Upcycle your old laptop as a DOSBox gaming PC

[@BumbleBeeTF]

This is the best tutorial i've found on DosBox. I was clueless until I found this video. Thank You!!!!

[@BytesNBits]

Glad it helped!

[@robertcraane7910]

I have a charity for cheap PC solutions for children in the Philippines. Old office PC's and laptops which we diregard after 5 or 6 years. But in other parts of the world kids are so happy with this old hardware! I always install Lubuntu, RetroArch and Dosbox. If I got a pallet full of PC's I sendf them to there. This year we hope to send out about 5 to 600 PCs. I encourage people to look into their own environment. A lot of companies have so much wasted stuff!

[@BytesNBits]

That sounds like a fantastic project. If you let me have some details I'll put out a video to see if anyone has some spare machines they can send to you - if that would be of use! Great to see perfectly working machines being used to bring joy to others.

[@terrydaktyllus1320]

Thank you for the work that you do, I am passionate about improving IT skills in youngsters and the older generations. I buy, repair and refurbish old IBM and Lenovo Thinkpads for my own personal collection and I've run free "Silver Surfers Clubs" to help older people keep safe on the Internet. I despise, with a passion, how Microsoft and Apple constantly force hardware upgrades onto people just to fill their own coffers, I personally stopped using Windows at Windows 7 and have gone nowhere near the utterly loathsome Windows 10. (Unfortunately the wife uses all Apple stuff but I am working on that). Fortunately, I've used Linux since 1996 (UNIX for a bit longer) and it has been my main OS since 2003 - apart from a few MS-DOS, Windows 95 through Windows XP laptops, everything else I have runs Linux - even down to a lowly Thinkpad T22 with 512MB RAM and a 700 MHz Pentium III CPU. I have done some charity work in the "recycling chain" to get PCs ready to ship overseas (usually to Africa) and during lock down here in the UK, three parents of kids in my road asked if I could sell them a cheap laptop for their kids to use because they didn't have a PC in the home for them to work remotely from school and their existing phones and tablets weren't good enough. I ended up sticking Ubuntu on three dual core laptops that I had and just gave them away - all three of them were very pleased with them. I've worked as a techie in telecoms, IT and cyber-security now for 40 years and I started at day release college back in 1982 doing machine code programming on 8-bit 1 MHz Z80 CPUs that ultimately went "mainstream" in ZX Spectrum computers. I've therefore always appreciate what power there is in even a 40 year old CPU and you can always find something for any piece of hardware to do - especially in these days of the Internet where you will usually come across another hobbyist that has already done what you want to do. It's utterly tragic how much landfill we create from all of this old hardware and people have just lost themselves in these completely corporate-driven upgrade cycles.

[@BytesNBits]

@@terrydaktyllus1320 Hi Terry. I totally agree that these machines deserve to be used. These lite versions of Linux really show how much computing power is being wasted in modern OSes that can be put to useful processing. I know there are some areas that need the full power but for many people office apps and web browsing are all they need.

[@robertcraane7910]

@@BytesNBits Thanks! That would be so helpful! I am planning on filming for a YT channel. If I go to The Philippines next time I will shoot a documentary on how our stuff is being used. Imagine, there must be millions of old computers out here, that would make good use in the Third World. I know a lot of kids over there now. I am more or less retired, so I can spend all my time getting children over there to start gaming, and even coding. I teach Basic programming, and C. Lots of kids now wanna become devs, hahaha... Maybe we can start a new Sillicon Valley in The Phillipines! But seriously, in every country there can be initiatives like this. I urge people to look around to find possibilities to start their own charities like this. It is needed and it works!

[@terrydaktyllus1320]

@@BytesNBits I work from home most of the time and in my Linux security role I write quite a few shell scripts to run on customer systems. If I am having a full day of writing scripts, I force myself to use my Thinkpad T22 from about 2004-ish with its Pentium III 700 MHz Pentium III CPU and 512MB RAM. I can happily edit scripts in vim whilst playing music in the background on a console music player and have an email and IRC client open too. I can also open a text browser to do basic web stuff. I actually enjoy working on it because it is completely distraction-free and it serves as a good reminder that you don't need huge amounts of power to get work (and entertainment) done.

[@DevilsReject765]

Very cool stuff thanks for the post My friend 😊😊

[@BytesNBits]

No problem 👍

[@Pickle136]

i prefer dosbox ece. Its actively getting development and has 2 key features i love: mt32 emulation and fluidsynth. Meaning i can use mt32 for the early games that only sound correct with it and fluidsynth gives access to any SF2 soundfont for general midi. Tie fighter with Timbres of Heaven come to mind. also now that you have linux you also are open to other computer/console emulation.

