Have you tried changing your output?
http://www.dosbox.com/wiki/Dosbox.conf#.5Bsdl.5D
That might help you...Also...turn fulldouble off.
Other than that, how cluttered is your ram? 256mb is not a lot.
Stable, official, DosBox 0.74 I just opened uses up 61,564 mb ram and I'm not doing anything yet, I just opened the "command prompt"
After loading tie fighter (more or less same sys. reqs as Colonization, I believe) usage increased to...67,156mb.
Windows 2000 (and such) isn't all that smart about it's paging IMO, and some of the things cluttering your RAM (which isn't a lot, really and with all that crap in the systray...all those "smart programs" that *believe* you want them there all the time (like Acrobat Reader)) might be forcing your OS to page in and page out using your HDD, the biggest bottleneck in a puter (unless you have an SSD which I believe you don't)...while you're playing with DosBox, hence giving you a rather unpleasant experience.
Also, I hope it's not incorrect to post this and the link, but have you tried VDMSound? It might lessen your problems.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/vdmsound/ Get it there.
It's easier on resources to just emulate parts of a whole system instead of the entire thing (like DosBox does)

Yes tried VDM and well sound is garbbled and crackled no matter what I try. As for the system tray, only thing in it is the volume icon. Nothing else running on this desktop. Opening the taskmanager shows ram being used by dosbox at 69mb of memory, CPU usage 89% if i take cycles higher it gets to 100% but doesnt smooth out and only garbles the music. Tried diffrent outputs, DDRAW gives me the best followed by surface

Ok, not trying to sound like EA's (or similar tech support) have you tried updating your drivers??

latest drivers are installed 🤣

candle_86 wrote:

* Dell * Pentium 3 1000 * 256mb PC133 * Radeon 9200SE PCI * Soundmax Intergrated Digital Audio * Windows 200 […]
Show full quote

* Dell
* Pentium 3 1000
* 256mb PC133
* Radeon 9200SE PCI
* Soundmax Intergrated Digital Audio
* Windows 2000 SP4
* Colonization 3.0
* Slow to render anything, though music is fine. And i mean it takes a good 30seconds at least to render anything
* Everytime i try to play
* SBpro2
* DDRAW
*DOSBOX 7.4
* Tried increasing CPU cycles but music gets to choppy and gameplay isnt helped

To add I just upgraded this computer from Windows 98 to Windows 2000. The game worked fine on Windows98 but I couldn't get sound working so I went to 2000 so I could use DOSBOX to get working sound and now its totally unplayable, 30 seconds to make a single move

The game required a 386SX and 8mb of ram, the wiki says my Pentium3 can render a 486 so I shouldnt have this kind of headache id think

Welcome to 1999!

Your processor is too slow and your soundcard is a POS. Get a faster computer and a halfway decent soundcard.

If you can't do that then setup a DOS/2000 dual-boot and play your DOS games in MS-DOS.

Frameskipping? Could work...other than that, I'm out of ideas, sorry; maybe someone else can help. Oh and set core to dynamic, if it's not already (or set to auto...)

From the DosBox manual:

CPU Core (speed up) On x86 architectures you can try to force the usage of a dynamically recompiling core (set core=dynamic […]
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CPU Core (speed up)
On x86 architectures you can try to force the usage of a dynamically
recompiling core (set core=dynamic in the DOSBox configuration file).
This usually gives better results if the auto detection (core=auto) fails.
It is best accompanied by cycles=max. But you may also try using it with
high amounts of cycles (for example 20000 or more). Note that there might be
games that work worse/crash with the dynamic core (so save your game often),
or do not work at all!

Graphics emulation (speed up)
VGA emulation is a demanding part of DOSBox in terms of actual CPU usage.
Increase the number of frames skipped (in increments of one) by pressing
CTRL-F8. Your CPU usage should decrease when using a fixed cycle setting,
and you will be able to increase cycles with CTRL-F12.
You can repeat this until the game runs fast enough for you.
Please note that this is a trade-off: you lose in fluidity of video what
you gain in speed.

DosFreak wrote:

Welcome to 1999!

Your processor is too slow and your soundcard is a POS. Get a faster computer and a halfway decent soundcard.

If you can't do that then setup a DOS/2000 dual-boot and play your DOS games in MS-DOS.

