Silly antiX Toys – DOSBox-only live-USB

[Moderator christophe]

Silly antiX Toys – DOSBox-only live-USB:

A live USB that boots directly to DOSBox, to play all your old favorites. And when you exit DOSBox, the PC shuts down. That’s it. Good for getting some use out of old hardware – particularly (as in my case) where an old computer no longer can support modern web browsers very well. Or just to muck about.

A tutorial – just in case anyone finds themselves in a similar situation, with a mind to play around.
Just for fun.

Starting with: An old 32-bit netbook. Hard drive removed for a “more worthy” laptop.
Some old DOS games & a simple text batch-file menu to launch them.
And a fresh full-featured live-USB – I chose antiX 17 base, but will work with 19 just fine.

1. Booting the live-usb:
a. Choose F5 persist_home, F6 fluxbox (or pick another one — no rox- or space- or min- prefix). Then F8 Save.

b. Boot up & set only 300 mb for the home persistence file when asked. Believe me, you don’t need more than that.

c. Set up your internet connection.

2. configure antiX:
a. run in a terminal:
sudo apt update && sudo apt install dosbox
Apt will tell you you have many updates available, probably, but we don’t need them. We do need dosbox. So hit enter & continue to install dosbox & dependencies.

b. Turn off internet after this has been completed. Since I used ceni (in antiX 17), I reopened it & chose the wifi configuration again. It told me it is already configured – do I want to reconfigure or remove it? I chose remove. I don’t want wifi connection on this live-USB, going forward.

c. Open Control Centre – edit fluxbox settings:
In the “startup” file – after this:

# fluxbox startup-script:
#
# Lines starting with a '#' are ignored.

add this:
dosbox;desktop-session-exit &
This will start dosbox, and as soon as it is closed, the logout menu pops up. That’s all we want!
Save & close.

3. configure dosbox:
a. Run dosbox for the first time (& close it). This creates the basic config file in ~/.dosbox folder. Open the only file in that directory & edit it as follows (my recommendations):

[sdl]
#####
fullscreen=true
fulldouble=false
fullresolution=640x480
windowresolution=original
output=overlay
autolock=true
sensitivity=60
waitonerror=true
priority=higher,normal
mapperfile=mapper-0.74-2.map
usescancodes=true

And also, at the very bottom of the file:

[autoexec]
# Lines in this section will be run at startup.
# You can put your MOUNT lines here.
mount c ~/dos
c:
menu

The last line launches your menu program. Mine is called “menu.bat” – example to follow, in case you need to borrow it.

b. Dig out your old dos games from your archives & copy them to ~/Live-usb-storage/dos. Since we are using the Live-usb-storage directory, it is outside of the home persistence file. You can use (basically) the whole live-usb (minus some room to remaster).

4. misc optional tweaks – your personal preferences
a. Session tweaks: Go to Control Centre – Session – User Desktop-Session:
(1) under the “desktop-session.conf” tab, I set:

LOAD_CONKY="false"
STARTUP_SOUND_LEVEL="0%"

I don’t need conky for this, since DOSBox will be launched full-screen. And I don’t want sound always on – although you might…

(2) I chose a nearly all black desktop wallpaper. antiX 17 has “antiX-galaxy4.jpg” which I thought best suited what I wanted. Set this the usual way or edit the config file.

b. DOS batch menu (if you don’t have a dos menu and/or forgot how to do this sort of thing in dos) – place it in ~/Live-usb-storage/dos with your game files.

(a) menu.bat (main menu example – make a new file called menu.bat at put something like this in it:)

@echo off
@cls
@echo.
@echo.
@echo                                DOSBox Games
@echo.
@echo                 7 Card Stud Poker ....................... 1
@echo.
@echo                 Classic Doom ............................ 2
@echo.
@echo                 Royal Flush Pinball ..................... 3
@echo.
@echo                 Score Golf Solitaire .................... 4
@echo.
@echo                 Space Cadet Pinball ..................... 5
@echo.
@echo                 Windows 3.11 ............................ 6
@echo.
@echo.

(b) 1.bat (individual launcher example – name each one the number on the menu. Type [that number] & press the ENTER key to launch. So I have 1.bat, 2.bat, 3.bat, etc., as well as menu.bat):

c:
cd \7stud
7stud
cd \
menu

c. Edit the live-usb boot menu – edit as root: /live/boot-dev/boot/syslinux/syslinux.cfg
Make it look like this (optional, as I wrote above):

#--------------------------------------------------------------------
# This is the isolinux.cfg and/or syslinux.cfg file
# It controls the main menu in the bootloader on the live system.
# You can edit it to change the main bootloader menu on a LiveUSB.
# If you are not careful you can break the live system and prevent
# it from booting.
#--------------------------------------------------------------------

