Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with dos

DOS Games

mccarty.tim — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 18:22:07 -0800

What are some of the best games for DOS that still have lasting appeal? I really like Settlers 2 and The Ur Quan Masters (AKA Star Control 2), and I also really like how they're still very playable in this day and age, especially in DOSbox. I don't know too many DOS games, so I was wondering if there are any other great, classic DOS games in the same vein out there.

Preferably they aren't too hard to play in DOS box or require too much documentation before playing. For example, I've tried to play Dwarf Fortress, but I just can't get past the interface. I also want games that are still fun and accessible today, and not just good for nostalgic purposes. I don't mind whether they're Abandonware or for sale on Steam or GOG. I just want a good list to try.

If it matters, I'm using a Mac and dual boot into Windows 7, in case you want to offer something not exactly for DOS, like a remake or clone.

How to merge multiple text files keeping original filename and date

chimrichalds — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 19:07:01 -0800

Hi AskMeFi. Can someone tell me how to combine 350 text files into one large text file so that the original filenames and dates are included above (or below) each entry? I'm using Vista Home Premium and they are all generic .txt files. I'm moving all of my notes into Evernote but want to save the names and dates of the individual txt files.

How do I print an old dos-era postscript file (font encoding: codepage 850) containing german umlauts?

pu9iad — Sat, 16 May 2009 09:26:21 -0800

MS-DOS/Legacy file format filter: How do I convert an old postscript file (font encoding: codepage 850) containing german umlauts to pdf?/ How do I print such a file on modern printers? Hi everybody,

basically, I need to print out / convert to pdf several really old postscript files, which were created by a dos app (1) and contain german umlauts. The font encoding of the files is done in such a way that e.g. for ü the character number is \201 (Codepage 850).

If I open these files with Ghostview or GSView the umlauts are not displayed at all.But I guess if I could get a hold of an old MS-DOS-era printer (that understands codepage 850), the files could be printed out correctly with this little utility, which is able to send postscript files directly to a printer.

Since such a printer is a difficult item to get nowadays, I've tried another approach:
I've tried to send the files with Printfile to a virtual Adobe postscript printer, which in turn should generate a new postscript file with an up-to-date character set. However, the results were the same: no umlauts were displayed.

Does anybody know how to solve this problem? From my point of view the best solution would be to convert the postscript files to pdf. But if that is not possible I would still be very!!! happy, if someone could tell me how to at least print these files.

Thanks in advance,

pu9iad

(1):Neither do I recall the app's name, nor do I have copies of the document in another file format.

Anyone know of a comparative DOS speed tester software?

lifeless — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 10:36:46 -0800

I'm looking for a DOS-based CPU speed tester that I remember seeing years ago. It told you how your machine compared to various pre-measured setups. I don't remember how it presented the speed (MIPS, maybe?), but there was a large table of CPU types (386SX/25MHz, 486DX/50MHZ etc.) that it compared the measured result against. Anyone know of such a program? Specifically, I'm looking to use the software inside DOSBox to get a ballpark figure of how many "emulation cycles" are needed on my host machine to correspond to various historical CPUs type. I would then write these settings down to create several DOSBox configs, one for each type of machine.

The software wasn't a CPU ID solution (it might have made a guess, I don't remember), but an app to specifically see comparisons to other hardware. CPU and other hardware identification would be rather nonsensical inside DOSBox.

The benchmark/speed test results are bound to be rough and inexact given timing discrepancies and other emulation quirks, and need to be fine-tuned inside the actual games, but a tool like this would still be nice to have.

I remember that the software (or one of many, I have probably tested more than one) had a real-time "ticker" and a sliding scale. I vaguely remember testing one of these inside DOSBox many years ago, and recall seeing the sliding scale move as I adjusted the cycles setting. Naturally, I've lost and forgotten the software since.

Doesn't matter if the software is free or not. I've googled up some things but not the one I remember seeing. Any help will be appreciated.

Game-name filter: DOS ninjas?

ab3 — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 15:32:32 -0800

Idle nostalgic curiosity is driving me crazy - looking for at least the name (at best, a working version) of a late 80s/early 90s DOS (not arcade) 2-d ninja game - very simple, and the most notable characteristic is that the entire game was in uber-simple orange-red-green VGA palette colors against a black background. It's NOT any of the Ninja Gaiden games or anything else easily Googled up. The graphics were very simple but relatively detailed and professionally done and the game involved platformer-style moving through levels, climbing ladders, throwing shuriken at enemies, etc. It was not a one-on-one fighting game.

More likely than not this was free/shareware.

I know this is a longshot, but there's no better place for longshot answers than here, right?

