Is DOSBox-X the best DOS Emulator?
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- Опубліковано 27 чер 2024
- DOSBox-X is another flavour of the famous DOSBox emulator. Let's take a look and see what it offers!
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The menu alone just makes this so much more accessible to the average person.
I still don't understand the low and high dma on the sound card doh :D it's also half 1 in the morning.
Thing is, DOSBox Daum hat many of these options and the GUI 10+ years ago. Of cause he didn't continue development, so I need to check if it's about time to completely switch as I'm still using Daum. Just have to check if I can continue using the same config files or of certain setting there do not work with DOSBox-X.
This is a long overdue upgrade to Dosbox. Now my stupid friends can play the classics without me having to explain Dosbox.
I've changed my library over to DOSBOX-X and the ability to run games from ZIP files made my life way easier. It's a bit more work to set up but you keep a clean base install of the game and every change, savegame, etc. is saved in a separate folder which I love. While not all games can be run from a ZIP, about 90% work fine. The ability for shaders is vital for me too - I just wish we had more advanced shares such as the ones RetroArch uses. For proper CRT emulation, RetroArch with DOSBOX Pure is the only option and while it supports running games from ZIP files as well, the options are more limited and games that do not like being run from a ZIP file simply don't work.
Wow didn't know about running from Zip. Nifty.
> For proper CRT emulation, RetroArch with DOSBOX Pure is the only option
Actually, the built-in adaptive CRT shaders in DOSBox Staging are your absolute best option. Check out of front page for screenshots ;)
@@johnnovak1979 I believe those are the same ones I have for DOSBOX-X but they're not as good as the shader packs you can get for RetroArch. I have a 4K OLED I bought specifically for CRT emulation and CyberLab Death To Pixels Shader for RetroArch is absolutely drop-dead gorgeous. It even emulates the reflection you get on the inside bezel of your CRT. It requires a relatively beefy CPU but it's really worth it. It doesn't compare to standard shaders you get.
@@johnnovak1979DOSBOX staging looks amazing but you have to work it like normal DOSBOX so I’m ok with the compromise with DOSBOX-X sometimes.
Hey Phil, congrats for the 800th video, it's CRAZY and amazing at the same time :D
Good luck going forward!
Oh my, thank you! Time really flies, it's scary 😧
Seeing these improvements in emulation is a one of the positive patterns I've seen with archival technology , probably no more nice things will fade away and be forgotten by history, what a great accomplishment for us humans, what a great time to be here. I have no doubt people will improve DOSBox-X or similar software (forks, maybe) to perfection. It's only a matter of time, and things have been arriving earlier and earlier, I feel. I also feel bad being a bystander while people code these marvels, I'm no good at that, my forté is soft sciences, whoever reads this post can see it clearly in the enthusiastic writing in english as a second language, hahaha! Great as always, Phil!
It would be interesting to see a video directly comparing the features of DOSBox-X vs DOSBox Staging. Thanks as always for the great content!
i feel like it's the specific game or software i wanna run that drives my choice. dosbox-x did make loading software really much more straightforward tho.
especially if you are new to emulating software and you just wanna play some games, i feel you will be and running much faster just based on that
DOSBox Staging in my experience is a lot more accurate, for example running Tony & Friends in Kellogg´s Land without any flickering of the water.
@@belzebub16but it takes lot more of CPU. I could use dos box x, but not staging on a core2duo
@@ChrisJackson-js8rdyeah I like right clicking on EXE when I’m testing things quick.
For Windows games 86box might offer better compatibility but it comes at a serious performance hit. To be able to emulate something above a 400 MHz pentium ii in 86box you need a very fast machine. Dosbox-x is what most people need and 86box is for the purists among us. Also a shame that the Dosbox developers are not doing something like Dosbox-x themselves.
Yep, even 86Box emulating a P1 MMX 233 / Voodoo3 for prime Win98se era, is no good on something like a Haswell CPU.
