does VDMSound work on 32bit Vista/7?

Personally I use DOSBox for all DOS games even on 32bit Windows. The x86 dynamic core is superb and you can't beat DOSBox compatibility. Back before DOSBox I used VDMSound but it is nowhere near as capable. DOSBox was conceived of to solve the problems of VDMSound, if I recall correctly, and to allow DOS gaming on other platforms of course.

swaaye wrote:

does VDMSound work on 32bit Vista/7?

No, fullscreen support for 16-bit dos apps has been scrapped in 32bit Vista/7.

I was hoping for a Virtual8086 -based DOS emulator that doesn't rely on NTVDM.

You will definitely need DosBox (best choice in the emulation field as far as speed is concerned) for anything newer than XP 32bit.

Barry_Purplelips, your avatar is offensive. All you are doing is showing the world what a racist idiot you are. Take you idiotic avatar and user name elsewhere. May I suggest redstate.com where the other wingnut idiots hang out.

collector wrote:

Barry_Purplelips, your avatar is offensive. All you are doing is showing the world what a racist idiot you are. Take you idiotic avatar and user name elsewhere. May I suggest redstate.com where the other wingnut idiots hang out.

Left wing troll. Why don't you go to the Huffington Post or Politico? What business is it of yours to tell anybody what they can or can't have as an avatar? The left are all the same, you're in favor of free speech for anybody who agrees with you but everybody else has to sit down and shut up or get tazed or beaten with a truncheon.

Topic people.

Keep it civil, man. What's wrong about that avatar?

eL_PuSHeR wrote:

What's wrong about that avatar?

If one isn't familiar with lip plates one can Google it. It is a blatantly racist image, in the same league as using terms like "spear chucker". This is not about defending Obama, but about open racism.

collector wrote:

eL_PuSHeR wrote:

What's wrong about that avatar?

If one isn't familiar with lip plates one can Google it. It is a blatantly racist image, in the same league as using terms like "spear chucker". This is not about defending Obama, but about open racism.

Lip plates are part of the sub-Saharan African culture. If you have a problem with lip plates, you have a problem with negroes, which makes you a racist.

Way to hijack a thread 🙄

Since you two cant understand a polite request, here is an impolite one: Stop bitching about the damn avatar here. Take it elsewhere or shut your pie holes now. If anyone wants to recommend a Virtual8086-based DOS emulator though, or knows whether i should use DOSBox or VirtualBox to run 3D DOS games under 64bit systems, go ahead.

PS: If some mod is seeing this, please delete/move the offtopic flamewar posts about the avatar, and this post too.

To run dos games use Dosbox.

Please get rid of this avatar

kurkosdr wrote:

If anyone wants to recommend a Virtual8086-based DOS emulator though, or knows whether i should use DOSBox or VirtualBox to run 3D DOS games under 64bit systems, go ahead

Again, 3D Game or not, there's no emulator capable of outperforming DosBox. If you're having problems with speed, specially when playing CPU-intensive games such as Carmageddon, try using a nglide-enabled build. In absence of a 3dfx executable, you could try compiling DosBox with whatever optimizations work best with your processor. I managed a 50-something % speed boost using an Intel Compiler a few years ago, but I no longer have access to it.

kurkosdr wrote:

Those of us still using 32bit CPUs theoretically have the advantage of being able to run DOS games without the need for a virtualizer or a full emulator. But i haven't come across a single decent Virtual8086-based DOS emulator for Windows 7.

This sentence really doesn't make any sense. Perhaps you are thinking these words have some meaning the rest of us are unfamiliar with..?

Anyway, there's always Bochs, but as Bochs is a full x86 emulator (is that what you mean?), it is quite slow.

I ve heard that both virtualization technologies (vt-x and amd-v) don't handle 16bit integers well, and that DOSBox is better for DOS games that use primarly 16bit integers. Do 3D DOS games use primarly 16bit integers or 32bit floats?

Does it really matter, as long as it's fast enough to be playable?

Also, how do you define a "3D DOS game"? Unless it uses Glide (in which case DOSBox is pretty much your only option), there's really nothing in particular to distinguish a "3D DOS" game from any other DOS game of similar complexity.

v86 mode is not capable of fully tracing (emulating) user or supervisor x86 code.

Barry_Purplelips wrote:

Again, 3D Game or not, there's no emulator capable of outperforming DosBox.

This is what i find perplexing. How its possible for a full emulator (DOSBox) to beat a virtualizer (VirtualBox) in terms of performance?

Books say that virtualizers (VirtualBox) beat full emulators (DOSBox) in terms of petformance.

Because virtualizers aim at modern OS and not at old DOS games. Virtualbox running DOS is most likely much faster than Dosbox but not as compatible by a longshot.

Also, in many senses DOSBox is not a "full emulator". Bochs is a "full emulator" (and is much slower than VirtualBox, etc).

Jorpho wrote:

kurkosdr wrote:

Those of us still using 32bit CPUs theoretically have the advantage of being able to run DOS games without the need for a virtualizer or a full emulator. But i haven't come across a single decent Virtual8086-based DOS emulator for Windows 7.

This sentence really doesn't make any sense. Perhaps you are thinking these words have some meaning the rest of us are unfamiliar with..?

I was hoping to find an alternative to NTVDM that works. In other words, a program that uses Virtual8086 mode to run DOS apps, like NTVDM does. That would eliminate the need for a virtualizer (VirtualBox) or a full emulator (DOSBox). But if virtual8086 mode is really broken, as you say, i doubt such program will ever exist.

That's because the VM programs don't use virtualization extensions for all code.

VM programs use the same techniques as DOSBox does (full emulation or dynamic recompilation) for code they don't run directly on the CPU.

DOSBox is faster for this code pretty much because no one else cares to optimize.

See the latest Splinter Cell re-release for consoles or any console port released to PC. Optimization is everything.

Your alternative to NTVDM is MS-DOS.

P.S. NTVDM is still there in Windows 7 32bit and may still be there in Windows 8 32bit. All you need to do is install XPDM video drivers instead of WDDM video drivers for full screen. I have noticed a decrease in NTVDM compatibility though starting with Windows Vista but that's mainly for 16bit Windows games. So if NTVDM is that important to you then you could setup a dual-boot with a 32bit version of Windows.