Is DOSBox-X the best DOS Emulator? 

This is a long overdue upgrade to Dosbox. Now my stupid friends can play the classics without me having to explain Dosbox.

The menu alone just makes this so much more accessible to the average person.

As someone who no longer has access to my old hardware. Emulation has saved me from crippling depression.

I've changed my library over to DOSBOX-X and the ability to run games from ZIP files made my life way easier. It's a bit more work to set up but you keep a clean base install of the game and every change, savegame, etc. is saved in a separate folder which I love. While not all games can be run from a ZIP, about 90% work fine. The ability for shaders is vital for me too - I just wish we had more advanced shares such as the ones RetroArch uses. For proper CRT emulation, RetroArch with DOSBOX Pure is the only option and while it supports running games from ZIP files as well, the options are more limited and games that do not like being run from a ZIP file simply don't work.

Hey Phil, congrats for the 800th video, it's CRAZY and amazing at the same time :D Good luck going forward!

Seeing these improvements in emulation is a one of the positive patterns I've seen with archival technology , probably no more nice things will fade away and be forgotten by history, what a great accomplishment for us humans, what a great time to be here. I have no doubt people will improve DOSBox-X or similar software (forks, maybe) to perfection. It's only a matter of time, and things have been arriving earlier and earlier, I feel. I also feel bad being a bystander while people code these marvels, I'm no good at that, my forté is soft sciences, whoever reads this post can see it clearly in the enthusiastic writing in english as a second language, hahaha! Great as always, Phil!

It would be interesting to see a video directly comparing the features of DOSBox-X vs DOSBox Staging. Thanks as always for the great content!

I love the old school emulator looking meny

The most difficult games to run right now are games from '96-'05, we really need something that runs Windows 98 properly at custom speeds from 486 to P3 and offers Glide, D3D and OGL anywhere from Voodoo 1 to GeForce 3 levels of performance and compatibility. That's the dream at least 😢

As much as I like DosBox, I prefer original hardware and PCEM/86box emulation

For Windows games 86box might offer better compatibility but it comes at a serious performance hit. To be able to emulate something above a 400 MHz pentium ii in 86box you need a very fast machine. Dosbox-x is what most people need and 86box is for the purists among us. Also a shame that the Dosbox developers are not doing something like Dosbox-x themselves.

Dope look at Dosbox X, Phil! I would be interested if you did a giant comparison between emulating the same DOS machine on this, Pcem, and 86Box

Waiting for 98Box, a user friendly and easy to use W98 emulator with proper graphics and audio support 😉

I use DOSBox-X mainly because of their suggested use case - running DOS applications (rather than games) with maximum compatibility. That being said, I've never seen an issue with any of my DOS development tools such that they failed to work in DOSBox Staging but did work in DOSBox-X, so I'm not sure how much water that claim holds.

DOSBox-X makes playing PC-9801 games so easy! No need to muck around with the Neko Project II emulator anymore!

I came across this fork a few years ago, immediately loved it for the sheer convenience it's menu's offer as well as it's capabilities. I was somewhat surprised it wasn't already the de-facto standard. It's Windows 95 support is something I messed with at the time, from what I recall it worked fine, but then again I only explored the OS itself and I did play a game on it, it would have been a DOS game. Addendum; If I recall correctly, it's possible to feed MIDI data to an external program such as VirtualMidiSynth, quite fun to mess around with. This may be a standard feature all DOSBox forks/flavours have though.

"Dosbox Staging" implemented Chorus and Reverb support for audio, which is a feature found on the Sound Blaster AWE64. When you add Chorus and Reverb to Adlib sound, it makes that seemingly come alive. DosBox X does not currently implement that feature.

I've been using it for a long time because of the convenience, but also of it's very good Windows 9x support.

Love the pace of the video, you get right into it, no long intro, respectful of my time. Thank you!

2024 has been a good Year for Retro PC so far. There's a guy called omores running 9x on extremely modern motherboards. Like 13th gen Core old. Nice video BTW as always.