It will run, but hovers around 80%... You're kinda limited to DOS with an i486 when running 86Box on older hardware.
The problem being the app itself is single-threaded, not just passing through a single thread to the emulated CPU.
@@KomradeMikhail That's why PCem is better. You don't need something faster than a PII 400 MHz for Windows 9x era games. Running at 100% with 5800x and 5950x.
I use DOSBox-X mainly because of their suggested use case - running DOS applications (rather than games) with maximum compatibility. That being said, I've never seen an issue with any of my DOS development tools such that they failed to work in DOSBox Staging but did work in DOSBox-X, so I'm not sure how much water that claim holds.
I love the old school emulator looking meny
As much as I like DosBox, I prefer original hardware and PCEM/86box emulation
I came across this fork a few years ago, immediately loved it for the sheer convenience it's menu's offer as well as it's capabilities. I was somewhat surprised it wasn't already the de-facto standard.
It's Windows 95 support is something I messed with at the time, from what I recall it worked fine, but then again I only explored the OS itself and I did play a game on it, it would have been a DOS game.
Addendum;
If I recall correctly, it's possible to feed MIDI data to an external program such as VirtualMidiSynth, quite fun to mess around with. This may be a standard feature all DOSBox forks/flavours have though.
Yes you can drive external MIDI synths. To be fair it's a feature DOSBox has been able to do for ages...
@@philscomputerlab I'm happy it exists, as well as that alternatives exist for Window's lacklustre built-in Wavetable system thing.
I've been using it for a long time because of the convenience, but also of it's very good Windows 9x support.
Great Video again👍🏻👌🏻
Dope look at Dosbox X, Phil!
I would be interested if you did a giant comparison between emulating the same DOS machine on this, Pcem, and 86Box
That's a big project! I do like the idea but it's so easy to miss something...
2024 has been a good Year for Retro PC so far. There's a guy called omores running 9x on extremely modern motherboards. Like 13th gen Core old.
Nice video BTW as always.
Indeed it has
Every year is awesome for retro 😅
Waiting for 98Box, a user friendly and easy to use W98 emulator with proper graphics and audio support 😉
Nice review
Love the pace of the video, you get right into it, no long intro, respectful of my time. Thank you!
Glad you liked it!
Fantastic, Phil🎉 I'm assuming that it is a fork of DosBox?
Config menus are a much welcomed improvement, for sure!
It is
Thank you. 👍🏼
Maybe I was lucky with my 486 build, I had to buy 3 motherboards for the 3rd one to finally work but other than that the setup was smooth. Mostly. I had bad luck with the audio driver, I wanted to use the original driver for the card I have in the machine but ended up using UNISOUND and it works perfectly. The only issue I have with that build is I can't quick Windows 3.11, it just hangs on the logout and I don't get back my DOS prompt but I wasn't planning on using Win3 much anyway. So yeah, building a real 486 can be tricky but if you have some time and the resources it's well worth it. If you don't but you still want to try out old games, this might be your perfect solution.
Thanks again Phil. I need to make time to check this out soon.
Love using this Version
Really cool stuff.
I'm just surprised they didn't call it DosBox 360. 🤷♂
Jokes aside, this is the step to the right direction regarding retro PC emulation.
But I think we need to see a more thorough process of this program regarding import system configs like the PC-98 and its translation settings to see if those japanese games would convert them to English. I'm more interested in playing Poiicenauts or Snatcher.
As for running Windows OS' on this platform with 3D acceleration, it still doesn't come close.
Perhaps Windows 95 maybe more stable to run some of these "system-sensitive" games.
We shall see in the near future where this takes us.
If I were running a PC-98 emulation, it would be to try out the early Touhou Project games (although I expect I'd fail miserably even in "easy mode".
(did Super Robot Wars run on PC-98?)
I ran into some issues with DOSBox-X and Dune 2 (mt-32 patched). Luckily Staging worked like a charm out of the box with it. Though always nice to have different options to choose from out there.
