DOSBox Windows 95 for Chess

spacious_mind · Post by **spacious_mind** » Sun Mar 03, 2019 8:07 am

Last couple of weeks I have had my head down in my spare moments building DOSBox with Windows 95. And surprisingly after figuring it all out based on instructions available on the internet and trial and error as the instructions were not always correctly described I got Windows 95 working on DOSBox.

Well I am really pleased that I made the effort as it works and what I like about DOSBox of course is the control you have with cpu_cycles so you can set these to be the same with your DOSBox Dfend setup for DOS chess programs, DOSBox Windows 3.11 and now DOSBox Windows 95. Windows 98 is also possible so that is one I will try to build sometime soon as well.

The benefits for this is that I of course want have good opponents for Millennium King and for the original Revelation. Now with this solution I have it!

I find through some testing with Fritz 2, CS Tal II and MChess Pro 8 that the cpu_cycle of 230,000 works well to get the Speed of a Pentium II 400 MHz. In fact CS Tal II with this setting actually considers it to be a Pentium 200 running at 200% exactly.

On an I7 I think this cycle of 230,000 is a good compromise as anything much higher than this and the internal chess program clock starts to slow down. Anything much less and you are weakening the programs to make them less competitive with Millennium King.

Here are some pictures:

That is the Windows 95 desktop inside DOSBox. As you can see I had already loaded some programs onto it.

Mephisto Shredder the 1996 Jakarta World Champion Program

You can see from the search depth, 10/22 in 29 seconds works nicely for competitive games against King.

Fritz 5.32

Great graphics and works really well as you can see from the search depths.

Genius 6 and 6.5

Genius 6 and 6.5 work well too and here you can see WChess 2000 from David Kittinger playing inside the Genius 6 program. COOL!!!

Chess System Tal II

And as you can see Chess System Tal II works well as well!

All in all I have been able to make the following chess programs work inside DOSBox Windows 95. Mostly by using either Fritz 5.32 and Chess Genius capability to run ENG chess engine files. (Not all but some work) Here is the list of what I have working so far:

Comet B50
Crafty 16.3
Crafty 19.01
CSTal II
Fritz 5.32
Fritz 8
Gandalf 432F
Genius 3
Genius 4
Genius 6
Genius 6 2nd Gen
Genius 7
Mephisto Shredder (14th WMCCC - 1996 Jakarta WM Version)
WBNimzo2000B
WChess 2000
Zarkov 5

That's not bad!!

Ok I still have some challenges. DOSBox Win 95 does not read external cd's so come programs such as Shredder 5, and several more I have not been able to work out how to get them working yet to install them and read the CD.

If anyone else has built DOSBox Windows 95 and figured out how to make it work then please let me know how.

So now with DOSBox of Dfend, Win 3.11 and Win 95 it seems that I am starting to find plenty of opponents for King and Revelation to beat up on!!

Best regards

fdimeglio · Post by **fdimeglio** » Tue Mar 05, 2019 6:18 am

Hello Nick,

You could have just used VirtualBox which is a Virtual Machine emulating a real PC and then installed Win95 into it.

https://www.virtualbox.org
https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads

VirtualBox is free (yep) and available on many platforms and you can probably share the "virtual disk" from a Windows to a Linux or Mac machine.

Virtual Regards,

Fabrice

mclane · Post by **mclane** » Tue Mar 05, 2019 8:19 am

I do it the other way arround. I bought a Lenovo netbook with win Xp and a toshiba Laptop with Pentium II 333 MHz and Win 98.

The advantage is to have a separate notebook only for the old stuff.

Those old machines are very cheap. Nobody wants them. Only we old dos friends need it.

spacious_mind · Post by **spacious_mind** » Tue Mar 05, 2019 11:05 am

mclane wrote:I do it the other way arround. I bought a Lenovo netbook with win Xp and a toshiba Laptop with Pentium II 333 MHz and Win 98.

The advantage is to have a separate notebook only for the old stuff.

Those old machines are very cheap. Nobody wants them. Only we old dos friends need it.

Hi Thorsten

I already have all the old computers from 286, 386, 486, P100, P300 and P800.

The advantage in what I am doing is greater as through DOSBox I can play whatever speed I want up to Pentium 400 speed. Also since I built this on an I7 laptop I can carry this around with me. It is a better solution especially if you want to play some tournaments as I dont have to have everything cluttering up my Desk.

