¶ Technical data
- Manufacturer: IBM
- Year of release: 1981 (IBM PC 5150)
- Operating system: PC-DOS / MS-DOS
- CPU: Intel 8088, then 286, 386, 486 and Pentium
- Video: CGA, EGA, VGA then SVGA
- Sound: internal speaker, AdLib, Sound Blaster, Gravis Ultrasound
- Media: 5"¼ and 3"½ floppy disks, hard disk, CD-ROM
¶ Presentation
The IBM PC compatible is not a console: it is a family of personal computers born in 1981 with the IBM PC 5150, whose open architecture was cloned by dozens of manufacturers. The reference operating system of that era, MS-DOS (sold as PC-DOS by IBM), remained the main PC gaming platform until the mid-1990s.
Unlike a console, there is no single "DOS PC" but an endless number of configurations: CPU, memory, graphics card and sound card all differ from one machine to the next. That is why games of the time asked you to pick your sound card at install time, and why a DOS emulator has to reproduce a whole machine rather than one fixed model.
The golden age of DOS gaming roughly covers 1985-1995: the graphic adventures from Sierra and LucasArts, the role-playing games from Origin and SSI, the flight simulations from MicroProse, and finally the FPS revolution with Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Duke Nukem 3D and Quake. Most of those titles now run far better in an emulator than on a modern PC.
¶ Emulators
Emulator availability per board:
| Emulator | RPI3/RPI02W | RPI4/400 | RPI5/500 | OGA/OGS/RG351 | PC | RG353 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Libretro dosbox_pure | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| DOSBox | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
DOSBox Pure is the default emulator, on every board. It is also the only one of the two supporting netplay and CRT output. RetroAchievements are not supported on this system. Standalone DOSBox remains useful for games that need a precise, hand-written DOSBox configuration.
A keyboard and a mouse are recommended on this system: most DOS games expect one or the other, and many of them (graphic adventures, strategy games, games with a windowed interface) are simply unplayable with a pad. Standalone DOSBox displays an on-screen keyboard you can drive with a pad as a fallback, but a real USB or Bluetooth keyboard remains the comfortable solution.
¶ BIOS
No BIOS is required for this system.
¶ Roms
Put your games in:
/recalbox/share/roms/dos/
The two emulators do not expect the same kind of "rom" at all: standalone DOSBox launches a game folder, DOSBox Pure launches an archive.
Supported extensions per emulator:
| Emulator | Extensions |
|---|---|
| DOSBox Pure | .dosz .zip .7z |
| DOSBox | .dos .pc |
¶ Standalone DOSBox: one folder per game
A game is a folder whose name ends with .dos or .pc. That folder holds the game files and, mandatorily, a dosbox.bat file describing how to start it. A dosbox.cfg file placed next to it replaces the default DOSBox configuration for this game only.
/recalbox/share/roms/dos/
└── Doom.pc/
├── dosbox.bat ← launch script (mandatory)
├── dosbox.cfg ← game-specific configuration (optional)
└── DOOM/
├── DOOM.EXE
└── …
At launch, Recalbox sets the ROOT variable to the path of the game folder: use it in dosbox.bat to mount the C: drive, for example:
mount c "%ROOT%"
c:
cd DOOM
DOOM.EXE
¶ DOSBox Pure: one archive per game
With DOSBox Pure, a game is a single archive (.zip, .7z or .dosz) holding the game tree exactly as it would sit on a hard disk. The archive does not need to be extracted: the core mounts it directly as the C: drive, detects the executable to run and offers a start menu when the game contains several of them.
The
.doszformat is simply a zip file meant for DOSBox Pure. Do not extract your archives and do not rename their content: the core reads them as they are.
Also have a look at the DOS guide for game preparation, configuration and system-specific tips.