2015-04-28 23:01:31 (edited by pitermach 2015-05-09 22:33:09)

This is a preconfigured version of dosbox Daum that comes with a screen reader and speech all set up to play old 16-bit dos games, even on new 64-bit Windows. For the most part, things work but there's still a lot of room for improvement which will hopefully happen as time permits and as I figure things out.
Version 2 is now live. It includes a whole bunch of games, 3 screen readers, and it was supposed to also include a read me but it looks like I once again forgot to include it. So I'll just link to it here. Please, please read it before asking a question. As I figure things out, there's going to be new versions which will always be at this link
Enjoy!

<Insert passage from "The Book Of Chrome" here>

2015-04-28 23:10:59

As a Mac user, I would love to see a similar setup available. How much of the work that went into this is platform-specific? smile I guess I could always run it in VMWare or something, but that seems a bit much.

2015-04-28 23:30:10

I'd love a mac version as well and initially I was planning to release one for both platforms. However, I'm having trouble getting dosbox daum to run, it was throwing sdl errors at me with wrong architectures. So I looked at Dosbox-X, which doesn't have mac binaries but I tried compiling the code. While the make command seems to have executed, it just kept saying there's nothing to do and didn't compile anything. The official dosbox 0.74 has issues with screen readers with no screen echo and after posting on the vogons forums it looks as though the mainline developers don't really care much for very deep emulation and are perfectly fine with making it do just enough to run games.
If you can get any of the unofficial patched dosboxes to compile, i would also be very interested. I know the feeling with VM's smile

<Insert passage from "The Book Of Chrome" here>

2015-04-29 10:31:55

Is there a place where we can get dos games to try this on? The PCS games website doesn't have any. I know there were others also, but I was too young to ever play any dos games.

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2015-04-29 11:08:06

Hi.
wow... Awesome. I think I'll find some very old discs with some nice dos games. smile
is it possible to activate the jaws cursor using a laptop keyboard? If not, then it's time to remap some keys in VmWare fusion on my Mac. smile

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2015-04-29 11:26:07

Great job Pitermach. I'm only sorry that Frank Black, the Eamon deluxe creator has dropped off the map, sinse he was looking for a solution like this to run edx for years.

Unfortunately the db is not really working at present, and annoyingly  baf's guide has been down for ages (it used to be the best place for dos rpgs).

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2015-04-29 13:39:23

Hi!
For me, it's the same as keyisfull said. I know there were some dos games which I were now interested in but can't find any games anymore, what a pity.

Vis google a few weeks ago, I found a mortal kombat version which was for dos. Could someone explain to me how to start dos games with the talking dosbox?

Thanks!

Greetings,
Janagirl!

2015-04-29 14:20:11

Okay, here are some dos games I have that people can try:

Fallthru:
https://www.sendspace.com/pro/3c7hpd

One of the best text rpgs I have ever played, with awsome descriptions and a really epic feeling. Parser is super clunky, the learning curve is steep and some of the mazes boarder on the insane, but don't let that put you off.


Braminar:
https://www.sendspace.com/pro/3c7hpd

A really nice little rpg with lots of random encounters and strangeness. Repeating stats screen can be a tad annoying but it's worth a try all the same.

Drone:
https://www.sendspace.com/pro/ehsfu5

A game based on braminar with even more randomness, and some audio challenges, though only using the pc speaker I believe.

World of legends:
https://www.sendspace.com/pro/yc0q93

A console window rpg released in 2006. I'm not sure if this one needs dosbox or not but I know it won't work under post xp windows. Rather silly in parts, but very epic in others and with some interesting mechanics, albeit it is a little easy to cheat.
Castaway:
https://www.sendspace.com/pro/uicaa8

An old if style game, set on a desert island.

NEbula:

https://www.sendspace.com/pro/e2rcga

Another if style game, but set in space, also uses the pc speaker.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2015-04-29 20:34:03

holy crash bandicoot!
this is the greatest thrill in my life!
Does dosbox support multiple sound cards?
does jaws support the covox speech thing?
if both are true, that might be a way around the sb conflict issue.

be a hero and stop Coppa now!
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Dkm … DkWZ8/edit
-id software, 1995

2015-04-30 16:09:49

woot!  so does this mean we can finally play emon?  would be fab to get fallthrough back. smile

2015-04-30 17:07:37

I would also advise you guys to try games by Graham Cluley (Jackaranda Jim and Humbug). There are available at the games/pc directory of the IF archive. Look for Jackjim50.zip and humbug50.zip. They are quite possibly the best text adventures on DOS.

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2015-05-02 05:46:56

If y'all are looking for some pcs stuff, go to ***, there's a growing host of them, some demos, some full versions, you'll just see what's what when you get there. And Peter, does pc speaker emulation work when running dosbox within a vm in fusion?

2015-05-02 06:10:34

Thanks jack.
Any way I can make sbtalker less choppy?

be a hero and stop Coppa now!
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Dkm … DkWZ8/edit
-id software, 1995

2015-05-02 11:15:14

Right, I think you guys deserve an update. That will come a bit later today, but you can expect a few things:

-I managed to boot into freedos. This was mostly required by one screen reader, tinytalk which absolutely needed the cover speech thing drivers to be loaded with proper dos. The speech thing was a very cheep sound card that connected to a parallel port and I mostly set it up to free the soundblaster for games that need it. Some apps may work better or worse when booted into it.

