DOS in a window mode?

D

Denaes

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Jun 10, 2003
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Nothing to do with programming at all.

I just got a LOT of older games. Space Quests, Kings Quests, old D&D games, etc.

I want to play them, but they're full screen games. I'd much prefer to play them in a windowed mode.

Since they're being emulated through DOS and not using directX, isn't there a way to force them to play in a window?
 
I'm not sure if there's any "easy" solution to this. One option *might* be to use some new software from MS (or at least, I heard MS bought it) that allows running a "virtual PC". It allows running a program that simulates another PC. The other PC can run DOS, linux, Windows 95, whatever. I've seen a demo and it worked pretty good. It was the slowest thing I'd ever seen (Windows XP was "hosting" a virtual Windows 2000 Server), but it was doable.

If it's cheap or free, you might have the virtual PC run an old copy of DOS 6.x (god, I can't even remember the last version anymore) if you can find one. I may have 2 or 3 if you really need it :)

-Nerseus
 
wow.

Thats the only reason I'd consider using OS X, is pretty much because you can run a virtual PC on it, letting you run PC and Mac stuff.

If PC can do the opposite, that would be sweet :)

I'll have to look into this, thanks for the heads up :D
 
hmmm, Virtual PC running Linux.

Might be what I'm looking for to try linux out.

It struck me as quite humorous in the knowledge base, seeing Microsoft giving tech support on Linux :p

Actually I was just thinking how frickin awesome it would be if you could install Virtual PC over a VERY barebones OS. I mean like Old Skool DOS, bare bones in terms of resources.

Then you could use the program as an interface and install whatever OS you want. It would be a slight performance hit running your primary OS (2000, XP, 98, etc) as it would be virtual, but being able to press Alt+Tab and flip between Linux, OS X and Windows 2000 really has me interested.

I don't know if OSX works, it says any x386 compatable OS, which OS Anything isn't. But the Mac version of Virtual PC runs x386 programs. I don't see why the PC version couldn't do the reverse.

Instead of having one OS tightly integrated into your system, you'd have 2+ OS's lightly (but equally) integrated into your system.

Get a 100+ gig hard drive, 700something megs of ram (what comes after 512?) and a 2ghz proccessor and you'd be set to run any OS you'd like, or multiple at once.

I think that would be really killer for developing cross platform software, testing compatability...

As it stands right now, if Virtual PC for Windows can't run OS X by the time a .Net Framework comes out for OS X, I'm going to switch to a G4 or G5 powerbook/titanium and run windows virtually.

Is it really healthy to enjoy developing software for an OS that you don't really prefer? I mean I have like zero interest in OS X software for some reason. I don't even know what langauge you'd write it in. C/C++? Smarttalk? ::shrugs::
 
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I got Microsoft VirtualPC 2004 with my MSDN subscription and it runs nicely. I have installed Windows Longhorn preview on it, as well as two versions of Linux (Mandrake and Slack) and Windows ME (just to see how bad it really it...wow....). It's not quite as fast as VMWare, but I think it's quite a lot cheaper.

And the reason that VirtualPC can't run MacOS X is... well.. have you ever tried to install OS X on your main hard drive? It's not gonna happen. OS X is made for a Mac, and that's the only thing it runs on.
 
Back to the whole DOS in a window issue...

I found the laziest, stupidest solution... but it works :)

I got a program called WinVNC (www.WinVNC.com I think) which lets you run a server and client machine, and the client can host into the server... in a window!!

My older computer (the desktop) is mostly a tank. Its big, ugly, has a friggin huge harddrive (90gb and 45gb internal and 180gb external). Primarily I use it to do stupid things like practicing video encoding, large downloads and other things I don't want to fuss up my pretty laptop with.

I threw the server on that machine and now on my wireless laptop, I can control the other computer anywere in the house :)

I can also run old DOS games full screen on "The Tank", which is windowed on my laptop :D It also has the side effect of allowing me to encode video and keep tabs on it from anywere in my house.

Just thought I'd share my lame solution :p
 
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