Old DOS programs seems to be critical and do not run anymore under Windows. So the users ended up with some beloved programs and games that became useless.
Luckily Linux offers DOS emulators.
Dosbox creates a dos windows where dos commands can run https://www.dosbox.com/
Install dosbox and launch it by dosbox to get a dos windows. Dos runs on drive Z: not C:
The command exit closes the window.
To get access to a directory the following command creates the C: drive:
mount c <directory in the home directory>
In the path the / character as in Linux need to be taken. The path starts from the working directory. So ~/<directory>
is a good way the define where C: is.
C: changes now the working directory to the C: drive
Alt + Return switches in full screen mode and back
Ctrl + F10 locks and unlocks mouse in X window
The default configuration file is in ~/.dosbox
Add there (or modify the line that is already there)
keyboardlayout=sg
to get swiss keyboard layout
There is also the
[autoexec]
section that serves as the autoexec.bat file. so commands as the previously mount command can be added.
To be more flexible command line parameters can be used as dosbox <mount dir as c: >
-conf <path to config file>
so a directory gets directly mounted as C:\ drive and a dedicated config file overwrites the one in ~/.dosbox
.
The classic Sokoban game from 1984 with amazing 4 color CGA graphics (black, white, magenta, cyan) runs well under Linux!
Finally there are front-ends for DosBox that help starting different configurations.
An other solution is FreeDOS http://www.freedos.org/. CD ISO image or floppy images can be download.
Such floppy or CD images run well in virtual machines under Linux.
Freedos can run well in virtualbox, so create a pc to run your historic programs.
Luckily freedos under virtual box support CD's, so create a cd iso image and have it read by free dos, this way data can be moved to this historic environment.
An other option is to install TCP/IP on freedos and use FTP. Software can be found on http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/
Commander keen: