Help with the DOS Box

[Quiet Stranger]

So lately I've been having a craving to play the games of my child hood, like Monster Bash and Commander Keen. Now that I can play them again with DOS Box all I need to do is to FIGURE OUT HOW TO MAKE IT WORK! Seriously, too many codes and stuff to go through, how do I work it? Can someone help me?

 

[Baby Tea]

What's your problem with it?
You need to be more specific. I use it to play Prince of Persia, so I might be able to help a bit.

 

[Lazarus Long]

Frontends are your very best friend. I use D-FEND [http://dfendreloaded.sourceforge.net/Download.html] myself. Very user-friendly.

 

[Vie]

Go get a DOS Box shell then?

Whats so hard about using DOS commands for crying out loud?

 

[Quiet Stranger]

my problem is on how to load the games up, all I remember is I have to type in a lot of codes

 

[Vie]

http://www.loonies.narod.ru/dosshell.htm

And learn to read readmes.

 

[Jack_Uzi]

my problem is on how to load the games up, all I remember is I have to type in a lot of codes

Youll have to search for the *.exe *.com or *.bat to execute the game, if that answers your quetstion.

*Edit: So let's say you see a list of files in the directory where you have the game, for example C:\games\nameofthegame you'll need to type in the nameofthegame.(exe, bat or com)

 

[Quiet Stranger]

Go get a DOS Box shell then?

Whats so hard about using DOS commands for crying out loud?

I am using Dosshell right now but I can't figure it out, I've mounted three different files on my dosshell and it seems like it's gonna start up but then it just goes back to the desktop

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

Let's say the game is on your C drive. You would type "Mount c c:/" then press enter. This mounts the virtual C drive to your actual C drive. After that, it's standard dos commands; i.e. "C:/" RETURN "CD GAME" (Where GAME is the name of the folder your game is saved in) RETURN "Game" RETURN (Where Game is the name of the .exe or .bat file that runs your game.)

Edit: And where RETURN means to hit the Enter key, and the quotation marks are left out.

 

[Erana]

If you don't want to learn the basics of DOS, just google whatever game you're looking for along with something about instructions of DOSbox. Chances are, someone will have written a guide. Some games, like Mech Warrior 2 or TES:ARENA can be a ***** due to weird disc wonkiness.

 

[number2301]

The above is pretty much it, except it's \ not /.

I think you need to be bit more specific about what the problem is before you're gonna get any more help.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

The above is pretty much it, except it's \ not /.

I think you need to be bit more specific about what the problem is before you're gonna get any more help.

You're right about that, but DOSBox accepts either one, and I'm pretty sure MSDOS itself did as well -- at least from 6.2 on. If I were going to get technical about proper DOS commands, it would also be "CD\C:", not "CD C:". However, DOSBox is running a reverse engineered and open source version of DOS, so the syntax is a little bit different.

 

[number2301]

The above is pretty much it, except it's \ not /.

I think you need to be bit more specific about what the problem is before you're gonna get any more help.

You're right about that, but DOSBox accepts either one, and I'm pretty sure MSDOS itself did as well -- at least from 6.2 on. If I were going to get technical about proper DOS commands, it would also be "CD\C:", not "CD C:". However, DOSBox is running a reverse engineered and open source version of DOS, so the syntax is a little bit different.

I'm no DOS expert but I would have always just put CD C:\..., never had the slash where you put it in any version I've used? More Windows generation though.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

The above is pretty much it, except it's \ not /.

I think you need to be bit more specific about what the problem is before you're gonna get any more help.

You're right about that, but DOSBox accepts either one, and I'm pretty sure MSDOS itself did as well -- at least from 6.2 on. If I were going to get technical about proper DOS commands, it would also be "CD\C:", not "CD C:". However, DOSBox is running a reverse engineered and open source version of DOS, so the syntax is a little bit different.

I'm no DOS expert but I would have always just put CD C:\..., never had the slash where you put it in any version I've used? More Windows generation though.

Well, I typed it wrong: to get to the C drive it would just be "C:". I meant to put "CD\GAME", which was the only way an actual copy of MSDOS would accept the directory change. I'm Windows generation as well, but early enough in that generation that most of my early games had to boot into DOS mode to actually run, meaning I had to learn basic DOS commands at, oh, the age of three or four

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

The above is pretty much it, except it's \ not /.

I think you need to be bit more specific about what the problem is before you're gonna get any more help.

You're right about that, but DOSBox accepts either one, and I'm pretty sure MSDOS itself did as well -- at least from 6.2 on. If I were going to get technical about proper DOS commands, it would also be "CD\C:", not "CD C:". However, DOSBox is running a reverse engineered and open source version of DOS, so the syntax is a little bit different.

MS-DOS itself only accepts the backslash; the forward slash is UNIX territory, and with most open-source programmers having at least something to do with Linux or open-source UNIXes, that explains why the forward slash works in DOSBox.

Huh, you're right. I just tried it in my Windows 95 VM, and sure enough, the forward slash doesn't work. Only 20 and having false memories...