DOS Gaming with Sound - FreeDOS + SBEMU on a portable USB drive

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DOS Gaming with Sound - FreeDOS + SBEMU on a portable USB drive

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Bytes N Bits

Күн бұрын

Пікірлер: 118

@DukowskiX 6 ай бұрын

I recently rescued a sealed new intel atom desktop with 1gb of ram from being thrown to the garbage. Looking I just found this Sound Blaster emulator so I was thinking in making it a DOS Gaming PC. This video will make the adventure much easier. Thank you for making it.

@BytesNBits 6 ай бұрын

Great find! Good luck with the project!

@idiedlastmonth Жыл бұрын

Thank you! Glad you are still around.

@BytesNBits Жыл бұрын

Still trying to fit the video work in!

@expeditionbuster Жыл бұрын

My first sound card was the Game Blaster for the Tandy 1000. It came with Silpheed to highlight the amazingness that was MIDI sound. Although not as great as the Roland sound card it was designed by/for the GameBlaster version of the Silpheed MIDI soundtrack will always be embedded in my memory and heart.

@BytesNBits Жыл бұрын

It was great to experience the development of computer sound from the 8 bit beeps to full music. We take it all for granted now.

@expeditionbuster Жыл бұрын

@@BytesNBits Correction, WE may take it for granted, but people born 5 years later or who didn't have access to computers can't take it for granted, because for them, it WAS already granted. :D

Жыл бұрын

Now if we could do a similar 3DFx Glide software emulation (probably using a different CPU core/thread than the one running the DOS game) that would be another great milestone.

@BytesNBits Жыл бұрын

I think DOSBox is going to be your best bet for that one!

Жыл бұрын

@@BytesNBits PCem might be a bit better in this regard. But I was thinking about something like SBEMU for native DOS.

@RhoTrepaan 2 ай бұрын

Actually using another core under DOS might be a problem

@BorisFavorov Жыл бұрын

Of course, I do enjoy your video. Thanks a lot for so detailed instructions. I have some original retro-PCs from 8086 to 2000s era, but always ready to try other ways to make a gaming pc. Surely will try FreeDOS and SBEmu for my i7 ))

@BytesNBits Жыл бұрын

Glad I could help!

@methanoid Жыл бұрын

The best video of yours I have seen but I confess (sorry) that it was a bit over long and I fell asleep (as I sometimes do) watching it. The first 5 mins was a little repetitive. I'd have tried to focus on a short "this is what we're gonna do" and "if you want to do X,Y or Z, check link in description"... I have to re-watch it now! :-)

@BytesNBits Жыл бұрын

Thanks for your comments. I did try to cover most of the process in this one as the setup is a bit unusual - most people just install onto an internal hard drive. I do try to timestamp all the videos these days so you can skip to the interesting bits. Hope you enjoyed it.

@terrydaktyllus1320 Жыл бұрын

@@BytesNBits I have no issue with your video format, I find your content is very well done and very interesting. I am of a similar age to your good self and I personally find it frustrating when people of a "younger" generation seem to lack the patience to just sit, watch and learn - that's how I got to be at the level I am today in my work life around computing and cyber-security. We all came into this world knowing nothing and the difference between "expert" and "newbie" is simply the amount of time and effort to learning that the former has put in compared to the latter.

@BytesNBits Жыл бұрын

Thanks. I try to make sure I give enough info so you can go off and complete the project.

@terrydaktyllus1320 Жыл бұрын

Thank you for another excellent video. I've not tried SBEMU out myself yet but I will be doing so in the next few days - probably on an IBM Thinkpad T22 with a Pentium III CPU in it that is still to new to have a native DOS soundcard in it. One thing to mention here is that you can have a PC that is "too new" for DOS gaming because a lot of MS-DOS games are very reliant on VESA graphics being supported by the graphics card - a lot of newer graphics cards do not have VESA modes built into them any longer so may not work anyway.

