DOS emulators for windows 7. Running games and programs in the DOS environment

The DOSBox application is an emulator program that creates a DOS environment in order to be able to run old games, as well as programs running under the MS-DOS disk operating system. DOSBox can be used not only on Windows OS, but also on all other known operating systems, which makes this application cross-platform. At the same time, it is even possible to emulate DOS from under DOS itself, which indicates the complete versatility and wide capabilities of the program.

DOSBox can easily emulate a large number of video modes, up to SVGA. And here the program works with various sound sources, ranging from the popular Sound Blaster Pro to the rare MPU-401. In addition, emulation of a CD drive and even a modem is supported. In the program, it is possible to control the speed of the virtual processor, as well as the size of the virtual random access memory. It is also possible to stretch the image using special algorithms that can get rid of unnecessary pixels. The program supports OpenGL accelerators.

DOSBox, moreover, is distinguished by its performance, which directly depends on the settings used. The settings themselves can be set either interactively or by editing the configuration file. DOSBox also supports large number commands from the well-known command.com interpreter. In addition, virtual disk Z: contains some COM applications that communicate with the host system using Backdoor. This includes such special teams, like MEM, MOUNT, IMGMOUNT, CONFIG and others. The DOSBox application, which is typical of any emulator program, requires serious computer parameters, especially the processor.

DOSBox Features:

• Works on all known operating systems;
• Launching programs and games created using MS-DOS;
• Taking screenshots;
• Customizable toolbars;
• Ability to work on PocketPC.

This application is quite accessible, since it is possible to download DOSBox for free. This means that every user who decides to create a DOS shell on his modern computer in order to remember the past can quite safely use this quite functional application for Windows.

DOSBox is a computer emulator that creates the DOS environment necessary to run old games under MS-DOS. This allows you to play such games on operating systems that do not support or do not fully support DOS programs, and on modern computers, on which older programs may otherwise not work or work with errors.

DOSBox can be used to run other things software for DOS, but this feature works with restrictions.

The emulator has an open source and is available for operating systems such as Microsoft Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X, iOS, OS/2, BeOS, KolibriOS, Symbian OS, QNX, Android. Also, the Windows version with the help of HX DOS Extender runs under pure DOS - thus, DOS is emulated under DOS.

DOSBox Settings

The performance of the emulated system depends on the computer and the settings that are specified in the configuration file or entered by the user interactively. DOSBox supports limited quantity commands of the command interpreter COMMAND.COM. Also, on the Z: drive there are several special programs in the form of .COM applications communicating with the host system through the backdoor:

MOUNT - mounting local directories as disks (including CD-ROM) inside DOSBox;
MEM - displays the amount of free memory;
CONFIG - writing the configuration to a file;
LOADFIX - reduction in quantity available memory(for old programs that cannot work with large amounts of memory);
IMGMOUNT - mounting a disk image (CD-ROM) in DOSBox;
BOOT - launches a floppy or hard disk image regardless of the emulated DOSBox system (the ability to load another operating system);
IPX commands - resolution and operation of the IPX network.

IN currently DOSBox easily emulates all video modes up to 256-color SVGA (including non-standard), sound cards Sound Blaster Pro, Gravis Ultrasound, Adlib, PC Speaker, Tandy, Disney Sound Source and MPU-401 (General MIDI), modem, CD drives, EMS/XMS memory, and also allows you to independently set the speed of the virtual processor and the size of RAM .

Key Features of DOSBox

• DOSBox partially emulates operating environment MS-DOS, BIOS interrupt vectors and IBM PC hardware, without requiring an x86 processor or a copy of the original MS-DOS.
• Dynamic processor core:

On systems with the i386 instruction set, dynamic instruction translation is used. On systems that are not x86 compatible, full emulation is performed, resulting in significant slowdown. For example, a 1.6 GHz PowerPC G4-based system is capable of emulating a system with standard hardware and a 50 MHz 80486 processor; on x86-compatible systems, the same speed can be achieved with a much slower processor (for example, a Pentium II).