[@BytesNBits]

Thanks for the tips. I'd not come across this. Looks to be a big improvement.

[@DouglasTitchmarsh]

2 good runs there

[@TSteffi]

Another good (maybe better) linux for a base system would be Puppy Linux, specifically the Bionic 32bit version. It uses only ~100MB of RAM out of the box, a few 100M of storage and runs very snappy even on my old Atom Netbook. It detected everything fine including the WiFi. Only thing a little tricky is updating the repository listings, that is hidden in the settings menu of the package manager. But once that is done, installing packages works just fine.

[@BytesNBits]

Hi. Thanks for the tip. I did look at Puppy Linux among a couple of other light distros but settled on Lubuntu, probably because it seemed closer to Ubuntu than any technical reason :) I think most of them would work well, and for really low powered machines your choice would definitely be better.

[@p3t3mit]

​@@BytesNBits I did this exact thing on Puppy Linux. It took me so much fiddling, but seemed to work really well. Puppy was cool because you could set it up in a sort of kiosk mode where any changes you make in the OS won't persist from reboot to reboot. Kind of handy if you just want a machine to emulate DOS and nothing else. Thanks for the video.

[@georgemaragos2378]

Hi, I also have a HP5102 mini pc that is similar specs. I have installed linux puppy, and it its apps store is dos box ( or it is called dos box pet ) You can installed linux puppy on a usb stick and test it - i have used versions as low as 3 on Pentium D and Pentium M and Atoms processors and as late as 6 on core 2 or newer - they all are very stable and run fast Most times it even picks up all the wifi and lan card drivers Another option is to use the X86 Rasbian ( raspbery Pi variation of linux ) image to get the full linux on the older PC/Laptop, then add dos box The above is is the only method that works in using the modern pc's windows based sound chip ( mainly AC97 type sound chips ) to reproduce sound blaster type sound

[@ksp1278]

Yes, this is certainly a better way to go than directly using DOS on hardware for which there are no drivers. What I did though was bought a Toshiba 460CDT laptop from ebay. It has a built-in Soundblaster compatible soundcard. But, since that got me hooked on DOS games, I have since bought a desktop PC on ebay with Pentium MMX. For ultimate compatibility, performance, and accuracy that's the way to go I think (if cost isn't a primary concern of course). But DOSBox is certainly an excellent way to utilise newer hardware and avoiding the reliability problems that can come with using aging hardware.

[@BytesNBits]

Hi. Thanks for the comments and tips. The driver problem really is an issue for newer obsolete hardware. Great you found some original hardware to use with DOS.

[@thecloudtherapist]

I'd love to get Privateer 2: The Darkening and the Blade Runner PC game to work again. Miss those sooo much!

[@BytesNBits]

Give them a go! The software is out there.

[@joshallen128]

Both are on gog but I find at the moment to use virtual machine virtual box to get old games working

[@BytesNBits]

@@joshallen128 Hi. That's a good solution. Have you tried running DosBox directly on your PC. It will give you better performance and almost as good compatibility with games.

[@joshallen128]

@@BytesNBits that's for dos based games but for windows only games usually it's either wine otvdm or virtual box with XP or I'm trying out with reactos with it's compatibility

[@BytesNBits]

@@joshallen128 Sounds good.

[@maxmuster7003]

I like to make a game menu with a batch file like GAME.BAT using the choice command checking the errorlevel highest first. We can put the change directory commands and the game.exe of all games inside the batch file. (I use the choice command from the FREEDOS operating system.)

[@BytesNBits]

Thanks for the tip.

[@fundude53]

great video as always one question the intro video it looks like you was playing a version of starship commander i thought it had only come out on the bbc can u tell me what the pc version was called

[@BytesNBits]

The intro is a video of a game in one of my coding courses - Space Commander. It's coded in a package called TIC80. I don't know of an actual PC version.

[@maxmuster7003]

We can put the the path and the file name of our executable (like our batch file, or game.exe) into the [autoexec] section of the config file after the mount command too. Example: (DOSBox on android): [autoexec] mount c: "/storage/emulated/0/BATCH" c: Menue.bat

[@BytesNBits]

Thanks for the tips. How do you get multiple game choices to display so the user can see what they are selecting?

[@maxmuster7003]

@@BytesNBits echo 1 Batch files echo 2 Edit echo 3 Qbasic echo 4 Pictview echo 5 Norton Commander echo 6 Exit choice /c:123456 Press number. REM check errorlevel in reverse order if errorlevel = 6 goto END if errorlevel = 5 goto NC if errorlevel = 4 goto BILD if errorlevel = 3 goto BASIC if errorlevel = 2 goto EDIT if errorlevel = 1 goto BATCH

[@BytesNBits]

@@maxmuster7003 Thanks for that. I'll have a go.

