The command prompt is not DOS. MS-DOS came on 3(4 with extras) floppies and was an operating system in it's own right. Dosbox is emulating not only this operating environment, but also all of the hardware of a PC. It is NOT comparable to a command prompt in this. A save state function has been proposed and it's probably possible but no one's done it yet. It's an open source program so it's up to people of their own free time to make changes. If you really want it badly, add it yourself.

To resize it, simple hit alt-enter to go fullscreen. If you look in your dosbox.conf file you will find options for you to tinker with.

avatar, I think you mean alt+enter rather than alt+tab.

HunterZ wrote:

avatar, I think you mean alt+enter rather than alt+tab.

Yes...yes I do. 😅

But you, have to adapt DosBox for each game personaly

Not true although it may appear that way.

Initially DosBox was created with very basic support to get to the level where games would at least execute or to get some basic games working so that the developers could figure out why the games were not working. There is alot of documentation out there for DOS but there is also alot of documentation that is not available nor will it ever be available. In these cases the people who fix the broken games have to figure it out for themselves. This is where it may appear that DosBox is being "adapted" for each game. It's not. When the programmers fix a part of the emulation that is not correct it hopefully will benefit alot more games. This is how most emulation is programmed for....and how all programs are programmed for. You use the program, you find the bugs, you report the bugs, the programmers fix them (If they are nice or if they care 😉 )

By the way, DOS was not simple. I wonder if you ever tried to get a CONFIG.SYS that worked with every game (that was impossible, of course). DOSBox is quite similar: You must work with the configuration for a while to get the best out of your specific computer, but it is possible to find a configuration that works with 90% of the games. Just like in real DOS, there is always the troublesome 10% that need special attention.

I'll say even more Moe: there were many different kinds of DOS. MS DOS, IBM DOS, PC DOS, etc. Of course MS DOS was best supported, but even then, DOS was only as good as its drivers. Mouse drivers, soundcards drivers, the versions of emm386.exe and himem.sys, etc. And then there's the hardware.

I know several games that refused to run on nearly every computer I tried them on - but DOSBOX runs them perfectly. Why? Because DOSBOX is a clean DOS version, with very standard emulated hardware which was made to be most compatible with games. Not to mention the relatively unlimited memory DOSBOX has at its disposal!

Bottomline: DOSBOX is actually better than the original DOS versions in many areas. It's only when certain games use obscure functions of the old DOS that problems may arise.

I should track down a copy of Reader Rabbit 2 and try it in DOSBox. I was never able to get that @#!$ game to run on either of our computers when I was a kid.