One thing not mentioned why DOSBox is also needed (even for older 32bit OS), is the lack of driver support for essential hardware of DOS era. Like sound cards. Today everything in Windows is DirectX based, including sound, but at those times each card had its own quirks, level of compatibility with older games and special hardware access based on its settings. I think the last time I was able to use DOS compatible sound card was with Win98. With XP (NT kernel), so many things stopped working altogether.

Actually ,even the original 8086 could address up to 1 MB of memory or even more. But it was using the wacky as hell scheme of the real mode.

Do note that every x86 or x86_64 processor can run in real mode so you could install DOS (putting driver issues to one side for now) and play games completely natively but you would have to reboot each time you wanted to switch between Windows and DOS

THANK YOU for this video. I can't believe how hard it's been to find information explaining WHY you can't run lower bit apps on higher bit systems, not just that there's compatibility issues. Like, yes, I know they don't work. No one wants to explain WHY. Again, thanks.

@1:29 Looks like Madison was bending the pins on that CPU

Why do you need DOSBox? 1-Play Doom 2-Play Doom II 3-Play FInal Doom 4-Masters of Doom 5-Plutonian Doom 6-TNT Doom 7-Repeat.

2:37 talks about Virtual 8086 mode, shows an 8085

I've been using DOSBox for over ten years now. It has improved significantly since I first found it.

Oh feel the speed of that 386 SX. Upgraded to DX and that sweet math co-processor. Grand Prix Legends loved it.

Well lucky for me my 486SX/33 with my Pentium Overdrive slapped in a few years later is still kicking! If memory serves me it’s running DOS 6.21 last I remember. Made by AOpen if anyone remember them.

how about emulating 32 bit emulator to emulate 16 bit programs, on a 64 bit machine ?

I think an important point is missing: Programs aren't just written to run on the hardware but also communicate with the OS (a lot) and if the OS changes some of this doesn't work anymore. Typical example is old programs trying to write to random folders in C:/ which there is no access to anymore in modern windows versions. Back then the whole concept of access rights did not exist ... Edit: Also user and application data was the same thing. Now savegames would have to be written in specific folders for the windows user while back then they usually went into the same folder where the program is installed into (which will now be read only)

Use dosbox at work, MOUNT C C: Aaaah can't remember the other commands😭

I love the "SourceFed" like video format. Keep it up and maybe do multiple subjects with differing hosts in one video like this. That would be amazing!

Good presentation. No failed attempts at humor. Upbeat but not over the top. Well done.

I was working on a project to replace this really old Windows 98 machine that ran a legacy MS DOS program. The first solution was to use a older version of VMware that was compatible with Windows 10 and supported VM of FreeDOS. We couldn't get the parallel card to recognize and the screen resolution would not scale to any monitors. We eventually settled on just installing FreeDos and make a FreeDOS and all hardware worked.

Gotta admit, some of your explanation went over my head but I'm grateful for your knowledge regardless! Thank you!

Excuse me, but the Intel 8086 had a 20 bits long memory address bus, so you was able to address 2^20 bits = 1MB of memory. You still used 16 bits of memory addresses, due to the linear memory model. The memory was divided to 64KB segments. (2^16) The memory address of these segments always ended with 0000, so you didn't have to store these values. When you wanted to access a specific byte of the memory, you needed the segment address, and it's offset value in the 64K big segment. (Also a 16 bit value.) When you added these two numbers, (segment + offset) you've got the exact address of the given byte. It was a pain in the ass to use, but was a pretty clever trick to address more memory with less numbers.

This type of content is absolutely brilliant for Techquickie. Go through the history of compression in honor of Silicon Valley ending.

640K RAM is enough for everyone! Yes, I am that old.

what a history lesson, nicely presented a lot of information, should be taught in IT basics ...

I use DOSBOX all the time at work in an industrial setting to connect to old RTUs.

Most cpus startup in real mode and switch to protected mode early in boot up. It’s not the computer that’s incompatible it’s the OS

A leak from the NT 4.0 source now allows us to run the official ntvdm on x64 versions of Windows, so that's cool

I just passed the first sem in Computer Science using this program

LHX Attack Chopper time

Wow just that little mention and screenshot of Windows 95 brought up my nostalgia for my first computer!

There's also PCEm to emulate the really old DOS hardware.

Nice always wondered about this. Great video.

I actually used it to run a really old cnc lathe (weird conversational machine). Takes a little config to get the serial port working but you you do what you got to.

Wow Linus looks so nice with this new tracksuit

2:09 Did he mean to say, "mid 1990s"

I love my DOSBOX. MS-DOS games are the most interesting time in retro gaming. Doom II and Blood are my favourites.

Don't forget DosBox even has ultrasound support and unofficial builds have MT32 and 3dfx support so you can run your old games with good sound and 3d effects.

How quick have you been to a teckquickie video

Actually, real mode has mostly been used in single-task mode. So, there isn't much problems with memory sharing, when you share it with nothing else at the same time.

I have that BenQ monitor showcased in the example early in the video. Mines a BenQ V2400W. It has a green line down it because of slight degradation around the panel, but it still works.