• Emulation file system— allows you to connect the host system folder as a guest system HDD, which is not available in any other PC emulator.
• Graphics emulation:

Text mode, Hercules, CGA (including composite and 160x100x16 modes), EGA, VGA (including Mode X), VESA and full S3 Trio 64 emulation; V unofficial builds also Glide (via a third-party emulator Glide2x.dll).

• Sound emulation:

Adlib, Computer Speaker, Tandy, Sound Blaster, Creative CMS/Game Blaster, Disney Soundsource, Gravis Ultrasound, MPU-401 and Innovation SSI-2001.

• Network emulation (allows you to play multiplayer games online):

Modem emulation via TCP/IP, IPX network tunneling. The Windows version supports direct serial port.

Disadvantages of DOSBox

Like all emulator programs, DOSBox requires significantly more powerful computer(especially the processor) than the emulated system. Additionally, Protected Mode support is still in its early stages of development, so DOS programs that run only in Protected Mode (which is most games released after 1995) may not run as well as other emulators like VMware or Virtual PC. On current version DOSBox's GP2X port makes even the simplest programs slow.

The disadvantage of DOSBox is the lack of LPT port emulation (with the ability to “map” to “live hardware”) - old programs with LPT keys (for example, CREDO) will not work on DOSBox. The MS-DOS environment and PC hardware are not fully emulated, so Microsoft Windows 95 and Microsoft Windows 98 under DOSBox are difficult to launch.

All DOSBox settings are applied via configuration file. Unlike many emulators, disks are mounted through the command line of the emulated environment - GUI is missing for this.

In any organization, it may turn out that when upgrading old computers to new ones, you may be faced with the fact that the computers are new, but the need to use old programs has not disappeared. And one of the old programs may well be some application written in the 90s under MS-DOS, which completely refuses to run on modern operating systems.

In this case, an MS-DOS emulator called DOSBox.

Download latest version, then install. No unusual steps are required when installing the program.

Now we are looking for what you need DOS programs u. Let's say it is located on disk D in folder Prog and is called Prog.exe. Go to this folder and create there text file with any name and extension conf. We write in it:

Mount c D:\Prog c: Prog.exe exit

mount c D:\Prog- mounts the D:\Prog folder in the emulator as a partition hard drive WITH;
c:- transitions to a section C hard drive;
Prog.exe- Launches the desired program. Instead of exe file there may also be files with the extension bat or pif.
exit- closes DOSBox after the program exits. Works ONLY with exe files.

If you need DOSBox to close after startup bat file ah, then instead easy start prog.bat we write:

Call prog.bat

Now let's create another text file with bat extension. We write in it:

Start "" "C:\Program Files (x86)\DOSBox-0.74\DOSBox.exe" -conf "D:\Prog\prog.conf"

Instead of "C:\Program Files (x86)\DOSBox-0.74" indicate the path where the DOSBox program was installed. Instead of D:\Prog indicate the path to the desired DOS program, and instead prog.conf indicate the name of the file created above.
We save and try to launch. If everything went well, a DOSBox window will appear in which the desired program will launch.

Adding support for displaying Russian language

However, the moment of triumph can be overshadowed complete absence Russian language - but this is a fixable matter.
First, download the official localization from the official website - then unpack the contents of the archive into the directory with the program. Now open the one created above conf file, and add the following at the very top:

language=russian.txt keyboardlayout=RU

Where "C:\Program Files (x86)\DOSBox-0.74\russian.txt" is the path to the russian.txt file unpacked into the program folder.

If the path to the russian.txt file contains spaces, be sure to close it in quotes, as in the example above. If there are no spaces in the path, quotes are not needed, and most likely DOSBox will not work correctly.

Save and try to run the program.

Russian characters are now displayed and printed.

Switching the language in DOSBox is done by simultaneously pressing left Alt and right Shift.

