[HN Gopher] DOSBox-X: Free, cross-platform and complete DOS, Win...
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DOSBox-X: Free, cross-platform and complete DOS, Windows 3.x and 9x
emulation
Author : FlyMoreRockets
Score : 227 points
Date : 2021-01-06 05:40 UTC (17 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (dosbox-x.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (dosbox-x.com)
| ejj28 wrote:
| Really excited for Windows 9x emulation, I have an elderly
| relative who still plays the first Age of Empires, and a few
| years ago when they upgraded to Windows 10 the game stopped
| working and they had to wait for and buy the remastered version.
| [deleted]
| schuke wrote:
| It's quite remarkable Windows was compatible for so long!
| Nition wrote:
| It's amazing really. I was playing the original Theme
| Hospital (1997) just yesterday on Windows 10 with no
| issues[1].
|
| [1] Okay a couple of issues. It needs compatibility mode for
| the colours to look right. But that option is built into
| Windows so I don't really consider that a failure of
| compatibility. And the installer is 16-bit and won't run on
| 64-bit windows. But some years ago I made a copy of it after
| install and the actual installed game is 32-bit and runs
| fine.
| beefok wrote:
| At the very least, there's also the Definitive edition which
| plays great in Win 10. I've enjoyed playing that game again.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I just might dust off my windows-98 and visual-studio 6 CDs and
| write software like it's 1999.
| snake_plissken wrote:
| Mechwarrior 3 is another game that needs a Windows 9x. I can
| never get it working in VM Player, excited to try it out on
| this.
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| Yes! This is huge. I can finally play civ II without using
| wine, which was always a little wonky.
| drblah wrote:
| I have a fun anecdote involving DOSBox.
|
| Back in 2012 I worked at a large manufacturing company. They had
| an old IBM PC running IBM DOS which controlled a vital system at
| the beginning of their production line. This machine had been
| chucking along since 1992 and now someone high up had been made
| aware that it could be a potential risk if this machine stopped
| working. It was therefore decided that this PC should be
| replaced/upgrade if possible.
|
| After investigating I learned it communicated with a PLC through
| the RS-232 interface and ran some special sauce software from a
| company that stopped existing in 1995. Previous upgrade attempts
| involved virtualization, but that did not work since the program
| ran too quickly on modern hardware.
|
| My solution was to copy everything from the old HDD to a new
| computer, install DOSBox and configure the serial port. The first
| few attempts caused some sirens and alarms to go off in the
| building, which was "exiting", but after fiddling with the
| emulation speed I managed to get it to work.
|
| To this day, unless something drastic has changed, a billion $
| company is running DOSBox in production (and I literally mean
| production).
|
| Also, a side note. The old PC was still connected to a modem with
| a dedicated phone line. At some point it had been remotely
| operated through some kind of Norton remote control software. I
| made sure to turn off the modem and did not bring it over to the
| new DOSBox setup. Imagine if someone had war dialed into the
| machine... They could have caused a major disturbance and
| potentially started a fire.
| protomyth wrote:
| We had a Windows 95 machine running our boiler. I was about to
| go your route, but luckily, we got together the money to put in
| a modern control system. I was understandably a bit worried
| when the age of the machine was greater than many of our
| students. Also, dust and old hard drives are not good for the
| blood pressure.
| beckyb wrote:
| There's some particulars in your story that sound awfully
| familiar- I think I might have been involved with the original
| installation. Was this company in New Jersey by any chance?
| slim wrote:
| on the same vein, in 2008 we have been contracted by a pharma
| distribution company to replace it's legacy ERP which worked
| only with DOS. To prove the new ERP is working we had to
| reproduce the reports from the legacy system bug for bug with
| the exact same numbers. On my linux workstation, I installed
| dosbox, a copy of their software and database, and made scripts
| that exported the data by printing the screen then compared the
| old and new reports. I did that till I got the reports right.
| proper TDD.
| Hackbraten wrote:
| Love that approach!
| nix23 wrote:
| I did nearly the same but with FreeDOS, but it was a warehouse
| system with a IR Connection, so no emulation/cpu speed
| problems.
| walrus01 wrote:
| Where you got very lucky was that the plc or other weird
| industrial system was controlled over rs232, and not from a
| manufacturer proprietary 8 or 16-bit ISA interface card that
| comes with device drivers to load in config.sys, and requires
| direct memory access. Can only run on bare metal. Yes there's
| vendors for industrial motherboards you can buy brand new with
| ISA buses on them...