Best regards

spacious_mind · Post by **spacious_mind** » Tue Mar 05, 2019 1:01 pm

fdimeglio wrote:Hello Nick,

You could have just used VirtualBox which is a Virtual Machine emulating a real PC and then installed Win95 into it.

https://www.virtualbox.org
https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads

VirtualBox is free (yep) and available on many platforms and you can probably share the "virtual disk" from a Windows to a Linux or Mac machine.

Virtual Regards,

Fabrice

Hi Fabrice,

Same as I just responded to Thorsten with. The DOSBox solutions are more flexible and much much broader in scope, speed control and possibilities especially if you are a tournament game player like me.

Best regards

mclane · Post by **mclane** » Wed Mar 06, 2019 12:16 am

Sorry I find it nuts to emulate dos and Windows when the originals are running ...
it’s a sad thing what bill gates has made out of us.

fdimeglio · Post by **fdimeglio** » Wed Mar 06, 2019 2:06 am

@mclane, it is not sad. This is a necessity. You actually don't really want to have Windows running on real h/w anymore. Windows is a pain in a but in many ways and that's why Virtualization is so great to keep it "in a little box".

As a reference point, my company, a top one in her domain with 80K+ employees, has banned Windows since a long time. We are all Linux + MacOSX.

As for me, my only instead of Windows is an old Win XP in a virtual machine. I can use it wherever I want.

@Nick, still don't get it why you would need to use DOSBOX. VirtualBox (or other VMs) are pure virtual PCs so you can install real MSDOS or any (free) compatible one and that provides you even more powerful options for h/w.

You can even use QEMU or even Wine.

Emulator Regards,

Fabrice

spacious_mind · Post by **spacious_mind** » Wed Mar 06, 2019 2:27 am

fdimeglio wrote:@mclane, it is not sad. This is a necessity. You actually don't really want to have Windows running on real h/w anymore. Windows is a pain in a but in many ways and that's why Virtualization is so great to keep it "in a little box".

As a reference point, my company, a top one in her domain with 80K+ employees, has banned Windows since a long time. We are all Linux + MacOSX.

As for me, my only instead of Windows is an old Win XP in a virtual machine. I can use it wherever I want.

@Nick, still don't get it why you would need to use DOSBOX. VirtualBox (or other VMs) are pure virtual PCs so you can install real MSDOS or any (free) compatible one and that provides you even more powerful options for h/w.

You can even use QEMU or even Wine.

Emulator Regards,

Fabrice

Hi Fabrice

The benefit with DOSBox to play against Millennium King and other dedicated chess computer is that you need something where you can control the speed and you have 3 or four systems that you have to create to make all the old chess software usable. With cpu_cycles on an I7 pentium you can reach the speed of a Pentium 400 MHz and that is what you need to be competitive and have all the software playing at the same speed. You need something for DOS, You need something that plays Windows 3.11, you need something that plays Windows 95, and probably also Windows 98 so that you can later probably add Winboard and Arena to it all playing on your one/two laptop at the same cpu_cycle. So in the config files of these DOSBox systems all you have to do is set the cpu_cycles and everyone of these builds plays exactly at the same speed on your laptop. So now I can play a Windows 3.11 software against a Windows 95 software or against DOS software all performing exactly the same.

To do this effectively you need a software solution that simulates the old pc speeds. So it is the cpu_cycle control that makes it work.

If I wanted to simulate a proper PC like a pentium 486 for example by using a pure virtual 486 PC then for example Gideon won't work as it was built for a 386 computer.. and so on. So now I am back to having different virtual computers. In addition I cannot speed them up or slow them down to suit what kind of dedicated chess computers I want to play against.

It is all this that makes the DOSBox solution a lot more flexible. I set the cpu_cycles to 26,700 and I am playing a DX 486-66 MHz. I set it to 69,300 cpu_cycles and all the software in all these builds plays at P90 speed. 77,000 cpu_cycles and I am playing a Pentium 100 with all the different builds. 230,000 cpu cycles and I now play them all at Pentium 400 speed.

So since it is a software solutuon Gideon for example works in DOS either under DOSBox or DOSBox Windows 95 because the installed DOS 6.22 reads it and lets it work. On hardware solutions I could only play it on a 386 computer set up for example.

That is the flexibility that I am talking about if you can take the hardware out of the equation and make the software alone work and simulate the hardware speed.

It is more than DOS that you need because you have good chess playing software with DOS, Windows 3.11, Windows 95 and later Windows versions.