Finalization

If, when starting the program, you are confused by the second DOSBox window, which opens along with the main window, then you can add the parameter to the bat file -noconsole, as a result, the bat file to be launched will take the following form:

Start "" "C:\Program Files (x86)\DOSBox-0.74\DOSBox.exe" -conf "D:\Prog\prog.conf" -noconsole

Despite significant progress over the past few years, and the release of versions of the CREDO complex programs for Windows, various reasons Often you have to use “outdated” versions of the complex programs written to work in MS-DOS.

We’ll try to figure out how to optimize their work and generally launch them under new ones. Windows versions old geodetic programs (not only “CREDO”).

So, Microsoft Corporation, by hook or by crook, is getting rid of MS-DOS as an outdated operating system, but despite this, it leaves the possibility of running programs in it using emulators. For Windows XP, the DOS emulator is the command line “cmd.exe”:

1. Launching programs of the “Credo” complex under Windows XP

For those who are familiar with the MS-DOS operating system, work in a team windows line almost no different from working in real life operating system MS-DOS. The peculiarities here are that the configuration files config.sys and autoexec.bat are located in the following path: “c:\windows\system32” and have a *.nt extension. Here the path “c:\windows\” is the path where Windows XP is installed.

The first thing you need to do after installing CREDO programs is to check the properties executable file credo.exe for this in any convenient way file manager open the file properties (Alt+Enter, or context menu“properties” file) and check each tab in turn, the settings in them should correspond to these:

Next stage. In the “c:\windows\system32” folder we find the Autoexec.nt and config.nt files. Add or correct the following lines to config.nt:

DOS=HIGH, UMB

DEVICE=%SYSTEMROOT%\SYSTEM32\HIMEM.SYS

FILES=40

DEVICE=%SYSTEMROOT%\SYSTEM32\grddos.sys

To prevent “krakozyabry” from being displayed on the screen at startup, we will add support for the Russian language in the DOS emulator. I use wonderful. Copy the “vrun.com” file to the c:\windows\system32\ folder and add automatic launch by writing “autoexec.nt” in the file:

VRUN.COM

In addition, the following lines must be active (not commented out) in “autoexec.nt”:

lh %SystemRoot%\system32\redir
lh %SystemRoot%\system32\dosx

Everything is ready, you can work!

2. Launching programs of the “Credo” complex under Windows 7

At the moment, unfortunately, I have not discovered a human way to do this without using inhumane methods. Thus, I will describe an inhumane method, for which you will need to download and install the DOS emulator program “”, currently it has grown to version 0.74. This method is also suitable for launching programs of the “Credo” complex under Windows XP.

So, point by point:

1. Install DosBox on Windows 7

When you start the emulator, you will see a window that closely resembles an MS-DOS window. Almost all commands and programs written for this operating system are supported.

During a bare start dosbox, you will see only one “Z” disk in it. To work, you need to connect another drive, or working folder. There are no restrictions on this, any path on your real computer (for example, "c:\work") for convenience, can be connected as a disk (for example, "D"). And the path where the software package is located CREDO, - for example, like a disk "C". In the future, you can use the settings dosbox Make the mounting procedure automatic every time you start.

2. Installation virtual disks in the emulator dosbox.

— mount the directory with the program: “ mount c c:\credo_dat»

- mount the working folder of projects credo " mount d d:\work»

3. Russification of CREDO.

When you first launch credo, you will most likely see “krakozyabry” - menus that should be in Russian are unreadable. The reason lies in the lack of support for Russian encoding in text output. In order for the Russian language to be displayed normally in credo, you need to download a localization program for DOS. For example, a wonderful small

We copy it to the folder with credo and launch it from there.

4. Let's do it active folder, in which our future credo dos project will be created:

— « cd d:\work\project»

It should look something like this:

5. Launch the program credo:

— « c:\credo.exe»

Voila! We're working! There are several subtleties in this type of work with credo V windows 7 Perhaps I’ll write about them later.

You can also configure all the actions that I described above -