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Gunship 2000 Intro This post is about obtaining the optimum version of Gunship 2000 and how to optimise the gameplay experience in DOSBox-X or DOSBox Staging. The release of Gunship 2000 on GOG and Steam hasn't gone well, the version is an abandonware version and the documentation lacks the necessary GPS codes required to use the in-game map, effectively reducing the game to a demo. At time of writing the publisher has indicated the release will be updated to the latest version, hopefully fixing many of the problems in the current release. This guide assumes you are using Windows 10 and want to set up HOTAS controllers, but most of it is fairly general. If there is anything you think is inaccurate, misleading or just plain wrong, let me know, I wrote this to help out other retro flight sim fans, so getting it right is important. Warning : Make sure your are comfortable doing this, this is for informational purposes only. I can't take responsibility for any loss or damage incurred. This is working on my particular machine and setup, your experiences may differ. Which version of Gunship 2000? Gunship 2000: Office Simulator My preference is for the cd version of Gunship 2000 found on the 'Conquer the Skies' cd compilation. This version has many advantages including: It's the latest 469.085 version. It includes the base game and Islands & Ice expansion, with the mission editor. The copy protection GPS codes aren't required, so the in-game map 'just works'. There is a complete high quality pdf manual with expansion and mission editor sections. There aren't any GPS codes in this version of the manual but they aren't needed anyway. Which version of DOSBox? My preference is for DOSBox-X or DOSBox Staging, it's very much down to personal preference. In fact there's no reason not to install both and see which one you prefer. The advantages over standard DOSBox include huge numbers of additional components already built in and available. Take a look at the DOSBox-X and Staging websites to see just how far DOSBox has come today! For Gunship 2000 the most important one will be the midi component. You can use standard DOSBox v0.74 (at time of writing GOG still does) but you get so much more built in with DOSBox-X/Staging. Installing DOSBox You can get the latest version of DOSBox-X from the DOSBox-X website . Installation is straight-forward so I won't cover it here. Likewise DOSBox Staging is available from the DOSBox Staging website , again it's a straightforward installation. Once one or both are installed, remember to run each one, this will create a default configuration, which we will use later. Installing midi components 'I thought you said midi components were built in?' I did and they are, however if you wish to enjoy the music of the Roland MT32 or CM32L midi synths, you'll need to supply some rom files. For the MT32 and CM32L you'll need: MT32_CONTROL.ROM MT32_PCM.ROM CM32L_CONTROL.ROM CM32L_PCM.ROM You'll want to create a sensible folder somewhere eg. D:\MT32 and then create a subfolder for MT32 and CM32L roms, eg.  D:\MT32\MT32 and  D:\MT32\CM32L . Having them in a separate folder means one copy can be used by DOSBox-X and DOSBox Staging, not only for Gunship 2000 but any other games you configure in the future! For Gunship 2000 we'll use the CM32L roms as the specs on MobyGames suggests Gunship 2000 has support for the LAPC soundcard. Generally you'll use the MT32 roms unless the game setup has an option for the LAPC sound card, which was basically an enhanced MT32 synth as a pc soundcard, then you can use the CM32L roms. Don't be afraid to try both out, it's easy to switch back and forth. If you try other games and think the midi music is a sounding a bit strange, try the other roms. Soundfonts If you're feeling adventurous, you can try a soundfont. DOSBox-X/Staging has a fluidsynth component built in. You can specify the fluidsynth component as your midi device and supply a soundfont, a file in a .sf2 format. A soundfont can make old DOS game music sound amazing, really really weird or somewhere in between. If you're interested, the midi section of the DOXBox-X wiki is well worth a read. How I set things up This bit is very subjective and based on my personal preference. I have a lot of DOS flight sims and this approach allows me to keep things organised while only using a single copy of DOSBox-X/Staging. Firstly I have a folder where all the DOS games live, D:\games\dos Within that folder there's another folder for Gunship 2000, D:\games\dos\Gunship 2000 Within the Gunship 2000 folder there are a number of sub-folders, each one has a particular purpose: hdd folder This is the folder that will be mounted in DOSBox as a hard disk drive, the C: drive in DOSBox. cd folder Stores the cd image of the game, the D: drive in DOSBox. I tend to rip my cd's to cd image files as who knows how long the cd or cd drive will last and it's generally faster. I normally use iso for data only (or cue/bin if there are audio tracks on the cd). The .iso format is fine for Gunship 2000. fdd folder Stores the floppy disk images of the game (normally older games not found on cd) and acts as a floppy disk drive, the A: drive in DOSBox. We won't need this for Gunship 2000. conf folder Stores the DOSBox-X/Staging configuration(s) specific to a game, in this case Gunship 2000. docs folder Stores any game related documents, so manuals, reference cards, addendums, hints & tips, strategy guides, release/patch notes, etc. will be here. patches folder Stores any patches I've downloaded from the internet for a particular game. icon folder Store an icon image (in .ico format) I use for a DOSBox shortcut for the game. I normally find the box art and convert it, giving me a very nice box art shortcut. This is entirely optional and based on personal preference. misc folder For anything else game related I want to keep. So for Gunship 2000 we'll have a minimum of: hdd, cd, conf and docs folders within a D:\games\dos\Gunship 2000 folder. This is all subjective and based on personal preference so feel free to use a folder/naming scheme that works for you. Initial DOSBox Setup If you haven't run DOSBox-X or DOSBox Staging before, start them up, there will be a shortcut on your desktop. This will create default configuration files which we'll use next. Next we'll want to copy the default configuration to the game configuration folder. The default configuration for DOXBox-X is: C:\Users\\AppData\Local\DOSBox-X\dosbox-x-.conf While the default configuration for DOSBox Staging is: C:\Users\\AppData\Local\DOSBox\dosbox-staging.conf You may have to set the file explorer to show hidden files and folders as AppData is hidden by default. So in my case