Maybe I was lucky with my 486 build, I had to buy 3 motherboards for the 3rd one to finally work but other than that the setup was smooth. Mostly. I had bad luck with the audio driver, I wanted to use the original driver for the card I have in the machine but ended up using UNISOUND and it works perfectly. The only issue I have with that build is I can't quick Windows 3.11, it just hangs on the logout and I don't get back my DOS prompt but I wasn't planning on using Win3 much anyway. So yeah, building a real 486 can be tricky but if you have some time and the resources it's well worth it. If you don't but you still want to try out old games, this might be your perfect solution.

Great Video again👍🏻👌🏻

I'm just surprised they didn't call it DosBox 360. 🤷‍♂ Jokes aside, this is the step to the right direction regarding retro PC emulation. But I think we need to see a more thorough process of this program regarding import system configs like the PC-98 and its translation settings to see if those japanese games would convert them to English. I'm more interested in playing Poiicenauts or Snatcher. As for running Windows OS' on this platform with 3D acceleration, it still doesn't come close. Perhaps Windows 95 maybe more stable to run some of these "system-sensitive" games. We shall see in the near future where this takes us.

Nice review

Fantastic, Phil🎉 I'm assuming that it is a fork of DosBox? Config menus are a much welcomed improvement, for sure!

Used DOS Box a longtime ago to replay an old game or five. Have not tried it in a while, used an old version with integrated 3Dfx Glide support. Might give this a whirl.

I haven't used it myself yet, but there is SoftGPU for virtual machines that some have been able to use to play Windows 98 games.

I ran into some issues with DOSBox-X and Dune 2 (mt-32 patched). Luckily Staging worked like a charm out of the box with it. Though always nice to have different options to choose from out there.

Thank you. 👍🏼

I have some of my old rigs from the past, Althlon XP, Athlon 64, Phenom II X6, Core II Duo, etc. Might be interesting to build Win 98/XP dualboot retrogaming rig. Some old GPU's to test I have too. HD 1950 XTX and GF 8800 GTS should work I think, some older TNT 2 etc. No sound card iirc. Should I build or just try emulator? Thanks for the nice video again!

This reminds me of early NES emulators lots of options right in the menus wysiwyg design very minimal I think that's a great thing for all skill levels

Just for your information, screamer did a CPU test on setup utility so if you switch the cpu, you should also run setup

I use Dosbox-x to run PC-98, it's amazing.

Love using this Version

Thanks again Phil. I need to make time to check this out soon.

YES. I wonder if it works better for WFW 3.11, of course accurate emulation with PCEm is ideal.

Great, I needed another option for Intel Mac instead of just Boxer.

DOSBox-X is awesome, just like you are, Phill 😉👍! It's rather versatile and beginner friendly at the same time. Thanks for the review!

Perfect bite sized video

Really cool stuff.

Just a reminder - the Wave 1 music for Raptor shreds.

Wonderful video as always. I wanted say that over the years, I have found that running as many intel components as I can in a system lead to the most compatibility issues with programs and trouble shooting. I did not see the specs of the system you are using. Were you using a non Intel cpu?

The difficulty I have with dos box is that I don’t use it very often and I forget how to use it. I have re-read all of the instructions and learn it again which takes some time and if I get it wrong I have go back and do some troubleshooting. The menus looks more intuitive, so if it has become more user friendly then that’s a big step forward.

Thanks❤

At start, so curious to see your thoughts once I watch this episode. I CAN say, having used Dosbox-X, I DO think it's the best port of Dosbox and probably the easiest way to emulate MS-DOS games, though I must confess I'm partial to 86box and that series due to it's accuracy of emulation and extra power (Dosbox-X is DEFINATEY the easier way for the average andy/normie norm/sportsball-dad to get into Dos quickly and with minimal fuss -- heck I USE it to emulate windows 1.X and 2.X for quick testing of some of my coding projects)

I have a customer who needs a little extra help who I have set up with a windows 98 se period desktop (based on a windows ME desktop), and a windows 7 32 bit laptop (an older toshiba AMD e-350 cpu win8 came with it) to throw old games at the wall to run natively or use dosbox. I would love to introduce him to dosbox-x to help him play dos games on the newer laptop, he would love it.

Great video once again. What about 86box? I watched a video from tech tangents last week. Even though it seems a bit complex, the emulation capabilities are very good.

