Old DOS programs seems to be critical and do not run anymore under Windows. So the users ended up with some beloved programs and games that became useless.
Luckily Linux offers DOS emulators.
The user must be in the games group . If necessary do gpasswd -a <USER>
games and log out and in. Then emerge dosbox and you can launch it by dosbox to get a dos windows where you run on the Z: drive. The command exit closes the window.
To get access to a directory the following command created the C: drive:
mount c <directory in the home directory>
In the path the / character as in Linux need to be taken. The path starts from the working directory. So ~/<directory>
is a good way the define where C: is.
C: changes now the working directory to the C: drive
brings now the dosou can mount any directory as the DOS C: drive.
Alt + Return switches in full screen mode and back
Ctrl + F10 locks and unlocks mouse in X window
The default configuration file is in ~/.dosbox
Additional configuration files can be created as follows:
Within the dosbox type
config -writeconf dosbox.conf
to create a configuration file in your home directory
Then type dosbox -conf dosbox.conf to get it used and running.
Inside the configuration file there is the
[autoexec]
section that serves as the autoexec.bat file. so commands as the previously mount command can be added. A usefull command to put there is to set the keyboard as this example sets the swiss-german
keyboard CONFIG -set dos keyboardlayout sg
The classic Sokoban game from 1984 with amazing 4 color CGA graphics (black, white, magenta, cyan) runs well under Linux!
An other solution is FreeDOS http://www.freedos.org/ or http://www.fdos.org/. CD ISO image or floppy images can be download.
Such floppy or CD images run well in virtual machines under Linux. See the floppy chapter how to run an floppy image without having a physical floppy.
Note there is also openDOS that might be an alternative to FreeDos. Freedos can run well in virtualbox, so you can create a pc to run your historic programs.
Luckily freedos under virtual box support CD's, so you can create a cd iso image and have it read by free dos, this way you can move data to this historic environment. Ctrl+Alt+ Delete frees the cursor in Virtual box.
An other option is to install TCP/IP on freedos and use FTP. Softeare can be found on http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/
Commander keen: