Dosbox Config File Location

[Karmen Mcarthun]

dosboxconf is a configuration file that DOSBox can use globally and/or locally per game (and settings that are left out are taken from the global file). It contains various system settings and initialization values that define your emulated environment. Everything can be controlled by editing this file or if you like through more graphically oriented Front Ends. You can also create separate dosbox.conf files for multiple host environments (which is helpful in playing various DOS games that expect various types of hardware).

The configuration file is broken into separate sections which contain section settings. Many of these settings do not need to be fully understood to configure DOSBox, but it is helpful to know where to look. You should also be aware that anything to the right of the # to the end of the line is considered a comment as is totally ignored by DOSBox when it loads.

Depending on the version or host OS, the dosbox.conf file is located either inside the user profile folder or inside the same folder as dosbox.exe. On 0.74, just go to the DOSBox folder and open "DOSBox 0.74 Options.bat" in order to open the configuration file (*.conf).

If you are using Mac OS X, a preferences file will be created for you on the first time you run DOSBox (as of version 0.73). This file contains the same system settings and initialization values as the dosbox.conf file on other systems.

This section contains all of the low level system settings for how DOSBox interacts with your real hardware. You can define what resolutions are emulated, how DOSBox should treat errors or listen to your keyboard and mouse. You can often achieve a fair level of optimization by working with these setting, though for the most part leaving them at their default settings will create the best experience. These settings are passed on to the SDL Library which handles low level things like input and thread priority.

The rendering (drawing) section controls methods that DOSBox uses to improve the speed and quality of the graphics displayed on the screen. E.g. it can "forget" (skip) the every 3rd screen update (which will save time), or it can try to smooth out some of the coarse low-resolution graphics that was used on old displays, but which looks bad when shown on a modern, high-resolution screen.

Do aspect correction. It only affects non-square pixel modes like VGA Mode 13h, which has a resolution of 320x200 pixels and is used by many DOS games (DOOM, etc). Recommended as such games were designed for 4:3 displays, and without aspect correction will look distorted and not as the developer intended.

Specifies which scaler is used to enlarge and enhance low resolution modes, BEFORE any additional scaling done according to the Fullresolution and Windowresolution settings under [sdl]. To see comparisons between the different scalers, see Scaler.

Here you can define any MIDI related settings. The term MIDI is commonly used to refer to background music found in games, but specifically it refers to synthesizer audio (which can be passed directly from emulated games to modern hardware.

A slightly confusing config name, because this isn't so much which MIDI device to use as which MIDI interface to use. As DOSBox currently does not emulate MIDI, but instead passes it through to an interface that does give MIDI playback support, this setting tells DOSBox which interface to pass MIDI data through to.

As used by the MIDI interface described above, this specifies the ID which identifies the particular MIDI device to playback MIDI on. Can be determined on Windows using MIXER /LISTMIDI or on Linux using pmidi -l in the console.

Different games will naturally work best with different configuration settings. Something to consider is to define a conf file for each game that will set the appropriate configurations and start the game for you. Then, create a shortcut such as DOSBox.exe -conf "DOSbox-GameName.conf" so that you can start your game in the least possible number of steps.

I need to run an old DOS application on my Android Smartphone (Samsung Galaxy S2). From the appstore I installed AnDOSBox. It starts without problem. But for my DOS software I need to add a line "FCBS=250" in the DOS start file "config.sys"

BUT:

when I push it ("click" it) there comes a message - I try to translate into English - "Open file. No application can execute this action" (German: "Datei ffnen. Keine Anwendung kann diese Aktion ausfhren").

Hello, when downloaded DOSBOX on a desktop, you can easily find the folder and see all the files in detail : dosbox.conf, dosbox.exe, xxxx.dll, xxxx.bat, manual.txt, etc. .. . We can therefore modify the file contents dosbox.conf.

When you upload aDosBox (application APK) on Samsung Galaxy S2 via ANDROID MARKET, aDosBox works perfectly, but I can not find files that I could see on my desktop and in particular the file dosbox.conf I would change a bit. Do you know where files are stored on a SmartPhone ? Thank you for your help. Sponti.