Great video Phil! Any chance you can link to where you downloaded this? I'm only finding the XP installer and zip files with no installer.

I see a new Mr Phil episode and I click without a second thought. LOVE this channel!

Very nice.

I am on an Android tablet with the Magic DosBox free app installed to create tiny x86 executable. I think the most DOS gamer use the default DosBox version and don’t like to switch to DosBox-X. If i use MMX-instruction in DOS for example most DosBox user can’t use it, because the default DosBox version emulates a 80386/80387, but not a Pentium MMX.

settings and information windows imitating windows 3.1 is cute

I've switched to DB-X from DB a long time ago. Tons of options and better perfs. For Win98, I prefer 86box. Not PCem because it's total crap when driven by RocketLauncher.

at 5:11 when you are not concentrated tomb raider might sound to you like coom raider at x2 video speed 🤣🤣🤣. I slowed down the video and sped it up just to check if i heard it wrong 😅

yes, phil.

😒👍 Keep It Old School

Many 90's computer monitors were 5:4 rather than 4:3.

lol 3dfx i loved

Thanks for your videos been waiting for this for a while 🎉😊

Short answer: NO, NOP, Nein, Ne... Lately I find myself using RetroArch - DOSBox-Pure core. All good stuff of DOSBox mixed with great stuff from RA. Playing game with Rewind function and easy save state from game controller (and the same configuration I use for other cores) makes it in my opinion one of the best combinations. I used DOSBox-X for a while now and long time ago had even instructions for original DOSBox on Abandonia posted. I also like to use PCem and Box86, more accurate emulation of a PC of the time.

Just closed my work Outlook, opened YT and see the Phil's new video about the DosBox - that's what I call a great weekend starter 😁

It's pretty awesome.

Yes it is!

My experience with DOSBOX-X is that it’s very buggy. It was the first one with native arm64 support for macOS, and for the longest time Quake would just crash upon launch. Then in one release the arm64 image was actually the x86 version. Contacted the dev, he just told us to wait for the next release… I’m using dosbox staging right now. Yes it doesn’t have a GUI menu, but lots of things can be achieved with command aliases if you make a one time effort to customize.

Is Phil one of the best retro tech channels? Yes of course. Don't be silly.

How powerful is the 3dfx emulation? I could see that the site refers to it as a Voodoo1, but the passthrough gives it quite a bit more umph, since it's translating the API to the host computer. May one ask for a benchmark of various Voodoo1, 2, Banshee, 3-3000 era games, in this DOSBox-X?

Sooo lets see what I'm missing (still using vanilla Dosbox 0.74-2). Yeah I'd swtich to X but too lazy to resetup my entire DosBox microSD card

There were much earlier DOSBox SVN compilations that had a top menu.

This to me looks like a cross of DosBox and 86Box or PCem

Save states, yes!!!

I'm a simple man, I see Gods on the screen, I click the video

I've used Dosbox X and SVN Versions before there was Doxbox Staging. Just because they have been the first to Introduce special settings (Filters and Scalers and Refresh Rate Options). But which Soundfont did you use for Raptor? The distorted Guitar was nasty and sounded way off compared to a real Roland SC (ehrlich, das hat sich schiach angehört).

Absolutely the best one, I have my own modified copy thats even better with things like easy virtualization mode for Win98. Maybe I should publish it.

phil thanks for that file on your website to get dos working

Honest question. Does that Fit to Aspect Ratio when selected like on video make that "Original ratio" broken not show correct?

emulation got amazing but it will never beat the real thing. having a yellow pentium 100 with a voodo 3 and 128mb ram help me to connect with that era and my nostalgia

86box, but DOSBox-X is the most user friendly for sure.

Games crashing in Windows 98 are a sign of perfect emulation 😁.

Phil can you do something looking at ReactOS for retro hardware use . Preferably on a couple or three generations around original Pentium through to about P3. It looks promising .

Does it work with roland "out of the box"? Do you need to add rom files?