I'll be copying dosbox-x-0.83.15.conf and dosbox-staging.conf to the D:\dos\games\Gunship 2000\conf folder. I normally change the name of the config file to something more descriptive, like gunship2000.conf . If you're trying DOSBox-X and Staging you might want to call them something like gunship2000-x.conf and gunship2000-staging.conf . We now have a games specific configuration(s). Next we want to Copy and 'Paste shortcut' (not Paste) the DOSBox-X/Staging shortcut on the desktop, we can also change the shortcut text to Gunship 2000, Gunship 2000 in DOSBox-X, Gunship 2000 in DOSBox Staging or whatever you prefer. Now our new shortcut will still be using the default DOSBox config, so we need to tell it to use the game specific one. We need to go into the shortcut properties and in the Target box add a -conf option followed by the game config folder and game specific config. So for me the DOSBox-X Target becomes: C:\DOSBox-X\dosbox-x.exe -conf "D:\Games\Dos\Gunship 2000\conf\Gunship2000-x.conf" And for DOSBox Staging: "C:\DOSBox Staging\dosbox.exe" -noconsole -conf "D:\Games\Dos\Gunship 2000\conf\Gunship2000-staging.conf" Because I have a space between Gunship and 2000, I need to use double quotes around the config. We now have a game specific shortcut using a game specific config. If we start it up we won't see any difference because our game specific config is identical to the default one. Now it's time to make our game specific config suitable for Gunship 2000. DOSBox Configuration So find your config and open it in your favourite text editor. It looks daunting, there's a lot there but most of it you don't need to worry about so we'll keep it simple for now. The config file is split into sections, each section has a header: [sdl] an explanation of the various options in the section, as comments: # fullscreen: Start directly in fullscreen. # Run INTRO and see Special Keys for window control hotkeys. # display: Number of display to use; values depend on OS and user settings. and the options themselves: fullscreen = false display = 0 We'll describe the options to check/change by specifying the section and what the option should be, eg: [sdl] fullscreen = false Display settings This bit could be a number of posts in it's own right and very much down to personal preference, but we'll keep it simple for now. For DOSBox-X: You'll probably want the output to be openglpp for a pixel perfect display or if it looks a bit squashed opengl . You can spend hours/days reading various articles on what is best and how to achieve it! And I always go with aspect correction enabled, as most DOS games were created for 4:3 aspect ratio displays, but feel free to try things out, it's all personal preference! If you want to run things fullscreen, set the fullscreen option. I tend to leave fullscreen off as it's easy to toggle between windowed and fullscreen, so... [sdl] fullscreen = false # or true output = openglpp [render] aspect = true For DOSBox-Staging: Since the release of DOSBox-Staging v0.81.0 the work done to clean up the display options and the confusion it caused has progressed to the point the default 'out of the box' settings provide an excellent game play experience for most games and players. The release notes are definitely worth a read. That being the case here are the settings to check: [sdl] fullscreen = false fullresolution = desktop windowresolution = default output = opengl [render] aspect = auto integer_scaling = auto viewport = fit glshader = crt-auto # or sharp If you really don't like the CRT effect produced by the crt-auto option, the sharp option uses the old default without a CRT effect. CPU Settings Quite an important one as DOSBox will try and guess how fast it should run stuff. For Gunship 2000 we need to tell DOSBox to set the cycles to 10000 and leave it there. However, if you feel it's too fast you can change the cycles up or down as you play. With 100 cycle increments this'll give you fairly fine grained control. [cpu] cycles = fixed 10000 cycleup = 100 cycledown = 100 Midi Settings Here's where DOSBBox-X and Staging differ, but we specify the same things so no big deal. We tell them to use an MT32 midi device and where to find the roms and that's it. I keep my MT32 roms in a D:\MT32\MT32 folder, so... For DOSBox-X: [midi] mididevice = mt32 mt32.romdir = D:\MT32\MT32 For DOSBox Staging: [midi] mididevice = mt32 [mt32] romdir = D:\MT32\MT32 Soundblaster settings Gunship supports the Roland MT32 for midi music and a Soundblaster card for digital audio. DOSBox picks standard settings for Soundblaster which work for the vast majority of games including Gunship 2000, so just check these are correct. [sblaster] sbtype = sb16 sbbase = 220 irq = 7 dma = 1 hdma = 5 Autoexec Settings Who remembers the old DOS autoexec.bat file? For those too young to remember (consider yourselves lucky) this is DOSBox's version of it. It's also where we tell DOSBox where to find the folder that will act as DOSBox's C: drive and where to find cd images that we will mount in DOSBox as a D: drive. As I'm using my folder scheme I described above, the folder that will act as a C: drive will be D:\games\dos\Gunship 2000\hdd . So I need to add a mount command: mount c "D:\games\dos\Gunship 2000\hdd" Now I need to specify the cd image to use, with the image mount command, imgmount . My particular cd image is made up of a single iso file (CQ-SKIES.iso), that I have stored in D:\games\dos\Gunship 2000\cd . I specify it like so: imgmount d "D:\games\dos\Gunship 2000\cd\CQ-SKIES.iso" -t cdrom The -t tells DOSBox it's a cd-rom image type. If my cd image was made up of a cue file (CQ-SKIES.cue) and a bin file (CQ-SKIES.bin), I only need to specify the cue file in DOSBox, like so: imgmount d "D:\games\dos\Gunship 2000\cd\CQ-SKIES.cue" -t cdrom This gives me the following autoexec section in DOSBox: [autoexec] mount c "D:\games\dos\Gunship 2000\hdd" imgmount d "D:\games\dos\Gunship 2000\cd\CQ-SKIES.iso" -t cdrom If we start DOSBox from our Gunship 2000 shortcut you should see the following commands and messages: Z:\>mount c "D:\games\dos\Gunship 2000\hdd" Drive C is mounted as local directory D:\games\dos\Gunship 2000\hdd\ Z:\>imgmount d "D:\games\dos\Gunship 2000\cd\CQ-SKIES.iso" -t cdrom MSCDEX installed. Drive D is mounted as D:\games\dos\Gunship 2000\cd\CQ-SKIES.iso We can go to the D: drive and see the files on our cd rom image! If we go to the C: drive, we find it very empty, as we haven't installed anything and that's next! Installing Gunship 2000 I'm assuming that there is some DOS knowledge, at least enough to change drives, get a directory listing, find and run the installer. So we want to find and run the Gunship 2000 installer. Where it is and what it is called will depend