RutSum

Dosbox in PCLinuxOS

I recently recieved a bunch of old games for DOS, from the Uncool Shitty, a school friend. So I came home, booted into PCLinuxOS, fired up Synaptic and installed Dosbox. The installation went fine, and I had Dosbox alright, but when I launched from the terminal, I saw this output -

[apoorv@localhost ~]$ dosbox
ALSA:Can’t subscribe to MIDI port (65:0)
MIDI:Opened device:oss

For some reason, ALSA wasn’t giving Dosbox access to the sound device.

Next, the screen resolution is set to some arbitrary constant called ‘original’. And there is a file, called dosbox.conf, which stores all your configuration and loads them when Dosbox is launched. It was nowhere to be found. After a lot of googling, I found out that in Linux, dosbox.conf is not created automatically, you have to create it. To do this, open up Dosbox, and type in -

Z:\>config -writeconf .dosboxrc

This will create a file named ‘.dosboxrc’ in your /home/USERNAME folder, which serves as your dosbox.conf.

After the creation of that file, Dosbox loads it autmatically when you run it.

[apoorv@localhost ~]$ dosbox
CONFIG:Loading primary settings from config file /home/apoorv/.dosboxrc
ALSA:Can’t subscribe to MIDI port (65:0)
MIDI:Opened device:oss

I finally edited it to give me a resolution of 400×300, which works best for older games, but unfortunately, while a game is running in the windowed mode (which is the default mode), and I press Alt+Enter (shortcut for full screen), Dosbox shuts itself down and sets the resolution in KDE to 400×300, renders my mouse useless, and I am forced to kill the X server by using Ctrl+Alt+Bckspace.

So I’m stuck with a Dosbox installation that doesn’t support sound, and at best can run games in a windowed mode which is so small that it makes your eyes hurt.

I need help.

P.S. BTW, if anyone wants to know which games I’m talking about, it’s good old Callus. Freely available for download, from here. We Indian boys are specially attached to the games, they remind us of our childhood and the dark video game parlours, where we used to buy coins, 2 for a rupee, and spend about 3-4 hours everyday, burning our eyes on those darned silly games. Gosh, I miss those days.

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