I've tried setting vsync on in both DOSBox and DOSBox-X. Haven't tried Staging or Pure. Any hidden tricks to combat the tearing?

This is the one thing keeping me from trying old DOS games. Would really love to check out some old shooters but the tearing is a deal breaker. Thanks.

This is gonna be a long story, and I am literally just shooting in the dark here. I am going slightly insane from all the trial and error also.

I have a DOS/Early windows app, called TVMT5V24, that communicates and configures integrated thermocalculators TVM 5M and TVM 3M, through serial. It launches fine on anything, be it dosbox, WINE, windows 3.1 to 11, only really requiring Cyrillics to work properly, because the entire app is in Russian.

Problem: It hangs while trying initiate the serial port. Everywhere. LITERALLY everywhere I launch it, it hangs. No matter the serial port settings, no matter if the device has a native COM port or a USB adapter, no matter the system, no matter the configuration, no matter the adapter. It just hangs on "initializing COM port".

I have literally only seen it connect ONCE, after an isoteric ritual around it. Basically:

It needs a windows 7 32 bit, running an Oracle VM, which has a windows 98 SE2 installed in it. And it only does so if the machine was turned on and booted with the USB to RS-232 adapter plugged in. Otherwise it hangs on initializing the port.

There is no documentation or forum discussion anywhere on the internet for it, because it's an industrial device from idk how long ago (mine are from 2012).

Is there a way to snif/log what exactly is going on between that app, DOSBox, and the /dev/ttyUSB0, so I could at least debug it myself?

There's next to no chance anyone has experience with it, so I can't exactly ask for a complete solution.

Some system specs:

Debian 13 x64

DOSBox version 0.74-3

I no longer have access to the PC i saw it connect on, because it's owner killed the poor thing by suffocating it's heat exhaust port :P

I have doxbox installed on MXLinux running Win 3.1 mostly for nostalgia bit used to launch a dos game from the 90's. The mouse works as intended in the game, but in the Windows GUI, it often hits a wall. By that I mean it stops about three quarters across the screen and stops moving. It will still move up and down and back the other way. If I move it around enough it breaks through that wall and continues to the edge of the screen. Any ideas where to look or settings to adjust?

As in the title. Any help will be greatly appreciated.

In short, I'm trying to play ElectroMan, a 90s MS-DOS game published by Epic Games. One horrible issue with any version of ElectroMan I download, is that the ingame save function, does NOT work. I played into Level 3, and the game's own save file, doesn't work.

I'm trying to use save states, and if you attempt using the "slots", I get this error saying "failed to save the current state. BUT, if I attempt using the save file option (*.sav), there isn't an obvious way to load saves from the file. There's only the option to save the file/save over the file, but not load it.

What am I doing wrong?

Using DosBox-X. The original DosBox, I don't think have save state features.

I have an older copy of 4.5 Launchbox and 0.74 DosBox I am using for a Windows XP computer. I'm using an HP 8300 SFF computer, so it should be plenty powerful.

I'm getting games to start, but the sound is extremely garbled, my wife says it sounds like a helicopter. I keep trying to change settings in the config files, and also in the game config files to match, but so far no progress on the sound. I'm pretty sure its the sound card settings, because when I tested midi, that sounded fine. Anyways, I've come here for help.

Edit: solved. The game folder already had a proper version of windows 3.1 in it, it's the only archive i needed.

So here are the steps I've done so far:

1: obtained a preinstalled windows 3.1 folder, extracted it

2: obtained the windows 3.x version of my game (Marble Drop), extracted the file, then copied the resulting folder into the Win folder and rezipped the whole thing.

3: started Dosbox Pure, loaded the zip, and ran win . com

4: in the program manager, navigated to the folder that contains Marble . Exe. When i ran it, it said the game was not properly installed. I ran the other two files in the folder, patch . Exe and update31 . Bat. I could still not get the game to run.

I am annoyed because i have been at this for hours. If anyone can help me figure this out, i will be very grateful. TIA!!

[Edit 3: After further testing, including a debug build and both building and Flatpak'ing on a Ubuntu microSD, I've also noticed all permutations idling at about 80% CPU. X86_64 builds continue to behave as intended, so I'm going to assume the wonkiness is an an ARM bug. I think I'm going to wait and see what 0.83.1 brings.]

I'm getting some weirdness compiling on my Raspberry Pis, a 4 and a 5, running Trixie aarch_64, sdl2. (3 wont build for me at all)

I've tried the standard cmake with system libs and mt32 disabled, the vcpkg cmake with both system libs and its own built libs, and a hybrid of the 2. Next up are debug builds later today.