|
| And that's before you deal with the rarity of an interface card
| that's literally impossible to purchase at any price today, so
| you better hope someone has saved spares.
| cecja wrote:
| If its an ISA card you can probably clone it yourself.
| colanderman wrote:
| That's a hell of a lot more work than "install DOSBox".
| unixhero wrote:
| How would you do that? Is this a thing now?
| npsimons wrote:
| Seen someone recreate a Sound Blaster:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25029727
| c12 wrote:
| Yup, Home-Brew ISA Cards is a thing. There are people out
| there who have reverse engineered some to create clones,
| not only for ISA but for more modern buses too.
| jasonjayr wrote:
| Does it have to be working to be reverse engineered?
|
| Typically folks will go looking for these services
| _after_ the device has failed :(
| raxxorrax wrote:
| Wouldn't it be easy to just rewrite the software if you leave
| the PLC?
|
| That said, as long as it works...
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| You must not be a programmer if you think it's generally
| "easy" to "just rewrite the software"
| raxxorrax wrote:
| For RS232 connected to a PLC I would assume it to be
| comparatively easy. Maybe it is not, but it is probably
| easier than for modern usb or network attached devices,
| since you can easily spy on transmitted data.
|
| I would also assume that the PLC just gets some commands
| from the master.
|
| Granted, these might be too many assumptions.
| bayindirh wrote:
| > Granted, these might be too many assumptions.
|
| Yep.
|
| Modern USB/TCP connected PLCs just encapsulate RS-232
| data into USB or TCP packets, nothing else (for backward
| compatibility). Also there are encapsulation and
| decapsulation devices which enables archaic PLCs and
| other industrial devices to be retrofitted to more modern
| systems.
|
| Moreover, the OP noted that emulation speed was at
| critical importance so, the code is CPU speed sensitive.
| Missing specs, missing company, missing source plus time
| sensitivity makes this endeavor very risky if not hard.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| What are you going to do with just the transmitted data?
| That's just a tiny part of operations, when the machine
| is working correctly. What if something breaks? Do you
| know what all the possible error states are? What does
| the machine have to do if it gets an eg. "machine on
| fire" alert? Does your software even recognize the data
| sent by the machine, if it hasn't been sent before and
| correctly recognized?
|
| Sniffing a protocol to reverse engineer stuff, is like
| trying to learn a new language by listening to
| conversations of a ground-level monitor and a crane
| operator.
| raxxorrax wrote:
| You can download the program from a PLC that supplies the
| logic aside from labels and comments, if that isn't
| available anymore. Some PLC even supply the complete
| project, but that is unlikely on such an old device.
| drblah wrote:
| Sure! Almost anything would have been a better solution.
| However, no one knew how the system actually worked, and we
| were on a shoestring budget.
|
| See, the situation was that IT management, who officially had
| the responsibility for the PC saw it as a risk because we in
| IT were unable to do anything if the system died. But the
| production line management, who had to pay for the upgrade,
| saw no reason to do it because it was "working fine!".
|
| Sure it was working fine, and had been for almost 20 years.
| But WHEN it would inevitably give up the ghost they would be
| completely hosed.
| dspillett wrote:
| It might be easy _if_ they had a detailed (and accurate) spec
| to work to, a good test environment that mimics the current
| production one sufficiently, and time /money for the required
| dev/devtest/qa cycles. It sounds like they had none of the
| above.
| tpoacher wrote:
| I wonder if this FINALLY allows Discworld Noir to finally work
| again!
| JadeNB wrote:
| I'd never heard of Discworld Noir, but now I want nothing more!
| ByThyGrace wrote:
| Please ping back if you make progress in such a worthy
| endeavour.
| dleslie wrote:
| I've found the Win9x support spotty at best. It hangs
| indefinitely when installing IE5 and the internet tools suite,
| for instance.
| tpurves wrote:
| My main recollection of DOS was never ending fiddling with
| autoexec.bat and config.sys to try and free up enough
| conventional memory to run some game... Does DosBox help emulate
| back all that nostalgic experience?
| arthuryip wrote:
| It is great! But for running old Windows software, Windows 3.x/9x
| license is required, while no DOS is required for running DOS
| software.
| unixhero wrote:
| Sigh
| fortyseven wrote:
| Yes, dad.