on the cd image you are using but the installer will normally be called something sensible like install.exe . Because I'm running from a compilation cd, the commands I used are: d: - go to the cd drive dir - look at the cd files/folders cd gs - go to the Gunship 2000 folder dir /w/p - look at all the files in that folder, find install.exe install - run install.exe During the install you'll be asked some questions: Install onto which drive [C] The default C drive is fine. Install to which directory on drive C? [\MPS\GS2000CD] The default directory is fine. Copy objfile, 226173 bytes (221K) required (Y/N)? These days we have huge amounts of disk space so just answer Y. The second part of the installer will now ask if we want to run the secondary installer which allow us to run the entire game from hard disk without the cd. Would you like to perform secondary install [Y/n]? Again we have huge amounts of disk space so answer Y and the installer will start decompressing and copying files to the C drive. Once complete it'll say: Secondary Installation complete. Type GS2000 to play. First Install Secondary Install DOSBox setup Right now if we wanted to play Gunship 2000 we would start DOSBox from our Gunship 2000 shortcut, then we'd have to go to the C drive and then we'd have to change directory to the Gunship 2000 installation directory. Then we can start Gunship 2000 or run the setup. Having to change drive and directory each time would get a bit tiresome after a while, so we can tell DOSBox to do this for us by adding some commands to the end of the autoexec section in the DOSBox config. After doing so my autoexec section becomes: [autoexec] mount c "D:\games\dos\Gunship 2000\hdd" imgmount d "D:\games\dos\Gunship 2000\cd\CQ-SKIES.cue" -t cdrom c: cd \mps\gs2000cd Where c: changes to the C drive. And cd \mps\gs2000cd changes to the \MPS\GS2000CD folder. As DOS is not case sensitive lowercase or uppercase commands will both work. Running the shortcut now takes us to the correct drive and folder to run Gunship 2000 or the setup utility. As we have made a full install of Gunship 2000 and don't need to the cd to run it, we could remove the imgmount command, but it doesn't hurt to leave it where it is. Getting the documentation Now for something completely different. At this point it's probably a good idea to grab any documentation. This bit is entirely optional but I find it useful. The manual Gunship 2000 Instruction Manual As I'm using a iso cd image I can mount this image using the Windows Explorer, once mounted I can go to the virtual cd and examine the cd contents. Fortunately there is a Manual folder on the cd and within this folder, the Gunship 2000 manual in pdf format. I can now copy this manual, GS2000.PDF to the docs folder I mentioned earlier D:\dos\games\Gunship 2000\docs . If my cd image was in a different format (eg. bin/cue), I could use the DOSBox Gunship 2000 shortcut to mount the cd image, go to the D: and search for documents. If I found any, I could use the DOS copy command to copy them to the C: drive. In my case, like so: d: cd manual copy gs2000.pdf c:\ Then use Windows Explorer to copy the manual GS2000.PDF from the D:\dos\games\Gunship 2000\hdd folder into the D:\dos\games\Gunship 2000\docs folder. If you have a paper manual then you can use that or search for a manual in pdf format. Other documents It's worth checking the installation directory for any useful documents. You can use Windows Explorer and go to the Gunship 2000 installation folder. In my case this is D:\games\dos\Gunship 2000\hdd\MPS\GS2000CD . In this folder there is a READ.ME text file and a GS2KHINT.TXT file. I'll copy both of these to my D:\dos\games\Gunship 2000\docs folder. Creating a shortcut When playing a particular sim I like to keep the docs close at hand. To do this I'd copy the D:\dos\games\Gunship 2000\docs folder and 'paste it as a shortcut' on the desktop, making it easy to find. Open the shortcut and all the documentation is there! Setup Gunship 2000 To set up Gunship 2000 we run Gunship 2000 shortcut then the setup utility. Run the command: C:\MPS\GS2000CD>setup Confirm the version, it's shown at the top of the page and should be Version 469.085 . Set the Flight Control: Keyboard. Set the Sound Source: Roland & SndBlstr Check Digitized Sound: On. Check Music: All Music On. Open the Details Level menu Check all options are On. Open the Miscellaneous menu. Set the Proportional Collective: Off at present. Check Digital Sound Address: 220h Check Digital Sound IRQ: IRQ 7 Check Digital Sound DRQ: DRQ 1 We don't set any HOTAS or joystick controllers at present for reasons explained later. Gunship 2000 Setup Running for the first time We can now run Gunship 2000 with the command: C:\MPS\GS2000CD>gs2000 First flight in the Defender The purpose of this first run is to check things out, let the intro run and see if the midi music sounds ok. Once complete check the music in the office area. If it sounds ok you can continue, otherwise you may need to change the MT32 roms or check the setup options. Make sure your mouse works as well, you don't use it for flying but you can use it to select options. Now we need to start a training mission, if this is the first time you've played, you may want to have the manual handy to consult as needed. The aim of this training mission is to check the digital sound effects provided by the Soundblaster emulation and to check the speed and fluidity of the game. Take-off, fire the cannon, rockets and a missile or two, fly around for a bit, hopefully everything sounds good and if not check the DOSBox config and run the setup utility again to check the settings. The last thing to check is the game speed and this is very subjective. It'll depend on your hardware and how you feel about the gameplay experience. It's assumed you'll want a fluid experience and the 10000 cycles option set earlier is a good starting point. If it feels a little too fast/slow you can use the following: For DOXBox-X: F11 + - Decrease cycles F11 + = Increase cycles For DOSBox-Staging: Ctrl + F11 Decrease cycles Ctrl + F12 Increase cycles We really want to be happy with the speed before we start dealing with controllers as the DOS/game calibration is very speed sensitive. Changing cycles whilst playing with a controller will cause significant drift at best or make the game unplayable at worst. If you have to change speed after setting up your joystick/HOTAS, run the Gunship setup utility again and recalibrate your controllers. Setup Joystick/HOTAS Controllers If you're following along step-by-step then STOP HERE . The next section is very involved and you'll want to read it first and understand the issues and how it might apply to your particular controller set up. To