Hopefully I am making sense

Best regards

fdimeglio · Post by **fdimeglio** » Wed Mar 06, 2019 2:34 am

Oki gotcha. Makes sense now. Thank you so much for sharing this.

Being able to control the speed is actually a great feature.

Speedy Regards,

Fabrice

spacious_mind · Post by **spacious_mind** » Wed Mar 06, 2019 2:52 am

fdimeglio wrote:Oki gotcha. Makes sense now. Thank you so much for sharing this.

Being able to control the speed is actually a great feature.

Speedy Regards,

Fabrice

Yep you mentioned Qemu great little program, but it has the same problem as for example MChess 8 runs 2-3 times faster than the fastest speed you can get in DOSBox so there is no dedicated computer you can play the software against unless you own a Revelation II and for that you might have MChess give it a competitive game. But for Millennium King MChess at nearly 1000 MHz searches too deeply and therefore not that suited. Qemu lacks that speed control I am talking about. So I could never set it to a 486-66 and play Mephisto Genius 68030 for example against it.

Oooops penny dropped we are talking about different Qemu. Franz Huber created a Qemu where you have 11 DOS Programs inside playing virtually. You are talking about QEMU the application

Best regards

mclane · Post by **mclane** » Wed Mar 06, 2019 6:28 am

In the old days where gates stole ideas and code from digital research and others, a strong opponent of gates in the competition would have been a good idea.
Dr dos e.g. was great or tos/gem on Atari st.
But gates was clever and monopolized the market.
So Dr dos and geoworks and tos never made it, although they were superior.

Then he threw dos out and in the moment we lost nimzo, tiger,
Mchess and wchess, Socrates and cstal dos.
Yes we can emulate this and yes we can set up the speed.
But the emulation is 10 times slower .
It is good in controlling the speed for 486 and pentium 90 and pentium 200 but even on fast machines it remains 1/10 of the speed
It could be.

Gates destroyed all enemies.
He killed development.
Digital research died. Geoworks ended. Atari died.
Only apple survived and a windows that is a pain in the ass.

And the same shit continued on the mobile market.
Remember when WEBOS died because palm was bought by
HP and hp made the decision not to sell hardware anymore and sold
The OS to LG where it now is in a grave in television sets.

spacious_mind · Post by **spacious_mind** » Wed Mar 06, 2019 11:21 am

mclane wrote:

But the emulation is 10 times slower .
It is good in controlling the speed for 486 and pentium 90 and pentium 200 but even on fast machines it remains 1/10 of the speed
It could be.

That is true Thorsten, the other solutions are faster, but you cannot control them so we are still individuals all playing at home alone. The speed control is what the other solutions have to figure out and develop and then we can all play as a community.

My preference is DOSbox for this reason alone as I can play against you in Germany and we have the same settings, just like dedicated computeres. If the other solution can ever do that then of course they will become better because of the higher speeds. They just need to also allow you at the touch of a button to drop down to low speeds as well so you can play against dedicated computers as well.

If you don't do that then you might as well join an engine forum and forget about hand moved dedicated games and just automate them all and go to bed while they play.

Best regards

Rob Appleby · Post by **Rob Appleby** » Wed Mar 06, 2019 11:48 am

mclane wrote:In the old days where gates stole ideas and code from digital research and others...

Why do you keep hawking this lie? Seriously man, did Gates shoot your parrot or something?

fdimeglio · Post by **fdimeglio** » Wed Mar 06, 2019 3:58 pm

@Rob,

this is quite famous that Gates stole the "Windows" idea when he has seen Steve Jobs' Lisa / Macintosh prototypes ... which also was stolen from the Xerox Parc and their Xerox Alto computer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_Alto

mclane · Post by **mclane** » Wed Mar 06, 2019 4:27 pm

Rob Appleby wrote:
mclane wrote:In the old days where gates stole ideas and code from digital research and others...
Why do you keep hawking this lie? Seriously man, did Gates shoot your parrot or something?

Nothing gates sold was self invented. He is a complete loser.
Microsoft is to stupid to produce anything that works.
Dos was stolen. Windows was stolen.
And monopolized. Windows mobile phone was a complete disaster.
The only thing you can buy from Microsoft are mouse or keyboards
The rest is a disaster.

To be honest I see Bill gates as terrorist.
I would have put him in prison for stealing and for killing all other companies.
We had a similar situation in Germany with chess base. Only a few potentions smaller but with similar behaviour.