| app4soft wrote:
| There are already two threads on DOSBox-X posted on HN month and
| two month ago.[0]
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=dosbox-x.com
| emteycz wrote:
| Without any comments though. Given the interest here, seems
| like the community simply missed it, so a repost was
| beneficial. A month is OK amount of time to wait before
| posting.
| tus88 wrote:
| WARNING - it's much, much slower than DosBOX due to more accurate
| emulation. This means it won't run some games fast enough.
| bilegeek wrote:
| I don't know why they don't provide a deb, but assuming all the
| build dependencies are installed, converting the rpm via Alien
| works fine.
|
| Also, be aware if you are using your existing DOSBox directory:
| games that require installation might not work if installed via
| the original DOSBox.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| > Also, be aware if you are using your existing DOSBox
| directory: games that require installation might not work if
| installed via the original DOSBox.
|
| Why? I have installed them on bare metal aeons ago and only
| copied since then. All I had to change occasionally was sound
| card details.
| bilegeek wrote:
| It's probably rare, but I speak from experience (specifically
| with the game "Inherit the Earth: Quest for the Orb").
| Installed with DOSBox, worked fine; when opened in DOSBox-X,
| graphics were all screwed up, and all the settings were set
| upon install, so I would have had to reinstall anyways. This
| was more than a year ago, so maybe it wouldn't happen today
| given how many new releases they have, but I don't feel like
| testing it out.
|
| Still, great project, and I prefer it over the OG DOSBox.
| simcop2387 wrote:
| Anyone interested in this should also check out pcem,
| https://pcem-emulator.co.uk/ it's emulating the hardware rather
| than the interfaces.
| iso8859-1 wrote:
| Would be cool if they had emulated it in VHDL/Bluespec/Verilog,
| then you could run it on an FPGA.
| simcop2387 wrote:
| There's work for that for the Mister system,
| https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/ao486_MiSTer
| known wrote:
| https://github.com/open-shell for classic windows look/feel
| aasasd wrote:
| Derailing the thread to the topic of Dosbox in general (as is
| tradition): on Android, 'Magic Dosbox' works quite nicely thanks
| to the feature of adding custom widgets on the screen, for
| keyboard or mouse keys and, in the paid version, combos. The app
| is freemium, but it's pretty cool and cheap so personally I'm not
| even bothered.
|
| Also, Retroarch has a Dosbox core, and Retroarch with some cores
| works on the PS Vita handheld console, and as a result there's
| Dosbox on Vita. However, it's said to be quite a pain to set up
| for a particular game, with text configs. For jailbroken-PSP
| owners, Dosbox is apparently ported as a homebrew app. I'm
| vaguely looking forward to trying System Shock on Vita, but with
| my luck I'm not holding my breath.
| 0134340 wrote:
| Dosbox also runs on Xbox One via Retroarch. So in essence the
| Xbox can be a retro Windows gaming machine as well. PCem also
| has a very primitive core. If only Dosbox-X had a core we could
| run Windows on Xbox which is still possible, I think, using
| Dosbox or PCem.
| shimonabi wrote:
| I've been playing with PCem on Linux the last week. You must
| enable network with a parameter when compiling!
|
| I can emulate Windows 98SE on a Pentium 133 MHz with my 2500U AMD
| Ryzen laptop. It's convenient, since you can copy your DOS games
| on the machine over the network.
|
| I successfully installed the 3dfx Voodoo 2 driver and the games
| run just fine.
| Delk wrote:
| Sounds interesting; I hadn't heard of PCem before. Does it
| always require a BIOS image from an original computer, though?
| Or are those just for some potential machine-specific
| functionality or something? The table of emulated systems lists
| ROM image file names, yet no ROM images are included (of
| course, as they're under copyright and proprietary).
| shimonabi wrote:
| The ROMs are one Google search away, on a public Github.
| tempodox wrote:
| My use case would be to use it on macOS-10.15 to run DOSsy apps,
| but it doesn't work: 'The application "dosbox-x" can't be
| opened'. No indication as to why exactly. The current original
| DOSBox does work, however. So, at least for that OS, the current
| verdict is: Mission failed. Maybe future releases will fix that?
| Why the devs put a clearly nonfunctional app up for download is
| beyond me.
| speeder wrote:
| If this let me play some games better I will be very impressed...
|
| Some games still run poorly on DOSBox, despite it being games
| focused... and of course then there is Win98 games that are a
| pain, I wanted to play "Gangsters" but that game use a unholy mix
| of GDI + DirectDraw to draw UI elements and modern windows 'run'
| the game but freak out completely, getting confused on how to
| draw the UI.
