You didn't do a thing wrong. SDL reports an error and therefore dosbox exits.

Try running dosbox as "root" to see if that helps.
else remove your joystick

good idea but nor sudo (admin privilege) nor su (root privilege) has managed to resolve the error.
Maybe did i miss a library or something. Any suggestions?

c'mon guys, especially mac users, id really love to try dosbox out .
(i really wanna play ascendancy indeed 😁)

I don't know
I can think of 3 options
Disconnect any joystick you may have or what can considered a joystick

Secondly get a newer version of sdl (that's the one that's failing here)

Be sure to have in your kernel support for HID

Last option: Edit dosbox/src/gui/sdlmain.cpp and look at line 44.
there is something commented out that may be handy for you.

ok, thanks for helping anyway...
(at line 44 its written #define DISABLE_JOYSTICK ??)

What revision of SDL are you linking to? The one in fink is horribly out of date and always causes issues. 1.2.6 works, and no longer kills the keyboard if the SDL application doesn't have the full focus. 😉

I have SDL version 1.2.4...
Should I update to 1.2.6 ?

Yes. 1.2.4 is broken. Horribly so. 1.2.6 should compile 'as is' for the most part 'out of the box' for you. Make sure that you remember wether or not you have X11 installed, and want to support it; --disable-x11 or enable, et al.

1.2.6 should clear up that joystick problem. 😀

Thanks A lot Rankin !!!! i owe you one!
Its alive , ALIVE 😁

But now i cant install ascendancy....
Shall i open a new topic and bother you w/ it ?

Congrats!

You might want to open a new topic - I've only compiled and written a wrapper for DOSBox in the past - I have no knowledge of that game.