be honest I need to break this up into a number of different posts! I obviously can't cover every setup out there, so I'll explain the issues and how it relates to my setup, which I think is a fairly involved one. Hopefully your setup is either easier or by reading this it'll give you pointers on how to achieve a similar result. We'll be discussing controller axes as assigning buttons to functions is fairly straight-forward by comparison. The Golden Rules There are a few of rules I'd advise you to follow: You don't have to set everything up all at once. I almost never do. I usually set up the joystick and throttle and only later, once I'm happy with the config, will I start on adding rudder pedals into the setup. If you're not confident, start with your stick, then later add the throttle and finally add the rudder (pedals). Change one thing and test. Don't try and change too much, there are a lot of parts to all this, trying to figure out what's gone wrong after changing a lot of things will get very frustrating very quickly! Calibrate your controllers! Or least check they are well calibrated, lets eliminate one source of problems before we start on this journey! This process is going to depend on your particular pc and controllers, so it'll be different for everyone! Remember it's probably going to be an iterative process, tweaking settings and discovering issues during the first few test flights! The first time you do this, it may be a bit of pain, but it does get easier once you've done it a few times and you understand DOSBox and your controller setup. Modern controllers and retro sims In the old DOS days of yore you might have a joystick, sometimes a joystick and throttle and if you were very lucky a joystick, throttle and rudder pedals. One controller would act as a 'hub' and the rest would plug into it (usually with some proprietary cable) and a gameport cable would run from the hub controller into a gameport socket in your soundcard. You might have had 2 or 3 controllers but as far as your pc was concerned it was a single gameport device. You'd plug it all in, calibrate the controllers in the game and away you would go. Fast forward a few years and the gameport has gone, to be replaced by usb. Later usb controllers like the Saitek X45 or Logitech X52 Pro would continue to use a similar design. One controller would be the hub and the rest would plug into it (still with a proprietary cable). Now a usb cable runs from the 'hub' controller into a usb port. But as far as your pc was concerned it was still a single usb device. These days we'll often find that the mid/high end controllers are usb devices in their own right. My Warthog stick, throttle and rudder pedals are each a usb device, this has some important implications for retro flight sims. DOS Flight sims and DOSBox Most (if not all) DOS flight sims will support a maximum of 4 axes. Those will be: The joystick X/Y axes. The throttle (collective for helicopter sims) axis. The rudder axis. What DOSBox would really like to see is a single device with 4 axes or fewer. It'll be ok with a single device with between 4 and 8 axes, but it's definitely not a fan of multiple usb devices. If I just try and use DOSBox-X with my joystick, throttle and pedals connected. It'll happily ignore the stick and pedals and only pick up the throttle as a 4-axis device. Windows 10/11 (I'm assuming that's the platform most of us are using) has a limit of 8 axes per usb device. Controllers, devices and axes. So the question we need to ask is: Given the controllers I wish to use, how many devices and axes is that? If it's a single usb device with 4 axes or fewer then DOSBox should find them all. There may still be to be some configuration but they are available. If it's a single usb device with 4 -8 axes then DOSBox should find the device but you may have to tell it which axes you want to use. If it's multiple usb devices and/or 8 axes or more then we need to take a detour on our journey and take a look at virtual controllers. With my Warthog stick, throttle and rudder pedals I have a total of 3 devices and 10 axes (I think). In my case I need to create a virtual device for my Warthog devices and rudder pedals. Virtual Controller A virtual controller, also known as an enumerated device, is a single controller which is seen in Windows as a single device which replaces one or more usb controllers. The virtual controller can be configured with a variable number of axes and button assignments. If you have profile software for your HOTAS device(s) it may create a virtual controller when a HOTAS profile is applied. Target I'm fortunate enough to have a Thrustmaster throttle, stick and pedals supported by Thrustmaster's profiling software Target. With this software I can assign the 3 axes I want to use to axes across all 3 of my controllers, but I will briefly cover an alternative below. Using Target I can leave the X and Y axis assignment of my stick at it's default. Change the throttle to use a single Z axis on the main throttle axis (disabling the rest) and add an X rotation axis to my rudder pedals, as shown below. My T.A.R.G.E.T profile I have now used a virtual controller to turn 3 usb devices with many axes into a single 4 axes controller. When I run the profile, my 3 usb devices used in the profile are disabled in Windows to be replaced by a single virtual controller. This is my default DOSBox profile in Target which I can use as a basis for a more specific game profile, I have the axes, now I can copy it and add button assignments as needed! You may have you own profiling software from your HOTAS supplier which may allow you to do something similar. Joystick Gremlin If you can't use your suppliers profiling software, may be it doesn't support one of your particular device, or provide functionality to disable axes, or you are using controllers from multiple suppliers then there is an open source alternative, Joystick Gremlin . Joystick Gremlin provides similar functionality as Target but supports devices from any manufacturer, their website is definitely worth a look. Joystick Gremlin will create your HOTAS profile and then use vJoy to provide the virtual controller. Now to be honest I have dabbled very very briefly in Joystick Gremlin and there may be a bit of a learning curve and as I was starting out with Target I put Joystick Gremlin aside. So if you want to try this route I would suggest taking a look at some tutorials, websites and videos so you know what might be involved. Make sure you are comfortable in trying it out. I have seen comments where Target users have tried Joystick Gremlin and vowed never to go back! Maybe one day I'll take another run at it and become a convert, but for now I'm finding Target