't all depend on machine speed for timing).

I have already cranked speed to 105%, and I'm not gonna lower the quality or increase frame skip to increase the speed either. The DOS VM runs it nearly perfectly at the highest quality settings at 10x the speed. I'm not settling for less.

So please go to the support forum of your vm.

Dominus wrote:

Good luck with your "native" VM - it obviously is turning out great for you.

Subtle way of telling me to fuck off, there. 😜

Dominus wrote:

So please go to the support forum of your vm.

Calm down bro, I'm not slamming your favorite program. If you're eager to see me leave, answer my original question and I'll disappear swiftly, or rewrite Dosbox and make it much faster. 😜

Romeo wrote:

I'm not settling for less.

DOSBox can run MechWarrior 2 at 1024x768 perfectly, on my MacBook Pro.

Trust me, you won't have to "settle". DOSBox is plenty fast.

Depending on the game, you might need to adjust the CPU settings in the dosbox config file.

For example, MW2 needs cycles=max, which is not the default settings.

So pray tell, what game are you trying to run?

I answered your questions, the problem I have is that you obciously never read anything in the readme or in the config.
And while you write you want gaming you scoff at dosbox superior compatibilty with games. And statementsthat a game for a 4MHz computer runs slow on your modern computer means to me that you are just trolling.

Squall, I am not trying to run a game, I'm trying to run an emulator. Indeed, emulating an emulator is surely the greatest way to make a very old console a challenge for a 2010 computer to run. 😜

I tried maxcycles as well, if it did make a difference I did not notice it.

Dominus,

I answered your questions

Nuh-uh, all you said was "muahaha Dosbox has speed control" and that I can't compare DOS with DOSBox, neither of which are even indirectly relevant to "which Soundblaster driver does DOSBox utilize so I can find one to install on my DOS VM".

, the problem I have is that you obciously never read anything in the readme or in the config.

There is no readme in the DOSBox package I downloaded, I think you meant the manual.txt. I read it and followed every reasonable step to ensure greatest performance which all failed miserably.

And while you write you want gaming you scoff at dosbox superior compatibilty with games.

I scoff at how slow it is for the game I'm trying to run. Nothing more.

And statementsthat a game for a 4MHz computer runs slow on your modern computer means to me that you are just trolling.

Fact #1: The Super Nintendo console utilizes the 16-bit 65c816 Ricoh 5A22 3.58 MHz (lower than the 4 MHZ I originally estimated.) Majority of games don't even use 100% of the CPU.

Fact #2: DOSBox runs one SNES game at 30/60 FPS at full-throttle on my 3000 MHZ i7 computer.

Fact #3: Trolls are commonly sarcastic, impudent and rarely type out more than one sentence per post. This fits your behavior more than mine. 😜

Ok, dosbox doesn't need a driver fir soundblaster as its emulation is such that you don't need a driver.
Your other question as to which soundblaster it emulates I answered as well. You can choose which soundblaster to use in the config.

Fact 1, yes but you need to look at the requirements of the snes emulator if you try to compare things. If you could run the snes game directly inside dosbox it would look differently.

Fact 2, again, emulation inside emulation takes its toll. Compare it to a how well that snes emulator runs on a real Dos computer.

Facts3, look at how long in the thread it took you to post any relevant information. You got treated the way you deserved.

And yes, dosbox is for dos games. Obviously you are not trying to run a dos game, but an emulator which in turn was probably not much faster on a real Dos computer.

Btw, I wasn't trying to be subtle

Your other question as to which soundblaster it emulates I answered as well. You can choose which soundblaster to use in the config.

You answered one post later with a vague "all of them" answer.

Fact 2, again, emulation inside emulation takes its toll. Compare it to a how well that snes emulator runs on a real Dos computer.

I have observed a 10x faster performance on my DOS VM. On a real DOS partition I imagine it would be even faster. I was actually reluctant to use a VM when I was first recommended to do so because I was afraid that the overhead would be massive like DOSBox and run a lot slower than real DOS.

Facts3, look at how long in the thread it took you to post any relevant information. You got treated the way you deserved.

What was so significant that I left out? I already made it clear that I had no intention of using DOSBox because it was too slow, just wanting to know which drivers it uses for Sound/Mouse because the one I installed acts up on my DOS VM for some games.

And yes, dosbox is for dos games. Obviously you are not trying to run a dos game

Define game then. It's a DOS program that runs games. Would a game that opens a graphical choicebox of which of the series in the trilogy you wanna play not count as a game? What about a game that lets you choose the individual levels? What about ones that need a file with a certain extension to load individual levels? It's all semantics at this point.

, but an emulator which in turn was probably not much faster on a real Dos computer.

It was an order of magnitude faster on a DOS VM, let alone a real DOS machine.

A VM is a virtualizer that uses parts of your system, check what cpu speed it uses. Modern virtualizer virtualize a 1GHz CPU, which is significantly faster than an old dos computer (more than 10x).

And dosbox is for dos games. There is no nitpicking possible. An emulator is not a game. If a game was developed for dos and ran natively in Dos then it's a dos game. Don't try to pretend to be dense.

What is vague about "all soundblasters except awe 32/64"?

Which emulator? Genecyst seems to run OK, as does the latest ZSNES.

I also wonder why use dos at all instead of a snes emulator for modern systems...

Romeo wrote:

I installed DOS on a VM because DOSBox was way too slow on my i7. Being unfamiliar with DOS, I was barely able to install a Soundblaster driver which worked for one game but kept crackling up on another, and the mouse driver I have is very unsmooth so I am unable to select some checkboxes in some game's settings.

I tried all kinds of mouse drivers, some with smoothness settings and they all failed.

So yeah, it would be good to know how DOSBox does it.

It is obvious that you're having problems without forums members, what they're expecting you to do, DOS machines knowledge, and VM's knowledge.

First of all, they expect you to read DOSBox documentation before asking any question. I suspect that you have not.

Now, I'm going to answer your questions:

- Soundblaster does not need any drivers in DOS. In DOS, Soundblaster was accessed directly (except in some rare cases that needed a special file for music), the only thing you needed to know was the model, port, irq and dma that you had installed in your machine.

- DOSBox, as it is said, emulates every Soundblaster except the AWE32/64 (the synth is not emulated, but the rest is equal to a SB16) and the ASP/CSP chips of the SB16. You may choose everything editing the config file (did you read the documentation?).

- DOSBox does not need any mouse driver, as it have one built-in. Mouse driver provides some functions (INT33) that DOSBox provides already.

- The same applies to some things like EMS and XMS. They're built in, so you won't need load any driver (and the quantity of memory is selectable in config file).

- DOSBox have some speed control (usually autodetects the speed needed), but if it fails you can change settings in the config file to force some speed settings.

- About speed: Try to set cycles=max and run Navràtil speed test, to know how fast will your emulated PC run. After that, avoid using games with higher requirements. Read this thread to know more about that. Yes, DOSBox is slower than an VM, but there are not too much games/emulators that need DOS and a CPU faster than a 486/66 (yes, you could say Quake, but there are Windows and OpenGL ports for that).

- VMs have less hardware support than DOSBox. For example, Virtualbox and VMWare will only emulate some PCI sound cards (that are not exactly DOS compatible), and they have SB16 emulation after you change manually your VM config file. And, after that, I'm not sure that they're able to emulate OPL (FM music) correctly. So, yes, at times running a VM is less compatible than emulation.

- At last, I don't know why would you want using a SNES emulator in DOSBox. Maybe you have some reason (better interface?), but there are plenty of emulators running in Windows and Linux.