Wanted to avoid that part heh...
No drivers for Soundmax for DOS, that I could find, at least...that's actually what I believe was his problem with Win 98...
Candle:
As a last resort you could read here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/279792 and set the game to run in compatibility with Windows 95...it might work and you could get sound (I recall it IS emulated (though poorly) in VDM)

22050 all your sound rates
scaler none
core dynamic
favor general midi whenever possible (cpu usage with older cpus and the opl emulator will just suffocate the cpu)
slow solved

DosFreak wrote:

Welcome to 1999! […]
Show full quote

candle_86 wrote:

* Dell * Pentium 3 1000 * 256mb PC133 * Radeon 9200SE PCI * Soundmax Intergrated Digital Audio * Windows 200 […]
Show full quote

* Dell
* Pentium 3 1000
* 256mb PC133
* Radeon 9200SE PCI
* Soundmax Intergrated Digital Audio
* Windows 2000 SP4
* Colonization 3.0
* Slow to render anything, though music is fine. And i mean it takes a good 30seconds at least to render anything
* Everytime i try to play
* SBpro2
* DDRAW
*DOSBOX 7.4
* Tried increasing CPU cycles but music gets to choppy and gameplay isnt helped

To add I just upgraded this computer from Windows 98 to Windows 2000. The game worked fine on Windows98 but I couldn't get sound working so I went to 2000 so I could use DOSBOX to get working sound and now its totally unplayable, 30 seconds to make a single move

The game required a 386SX and 8mb of ram, the wiki says my Pentium3 can render a 486 so I shouldnt have this kind of headache id think

Welcome to 1999!

Your processor is too slow and your soundcard is a POS. Get a faster computer and a halfway decent soundcard.

If you can't do that then setup a DOS/2000 dual-boot and play your DOS games in MS-DOS.

game manual puts me well within the range to render a 386 fine, my main desktop is down for repairs and im waiting on my video card to get back. But i should be able to emulate the needed 386 fine, a Pentium3 1ghz according the FAQ can emulate a 486fast

leileilol wrote:

22050 all your sound rates scaler none core dynamic favor general midi whenever possible (cpu usage with older cpus and the opl […]
Show full quote

22050 all your sound rates
scaler none
core dynamic
favor general midi whenever possible (cpu usage with older cpus and the opl emulator will just suffocate the cpu)
slow solved

Well the unit sounds i could care less about its the games music i loved which the music wont render on midi for some reason, but it fixed my lag but without the music makes more sense to run in Windows 98 without dosbox 🤣

but i should be able to emulate the needed 386 fine

No, you're not. Not with that machine anyway.

from the FAQ it says a PentiumII/K6-2 is needed to eumulate a 386

Pentium3 1ghz/AMD Athlon for 486Fast

thats from the FAQ so i have to disagree unless the FAQ is wrong

Or your PC is crappier than the usual 1GHz Pentium. Or the game is doing something extra CPU intensive.

Well it may be a dell but its totally clean, my main PC is down after the video card died, Texas Summer, no AC and GTX470 do not mix lmao. But this dell is clean, bios updated with a custom bios that restores features that where included on the retail intel board this Dell runs. No bloatware, no nothing 🤣. It runs like a normal 1ghz P3.

But i guess for now i have to run the buggy Windows Version that the drag and drop fails in every 5minutes to 2 hours. 🤣

The game wasn't ever mentioned, so i'm assuming it's C&C Red Alert, which sucks on most 486s compared to its predecessor.

> * Colonization 3.0

sounds like a game name

Colonization with patch 3.0 🤣

h-a-l-9000 wrote:

> * Colonization 3.0

sounds like a game name

I thought that was a spec or a kick-ass spreadsheet program, either way it wasn't clear enough.
Try changing output, perhaps there's a driver bottleneck with 8-bit color.

y was my title changed? The computer isnt a POS, it serves a valid need and works fine for everything except dosbox. Including games such as MOH:AA and Quake3 run fine on here, just not dosbox.

candle_86 wrote:

Well it may be a dell but its totally clean, my main PC is down after the video card died, Texas Summer, no AC and GTX470 do not mix lmao.

Playing Starcraft 2 you are? 😜

candle_86 wrote:

The computer isnt a POS, it serves a valid need and works fine for everything except dosbox

DosBox is a valid and basic need 😜 after playing the latest POS Raven called Wolfenstein...I ran back to the good old...oldie 😜
You mention drag and drop...falls...every 5 minutes? It doesn't really work fine then 😜

Anyway, did you try what I suggested about compatibility mode?