sufficient for my needs. One last point if you have created a virtual controller, check the calibration in Windows to make sure it is well calibrated and has all the axes you expect! Setup DOSBox Now it's time to setup DOSBox. We'll want to take a look at the joystick section: [joystick] joysticktype = auto timed = true swap34 = false deadzone = 10 These settings will take some trial and error as they'll depend on your controllers and on your personal preference. You need to try some test flights, to see if they need to change. I set my joystick type to 4axis. If you experience controller drift as you fly you might want to try setting timed to false. After a few tests flights my controllers were ok so I left this setting at the default. If the throttle/collective acts as the rudder and the rudder acts as the collective you can swap these axes. During my first test flight, this happened so after quitting the sim and DOSBox I had to swap axis 3 and 4 by changing swap34 to true. I also prefer a smaller deadzone but that's just personal preference. In my case I ended up with the following settings: [joystick] joysticktype = 4axis timed = true swap34 = true deadzone = 1 In DOSBox-X the deadzone option doesn't exist, instead there's a mapper section immediately following the joystick section, with a deadzone option for each joystick and axis: [mapper] joy1deadzone0- = 0.60 ... joy2deadzone7+ = 0.60 I tend to set mine to 0 but you can tweak them to your personal preference. DOSBox Keymapper DOSBox Staging mapper Also known as just the Mapper in DOSBox Staging. This utility allow you to assign buttons to keys and shows you which of your controller axes are mapped to the 4 axes in DOSBox. If you aren't using profiling software, this utility will allow you to rebind DOSBox axes to your controller axes. Each axis is split in half into a negative and positive area. Clicking on the box representing a joystick axis shows the current axis mapping. Depending on your controller(s) you may want to rebind the axes if you're not using your HOTAS profile utility or you don't have one. You have the ability to del ete the current binding and then add a new one. Once you click the add button, move the controller in the appropriate direction. Setup Gunship 2000 again! Controller Setup Before running the setup open up the joystick panel in Windows and find the centre point of your throttle, if you're going to set one up. The setup utility may ask you to centre the collective which is tricky to judge by hand. Now it's to set up and calibrate your controllers for Gunship 2000 so start up the setup utility and you should see the following Controller Setup. Now setting up the Joystick is simple enough, set Flight Control to Joystick . You'll be asked to move the joystick to top left and bottom right limits to calibrate it, follow those instructions. If it keeps repeating the same instructions again and again, then it's having trouble calibrating your joystick, hit Esc to exit and check your controller and DOSBox settings. Now go to the Collective/Rudder menu. The menu options may require an explanation: Keyboard +/- : Keyboard +/- keys control the collective, no keyboard rudder control, this might be useful if you just want to setup up a joystick or you want to set up other controllers later. Keypad Arrows : Keypad up/down arrows control the collective, left/right arrows control the rudder, again useful if you have a single stick or you want to set up a collective/rudders later. Rudder : If you just have a joystick with a twist action or a third axis and no other controllers and you want to use this as a rudder then select this option. You'll be asked to calibrate. Collective : If you just have a joystick with a third axis and you want to use this as a collective, or a joystick and throttle without rudder control or joystick and throttle with rudder control but you want to set up rudders later, choose this option. You'll be asked to calibrate the axis. I actually chose this option for my first few tests before I set up my rudder pedals. Second Joystick : If you have a throttle/collective and rudder you wish to use, choose this option. When it asks you to calibrate top/left limits, move your throttle to the top AND move you rudder to the left before continuing. For bottom/right limits, move your throttle to the bottom AND move you rudder to the right before continuing. If it keeps repeating calibration instructions, then it has a problem, use Esc to exit and check your controller and DOSBox settings. You might want to move the throttle to the afterburner detent if you have one, when calibrating, rather than using the full range of the axis, to make the collective easier to use. It's something to try out and see which you prefer. There's one final option you may want to set, under the Miscellaneous menu, there is a Proportional Collective option. I think this makes it easier to fly with a throttle as collective, so I set this to On , but it's personal preference. First flights So it's time to fire up Gunship 2000 and kick off a training mission. The aims of these tests will be to ensure the controller(s) behave as expected. So get up into the air (if you can) and test each of the axes you have configured. Might also be worth ensuring your disabled axes are actually disabled! When I first set up pedals, the pedals controlled the collective and the rudder pedals controlled the collective, so I had to quit the game and swap axis 3 and 4 in my DOSBox config before trying again. Once the testing is over you're done, now go enjoy all that hard work! Final (optional) touches These bits are completely optional. You can get DOSBox to automatically run Gunship 2000 and then close the DOSBox window once you quit the game by adding the following to the end of the autoexec section of your DOSBox config: gs2000 exit So mine would become: [autoexec] mount c "D:\games\dos\Gunship 2000\hdd" imgmount d "D:\games\dos\Gunship 2000\cd\CQ-SKIES.iso" -t cdrom c: cd \mps\gs2000cd gs2000 exit If you need to get to the DOS prompt to run setup again, you'll need to comment out those lines like so: # gs2000 # exit Shortcut Icon Game management As pretty as the DOSBox-X and DOSBox Staging shortcut icons are. I prefer to use some retro box art instead. After finding a suitable image, I use a suitable website service to convert it from it's original .jpg or .png format to a .ico format, used by Windows icons. I think it makes for a nice flight sim collection! Miscellaneous Notes End screen advert If you use DOSBox-X then when you quit Gunship 2000 you may see an error in the DOSBox window, seems like a minor incompatibility somewhere. If you use DOSBox Staging you'll see a Microprose advert splash screen. Good hunting!

