DosFreak wrote:heh. I'm with ya there but according to WD's post here:
Topic 8167
it's not that complicated. […]
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Nazo wrote:Yeah, if I could do that kind of thing I'd just dig up the code for DOSBox and change the internal tables or something myself.
heh. I'm with ya there but according to WD's post here:
Topic 8167
it's not that complicated.
Broken link. I hope that you're right that it's not that complicated, but, simply put, if it involves writing software to intercept interrupts, you're talking about something that is not actually simple to many of us. Let me put it this way. The most complicated (and only) assembly code I know is nop.
So are you going to honestly tell me that such a simple basic tool that came with pretty much every version of DOS itself can only be used by either doing some serious hacking the likes of which you know the average user cannot do or by paying someone (legally you must pay if you use it for more than 30 days, so legally you are telling us to buy that software) a price that, despite it's seeming lowness, is actually a bit of a ripoff considering that it basically does nothing you aren't supposed to already have?
DOSBOX short-term goal (short being years of course) is as a GAME emulator. So far you've just listed utilities (namely DOS 6.22) which require SETVER or version changing functionality in DosBox. List a game which requires such a feature and I'm sure the devs will jump all over it.
Er, firstly, like I said, it's possible some would refuse to run on DOS 5.0 versus DOS 6.22. However, that was taken a bit out of context. I'm saying that trying to sell users commercial software is contrary to DOSBox's philosophies, which is a different discussion of games or programs in DOS 5 versus 6.
You asked for a method to change DOS version. I showed you a utility that accomplishes that purpose. As for paying for it....just like with any software that someone creates and does something usefull and if it's funciotnality that you need, then yeah you must pay, unless you aquire it illegaly. It's called life.
I guess I aquired my copy of linux illegally then. That, or maybe life isn't always as simple as "if you need it you pay for it or you steal it." Anyway, the point is just that it's a simple little utility that does next to nothing and isn't really worthy of being commercial. There are free alternatives out there all over the place I'm sure. Thing is, my question wasn't actually "what program do I use?" so much as "how do I get it working?" Immediately pointing me to a commercial software as the only response actually isn't terribly useful as I could have done my own searches for software. Telling me that I needed external software (as was the implication) or how to get it working was all I really needed. In particular, pointing me straight to commercial software, then getting into a long discussion when I say I want a free utility for the job just leads away from the issue rather than solving anything.
Yeah, I guess tomorrow we have to pay $5 to be able to use the CD and DIR commands.
CD/DIR are required in DosBox to be able to navigate the file structure. SETVER is not required for running games, AFAIK.
In context that was "today dosbox people expect us to pay for setver, tomorrow they decide to tell us to pay for cd/dir." Just making a little point. Actually, it's not entirely a joke I'm afraid. Over the years I've seen some wonderful freeware projects get ruined because they decided to start slipping in commercial requirements. DOSBox looks to be the future of playing abandonware, so I absolutely do not want to see it go this route.
Sorry, I don't mean to be rude, I'm just saying that it's kind of against the philosophy of DOSBox.
Currently the "philosophy" of DosBox is running games. Not getting utilities to work.
That's out of context too. I wasn't commenting on games versus programs, though, frankly I think the point is to someday get complete and accurate emulation of an old computer running DOS. All I was saying is that peddling commercial modules is not in keeping with DOSBox's philosophy.
Seriously though, there are some games and programs that will refuse to run just because they assume if your version of DOS isn't what they expect to see then it's a bad version that can't handle what they want. It seems to me that this basic functionality will eventually be needed in DOSBox.
List the games. As I stated above they don't really care about the programs at this point in time. (but possibly your post may incite some acitivty....)
How can I possibly do that? Do you have any idea how many DOS games exist? I sure don't. What I can tell you is that I'm constantly trying new things, so when I find one I'd gladly post about it here, but, who knows how long that could be. There are too many for me to test them all and tell you what works and what does not due to this.
Anyway, I managed to find my old installation disks for DOS 5.0. I had to manually extract each of the files, but, once that was done, I now have a proper copy of DOS 5 and it's tools including things like MODE.
We usually suggest using FreeDOS which has pretty much the same tools but have been updated with bugfixes and more functionality + they are free to use.
