• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

Best/Recommended DOS Emulator?

S

Shadow Lord

Veteran Member
Joined
Jun 16, 2010
Messages
3,234
Location
California
Hello All,

I recently ran across vDOS and went down the DOS on x64 rabbit hole. For those of you that don't know vDOS is a limited DOS emulator to allow you to run text based dos programs in Windows x64 (Vista, 7, 8.x, 10 and 11) without the NTVDM found in the x32 version. It isn't a full fledged machine emulator as far as I can tell. It is more analagous to a wrapper (although I could be wrong here as it is based on DOSBOX).

Prior to this I have always used a VMWARE machine with a full DOS and WfW install. This provided a "real" enough environment to try out programs or mess around with configurations. Of course an emulated machine is never as good as the real thing. Things that worked on actual HW would fail in the emulator. For game play I use real HW.

The VMWare solution is nice and does let me to do just about everything (including playing limited games). It does fail in that it doesn't emulate all HW (i.e. I can setup MSLANMAN with the VMWARE NIC but can't mess around with configuring a 3COM NIC like I use in my real HW). It is cumbersome though to have to boot a whole VM to run something. This is where I think a wrapper like vDOS comes in to play. With vDOS you can have an icon on your desktop that can be clicked to run one DOS program. Technically you could set it up to run multiple dos programs from one instance of the program but then it loses its utility and appeal IMHO. Of course the one big down side is that I don't believe it emulates any graphics so you are limited to pure text programs (i.e. Autocad for DOS is out...)

While looking at vDOS I found another fork call vDOSPlus that is not as frequently updated/maintained but is more feature rich. The author of vDOSPlus also has a fork of DOSBOX that is more of a general purpose emulator (i.e. not geared toward just games) and allows you to even run Win9x under it.

So what do you guys use for your DOS fix when you can't get to real HW? Do you go for a full VM like VMWare or PCE? Or a psuedo VM like DOSBOX? With the options of a full VM or DOSBOX is there even a point in having a wrapper like vDOS? More importantly why do you use what you use?
 
Linux guy here. Depends on your needs, but VirtualBox does a good job at emulation; I also installed an old version of DOSEMU for casual text-only use. I've tried DOSEMU2 also, but never had much success due to their screwy installation procedure; maybe it's gotten better, but I was in the process of losing all of my hair 3 years ago when I tried it.
 
I am far from an expert at running a Virtual DOS environment. And, I am not much into DOS gaming. Most of my DOS activity is centered around productivity software such as Word Processing, Database Management, Spreadsheets, simple CAD, etc.

I have had success with VirtualBox and setting up DOS in a VM, similar to what you have done in VMWare. For me that has been my best experience in Windows 7 thru 11. I have also used VirtualBox and FreeDOS.

On Linux I have used both VirtualBox and DosBox.

But I have so many old DOS machines I don't usually choose to use a virtual environment. I just use the actual hardware.

Seaken
 
I had forgotten about VirtualBox. I have never used VirtualBox myself but I am guessing it is a full fledged PC emulator? So you would need to "boot it up", load the OS (DOS in this case), then run your program? How is the compatability/emulated HW support? Is it limited like VMWare? Or does it emulate different sound cards/video cards like DosBox?
 
I use VMWARE workstation for my emulated DOS. There is a nice driver that allows it to connect a DOS drive letter to a VMWare shared folder so you can transfer files easily between it and the host system.

vDOS on occasion for something at a command prompt if it works. There is also the MS-DOS player that can also be used which I like better than vDOS.
 
PCem can be found at https://www.pcem-emulator.co.uk/ - it can emulate a wide range of older PC machines very accurately. It can also do graphics, the website has a list of graphics adapters it supports. I've used it because it can emulate certain old PC laptops I have such as the Toshiba T-series, which I have, and thanks to the accuracy I've used it for things like debugging software quickly, without having to transfer it to real hardware for each iteration.
 
One thing that I like about VirtualBox is that you can map access to real floppy drive, if your machine has one. It can also take over USB peripherals. I routinely use it with an old HP scanner that has a USB interface and its own XP application. Also works fine with USB MIDI adapters.
 
For running DOS apps/games, I use DOSBOX only. Because it "just" works and I can have the host filesystem mounted, so no need to deal with hard disk images, getting files across etc.
 
VirtualBox has a convenient way to get (at least under Linux) to the host filesystem via network connection. So, under VBox, I can have the XP local drive C: as a VBox virtual image file, but also connect to all my Linux Ext-4 files via a network-connected drive E:. DVD ROM D: can be either a disc in the drive or a virtual image file. VBox also supports "mixed" applications, where the installer may be 16-bit code, but the application itself being 32-bit code. I don't know if DOSBox can do this.

Apparently, VBox can even run 64 bit OS code if the host processor is 64 bit, even if the host OS is 32 bit.
 
I used VirtualBox for many years and none of that is really useful for DOS (the guest additions for DOS are long gone). Also, since VirtualBox runs all code on the host CPU, it is way too fast for classic DOS stuff anyway. You even need stupid hacks to get Windows 98 installed when your host CPU is from AMD.

I really think there are only two options: DOSBOX when convenience is important, or PCem if compatibility is most important.
 
Depends on one's goal. XP's support for DOS is very good, so long as you confine your needs to text-mode. Win98 Win32 apps run just fine for the most part under XP, so that's not an issue. Of course, nobody has support for more exotic DOS peripherals, say, old QIC-02 interface tape drives, so it's best to keep a real vintage system or two around for that stuff. Games are of zero interest in my work.

Perhaps this thread should be re-titled "DOS emulator packages for gaming"...
 
I use VirtualBox a lot. I've noticed a few things wrong with it over the years:
  • Programs that manipulate the 8253 timer chip to get higher resolution timing cause the system time to act weirdly. Time within the virtual machine passes correctly, but wall-clock time slows down quite a bit while the 8253 is using the different interrupt rate.
  • You can't enter extended ASCII codes using the Alt-numpad three digit code trick. It's not implemented.
  • On Windows things that use the motherboard beeper don't work; it doesn't even try to plumb those noises into your sound card.
  • I can glitch the screen in CGA mode by just simply writing to it too fast. (My RLE graphics decoder exposed this. Works on real hardware, and works in VMWare, but on VirtualBox the screen gets garbled.)
For testing DOS programs I use a mixture of VirtualBox, VMWare, and real hardware.
 
x86box is fantastic. I like it because I can set it up exactly like my actual hardware and try things before having to mess with the actual stuff.

Also im kinda shocked that no has mentioned Dosbox yet... is there a reason for that? If all one wants is a basic dos emulator that seems like the standard easy choice especially for games.
 
mbbrutman said:
You can't enter extended ASCII codes using the Alt-numpad three digit code trick. It's not implemented.
Click to expand...
Depends on the host platform. Under Linux and VBox 6.1, the alt-keypad functions work just fine. Recall that VBox was originally developed by Oracle for use under Solaris, which may account for some of the quirks when the host is a Windows system.
I haven't checked out your other bugs.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top