@BytesNBits Жыл бұрын

Thanks for the comments. Definitely give it a go. I didn't know about the modern graphics cards. That would be an interesting test to try out. I think my son's PC has a fairly up to date card so I'll give that a go with the new portable DOS stick! Thanks.

@terrydaktyllus1320 Жыл бұрын

@@BytesNBits I gave up on AAA "games as a service" about 10 years ago and went "Linux only" at home when Windows 7 support ended. As such, I have older hardware (that I buy used and cheap) that all works fine with Linux and I think the newest graphics card I have is probably 7 or 8 years old now but works fine for the pre-2010 and retro games I do play - it supports VESA modes so I think removal of them is fairly recent in GPUs.

@BytesNBits Жыл бұрын

Yes. There is a lot of great tech out there that gets forgotten as the next shiny thing comes on the market.

@maxmuster7003 Жыл бұрын

My last graphic card Radeon 9750 PCIe have a VBE 3 BIOS with some modenumbers for widescreen resolution 16:9 and 16: 10 aspect ratio. I think some old DOS games use VBE 1.?, but not VBE 2 or VBE 3. Since VBE 2 we have to get the modenumbers from a modelist inside the BIOS and not the number from the outdated modelist of VBE 1,?. This might be the problem.

@maxmuster7003 Жыл бұрын

DOSBOX use the old outdated modelist from VBE 1.?, but have some function of VBE 2 like the support for the linear framebuffer in the 4. gb memory address. Example: svga-S3 emulation 800x600x32 in C0000000.

@maxmuster7003 Жыл бұрын

I am not a DOS gamer, but i like to program tiny executable for DOS/DOSBOX and i began to learn how to make videos(no speech).

@BytesNBits Жыл бұрын

that sounds good

@mkastelovic 8 ай бұрын

For Ac97 sound cards you can try also Dossound. It doesn't run with every AC97, but worth testing also ;) .

@BytesNBits 8 ай бұрын

Thanks for the tip. I'll try that out.

@MarekMoravec900 Жыл бұрын

Thank you very much. My dream of dos gaming pc has come true.

@BytesNBits Жыл бұрын

Great. Have fun!

@xCrossBite Жыл бұрын

Thank you for this! I've been looking at getting back into DOS and have a bunch of disks and discs I'd love to revisit. Any advice on getting apps/games copied to local installs instead of running from USB?

@BytesNBits Жыл бұрын

You can use the USB stick to install FreeDOS onto the hard drive of a suitable PC. If it's got a floppy drive and/or CD you can just plug in your media. If not you'll need to copy the files off the media and then copy them onto your installation.

@guidolehwalder9376 9 ай бұрын

Does work here fine with MS-DOS 6.22 on a Intel-Chipset AC97 industrial based PC (also like Network with MTCP under DOS)

@BytesNBits 9 ай бұрын

Thanks for the update. I haven't looked at the project since making the video.

@MotownBatman Жыл бұрын

What a Simple, Clean Setup! Nice Job, Definately gonna try this out. Did you test this on usb2 &/or usb3 Thumb Drive or just the one you happened to use? That used to drive me nuts trying to figure out why I could install Linux but Windows 7 Setup Always Crashed lol

@BytesNBits Жыл бұрын

I suspect it will work with USB2 and 3 drives. I think they are all backwards compatible. The machines I used it on in the video where both USB2 (or possibly USB1!), the stick was USB2. Definitely give it a go.

@JohnVella1968 Жыл бұрын

Great video, thanks! Any idea if this would work on a laptop which uses AC97 sound? It's an IBM Thinkpad T43.

@BytesNBits Жыл бұрын

Yes. SBEmu is designed to work with the Windows style sound cards. It's a good start but not fully developed yet so not all games will work. I found the emulation route with DosBox worked better. The next video in my feed covered that.

@JohnVella1968 Жыл бұрын

@@BytesNBits I'll be honest and say that I want to use the T43 as a dos based word processor, and the only games I think I'd have on it would be Doom and Prince of Persia, but if they don't work it's not the end of the world.