-The next version will also come with Tyler Spivey's braille n's peak emulator, compiled into an EXE as well as a full version of ASAP. You will need to install com0com to get a virtual serial port, but I think it's worth it as  ASAP is probably the best dos screen reader out there. It's faster, has the most reliable screen echo and unlike the screen readers that use stalker, doesn't stop the program while it's speaking. It's definitely the preferred way of playing the PCS games, for example. JAWS will still be included so no worries in case you don't want to set that up.

-Lastly, just like with Jason Smith's messapple I want to include some games to get people started. I'm probably going to include Eamon, Drone, a few of the other games people mentioned here and I'll probably also get in touch with Phil to see if I can get the full versions of the PCS games I'm missing

@Jack yes, PC speaker emulation works. It's emulated by Dosbox independently of your actual hardware.  This was one of the reasons I wanted to get this to work so badly

<Insert passage from "The Book Of Chrome" here>

2015-05-02 11:29:28

Hello.

_Can someone translate it to Czech or can I play it with Sapi?

And can I play Aria games on it?

Thanks, Vojta.

2015-05-02 13:58:14

what is aria?

be a hero and stop Coppa now!
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Dkm … DkWZ8/edit
-id software, 1995

2015-05-02 15:01:02

Hi.

the main page for eamon deluxe is Here

(there are even reviews, parts of the manual  and bits in the news letters written by muggins). The standard version uses dosbox, when run in blind compatibility mode it doesn't, however the blind compatibility mode has  a lot of useful features like dos style  numbered menus, an enhanced version of the text main hall with lots of good services and even some described graphics. I did e-mail the edx creator and send him a link to this topic, sinse he has been looking for a solution like this for years, however unfortunately after a lot of development, including convertion of several more Eamon adventures to eamon deluxe in 2013, he seems to have dropped off the map again, which is a real shame sinse  edx was lining up to be awsome and there were some amazing new adventures written for system as well as convertions of classic ones.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2015-05-02 15:10:16

Hello. Aria is is device without monitor, you can write braill and it can speak. You can play games or use programs from cart or disc 3,5

2015-05-02 15:19:42

thanks.

be a hero and stop Coppa now!
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Dkm … DkWZ8/edit
-id software, 1995

2015-05-02 15:32:29

Hi all,

could someone explain how I can start a game in the dosbox? I didn't really find out how this works. I don't know what else to try.

Thanks!

Greetings,
Janagirl!

2015-05-02 18:16:02

I think it's cd followed by the path of the game you want to play then hit enter, type the filename of the exe then hit enter.

be a hero and stop Coppa now!
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Dkm … DkWZ8/edit
-id software, 1995

2015-05-02 23:24:35

Hi pitermach.
Ok here is my old hard drive from my 386 sx I backed up ages ago before most off my disks went bad.
there is a lot of stuff in it Norton utilities qemm and a few other things.
One thing does the c drive if its the only thing mounted in emulation does it take that as the hard drive.
try these at your own risk I won't want to stuff up my computer with some of this as it could be dangerous however you may want to experiment as you see fit.
quemm is the quarterdeck expanded memory manager I got this from an install so its not a real install just the files you need to run qsetup then optimize.
I suggest you include the b000-b7ff which is the old monochrome reagon, also mft  is a diagnostic program that can come in handy to.
device files and a few other programs are loaded in here.
Norton has everything from disk docter and speeddisk and a few other bits of crap which I am not sure about.
I have lots of games some are from the ifarchive.
I won't have time to test things fully today but whatever.
anyway for everyone else try the games the programs are your own risk to all the sup 622 folder is for my old Toshiba and can be disreguarded there may be others that can be disreguarded as well but I have not touched this folder in at least 5 years.
it should take 16 minutes to upload or so.
note piter if you do get qemm working when its done its first time, in all the device lines with various memory numbers change those and put random gibberish numbers in the file then run optimize again.
Do that in your config.sys and autoexec.bat then again that may not work there is also a beep and some other music stuff, I also have an old version of wordperfect I am not sure if its included or not but I can give it if you care for it.
I have some old mastertouch 1 2 and keysoft 1 disks but sadly they are useless to general users even me now.
I have emailed frank of eamon deluxe your email address and the link to this topic but he has gone.
The last I heard of him a couple years ago was that he was hacked and then a day after that the post on his blog went.
He had apparently lost the source code but didn't elaborate.
its a shame he's not here now he has been wanting to make an emulator for ages.
anyway have fun

2015-05-02 23:36:09

At this time, the last Eamon Blog entry was in March of this year:
http://eamon-guild.blogspot.com/2015/03 … abase.html

So for now, no one knows I guess.

2015-05-03 03:38:41

@Trenton good to know. I obviously hadn't checked the Eamon guild site blog for a month or so the last post I saw was from december 2013 and it was that way for quite some time.

On the one hand of course, both Matthew Clarke who runs the Eamon guild site and Derric Jeter who mentioned the eamon delux utility are not the creators of Eamon deluxe or for all I know involved in development, the man in question is Frank Black.

On the other, Derric Jeter is one of the people who has written a new edx adventure, the very good Stronghold of Ka'dur back in 2013, and was working on supposedly another pretty awsome and large scale one, so if he's back working with edx we can hope the project will get underway once more, and if it can encorporate a talking dosbox all the better.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2015-05-03 15:49:33

crashmaster, Where's the download link? I've been looking for an authentic pc speaker music tracker!

be a hero and stop Coppa now!
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Dkm … DkWZ8/edit
-id software, 1995