DOS Archives - The Silicon Underground

What is a DOS game?

Dave Farquhar — Tue, 05 Apr 2022 13:03:56 +0000

It seemed like an innocent enough question to me. Two game developers were talking, one older than the other, and the older said something about developing a DOS game, and then the younger asked, what’s a DOS game? A DOS

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DOS boot menu explained

Dave Farquhar — Wed, 04 Aug 2021 12:00:26 +0000

MS-DOS 6 introduced a boot menu capability, a capability PC DOS inherited. This capability had the potential to eliminate custom boot floppies, but not a lot of people used it in my experience. I have them set up on my

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Advantages and disadvantages of MS-DOS

Dave Farquhar — Tue, 26 Sep 2017 11:00:10 +0000

MS-DOS was the dominant computer operating system of the 1980s and early 1990s. It was the operating system most people loved to hate, yet it remained a bestseller. It formed the foundation of Microsoft’s market dominance of the 1990s and

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Marvel Mystery oil in a snowblower

Dave Farquhar — Wed, 02 Dec 2015 11:00:49 +0000

I’ve had such success with Marvel Mystery Oil in my lawn mower than I’ve gotten questions about Marvel Mystery oil in a snowblower. Yes it will work. It will work in any gasoline-powered yard tool. And I would expect the

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Building DOS gaming PCs

Dave Farquhar — Mon, 10 Aug 2015 11:00:48 +0000

The ultimate DOS gaming PC is a topic that I’ve seen come up in forums frequently, and that I’ve been asked directly a number of times. I guess since I published advice on running DOS games on Windows PCs on

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DOS war stories

Dave Farquhar — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 17:19:53 +0000

In honor of the IBM PC turning 30, I thought I’d tell some stories about my experiences with the operating system introduced with it, PC DOS (aka MS-DOS). Early in my career I worked with a guy named Dan. Dan

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How to make a virtual DOS machine with networking

Dave Farquhar — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 00:22:58 +0000

If you want a virtual DOS machine running inside a modern PC operating system, with old-school networking and everything, everything you need to do it is at http://lazybrowndog.net/freedos/virtualbox/. It includes a DOS client so you can connect to network shares

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DOS nostalgia?

Dave Farquhar — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 02:48:32 +0000

I've been getting nostalgic for DOS lately. Well, certain DOS games *cough* Railroad Tycoon *cough*.

One of my coworkers' wives is nostalgic for '80s boy bands whose name I refuse to mention, so there certainly are worse things for me to be nostalgic about. Sure, DOS is terrible, but not that terrible.

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Need to squeeze a little more on that floppy?

Dave Farquhar — Tue, 17 Aug 2004 23:54:26 +0000

I've been experimenting again with bootdisks and the FreeDOS project came to mind.

Boot floppies are getting rarer but they're still hard to avoid completely. I think FreeDOS is worth a look for a variety of reasons.

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Running ancient DOS games on modern Windows

Dave Farquhar — Fri, 13 Feb 2004 04:40:02 +0000

So today I was one of at least two people trying to help Jerry Pournelle get the original Railroad Tycoon running under Windows XP. The secret is DOSBox, a cross-platform DOS emulator.

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