WINE version 1.0 was announced today, and this got me thinking maybe I could run some of the old games I used to play some 15 years ago. Well, at that time, Windows wasn't needed at all, so I turned to another great project: DOSBox, an excellent MS-DOS emulator, focusing primarily on games.

So I had to dig out some old games then. Doom seemed like a natural first choice, and after a bit of shifting through various groups, it ran fine. In fact, below you can see a screenshot of Doom, Doom II and Hero's Quest all running at the same time under Fedora 9.

Installation

yum install dosbox

Today, this gave me dosbox.i386 0.72-4.fc9.

Configuration

* Start up by simply typing: dosbox
* In the DOS-terminal, type: CONFIG -writeconf dosbox.conf
* Exit the terminal by typing "exit"
* You will now find the file dosbox.conf in your current directory.
* Move and rename this file: mv dosbox.conf ~/.dosboxrc
* Next time you start DOSBox, it should say: "CONFIG:Loading primary settings from config file /home/username/.dosboxrc"

Sound

On the initial start up, DOSBox gave the following error messages, which many people have reported:

MIXER:Can't open audio: No available audio device , running in nosound mode.
ALSA:Can't subscribe to MIDI port (65:0) nor (17:0)

To start with the last issue, the MIDI port. This was easily fixed by updating the midi-section in the .doxboxrc config file created above. Theses settings works for my onboard "VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8233/A/8235/8237 AC97 Audio Controller"

[midi]
mpu401=intelligent
device=alsa
config=128:0

The second issue required the PulseAudio server to be started. Simply typing pulseaudio will take care of that. You can verify that it is working correctly by runnging paplay /usr/share/sounds/generic.wav, and you should hear a small sound.

After this DOSBox reported no more errors, and would play both MIDI and sound effects. For some games, you need to "install.exe"/"setup.exe" to set the sound properties. Make sure the IRQ, DMA and port settings match the settings in your .dosboxrc. (Had you also almost forgotten your favourite IRQ/DMA setting? :D )