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The definitive guide to running (MS-)DOS (80x86) programs under Windows Mobile […]
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The definitive guide to running (MS-)DOS (80x86) programs under Windows Mobile

MS-DOS, which was the most widely known operating system of the pre-Windows times on the IBM PC platform, has several unique software titles either not available on other platforms or of considerably better quality than on other platforms. This means emulating MS-DOS, in cases, may be either the only or the best way to get a particular title, let it be an application or a game, run on your Windows Mobile (WM for short) handheld.

In this article, you’ll find ALL (and I certainly mean this!) information you’ll ever need to successfully select and use an MS-DOS emulator.

(Note that, in this article, I refer to all DOS operating systems of the IBM PC as “MS-DOS”. Naturally, the discussion also applies to DR-DOS and PC-DOS and, in this roundup & tutorial, instead of elaborating on the basic operating system itself, I mostly concentrate on the most important aspect of these operating systems: running third-party applications and games.)

1.1 Why an article on MS-DOS emulators?

1. there are no similar all-in-one articles, let alone in-depth ones. The very few articles ever written on the subject only discuss one of the (several) available emulators, PocketDOS.
2. the majority of current emulators, particularly the most recommended DOSBox port by n0p, HEAVILY lack any kind of a decent tutorial. In here, you will find all the information you'll ever need configuring and running these titles.
3. there are many different emulator versions from a lot of developers; this may make the life of a newbie to MS-DOS emulation VERY hard.
4. Windows Mobile forums are FULL of contradicting and plain bad, unreliable information on these emulators. Someone had to, finally, get the facts straight.
5. the BEST MS-DOS emulator (that of n0p), being of Russian origin, is mostly discussed in Russian language forums. As one of the several languages I speak is Russian, I understand what is discussed there. That is, in this article, I also build on the information found in Russian forums, making it unnecessary for my readers to suffer from the Babelfish “translation”. To a lesser degree, I've also found some useful user reports & tips in German (which I also speak) forums; I’ve also incorporated the info found there in this tutorial & roundup.
6. my old, related article (Another reason to get a VGA device – running Legend Entertainment's old adventures reviewed) is heavily outdated because of the brand new DOSBox ports
7. as the Nominations Manager at Smartphone and Pocket PC Magazine, I have to know everything about Windows Mobile apps. This article also shows I do 😀

1.2 Why should you bother?

As has already been pointed out in the introduction, MS-DOS has several quality titles either not available on other (with a usable WM emulator) platforms or the quality of these titles on all other platforms (again, with emulators) are clearly inferior to that of the MS-DOS version. For example, the evergreen games by Legend Entertainment is a very good example of these (they haven’t ever been released for other platforms). If you don’t know what these games are but you like text-based, high-quality adventures, make sure you give them a try – they’re certainly worth it. And the list of excellent, MS-DOS only titles continues; for example, Betrayal at Krondor was also a PC-only release. This means MS-DOS was a VERY strong gaming platform in the early 1990’s with tons of high-quality or unique titles worth playing even today.

However, in other cases, MS-DOS emulation is NOT something you should always prefer to emulating other platforms or looking for native WM (re)implementations / ports of the same game. For example, as far as games are concerned, with games that only had an MS-DOS version, there may be better emulators (most importantly, "partial" interpreters "only" running a specific type of games; most importantly, from a given game publisher) to run the game than a fully-fledged, full MS-DOS emulator. In addition, some (not many) classic titles have their own WM implementations / ports; examples of these include UFO (the reimplementation is Pocket UFO; see my quick review HERE and the PocketGamer thread HERE), Civilization (Pocket Humanity; unfortunately, FreeCiv has no direct port; PocketCiv only runs on Linux-based handhelds), Pipe Dream (having several WM reimplementation; see for example the Roundup of All Pocket PC Games Part I for some of them), Doom (DoomPPC / DoomGL ES are excellent), Wolfeinstein 3D (see pocketinsanity’s port) etc.

Note that the (vast?) majority of MS-DOS emulator users use emulators for gaming (it’s mostly games that haven’t been released on other platforms or are unplayable / far more awkward to play in emulators); therefore, in this article, I also concentrate on gaming issues. This, however, doesn’t mean you will be unable to make use of it if you, for example, plan to run your old MS-DOS-based apps.

Excellent read.