First post, by Gregster
Hello, I've been trying to get DOSBox to work with Kali, an IPX over IP service home to a population of about two dozen veteran Descent pilots who have been playing since Kali's inception in the early 90's. Unfortunately, DOSBox does not notice Kali's IPX driver when DOSBox is launched from within Kali (games have to be launched from within Kali in order for them to be linked to the Kali network).
Kali works with almost any IPX application by somehow intercepting that application's IPX. It lets us use any Descent source port we want to fight each other; we decide beforehand which versions are okay for a battle. We might have some guy in a Windows 98 machine with a Voodoo card fighting against a guy on Descent Rebirth with the latest and greatest hardware, and around the corner is some other guy flying a DOS machine with a 486.
Right now, keeping old computers around is the only way to enjoy a DOS version of Descent over Kali. If DOSBox had a way to access the Kali IPX driver, one would not need to build a DOS system to play an older version.
I suspect that Hal's Megabuild MAY fix the problem, but it requires installing winpcap. I find installing winpcap to be an unacceptable security risk since it was originally designed for packet sniffing. Many malware and virii use that library.
I really wish that DOSBox had its own LAN support. Not only would it enable support for Kali, but also LogMeIn Hamachi, Tunngle, and many other third party LAN-over-internet solutions. The current system seems to force everyone to use DOSBox's inbuilt system, and while this is great if everyone wants to be on DOSBox, it falls short in any situation where individuals wish to mix and match their experience (such as Windows ports interacting with pure DOS).
-- DOSbox 0.74 on Windows 7 64-bit / C2Q Q9300 / 8GB RAM / NVIDIA 9800 GT 512mb / Game: Descent / Utility: Kali/Hamachi/Tunngle