Thank you, you gave me hope

i can feel the teleprompter

Thanks for helping teach me about the world of IT.

20 years ago was 2000. No one in their right mind was still using one of those pizza box-style Macs in 2000. Those old things were low-end even for their time, and that was very early 90s.

Awesome. Truly awesome video, questions aside.

0:29 I built my first PC in that case almost 15 years ago!!! Love me some old school Raidmax goodness :-)

The number of bits that define the system as 16bit is not the address bus, but the data bus. The 16bit x86 processors had a 20bit address bus and could access 1MB of memory. The 16bit motorola 68000 processors had 24bit address bus and could access 16mb of memory. Also if you install DOS on a modern PC it should be able to run most old games, without sound, since you don't have an ISA slot for a sound blaster. You could have had. The ISA bus is still part of the architecture, but modern motherboards don't expose it as a physical slot unfortunately.

Doom was actually a 32 bit game. Lots of DOS game were 32 bit, they used the "dos4gw protected mode runtime" to enter 32 bit mode from the 16 bit DOS.

16 bit refers to the data path not the address bus. The 80286 was a 16 bit CPU that had a 24 bit address bus. A bigger issue was the segmented memory model used in the x86 CPUs. There are 4K addresses for every byte in memory due the overlapping memory registers in real mode.

I still play DOS games, it feels like going back to those times :)

1:05 Small correction: The original 8088/8086 had already a 20 bit addressable memory space . So it could address already 1M byte of memory (in theory) The older 8 bit CPU had typical a 16 bit address space (hence the typical 64 kbyte limit of 8 bit computers) It's a common mistake. 8 , 16, 32 bit etc refers to the width of the main registers! Not the maximum addressable space. Starting from 80386 (32 bit CPU) the main registers and address registers (instruction pointer, etc ) are the same width. The rest of the video is quite accurate

It isn't just 16-bit compatibility either. Every DOS game back in the day shipped with their own drivers for different sound and video cards too. It's pretty unlikely that any of those drivers are compatible with today's video and audio hardware. (Although modern video cards still have some of the barebones VGA capability built in, even today, the performance is way in the dumps and compatibility is spotty at best.) But we still need emulators. These days they either emulate the aforementioned hardware outright (no sound cards come with FM synths on them these days) or remap the register writes to something that modern hardware can use (USB mice, keyboards, so on).

Speaking of Doom, you can turn on IPX protcol in DOSBOX. IIRC XP was the last version of Windows that had supported it.

But can it run Windows 3x? Yes, yes it can

Thanks for showing this after i found out about DOSbox and played my childhood games smh

What a lot of people don't realize is that you can run Windows 3.3 out of D-fend Reloaded. That allows me to run old Windows games using Windows 3.3 that can't run in Windows 10.

finally after years :D

1:20 a bit more work hahaha that killed me

Heck with Doom. I am loading Descent after watching this video.

The BIGGEST reason many of these games won't run or run correctly besides speed is the fact that modern PCs lack Soundblaster capabilities from the sound cards of the 90s. Many games need an OPL3 compatible sound chip (similar to the Sega Genesis sound chip) to play sound at all.

Im high school times I used DOSbox to run old PCB software (Tango) at home lol. We used that one year in a lab with really old and slow win xp computers. Eventually we got some win 10 computers with Eagle.

01:44 You can trust me to real your memory. I’m 4Real

2:10 it should be noted that there are more rings, although not all of them are always present depending on which os/hardware you are on Protection Ring: 3: User Mode 2: Drivers 1: Drivers 0: Kernel -1: Hypervisor -2: System Management Mode -3: Intel Management Engine

'Protected mode' was not only in PCs but in the DSi and/or the 3DS since the 3DS has 275MB? Of RAM and DS games required only 4MB/16MB (4 -NDS and 16 for NDSi) it made sense for the rest of the RAM to be inaccessible while in this mode and in,y used for the 3DS' system software, Nintendo called this 'DS Mode'

Do you know if dosbox will run games that came out in late 1999 or early 2000s? I have a problem with Rainbow Six Rogue Spear, for some reason it won't run on my windows vista laptop which exceeds the minimum requirements.

0:07 coincidence kinda, all of the games shown are Sega Genesis games made by Sega(except the one on the top left which is Mega Man 2 which is an NES game made by Capcom

Ah yes, the times where I played: - Commander keen - Jazz Jackrabbit - One must fall 2097 - Biomenace - Doom - Jill of the jungle - Wacky wheels and so many other titles... was amazing.

Before this video was posted i bought and played origenal doom. Nice timing.

DOSBox can also run the old-school Borland Graphics Interface (BGI). I was able to resurrect a few of my earliest programs because of it!

Dosbox also enables to Play Ultima 7 under Linux or Windows. The unreal mode was so wacky even on Windows 95 era, requires to boot to pure DOS node!

Phones can emulate N64 smoothly now. I replayed Ocarina of Time with updated texture packs on a Droid Turbo a few years back.

