2 EASY ways to use DOSBOX to load old Programs & Games! (with CD-ROM support)

[@DOSStorm]

Hey guys! I have an updated video with some more detailed instructions for using CD-ROMs and images using DOSbox-X which you may find more straightforward. Check that out here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/gmOuk3hmpa-VpLM ALSO, if you need any help hit me up in the comments and I will try my best to assist!

[@CYON4D]

Nice tips for newbies. Setting up DOSBOX is really easy but most people get confused when they see people typing commands :)

[@HawkGTboy]

It never fails with videos like this: I skip to the halfway point and that's where the actual information starts.

[@plzletmebefrank]

Thanks, I've been messing with getting abandonware games running and one of my older brothers asked if I could do some DOS era games when I asked if there was anything he might want or want to let his kids play. I think putting everything on a thumb drive and having shortcuts and game files on there for easy parental management (you know, the drive has to be in to play the games) should work beautifully.

[@DOSStorm]

That is an excellent idea. I hope they fun playing some Commander Keen!

[@marccaselle8108]

I am actually making a flash drive with dosbox and games on it. Once I got the syntax correct, all was good.

[@marccaselle8108]

If you have a iso or cue bin image of a game you can mount that also by typing IMGMOUNT D path to game.iso -t Iso

[@painter194]

Oh my gosh, I feel so stupid. Just drag and drop. I don’t know why I never thought of that. I spent so much time watching tutorials yesterday trying to set this up. I almost gave up. I took one more shot down the rabbit hole watching tutorials and I found your video. I can’t thank you enough!

[@DOSStorm]

It CAN be really easy right?! Glad my video could help you out.

[@wp2312]

I recently downloaded Wizardry 1 and dosbox, and thought I had to do some elaborate commands in dosbox, but all I had to do was, as you showed, hover one of the files (in this case 'wizdos') over dosbox. Seriously, THANK YOU, I almost gave up! 😂

[@lutello3012]

Back in the day my family used Fifth Generation Systems' Direct Access 5.

[@marccaselle8108]

I discovered direct access in 2017 and it's pretty awesome. 🙂

[@DOSStorm]

Some of those weird pre-windows GUI environments are pretty interesting! I would love to check more of them out.

[@BUDA20]

DOSBOX Pure (retroarch) can open games in zip files, with all the functionality, and the eXoDOS V5 collection has pretty much all DOS games already installed in zip files (I recommend instead of downloading all the collection, choose what parts of the torrent to download)

[@LeeM-ip1jy]

Omg sky roads and captain comic!! I remember playing those on a blue disk called game empire. Most were demos but takes me way back..

[@BohdanS15]

It was super helpful for me. Thank you very much dude.

[@sparki_]

i don't know why people are so command-phobic it is really easy to use, it is not a whole operating system that you have to memo a lot of commands for, you can just memo 3 commands or smt and you're done with it 😁 thanks for this tutorial, hope it helps more people

[@maxmuster7003]

I like to make special batch files to create new external commands for Dosbox, example a new color command, from a routine inside the batch file with a little help from debug external command. The COLOR.BAT have to start with a color attached. From the command line C:\>COLOR.BAT 1b or from a batch file with a call command.

[@Creative9-URG]

Good information...! Thank you...!

[@elsenior8110]

Thanks a lot. very helpful video. Im replaying all my childhood games and I remember had all these msdos games on my old pc but i didnt knew how to play them

[@maxmuster7003]

I am on an Android tablet with the Magic DosBox free app installed from google play. I figure it out that this verison starts within the 16 Bit Big Real Mode with segment size of 4 gb for DS ES FS GS segment register, but not for CS and SS segment register with ems=true in config. This is a nice feature for drawing into the linear framebuffer located for svga-S3 emulation at address C0000000 in the 4th giga byte. Using the official version of DosBox i have to switch into this Big mode with ems=false before i can write and access addresses above the first mega byte. I am a hobby programmer.