@BytesNBits Жыл бұрын

@@JohnVella1968 If sound isn't an issue FreeDOS will give you a great machine. Doom and Prince of Persia both work with SBEmu so you're all set!!

@martinausdeutschland 10 күн бұрын

Danke!

@BytesNBits 9 күн бұрын

Thanks you very much!

@saschatrott87 5 ай бұрын

when the laptop has legacy usb support for keyboards and mice you can play games with an 8bitdo micro gamepad it has an keyboard mode and the buttons and dpad can set to any keyboard key with its software

@BytesNBits 5 ай бұрын

Thanks for the info. Sounds like a very good controller for retro gaming.

@damienretro4416 4 ай бұрын

Unfortunately, most modern GPUs + monitor combinations are locked at 60Hz in FreeDOS whereas most DOS games are designed to run at 320x200 @ 70Hz. You end up with dropped frames and a worse experience than DOSBox-X or DOSBox Pure with Freesync which can do 70Hz with issues.

@BytesNBits 4 ай бұрын

Thanks for the info. I hadn't considered that angle.

@sebastian19745 9 ай бұрын

I tried FreeDos with SBEMU on several computers. Older, like EEEPC 901 netbook or like HP Core i5 first gen. All with HD audio from Realtek mostly on Intel Chipset. It worked well, but not great. Jemmex, the version that came with FreeDOS or the newer version, are quite unstable. Some programs/games crash, some run well, and some freeze the system. The classic Prince of Persia usually freeze the computer with a black screen and it needs to be powered off. I found that Doom works well, but only music (midi) plays but no FX sounds on some machines. For the programs that worked, I found that there was no speed issues, independent the CPU (Atom, Core I, C2D, Dual core or even some old Pentium CPU). I also find that the phisical memory amount is a problem, many times the same program works or not depending on the amount of memory installed. Less memory is better, 512M DD2 is compatible with more priograms than 4G DDR2 on the same laptop. Maybe is a way to limit the memory amount that Jemmex use or the system is reporting? I used to make a ramdrive in the XMS to "eat" some memory, leaving 20-50M available as EMS or XMS but I saw no difference. About emulation with dosbox, I also found that on some old low-power PCs (like the EEE PC 901), running the program under XP is better than using DosBox, even if that means using VDMSound. DosBox is somewhat limited under Windows 7/XP and even under Linux I found speed issues on some games (felt laggy) on EEE PC 901 with 2G DDR2.

@BytesNBits 9 ай бұрын

Thanks for all the information. That's really helpful. The native DOS route is a bit hit and miss.

@mikeums Жыл бұрын

how to work with real CDs and disc image files?

@BytesNBits Жыл бұрын

Check the DosBox documentation. You need to mount them in a similar way to mounting the hard drive.

@Devilot91 Жыл бұрын

nice video and you're amazing, but HELP! i tried this (i already had a FreeDOS 1.3 on a partition on my XP HDD) but all i needed was sound working on my "modern" PC, which is a Asus M2N from 2006, i think with a SoundMAX integrated sound card. I tried to add the SBEMU files on the root and edited the fdconfig and fdautoexec as your video. Everything at booting seems to work, i mean i have the SAME messages on your video when everything is loaded and working\emulated, but as soon i try to run any DOS game (Blood, Duke 3D, Doom ecc.) it recognized the settings on the setup, but i get NO sound. Is muted, the speakers are working and full volume but i get not any sound or music at all.. why?

@BytesNBits Жыл бұрын

I think the sound blaster emulator is still not fully compatible with all systems. It might be that you card isn't supported yet. I'd have a look on the discussion boards to see if anyone has something similar. I seem to remember reading seems works best either Intel integrated hardware.

