DOS ain't dead

DOSBox-X 0.83.16 is now officially released! Designing to be a cross-platform DOS emulator, it is the goal of DOSBox-X to cover essentially everything in the DOS scene, including DOS games, DOS shell, DOS applications, Windows 3.x/9x, DOS/V, PC-98, and more.

In order to help improve the general DOS emulation and also to help continued DOS developments, DOSBox-X intends to implement accurate emulation, accurate enough to help make new DOS developments possible with confidence the program will run properly on actual DOS systems.

DOSBox-X provides official DOS versions in addition to versions for other platforms (Windows, Linux, and macOS). You can download the latest DOSBox-X 0.83.16 packages for all supported platforms from the DOSBox-X project homepage:

https://dosbox-x.com/

There are quite a lot of new features and other improvements in this latest version, such as support for loading programs into UMB memory with LH command, mounting extended partitions in disk images, and many more. You can find the release notes for this version (containing the change history) here:

* https://dosbox-x.com/release-0.83.16.html

Direct download for the HX-DOS package:

* dosbox-x-mingw-hx-dos-20210801212637.zip

The package is self-contained so that you can simply unzip the file and type DOSBOX-X to run in DOS. It is confirmed to work in DOS, and read the included README.TXT file for more information.

In addition, the updated DOS LOADLIN package for DOSBox-X 0.83.16 is also available, available from:

* dosbox-x-dos-0.83.16-loadlin.zip

For the LOADLIN package, you can run DOSBox-X right from DOSBox-X's DOS shell. Just make sure to start the outside DOSBox-X with the setting "memsize=127" and "cputype=pentium" (perhaps also "fullscreen=true" and/or "autolock=true").

P.S. This version has also tried to address the international keyboard issue reported in the previous version. Please check it out and see how it works.

I have some keyboard mapping issues in HX-DOS version too. E.g. key labeled with : and ; acts as ~ and ` and also other keys around enter key doesn't match. Under win32 version it's OK.

I also had a little time to try older loadlin x64 version 0.83.13 and found that performance droppend from 42 to 36 FPS compared to old 0.83.9 (same conf). I aslo tried just to update dosbox ELF and libpng into older linux image to see if it is not caused by different linux kernel/FB driver but same result...

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DOS gives me freedom to unlimited HW access.

Compilation from dosbox-x-mingw-win32-20210801203638.zip is NOT working under Windows XP.

> DOSBox-X 0.83.16 is now officially released! Designing to be a
> cross-platform DOS emulator, it is the goal of DOSBox-X to cover
> essentially everything in the DOS scene, including DOS games, DOS shell,
> DOS applications, Windows 3.x/9x, DOS/V, PC-98, and more.

---
echo g=ffff:0|debug>nul

> Compilation from dosbox-x-mingw-win32-20210801203638.zip is NOT working
> under Windows XP.
>
> > DOSBox-X 0.83.16 is now officially released! Designing to be a
> > cross-platform DOS emulator, it is the goal of DOSBox-X to cover
> > essentially everything in the DOS scene, including DOS games, DOS shell,
> > DOS applications, Windows 3.x/9x, DOS/V, PC-98, and more.

Please use the 32-bit Visual Studio builds for Windows XP for now, either the portable package or those included in the 32-bit Windows installer. The 32-bit Visual Studio builds are version-patched to work with Windows XP, and they additionally have the debugger.

> I have some keyboard mapping issues in HX-DOS version too. E.g. key labeled
> with : and ; acts as ~ and ` and also other keys around enter key doesn't
> match. Under win32 version it's OK.
>
> I also had a little time to try older loadlin x64 version 0.83.13 and found
> that performance droppend from 42 to 36 FPS compared to old 0.83.9 (same
> conf). I aslo tried just to update dosbox ELF and libpng into older linux
> image to see if it is not caused by different linux kernel/FB driver but
> same result...

I see. So the keyboard fixes may not fully cover the HX-DOS version I guess.

As for the LOADLIN package, I suggest you ask grapeli in the issue tracker thread so that he can help with it (he made the package after all).

I think that for 32-bit windows you can use older mingw32 that produces also compatible binaries for Win2k-10...

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DOS gives me freedom to unlimited HW access.

> I think that for 32-bit windows you can use older mingw32 that produces
> also compatible binaries for Win2k-10...

Using the older MinGW32 will cause some features to be missing, and it will still not work in Windows 2000 due to missing functions unless we decide to take many features out of it. I think for Windows XP at least, 32-bit Visual Studio builds are the best solution for now.

Perfect!

The keyboard bug I mentioned about v0.83.16 is not present at all, what's more, the minor bug I mentioned about the previous versions also disappeared.

This version is 100% now.

Thanks!

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DOS isn't about why. It's about why not.

> Perfect!
>
> The keyboard bug I mentioned about v0.83.16 is not present at all, what's
> more, the minor bug I mentioned about the previous versions also
> disappeared.
>
> This version is 100% now.
>
> Thanks!

Great to hear that. It does fully fix your keyboard issues after all.

I just realized that that the last two version hadn't come with DOS builds? (interestingly, though, some bugfix of the HX-DOS build is mentioned in .18 changelog). Why?

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DOS isn't about why. It's about why not.

> I just realized that that the last two version hadn't come with DOS builds?
> (interestingly, though, some bugfix of the HX-DOS build is mentioned in .18
> changelog). Why?

I was able to make the HX-DOS build on my computer with the fix, but Jon Campbell was still not able to build it successfully, probably because his and mine build environment are different.

For the new version DOSBox-X 0.83.19, there is the DOS LOADLIN package available:

https://github.com/joncampbell123/dosbox-x/release...box-x-v0.83.19/dosbox-x-dos-0.83.19-loadlin.zip

Thank you, but the LOADLIN versions are unsuitable for me. Not just that they won't run on my system, but even if they did, they're, by concept, fail to fit my needs. Most importantly, loosing my DOS session just in order to run DOSBox is never an option for me, having many things resident, including a suspended web browser, work, etc., and even temporary things on my RAM-disk. Loosing all these things just to play a short game or run an app that requires more conventional memory than available would be counter-productive. Could you please post you binary you've mentioned instead?

Thank you!

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DOS isn't about why. It's about why not.

Unfortunately, the HX-DOS build I complied with MinGW for DOSBox-X did not run in real DOS systems. But the HX-DOS builds Jon Campbell made for previous versions of DOSBox-X did. The reason appears to also because of the differences of MinGW versions he and I have. If you need a working HX-DOS build, I suggest you to let Jon Campbell know. He asked earlier about who is interested for making further HX-DOS builds in the issue tracker:

https://github.com/joncampbell123/dosbox-x/issues/2046

Wengier

Finally, I was able to build a HX-DOS binary that works in real DOS, by setting up a different version of MinGW. The HX-DOS binary for DOSBox-X 0.83.19 is now available from:

* dosbox-x-mingw-hx-dos-20211101234567.zip

It now also shows up in the DOSBox-X website. Hope this helps.

Wengier


> Thank you, but the LOADLIN versions are unsuitable for me. Not just that
> they won't run on my system, but even if they did, they're, by concept,
> fail to fit my needs. Most importantly, loosing my DOS session just in
> order to run DOSBox is never an option for me, having many things resident,
> including a suspended web browser, work, etc., and even temporary things on
> my RAM-disk. Loosing all these things just to play a short game or run an
> app that requires more conventional memory than available would be
> counter-productive. Could you please post you binary you've mentioned
> instead?
>
> Thank you!

Thank you!

I tried it and it works perfectly, including the TTF support.

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DOS isn't about why. It's about why not.