"Dosbox Staging" implemented Chorus and Reverb support for audio, which is a feature found on the Sound Blaster AWE64. When you add Chorus and Reverb to Adlib sound, it makes that seemingly come alive. DosBox X does not currently implement that feature.
I use Dosbox-x to run PC-98, it's amazing.
would need to check that, so many gems in that hardware, the Ui sure looks more comfy for sure to experiment with those games
Is dosbox x better than nekoproject2?
@@Tofu3435 Yes and it's easier to setup.
Used DOS Box a longtime ago to replay an old game or five. Have not tried it in a while, used an old version with integrated 3Dfx Glide support. Might give this a whirl.
DOSBox-X is awesome, just like you are, Phill 😉👍! It's rather versatile and beginner friendly at the same time.
Thanks for the review!
Thank you 😊
Short answer: NO, NOP, Nein, Ne...
Lately I find myself using RetroArch - DOSBox-Pure core. All good stuff of DOSBox mixed with great stuff from RA. Playing game with Rewind function and easy save state from game controller (and the same configuration I use for other cores) makes it in my opinion one of the best combinations. I used DOSBox-X for a while now and long time ago had even instructions for original DOSBox on Abandonia posted.
I also like to use PCem and Box86, more accurate emulation of a PC of the time.
at 5:11 when you are not concentrated tomb raider might sound to you like coom raider at x2 video speed 🤣🤣🤣. I slowed down the video and sped it up just to check if i heard it wrong 😅
Very nice.
Perfect bite sized video
Thank you 😊
Great, I needed another option for Intel Mac instead of just Boxer.
The most difficult games to run right now are games from '96-'05, we really need something that runs Windows 98 properly at custom speeds from 486 to P3 and offers Glide, D3D and OGL anywhere from Voodoo 1 to GeForce 3 levels of performance and compatibility. That's the dream at least 😢
settings and information windows imitating windows 3.1 is cute
Save states, yes!!!
YES. I wonder if it works better for WFW 3.11, of course accurate emulation with PCEm is ideal.
Thanks for your videos been waiting for this for a while 🎉😊
Just a reminder - the Wave 1 music for Raptor shreds.
I haven't used it myself yet, but there is SoftGPU for virtual machines that some have been able to use to play Windows 98 games.
yes, phil.
Just closed my work Outlook, opened YT and see the Phil's new video about the DosBox - that's what I call a great weekend starter 😁
Enjoy!
lol 3dfx i loved
😒👍 Keep It Old School
It's pretty awesome.
I'm a simple man, I see Gods on the screen, I click the video
Many 90's computer monitors were 5:4 rather than 4:3.
If you were rich and had an early LCD with 1280x1024 maybe...
@@philscomputerlab I grew up in the projects and half my hand-me-down/throwaway CRTs were 5:4. (Wish I had kept my CRTs as nostalgia and their low supply has caused their price to rise - but I had nowhere to put them when I had to move out of that home.)
@@ErdrickHero CRTs with 5:4? I call it, your memory is off unless this is something really really exotic...
I've switched to DB-X from DB a long time ago. Tons of options and better perfs.
For Win98, I prefer 86box. Not PCem because it's total crap when driven by RocketLauncher.
Yes it is!
Is Phil one of the best retro tech channels?
Yes of course. Don't be silly.
Yeah I remember when he was on the gog forums ages ago.
@@armedready1 I was going to say, he not only has an awesome channel, but he contributes a lot to the retro gaming scene, with a lot of work put into the GOG games on real hardware spreadsheet and testing things.
Nice seeing you here besides the Tech Yes Man comments, Marco, you have great taste and most important, looks like you're an awesome friend to... well... Your friends, of course! Keep being great, my man.
DOSBox-X makes playing PC-9801 games so easy! No need to muck around with the Neko Project II emulator anymore!
Wonderful video as always. I wanted say that over the years, I have found that running as many intel components as I can in a system lead to the most compatibility issues with programs and trouble shooting. I did not see the specs of the system you are using. Were you using a non Intel cpu?
