DOS Emulator for Win2k?

[PanMan 0]

Is there a DOS emulator that will run on Win2000 so that I can run some of my old DOS games. I understand that there may be sound sound incompatabilities. I have looked around, but all I could find were DOSEmu and FreeDOS, which seemed to be for Unix which wasn't useful. Just for ppls info - Im looking to run stuff like ZSNES (SNES Emulator), GTA, and some other standard DOS games that the NTVirtualDos simply won't run. Thanx in advance for any help on this problem! =)

[Preacher 0]

Sound isn´t the problem, just head over to www.softsystem.co.uk/page3.htm

for their SoundFX proggie. Darn, if I only could get Privateer (1) to work with W2k...

[hammer_2000 0]

Don't think there is any way to play

old !!16-bit!! games, cause as far as

i know NT is 32-bit only.

[Preacher 0]

Since Win9x is a 32 bit OS (well, Microsoft told us it is...) too, you shouldn´t be able to run DOS games with this as well

Just kidding

 

For instance, Abuse and Doom both run quite well with W2k

[Damien 0]

Hmmm - Win 9X 32 bit! Maybe it is - just a pity it has to rely on 16bit Dos code.

[CUViper 0]

Win2k can run 16-bit apps... if you look at the task manager when you run a 16-bit app, tou will see ntvdm.exe and wowexec.exe. As far as I know, these provide the 16-bit emulation. Old games like "prince of persia" run for me in win2k.

 

I think the problem is more with the later dos games, just before everything went to win98. These games accessed hardware on a low level to speed things up, and NT/2000 doesn't like that!

 

PanMan: for snes emulation, try the win32 version of SNES9x... it works great for me. For GTA, if you have the full version (or even a complete warez) you can run it in directx mode.

[DosFreak 2]

Check out VMWARE.

[someone_nt 0]

the url for vmware is (obviosly) www.vmware.com.

[sanjiyan 0]

One of the issues when using a Virtual Machine is overhead. I don't know VMWare's overhead, but Connectix Virtual PC made Privateer run really slow (hey, at least it started!)

 

VMWare is great for really old DOS apps, but for games that came from the 486 + 4MB and above eras, it just doesn't cut it.

 

If only Privateer could be modified to use DPMI implementation of EMS memory...

 

--Sir Sanjiyan

[kgeissler 0]

Just a thought, but couldn't you dual boot DOS and Win2k?

[Wolf87 0]

Make a Boot diskette including all drivers and use it to create a Bootable CD on a CD-RW or CD-R. Modify the Bios to boot from CD-ROM.

[DosFreak 2]

What I've been thinking about is making a bootable DOS CD with a 256 RAM drive. (I have 768mb of ram). The CD would have all the configs alreadt set up and the games extracted. All I would have to do is boot! Most DOS games saved games can easily be stored on floppy. I would do this but Windows 2000 & Connectix Virtual PC play every game I need 'em to play except 40 out of 356!

[Wolf87 0]

Here are two texts gleaned from the Internet about the process:

 

 

"Creating a Bootable CD with Easy CD Creator"

 

<Bootable CDs for PCs use the El Torito! format. Put DOS onto the CD and enough other tools such as scandisk (or chkdsk), fdisk (for disk formatting), and installers and other information.

 

To record a bootable CD, you must first make a bootable floppy. There are two ways of doing this, and they each create a different set of functionality:

 

Creating a bootable floppy using Windows using Add/Remove Programs. Insert a blank floppy disk into your drive, and then open the Add/Remove Programs control panel. Click the Startup Disk tab and create a new disk. The disk that is created with this method also includes the drivers, autoexec.bat and config.sys files required to not only boot the machine, but also the other diagnostic tools and CD drivers. Check it by booting your machine using the floppy. Next create the CD itself:

 

Open Roxio Easy CD Creator.

 

Insert a blank CD into your CD-R/RW drive.

 

Click File and select the New CD Layout menu item, followed by the Bootable CD from the submenu.

 

You'll be prompted with the dialog box shown in Figure 2. Select the type of bootable CD that you want to create. There are four different types to choose from. If you want to use an existing image, click on the Browse button to find the bootable image file. Don't adjust any of the other parameters—you shouldn't need to change these figures.

Figure 2: Adding the contents of a bootable floppy to the CD layout.

 

Floppy Disk emulation (1.44MB)—forces the bootable CD to emulate a 1.44MB bootable floppy.

 

Floppy Disk emulation (2.88MB)—forces the bootable CD to emulate a 2.88MB bootable floppy.

 

Hard Disk emulation—allows you to create a 'full size' CD with as many installers and additional data as you need. You'll need to have a suitable bootable image file available to write to the CD, you can use a floppy image if you wish.

 

No Emulation—Don't emulate a floppy or hard drive.

 

If you've opted to emulate a floppy disk, you'll be prompted (see Figure 3) to insert the bootable floppy disk that you just created into the floppy drive. Insert the disk and click OK. Roxio Easy CD Creator will copy the bootable information from the floppy disk and store it within two files, BOOTCAT.BIN and BOOTIMG.BIN within your final layout.

 

All you need to do now is add any further information, installers, applications, etc., that you may want to use on the bootable CD to the CD layout, just as you would for an ordinary data CD.

Once you are finished, click on the Record button to write the information to CD.

 

Once the CD has been written, you will need to configure your machine so that it can boot up from the CD in preference to the floppy drive or the hard drive. To do this, you will need to configure your BIOS, which you usually do by pressing a key (F2 or delete) during the startup process when you first turn the machine on. See Figure 3 for an example—in this case, we need to press F2.

 

Dropping into the BIOS from the main BIOS boot screen.

