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Guide: How to setup DOSBox

Yesterday I suggested to spend some time playing good ol' games. Obviously, these games won't run in a modern OS-environment, but with a little help from a friend or three we can emulate an old-school environment. Spending a lot of time getting this to work I figured I'd make this step-by-step guide for Windows-users. I personally run Windows 7 64-bit, but there shouldn't be any critical differences if you run XP or Vista.

So, you want to play Keen? Let's do it then.

What you will need:

- DOSBox and D-Fend Reloaded. It's bundled here: http://dfendreloaded.sourceforge.net/.

- Games. Search google or simply try 486 Games.

Okay, start off and download D-Fend Reloaded. You want the file named "D-Fend-Reloaded-x.x.x-Setup.exe", x's indicating version number. When the download has finished, install it as you would any other program - automatic installation worked fine for me.

First time you run the program it will bring up a wizard to configure the program. There is one thing, that you may want to change and that is the Game Folder. The default is located somewhere like User\Admininistrator\D-Fend Reloaded\VirtualHD\. I prefer to make a directory either immediately in the C: drive or in a subfolder. Note: I was not able to change the Game directory after I had chosen the name in the wizard. Therefore, choose carefully and watch your spelling :)

For these old DOS-games I chose to make a folder called DOSBox in C. I therefore clicked the Edit Settings button in the wizard, skipped to Game Folder and wrote C:\DOSBox. The games I download will need to be put in that folder.

And now.. we're basically done! What we simply need is to find the games we wish to play, put them in our Game Folder and launch them with D-Fend.

Using the example with Keen, go to 486 Games (or Dos Games Archive) and search for it in the search box in the left-hand side. Choose your favourite Keen (mine is Keen 4) and download it where is says 'here' in red.

You will now have downloaded a zip-file containing the game. Open the zip-file and put it the folder named keen4 in your Game Folder.

Open up D-Fend Reloaded and click the green Add-button (or press Insert). This will bring up a profile-window. If you wish, you can select an icon for your game. The essential options for us are the name of the profile and Program file. Go ahead and name the profile Keen 4. Next, click the folder icon to the right under Program file. This will bring up an explorer-window. Dive into your keen4 folder and chose KEEN4.EXE and click Open. We don't need to specify any setup-file, but other games require that. In that case, simply browse to the game folder and chose SETUP.EXE. Now, Click OK and you should be back in the main menu and see Keen 4 added to the list of programs.

Lastly, double-click Keen 4 and the game should start. Notice the prompt: Alt+Enter toggles between Fullscreen and Windowed mode and Ctrl+F9 terminates the game.

If any error occurs feel free to comment on this blog. Good luck and have fun.

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