AMD APU with a modern Mini PC.
86box, but DOSBox-X is the most user friendly for sure.
86box is good, but it has problem with performance. It requires CPU from future for anything above Pentium at 100 Mhz.
I see a new Mr Phil episode and I click without a second thought. LOVE this channel!
At start, so curious to see your thoughts once I watch this episode. I CAN say, having used Dosbox-X, I DO think it's the best port of Dosbox and probably the easiest way to emulate MS-DOS games, though I must confess I'm partial to 86box and that series due to it's accuracy of emulation and extra power (Dosbox-X is DEFINATEY the easier way for the average andy/normie norm/sportsball-dad to get into Dos quickly and with minimal fuss -- heck I USE it to emulate windows 1.X and 2.X for quick testing of some of my coding projects)
I have some of my old rigs from the past, Althlon XP, Athlon 64, Phenom II X6, Core II Duo, etc. Might be interesting to build Win 98/XP dualboot retrogaming rig. Some old GPU's to test I have too. HD 1950 XTX and GF 8800 GTS should work I think, some older TNT 2 etc. No sound card iirc. Should I build or just try emulator? Thanks for the nice video again!
I you have the stuff on your hands, i'd build a system and experiment from there on. But that's what i would do with the hardware available. 😉
In my opinion, the best way for retro gaming is always to build an old PC as much as possible, although OS emulation/ virtualization is much more convenient than that.
There were much earlier DOSBox SVN compilations that had a top menu.
The difficulty I have with dos box is that I don’t use it very often and I forget how to use it. I have re-read all of the instructions and learn it again which takes some time and if I get it wrong I have go back and do some troubleshooting. The menus looks more intuitive, so if it has become more user friendly then that’s a big step forward.
DOS Box seems like a very developer oriented program. Developers are usually pretty bad at user interface design. And opensource/free projects usually don't have user interface teams or consensus on what good interface design should be.
Just for your information, screamer did a CPU test on setup utility so if you switch the cpu, you should also run setup
This to me looks like a cross of DosBox and 86Box or PCem
My experience with DOSBOX-X is that it’s very buggy. It was the first one with native arm64 support for macOS, and for the longest time Quake would just crash upon launch. Then in one release the arm64 image was actually the x86 version. Contacted the dev, he just told us to wait for the next release… I’m using dosbox staging right now. Yes it doesn’t have a GUI menu, but lots of things can be achieved with command aliases if you make a one time effort to customize.
This reminds me of early NES emulators lots of options right in the menus wysiwyg design very minimal I think that's a great thing for all skill levels
phil thanks for that file on your website to get dos working
the mt 32 sounds so smooth and clean
Sooo lets see what I'm missing (still using vanilla Dosbox 0.74-2). Yeah I'd swtich to X but too lazy to resetup my entire DosBox microSD card
WOW, this app seems awesome. I will try it out. Thanks for the info.
if adaptive crt shader can be added into dosbox-x, it will be perfect.
Thank you Phil!
How powerful is the 3dfx emulation?
I could see that the site refers to it as a Voodoo1, but the passthrough gives it quite a bit more umph, since it's translating the API to the host computer.
May one ask for a benchmark of various Voodoo1, 2, Banshee, 3-3000 era games, in this DOSBox-X?
I really ought to learn, not to ask questions until I've seen the entire video. :D
Absolutely the best one, I have my own modified copy thats even better with things like easy virtualization mode for Win98. Maybe I should publish it.
WOW, big improvement this menu!
What's Up Phil!
I think most of the stuff I have been using, has PURE running.
But I'm Overhauling my 3+ Decade Collection and going to have emulators all set up properly., so Back to checking this out again LOL
emulation got amazing but it will never beat the real thing. having a yellow pentium 100 with a voodo 3 and 128mb ram help me to connect with that era and my nostalgia
128mb is overkill for a p100 😂
I found that changing the CPU cycles mid game isn't always the best. If the game does timings checks at startup and then stores that result in a variable, changing the CPU speed mid game messes with that so it's best to set the CPU cycles before starting a game.
