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>

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!

DosEMU emulates a PC under Linux, where MSDOS or an other DOS as FreeDOS can be installed.

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:

http://www.oldversion.com/ http://www.abandonia.com/ http://www.cdosabandonware.com/ https://www.myabandonware.com/ http://www.squakenet.com/ http://www.xtcabandonware.com/ https://www.gog.com/