 

Once there, change to the boot options page, or the BIOS Features page using the on-screen menus. You'll need to change the priority with which the BIOS searches for a bootable disc and operating system. The default is normally to boot from the hard disk, or from the floppy if one has been inserted into the drive. Change the priority so that the CD-ROM is either first, or immediately after, the floppy drive. You can see in Figure 4 that I've configured the CD-ROM drive to priority over floppy and hard disk devices.

 

 

Setting the BIOS for booting from CD.

 

To boot from the CD, insert the CD before a restart or during the BIOS startup, and then wait while the system searches for a bootable device. If it doesn't boot up from your CD, something went wrong and you'll need to check the CD.>

 

 

 

<From: Ron Lowe (ron'DOT'lowe'AT'bakeratlas'DOT'com)

Subject: Re: Making a bootable CD

Newsgroups: microsoft.public.windowsme.general,

microsoft.public.windowsme.new-user

Date: 2001-03-19 02:26:11 PST>

 

 

<In response to the original request "How to make a bootable CD-ROM"

The instructions below are for Adaptec EZ-CD creator V4.x

 

Creating a Bootable CD

======================

A bootable CD is a CD from which a computer

can be started up because it contains all the

operating system software the computer needs to run.

A bootable CD contains a bootable image,

a file that is an exact representation of a

bootable floppy disk or hard disk.

 

Easy CD Creator creates a bootable CD by copying the

contents of a bootable floppy disk to a CD.

When you boot to the CD, the exact contents of your

floppy disk are now seen on your CD-ROM drive.

Under most configurations, the CD-ROM drive is

accessible as drive A: while your floppy drive

automatically moves from drive A: to B:.

 

Note: Creating a Bootable CD-ROM is intended for the advanced user.

It requires an understanding of how to create bootable

floppy disks and how to create and edit DOS CONFIG.SYS

and AUTOEXEC.BAT files.

 

To create and use a bootable CD, follow the steps in each of the following

sections:

 

1) Verify that your System Supports Bootable CD

 

2) Create a Bootable Floppy Disk

 

3) Create a Bootable CD with Easy CD Creator

 

In detail:

==========

 

1) Verify that your System Supports Bootable CD:

 

Easy CD Creator allows you to create a bootable CD;

however, not all systems support booting from a bootable CD.

Here is what you need to check:

 

If your computer has a built-in CD-ROM drive,

you should check your system BIOS settings and see if

you can enable Bootable CD-ROM support.

Most Pentium class systems (or higher) support this feature.

 

If your CD-ROM drive is connected to a SCSI host adapter,

and if the SCSI host adapter has a BIOS on-board,

you should check your host adapter's documentation

and see if it supports booting from a CD-ROM.

 

2) Create a Bootable Floppy Disk:

 

The floppy disk you need to create is dependent on the

system you are planning to boot from.

The floppy disk needs to be formatted with the

DOS FORMAT command (FORMAT A: /S) and also contain a

CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT file.

 

The CONFIG.SYS file typically contains the instructions

to load your DOS CD-ROM driver while the AUTOEXEC.BAT

file contains the instructions to load Microsoft's

DOS CD-ROM Extensions (i.e. MSCDEX.EXE).

 

Please consult your system's documentation for the proper

way to load your DOS CD-ROM driver and MSCDEX.EXE.

You should test this configuration with your bootable floppy disk

before you create a bootable CD.

If your target system boots properly with the floppy disk,

and assigns a drive letter for the CD-ROM drive on that system,

you are ready to create a bootable CD-ROM.

 

TIP: When you add the command lines to the CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT,

do not use fixed paths. For example:

 

Recommended Entry: device=aspicd.sys /d:aspicd0

 

Not Recommended: device=a:\aspicd.sys /d:aspicd0

 

 

3) To create a Bootable CD:

 

Insert a blank CD into your CD-Recorder (the destination drive). Click the small arrow next to the New button on the toolbar

and then select Bootable CD from the drop-down list.

 

A dialog box appears that asks you to insert a bootable floppy disk in drive A. Insert your bootable floppy disk into your floppy drive and click OK. The contents of the floppy disk are copied to your system and stored in your CD Layout.

 

You can see that two special read-only files have been added to the root directory of your CD Layout: BOOTCAT.BIN and BOOTIMG.BIN.

From this point, use Easy CD Creator as you normally would for creating a Data CD.

 

Note: When the CD has been created, take it to the system you wish

to boot from. Make sure it has bootable CD-ROM support enabled,

insert the bootable CD in your CD-ROM drive, and reboot the system.

 

If everything worked well, you can see the contents of your

bootable floppy disk as drive A: and the contents of your

CD Layout as Drive X: (where X: is determined by how you configure MSCDEX.EXE in your AUTOEXEC.BAT)

 

Best Regards,

Ron>

 

 

Since many newer sound cards do not work in real mode Dos unless a full Windows 95 or 98 sound driver installation is present and since a number of games play to perfection only on those OS (Wizards and Warriors; many of Janes's simulations preceding Longbow 2) the real need is not for a real Dos boot CD but for a Windows 95-98 boot CD.

 

CD-ROM are now multi-read and read CD-RW like DVD-ROM always could so I wonder would a CD-RW boot CD starting Windows 98 SE work? Of course it would also involve choice of a possible Dos mode boot.

[rnoe71 0]

I am working on getting some games going with XP in my spare time. As for the Janes Longbow 2, it is working if you following the post... http://ntcompatible.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=136422#136422

[TheOutrider 0]

http://dosbox.sf.net/ is quite fine for old games, but it's kind of slow (about 486 performance on my Athlon XP2000).

Alternately, http://ntvdm.cjb.net/ makes many DOS games run in 2k or XP as well.