You'll only have one "default" dosbox.conf so yes, you could put a custom one in the dosbox folder but it will be overwritten if you make changes to the conf via the LB UI, though it shouldn't happen just from updating LB.

The best method is to just create .confs for each game. When you import the game, go to the DOSBox tab and where it says to use/browse to a custom .conf tell it to create one and then save it in the game's folder. It'll be created based on whatever you have in your default dosbox.conf in LB but this way you can individually tweak them per-game. There's no one-size-fits-all solution to .conf settings so individual .confs allow you get the best settings for each game.

You can sometimes find some suggested tweaks in a game entry in the dosbox wiki, but I rarely use them. Some things are a matter of personal taste and some things are computer-specific so it might be difficult to have a definitive .conf for everyone for each game.

It was a joke haha. Actually, in my experience GOG's aren't even ideal in some cases. A lot of times they're using older versions of DOSBox which don't have all the features available in newer builds, sometimes they're using weird scaling options, none of them use Novert, etc. Sorry, that's probably not what you wanted to hear

I've got Crusader: No Remorse, King's Quest 7, and Tie-Fighter. I don't have Wing Commander Prophecy in my library but I have WC3, which should be the same or similar settings. I'll check out WCP and Strike Commander.

For Crusader, the main application is Crusader.exe, the configuration is Install.exe, and my disc image is in the Mounts tab assigned to drive D and is CD-ROM/ISO type. These should all be picked up by default via the DOS importer in LB.

For King's Quest VII, the main application is KQ7.BAT and the configuration is INSTALL.BAT. The configuration application should be picked up by default via the DOS importer but I'm not sure about KQ7.BAT.

I tried to put these lines on each dosbox-0.74.conf located in each translation folder, but still not working.I think that the application doesn't run this configuration file, it seems to be another file, but which one? I've made a search of dosbox and these were the only files existing.

As it has already been shown how to mount a folder and set it as c drive in dosbox (although it is also necessary to add c: under the mount c line to actually change to that folder), I will address the second part of the question and demonstrate a few other dosbox commands that can be used to mount optical drives and disk image files.

All the following commands go in the [autoexec] section of your dosbox.conf. To select a different conf from the default held in .dosbox, generate it with the config -writeconf command (as noted in the above answer), edit it and place it in your game folder, and launch the game so that dosbox uses the custom conf:

With regard to your second question, you can mount multiple optical drives if you have more than one physical drive connected to your computer. The disc must be mounted in Ubuntu before you start dosbox. The dosbox command to add to your conf file is, for example:

Dosbox also has a very useful feature that allows you to mount a folder as if it were a cdrom: this is very useful when the folder contains multiple disk images. A sample command for this that I have in one of my dosbox confs is:

My intent here is just to automatically mount the C drive using the specified location for my DOS applications every time I start DOSbox. Within the previously mentioned dosbox-staging.conf, scroll the very bottom and you will see [autoexec] along with some commented out options.

Here I am mounting my desired drive location and also automatically selecting that drive. The fun can further be expanded from here to wherever your imagination takes you. You can add your own start screens unique to your desired DOS experience. There is nothing stopping you from creating multiple .conf files, named whatever you wish with specific hardware tweaks and automatically starting your application or game of choice.

I want to add one small note about some other bits of power you are given with DOSBox and that is the ability to invoke another .conf file for particular application. It is just as easy to copy and modify a .conf file to automatically launch a title as well. For example, assuming I wanted to just play Simant, I can take a copy of the .conf file and add this to the [autoexec] section.

To which, I can make a custom menu entry and play Simant like any other native game on my Linux desktop. The avenue of becoming slightly lazier in accessing your vintage titles is clear and easy to implement.

I will have a follow up article to this with some other fun things I have done with DOSbox. DOS is way more fun today for me than what it was some 30 years ago and DOSBox makes it possible. I do realize that there are other DOS game launchers out there but this one is pretty fantastic, and easily able to be tailored to your unique case. I am super grateful for the years of time and care to make DOS just another extension of my Linux experience.

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