@Devilot91 Жыл бұрын

@@BytesNBits thanks for answer! sadly looks like my sound card not work. BUT i just tried my Sound Blaster Live 5.1 PCI and it WORKS! still have some random crashes and i must still do some workarounds, but for now i am amazed that works, thank you very much :)

@szaman6204 9 ай бұрын

Coś pięknego.

@BytesNBits 9 ай бұрын

Thanks

@freevideos051 4 ай бұрын

I got it to work on old version but no sound on new version.

@BytesNBits 4 ай бұрын

You'll probably have to play with the settings in both the emulator and the software you're running. I'm hoping the new versions are better than the old ones!

@MarekMoravec900 Жыл бұрын

I tried SBEM and dos 7.1. I played around with the command line a bit and it goes perfectly. Aspire 5310. So all done

@BytesNBits Жыл бұрын

Great. Glad it worked!

@give_me_my_nick_back 9 ай бұрын

I think making some thin linux boot stright to dosbox is a bit more practical solution

@BytesNBits 9 ай бұрын

I totally agree. I made the same conclusion in one of the following videos. The native DOS route is a great technical challenge but not quite there yet.

@SolarLantern424 Ай бұрын

Did lemmings work with SBEmu after you had installed it? I guess you could make a menu to boot with or without SBemu.

@BytesNBits Ай бұрын

Some games worked, some didn't. It was very hit and miss.

@SolarLantern424 Ай бұрын

@@BytesNBits In the video you said it wouldn't install with SBEmu enabled but I wasn't sure if it worked with SBEmu AFTER you had installed it with SBEmu disabled.

@awilliams1701 Жыл бұрын

I wonder if free dos would help me. I made a program a long time ago that requires windows (for full file names) but is actually dos based. It ran fine in XP. But I couldn't get it to run in dosbox. Even the version that didn't require long file names. I didn't feel like trying to debug something so old. The odd thing is I developed it on a laptop that had VESA 2.0 support. In windows ME it had VESA 2.0 which makes development easier. But in XP that support was missing, so I had to include a VESA 1.2 driver.

@BytesNBits Жыл бұрын

If the code doesn't rely on any of the Windows infrastructure it should be fine in FreeDOS. It covers DOS up to V7. Your other option is to create a Windows XP / ME PC either on real hardware or in VirtualBox. The installation disks are not hard to find.

@darylchandler1033 2 ай бұрын

I have a windows 11 laptop and I was wondering how to get freedos to work with dosbox? Any help would be greatly appreciated thanks.

@BytesNBits 2 ай бұрын

I think DOSBox has it's own version of MSDOS built in so you can't overwrite it with FreeDOS. But please do check.

@slowlymakingsmoke Жыл бұрын

Thanks for the video. Is there a way to set the screen to 4:3 in Free Dos even if you have 16:9 monitors?

@BytesNBits Жыл бұрын

I'm not sure, I haven't looked that deeply into the finer setup. I strongly suspect it is possible but you'll need to look in the documentation to find out what drivers and settings changes you need to make.

@maxmuster7003 Жыл бұрын

Some 16:9 monitor have an interpolation to display 4:3 in full screen without black bars around. There are modenumbers for 4:3 and other modenumbers for 16:9 aspect ratio. I think all DOS games use 4:3 modenumbers.

@maxmuster7003 Жыл бұрын

I used 16: 10 aspect ratio in MS DOS 6.22 with 1920x1200x32 with a 28" LCD monitor on Geforce PCIe graphic card with a VBE 3 BIOS with my own DOS program.

@dullah1434 9 ай бұрын

Am I able to play dos games with sound through my headphones or will the sound be from the speakers on my pc? I don’t want the sound from the games to suddenly play out from the speakers when I want to play in private and peace

@BytesNBits 9 ай бұрын

With this approach the sound will be played through your PC standard sound output. Usually the headphone socket will mute the main speakers when in use but you'd need to try it out. My advice would be to go the Linux / DOSBox X route instead where you have actual control over the sound hardware. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/kOCgnLOQ0rSqnmw.html

@yollabolly7944 6 ай бұрын

I wonder if you can install freedos on a windows 7 computer I don't know if it would come with sound however.