DOSBox-X kinda ruined me with Windows 98 Gaming there, I was very disappointed with lack of "support" sort of speak, to run games on that... Even running a DOS game on 98 for lelz was bad... DOSBox-X randomly froze when doing that IIRC, by itself. Despite that... Those Save States are a game changer for me... When you are emulating just DOS Games, ofc... A thing I knew about from Video Game Console emulators... I never thought It would actually be as well on PC/DOS emulators for some reason.

I found that changing the CPU cycles mid game isn't always the best. If the game does timings checks at startup and then stores that result in a variable, changing the CPU speed mid game messes with that so it's best to set the CPU cycles before starting a game.

Would it be able to run PC demo’s?

if adaptive crt shader can be added into dosbox-x, it will be perfect.

the mt 32 sounds so smooth and clean

That "Unreal" crash/illegal operation issue seem's like a 'memory leak' problem to me?

Is DOSBox still in development? The last version (0.74-3) has been released 5 years ago.

Original hardware certainly, eXoDOS, 86Box, PCem, DOSBox-X, DOSBox Pure, MiSTer FPGA, all great alternatives to vanilla DOSBox! Thanks Phil for covering DOSBox-X :)

I've been using Dosbox-x for a couple of years now. It is better than Dosbox. I can even run Windows 98 on Dosbox-x

What's Up Phil! I think most of the stuff I have been using, has PURE running. But I'm Overhauling my 3+ Decade Collection and going to have emulators all set up properly., so Back to checking this out again LOL

Shame about the slow buggy performance in games on Windows 98SE, I wonder what Windows 95 is like on this emulator?

WOW, this app seems awesome. I will try it out. Thanks for the info.

Lots of QoL features,looks easy to set up.... might try with some of the games I bought on GoG

WOW, big improvement this menu!

Thank you Phil!

Ugh, on the surface yes. But my god! I've constantly found X THE most frustrating build to use. Allow me to explain. There used to be 4 builds for a start. They've cleared this up somewhat now so that's good. Then the menus are separated into the Windows ones you see here but there's also the menus within the menu which are in-app (that is, the app's own interface). OK, fair enough but it's an added layer of complexity (and X is the most powerful build, don't get me wrong). Not only that! Once you think you have your perfect setup, what they don't make you well of is if you quit there, it doesn't save those settings by default! OK, so I do understand why. It's because DOSBox has always used config files and people have always used separate ones for each game or whatever in the past. Fair enough, but it's incredibly frustrating when you don't realise this. You need to go into the in-app menu and save your settings as a config there. And don't get me started on the different ways to do this! It's a very powerful build, but that's its problem in a way. There's so much there, you've got to know a lot. It's not like ECE (RIP) that was easier and had similar features. And it's not like Daum that had menus first (but it saved settings by default!) Once you get used to X it's really the only option for more complex DOS stuff now unless you like doing everything manually and credit where due- they have improved things. But really for the longest time, so frustrating, believe me!

I"m a bit annyoed with Dosbox-x in somewhat minor way, I was literally looking at it last night and if you're on windows or macos you can get builds... but linux is RPM or flatpak... *ugh* flatpak? Never touch the stuff myself.... but RPM... I mean... JUST rpm is odd, why not also do .deb?

DOSBox has trouble keeping the frame-rate constant in some of the games. Its quite annoying to me. Next problem with dosbox is it does not have accurate graphical output. I was surprised how much better looking games look in PCEM17. It look as i remember them. Its tough to explain you have to see it. I think emulation is not accurate. Different video cards on PCEM produce different output! Its like real hardware. Next thing is hardware support. PCEM emulates a lot of hardware you can choose, including 3dfx Voodoo 1,2 and 3000, all the sound cards from DOS era. Its excellent, you should try it if did not. Im playing Quake GL for Windows 98se on a Ryzen 3500X, and very good. It works with SCSI directly in DOS, removes all the problems with DOS HDDs. Only problem is CPU power. Ryzen 3500x can emulate up to Pentium @ 200Mhz, in DOS maybe P@ 300. It works with MUNT, very very nice. On top of everything HDD is a .vhd virtual disk that can be mounted directly from windows disk management as a drive in host windows. Its awesome. I like it much more then dosbox.

Better than Staging?

Dosbox-X can run in DOS. Sounds like nonsense but has some use actually.