DOS Games Discussion

Greetings. I am trying to get a huge package of DOS Chess games (over 100, if you include the different versions of various games) that was originally created by Franz Huber as a package that would run all the games on either DOS-Box or QEMU. I'm trying to get them to run on a bootable USB drive so that I can run them on pure DOS for the speed increase, which is substantial. For example, for one game I tested the nodes/second (or moves/second analyzed), was 150,000 nodes/sec for DOS-Box, 200,000 nodes/sec for QEMU, but 2,000,000 nodes/sec running directly on DOS.

Problem is, only about a third of them work on my gaming PC (running Windows 10). I'm only given a choice between Standard Configuration and Extended Configuration when I start the overall program. Standard Configuration doesn't work at all, and Extended Configuration lets me run no more than 1/4 to 1/3 of the programs. I don't know enough about DOS to be able to fix the problem so they all work. Anyone out there who would be willing to look at the package and see if they can figure out the problem?

It's an amazing package, including many versions of some of the best DOS Chess Games ever, including Fritz, Rebel, Chess Genius, Battle Chess, HIARCS, Chessmaster, etc.

I guess you need to run them through DOSBox then, if the bundle was intended for such use?

Windows 10 is not very suitable to run old DOS games directly.

tsmiller1 wrote: ↑ For example, for one game I tested the nodes/second (or moves/second analyzed), was 150,000 nodes/sec for DOS-Box, 200,000 nodes/sec for QEMU, but 2,000,000 nodes/sec running directly on DOS.

JIC, did you make sure DOSBox was running at as many cycles as both your system and the chess programme permit? If the chess programme runs in real mode, DOSBox by default will emulate just 3000 cycles which is roughly a 286 CPU, unless configured to do otherwise (e.g. max cycles).

MrFlibble wrote: ↑

tsmiller1 wrote: ↑ For example, for one game I tested the nodes/second (or moves/second analyzed), was 150,000 nodes/sec for DOS-Box, 200,000 nodes/sec for QEMU, but 2,000,000 nodes/sec running directly on DOS.

JIC, did you make sure DOSBox was running at as many cycles as both your system and the chess programme permit? If the chess programme runs in real mode, DOSBox by default will emulate just 3000 cycles which is roughly a 286 CPU, unless configured to do otherwise (e.g. max cycles).

I did. I made sure DOS-Box was set to run maximum cycles when doing the test.

Depending on the peculiarities, of a particular programme, you might get better performance if you use fixed or capped cycles, and/or the dynamic core. A good start would be to look up the original system requirements for a game (386, 486 etc.), and here is a useful table of approximate correspondence between cycle count and actual CPUs. It's not super accurate but it gives some good indications.