[@roastinNAVY]

I’m going to school for my BSEET, and my microprocessors class has us use DOSBOX for creating programs. I’m learning assembly and machine code, but it can be tricky.

[@comesect]

Lol nice storage space screen shot...I'm about at that point🎉

[@shawnnettle384]

thanks for the how-to vid

[@MrMike6519]

Awesome, cheers mate!

[@macmac4050]

wow thank you

[@ModernRetroGuy]

Thank you

[@Airelon]

Thank you for this video. Before watching this I was trying to write batch files to do things. That options app made my life so much easier. I'm working on a WIndows 311 Dosbox that can be ran from anywhere inside my network. One thing to add that took me a minute to find online was mounting floppies. imgmount a [directory of .img] -t floppy

[@OldNerdPlayingOldPCGames]

Great video 👍

[@TheBloodyriot]

Awesome video! Really quick, what was that game from 1:53-2:00? Seeing that short clip triggered a memory of playing it

[@DOSStorm]

Thanks! The game is called Captain Comic.

[@TheBloodyriot]

@@DOSStorm cheers!

[@DisarrangedKing]

thank you:)

[@ultimategamer2669]

I dragged and dropped Duke Nukem 3D and it worked just fine. I'm pretty sure that's a cdrom game. I guess DOSBOX doesn't need you to type any commands to run games now.

[@jeffyp2483]

great video! i dont think ive used ampshell. i have used for many years d-fend reloaded. it has a nice feature (maybe amp shell has it also) you can use to make a shortcut for any/all the programs youve setup in the front end on your desktop that you can then copy or move where you want it, or leave it on the desktop. d-fend reloaded comes with dosbox, and im pretty sure there is a facility to use a version other than the one included. i havent messed with it though.

[@DOSStorm]

That is interesting. Yeah D-fend is a good one too, a breakdown of DOSbox frontends could be an entire video really there are quite a few of them.

[@taagoallas3336]

Thank You so much!

[@buzzradio1]

Tried doing the shortcut, didn't work. Copied and paste the dos game exe location, dosbox just won't execute the game. :(

[@billkeithchannel]

I got my android 7 to recognize my USB floppy drive but having a heck of a time finding the actual directory name to put into DOSBox (using FreeBox) to mount it.

[@DOSStorm]

Android does put things in odd locations. It might be under an "emulated" storage path? There actually is an LGR about using a smartphone with a floppy drive, maybe that can help you figure it out?

[@billkeithchannel]

@@DOSStorm I figured out a weird trick to get the actual path name. I am using one of the MAME apps .139u1 to reset the ROM folder and it gives me root access to browse the filesystem. Each time you put a floppy in the drive (not plug in the USB) it generates an 8 character name with hyphen in the middle. So I get the name and close out of the app without setting the default directory then go back to DOS. Annoying but it worked. I fired up a 1990 Jack Nicholas Golf Sony Edition demo diskette and it worked fine. Also, is the only way to get access to the arrow keys by plugging in a USB keyboard? They are not in any menus to choose them. I fired up DR.COM and it worked but no arrow keys to scroll down the file list.

[@Lita1]

👍

[@yarsftks]

Thank you. This was very helpful. Sad part is, i still can't run Xmen COTA for PC, 😞

[@DOSStorm]

Maybe you could try the PS1 version in an emulator?

[@RonPrieston]

Hi how are you? Good video. Question. If I am installing a Windows 95 game one CD, what or how would I do that? I am using Windows XP Pro, I have DOSBox working it mounts downloaded games, but I can't get the CD versions to work, I prefer them as the music is CD quality and not MIDI. Any advice?

[@austinblack7991]

It doesn’t work for me it keeps saying drive letters of multiple cdroms have to be continuous what does that mean?

[@DOSStorm]

What letter are you assigning to the CDROM? If you mount more than one CDROM they have to be in the same alphabetical sequence. Try to use D if you can.

