bellarmine wrote:

I also have the later 1993 SimCity Classic for DOS (with MIDI and Wave sounds). This version works with my mounted drives fine. However it exhibits a strange anomaly: It shows ALL the physical drive letters on my computer, even if I have only mounted ONE drive in DosBox.

DOSBox only informs programs running inside it about emulated (mounted) drives, not host drives. What you are seeing is likely a consequence of DOSBox indicating that all drive letters are available (because of the internal Z: drive, equivalent to LASTDRIVE=Z in CONFIG.SYS in real DOS) and the way the game checks (or doesn't) if drive letters are actually assigned to drives.

bellarmine wrote:

In DosBox I mount my real D and E drive, as I like to store my City files on E. However, when I load SimCity and click Load City, there are NO drive letter buttons visible. I can only browse the directories on the current drive. Same with Terrain Editor.

It's a known issue with the original version of SimCity and its install program. The block device count is used for the number of available drives -- a questionable practice even with older DOS versions where it is more reliable.

After mounting all drive letters you intend to, run the attached workaround program inside DOSBox to set the block device count for SimCity. Drives should be mounted according to DOS standards: floppy drive letters A: and B: can be mounted or not, drive letters C: and up are mounted sequentially with cdrom drives following fixed drives.

Hi Ripsaw,

THANK YOU! That was a fast simple solution! You've explained a lot, I understand what's going on now, and your fix works perfectly. Now SimCity works just like the good old days, thanks a bunch! 😀

I see "DosBox author" under your avatar, thank you for making such a great utility for running all these old gems. I used to be so fussy with my hardware and backwards compatibility, because I always wanted to be able to run these older programs. But with the advent of Gigahertz CPUs and emulators like your DosBox, I can now have the best of both worlds - a modern PC with perfect and customizable DOS compatibility.

If I may, I have a few quick questions about DosBox. Probably picaune, but at least I'd like to know if any of them are relevent.

o - I notice when I specify DosBox to run a batch file on the command line, then put -exit at the end, DosBox does not exit. A workaround is I put the exit command in the batch file itself.
o - With the CTRL+F11 and CTRL+F12 cycles keys, is there a way I can increase and decrease the cycles by simply holding down the keys (auto-repeat)?
o - Is there a way to set the default cycles that DosBox uses on startup (ie to 12000 vs 3000), without them being fixed there, ie still switch to AUTO as required.
o - I've noticed that the standard DOS Copy command changes the dates of the copied files to the current time, which strictly speaking is not standard DOS convention. I've seen a few workarounds, would you recommend one (if any)?

Thanks again Ripsaw, for solving my problem so elegantly, it is MUCH appreciated! 😎 😀

Cheers!

Bellarmine

You seem to have drawn an erroneous conclusion from the title that I share with others. Harekiet is the creator of DOSBox; Qbix is the head developer on the project, and has been for many years.

bellarmine wrote:

I notice when I specify DosBox to run a batch file on the command line, then put -exit at the end, DosBox does not exit. A workaround is I put the exit command in the batch file itself.

Not easy to offer any suggestions without knowing exactly what is in the batch file and what command line you are using.

bellarmine wrote:

With the CTRL+F11 and CTRL+F12 cycles keys, is there a way I can increase and decrease the cycles by simply holding down the keys (auto-repeat)?

Those are not designed to auto-repeat, but you can change the increase/decrease amounts per keypress in the conf.

bellarmine wrote:

Is there a way to set the default cycles that DosBox uses on startup (ie to 12000 vs 3000), without them being fixed there, ie still switch to AUTO as required.

The default cycles=auto setting initially gives 3000 cycles for real mode and max cycles for protected mode. You can specify a fixed amount of cycles in the conf (e.g. cycles=12000 instead of cycles=auto), but you then won't get the automatic switch to max cycles when running protected mode games.

bellarmine wrote:

I've noticed that the standard DOS Copy command changes the dates of the copied files to the current time, which strictly speaking is not standard DOS convention. I've seen a few workarounds, would you recommend one (if any)?

Changing date stamps on files is problematic for cross-platform reasons. There is also a benefit regarding malicious DOS programs and viruses -- they can't hide the fact that a file has been modified by restoring the old date stamp. A source patch exists for the feature on the Windows platform, which is included in some unofficial builds such as the Daum build. Read here for more info about SVN builds.

Thanks for answering all my questions Ripsaw, I appreciate it.

I will check out those Copy patch files you gave me. Also, you gave me an idea about DosBox not exiting. I re-checked my shortcut command lines, and noticed I hadn't ordered the arguments exactly correctly. I fixed it and it now works fine.

As to my error about your title, I apologize, and thank you for telling me about Harekiet being the creator Qbix being head-developer. Many thanks to them for this great program, and I will assume you have worked at some part of it yourself, so thanks is due to you as well Ripsaw... 😎

Thanks again for answering my questions. I will be back in the future if I have any more problems or queries or questions. This is such an interesting retro place with great people like you Ripsaw! Perhaps you could put (SOLVED) in the title, so other people like me will find your solution.

Bellarmine