A few tips for DOSBox and real DOS.

[Dragon Mech]

hi everyone.
i have a few tips that might help ease the use of DOSBox and computers(with hard drives) that use PC/MS-DOS and FreeDOS.

1st tip. Long File Names (or LFN for short).
i have found a TSR (Terminate and STAY Resident program) that enables the display and use of long file names in both DOSBox and DOS. you can download it from FreeDOS's website. here is the url:

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http://www.freedos.org/software/?prog=doslfn

this program only uses about 12kb of memory and should be started from your autoexec.bat.
to use this program in DOSBox here is what you will need to do:
1: download doslfn and decompress doslfn to its own folder named "doslfn". then place the doslfn folder in to the primary folder that you use within dosbox (this is assuming that you haven't setup a HDD image for dosbox).
2: go to your DOSBox folder and open "DOSBox 0.74 Options.bat". this will open the configuration file for dosbox.
3: go all the way to the bottom of the configuration file. you should see a section at the bottom labled "autoexec".
4: add the command to load doslfn to the autoexec section. (example "C:\doslfn\doslfn.com ).
and thats it. you could also manually load doslfn each time you wanted to use it in dosbox.

2nd tip: Batch (.bat) files.
.bat files can make using DOSBox and DOS a lot easier in the long run rather than changing directories all of the time. and it's very easy to make .bat files.
all you need is a text editer program like Windows Notepad or MS-DOS's Edit. do not use a word processing program like word perfect, microsoft word or wordpad. as these programs insert text characters that DOS dosen't reconize and they can't save to the .bat format (even if you rename the file to".bat").
here is an example of a .bat file that loads quake.exe

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cd\games\quake
quake.exe
cd...


you can see that this is a very simple .bat file. it switches to the games\quake directory (a lot of DOS programs require being run from there home directory instead of using C:\.....\.exe/com), runs quake and after the user exits quake, returns to the C:\ directory.
you can also use .bat files to run programs with certain parameters without the need to type the parameters everytime you want to use them.
for example, here is a .bat file that runs quake with the Aliens mod.

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cd\games\quake
quake.exe -game aliens
cd...


now the user can load the Aliens mod for quake when ever they want without having to try to remember the parameter or keep looking the parameter up each time they want to play Alien Quake.
thats all the tips i have for now. if anyone wants to share ther tips for working with DOSBox and real DOS. please feel free to do so.

[Fogsight]

Hi from me too...

Since I ran into this thread and have recently set up a dos pc from scratch (using an old Celeron-driven PC which I have pimped up with freedos) I thought I could share some of my newly re-discovered wisdom...

Many nice games for dos came out as CDROMS, and until recently the only way to play them was to burn CDs outright. There is however, a possibility to mount ISO Images with freedos, discarding the need for physical media, and outperforming every cd drive provided you have a faster cpu than a PII.

There is a catch though... Only .iso Images are supported, and older CDs with mixed data/audio tracks cannot be converted into isos, These Images can only work if they are burned on CD. There is no workaround for this to my knowledge. (to be clear, we are NOT talking about dosbox, but native msdos or freedos)

So, how to do it? There is a small program that comes with freedos (but you can also download the latest version at

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http://www.oocities.org/jadoxa/shsucdx/

)
Meet shsucdhd. This serves as a replacement for mscdex, but has more advanced functionality. Also you need shsucdx, which is part of the same package.

So, I will tell you how I did it.

First, I put all my isos into one Directory, and both shsucdhd and shsucdx. Let´s say that I want to mount an Image called dune_cd.iso

Now I type: shsucdhd /f:dune_cd.iso That should have mounted the image.

Now, we have to assign a drive letter to the image:

shsucdx /d:shsu-cdh /I That should have assigned a drive letter, in most cases E:

The Switch /I is neccessary, because else dos will bitch around, saying that there is already a resident copy in memory.
So, now you can access the contents of the ISO like a normal CD , and install the game...

As the post above stated, batch files are your best friend if you don´t want to type all this stuff everytime you want to start a game...

An example dunecd.bat from my setup would be: (provided the file is stored in the rootdir)

cd games\iso (Of course, you would point to your iso directory)
shsucdhd /f:dune_cd.iso
shsucdx /d:shsu-cdh /I
cd\
cd games\dune (The directory you have installed your game)
dune

So now you can run the game from the c:>-prompt by just typing dune.

I hope I could help a Little with this tip, as there are no really good tutorials for beginners I have seen on the web, and I think this in an awesome feature with freedos...

Take care!