Help me remember a mid-90s adventure game

fvw — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 13:29:50 -0800

I'm trying to remember a DOS game I used to play. It was an adventure type game where each level you had a task to complete in a dungeons-and-dragons type setting, so mages, archers, skeletons, that sort of thing. After each level you could hire new people to be on your team, and I think the ones that died during the level stayed gone permanently. You could switch between the various people on your team instantly by hitting a key (pgup/pgdn?). There was something of an overarching plot between the levels where a dark lord was using skeletons and zombies to take over towns and castles (that doesn't narrow it down much, I know). I also remember the mages could teleport to a random spot, and the druids(?) could plant trees which you could use as walls. Each character had a health bar and a mana bar.

On the technical side, this was very low res (must have been 320x200), and it used DOS4GW (and for some reason I think overlays too). There was a cooperative mode where you had a split screen and you two people could each control a team member at the same time. The terrain consisted of a large rectangle which you had a scrolling viewport onto, and I don't think the mouse was involved at all.

I realise each part of that describes hundreds of games, but the hive mind is so good at tracking these things down I figured I'd give it a shot. Thanks for reading anyway.

Give me a break!

Slenny — Sat, 17 May 2008 05:03:58 -0800

How can I install/use the DOS batch scripting SLEEP command with Vista Ultimate? It does not exist by default. Back while scripting on XP, I used to install the free package "Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit Tools" which came with this command. So basically, I just want to put a 60 second pause in a loop in a script. I am not looking for CPU intensive work-arounds or solutions involving cygwin.

Thanks.

Help me find an obscure DOS application that had a variety of topics?

bertrandom — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 13:56:31 -0800

Help me find an obscure DOS application that had a variety of topics. So back in 1997 or 1998, I was browsing the web and came across a website that had a link to download a DOS application which was a glorified text file viewer that had a variety of topics built into it. The topics ranged from everything from love to relationships to careers and religion and I thought the writings were pretty insightful. The author also mentioned that he'd like a book deal but that was all he had.

I'm not sure that's enough to go on but I'll cross my fingers and hope the hive mind can help.

recover deleted files on old DOS system

imaswinger — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 09:32:25 -0800

Help me recover some deleted files on an old DOS system. I have tried:

the undelete command: it found the files in question, but said the first block or sector or something was corrupt or unreadable or something. Subsequently running undelete turns up nothing now. (it's the plain-jane undelete)

Attach as second drive to XP to run Easyrecovery: Unknown partition, even though it's fat16. I now know XP can't read fat16 for some stupid reason.

Use UltimateBootCD: I tried 2 or 3 of the recovery programs there, but they said the partition was corrupt or unreadable.. something along those lines.

It still works perfectly fine as a dos machine. The files in question are less than 10 small text files. It's an old 40mb drive. Hope this helps...

Half-remembered DOS game from the early '90s

Johnny Assay — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 19:00:40 -0800

Can you help my sister & me identify this half-remembered DOS game? While my sister & I were chatting the other day, we got on the subject of the Marines. I started humming the Marines' Hymn ("From the Halls of Montezuma"), and this twinged a memory in my sis of an old DOS computer game. Here's what we can remember about it:

The theme music was the Marines' Hymn. This much we are certain of.
The name of the game may have been Captain something or Commander something.
There was no save feature, so you had to play through the entire thing in one sitting if you wanted to beat the game.
The game was quite possibly a side-scroller or a top-scroller. We seem to recall that some of the enemies looked like beach balls.
We were playing this game on a DOS machine in the early '90s. It was almost certainly shareware.

Not much to go on, I know, but if any site can recall this bit of computer nerd ephemera, it's Ask MetaFilter. Any thoughts, folks?

Change printer port name in Windows XP

chitlin — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 06:41:15 -0800

Making DOS program get along with new Windows XP machine and ancient printer: How to change the name of the printer port from USB001 to LPT1? I work in a small company that is managed by 50-somethings who do not feel compelled to stay up to date in the technology department. However, we recently upgraded computers from an old ATX motherboard system complete with LPT printer port to a new Dell mini-ATX system that relies on USB connections for printers.

The problem is that the software the managers use to do what they do is a DOS-based program from 1986. The name of the program is probably not relevant because it's a highly specialized program called Maptech Coordinate Geometry.

It uses dot matrix printers to print line-by-line data as the program runs. The program settings only allow for four characters and a colon for the printer port, i.e. "LPT1:" and such. The new cable adapter we got to get this printer hooked up via USB creates a printer port called "USB001". So the DOS program can't use that port because it has too many letters.

My question is, can I change the name of the port USB001 to LPT1 or LPT2, etc.? Or is there another way of fooling the DOS program into printing on the USB port?