UI gfxboot gfx-cpio readme.msg
timeout 3000

default db

MENU TITLE   antiX Toys

LABEL db
    MENU LABEL DOSBox DOS & Win 3.1 Games
    KERNEL /antiX/vmlinuz
    APPEND quiet splash=v disable=lx desktop=fluxbox 
    INITRD /antiX/initrd.gz

“MENU TITLE” does not display after editing it. But the MENU LABEL does. I like it to tell me what is on the live-usb – this “toy” and not “real” antiX – in case I come across it, say, a year down the road, and wonder what the heck is on this thing…
I also comment-out the rest of the file with # in front of each line, so the original entries do not display on screen.
Note the “desktop=” parameter, where you can add another 1 or 2 antix toys in the future, by listing either icewm or jwm in this boot code… for example:

LABEL vb
    MENU LABEL WinXP Games Virtual Machine 
    KERNEL /antiX/vmlinuz
    APPEND quiet splash=v disable=lx desktop=icewm 
    INITRD /antiX/initrd.gz

LABEL og
    MENU LABEL Classic Games - Win32, DOS, Win16, PSOne, Misc
    KERNEL /antiX/vmlinuz
    APPEND quiet splash=v disable=lx desktop=rox-jwm 
    INITRD /antiX/initrd.gz

But if you don’t want to edit this, it will still work, so long as you saved your boot settings as directed in the beginning.

5. NOT OPTIONAL – remaster the live-USB (or you lose everthing you just did!)
Run the Remaster program: Control Centre – Live – Remaster-Customize Live, and follow the prompts. When asked, choose “personal” and include /home in the remaster. If you have the space on the usb, use the lz4 compression.
Once the remaster is finished, reboot.

6. End notes:
Your menu & saved games are all saved in your Live-usb-storage folder, independent of any persistence files, so persistence is really not needed. But I find that “persist_home” is nice, in case you decide to tweak some OS settings down the road. So I left it.

(For example, I like how the fluxbox bottom panel is tiny & unobtrusive – when you see it after you exit dosbox at the end of your session. If you chose a different window manager for this project, you may want to configure the panel/toolbar to autohide. Or you may want to change to a better wallpaper later.)

When we boot back up, we see dosbox go full-screen with the menu to choose each game. When the game exits, it calls the menu again, forever, until you type “exit” at the dos prompt. Then the desktop-session-exit program immediately offers you logout/reboot/shutdown options.

• This topic was modified 2 years, 8 months ago by christophe.

confirmed antiX frugaler, since 2019

[Member rayluo]

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christophe wrote:

sudo apt update && sudo apt install dosbox

Quick newbie question. Following this path in its menu, AntiX 19 already comes with a “Applicaxtion -> Game -> DOSBox Emulator”. Is that the same thing that you want to install? (Aside: It is somewhat confusing to me that, DOSBox is already an emulator in itself, why do we have an emulator of an emulator in antix 19…)

By the way, this search “antix dosbox emulator” leads to an unexpected result: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaalVube5g8

[Moderator christophe]

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Yeah. I had forgotten that some antiX ISOs come with dosbox pre-installed. So then you skip that step, if the live-USB you made already has it.
Regarding “dosbox emulator” — it just emulates the MS/PC-DOS OS. Mainly to play old PC games. (It doesn’t emulate a DOS emulator. It’s just a descriptive title.)

confirmed antiX frugaler, since 2019

[Forum Admin rokytnji]

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What I like about this thread. It gives one the opportunity to just shoe horn in what one needs on a low spec laptop to play dosgames.

Some folks can’t even boot a full iso < ram,storage, or cpu challenges >.

You would be surprised what antique gear boots on this iso.
It still serves my purposes. < I disregard the distrowatch discontinued message >

https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=womp

Sometimes I drive a crooked road to get my mind straight.
Not all who Wander are Lost.
I'm not outa place. I'm from outer space.

Linux Registered User # 475019
How to Search for AntiX solutions to your problems

[Forum Admin rokytnji]

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I’ll also mention. For really old laptops with no usb boot option.

One can install PLOP bootloader before following the threads 1st steps .

https://www.plop.at/en/bootmanager/startmodes.html

Start from your bios as option rom You can store the boot manager as option rom in your bios. There is no need for any hard disk or anything else to start the boot manager. It can be used as PNP part of your bios or the boot manager can hook the INT19 to take control as first boot device.

Or install PLOP to your hard drive so it comes up 1st on boot up when hard drive powers up. If lacking cdrom,dvd,or usb boot options. Just scroll through my link supplied pages to learn something new.

Sometimes I drive a crooked road to get my mind straight.
Not all who Wander are Lost.
I'm not outa place. I'm from outer space.

Linux Registered User # 475019
How to Search for AntiX solutions to your problems

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