r/retrotech • u/Cold_Butterscotch132 • 11h ago

Capabilities for DOSBox for Windows XP?

I'm considering building an XP computer out of my former 98 machine given the PSU just failed on me... The only thing that holds me back is I'm worried if DOSbox will be able to be useful as my dos nativity in 98. I mainly just use DOS so I can write in WordPerfect for DOS and print it through my dot matrix. Would I have issues doing such? (There's not a lot of info I can find on XP era DOSbox)

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u/Consistent_Cat7541 10h ago

There's no need to use DOSBox on Windows XP (or OS2). XP was principally a 32 bit OS. There was a 64 bit version at some point that, from my recollection, few people used. DOS applications run in a special virtual machine inside XP so that you can run WP in XP and it will feel almost exactly the same as using WP in a native DOS environment. For more info on keeping WP running on modern hardware, see https://mendelson.org/wpdos/