| steerablesafe wrote:
| A question I don't see in the FAQ: why the fork?
|
| Although I already see that it has a ton of features on top of
| the features of DOSBox, and their scopes differ quite a bit.
| wiz21c wrote:
| IIRC it's because DosBox doesn't progress much (well, TBH, they
| don't release much, but their svn is quite active)
|
| DosBox-X may also be better at some timing critical stuff such
| as demo's.
| wiz21c wrote:
| I confirm that DosBox-X runs Imphobia disk magazine which is
| doing some very accurate vsync timing (basically switching
| color palettes several times during the screen refresh to
| display 48 colours on a 16 colours EGA display)
| TonyTrapp wrote:
| In addition to what has already been said, DOSBox has a strong
| focus on games and quite often they decide to not fix something
| unless it directly impacts a game. Many people were not happy
| with this, because it would mean that trivial (and also not so
| trivial) fixes to make some demos, trackers or business
| software run were never applied. In particular they refuse any
| patches for the latter (probably scared of possible liablity).
|
| Edit: Vanilla DOSBox is also unlikely to add support for more
| hardware (e.g. MMX or early 3D accelerators) because they don't
| want to maintain it and it won't be needed by most games.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| In my head I am thinking one of these dosbox branches is also
| pulling it up to C++17 or something like that, and the main
| team has no interest in that really. The eXo project has been
| using about 6 different branches of dosbox depending on the
| game for particular features. Mostly they use the main branch
| but for some bits the game just does not work in all modes.
| Now that PCem has VHD support I could see them ditching
| dosbox all together (unlikely). But they will probably not
| use dosbox for 9x games due to size.
| mrbuttons454 wrote:
| PCem is great but lacks serial/cross platform networking
| support
| [deleted]
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| A while back I had to compile my own version of DOSBox because
| the official version doesn't call glClear() when swapping
| buffers. The issue tracker had a multi-year-old bug report
| about it, but the developers insisted that the driver was bad
| despite the OpenGL specifications stating quite clearly that
| one cannot assume a buffer hasn't been modified when using
| SwapBuffers and must clear it.
|
| So it really comes as no surprise to me that there are actually
| many DOSBox forks.
| kelchqvjpnfasjl wrote:
| From their repo:
|
| DOSBox-X is a cross-platform DOS emulator based on the DOSBox
| project (www.dosbox.com).
|
| Like DOSBox, it emulates a PC necessary for running many MS-DOS
| games and applications that simply cannot be run on modern PCs
| and operating systems. However, while the main focus of DOSBox
| is for running DOS games, DOSBox-X goes much further than this.
| Started as a fork of the DOSBox project, it retains
| compatibility with the wide base of DOS games and DOS gaming
| DOSBox was designed for. But it is also a platform for running
| DOS applications, including emulating the environments to run
| Windows 3.x, 9x and ME and software written for those versions
| of Windows.
|
| https://github.com/joncampbell123/dosbox-x
| mysterydip wrote:
| Between DOSBox (and its various forks) and PCem, it's a great
| time for retro gaming/app playing and development!
|
| I wonder if the games of today will ever get the kind of
| aftermarket support that the DOS era has, given DRM and OS hooks
| and the like. It seems companies would rather games today be
| disposable and incompatible tomorrow so you can either buy the
| sequel or re-buy the game again on the next platform.
| jbarrs wrote:
| I feel like emulation will always be catching up with the
| latest systems, though running some modern AAA game in a
| virtual machine would probably need a super beefy PC (though we
| could probably expect that to be available by the time that
| becomes necessary). Hopefully then a virtual machine can
| satisfy the DRM.
|
| However, I do worry about games (or, in some cases, the DRM on
| some games) that require the player always be online. If the
| game or DRM servers are taken down in the future and the
| developer doesn't release a patch to remove the always online
| requirement, the game could end up being unplayable. If it's
| popular enough, people may reverse-engineer third party
| servers, but this can present more challenges, e.g. getting SSL
| certificates from a CA your device trusts; on a PC you could
| manually trust the certificate, but on a console you likely
| don't have that option.
| grishka wrote:
| Oh, modern consoles and their push for digital distribution
| combined with effectively unbreakable DRM. Some games are
| available on physical media, but some are not. Good luck
| preserving those that are not when those servers go down.
