Playing old DOS games in Linux

Ard Righ · Posted: Sat Mar 01, 2003 8:48 am Post subject: Playing old DOS games in Linux

How do,

I am hoping someone here might be able to tell me if it is possible to emulate DOS in a Linux environment, just for playing old DOS classics (X-Wing and TIE Fighter).

They both require EMS memory to run (only 8MB really), and sound blaster support for sound.

Does anyone here know if Linux can emulate DOS with EMS memory for a start ? I know linux has filetype support and all that, but I am curious if anyone can get X-Wing or TIE Figher running under Linux

[edit]I just had a thought, would this maybe work under Wine or WineX ? [/edit]

TheMole · Posted: Sat Mar 01, 2003 9:42 am Post subject:

http://www.dosemu.org/

dunno if it supports EMS and so forth, and I'm afraid sound emulation isn't quite there yet, but it's worth a try. (And I do believe it's in portage, although I can't be sure, @ work ATM)
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nephros · Posted: Sat Mar 01, 2003 5:29 pm Post subject: why not run them natively?

I haven't checked with the games in question, but I have been able to run a bunch of old DOS classics using FreeDOS http://www.freedos.org/.

They offer a livecd, or you can install it on your hd and start tweaking CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT again.

I had it installed on my linux swap partition, as not to repartition my drive just for DOS. To get rid of it again, just mkswap /dev/foo again, and you have your swap back (in the meantime I went with a swap file under linux.)

There is also a MSDOS 6.22 bootdisk at http://www.bootdisk.com/, if you just need basic DOS and a CDROM driver.
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Ard Righ · Posted: Sat Mar 01, 2003 7:21 pm Post subject:

Great thanks. I will give DOSEmu a try first, since the docs do mention configuring EMS support. DOS boot disks are the last resort

gwydion · Posted: Sat Mar 01, 2003 7:37 pm Post subject:

might I request/suggest that you post your results? I'd like to run some of my old games for kicks as well (Duke Nukem and King's Quest come to mind) but I don't have time atm to fiddle with it too much. Some pointers on anything you find out would be greatly appreciated.
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Ard Righ · Posted: Sat Mar 01, 2003 8:29 pm Post subject:

Sure, if I get the games working, I'll post here how I did it

gwydion · Posted: Sun Mar 02, 2003 9:06 pm Post subject:

much obliged, danke

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nephros · Posted: Mon Mar 03, 2003 6:39 am Post subject:

There are also other alternatives using emulation:

For Sierra games, check out these two

http://freesci.linuxgames.com/index.shtml

ebuild

http://sarien.sourceforge.net/

For Lucasfilm/Lucasarts games, plus Simon the Sorcerer, look at

http://scummvm.sourceforge.net/

ebuild

EDITED: the original post said sarien had an ebuild. This is wrong, corrected.
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karl420 · Posted: Mon Mar 03, 2003 11:06 am Post subject:

speaking of old classics such as kings quest, etc (thanks nephros), does anyone know of a way to play the old zork's? zork 1 especially, the text only one. lol

nephros · Posted: Mon Mar 03, 2003 11:23 am Post subject:

SpoonMeiser · n00b Joined: 25 Sep 2002 Posts: 62

There's a masked e-build for dosbox in portage too, it aims to emulate a dos environmet especially for games. It's far from complete at the moment, but it does have some level of sound support, ems, xms etc.

It's worth giving it a go, although I couldn't get the speech in Return to Zork to play (the music worked fine) which was a little disappointing. I think this'll be a vital piece of software for every retro gamer once it's a little more mature.

Ard Righ · Posted: Sat Mar 08, 2003 1:38 am Post subject:

Just a note, I have been playing around with programs in Win2K/XP to get old DOS classics to work.

VDMSound is a very good package for doing just this, it's hosted on Sourceforge I believe. It can emulate Sound Blaster sound, and control the memory etc just like you would need.

BlastM · Posted: Sun Mar 09, 2003 7:01 am Post subject:

gwydion · Posted: Sun Mar 09, 2003 7:15 pm Post subject:

I probably should've been more specific when I mentioned duke nukem - I actually never got into the first/original one too much. I started out on duke 3d as far as "first person shooters" go. Looks like this thread took off - I can't wait to get home and try some of these programs out

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ReKleSS · n00b Joined: 10 Mar 2003 Posts: 17

Back to Zork 1,2,3, the undiscovered underground, zero, and whatever else (text mode), you need a Z-machine emulator. I can't recall any ATM, but look for the Interactive Fiction Archive. Look around, they're not that hard to find.
-ReK

Swishy · Guru Joined: 06 Jun 2002 Posts: 491 Location: NZ

relyt · Posted: Tue Mar 11, 2003 8:57 pm Post subject: