DOSBox Pure with Win95/98 support

DOSBox Pure with Win95/98 support - Printable Version

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DOSBox Pure with Win95/98 support - Space Quest Historian - 10-11-2025

DOSBox Pure is a new fork of DOSBox that focuses on being super easy to configure and run.

The thing that really caught my eye, though, was the "experimental Windows 95/98 support." The PC era between roughly 1995-2005 (an era I like to call "the Dark Ages") is full of games that are notoriously difficult to run on modern PCs without resorting to esoteric shit like Virtual Machines — and even then it's a bitch to set up and get running. It's a steep uphill curve for casual gamers who just want to go back and re-experience the games they loved.

This might be the gamechanger we were all looking for.

Watch the trailer here:

RE: DOSBox Pure with Win95/98 support - Legerdemancy - 10-11-2025

Thank you, Space Quest Historian for sharing that intriguing DOSBox fork. On a related note, I belatedly watched your discussions on this subject with other YAR members, and I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it.

From my own perspective it’s definitely a mixture of proprietary video formats, along with outdated versions of DirectX as being the two main barriers to playing older adventure games. That’s without even mentioning DRM!

I highly recommend checking out the PC Gaming Wiki. I’ve used it countless times to get older games to work on modern systems. It’s indispensable for patch links and configuration advice:

https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Home

I usually use a dedicated laptop running windows XP for 'the dark ages' era. The hardware has somehow lasted 20 years which is quite lucky.

However, when I want a software-based solution for modern systems, I usually go for ScummVM since they also implement fixes for bugs that were present in the original game code.

https://www.scummvm.org/compatibility/2.9.1/

GOG also makes things convenient with their ‘GOG Preservation Program’, which means I don’t have to patch anything.

https://www.gog.com/en/gog-preservation-program

Sorry if anything I’ve mentioned so far has been obvious. Hopefully the advice you and I have written on the subject will help the less technically-minded adventurers on this forum more inclined to dive back into those 90’s classics.

Optional links in case other people are interested in watching the videos:

The DARK AGES of PC Gaming - ca. 1995-2005

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADjrzWynWS8

YAR Talk Episode 2 - "Old Games on Modern Systems"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSLsFMDngyM

P.S

Looking forward to your Black Dahlia video, and hopefully a YAR reunion eventually.

RE: DOSBox Pure with Win95/98 support - LeftHandedGuitarist - 10-11-2025

This is really good news. I've successfully used PCEm before for running Windows 98 games on my system, but it was a little awkward. Hopefully this is the start of an easy solution.

RE: DOSBox Pure with Win95/98 support - Beau - 10-11-2025

I can usually figure out how to get a game to work, but Riddle of the Sphinx is still a bugger. I'll have to check this out.

RE: DOSBox Pure with Win95/98 support - kamineko - 10-17-2025

Here's to hoping.

Won't believe it though until it will be able to run something like Liath: WorldSpiral.

Now I can correctly run such games only on a low level emulator like 86Box.

RE: DOSBox Pure with Win95/98 support - LeftHandedGuitarist - 10-19-2025

My first impressions of this are that it's wonderfully easy to use. Drag a zipped DOS game on there and it just loads. That said, there are some not-too-obvious aspects to it that do need explaining. There's a comprehensive guide to the important hotkeys here (e.g., Ctrl+F12 to access the settings menu while in a game):
https://schelling.itch.io/dosbox-pure

I'm not the most savvy user of DOSBox, although I have managed to stumble my way through it all these years. One thing I'm a little confused here is how different game configurations are handled. Am I missing an obvious way to save a configuration file once I've set a game up the way I like it?

RE: DOSBox Pure with Win95/98 support - kamineko - 10-20-2025

LeftHandedGuitarist, have you tried to run any Windows 98 dependant games?

RE: DOSBox Pure with Win95/98 support - LeftHandedGuitarist - 10-20-2025

(10-20-2025, 12:26 AM)kamineko Wrote: LeftHandedGuitarist, have you tried to run any Windows 98 dependant games?

I haven't had the time to try that yet, no. I'm fairly sure I have a Windows 98 installation disc lying around somewhere.

RE: DOSBox Pure with Win95/98 support - sjmpoo - 10-20-2025

Looks cool... I'm just forking a 3D enabled QEMU image with Windows 98SE and installing games individually. This works very well even for wayward games like Black Dhalia and Discworld Noir, will this work for these?

RE: DOSBox Pure with Win95/98 support - kamineko - 10-25-2025

So I had some free time and decided to try out DosBox Pure's experimental Windows 95/98 support. To play it safe I ran it on an old Windows 7 computer.

All settings were at defaults except:

Code:
Performance - Emulated Performance - Pentium II, 300MHz from 1997

Performance - Detailed > Maximum Emulated Performance - Pentium II, 300 MHz from 1997

Video - SVGA Memory - 4MB

System - CPU Type - Pentium

The choice of emulated graphics cards is limited to S3 Trio64 and Tseng Labs ET3000/4000 with 4/8 MB maximum RAM, there is also 3dfx Voodoo expansion card support. I guess this is to ensure maximum compatibility.

Windows 98 SE installed successfully, the installation process was as easy as described on the emulator's web page.

Next I ran dxdiag to test graphics capabilities. This is where I encountered the only bug so far: all graphics tests completed sucessfully, but when I tried to close dxdiag the emulator crashed. Installing DirectX 7.0a or 8.2 didn't help.

Well, graphics tests were successful, so I restarted the emulator and continued by installing Voodoo drivers, which also went well.

Finally, I proceeded to installing Discworld Noir. I chose full installation and the game installed and ran without a problem (which is ironic, because when I installed it on my Pentium II 266MHz computer back in 2001 it crashed because of some graphics driver issue).