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DOSbox is a free and open-source MS-DOS emulator that runs programs – primarily video games – that are otherwise inaccessible since hardware for running a compatible disk operating system (DOS) is obsolete and generally unavailable today. It is available for Windows, macOS, and Linux-based systems.

History

Before Windows XP, consumer-oriented versions of Windows were based on MS-DOS. Windows 3.0 and its updates were operating environments that ran on top of MS-DOS, and the Windows 9x series consisted of operating systems that were still based on MS-DOS. These versions of Windows could run DOS applications, whereas the Windows NT operating systems were not based on DOS. The first NT-based operating system in the series, Windows XP, debuted on October 25, 2001; it was the first consumer-oriented version of Windows not to use DOS.

Although Windows XP could emulate DOS, it could not run many of its applications as they ran only in real mode to directly access the computer's hardware, and Windows XP's protected mode prevented such direct access for security reasons.[citation needed] MS-DOS continued to receive support until the end of 2001, and all support for any DOS-based Windows operating system ended on July 11, 2006.

Development

The development of DOSbox began around the launch of Windows 2000 – a Windows NT system – when its Dutch creators Peter Veenstra and Sjoerd van der Berg discovered that Windows 2000 had dropped a lot of its support for DOS software. The two knew of solutions at the time, but they could not run the applications in windowed mode or scale the graphics. The project was first uploaded to SourceForge and released for beta testing on July 22, 2002.

DOSbox 0.1 was first released on January 31, 2002. It is primarily used for playing old DOS games.[1]

Features

References

  1. ↑ Sjoerd "Harekiet" van der Berg. "DOSBox". Zophar's Domain. Archived from the original on 2002-03-24. 

External links

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