[@maxmuster7003]

@@BytesNBits It need some jump label like *:GAME1* or *:END* for the goto command and a new line for the next commands to execute. If we want to use sub menus we can call some other batch file from the first batch file, if the first batch menu have genre like jump&run, shooter, adventure to switch to a second menu and maybe back to the first one if we want.

[@maxmuster7003]

Personaly i am a hobby programmer and not a DOS gamer. Most times i write tiny executable com files using the assembly programming language. And i put all assembler instructions into batch files, because batch files are easy to copy&paste and suitable to contain the open source code of a tiny routine. All other executable are not easy to copy&paste, because not all values of a bytes are visible as an ASCII. In DOSBox we have a DOS PC with a 32 bit CPU, RAM, BIOS-ROM of the mainboard and BIOS-ROM of the graphic card, keyboard controller, timer chip, sound card, pc speaker, DOS and Bios-Software interrupts, enviroment variables, mouse driver and a lot more that we can use.

[@zebunker]

Wrong information on copyright laws regarding old media, but otherwise fine video. Should be two videos one for installing linux and other for DOS game stuff. Especially when 99.995% of users use windows.

[@BytesNBits]

Hi. Thanks for the comments. Please let me know what I got wrong on the copyright side so I get it correct next time. I did make an earlier video on using Linux to improve the performance of this laptop and turn it into a development machine. I think the Linux installation was covered in more detail there.

[@moshesabovich9362]

I have an Intel atom, 1gb ram, 16gb SSD and it runs win7 lite very well, you can install XP with DOSBOX on installed, for some reason my laptop does not run linux well at all, to slow even when i use a 32bit os on that 64bit hardware!

[@BytesNBits]

Hi. It can be a bit hit and miss with older hardware depending on driver support. Will DosBox run inside your Win7 installation?

[@moshesabovich9362]

@@BytesNBits I will try and let You know God willing!

[@moshesabovich9362]

@@BytesNBits What I don't like about Linux is that the fast distros such as Amtix n Pepprrmint give me a lot of trouble connecting to wifi and entering the password, they got the keyboard layout wrong n lubuntu is too heavy

[@PotatoImaginator]

Does it run Age of Empires 2 ? Or Star Craft : Brood War ? :)

[@BytesNBits]

Hi. I've not tried those games. You'll have to have a go.

[@Pickle136]

Both would need windows 9x, which is chore on dosbox. Better with PCEM, VirtualBox, Vmware.

[@joshallen128]

@@Pickle136 eh it's possible to do on dosbox but you need it to be incredibly fast cycles but I don't see the point if theres wine

[@andrewdupuis1151]

i have install DOSBox on windows 7 on old ASUS eb1033 only has 2 GB ram 320 GB hard drive however must dos games i brought from gog they seem run fine

[@BytesNBits]

Hi. It's amazing how low powered pre 2000 gaming machines were compared to today's PCs.

[@g.ausw.8049]

I´m using Batocera for Atom....less work....more FUN

[@BytesNBits]

Great use of the old laptop!

[@MarkWhich]

You don't try MS-DOS, you try FreeDOS, but yeah couldn't get much audio either.

[@BytesNBits]

Either route sound seems to be the big issue. Have a look at my SBEmu video. It's a Sound Blaster emulator that runs as a DOS driver. Not perfect but getting there.

[@crusader2.0_loading89]

Find one with a via chipset and you will have your sound in dos. You're welcome

[@BytesNBits]

Hi. Thanks for the tip.

[@umutkayacan7659]

why doesnt youtube send me my notifications?!?!?

[@BytesNBits]

Not sure. Maybe you need to unclick the notifications and then re apply. See you soon.

[@SolarLantern424]

There is emulation for soundcards in FreeDos now: kzbin.info/www/bejne/bHiuipamjdF6f68

[@BytesNBits]

Great. Thanks for the link. I'll have a look.

[@deejagers716]

why you say "gems"? :)

[@BytesNBits]

Not sure where I said that or why.

[@eric.lopes.l]

DosBox is different from dosbox-x.

[@BytesNBits]

Hi. Thanks for the heads up. I can see now that it's forked from DosBox rather than just a version of it. I picked it as it seemed to be the best for emulation. Are the two very different? I've used DosBox on another build and I didn't notice a difference.

[@eric.lopes.l]

@@BytesNBits DosBox-x can do things that DosBox can't. But for games, both are almost the same!

[@BytesNBits]

@@eric.lopes.l thanks. Dosbox-x it is then