That is interesting. What game have you come across that is affected?
@@philscomputerlab the sound stuttering you were talking about I have seen some games do when you mess with cycles mid-game. But also as a developer in those days I remember doing a CPU timing check at app startup because you had a variety of CPU speeds.
@@robvdl Very interesting, thanks!
You might know this already but some games like Jazz Jackrabbit 1 won't start on anything above 200mhz and will get a divide by zero exception.
From my experience this happens with programs compiled with Turbo Pascal (I think version 5), and if they import the "crt" unit that was all you needed to do.
Inside the crt unit was a timing check and it would crash on machines above 200mhz.
It was also possible to patch executables compiled with Turbo Pascal against this crash if you didn't have the source code. I did this back in the day with Jazz Jackrabbit 1 but forgot what the patch was called.
Lots of QoL features,looks easy to set up.... might try with some of the games I bought on GoG
I've been using Dosbox-x for a couple of years now. It is better than Dosbox. I can even run Windows 98 on Dosbox-x
Shame about the slow buggy performance in games on Windows 98SE, I wonder what Windows 95 is like on this emulator?
Very similar I guess...
Honest question.
Does that Fit to Aspect Ratio when selected like on video make that "Original ratio" broken not show correct?
?
Original hardware certainly, eXoDOS, 86Box, PCem, DOSBox-X, DOSBox Pure, MiSTer FPGA, all great alternatives to vanilla DOSBox!
Thanks Phil for covering DOSBox-X :)
Pure hardware>emulation
DosBox’ annoyingly busted DInput support finally forced me to switch DBX
I'm not sure what that means. Did some controllers stop working?
@@philscomputerlab I have a DS4, and the D-pad never really worked in DosBox 0.74. As in - it worked in the menu, but never inside the emulator itself.
Would it be able to run PC demo’s?
Huh, that looked like Screamer running properly, it is supposed to be fast.
It's not Screamer actually.
Finally DOSBox with 3dfx emulation :)
Does it work with roland "out of the box"?
Do you need to add rom files?
Of course you need to add ROM files.
Dosbox-X can run in DOS. Sounds like nonsense but has some use actually.
I saved this for another video!
@@philscomputerlab Looking forward
For me Dosbox X is mostly better than native DOS gaming.
Ugh, on the surface yes. But my god! I've constantly found X THE most frustrating build to use. Allow me to explain. There used to be 4 builds for a start. They've cleared this up somewhat now so that's good. Then the menus are separated into the Windows ones you see here but there's also the menus within the menu which are in-app (that is, the app's own interface). OK, fair enough but it's an added layer of complexity (and X is the most powerful build, don't get me wrong). Not only that! Once you think you have your perfect setup, what they don't make you well of is if you quit there, it doesn't save those settings by default! OK, so I do understand why. It's because DOSBox has always used config files and people have always used separate ones for each game or whatever in the past. Fair enough, but it's incredibly frustrating when you don't realise this. You need to go into the in-app menu and save your settings as a config there. And don't get me started on the different ways to do this!
It's a very powerful build, but that's its problem in a way. There's so much there, you've got to know a lot. It's not like ECE (RIP) that was easier and had similar features. And it's not like Daum that had menus first (but it saved settings by default!) Once you get used to X it's really the only option for more complex DOS stuff now unless you like doing everything manually and credit where due- they have improved things. But really for the longest time, so frustrating, believe me!
To clarify, 4 builds means a choice of 4 downloads (and a download of all 4 because how the hell am I supposed to know which to use!) which were two different compilers and each using the different versions of the SDL. Now they're just using one of each now I think.
With great power comes great responsibility.
Better than Staging?
Ever heard of the law of headlines?
I"m a bit annyoed with Dosbox-x in somewhat minor way, I was literally looking at it last night and if you're on windows or macos you can get builds... but linux is RPM or flatpak... *ugh* flatpak? Never touch the stuff myself.... but RPM... I mean... JUST rpm is odd, why not also do .deb?