[@austinblack7991]

What does it mean by please remove writing protection in dos box? It won’t let me play nam and ww2 gi on my disc copy’s of the games

[@DOSStorm]

@@austinblack7991 Did you copy them from the the disc? They are probably marked as read-only in Windows. Select all the files in the folder in windows, right click to enter the properties(you might have to click show more options on Win 11) and uncheck the read-only box.

[@austinblack7991]

No I’m using a old latitude e64000 laptop with a built in disk drive that’s running windows 7 plus I’m trying to play the game in dosbox directly from The disk

[@OfficialTheMan]

i know this video is old but can someone help me i'm trying to play the terminator rampage and every time i click intall it says can only boot from floppy i don't have a floppy

[@stevenmedina4512]

Does the doom gurus CD that came with the book, can dos box run old program exe files, I'm trying to use dosbox to make doom wads with running the cd

[@Architect222]

You couldve specified windows only.

[@zengseng1234]

“Except games that use a CD” *gets disappointed and started to click off video* oh wait, there’s more!

[@DOSStorm]

I wouldn't leave you hanging like that! lol

[@animelife6476]

Hew said Mount huh huh huh

[@lukew3528]

My laptop registers the game, I've tried to drag and drop my dvd rw drive into the dosbox, it says it's mounted but it's stuck on "C:\>" and the game won't load. How can i fix it?

[@DOSStorm]

Do you know what drive letter is assigned to the CDROM inside of DOSbox? You can use the cd command to switch directories. Type cd then the drive letter. If the CDROM was mounted to D:\ you would need to type "cd d:\" to access the drive.

[@dennisguilder1]

Hey what was the racing game at beginning of video you drug and dropped in dosbox?? Been lookin for it

[@DOSStorm]

Skyroads!

[@dianablue9609]

The drag an drop isnt working for me, nor the command way, I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong?

[@DOSStorm]

@@dianablue9609 What game is it? Are you sure it's a DOS game?

[@eapleitez]

I use DBGL. Launches DosBox and ScummVM with a GUI

[@MetalVania]

What about for iMac computers and for Mac laptops?. Because the program you use with dosbox which is called boxer. Well It hasn't been updated since Maybe 2016. Which means I cant use boxer. I know dos was for windows computers. But there's been ways to play them on Macs in the past.

[@DOSStorm]

I've been meaning to do an updated video for loading DOS games. I'd have to do more research on DOSbox frontends for Mac, but I would try DOSbox-X. With DOSbox-X all you need to do is load it up and there should be a "quick launch program" option in the main menu you can use to load games quickly. You can also mount CDs and other drives using a GUI, which is much easier than using the OG DOSbox.

[@Mommy_Paladin]

How do I setup a virtual CDrom? I haven't had a computer with an actual CD ROM in over 20 years 😂

[@DOSStorm]

Sorry for the late response! It depends on the format. If it's an ISO file you can right click and hit mount within Windows. If it's a BIN or IMG file I've used a free program called "Virtual CloneDrive" that works pretty well.

[@tofublock3019]

Hey I don't know if you're still active, but do you know why I can't type in terminal? All of the videos I've seen so far have a little blue interface on startup, but I don't see that at all. Any ideas?

[@DOSStorm]

Thats odd. What version of DOSbox are you using? Have you tried reinstalling it?

[@elenamunro5720]

I am so so so lost on this - I've tried the drag and drop method using ISO files, and it jsut... won't run. I've tried front ends, I've tried commands based on reddit comments, have you got any suggestions?

[@DOSStorm]

I'm actually working on an updated video about DOSBOX-X which is an improved version of DOSBOX that maybe you should look into. It allows you to mount drives, ISO images, and load DOS programs using a GUI, which you may find easier.

