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[therealjohn1]

Hello!
I have a few Questions about DOSXBOX...

1. What is the newest version of DOSXBOX ? (Is Ver 12 the newest ? Also will there ever be a newer version made again ??)

2. Is there a GUI with Menus to make it easier to use the Xbox Controller? or Do U have to have a Keyboard and/or Mouse ??

3. When you play a PC MSDOS Game and U go to configure the controls... Can U use the Joystick or Gamepad Option in the game instead of mapping Keyboard buttions to the Xbox Controller buttons ?

4. I know of the XDSL Linux/Win 98 for Xbox But Can U install and use MS Windows 3.1 from DOSXBOX ? (What about MS Windows 95 ?)

PS: Q#4: I just did a Google Search and found this link:
http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=437898

5. Is there a way to setup DOSXBOX to run many PC MSDOS Games from a DVD instead of installing it on the Hard Drive ?

6. What other PC MSDOS SoftWare other then Games can U run from DOSXBOX ?  Also what should U never run on DOSXBOX And Why ??

Thanks in advance for all your Help!  And when answering the Questions... Please indicate what Number question U are answering when U post a Answer!!

Later.   (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

This post has been edited by therealjohn1: Feb 9 2008, 11:43 AM

[ressurectionx]

I'll answer what I can.  Been a while since I messed with DOSXBOX

1.  I believe v12 is the newest version, at least it's the newest one I have.  If you go to the usual spot to get it and there isn't a 13, you know it's true.  Whatever the version, I highly doubt that there will be any newer version made.  The emu scene for XBox 1 isn't completely dead yet, but it's been a while since XPort updated any of his emus.  I believe he even released the sourcecode which means that he's most likely officially done with them now.  It also means that if somebody wanted to, they could take up the project and improve upon it.

2.  No GUI with menus for setting up the controller.  You can program the XBox controller, but you have to do it all manually and it's a bit tricky.  I can't even explain it to you and I dont' believe there is documentation on how to do it.  It was a trial and error thing that got easier the more you did it.  This is one of the reasons I hardly ever play it, because of how long it takes to set a game up on the controller.  There are about 100 buttons on a keyboard and almost every game used different ones, so there's really no way to easily map it like a home console which had the same amount or less buttons than the XBox controller.  This is why I only have about 5 games on my own DOSBox.

One tip I can give you is that the whole process is so much easier if you have a printout or instructions for which button does what on the game.  Otherwise you need the keyboard and mouse to do trial and error and you're just pissing in the wind.

3.  Not sure what you mean here.  #2 above is the only way I know how to set up a controller.  (anybody can correct me if I'm wrong here, but I seriously doubt there is any other way).

4.  This is a bit out of my realm here but I highly doubt that you can install Windows 3.1 as the operating system (Over MSDOS, of course) on XBox and I'm 99% sure that you can't install or even emulate Win95.  At least you can't install/emulate it with any of the functionality you'd want because how would you emulate all of the drivers and such?  The Windows 3.0 thing is interesting, and I never knew about that before.  That does't really suprise me too much though since Windows 3.0 wasn't anything more than a front end for DOS.  It's kind of like running a very boring game in DOSBox.  Neat trick, but I don't think you can do anything notable with any version of DOS or Windows on your XBox.

5.  I don't imagine why you couldn't play from the CD/DVD, but I could be wrong here.  I know for a fact though that you wouldn't be able to save your progress using a CD/DVD though.  Save states don't work on DOSBox.  XPort disabled them because they took up extra memory which DOSBox desperately needs.  The only way that you can save the game is by using the in-game save.  Keep in mind that the same goes for using ISO images of games as well.  I liked putting ISO images of the games on DOSBox because they're a lot cleaner than having 100s of files floating around for a game, until I found out you can't save the game.

6.  I don't really know what else you can run from DOSBox, but after hearing about that Windows thing, I would assume pretty much any program that ran from DOS on one of those ancient 386/486 computers would work.  Maybe you could even get those encyclopedia programs that came with a lot of those computers back in the day to run in Windows.  

Use at your own risk, but I don't believe that there is anything that you could run on it that would damage your XBox in any way.  Afterall, you're not really running any operating systems, but just an emulated version of one.  


Keep in mind that this emulator doesn't emulate a whole lot of high intensity games.  Even though the XBox has a 733mhz processor and 64mb Ram it still has some problems running games like X-COM which ran fine on a 33mhz 486 PC with 4mb of memory.   This is because not only is the emulator emulating the games themselves over the DOS operating system, but it's also emulating CD, soundcard and video devices and drivers as well.  Really impressive that they even got it to work in the first place.  

Good luck

This post has been edited by ressurectionx: Feb 9 2008, 01:58 PM