Hello everyone.

I have the following question:

I want to install MS-DOS 6.22 (which I own) on my machine. The reason for me do that is because I want to be able to play the games of before and fiddle around the OS just for the fun of it.

The problem is I'm not quite sure how I should install it due to the fact that I want to preserve the Windows XP SP2 and the Ubuntu 6.06 installations that I already have.

So I want your help to know what course of action should I take to install the MS-DOS 6.22 on a new partition a make it selectable via boot.

Now I'm sure that some of you will point me to DOSBox. But unfortunately it doesn't run the games in a satisfactory way (I'm running DOSBox from XP), no matter what combination of 'cycles' or 'frameskips' I attempt to make. And I should mention that I have a reasonable PC: P4 3GHz, 512 RAM, 2 80GB HD (3 partitions each), GeForce FX 5200.

Therefore I want your help to figure out a way to install MS-DOS 6.22 while preserving my other two OS's and make it selectable via boot.

Thank you in advance.

Perhaps you can use Virtual PC or VMWare to emulate a virtual computer and install it there. Both are free.

FreeDOS might have more modern hardware support.

Remember that DOS requires drivers (just like any other OS) and that your hardware might not have backwards compatibility that goes that far back...

Since when? Or do you mean "they're free if you don't pay for them"?

EDIT:
Oops.

I'm starting to like Microsoft.

Virtual PC has been free for some time now.

Well, I didn't know that. I know now.

That's the important part.

This is how I enure that I can play all my DOS games properly:


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It's a 486DX4-100, running MS-DOS 6.22.

I'm downloading Virtual PC now. Gonna give it a try.

I tried FreeDOS too but I really forgot about the hardware compatibility. Games running on it didn't recognize my USB mouse. I didn't try to configure it anyway.

Maybe I'll end up doing this afterall...

Thanks.

VirtualPC will basically only run on Windows XP Professional 32-bit. VMWare runs on more host systems. Both are free, so I'd go with the latter.

my DX4 went in the skip last week It was my first PC and perfectly OK. tempus fugit.

Bernardo, 2 Questions:

1. What do you use for multiboot? If you use grub or lilo then add your MSDOS partition as normal. If you use Windows multiboot then I don't know, because everyone recommends installing oldest MS OS first.

2. Will your PC boot from a USB drive? If so install DOS + all your DOS games on a memory stick.

You don't have to 'Install' MSDOS as such. You can F8 it while booting Disc 1 to skip autoexec.bat and then format and install to the correct partition manually. I think it has to be a primary partition so it will be hda1 hda2 hd3 or hda4 in Linux.

And it won't work in MSDOS either, unless you find a USB mouse driver. hidusb.sys from a 98SE/ME disc works apparently

How about DosBox ??

VMWare is all free now? Last I knew VMWare server was the only free one, and quite frankly, VMWare Server blows chunks... it's too laggy, even on localhost.

VMWare Server is free, which has always worked better than VPC for me. But considering VPC won't run on a 64-bit OS or a Home edition, it won't work at all for me anymore.

Nope, only server... and yes, it's quite slow, but then, the virtual machine does not depend on windows, as ML pointed out. I have not tried Virtual PC, I guess it's probably faster, but let the OP decide which one is better for his needs

If you meet VPC's requirements, I'd go with that. It runs a lot faster for me, plus VMWare network randomly doesnt work, while VPC's always works.

Can you please let me know which games you're trying to run and how they're not running to your wishes. I ask because to this date I've gotten everything to run (on DOSBox, on Windows XP) except for one game.

If you visit the official DOSBox site, you'll see plenty of games that don't work. For starters, none of the later-day Origin DOS titles like Strike Commander, Pacific Strike, and Wings of Glory function well... or even at all in many cases.

The big problem with Dos 6.22 is that you will be limited to a 2 GB partition and will have to use FAT16.

At the moment I'm messing around with all the ideas given here.

Anyhow, Virtual PC is a very nice piece of software. It seems excellent at testing programs to see if they run on different OS's.

1. grub;
2. Yes.

I'm trying to accomplish that now. And I will search for that 'hidusb.sys' file on my WIN98/SE CD, or connect an old mouse.

Sure.
X-COM: UFO Defense and X-COM: Terror from the Deep: Runs very slow on geoscape, runs even slower on battlefield and the mouse is extremely jerky. So far that's the only games that I have tested and the reason that I'm doing all this. And that's a big enough reason to me.

Later I'll try the Alone in the Dark series (one to three).

Maybe I'm not configuring DOSBox correctly, but I think I am. I mean, I changed many options in the config file at small steps, and no combination would work smoothly enough.

Yes that is a problem indeed, because I would have to format one of my partitions to FAT16 and that's a lot of trouble given the actual setup of my files.

Certainly a possibility, since I know a few people who have played the X-COM games on DOSBox. If you're using the latest version of DOSBox, you might also want to try finding a previous version, and see if that helps.

I did try DOSBox 0.63 and 0.65 (latest version). Both versions did run those games, I didn't get any crash and the sound and music played correctly.

But the mouse and the game in general runs noticeable slow/jerky.

I changed the values 'cycles', 'frameskip', 'fullscreen' and 'ascpect' of DOSBox configuration file in many combinations without any satisfying result. The game is playable but not enjoyable. It gets boring because of the slowdown.

I didn't want to make this a DOSBox thread because this is an Allegro forum. And I was about to give up DOSBox to install a real DOS. But if someone can point me in the right direction regarding DOSBox that would be very nice.

http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/news.php?show_news=1

Hit the 'games' or 'forum' links for more info on getting DOSBox set up and running with your favorite games. I've had fantastic success except for a few select titles.

Funny, I was playing Strike Commander (CD-ROM version) just the other day. So far I haven't noticed any problems.

DOSBox stable versions are comletely useless. Try these.

OK. So I installed the latest DOSBox with the lastest non-official CVS Build on top.

Both X-COM's continued to have the same problem.

Then I disabled all sound. And to my surprise the games ran just like the old times.

Next I enabled the sound again but this time I changed the IRQ value to 5 (the value that I used back in the DOS-era) instead of the previous 7. And it worked nice again and I had sound.

Clearly something was going wrong regarding my sound configuration. And clearly I should have tried a little harder before opening a thread.

But even it works wonderfully now I don't understand the 'whys'.

Thank you all for the help.

I've got Win98 in the first 10 gig partition followed by XP and then Linux, and all the old dos games run fine (except for no sound, the drivers that are supposed to work with dos don't work). Oh, yeah, the occasional Quick Basic exe will complain about too many files or something, you can run them in a ramdisk usually. And then there are the games that were designed for a 4.77Mhz 8088, no slowdown program will work right on anything made since 1992.