This is a tech refresh article describing any changes since the original article 'Brrrrt': Avenging with A10 Attack! was published. Updated emulation will be examined along with any resulting changes. Much of the updated advice will be identical to that for the other Mac flight sims. The same versions of SheepShaver and MAME give us consistency across flight sims and result in less installations to set up and manage. Joystick setup The original article suggested mapping the mouse x/y axes to the joystick x/y axes which although correct, lacked detail. The joystick axes to Windows axes mappings are shown below: Physical axis Windows axis Joystick x-axis MOUSE_X_AXIS Joystick y-axis MOUSE_Y_AXIS Only the joystick axes are supported. It is recommended to use throttle buttons to control the throttle power. This mapping should be placed in your HOTAS profile software or Joystick Gremlin. SheepShaver At time of writing the latest version of SheepShaver is SheepShaver-Windows-20-10-2024 . When published the latest version was SheepShaver-Windows-27-08-2023-framebuffer . A-10 Attack! works well with the latest version of SheepShaver and is the preferred version to use for consistency with other Mac flight sims. To upgrade the settings shown in the SheepShaverGUI app should be copied from the older version to the newer version. This will allow the existing emulated Mac to be run. If creating an emulated Mac or installing the game, the existing advice in the article   'Brrrrt': Avenging with A10 Attack!   should continue to be followed. Keycodes The keycodes facility of SheepShaver has been improved to support both ANSI and ISO keyboards. Within the Keyboard/Mouse tab of the SheepShaverGUI app either the keycodes_ansi or keycodes_iso file should be chosen, depending on your keyboard. You should also take the opportunity to check the keyboard layout with the Keycaps app within the emulated Mac. MAME MAME remains the preferred option for an emulated multi-monitor setup. The original article was published when the current version of MAME was v0.261 . The current version of MAME is v0.272, available at the MAME download page . The download is a self extracting exe file, open the self extracting exe and choose a folder. Once installed the following files/folders should be copied from your original MAME installation folder into your new MAME folder: cfg folder diff folder nvram folder roms folder If you are using the MacFlight plugin, it should be copied from your original MAME plugins folder to your new MAME plugins folder. Any batch (.bat) files created. Any  hard disk images in a .chd (compressed hunks of data) format . The Mac Quadra 800 ini file (macqd800.ini). Run the MAME executable once to recreate any other necessary .ini files. You should then be able to start the an emulated Mac using the new version of MAME with the batch files in the new MAME folder. The advice to create a new virtual Mac with MAME and installing A-10 Attack! remains unchanged. The ScrLk key will continue to enable/disable the MAME UI and the Tab key will open/close the MAME config menu. Using the MacFlight plugin The MacFlight plugin continues to work with MAME v0.272. The advice in the article ' MacFlight: A MAME plugin for retro Mac flight sims ' should continue to be followed. The MacFlight plugin will attempt to identify any connected joysticks, so the above joystick mapping is not required if using the plugin, however you may still create a virtual controller for button mappings if required. The plugin should find your virtual device. It's worth noting that the role of MacFlight plugin was to convert joystick input into an appropriate mouse input for Mac flight sims. It does not control any button mappings, only the joystick x and y axes. Rather than duplicate functionality, the comprehensive facilities provided by your HOTAS profile software, Joystick Gremlin or the MAME control settings should be used to map HOTAS buttons. Good hunting!

A-10 at an airbase This is my setup guide for getting the Mac classic A-10 Attack! running under emulation. I'll discuss my 'subjective' preferred methods for running in a single and emulated multiple monitor setup. If you've already seen some of my other guides they'll be a lot of the same information as the steps for setting up SheepShaver and MAME will be the same (so you'll be able to skip some sections). If you're here to try out A-10 Attack! and haven't emulated any other sim before then the information you need should be in this guide, it will refer to other more detailed guides where necessary. Version A-10 Attack! v1.5 The preferred version of A-10 Attack! is v1.5. It can be obtained as a single .sit compressed file so no further updates are needed. This will be the assumed distribution of A-10 Attack! SheepShaver SheepShaver is the preferred emulator to use when running A-10 Attack! in a single monitor setup. SheepShaver is a good solution, easy to setup and run. In order to use a modern joystick effectively, you will need to use your joysticks profile software to map your joystick x/y-axes to the mouse x/y-axes. It doesn't have support for multiple virtual monitors at present. The latest version of SheepShaver can be obtained from the Emaculation website. At time of writing the latest version is SheepShaver-Windows-27-08-2023-framebuffer . In order to create a suitable emulated PPC Mac, the SheepShaver setup guide at the Emaculation website should be followed. The configuration I use is: An old world 4mb rom file 128mb ram Mac OS 7.6.1 1152x870 resolution In addition the SheepShaver_prefs file was edited and the following preference was added to reduce the cpu clock to 33Mhz, the default being 100Mhz. cpuclock 33 SheepShaver keycodes The key bindings are not optimal. To fix this you'll want to set the 'Use raw keycodes' option and specify the keycodes files in the SheepShaver folder as shown. When installing software, use the SheepShaverGUI application. Check the ' Enable "My Computer" icon on your Mac desktop (external file system) ' option to transfer files to/from the hard disk image. Installing Stuffit Expander Once you have an emulated Mac running Mac OS 7.6.1, you will want to install software. We'll need a copy of Stuffit Expander which we can use to expand .sit archives and mount .img disk images. I've found Stuffit Expander v5.5 to work well. The steps to take are: Obtain a copy of Stuffit Expander v5.5 in an img or dsk disk image format. Mount the disk image in SheepShaverGUI. Start SheepShaver and the disk should appear on the Mac OS desktop. Install Stuffit Expander v5.5 from the installer on the disk. Once installed, restart SheepShaver to make sure Stuffit Expander is installed and working. Installing A-10 Attack! Installing is remarkably straight-forward, simply perform the following steps: Use the SheepShaverGUI application and enable the My Computer icon to give SheepShaver access to the host hard disk with the compressed .sit archive. Copy (or move) the compressed .sit archive to your Mac hard disk. Open the compressed .sit archive, it will expand the archive and you should be left with the A-10 Attack! folder on your Mac hard disk. Shutdown SheepShaver and use the SheepShaverGUI application to disable the My Computer icon, you don't need to access your host hard disk anymore. Start SheepShaver again and give A-10 Attack a try! MAME MAME provides very accurate emulation at the cost of performance. SheepShaver provides better performance but requires the joystick axes to be mapped to mouse axes for the mouse controls to act like a joystick. If this isn't possible then MAME may be a preferred option. I don't suggest Qemu as they is a weird bug where turning on the HUD and accelerating will either cause a crash to the Mac desktop or freeze the sim. Here's a video showing off the problem. To increase performance, you can specify the -cheat option in the command used to run MAME and use the MAME slider menu to overclock the main cpu by up to 400%. This may introduce non-breaking sound issues, where fragments of sound get repeated during play, depending on how high you go and your host pc, so the optimum overclock is a personal preference. The current version of MAME is v0.261 although there is active development with new releases coming out frequently. Setup To set up MAME take a look at my earlier blog post: Running the Mac version of F-117a Stealth Fighter 2.0 with MAME . You can follow the guide all the way through until it comes to installing F-117. Installing Stuffit Deluxe is optional but you may find it useful for installing other games. You should now have: An emulated Mac Quadra 800 with 128mb of memory. Running Mac OS 7.6.1. With Stuffit Expander v5.5 (and optionally Stuffit Deluxe) installed. Installing A-10 Attack! Installing is quite straight-forward, there are a couple more steps as you need an .iso cd image to mount in MAME. Here are the steps: Create a .iso cd image containing the A-10 Attack! .sit file. Start the Mac in MAME. Mount the .iso cd image using the MAME File Manager. Open the cd on the Mac desktop and copy the A-10 Attack! .sit file to the Mac Hard disk. Open the compressed .sit archive, it will expand the archive and you should be left with the A-10 Attack! folder on your Mac hard disk. Joystick setup A-10 Attack! can use keyboard controls (not great) or mouse controls (even worse)! To use a modern joystick with the emulated Mac mouse controls that acts like a joystick, you can use the MacFlight plugin. Details on how to use the MacFlight plugin are on the earlier blog post: MacFlight: A MAME plugin for retro Mac flight sims . Multiple Monitors To set up multiple monitors in MAME take a look at yet another earlier blog post: MacFlight: Multi-monitor support! It'll describe how to set up multiple monitors in MAME. If you use a supported memory and resolution, MacFlight will also work.