@BytesNBits 6 ай бұрын

Sound is the big issue with PCs that don't have an actual SoundBlaster card. Have a look at my video on DOSBox. It's a much better route.

@matthewday7565 Жыл бұрын

Interesting, how does memory usage compare with the case of VIA chipset emulation and the notoriously bulky VIAFMTSR

@BytesNBits Жыл бұрын

You're going way beyond my knowledge of the topic here!

@zhanatrakishev8944 Жыл бұрын

If you do not have an AC97 sound card, then you will only have sound in Doom and Duke Nukem. Warcraft 2, Warlords 2, Flashback, Wolfenstein 3d, Spear of Destiny, Black thorne - the sound card is not detected.

@BytesNBits Жыл бұрын

Yes. It's still not perfect, but getting there. It's opened DOS up to a lot of 'newer' PCs.

@darylchandler1033 2 ай бұрын

Can I have a complete list of dos games included please and thanks.

@BytesNBits 2 ай бұрын

This is the basic emulator setup. You'll need to get your games elsewhere.

@yollabolly7944 6 ай бұрын

I've used DOSBox on windows 7 even on windows 98se windows 2000 windows XP and this computer witch is windows 10 I was just curious about windows 7.

@BytesNBits 6 ай бұрын

FreeDOS depends on the PC hardware you're using as it replaces the Windows operating system. You could try running it in a virtual PC inside Windows. I think you can attach SoundBlaster cards through the virtual route.

@szaman6204 9 ай бұрын

Does this work in ms-dos6.22?

@BytesNBits 9 ай бұрын

I think so but I haven't tried it.

@szaman6204 9 ай бұрын

@@BytesNBits I've checked, it works.

@diejuse 4 ай бұрын

Is possible using qemu? I can't get it to work.

@BytesNBits 4 ай бұрын

It can be tricky to get a native DOS machine set up. The other option is to run DOSBox under Linux. I made a video showing how to do that. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/ma5jocSUx83cj6M.html

@diejuse 4 ай бұрын

@@BytesNBits Yes. The sound with Dosbox works perfectly. But I wanted to do it with QEMU, which also allows me an internet connection.

@ratix98 Жыл бұрын

Jemmex is very picky in my experience. I only had one pc work somewhat great. I need to look into the other alternatives. It ran doom, doom2, and heretic just find with complete sound & music. I really give it my all across the board with this to see what i can play. Games i tried off the top of my head and had no success or just crashed all together when "exit to dos". Keen2, keen4, monster bash starring johnny dash, and stunts. I got to play speed racer but it appears to have a timer issue and i can only play the demo. I havent tried much else but be prepared for timer issues in a few games. Moslo would probably work fine in this situation. I kicked the tires essentially about an hour ago for the absolute DOS experience. You can play might and magic 1 through 3 but mm1 will crash the system when you quit. The 80s games you'd want to play for those sweet pc speaker sounds should work fine but you have to reboot into freedos and bypass the startup files by pressing f5 when it prompts you. Stunts will probably load up but i haven't checked. You made it look easy and yes it is easy if you wanted to play a few modern dos games such as duke3d that you showed. Quake runs like an absolute dream. Bottem line is it's still damn cool that this works.

@BytesNBits Жыл бұрын

The native dos route is still very hit and miss. To be honest I've shelved the idea for the moment and reverted to emulation.

@ratix98 Жыл бұрын

@@BytesNBits I'm still chipping away at it but it's definitely on the back burner for the time being for me as well. Limiting ram is where I stopped because i got tired of trying different parameters and xms shenanigans. A few things to note though. 1. You can make a freedos directory and set paths accordingly so you can have full access to edit, format, copy, xcopy etc. 2. If you do set the paths and copied freedos you gain access to loadfix. Loadfix seems to let the older games work fine without having to bypass the startup files. 3. Sbemu will introduce IRQ conflicts crashing the computer. Doom and heretic will either not load or load then freeze immediately and screws up all the video. Switching the irq from 7 to 5 seems to fix this.

