You are not a true hardcore gamer if you never had to learn how to use MS-DOS just to play games

that's all you realy needed outside of the making occasional batch file if you wanted to automatically add some modifiers to the launch command. Actually using dos was autistic as fuck. It's not dissimilar from using the console in unix.

This.
>tfw got a sudden urge for Arkanoid

What did it give you over dosshell?

Anyone ever use Amish Launcher? Like a start menu for win3.1.

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I think that's the notsequel. Fury something or whatnot.

>>learn how to use ms dos to play games
>wat? There's no learning involved if you just wanted to play games.

It depends on the games.
Some games need expanded memory, or special memory managers.
Most games also require sound and mouse drivers, and managing use of conventional memory.

A good example of this is Quest for Glory 3, which requires 580kb of free Conventional Memory. If you just load up DOS without caring about memory use, MSCDEX, DOS, the sound drivers, and mouse drivers will easily eat 65k of memory, making the game impossible to launch.

Learning how to use expanded and upper band memory is part of knowing DOS for games.

DOSBox skips all this stuff, and isn't a real DOS experience.

Only 65 kilobytes? I remember MSCDEX alone taking something like 46 and unless you found something really minimalistic for mouse you'll end up close to 512 or so just from that. Sound blaster (or ESS or whatever) would easily put you into 480 or so.

How does being able to use the two most basic DOS commands make you a hardcore gamer?

fuck YES terminal velocity, I can't count how many times I fucked up my DOS and later windows 95/98 PC by experimenting without having a clue about what I was doing

>wat? There's no learning involved if you just wanted to play games.
sure, what then when games asked you to specify IRQ, and other weird settings in their setup just to get sound working?

>drag exe over DOSBOX
>game runs
alternatively
>boot it up in a loader

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My bad.

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MSCDEX is a real beast on memory usage.
I wish someone would make an alternative that was much slimmer.
Like CTmouse, but for CD drives.

>didn't set up the sound options in the game
>get PC Speaker sound
youtube.com/watch?v=1IOL4q5tDDQ

>true hardcore gamer
wtf does this even mean

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A220, I5, D1, H5, P330

This should be ingrained in the memory of every DOS gamer.

you can usually do that in the title screen menu

>CTmouse
How much does it take? The one I used the most on real hardware was amouse, don't remember the size but it was fairly small. Now I'm using mtsmouse, it's 5680 but I've never ran into any problems with it.

Wrong.

I'm a hardcore gamer and I started gaming on a sixth generation iPad

I didn't know such thing as dosshell back then 2bh

3.5kb, it can also reside in the UMB.
cutemouse.sourceforge.net/

It's probably the lightest mouse drive for DOS, and has great compatibility.

OP btfo

Nice, thank you.

When did hardcore come to mean wanting to play old shitty games?

haha, I remember struggling with autoexec.bat and config.sys to run some games, at the end both had like, dunno, mayby 7 lines

Since about 3.x I think you could section config.sys and add a menu where each entry used only a certain section.

it really depends on the game.
Early dos games are simple, and will run with basically any autoexec or config.sys setup.

Later DOS stuff is a frankenstein's monster of special memory managers, dos4gw, VESA drivers, and insane conventional memory requirements.

Ultima 7, for example, can be a real pain in the ass to run in DOS. Thankfully, Exult exists and is better than the DOS experience, even though it fixes some hilarious U7 bugs like being able to drug yourself into godhood.

I didn't know that, seems nice

yup, I could barely run F-15 Strike Eagle III iirc

It is. What few people used (and possibly knew about) is you could include sections into others. Although that might've been a later addition, likely in 6.22.

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I think I used 6.22 at least for a while. Shit's dank af, shame I didn't know that.

>he never optimized thte FUCK out of his autoexec.bay and config.sys to get the most free memory possible for his games
Imagine being this casual.

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>"Back in my day..."

Gramps, the games were good, the hoops you had to jump through were not.

You remember conflict because it helps you grow, but don't try to use it as a weapon to bash millenials. Old faggot.

>run memmaker after windows 3.1 and all drivers are installed
>end up with 615k free afterwards
>every game just werks
Come on son.

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Some games would break or crash if you had too much shit in UMBs and/or EMS.

Sure, but they usually mentioned they needed more UMB memory in the readme. Open file, remove LH tag ahead of one driver, reboot, and away you go.

boom boom boom boom
i want you in my room

Just load everything into XMS, dude, you have 32 megs.

Plebes. I had to tinker with DIP switches with no documentation to get a soundcard working. Get your kiddie MSDOS stories out of my face.

Anyone ever try SHSUCDX as a replacement for MSCDEX?

Yes and it didn't work well for me. Don't remember why. I think it wasn't working either with the physical drive exposed to the VM or with an emulated one.

Had a 66mhz 386 enhanced with 8 megabytes of RAM that we eventually upgraded to 16. Still had to make a boot disk to go directly into dos to play some games like Mechwarrior 2. Was a learning experience and I miss the old dos days.

GO TO BED GRANDPA, I'M NOT GONNA TELL YOU AGAIN

Be quiet, child. Adults are talking.

toiling around in config.sys and autoexec.bat to free up conventional memory....fun

I was exactly like you (except for 486SLC at around the same time) and then I found Jes... I mean Arch Linux. You could try Void or other alternatives without systemdicks.