Take a look at Qemu: http://www.h7.dion.ne.jp/%7Eqemu-win/

Hmm, I checked. It's 8.1 megs so I'll only download if you think it'd work. Do you? And is it any good really?

Other reccomendations are also welcome.

The game I'm trying to run is, as I believe I said, Elder Scrolls: Arena. The game runs WAY too fast with regular windows, too choppy with MoSlo and doesen't work in Dos mode. So I turn to emulators, and as Dosbox wont run on this crappy computer, I'm using this as my last resort.

Thank ye all in advance

Read the description of Qemu closely then, nobody knows if it suits YOUR needs.

Gibush - I am sure you can find someone in Canada, that for a few bucks is willing to burn a CD with FreeDOS on it and send it to you. There might even be companies, or maybe even something on the FreeDOS home page whereby if you donate 20$ they will send you a CD.

The "problem" with FreeDOS and games is the same as with real MS-DOS: You need the real sound hardware (and drivers) that the games expect or you will be down to PC-speaker sound (which Abyss thinks is great!).

With a crappy machine like yours, you need a very light-weight emulator/virtualizator. Maybe QEMU will work for you. I fear the other options (MS Virtual PC and VMware workstation) are way to resource demanding for you.

I don't know if the game will run using VDMSound, but it has some optional cpu adjustments.

For one thing, theres no way I'm paying 20 bucks for a burned cd of a free program I COULD download in like an hour(Plus, I'll have glorious Dosbox soon as we're getting a sweet computer soon - 3-3.6ghz 1-2 gigs ram, 256mb vid card, etc.) For another, I thought VDM was only sound?

Pretty much, all I wanted was a temporary way to play Arena without it being all fast and...fast.

I finished elder scrolls arena on Vdmsound before I had upgraded my pc and was able to play arena on dosbox. So try vdmsound, it works great for arena 😀

I don't like the Elder Scrolls series at all though 😀 Too generic and too boring, even oblivion.

Gibush wrote:

For one thing, theres no way I'm paying 20 bucks for a burned cd of a free program I COULD download in like an hour(Plus, I'll have glorious Dosbox soon as we're getting a sweet computer soon - 3-3.6ghz 1-2 gigs ram, 256mb vid card, etc.)

Okay - then we won't be expecting your donation to DOSBox either.

But just in case you change your mind:
http://sourceforge.net/donate/index.php?group_id=52551

For one thing, theres no way I'm paying 20 bucks for a burned cd of a free program I COULD download in like an hour

Well, then I see no reason why you won't download Quemu and give that a try. We can't really help you since it seems Arena is picky and won't work correctly in a couple of situations, so you will just have to make do with what you got, meaning you have to try things like Quemu.... Good luck.

has 233mhz processor, 96 ram, 1mb vid memory (shudder), 3 gig HD

I'd be so bold to say that you can forget running Qemu, or any other "real" PC emulator, with useable speed on that machine. It's either native DOS (or Win95/98 DOS), or you'll have to wait for your new PC.

Besides, when using what i call a "real" PC emulator (like BOCHS, Qemu, VMWare, etc.), you'll still need an OS to install the virtual PC with.

AFAIK, you can download a small version of FreeDOS, which only has a couple of megabytes, and contains only the basic apps.

what i call a "real" PC emulator

Qemu/VMWare/VPC are virtualizers, no emulators. They share several
things though, like device emulation (best seen at the shared/derived
code between Bochs and Qemu).

Heh... To discuss the difference between emulation and virtualization would be completely academical. I don't think there are 100% valid, all-around accepted definitions for both terms.

My personal definition is that there's only two kinds of "emulation": software-based, and hardware-based. Hardware-based "emulation" (the thing that the new breed of processors is capable of) is what i'd call "virtualization" - the rest is emulation to me. This point of view helps me to cope with the complexity of emulation/virtualization/whatever. (;

Anyway, what i meant to say is that Qemu, BOCHS, etc. emulate a "naked" PC, without an operating system. DOSBox is different in that it also emulates DOS functions (but, if i get that correctly, it's not a "DOS emulator" per se). To play games on one of the other emulators, you need an OS installed first (or a bootable medium with an OS).

P.S.: If anyone is interested, it's quite funny to read the Wikipedia articles on "Qemu", "Virtualization" or "Emulation".

Examples:
Virtualization: "In computing, virtualization is a broad term that refers to the abstraction of computer resources."
Emulation: "An emulator duplicates (provides an emulation of) the functions of one system with a different system, so that the second system behaves like (and appears to be) the first system."

Two different sentences to describe more or less the same thing, i'd say. It's also obvious that the definition of "emulation" is not complete nor exact - as it reads, it suggests that the "first system" (the system executing the emulator) is not active or visible after starting the emulation, which is not true.

Or Qemu: "QEMU is a fast processor emulator ... which allows full virtualization of a PC system within another one."

But enough of that (;

QEMU is a generic and open source machine emulator and virtualizer.

When used as a machine emulator, QEMU can run OSes and programs made for one machine (e.g. an ARM board) on a different machine (e.g. your own PC). By using dynamic translation, it achieves very good performances.

When used as a virtualizer, QEMU achieves near native performances by executing the guest code directly on the host CPU. A host driver called the QEMU accelerator (also known as KQEMU) is needed in this case. The virtualizer mode requires that both the host and guest machine use x86 compatible processors.

You have to install the host driver before QEMU can "virtualize", if you don't then it's just performing dynamic recompilation (like DosBox).

We're getting quite OT here, but it's an interesting topic... I've tried the accelerator on windows, but there was no noticeable difference in the VM's performance. On the QEmu forums, i've read that the Linux accelerator module gives a huge speed boost - didn't try that yet, though.

ADDiCT wrote:

Besides, when using what i call a "real" PC emulator (like BOCHS, Qemu, VMWare, etc.), you'll still need an OS to install the virtual PC with.

Right - but with all the money he is saving by not donating, he has plenty of gold to buy a legit license for MS-DOS 🤑

ADDiCT wrote:

Hardware-based "emulation" (the thing that the new breed of processors is capable of)

Eh - this is something that has been possible with real CPU's for the last 30 years. 😜

MiniMax wrote:

Eh - this is something that has been possible with real CPU's for the last 30 years. 😜

??? i don't think so: Virtualization Technology on Wikipedia.

I know there's something called "Virtual Mode" or similar, and it has something to do with coding on x86 (?), but it was that "Virtualization Technology" i was referring to.

IBM had virtualization in the 60s 😎

That is the problem with newbies - no sense of the rich history of computing 😀

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_System/360-6 … #Virtualization

Oh yes, the Zuse Z1 had maybe also virtualization features. But i think we're talking about "normal" machines, and not computers from the 60's, right?