@MarekMoravec900 Жыл бұрын

Hello. A lot of games go great for freedos for me, for which I thank you. But I tried ms-dos7.1, it goes great,even better. but without sound.Could you record an ms-dos video tutorial with audio? I have a laptop Intel Celeron M520 (1.7GHz).Intel GMA950 1GB RAM HDD 120GB. THANKS

@BytesNBits Жыл бұрын

The SMEmu route is great but still has a way to go, as you're finding out. I've gone down the DOSBox(X) route to get much better compatibility. Even on a lower powered modern PC it will give you great DOS emulation. Have a look at kzfaq.info/get/bejne/kOCgnLOQ0rSqnmw.html

@umutkayacan7659 Жыл бұрын

❤

@BytesNBits Жыл бұрын

Thanks.

@ryannystrom6427 Жыл бұрын

This worked great, except for that doom isn't detecting my usb mouse

@ryannystrom6427 Жыл бұрын

It says mouse not present when starting up doom

@BytesNBits Жыл бұрын

Did you load the mouse driver in the config.sys file. I think I cover it briefly in the video.

@ryannystrom6427 Жыл бұрын

ctmouse says it can't find a ps2 mouse. I think it is because the mouse is usb. When I try Bret Johnson's usb drivers, the computer crashes when I try to open a program to test the mouse.

@BytesNBits Жыл бұрын

@@ryannystrom6427 It is all a bit hit and miss getting DOS to interface with the more modern hardware. Sometimes it is easier just to get hold of compatible bits as it can take a lot of fiddling about to get the right setup, and it differs from machine to machine. To be honest I've shelved the native DOS route in favour of an emulated route using DOSBox running on a light Linux distro to reuse the old hardware. I made a video on that about a week ago.

@DeadMouseis Жыл бұрын

how are you getting real moden with jemm,it bitches for me saying no real mode for lack of qemm

@BytesNBits Жыл бұрын

To be honest this route wasn't my preferred way to get a DOS gaming machine. I haven't explored all the setup possibilities.

@DeadMouseis Жыл бұрын

@@BytesNBits I have been..a hard drive with qemm seems to be the best,well a boot menu one with qemm and one with jemm and just making a sbon.bat..that way if like I use mplayer I do not need the driver so I choose jemm and don't run the bat. For games or impulse tracker I use qemm for ems and the sbon.bat...for games like quake 2 hexen 2 and normal doom as well,for older games I use jemm and sbob.bat...makes for way less reboots

@coolie4u Жыл бұрын

Gravis Ultrasound support?

@BytesNBits Жыл бұрын

Not yet. Just Sound Blaster.

@MarekMoravec900 Жыл бұрын

and intel hd audio (ac97)

@BytesNBits Жыл бұрын

Yes. SBEmu will work with Windows sound cards.

@donaldlemoine3032 10 ай бұрын

The next greatest thing is to create an ISO file of the completed stick so we can just burn it to a flash disk. Works great for us lazy people, lol!

@BytesNBits 10 ай бұрын

Great tip! But part of the fun is going through all the messing about with the setup :)

@SuperbLobster 11 күн бұрын

"bad or missing command interpreter" is all I got for following this bad, no-good tutorial.

@BytesNBits 11 күн бұрын

Did you follow all the steps. Sounds like not all the required files are on the boot drive.

@SuperbLobster 8 күн бұрын

@@BytesNBits Of course I followed all the steps! All the required files were on the drive. It turns out your guide is WRONG. The incorrect line is "DEVICE=\jemmex.exe". This causes the above error. What you actually need is "DEVICE=JEMMEX.EXE X2MAX=8192 NOEMS" as per instructions in the SBEMU readme. Having done that, it booted and SBEMU sound worked, though several games won't run without EMS.