Crucible wrote:I see the instructions and I'm like...okay I'm in the computer, but I don't see how to do ANY of that.
Okay, the guide I linked to is probably not as simple as it could be.
I assume that you have installed DOSBox, right? Now you need a place where you will have your DOS games, and you need to have DOSBox recognize this as a hard disk.
On Windows it is generally recommended that you run DOSBox from somewhere where the system will not try to interfere with its functions. I suppose that you have a non-system partition or and/or a physical hard disk where you don't have any system files (usually C: is the system drive, everything else isn't).
Typical Windows setups have at least one non-system partition for user files.
So your first step would be to create a folder on your non-system partition (let's assume it has the drive letter D:) where you will install all DOS emulation related stuff.
Create a folder for your emulated DOS environment, for example, D:\DOS. Use the Start menu to open the DOSBox default configuration file. It should open on Notepad for editing. Scroll down to the end of the text where it says [autoexec]. This is the section for commands DOSBox will execute upon startup.
You want DOSBox to immediately mount D:\DOS as a hard disk drive, and switch to it every time it starts. To do this, add the following lines just beneath the [autoexec] line:
Code: Select all
mount c d:\dos -freesize 600
c:
Next time you start DOSBox, it will think that it has a C: drive which is 600 MiB in size. Thus DOSBox will recognize every file and folder you put into your actual D:\DOS folder on your PC. This way you can simply run a DOS game if it requires no installation.
However, I assume that the game you're trying to play needs to be installed first. Your next steps thus depend on what medium you have the game on. Is it a physical CD, a CD image, or a pre-installed warez copy?
In the meantime, here's a couple of useful commands that will help you navigate the DOS environment (you need to type a command and its arguments end press Enter):
go to a sub-directory from the current directory. For example, if you are on C: and there's a directory called C:\DOSGAMES, you need to type
to switch to the DOSGAMES directory.
go to the root directory (C:
) from the current directory.
go up one level on the directory tree. For example, if the current directory is C:\DOSGAMES\TETRIS, this command will take you back to C:\DOSGAMES.
clear screen. This will clear all output currently on the screen.
list current directory contents. This will bring up a list of files and folders in the current directory. There are two useful switches for this command:
short list. This will arrange the directory and file names in several columns, thus fitting more names on a single screen. File information such as size and modify date will not be displayed.
pause every screen. If the list takes more than one screen, each screen is displayed until the user presses a key, after which the next screen is displayed.
Hope this helps!