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an ars staffer works in freedos for a whole day to "celebrate" freedos being 20 years old
apparantly its possible
the article self
http://arstechnica.com/information-t...ng-in-freedos/
and a visual tour
http://arstechnica.com/information-t...ay-in-freedos/
here is waiting for the windows 3.11 follow up
How bout baking turtles in a pan. And bring them to life. And die hard tring itQuote:
Originally Posted by KitsuneNight
took the words right out of my mouthQuote:
Originally Posted by Semmie
I find messing around with DOS very satisfying, always fun to try and get it all working as smoothly as possible.
I loved dos, but it's done with forever. Now if we can just get windows to die.
Maybe I'm too young, but I classify MS-DOS the same as anything having to do with 8-bit computers (like the Apple ][). No longer usable for modern purposes and strictly for old games.
Even then, if I want to play old MS-DOS or Windows games, the lazy Canadian in my says to use Windows 98SE, it even has USB.
yeah you're too young, and because you never messed around with it back in the day you never experienced how powerful it became.Quote:
Originally Posted by Guntz
For me MS-DOS means playing games from King's Quest 1 to Quake 1, so its a very versatile experience.
For me MS-DOS means playing a super awesome version of Mortal Kombat II while the Genesis got a shitty one.
For me MS-DOS means playing a super sweet version of NBA Jam TE while on Sega we had to wait for the 32X version for some arcade like quality.
for me MS-DOS means playing amazing FPS shooters like Duke3D/Quake while 16bit consoles got slow stuff like Zero Tolerance and Wolfenstein 3D on Snes.
for me MS-DOS means playing all those sweet point & click adventures, while on consoles we got Scooby Doo or those few Sega CD ports.
for me MS-DOS means playing Screamer while the Snes had us play Mario Kart.
I love MS-DOS, I love how these days devoted fans create stuff like ScummVM just so we can play those amazing adventures again.
I love how they made enhanced ports of games like Quake and Duke3D and Doom, all stuff that originally started out on MS-DOS.
Hardly Apple II stuff.
I might try this out myself on my MS-DOS computer that I use to test sound cards on. I only ever used DOS for gaming and to run some DOS-only utilities, but I do like things that are older than I am, so hey, why not give it a go? I do wonder, though... what was used for this article? A modern computer running FreeDOS in a virtual machine or an actual MS-DOS computer from around the mid-'90s?
^freedos in a virtual machine most likley considering it was just a one off for a single day
i doubt the author would have dug up a 386 or a 486 for the express purpose of running dos
you may neve rknow though
Considering the screenshots he got?
Definitely a virtual machine.
hopefully somebody will do something similar with windows 3.1
Windows 3.1... those were the days. It's hard to imagine that a best-selling software title at the time was actually a screensaver (After Dark), and that I actually saved up for it and enjoyed the hell out of it. Flying toasters!
I don't know why, but I can't stand emulation, I only use emulators if I absolutely have too. I feel the same about virtual machines too, that's why I built an actual Pentium III rig [for "classic" Windows games only] and a AMD K6-III+ rig [for "classic" MS-DOS games only... I chose AMD K6-III+ because it's extremely overclockable and can underclock to about 386 speeds; the multiplier is by default factory unlocked].
I've used FreeDOS for quite awhile actually, however it's still not, as of this post, 100% compatible with DOS games, i've stumbled into several compatability issues namely with LucasArts games, and a few other more obscure games. If you're a DOS gamer [such as myself] then the tried and true MS-DOS is your best bet.
Be aware that the ISO floating around for "MS-DOS 8" thats released under a "GNU License" by some Chinese group is utter crap and I never trusted it. So, what I did, was simply rip MS-DOS from a Windows 98 SE install, and added some modernization DOS apps from the FreeDOS project and burned it all to a CD, then just xcopy the CD onto a FAT32 formatted harddrive. That way I have FAT32 + Long Filenames + USB + CDR + web browsing + modern memory management, etc all from within DOS. It really works like a charm and no compatability issues at all [that i've ran into yet].
I didn't even get the point of the switch to Windows 95 back then. I remember thinking in DOS , I just type the name of the game , Wing Commander, Stunts or Space Quest usually, and it just starts up. Windows just slowed everything down. Now it would make my head swapping media files around to multiple programs. Still though I really think desktops are far to cluttered and need to be more functional. Worse yet basic functions are done away with and replaced with garbage that doesn't work well and passed off as simplification.
Yeah? For me, MS-DOS meant tinkering around with my config.sys and autoexec.bat files in order to get my games to run (smoothly if possible).Quote:
Originally Posted by NeoVamp
The hours spent trying just to squeeze the one additional byte of EMS out of the system.
The satisfaction the realization brought that you could sheer off another little slice of memory just by using "lh mouse.sys" instead of "lh mouse.com".
The pride when I first started my first hand-written Boot Manager with an increasing number of different setup patterns (I guess I had reached 7 or 8 at one point - one for the ideal Win 3.11 configuration, and the rest for DOS games - games with EMS loadout, games with QMS, games with or without mouse controls, games with or without CD-Rom support, games that could go with an older sound option but could do with a little extra memory for a little boost in gameplay speed etcetc.). I know one of those existed solely to get "Legend of Kyrandia 3 - Malcolm's Revenge" to run; what with it needing a perverse amount of EMS memory, mouse Controls, CD-Rom support AND it needing to get the sound driver to work at full capacity if I wanted to enjoy the fully voiced adventure. The manual didn't suffice in giving out decent pointers, and in the end I somehow managed to come up with something that worked with Kyrandia 3 - and only Kyrandia 3 - and only if it started up directly out of the bootup sequence; entering the starting command by hand didn't work out (Well at first, at least; eventually I managed to tweak it enough to get it done manually, but I don't think I ever owned another game that specifically NEEDED that configuration in order to work).
Somehow, mastering the bootup sequence in DOS actually gave me a greater sense of accomplishment than trying to get a particularly iffy driver to run on 95 or 98. (Though I know a guy, about 12-14 years older than me, who says the same thing about knowing the Machine Code of a Commodore 64 by heart).
And occasionally... yeah, I miss DOS, if only a little bit... if only to get my original, not-Windows-optimized copy of Privateer 2 to properly work with my trusted Logitech Wingman Extreme joystick again. Ahh, the fun memories I had playing flight- and space sims with my analog flightstick controller... they just don't make them like they used to anymore...