So I read through the guides and many topics, found them very informative, but I still have a couple questions. In the Mac OS X guide, it says to first insert the CD of the game you want (initial reaction- 😐 'uh oh, what extra steps are required'), followed by the rest of the instructions. That first step is where I have a question.

I've been wanting to play Master of Orion 2 on my intel mac for a while now, and playing it on my dad's old computer on his OS 9 partition is not feasible. After reading about DOSBox, I figured downloading the MSDOS version from Atari's website for $5 and playing it through dosbox would be a good idea.

So my questions-
-Does the file I download from Atari come in a form that is instantly recognizable by DOSBox or is there manipulation required?
-While we're on the subject, is the stuff I can download from abandonware sites instantly installable or playable from DOSBox?
-When the guide says 'insert the CD', can it just mean 'stick the game in a folder and pretend it's the disk drive'?

I tried answering the questions myself by poking around in a couple areas of these forums for an hour, but nothing was readily apparent. All of the topics revolved around issues after the mounting of drives. I feel a bit dumb asking a question about step fucking one, but what can ya do. At least the rest of the instructions are perfectly manageable, so I don't foresee any other user-related problems (technical problems, who knows).

EDIT: After re-reading the Mac OS X guide, I think I answered most of my other lingering questions and now I feel extra stupid, since they partially answered the questions I asked. I now, probably, could figure out the questions I asked here through trial and error, but I've never been a big fan of that approach. I prefer knowing what's necessary to do something successfully and go in with confidence rather than risk screwing up horribly.

EDIT2: My attempt at answering my own question-
Once I download the game, if it requires decompressing, that can be handled without a hitch by normal means (am I assuming correctly?). I then setup my c drive as described through the tutorial. I stick the game package on the c drive, in a folder called 'installs' for the hell of it. At this point I run dosbox, mount the c drive, cd installs, cd game's folder, run the installer script, and choose the destination folder. Then once the sound and shit is configured through the thing that pops up, I should be good to go? Is there anything that sticks out as wrong? I watched a couple of tutorials on youtube that were pretty helpful (this one in particular where a guy installs some stuff directly from the c drive- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vI6buHTnAog), so I think I've got it. Confirmation would be great.

When I saw that the instructions assumed I had a CD for the game, I initially thought I would have to do complicated crap like something involving bin/cue cd images i briefly read about somewhere else on these forums. I don't even know the context of what I read, but I thought I might have to do something with disk images anyway (which I've never done before, never had to), and that seemed like as good a lead as any. It was shaping up to be a very complicated endeavor in my head.