How to SSH/telnet into Windows command line?

jkoby — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 21:38:54 -0800

How can I SSH (or telnet) into my Windows machine (2000 and XP) and get a command line?

Integrating the output of 2+ programs?

nasreddin — Wed, 23 May 2007 11:47:02 -0800

I am trying to find a way to generate a CSV table based on output from two or more command line programs (DOS on Windows XP). I do miscellaneous technical tasks for my university, and the task I am currently working on involves doing an inventory of our computers. I work for the enrollment department, not IT, and IT is extremely uncooperative and bumbling. So we have to do things like inventory all on our own, without access to any central servers, any control panels, etc.

So we're looking for a low-tech way to do inventory, nothing official or fancy but simply a way to automate making a spreadsheet with some crucial info. I've written a batch file that runs systeminfo, passes it one IP at a time from a list, and then has it output CSV data into a file, called, let's say, foo.csv, which we can then open in Excel.

Unfortunately, systeminfo doesn't return some things--for instance, MAC addresses. I can use getmac to do that and output a CSV file, but then I have two tables. I also want some function to return other data (serial numbers in BIOS or something). My goal is to:
1. Make foo.csv have headings for all the programs--systeminfo column headings, getmac column headings, and other arbitrary column headings.
2. For each pass of the FOR loop, I want systeminfo to write its data to the file, then getmac to add its data to the end of the line, and then arbitrary function to add its data to the end of the line.

But somewhere, either at the end or the beginning of the systeminfo output, there's a blank line, and if I simply try to >> the getmac CSV output to the file, it starts on a new line, which means I don't have a functioning table.

Hope me! I've been looking through late-'80s DOS text editing utilities to no avail. I can handle regexes, but just barely, and I don't know any perl/python/etc. There has to be a simple way to do this!

Old Los Angeles based DOS game?

the dief — Tue, 08 May 2007 18:51:00 -0800

Old DOS game involving adventuring around Los Angeles... Hey folks,

When I was knee-high to a CP/M machine I used to play this game on my DOS 8086 -- no CGA, no EGA, no Herc, no nothing -- just green screen -- and it involved going around to various locations in Los Angeles and collecting clues pointing to other locations in Los Angeles with the goal of finding some final location. All the while little meanies were following you. I seem to remember that your character was a + sign, and there were lines for streets, and you may have made use of taxis or other transit to get around on occasion. I've tried off and on to find this game on HOTU amongst other places with no luck. This ring a bell for anyone?

Colorizing Text Editor for DOS?

iconjack — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 20:37:27 -0800

Does anyone know of a text editor for DOS that does syntax coloring? Yes, DOS. I know this is the 21st century and all, but I have a special need. Thanks.

How to find DoS attacker's contact data?

Herr Fahrstuhl — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 08:32:22 -0800

Some guy is DoS-attacking my mail server. Can I determine his name from his server's static IP? I have my own little Windows Server 2003 hosted virtual dedicated server machine, i.e. I run my own web and mail servers (using IIS and MailEnable, respectively).

In the last few days my pop3 service crashed a few times a day. I read the log files and determined that some person with a static IP address is sending long, wierd packets to port 110 (POP3/APOP) causing the service to terminate unexpectedly.

In my picture this leaves little doubt that this is a denial of service attack, though I suspect the other server's operator is not aware of the attack (attacking my little personal server wouldn't benefit anyone, so I do not suspect malice).

I called the other guy's ISP and they told me to hand in paperwork so they could give my his contact data, which I can understand, since they are not supposed to hand out customer info nilly-willy. So I am going to send them a fax requesting the contact data.

But this is probably going to take some time and I want to resolve this problem fast, so I ask the hive mind: Given an IP address, how can I find out the owner of the server without his ISP's support? Reverse DNS lookup only yields a DNS name of the form server123-32-123-43.hostername.de, but I suspect the server can be found under additional domains for which I then might be able to get the contact info out of the DNS. Is it possible to find all records for a given IP?

Different approaches are also appreciated, of course.

Wooosh!

phrontist — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 14:08:58 -0800

I used to play an old DOS game in which you had to manuever a paper airplane through a house, with each room being a different level, each of which got progressively harder through the addition of obstacles. The plane, if I recall correctly, had a fixed rate of descent and could only rise by moving over a fan/vent. If you touched anything you died. It was an awesome combination of puzzle/action. Bonus points if you tell me how I can play it on a modern WinXP box.