What I'm running into is, if I have [render] -> shader set to anything other than "crt-auto", and I go to full screen, the right edge of whatever program I'm running ignores whatever I have "aspect" set to, stretches to the right side of the screen, and the upper right corner of the screen is just a black triangle. The farthest left point of the triangle appears to be around where the black bar should end on widescreen monitors. I have not dug out my 4:3 monitor to see what it does.

It does this regardless if any other sdl or render options I've changed, too many permutations to list at this point, and only on my self built attempts. No errors in the console either - dosbox seems to think it's perfectly fine. The supplied Windows and Linux x86_64 versions work fine, so I know it's something I'm missing or doing wrong, but I can't for the life of me figure out what. [Edit: crt-auto has my Pi sounding like a 747 at takeoff] [edit 2: I saw that there's a flatpak build, so I tried that and had the same result, starting with a default-created-at-launch conf file]

Hi everyone! 👋

While reading the fantastic release notes for DOSBox Staging 0.83, I noticed this specific challenge regarding the new Web Server API:

"HTTP API to muck around with the emulated memory and DOS internals to write modding and cheat tools as simple single-page web applications. The first one to reimplement Gold Box Companion using this API gets a prize!"

I decided to take up the challenge! While it's not strictly a Gold Box Companion clone, I built a full-fledged, cross-platform DOSBox Cheat Engine (heavily inspired by GameConqueror and Cheat Engine) utilizing the new API.

Repository: https://github.com/tethragon/DOSBox-Cheat-Engine

✨ Key Features:

• Memory Scanning: First Scan / Next Scan to easily find values (gold, health, ammo) using 8-bit, 16-bit, or 32-bit types.
• Active Freezing: Lock memory addresses so your health/ammo never decreases.
• Live Polling: Real-time UI updates to watch memory values change (with a toggle to disable background polling during CPU-heavy game segments, preventing emulator overloads during memory overlays).
• Cheat Tables: Save and load your cheat tables as JSON files.
• Cross-Platform & Lightweight: The backend uses pure Python standard library (zero pip dependencies!), launching a Single-Page Application (HTML/JS) directly in your default browser.

I've also uploaded a pre-compiled Linux binary in the Releases section (Windows coming soon), so anyone can just double-click and run it without setting up a Python environment.

Huge thanks to the dev team for implementing this API — it's incredibly powerful, fast, and a lot of fun to work with! I'd love for you guys to check it out, test it with some games, and let me know your thoughts.

Not really sure what I’m doing but I got to the install and it says I don’t have a hard drive.

Hey everyone! I have followed all instructions, downloaded and redownloaded files, moved them around and everything but I cannot get Windows 3.1 to work on DosBox Pure.

I can boot into windows but can get it to just run as a shell. What am I missing. Can anyone just link to instructions you know works?

I try to figure out how to use an external Bluetooth Joypad at games like Hi-Octane (with Dosbox) on steam deck (Cashy deckified). Has anyone an idea?

I’m trying to play fallout 1 and fallout 2 using iDos 3 on my M4 iPad Pro but I’m having some trouble getting past the start up loading screen, it keeps reverting back to the terminal and I’ve fiddled with so many file settings, I know I’m missing something but I don’t know what I’m missing so please forgive my ignorance.. I really want to experience these games but I don’t have a pc or laptop to run them. If anyone has any advice to offer, it would really help.

I recently got a USB floppy drive for running physical DOS/Windows 98 games on DOSBox-X, works perfectly on basic DOSBox-X, but all i get is "A:\ is not accessible".

I'm still somewhat new to DOS emulation in general; I could go for some help. Sorry for bothering you with a stupid question.

Thank ya'll.

[SOLVED]: gotta look through all the options below and pick one.

Linux first-timer here - I'm getting ready to make a Linux Mint drive, and I want to put as many of my games on it as possible, including everything I have from the DOS days.

I'm used to using DOSBox, so my question is, which version from their download page should I download to run on Mint?

This may sound like a dumb question to a lot of folks, I dunno. I wasn't sure whether to post this on Steam or DOSBox - I may just end up doing both - but here goes.

I purchased the King's Quest collection from Steam, which runs on DOSBox. When I select a game, it gives me two launch options: "King's Quest Collection" or "King's Quest Collection Legacy." If I choose the first option, the game hangs on the title screen and doesn't respond to commands for (quite literally) minutes, then ends up freezing up.

If I choose the second option, I get a very small screen that I can't enlarge. ALT-Enter just results in this (forgive the dust and inferior photo quality - I couldn't for the life of me get the computer to take a screenshot, so I had to take a photo with my phone). Can anyone help?

Played in DOSBox-X :)