DOS games on Windows ME?

[Valkysas]

My dad's computer currently has Windows ME. Problem is, all his favorite games run through DOS. DOS and ME do not get along.

Is there a way to get them working properly on that horrible OS? I know there are non-DOS versions of a lot of games, but lets use the old-ass game Carmageddon as an example. the DOS version he bought years ago lets you run over people. the windows version he bought after he got ME lets him run over metal orbs. not as fun.

[Caciss]

Re: DOS games on Windows ME?

Aren't there DOS emulators out there? I've never really used DOS, so I'm not sure.

[d2king10]

Re: DOS games on Windows ME?

Yeah, search for DosBox on google.

[thetruecoolness]

Re: DOS games on Windows ME?

^^ beat me to it.

There are some DOS emulators. I think a program called DOSBox is the big one. Another option is to get a DOS boot disk, though it would be kind of annoying to have to reboot just to play DOS games, it's the best way to do it. Not sure how drivers and such would work though (don't think you would need them but you never know).

I think I have a DOS boot disk maker somewhere but I'll have to look for it, but google for DOSBox and try that out, I know I was able to get Lords of the Realm 2 to work with it.

[Goufunaki]

Re: DOS games on Windows ME?

been years since I've used dos, i'm not familiar with the commands you have to enter. How would you get a cd rom game working? Stuck with the Z drive, but the examples and such confuse me.

[thetruecoolness]

Re: DOS games on Windows ME?

You have to "mount" drives similar to what you have to do in Linux

mount k K -t cdrom -usecd 5 -ioctl
mount c Clords2
C:

This is the command I use to mount mine.
My cd drive (well one of 5, since 4 of mine are virtual drives but thats not important) is K and I mount the directory CLords2 (holds Lords of the Realm 2 install) to the letter C.

The C: command at the end then makes C the current directory (meaning CLords 2 is the current directory). Think of it as setting up shortcuts.

So the mount command is

mount (virtual drive letter) (actual directory on your pc)

for normal drives

mount (virtual drive letter) (drive letter of CDRom) -t cdrom -usecd (Cd number reported by running mount -cd) [-ioctl for Win2000/XP | -aspi for Win98]

for cd drives

So in my case I mount Drive K to the Virtual Drive K in DOSBox, and the number of that cdrom happens to be 5 (the last cdrom drive on my machine, I have 6, but the index is 0 based, i.e. 0 is your first cdrom, 1 is your second, etc.) and I have Windows 2000 so I put -ioctl at the end.

All of this is in the readme for DOSBox and it will require a bit of tweaking the .conf file for it to work with some DOS programs.

[Valkysas]

Re: DOS games on Windows ME?

on windows 98 he just had to double-click the program icon and it would load itself, despite being DOS.

[thetruecoolness]

Re: DOS games on Windows ME?

Yep, because 98 was still dos based, where as Me is some abomination that had a lot of things in common with 98/95, but seems to be like NT/2000/XP which are NT based and therefore don't have DOS anymore. I forget the reasoning behind this, other than NT is more secure or something like that, but for whatever reason after 98 DOS is no longer part of Windows.

Honestly I would advice dropping ME and getting 98 back, or going up to 2000/XP, but then again that costs money so. No one likes ME.

[Red Dragon]

Re: DOS games on Windows ME?

I like me...

me like donuts too...

mmmm donuts...