[@elenamunro5720]

@@DOSStorm oh thank you!! I’ll keep an eye out, your presentation style is so wonderful and even though I’m not very good at this kind of thing, it was still so fun to watch and try to get my games working with your guidance!

[@danielluisi1532]

Hi everyone! Nice video. A have a question: do you know how to open the "on-screen keyboard" pressing one key on the keyboard? Because I played Prehistorik 2, but I can't enter the password because Dosbox redefined all the keys, thanks!

[@DOSStorm]

I'm not really sure I've never messed with the onscreen keyboard. Might try hitting up the r/DOSBOX sub.

[@mintytruffle69]

So with the the cd rom part after you do that how do you get the game to start?

[@DOSStorm]

If the mount command for the CD-ROM is in the autoexec it should mount anytime DOSbox is loaded. So you should just be able to drag and drop the game exe into DOSbox after that.

[@Katdinsdale]

I’m running into an issue when I drag and drop the set up icon into DOS box it just tells me this program must be run under one knows 32 what is this mean is there a way to get around this?

[@DOSStorm]

What is the program you are trying to run? Are you sure its a DOS program?

[@SxGaming3390]

Sorry man I don't get the Virtual CD Drive thing. I don't have a physical one. Any help?

[@DOSStorm]

If you don't have a real CD you will need to use a CD image. You can find CD images for games on archive.org and they will usually have a .iso extension. If you right click on an iso file in Windows it should give you an option to "mount" which will assign it a drive letter so that applications and programs will think its a real CD. If you have a computer laying around with a CD or DVD drive you can also make your own CD images from CDs you own using something like imgburn.

[@SxGaming3390]

@@DOSStorm Thanks!

[@gulagirlgulagirl4535]

so if my dvdrom drive is "F" then i would do like this? mount D F:\ -t cdrom ? and to install game from rom then CD F:( enter ) then type install?

[@DOSStorm]

In that case your CD-ROM will show up in DOSbox as D:\ The letter after the mount command is just basically what the drive will show up as inside of DOSbox. I used "D" because most older games expect the CDROM drive letter to be D or E.

[@gulagirlgulagirl4535]

@@DOSStorm hmmmm.....still a bit confused but thanks anyway!

[@Daniel_H01]

hmm when i try drag and drop the exe from the disc folder, it says invalid command. and idea why? trying to load tonka search and rescue disc.

[@DOSStorm]

I think that is a Windows 3.1 game. You might want to look into OTVDM instead which will allow you to run 16 bit windows programs. I have a video on that as well if you're interested.

[@Daniel_H01]

@@DOSStorm Awesome. I did get it working with PCem and a bootable Windows 98 on it lol. I just made an ISO and uploaded it to PCem. It was nostalgic to see and play again for a bit.

[@DOSStorm]

@@Daniel_H01 Yeah that works! There is a DOSbox package version of Windows 3.1 on Archive.org that works pretty well for this too.

[@Daniel_H01]

@@DOSStorm Oh awesome. I'll look into that too.

[@paperinnards]

would

[@MrMike6519]

Hello, Does Ampshell work Portable Dosbox??? Cheers!

[@DOSStorm]

Yes I think it does. There is a portablepack on the github page for Ampshell that has everything setup to run self contained.

[@khoff2029]

How do you find what the virtual drive is

[@DOSStorm]

It can be whatever you want, it's just what DOSbox identifies it as.

[@BradPitBrasileiro]

Muito obrigado +69 likes

[@DOSStorm]

Nice! Thanks!

[@tonycoffee7335]

Where does one find dos games these days?

[@DOSStorm]

You can lots of them at dosgames.com/

[@tonycoffee7335]

@@DOSStorm thanks, good video.

[@jakublajda7434]

dosbox is the worst thing to open old files, please never install this thing, it does not work.

[@DOSStorm]

What are you trying to run? It's pretty much 100% compatible if it is a DOS application.

[@knowmercy4you]

i cant drag dune2 onto dosbox :/