| ArtWomb wrote:
| >>> it's a great time for retro gaming/app playing and
| development
|
| It's amazing. The combination of consumer SoC boards, next gen
| emulation, 3D printing and AI techniques like super-resolution
| are generating not just archival efforts, but active
| development. I just love that there is a very active market for
| RetroPie kits ;)
|
| https://www.experimentalpi.com/Retro-Arcade_c_12.html
| Narishma wrote:
| > It seems companies would rather games today be disposable and
| incompatible tomorrow so you can either buy the sequel or re-
| buy the game again on the next platform.
|
| It's not like back then companies were any different.
| roody15 wrote:
| This looks promising.
| bayindirh wrote:
| 3dfx emulation! Could play some of my old favorites with this!
| rixrax wrote:
| Glide / 3dfx game list:
| http://www.3dfxzone.it/enboard/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1758
| npsimons wrote:
| Interesting. IIRC, at least some of those (Descent and
| Descent II) have source available.
| eloeffler wrote:
| GTA! :)
|
| It was so impressive when I first installed a Voodoo 2 card and
| launched it to see insanely smooth graphics +( _degVdeg_ )+
| Razengan wrote:
| GTA 2 still has the best radio selection in the series.
|
| Like KJAH and Funami FM's Teriyaki-chan <3
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| That's insanely cool! I have never had a 3dfx card and only
| kept begging Santa with no luck when I was a kid. Finally, I
| can play the games which required it!
| bayindirh wrote:
| I still have my Voodoo2 card with me, with different
| processors on board. Albeit I have no PCI slots and VGA is
| not very favorable at modern resolutions.
|
| I'm excited to play Need for Speed 2 SE & Carmageddon 2
| actually.
| ineedasername wrote:
| What is the legal status and availability of 3.x and 9.x?
| bsharitt wrote:
| Nice. I mostly use DOSBox for my DOS games and ones that work
| with Windows 3.1(Civ 2, Sim City 2000, and Solitaire mostly), but
| it'll be nice to be able to do Window 9x stuff with 3D
| acceleration without having to break out the old Pentium II box.
| refracture wrote:
| I installed Windows 95 and 98se in DOSBox-X, it's pretty neat.
| Unfortunately my main motivation, an old Windows game called The
| Divide: Enemies Within runs poorly, either with software mode or
| using the emulated voodoo. On vintage hardware I could run the
| game at 320x240 with a good frame rate on a Pentium 100 mhz, but
| this setup doesn't allow anything lower than 640x480. Sigh..
|
| In anycase this is a great project, and it's nice to be able to
| run Windows 9x in dosbox, something standard dosbox did not do
| reliably.
| dmitriid wrote:
| I'm tempted to install Win95/98 on it, run Borland Delphi 4 from
| 1998 on it, and develop a UI in fraction of the time and
| resources it takes on the Web.
|
| The result will probably still run on modern Windows, too
| keyle wrote:
| That has crossed my mind actually, bring me back to my youth.
| Just seeing the screenshot of win98 on pcem gave me strong
| nostalgia.
| memsom wrote:
| It would be better to use NT4 or Windows 2000. Delphi had a
| habit of crashing hard under 9x whilst debugging and taking the
| OS with it. I used Delphi from 1 - 5 commercially and we never
| used 9x because the experience was a lot less usable. I did use
| maybe, Delphi 3 under Windows 98 at home, but it would never
| have been for anything important.
| dmitriid wrote:
| Thanks for the hint!
| arithmomachist wrote:
| I'm tempted to install Turbo Pascal for a deep nostalgia trip.
| I grew up in a small-ish town in Appalachia, and when I ran out
| of math classes to take in high school I started learning to
| program. They had put together a little "computer lab" circa
| 1990 when cash was a little easier to come by for a public
| school, and hadn't updated them since.
|
| It was 2004, and their intro programming course was still
| taught in Pascal. We hacked on a version of Turbo Pascal that
| might have dated to when the Soviet Union still existed, and I
| remember that cheery blue terminal interface fondly. It left me
| with an irrational life-long love of text-based interfaces.
| benibela wrote:
| That does not actually need DOSBox, it runs great with WINE:
| https://i.imgur.com/YgOw2Zc.png
| dmitriid wrote:
| Sorry for breaking HN conventions, but:
|
| Oh My God
| sumnole wrote:
| Lazarus is the modern alternative for Pascal coders
| benibela wrote:
| But I do not think it will run on Windows 98
|
| It needs the Unicode APIs
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