This is a tech refresh article describing any changes since the original article ' Running the Mac version of F-117A Nighthawk Stealth Fighter 2.0 with MAME ' was published. It will cover upgrading MAME and any changes resulting from it. Upgrading MAME The original article was published when the current version of MAME was v0.259. The current version of MAME is v0.272, available at the MAME download page . The download is a self extracting exe file, open the self extracting exe and choose a folder. Once installed the following files/folders should be copied from your original MAME installation folder into your new MAME folder: cfg folder diff folder nvram folder roms folder If you are using the MacFlight plugin, it should be copied from your original MAME plugins folder to your new MAME plugins folder. Any batch (.bat) files created. Any  hard disk images in a .chd (compressed hunks of data) format . The Mac Quadra 800 ini file (macqd800.ini). Run the MAME executable once to recreate any other necessary .ini files. You should then be able to start the an emulated Mac using the new version of MAME with the batch files in the new MAME folder. The advice to create a new virtual Mac with MAME and installing F-117A Nighthawk Stealth Fighter 2.0 remains unchanged. The ScrLk key will continue to enable/disable the MAME UI and the Tab key will open/close the MAME config menu. Using the MacFlight plugin The original advice covering 'Joystick controls' and 'Joystick workarounds; was superseded with the creation of the MacFlight plugin. The MacFlight plugin continues to work with MAME v0.272. The advice in the article ' MacFlight: A MAME plugin for retro Mac flight sims ' should continue to be followed. It's worth noting that the role of MacFlight plugin was to convert joystick input into an appropriate mouse input for Mac flight sims. It does not control any button mappings, only the joystick x and y axes. Rather than duplicate functionality, the comprehensive facilities provided by your HOTAS profile software, Joystick Gremlin or the MAME control settings should be used to map HOTAS buttons. SheepShaver The latest version of SheepShaver is SheepShaver-Windows-20-10-2024. Compatibility with F-117A has improved drastically with the sim remaining stable for both internal and external views (a common cause of crashes). It is almost playable... almost. Unfortunately on successfully striking a target the digital speech causes the emulator to freeze. So for now MAME remains the recommended (and only) way to play. And that covers the tech refresh of F-117A Nighthawk Stealth Fighter 2.0 (Mac version). Good hunting!

Flying the fjords Update: This guide has been superseded by ' EF2000 Updated Part 2: Installation '. This is a guide I wrote a little while ago about installing EF2000 and patching it for 3dfx and running it with EF2000 Reloaded (a custom DOSBox build). This is all done with a single Windows 10 machine, no need for a second retro pc. This guide was on the COMBATSIM forums, but these have sadly disappeared so I've added it here. It's quite an old guide and uses older versions of PCem, so with later versions it is a bit easier. At some point soon I should really update this guide. So here it is, my guide to installing, patching and running EF2000 with a single Windows 10 machine... Overview We’re going to do a completely clean install of EF2000, Tactcom and the GFX+ patch on a Windows 10 box without the need to dual boot or use another physical machine. We’ll do this by creating a virtual Windows 95 installation machine, then we’ll move our newly installed and patched EF2000 into Windows 10 before final tweaking and configuration with the Reloaded application. Now this is quite a long and involved process, as we’ll need to install PCem a PC emulator and setup a Windows 95 virtual machine. PCem more accurately emulates the hardware of an older generation of PC’s. This accurate emulation was key in successfully patching EF2000. Setting Up PCem and Windows 95 The version of PCem I used was v12 available here: https://pcem-emulator.co.uk/downloads.html Currently the latest version is v13.1 but I haven’t tried this one yet. Rather than describe the setup of PCem, I’ll instead point you to the impressively comprehensive tutorial provided by THEOLIGOPOLIST here: https://olistutorials.wordpress.com/2017/02/25/setting-up-pcem-for-windows-95-games/ You don’t need to follow the complete tutorial, once you have setup Windows 95 you can leave it there, we won’t need the 3DFX drivers, as we will use this box to create our patched installation but not for running EF2000. In order to install into PCem we’ll need to quickly cover how to mount cd’s and cd images for use with PCem. Physical cd PCem can use the host’s cd drive so for those with physical cd’s you can use them normally. Select the CD-ROM menu option and then the Host CD/DVD option. PCem physical cd option ISO cd images PCem supports iso cd images and you just need to select the iso option within the same settings menu above and then pick your iso image to mount it. PCem .iso image option Other cd images Now for those with cd images other than iso things are a bit more involved, at the time of writing PCem only supports iso images, so if you have cd images in other formats they’ll need to be converted to iso. One method is to use an imaging mounting utility, such as WinCDEmu available here: http://wincdemu.sysprogs.org/ This will mount the cd and give it a suitable drive letter. Once mounted another utility ISOcreator, can be used to create the iso image. ISOcreator can be found here: https://sourceforge.net/projects/iso-creator-cs/ Once there is an iso image, it can be used with PCem as described earlier. Installing EF2000 Mount the EF2000 cd in PCem. Open up a dos prompt in Windows 95 and select a full install to hard disk, this will automatically install it to c:\Ef2000 Installing Tactcom Mount