Could be, but, FreeDOS sometimes has issues since things tend to be designed to run in it's full environment. Catch is, if you run the full environment, then games will have issues (I have done this on a real system, not just an emulated one.) On the other hand, I did, after all, happen to own DOS 5.0, so, why not use it?
That said, anyone without access to DOS 5.0 disks probably would be best advised to go to FreeDOS.
Read this link for Qbix's explanation of SETVER in DosBox: MS-DOS version compatibility
I don't really get what I'm looking for there. Yeah, I understand the idea behind it -- that software looks for a specific version in the theory some subtle thing (perhaps undocumented) may change -- but, the problem is, there's nothing I can do about it since I didn't design the software. All I can do is compensate for their poor designs in that software as best as I can and ensure that any software I should ever make (which so far consists of incredibly simplistic frontends at best) won't make some stupid check that refuses to run unless it sees exactly the conditions it expects (like those that refused to run if your processor wasn't of a certain clock speed with the assumption that gameplay wouldn't be acceptable rather than letting the user make that determination themselves. I think a few Sierra games did this sort of thing?)
P.S. You can install DOS 6.22 under DosBox and use setver all you want there.
Well, the DOS installation method makes things a lot tougher. Right now I just have a C_DRIVE folder mounted as C:\ and over 2 gigs worth of data in games on an external harddrive. To go this route, I'll have to make an up to 4GB partitioned harddrive image (or multiple 2GB images with single partitions) and format with FAT16. I guess I could alternately use up to 4GB in a single partition with FAT32 (the external harddrive must use FAT32 so I can access it everywhere) and run the Windows 98 version of DOS (officiallly 7.00.98 or something lke that) however, I have had some games fail to work on it that really needed DOS 6.22 on a real system (not emulated.) Also, I will then get the pleasure of dealing with memory once again since I will start to have to load more TSRs and such and DOS itself takes up more memory. Actually, I ran a test where I ran a really simplistic DOS off of a floppy disk and even just that dropped conventional memory down a bit. Believe it or not, there are some really picky games that ask for ridiculous amounts of conventional ram (off the top of my head I can think of H2O which was a newer game using newer graphics and audio but apparently still relied on conventional ram for some reason. So, you either turn off music and kill half of the game's atmosphere, or you spend insane amounts of time to get I think 610KB of conventional free.) Yeah, if I have to do that, maybe I will just for the one thing, but, this is definitely not an overall solution. Right now the way DOSBox handles its memory while providing functionality of things like mouse, cd-rom, etc always leaving you with practically the full 640K free is just amazing and all but guarantees that no game will refuse to run because of conventional memory. Anyway, right now any time I want to make a change to a configuration file, copy some data files, add a new game, or otherwise make any changes to the filesystem, I just open it up in explorer, cmd, or whatever else I want to use at the time and simply do so. If I have to go to a filesystem image, I'll have to probably do most of my operations of this nature within DOSBox itself (which can make things a bit harder when working with my primary harddrive where I'll have to deal with long filenames and such.) That or track down some sort of software which allows me to mount harddrive images (and it has to handle partitions then I guess rather than just mounting a single filesystem like you might do in linux with the loopback filesystem.) Either way, it brings the current just drag and drop and I'm done in seconds method down to something that's long and drawn out taking 5+ minutes to do a simple operation.
Qbix wrote:I was planning on adding a simple setver functionality to DOSBox.
But considering the fact that the people using DOSBox allready feel ripped off by the fact that
we allow people to read and change the source. I think I'll store my plans for that in the large list of non-attention worth things.
Who feels ripped off by DOSBox being opensource? I'm not clear, did you maybe mean my earlier statement? I said it's a ripoff to pay pretty much any price for a DOS version faking utility when it's basically built into DOS. Sorry if you didn't mean that. Frankly, just ignore anyone who might actually feel DOSBox is a ripoff somehow. It's the only project I've ever seen do so well with emulation that so many old classics actually become playable. Things like VMWare can get a few basics like QuadNet working, but, real games have stupid hardware calls or other poor design things that send things like VMWare into a panic (or just plain run so slowly as to be unusable.) I'd say overall if there are any users that feel ripped off, they are dwarfed by the number of those who are extremely happy to finally have games running the way they are supposed to.