Wooohoo!
I know I should be asleep in bed right now... *snicker* ... but I was relaxing with a bit of Ultima 6 -- my longtime goal has been to play through the whole series -- and became frustrated with the lack of appropriate sound. There was an extensive MIDI-type soundtrack and sound effects as part of the game, but it was all coded for SB/AdLib hardware of a specific type. So if you try to run it on a modern system, all of the music & effects simply don't work, which degrades the experience just enough to make it really annoying.
Tonight, just for kicks, I decided to see if it might be possible to emulate DOS with specific hardware. I know that groups of Ultima fans are slowly creating high-quality emulators for each game, as well as total remakes, but I wasn't sure if anybody had looked into just emulating an entire DOS system within XP in the same way that has been done with other "game" platforms.
The answer is... DOSBox! The list of games they've gotten fully working under this emulator is seriously impressive -- up in the hundreds. Woot! I loaded U6 under it, and for the first time in years, I actually got to hear something other than scary crackles at the boot screens! *bounces* I wandered around Britannia enjoying the music and sound effects until I realized it was getting ridiculously late...now, here I am. Time to go to bed, I guess... Can't wait till I get to continue my journey tomorrow! *grin*
Posted by moggy at October 24, 2003 03:23 AM | TrackBackDOSBox has be one of those must-have utilities for Windows, I use it on Win-ME withjout any problems, but I do find at the moment the speed and performance of this program is a but limited, I've tride some early '486 specific games and they just don't seem to run with any accuracy at all. I have found all my old 86, 286 & most 386 games work fine without any problems. The sound is emulated fine - even the PC Speaker!!!
I still have to say, you just can't beat building yourself up (or aquiring) an old 386 or 486 based machine with a SB or compatable sound card - I own one which I keep to one side (Havn't used it in a while and have removed most of it's guts, however!!!)