I recommend you Dosbox-X wich contains a bunch of optimisations and is a quite active project. You also have PCEm wich run very good too. Btw, there is also another problem : using windows 16 bits programs under x86/x64. But Microsoft is here with a genius solution : the win32s thunking layer aka how to load a win16 binary with a 32/64 bits program.

I mean its not only Microsoft's problem to make sure old software works on new hardware. Eg: The Sims (1) or Hotel Tycoon (1). You will lose your mind trying to get them to run on Windows 10. Even though they were made for 32 bit OS with 16 bit color support (Sims). Its EA's responsibility to make sure its compatible not Microsoft.

Depends on what you mean by "need" ... I don't NEED to play Umoria, although I like to. I do have VirtualBox in my Linux Mint, and I could easily install a Win-95 or even a plain DOS install and use that, but DosBox is a far simpler and quicker solution. Once your life has been disturbed by Ancient Multi-Hued Dragons, you never recover... The Balrog is another matter. They say you can kill it, but in 25 years of trying, I've never found a way.

@ 4:40 My man. 👊

While I was looking at the picture of the 386 that they used, something seemed off, but I couldn't quite place it. After staring at it a little longer, I realized that it's not in a socket. It's just resting on the traces of some random PCB. Were you guys not able to find an old compatible motherboard, or was this a stock photo?

for those of you that don't know what DOSBox is it is 8bit and the 8bit was the original gaming for windows in other words you would be running the same thing as Atari

Now I can play my old Magic School Bus and Duke Nukem II games on my Windows 10 PC! Thanks!

Lmao the animation at 1min28 ahaha 😅

1:00 lol sounded like kermit for a sec ngl

You could have posted this video one and half week before since i was working on it......I also wanted this video...But nice i liked it.....

Just replayed Cyberia and Mission Critical 🙂

What a specific video

Video Suggestion: How do people discover vulnerabilities in software and hardware? Who does this?

You can use OTVDM too

Fun fact: Windows 2000 and above, ran 16-bit Windows applications in an emulation layer, known as WOW32 (Windows on Windows 32). When the switch was made to 64-bit, there was a need for compatibility with 32-bit applications on the 64-bit OS, so Windows 7+ in 64-bit mode runs 32-bit applications in an emulation layer (WOW64). This is why task manager explicitly calls out 32-bit applications, to let you know they're running under this emulation layer, and why there's a copy of some system files in the windows\syswow64 folder. It also means that 64-bit operating systems can't run 16-bit applications, as that would require running WOW32 under WOW64, which would be an absolute mess. So old (Windows 3.1) application installers don't work, but sometimes the applications inside them do: imgur.com/a/oAaZ1

Cool. Not something I expected to see here. I've been involved in DOSBox development off and on since around 2013 (not mainline branch so much as offshoots and ports to assorted alternative type OSes).

0:32 holy fuck that's the case my first ever gaming PC, a prebuilt, came in back in like 2008. I cut the shit out of my hand when rebuilding a newer system into it years later. It was awful case, dumb, the light bar burned out in like 2 months, air flow was awful, zero room behind the motherboard tray, satanic blood ritual caused my cpu to run hotter, swinging plastic door broke, overall just the cheapest crappiest case I've ever used. *I miss it*

OTVDM is a third party 16-bit virtualization layer for windows 64-bit. It is still in the testing stage so not super reliable yet, although this is only good for 15-bit Windows apps not dos.

Time to go get Midtown Madness running on my laptop

16 bit might be obsolete, but some software is vital if its never been done in new platform.

1:31 what are you talking about ? The 386 is backwards compatible with the previous x86s made, and that without even including the 8086 emulator inside. The 386 can natively run 16 bit software. If you need to use the 386's features, just write 32 bit code. What long mode doesn't do is the virtual 8086, but you can still run 16 bit software in long mode as long as it doesn't try to access memory areas it's not authorized to. Which means that 16 bit programs for windows could still work natively in 64 bit windows (proof of this is that there is some wine port for windows being developed that allows that) Now, for DOS you'd need a 8086 emulator indeed, or some VM maybe but that's all you really need. A VM especially would be a lot faster than DOSBox which may sound bad for speed sensitive games, but it can also be a great thing for demanding games that run slowly on DOSBox.

Horrendous memories of turbo C starts kicking in

DOSBOX is mostly needed to play older PC games like Doom, Duke Nukem 3D Wolfenstein 3D, etc. GZDoom helps make these games more playable on modern systems, but DOSBOX is still absolutely required to even get them running.

Is dosbox a compendium of all these different emulators? Would be nice to have all compiled into one program.

I should go install Duke nukem 3D with this I still have the CDs

is there a way to like easily put something on your walls or something to block outside wireless signals.

Last time I was this quick 360p was a thing

Master of Orion 1 in a window work great.

Gotta love those full 64bit programs, like... give me second. Firefox? No. Chrome? No. Windows? No. Is everything programmed in 32bit and just... placed in a 64bit container? How would that even work?

It was the 8 bit CPUs that could use 64 KB. 16-bit processors could access 1-16 megabytes.

Of all the games to mention, Doom is one of the ones you don't need emulation for because of the plethora of source ports available.

I just wait Winamp reborn