Get your old sims runnin'

[Caesar 305]

Hey all,

 

I'm not sure how many of you have heard of DOSBox, but I've been running it for a while now, and have gotta say, if you miss your old flight sims, there still may be hope. DOSBox is a DOS "emulator" (no, it doesn't pertain to that illegal ROM b.s. you hear about) that runs DOS programs in their natural environment. Basically, this allows you to run games designed for MS-DOS, that no longer run on Windows XP, or may run but horribly at best.

 

For example, I have my favorite sim Fleet Defender Gold running on DOSBox, and quite well at that, though I'm still figuring out how to tweak the sound (it runs fine in other games, but skips in FD). This runs most if not all DOS games up to about, I'd guess 1994, as only so many resources can be allocated, but DOS versions of F-19 should work, I have over 100 kills in FD so I can vouch that it works, and other fun games like the strategy XCOM: UFO Defense or the futuristic Descent run just fine. It even supports modern joysticks; though I can't get the throttle working, I just leave that on the keyboard in FD.

 

The caveat here is that you:

A. Need to own (a) legitimate copy(ies) of the game(s) for installation

B. Have to have patience for tweaking

C. Need to re-learn DOS commands

 

If you don't know DOS well, you can get what's known as a "Front-End" (one is called D-Fend) which allows you to modify values in a window, rather than right in DOSBox. To run games well, you have to figure a good processor speed, core, and memory allocation (Fleet Defender will run well at 20MHz on a Dynamic Core processor at 16MB of allocated RAM, I found) and this is a lot easier to do in a Front-End than with the DOSBox command prompt, which I've had to resort to doing when my new Front End failed to install properly. Sometimes different parts of the game will be affected: FD runs well in game with those settings, but for some reason, the menus ran better at 3MHz on a normal core processor .

 

I haven't tried to install a program through DOSBox yet, I've actually just done that in command prompt, and then run the program in DOSBox, but this will become completely impossible for most DOS games in the future with the new 64-bit OS's which I've read will not support 16-bit installers. My solution: I install the programs and keep the installed file on archive, which then can be transferred to the new OS when I do upgrade. Unlike modern games, the installed file can just be copied; my current archive is backed up on a DVD, and I have done such a copy after a reformat and the programs still work fine in DOSBox.

 

So, I can't tell you if you can get the install working on a 16-bit program through DOSBox, but if you can install it through command prompt, you can play it in DOSBox. Anyone else with old sims lying around oughta at least give it a shot, rather than just let the old boxes collect more dust!

 

-"Caesar"