Help me find a freeware font for printing 'tree.com" results?

pax digita — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 11:27:32 -0800

Working in Win XP, I just ran TREE.COM against a dir structure and saved the results to a file; now I'd like to print it. I find that the Terminal fonts doesn't render on our printer because it can't handle the extended char set for all the funky li'l lines. It's distractingly fugly, and a couple of us are going to be referring to this quite a bit. I'd like to be able to print the listing out & hang it on the wall.

Does anybody know a freeware TrueType or OpenType replacement for Terminal they'd care to nominate? I already had to open my wallet for some other shareware today, and I'd prefer not to have to do so a second time if there's a free alternative.

(Or if there's a better way to have gone about this in the first place than TREE.COM, feel free to hit me with a stupid brick or two.)

Thanks in advance.

DOS, FTP & Incremental Backups

samstarling — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 06:08:42 -0800

DOSFilter: I want to create regular backups of a certain file, but details may change as well as folders - how do I do this? I want to create a DOS batch script which will execute 3 times a day using Windows Scheduling.

I basically have a directory with several folders which I wish to mirror on another server as a backup using FTP. However, in each folder, I only want to mirror one particular file (an Access DB).

For example I have:
M:\data\a\
M:\data\b\
M:\data\c\

All these folders are full of rubbish I don't want to back up, but each one has a file called data.mdb in it, which I do want to back up! Therefore, my questions are as follows...

Is this possible?

Can I change filenames on the go? I want to time and date each one so I have incremental backups on the server.

Bear in mind I'm happy to use JavaScript via wscript, but I haven't a clue about JavaScript! Thanks in advance.

Did my site get a DoS attack?

electric_counterpoint — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 21:43:05 -0800

How do I tell whether my site was hit by a denial of service attack? [Server logs inside.] Background: My friend and I run the website for a campus political party at our university. Elections started at midnight last night. We heard that the other guys were planning to try a DoS on our site, http://www.michiganprogressiveparty.com.

Here are the logs:
http://joeygolden.com/stats1.pdf
http://joeygolden.com/stats2.pdf

We think that someone was requesting the same image (mpptop.gif) a lot. I changed the around 1am, not sure if that stopped it (if there was ever an attack in the first place). I'm not skilled with this sort of IT stuff, so I thought I'd ask here. Is there good evidence in our logs that a DoS attack occurred?

DoS investigation

srboisvert — Sun, 26 Feb 2006 04:17:19 -0800

My router logs show that I have been under what looks like a sustained low level DOS attack for quite a while now. An example entry is: 1 Blocked by DoS protection 10.69.0.1 I assume the IP is spoofed because it is a reserved IP and I am on a 192.168.*.* local network. What can I find out or determine about the attack? What tools and resources are available?

Name that mid-eighties DOS game

slightlybewildered — Sat, 31 Dec 2005 14:40:55 -0800

What is this? Mid-late eighties DOS game. In space or underwater. Little submarine or spaceship guy, cruising around a platform/maze type environment. There are teleports with codes to move between some areas. x Purple/blue/white/black colour palette. (similar palette to Alley Cat which I also played at my friend's place at the same time, along with Captain Comic)

DOS Boot CD

daveed66 — Wed, 30 Nov 2005 04:46:39 -0800

I need to boot to DOS in XP. How do I make a bootable CD? The command prompt will not do the trick as i need to be able to access the hardware.

screen capture of old dos graphics

NGnerd — Thu, 17 Nov 2005 21:14:09 -0800

I'm trying to get a of an old based program but i can't use printscreen (keyboard), snagit, and the window sizes to fullscreen. Any suggestions better then taking a photo of the (i'm sick of putting reflections of my head in reports). More inside... The program is one of those super useful government programs that was written 15 years ago when nibbles was king. I'm able to run it from the command line of windows and can take a shot of the text input, but the program creates some graphical images which force the to fullscreen and doesn't allow me to use printscreen ( to the clipboard) or snagit (with shortcut keys). Help me obi wan kenobi, you're my only hope...

Find an old DOS Civil War Simulator

kenneth — Fri, 30 Sep 2005 10:00:06 -0800

Help me find this old DOS computer game. The talk of SkiFree reminded me of a favorite DOS Civil War simulator that was called, get this, Civil War Simulator, CWS.exe. It was a turn-based game, with multiple armies (Jackson, McClellan, Grant, Lee, etc.) that started out in certain cities and the player (as either north or south) moved the troops around to various battles, which were won based on numbers of troops, supplies, skill, location, etc. You could split or fuse your armies to take on more opponent's armies or fight them better and more. Unessential details: It was freeware/donationware/postcardware, I think. I remember it was written by a guy in Knoxville, and that it might have even stopped working after a certain date. Anyone remember this game, know who wrote it, or know where I can find it?