Introducing DosBox

During the early days of PC gaming, DOS was the operating system of choice. Thanks to some shrewed moves by Microsoft, a large portion of the computers on the market came with DOS pre-installed, but this also created many problems - computer hardware wasn't very standardized yet, so there was always some random incompatibility or odd problem that got in the way of everything.

This is actually still an issue today. If you were to try to use MS-DOS as your operating system, it's likely that your modern hardware would cause all sorts of trouble. In fact, many old programs will run much too fast, as they don't know how to properly control their frame rate.

One of the best solutions to this problem is to not run DOS at all. Instead, you can use a program called DosBox to create a miniature DOS environment within your existing operating system and run DOS programs from there.

Compared to a virtual machine, DosBox is also very beginner friendly. You won't need to worry about the technical stuff like setting up a sound card, selecting a processor, or how to deal with disk images - this is all handled for you behind the scenes. All you need to do is set aside a folder for your DOS programs, put a few things in there, and launch DosBox.

This tutorial will walk you through these simple steps - though you will be expected to know how to do a few things, like navigate your computer's file system and unpack a zip file.

If you can do that, you're ready to work with DosBox!

Most people reading this will be running Microsoft Windows. If this is the case, you'll need to download DosBox from its homepage, DosBox.com. The link to the download section is found just below the logo. Simply click on the big green "Download Now" button on the next page to head over to SourceForge and automatically start the download.

An important note here: SourceForge does display advertisements, some of which may display fake download buttons. You do not need to click anything on the SourceForge page; visiting it is enough to trigger the download.

A look at the DosBox installer

As soon as the download has completed, you'll be ready to launch the installer. You might need to grant it permission to change files on your computer; if so, double check that the file name really says DosBox Win32 Installer (plus some numbers) and if it does select YES on the prompt to run it.

The installer itself is quite simple: it asks you to accept the GNU GPL license, and then you can just keep clicking "Next" until the it starts copying files. When it's done, a "Close" button will appear where the "Next" button used to be.

Clicking "Close" exits the installer, and you're almost ready to use DosBox.

On the other hand, if you're a Linux user, then you can find DosBox in your distro's software repository (usually apt). Simply issue the right command from a terminal and your distro will install DosBox with no further fuss on your part.

Technically, DosBox will already be ready for use once it's installed. However, for an easier time using it, you'll want to do some additional things first.

Your fake DOS environment will need a hard drive in order to run anything. DosBox can use a directory on your computer as a fake hard drive, so all you need to do is pick a folder and tell DosBox where to find it.

While you can use any folder on your computer, I'd suggest making a new one just for your DOS programs. There can be issues with using special folders like your Documents folder (eg, Windows might try to back up your DOS install, wasting both OneDrive space and your time), so I'd suggest something like c:\dos_games.

As a side note, I'm going to assume you've used c:\dos_games for the rest of this page; just remember to replace this with the full path of your actual folder.

Once the folder is ready, you'll need to tweak DosBox's options - there should be a link for this in your Start Menu's new DosBox folder. The configuration file is a very long file with a lot of code, but thankfully, none of that is important right now. Just scroll to the bottom and you should see some text saying "Lines in this section will be run at startup".

Place the following two lines there:
These two lines instruct DosBox to use your reserved folder as the DOS environment's drive C, then changes the current directory to the root of your fake C drive.

For the curious, DOS drive ordering uses the C drive as the "system" drive. It's where the computer expects to find your programs, files, and other things. Drives A and B are reserved for floppy drives, while D is typically the CD ROM.

Save the changes, and you're done setting things up.

By itself, DosBox doesn't do much. In truth, it's not even a complete DOS system. In order to use it, you'll need to find some DOS programs and place them in your special DOS folder.

Part of the fun of playing retro games is tracking them down, but I'll save you the trouble for now. Head on over to Dungeon Dwellers Design's Super ACiD Block Attack page, select "DOWNLOAD" from the menu, and then click on "Download Now!" to get a zip file containing the game's files.

Super ACiD Block Attack is one of the many, many Tetris clones that were released for DOS, and since it's a fairly good one, it makes for a nice introduction to DOS gaming.

But first, you'll need to unpack the zip file and place its contents in your DOS games folder. If you've followed the above steps correctly, then DosBox will know these files exist and make them visible in the fake DOS environment.

Let's launch DosBox now. You can do this by clicking on its icon in your Start Menu. You should see something like this:

DosBox, ready to go

DOS didn't have a GUI like modern operating systems do; it's strictly a command line, and since DosBox mimics this interface, you'll need to navigate to the folder where you've installed your game.

If you used the default folder name from the zip file, then the command is cd saba. Just type it out and press ENTER to execute it. The command cd means "change directory", and it's one of the most common commands you'll use when working with DOS.

If all goes well, the prompt will simply change to C:\saba\>. Otherwise, DosBox will respond by printing an error message.

Once you're "inside" the right folder, you need to configure the game. You can expect to run a setup or configuration utility at least once for every DOS program you add to your DOS folder; that's just how we did things back then. These tools were typically called "install" or "setup", so they're easy to spot.

Now, DOS treats the names of files within the current folder as if they were commands. You can run any program by navigating to its folder and typing its name. So, to run Super ACiD Block Attack's configuration utility, type setup and press ENTER.

There's very little for you to do here - just use the down arrow key to move the selected item (the one that's growing and shrinking) down to "Exit to DOS", then press ENTER. This will tell the game to use the default options.

After all of this, you're finally ready to enjoy a DOS game!

Once you've installed everything, you won't need to do it again. From here on, you can enjoy your new fake DOS system just by launching DosBox. Do keep your different games in their own folders; they aren't smart enough to understand which files belong to them.

But first, let's try out the game you installed. If you've closed DosBox since the previous step, launch it again and return to the C:\saba folder.

To begin the game, type its name ( "saba" ) and press ENTER.

Super ACiD Block Attack's title screen

As this is a Tetris clone, you shouldn't have any trouble figuring out where to go from here. Just move the pieces with the arrow keys and press A or S to rotate them. To leave the game, press ESC.

DosBox has some extra features that might be useful. At the beginning of this page I mentioned that some games don't properly pace themselves. Although DosBox tries to fix this on its own, you can take control of DosBox's cycle count yourself using some keyboard shortcuts.

Without going into technical details, the "cycle count" refers to how fast DosBox runs. As the cycle count increases, so does the speed of whatever you're running. Press CTRL and F12 at the same time to increase the cycle count. On the other hand, to slow things down, you can reduce the cycle count by pressing CTRL and F11. Just keep pressing these combinations until things seem to be running normally.

DosBox has several more keyboard commands that may interest you; these are summarized in the table below.

SHORTCUT	EFFECT
ALT + ENTER	Toggle between fullscreen and windowed mode - really useful for games with small graphics.
CTRL + F1	Switch to the keymapper configuration screen. This allows you to control how DosBox interprets your inputs; one possible use of this feature is to force games to accept joystick input when they never supported it originally.
CTRL + F5	Save a screenshot to your capture folder. You might need to do some digging to figure out where this is on your machine; alternatively you can edit DosBox's configuration file to make it use a specific folder of your choice.
CTRL + F10	Tells DosBox to "let go" of your mouse. This is a somewhat annoying querk that most virtual machines need to deal with; the best you can do is learn to live with it.