First: I read through the stickies, though I admit not as well as I could have done.
I'm going to be building a new computer in a few months, and I'm remarkably angsty over which operating system to install (vista 32, 64, or xp). And I want to know if it will make a difference for playing older games. I own Arena, Daggerfall, and Battlespire. I'm particularly concerned about games like Redguard (which my boyfriend apparently owns somewhere) whose guides are specifically aimed at Windows XP.
Wait. Short version.
DOSbox will get any and all of these to run on any OS, right or wrong? If wrong, please tell me what I'm failing to understand. Also, are there any more headaches with any particular OS that I should consider?
Thanks in advance.

I think DOSBox works with all of those OS:s, someone correct me if I'm wrong, and Arena, Daggerfall and Battlespire should therefore work fine. I know that redguard can be difficult to get to work on vista, the only way that I've found that works is http://www.glidos.net/ which you have to pay $10 for which off course isn't that much when you think about it. If you go with vista 64 however the installation files for redguard won't work but you can get around that by installing it before you upgrade and saving the folder on a USB or similar.

I have used DosBox on XP for for Arena, Daggerfall and Battlespire. XP will work fine if you have enough horsepower (mostly for Battlespire).

I have not upgraded to Vista yet, so no idea, but with some tweeking Vista should work. I have Redguard, but I haven't installed it under XP

( I used win98 the last time I played it).


JimC

Dosbox and any modern OS, as long as you got the horse power, pretty much. :shrug:
You might need Glidos, as Manveru Taur?n?r mentioned, for Redguard if you're using Vista. I'm not sure if it would run outside of Windows though.

Your best bet is to partition your system so you can boot multiple operating systems. DOSBox is a poor substitute for real DOS. If you install a partition with Windows 98, you should be able to run just about any DOS or Windows 9x software you would want in an environment very congenial to it.

DOSBox may be a poor substitute for real DOS, but at least it pretty much configures itself. I doubt the modern gamer is ready for the horrors of tweaking his autoexec.bat and config.sys to scraqe together enough conventional memory to run Arena.

DOS emulation is less efficient and more CPU-hogging than real DOS. You ought to, as they said, either partition a drive or get another computer and put DOS on.

If you want a more "modern" OS so you can still have your pretty desktop and all, I believe Win98 DOS is very close to "vanilla" DOS and runs Daggerfall etc. fairly well.

I agree. Without DosBox the majority of classic DOS games would be left collecting dust because people wouldn't have the hardware to run them or wouldn't know how to run them. DosBox is a great app IMO and 20x times easier to configure than real DOS.

Yes, the DOSBox team should be honored for their ambition and dedication - DOSBox is one of those things that has kept many great old games from being forgotten, and without it, a great deal of history would be lost...

DOSBox may be a poor substitute for real DOS, but at least it pretty much configures itself. I doubt the modern gamer is ready for the horrors of tweaking his autoexec.bat and config.sys to scraqe together enough conventional memory to run Arena.

It is no more difficult to tweak DOS than it is to tweak DOSBox, if the numerous DOSBox threads in this forum are any guide. The bottom line is, any DOS game will present a challenge to the non-technical. This is why consoles are so popular (and justifiably so).

The thing is, once you get Win9x running, you have a good OS for 'most any DOS game. And you get Win9x for games designed for it as a bonus.

Vista is pretty awful for older games in general (about half my games don't run properly without some serious work, or don't run at all), but when it comes to games run through DOSBox there's not much difference between the OSes.

I have XP and can't get Daggerfall to run through DOSBox (I get a black screen). So it's probably not just a question of OS - there's graphics card and driver as well. And who knows what else.

If starting afresh I'd use a partitioned drive - I have a copy of Win98 (and one of Winp5 if memory serves me), but I'm not about to scratch my current disk content to get an extra boot partition.

If starting afresh I'd use a partitioned drive - I have a copy of Win98 (and one of Winp5 if memory serves me), but I'm not about to scratch my current disk content to get an extra boot partition.

Gosh, you shouldn't have to scratch much. DOS 6.22 fit on one 1.38 Mb floppy. Windows 98 fit on a CD.

Black screen? Try switching between window and full-screen mode!

I'm pretty sure I did try both. Right now it gives me a black screen, then dies, taking DSBox down with it.
I'll have to look into it later. I don't have time right now.


Size is not the problem. I assumed that I'd have to reformat the whole drive to set up a new partition. Is that incorrect?

Size is not the problem. I assumed that I'd have to reformat the whole drive to set up a new partition. Is that incorrect?

You XP users can re-partition your drives without reformatting if you get a product called Partition Magic (there may be similar products, but PM is time-tested). Otherwise, you are correct, you'd have to re-do your drive.

If one had Vista, one could re-partition at any time one liked using tools built into Vista.

Dear god no. I struggled enough getting DOSBOX to work. But once I'd worked out where the Arena file needed to be, it worked fine. There is the problem that the backward slash key doesn't seem to work on Vista, but it isn't needed for arena, though it is for Daggerfall.