[Quiet Man Cometh]

Hi there. I'd like to dig up some old DOS games I used to play, lie Warcraft 2 or Lemmings 2 in particular. I'm looking for a decent emulator to use but I'm not very tech savvy so I'm asking around.

I've encountered DOSBox but I'm not sure if that's the one to go with since it mentioned someting about needing a big computer or something. I'm barely aware of my laptops stats as is so I'm not sure what it all means.

This is what I've encountered thus far, and they do have Lemmings 2. http://www.abandonia.com/en/programs.

[Serra Britt]

When I bought Ultima 9 (I think?) It had a collection disk with all the older Ultima games included, some of them DOS based. It had some sort of compatibility emulator with it because it had to seriously slow down the older games in order to be playable. Unfortunately it was so long ago that I've installed them (on an older computer) and they are currently hiding in a pile of boxes or I'd check what was used ><

[Quiet Man Cometh]

I've yet to see Lemmings for sale anywhere and I'm not sure if programs from other games will help. Getting Lemmings 2 online doesn't appear to be an issue, but I'm not sure what sort of emmulator I should look for, or if the issues mentioned with DOSBox are pertinant to my laptop. I'm not techy enough to understand what the mentioned issue is getting at.

[Serra Britt]

All the program from the Ultima games did was force it to run at a slower rate, since the early games used the processor speed as a timer. Which made the earlier ones have MONTHS pass in-game within a few seconds >.>; So likely it would not help with your issues.

What specific issues are mentioned with DOSBox? I can try to translate for you.

[Quiet Man Cometh]

This is what is says in the link. I'm not totally sure what's it's getting at though I have some idea. The bolded part I'm not sure about. I'm also running Vista and will (eventually) switch over to W7.

DOSBox

Many times I have wished to play some old DOS games on my Windows 2000 workstation. And many times I have been disappointed with incompatibility. In last few years the only solution was a dual boot with compatibility drivers for sound and graphic cards, and a huge basket of luck. There was no real and effective DOS emulator on the scene. Then DOSBox appeared. DOSBox is completely free of charge and open source DOS emulator for modern operating systems like Windows (2000 and XP), BeOS, Linux, MacOS X... DOSBox also emulates 286/386 CPU real mode, Directory FileSystem/XMS/EMS, the SoundBlaster card (and others) for excellent sound compatibility with older games. There were a lot of problems in earlier versions, but now over a thousand games are supported, many of them are completely playable (Full Throttle… finally). The only bad thing with DOSBox is that you need to have a real beast to run some complex games. 400 MHz machine acts like old XT 80086… Heck, you can even play original Tetris once again!

[Serra Britt]

Well, what speed processor do you have? 400 MHz is really old...I have an old processor myself and it's 1.6 GHz. Besides, I can't imagine Lemmings being counted as one of those complex games, though I admit it does have a lot of little things moving around.

[Quiet Man Cometh]

Umm, where would I find the processor info? The stickers on the front of the computer looks to be just operating system and graphics card (AMD Athlon X2; NVIDIA graphics). There are stickers on the bottom but I'm not sure which number I need to be looking at.

[Serra Britt]

Go to the start menu and choose "computer" and on Vista at least it lists the processor right at the bottom of the window. Otherwise you can go to system info in the control panel, right click "my computer" and choose properties, or run dxdiag.

[Quiet Man Cometh]

Ah. Thanks Serra.

AMD Athlon Dual-Core QL-64.

[Serra Britt]

Alright Quiet, that's a 2 GHz processor, so it should be able to run DOSBox with no problems.

[Quiet Man Cometh]

Ugh. I come to this forum so little that I forget I actually have a thread here. Thanks for your help Serra. :)

[Serra Britt]

And see how long it took me to notice that you replied...glad I could help Quiet :3

[Wicked]

I use DOSbox to play Princess Maker 2
but I can't help you with specs of anything like that.

It runs on my desktop but I don't know if a lappy could handle it.
Sorry I'm not much help.

Edit: Also, I'm seeing this thread isn't very current.
Hopefully problem solved by now?

[Quiet Man Cometh]

Actually I've not gotten around to trying the download yet. Other things on my mind and my priorities shift a lot. DOSBox has worked well for you then?

[Wicked]

I like it. Suits my purposes. Thing is I was only after that one game.

[Rumiel]

I had a computer that could play some MMOs but not all the new stuff very well a while back, and it's whole capacity GB wise was 55 GBs, and it could run DOSBox like a dream (I used to play the translation of Princess Maker ;3; that was fun)