Basic Setup and Installation of
DosBox

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Contents

1 Basic
Concepts

2 Installation

3 Running a
game

4 Alternate methods for
running a game

5 Performance

6 Other Useful
features

6.1 Quick
start

6.2 Full
Screen

Basic Concepts

DOSBox is an emulator that recreates a MS-DOS compatible environment
(complete with Sound, Input, Graphics and even basic networking). This
environment is complete enough to run many classic MS-DOS games completely
unmodified. In order to utilize all of DOSBox's features you need to first
understand some basic concepts about the MS-DOS environment.

Mount a
Drive

Drives

Sound

Display

Input

Connectivity
(Modems/Networking)

Installation

The first step is to install DOSBox. This guide will use the 0.72 Windows 32 version which
is available for download. Download the release
for your operating system. If you are a Windows user, get the Win32
installer.

After downloading, install DOSBox to any directory. Also, make a folder to
put all your old games in. I put DOSBox in C:\DOSBox, and my old
games directory is C:\OLDGAMES. I put a game in my
OLDGAMES directory, TESTDRIV, which is Test Drive, an old racing
game. Your directories should look like this:

Running a game

Now, the hardest part, getting games to run. First, run dosbox.exe in
your DOSBox folder. Remember that OLDGAMES directory you created
in Step 1? You have to basically set that as new directory just for DOSBox.
Essentially, it's going to become the C:\>
drive of DOSBox. So, type:

Z:\>MOUNT C C:\OLDGAMES
Drive C mounted as local directory C:\OLDGAMES\

To dissect the above:

MOUNT:
Tells the program to mount a directory

C: Tells the program what you want your new drive to be called
(leaving it as C: is fine)

C:\OLDGAMES: This is the directory I want to set as the new drive
for DOSBox, because all my games are in it. If you created a different
directory, write in the directory you created.

(Note: If you want to mount
a CD-ROM instead of a folder, type this:

Z:\>MOUNT D D:\ -t cdrom
MSCDEX installed.
Drive D is mounted as CDRom D:\

(Note: "cdrom" is case sensitive and must be lowercase!)

In this example, D:\ -T cdrom tells DOSBox that my D:\ drive is a
CD-ROM drive, and the first D, tells DOSBox what my new drive name should
be called. If you are running your game off a CD-ROM then make sure to use
D: in place of C: in the following examples. You can find
instructions on how to mount other devices, such as floppy
drives, in the mount section).

After you've done this, you will be prompted with a Z:\>. Now, just write what
you wanted to call your new DOSBox drive, which as I said above, we called
C. To navigate to that newly mounted drive just type in:

Z:\>C:

C:\>

Hopefully, you're all set! Now, it's time to run the game. Previously I had
mentioned a game called TESTDRIV in my OLDGAMES
folder. I now want DOSBox to go to that folder. So type in:

C:\>CD TESTDRIV

C:\TESTDRIV>

That's it! CD stands for "Change
Directory", so you've changed the directory to TESTDRIV. You can find
instructions on how to use the Change
Directory command, in the CD
section of the Commands article.

One more step, running the game! Most games have an EXE file in their
directory that you can run. However, some might require a BAT file, or COM file
(common in demos and really old games). Most of the time, the file is in the
root folder. Please consult the documentation of your game for which file is
needed to start the game. In the case of Test
Drive, it's TDCGA.EXE. So now, I just type this:

C:\TESTDRIV>TDCGA.EXE

That's it! Here's a picture of all of the commands I've written about in Step
2:

Alternate methods for running a game

The steps described above are closely aligned with how DOS Based operating
systems behave natively. However modern operating system allow for more user
friendly (although less authentic) ways of playing your favorite games. If the
steps above seem tedious or confusing you can try some of these other guides.
In most cases these guides will still require you to setup a working DOSBox
environment.

Using
Frontends

Creating
desktop shortcuts

in
Microsoft Windows

in
Apple OSX

in
Linux GNOME

NOTE: If you have problems with launching the game, unrecognizable errors
being spit out, saving settings, or having the game drop out while running it,
one thing to try is to make sure all the files are not set to Read Only. In
Windows, select the folder of the game, right click and hit properties, uncheck
Read Only if it is checked, and apply to all sub folders.

If you have other errors, please search the forums first before posting a question.

Performance

Yay, you've gotten your game to run! But maybe you're experiencing slowdown?
How do you fix this? With the following commands:

CTRL+F7 = Decreases frameskip
CTRL+F8 =
Increases Frameskip
CTRL+F11 = Slows down the game

CTRL+F12 = Speeds up the game

Press CTRL+ALT+DEL to open the Task Manager, and click the
Performance tab. Start by pressing CTRL+F12 until your CPU Usage
level begins to go above 95%. After that, if you still need a performance boost,
hit CTRL+F8 to have DOSBox not render some frames. The console
window will display all of the changes you've made, and the top of the game
window will display the current settings. Adjust these settings as needed until
your game goes smoothly. Please keep in mind that not all games will run
smoothly on DOSBox.

Other Useful features

Quick start

You can save yourself some time by having DOSBox automatically MOUNT your folders and change the
drive to C:. In original DOS based operating systems a file called
AUTOEXEC.BAT contained
any commands that the user wanted executed every time the computer booted up.
This functionality is simulated by the [autoexec]
section of the dosbox.conf
file.

For DOSBox versions older than 0.73 browse into program installation folder
and open the dosbox.conf
file in any text editor. For version 0.73 go to Start Menu and click on
"Configuration" and then "Edit Configuration". Then scroll down to the very end,
and add these lines:

MOUNT C C:\OLDGAMES
C:

Now those commands will be executed automatically when starting! If you're
having trouble with that, make sure it looks like this (look at the bottom):

Full Screen

Just press ALT+ENTER to go into and out of full screen.

Alternatively, you can open the dosbox.conf
file as mentioned above and change "fullscreen=false" to "fullscreen=true".
DOSBox will then run in full screen mode when you open it.

Retrieved from "http://www.dosbox.com/wiki/index.php?title=Basic_Setup_and_Installation_of_DosBox&oldid=4276"

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This page was last modified on 2 December 2010, at
20:03.

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