I built DosBox-x from source on Linux off the git repository. Of course. So that's why not. DOSBox-X version 2024.03.01 Commit 02f36ba ua-cam.com/video/EL8e2ujXe8g/v-deo.html
为什么安装 win98se 如此之慢, Installing Windows 98se is very slow ,why?
Is DOSBox still in development? The last version (0.74-3) has been released 5 years ago.
Doesn't sound like it. The last contribution on the SVN was 2023-09-12 Now whether that's in compiled binaries or the zip file I don't know. You might have to do a checkout to get that. It's all rather subversive to me. I'm a git man myself. Meh it's not a fix I need anyways. Dev seems pretty halted to me on the project. DosBox-x is more active. The last change there is a week old. Again if you want that you need to clone and build it. I built the DosBox-x I have on 2024.03.01 Commit 02f36ba Dosbox is so stale I installed it from my distro's repo. Good enough. They're both smooth and easy builds for me. Although DosBox-x does have a lot of dependencies. It is linked to 172 libraries. That's a lot.
addendum: I just checked how many libraries dosbox is linked to and it's only 79. So a lot less than DosBox-x
@@1pcfred I saw that contribution on the sourceforge, but the downloadable version had the same version number as you can find on the dosbox homepage. Does the sourceforge downloadable contain the latest contribution? I don't know.
@@RelakS__ based on the description I don't think it matters. Not unless you're planning on compiling it yourself in Visual C.
Nothing beats original hardware. But DOSBox is a good option for those that don't have the space, time or money that retro hardware requires.
Or patience. I mean I have a pile of old PCs I just can't be bothered fooling with any of them. If it's older than the PC I'm using I have no interest in it whatsoever. Those older systems are slower. It's old junk!
@1pcfred I am a bit curious why you watch this channel, as its primarily focused on this "old junk". I couldn't disagree more. Tech companies like Microsoft force us to throw away hardware that's still useful. For web browsing and office tasks even a 10yr old PC works fine. I agree that for modern gaming you need to keep relatively up to date. But that doesn't mean these PCs are junk.
@@RetroPcCupboard dosbox-x crosses over to something I did fairly recently. I used dosbox-x to run a utility to process a file so I could use it. I still play old Doom. I just play it with a modern source port which runs natively on my OS. So even though I don't use old junk I still run an old game. That's why I was interested in this video.
DOSBOX Staging is better.
DosBoxX is a lot more stable than PCEM. PCEM gives me weird graphical errors. That extend into Windows. Its really weird. So I dont use it. So Dosbox it is.
If you approve of it then why not link it so more people can find it easier? 🤔
Literally type it into Google first hit...
No, best DOS emulator is PCEM because its a hardware emulator, but you will need a strong cpu. DOSBOX can be erratic with performance, PCEM is much more stable.
When you say DOSBox can be erratic, what do you mean? Tell us more.
@@philscomputerlab DOSBox has trouble keeping the frame-rate constant in some of the games. Its quite annoying to me. Next problem with dosbox is it does not have accurate graphical output. I was surprised how much better looking games look in PCEM17. It look as i remember them. Its tough to explain you have to see it. I think emulation is not accurate. Different video cards on PCEM produce different output! Its like real hardware.
Next thing is hardware support. PCEM emulates a lot of hardware you can choose, including 3dfx Voodoo 1,2 and 3000, all the sound cards from DOS era. Its excellent, you should try it if did not. Im playing Quake GL for Windows 98se on a Ryzen 3500X, and very good. It works with SCSI directly in DOS, removes all the problems with DOS HDDs. Only problem is CPU power. Ryzen 3500x can emulate up to Pentium @ 200Mhz, in DOS maybe P@ 300. It works with MUNT, very very nice. On top of everything HDD is a .vhd virtual disk that can be mounted directly from windows disk management as a drive in host windows. Its awesome. I like it much more then dosbox.