dosbox dos is limited. best thing to do is just run 4dos as a command interpreter in dosbox.

if you do run dos6.22 hd image in dosbox you loose all the extra functionality (like mount, etc)

If you want to go the image route, I would recommend pcem and 86box over dosbox

Booting MS-DOS is useful for a couple of extremely rare situations where you might need low-level disk access, or need to load a device driver. But indeed, you might be better off with DOSBox-X or PCem in a case like that.

Thanks guys! I guess I'll use DOSBox-X or Optionals (I like the crt filters on it) for DOS stuff. I'll check out that PCem though, haven't heard of it and it looks really neat!

DOSBox-X is interesting, yes, but also -insert nice word for bloated here- and a little bit slower than official DOSBox.
Noticed that on my Raspberry Pi 4..

Booting MS-DOS is nice sometimes if you're facing trouble.
Share.exe, programs trying to directly access the FAT, the need for EMM386, undocumented API calls, programs using extended memory from int15h instead of XMS,
dependency on external commands, etc.

polybius wrote on 2021-05-07, 21:59:

I guess I'll use DOSBox-X or Optionals (I like the crt filters on it) for DOS stuff.

...Should I emphasize that it is extremely rare that you will need the sort of low-level emulation that is not provided by ordinary DOSBox? You don't need to make things more complicated than they are.

There's not much talk of DOSBox-Optionals hereabouts; are the CRT filters the primary way that it differs from DOSBox-X?

Some DOS Games (like Pizza Connection, the German version of Pizza Tycoon) do require a proper DOS on an HDD image with mouse and sound drivers installed for the music/sound to work.

But other than that there doesn't seem to be that much of an advantage over regular DOSBox.

Jo22 wrote on 2021-05-07, 22:17:

DOSBox-X is interesting, yes, but also -insert nice word for bloated here- and a little bit slower than official DOSBox.

The additional DOS programs bundled with DOSBox-X indeed increases its size, and all the additional features and more accurate emulation it provides also do not come for free.

_Rob wrote on 2021-05-08, 11:23:

Jo22 wrote on 2021-05-07, 22:17:

DOSBox-X is interesting, yes, but also -insert nice word for bloated here- and a little bit slower than official DOSBox.

The additional DOS programs bundled with DOSBox-X indeed increases its size, and all the additional features and more accurate emulation it provides also do not come for free.

I guess that's true. The many settings in the config file must result in many checks which the program has to go through (IF.. THEN..).
Or maybe it just changes the variables in memory and uses a look-up table of some sort. Not sure.
But I imagine it's at least a bit more time consuming than just using hard-coded values in the source code.

Jorpho wrote on 2021-05-07, 23:42:

polybius wrote on 2021-05-07, 21:59:

I guess I'll use DOSBox-X or Optionals (I like the crt filters on it) for DOS stuff.

...Should I emphasize that it is extremely rare that you will need the sort of low-level emulation that is not provided by ordinary DOSBox? You don't need to make things more complicated than they are.

There's not much talk of DOSBox-Optionals hereabouts; are the CRT filters the primary way that it differs from DOSBox-X?

I'm not really sure! I was looking over some posts elsewhere and a few people recommended Optionals. I do have a small problem though with it though. It seems that almost everything else runs really well on it (Duke3D at 800x600 runs great!) but Death Rally runs slow with sputtering audio during the actual races. It runs perfectly fine in an older Megabuild (6) of DOSBox that I've had forever. Anybody happen to know why it could be doing this?

polybius wrote on 2021-05-10, 00:28:

I do have a small problem though with it though. It seems that almost everything else runs really well on it (Duke3D at 800x600 runs great!) but Death Rally runs slow with sputtering audio during the actual races. It runs perfectly fine in an older Megabuild (6) of DOSBox that I've had forever. Anybody happen to know why it could be doing this?

Well, for starters, you should check if the problem exists in the standard DOSBox 0.74-3 and/or in the latest SVN build. (You can get a standard SVN build from https://dosboxece.yesterplay.net/ .) If there are no problems there, then you should open an issue on the DOSBox-Optionals github.

Or you can just forget the whole thing and play the free Windows port of Death Rally instead.

Jorpho wrote on 2021-05-10, 01:18:

Or you can just forget the whole thing and play the free Windows port of Death Rally instead.

😳 How did I not know this existed... Thanks!