DOSBox Staging

DOSBox Staging is a DOS system emulator designed to run legacy software on modern hardware. It is a fork of DOSBox with improvements in performance, compatibility, and additional features. The project focuses on preserving and running classic games and applications faithfully to the original hardware.

★★★★★

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• Accurate CPU emulation. DOSBox Staging emulates Intel x86 processors with exact instruction cycles, allowing faithful reproduction of original hardware behavior. Includes support for real and protected addressing modes.
• Enhanced graphics support. Offers video rendering with scaling filters, aspect ratio correction, and support for high resolutions. Emulates graphics cards such as VGA, SVGA, and Hercules with precise video modes.
• Advanced sound emulation. Includes support for Sound Blaster, AdLib, Gravis Ultrasound, and other audio chips. Audio timing emulation has been improved to reduce distortion and desynchronization.
• Controller compatibility. Allows configuration of joysticks, gamepads, and keyboards with custom button mapping. Supports legacy protocols like Gameport and modern devices through direct mapping.
• Virtual drive mounting. Can emulate floppy disks, hard drives, and CD-ROM drives with support for ISO, CUE/BIN, and raw format images. Drives are mounted using internal commands.
• Network and multiplayer mode. Includes IPX network emulation for LAN gaming and initial TCP/IP support. Allows configuration of latency and transfer speed to simulate legacy connections.
• Gameplay recording and playback. Offers features to capture video and audio during emulation, as well as save game states. Files are saved in standard formats for later playback.
• Control customization. Keyboard and joystick layouts can be modified using configuration files. Supports different profiles for each game or application.
• Operating system support. Compatible with MS-DOS, PC DOS, DR-DOS, and early versions of Windows. Emulates environment variables and autoexec.bat/config.sys settings.
• Performance improvements. Includes optimizations for multi-core systems, reduced audio latency, and GPU-accelerated rendering. Allows dynamic adjustment of CPU cycles.
• Timing correction. Synchronization between CPU, video, and audio has been overhauled to avoid speed issues in games. Includes options to adjust frameskip and vertical synchronization.

DOSBox Staging was created in 2020 as a fork of DOSBox 0.74-3. The project is developed by a team of contributors focused on preserving historical software. It is written in C++ with assembly language components for low-level emulation. The source code is available under the GPL license and receives regular updates with compatibility improvements and new features.

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