Playing Older DOS Games

Recently, I've had the urge to play a few games from 1995-1996 which requires real DOS mode. I can get into the real DOS modes in Windows 95 and 98, but when I try to play the game, the CD-ROM is not recognized even though in Windows it is recognized. My question is how do I load drivers for the CD-ROM drive as well as other drivers for other devices so I can try the games out? I don't have much experience with DOS.

 

What other devices are you referring to?

 

Lots of information about this can be found in a forum that specializes in Very Old Games: http://vogons.zetafleet.com (Get it? Vogons-Very Old Games!)

I was good at getting it done with the hardware and software at my disposal. Now, I'm using XP with newer hardware and installing vdmsound and dosbox for firing up the old stuff. I can't help much without knowing your soundcard, videocard,etc. Some videocards have Vesa support to run game resolutions in 98 Dos Mode and some don't. Some PCI soundcards come with MS-DOS sound drivers that can be jimmy rigged to run only when you boot up to Dos without messing with your Windows configuration and some need to run stuff while Windows is running regardless of whether your going to use them at the moment. Most newer soundcards don't provide any Dos drivers. These newer cards, however, run with WDM drivers, and the WDM specification includes sbpro support within Windows. Since your newer card doesn't come with an FM chip though (only ISA cards did), you would need your game to have a setting for MPU-401 that you would set to port 330, along with setting the rest to 220-5-1. Games that have music that only run with an FM chip would run without the music, but you would hear the sound effects (sometimes with the music, but no sound effects).

Dosbox works on 98 as well (but vdmsound, with the exception of an alpha version that is buggy and not being developed, does not). You could then run your dosgames within Windows using dosbox. Some will run real slow, since dosbox emulates an entire PC and needs huge processor power. If you have a speedy processor you might not have a problem. The Vogons forums has links to the dosbox program if you want to try it. I mean a seperate program, not the Windows provided dos window.

I hope you get it going.