the physical cd or an iso image of Tactcom in PCem. Once an iso image is created, mount this in PCem. Open up a dos prompt and run the tactcom executable, this will automatically find the c:\EF2000 installation directory and apply the tactcom update. Installing GFX+ The GFX+ patch can be found here (and a right pain it was to find): http://www.patches-scrolls.com/dl.php?file=gfxplus.zip The patch should be unzipped, the resulting tactpat.exe executable should be placed in a folder and an iso image created with this folder added. Mount the iso image in pcem. Copy the tactpat.exe executable to the installation folder c:\Ef2000 Run tactpat.exe from windows in PCem, it’s a 32bit windows executable. Choose the 3DFX option. GFX+ upgrade patch The upgrade occurs in two phases a dos window will appear and it will patch ef2000. Once finished close this dos window and another should open and it should patch tactcom. Once complete close the dos window and exit the Tactcom Upgrade. Extracting EF2000 from PCem Now the EF2000 installation folder needs to be extracted from PCEM. Unfortunately at present PCem only uses virtual hard disks in the img format, if it use the vhd format we could have mounted the hard disk in Windows 10 and just copied the folder elsewhere. Another utility is needed to open the virtual hard disk. One such utility is WinImage. WinImage 9.0 works with Windows 10 and is available here ( wima6490.zip ): http://www.winimage.com/download.htm Shutdown PCem otherwise the virtual hard disk can’t be opened. Start WinImage and select the virtual hard disk used by PCem. Selecting a hard disk image Select the only partition available Selecting a partition Right click on the c:\ef21000 folder and select extract. Extracting a folder Pick a folder to extract to, ensure ‘Extract with pathname’ is selected. Extract dialog box And that is a fully patched EF2000 installation folder in Windows 10. EF2000 Reloaded All that remains is to import the ef2000 folder into the reloaded application. Might be worth making a copy of the ef2000 folder (you don’t want to go through all that again!) There may be some invalid entries in the clump_3.txt file but once these are removed it should be fine.

Over the following weeks the articles which have been produced over the year will be subject to a tech refresh. This means the DOSBox Staging configurations will be updated to the latest version. Native Windows 10 setups will be tested with updated wrappers and Mac emulation will be tested with the latest version of Mac emulators. If a particular sim does not get a tech refresh article then the existing advice will still apply.

A version and patch history of the classic DOS sim Falcon 3.0 and it's expansions Falcon 3.0: Operation Fighting Tiger, MiG-29: Deadly Adversary of Falcon 3.0 and Hornet: Naval Strike Fighter. This article will only be examining the official releases and patches of Falcon 3.0 and the expansions. The shear number of patches, and expansions has left a very convoluted and confusing history of Falcon 3.0, to say nothing of the third party tools, mods and updates. This article will attempt to clarify the history in a hopefully mostly chronological order. All patches can be found on the Internet Archive . Falcon 3.0 demo Demo title screen A limited demo version of Falcon 3.0 was released by Spectrum HoloByte in May 1991, featuring an instant action scenario only. In this version there are a limited number of commands and there is no War Room screen. Sound was selected at startup and was limited to PC speaker, Adlib or Soundblaster options. The size of the demo is 1.2Mb and was probably distributed on a single 'sampler' 3.5" HD or 5.25" HD floppy disk or 2 x 3.5" DD floppy disks. The demo can be found on the Falcon 3.0 section of the DOSGAMES.COM website. Falcon 3.0 Falcon 3.0 retail box The original retail release of Falcon 3.0 appeared in Dec 1991. Developed by Sphere, Inc and published by Spectrum Holobyte, Inc and MicroProse Software. Inc. It was distributed on 5 x 5.25" High Density (HD) floppy disks or 4 x 3.5" HD and 1 x 3.5" Double Density (DD) floppy disks. Falcon 3.0 box rear The first readme file covers requirements, installation issues and finding enough free memory, 600K, a huge amount for the time, and an issue requiring mentioning in numerous expansions and patches. It also covers hints, manual changes and additions. Most patches were cumulative, effectively replacing earlier patches. Falcon v3.0a The first of many patches was released in Jan 1992, updating Falcon 3.0 to v3.0a. Notable feature include an improved installer utility and a number of bug fixes. As would be the norm, VCR files created with the ACMI feature would not be compatible with earlier versions. All players wishing to use the head-to-head feature would need to be using v3.0a. A note on Falcon v3.0b Version 3.0b of Falcon was never released, the next version being v3.0c. The reason for this is given in the v3.0c readme file: The version following 3.0a of FALCON 3.0 is 3.0c. Sphere, Inc. will not release a version 3.0b of FALCON 3.0 because two unofficial versions proclaiming themselves as "3.0b" were released by hackers. To avoid potential confusion, it was decided to name this version "3.0c". Falcon v3.0c Released in Feb 1992, the Falcon v3.0c patch updated all previous versions to the v3.0c standard. Changes include a large number of game accuracy improvements and bug fixes. In addition the comms code was improved and issues caused by 'fast' machines (33Mhz 486) resolved. The readme file also includes the changes from v3.0a as well as manual corrections. Update: The above readme was taken from a Falcon v3.0c install. The elusive patch has been found and added to the Internet Archive. The patch readme file is shown below: Falcon v3.0d Released in May 1992, this patch made comprehensive changes to missile awareness, effectiveness, chaff/flares and ECM usage by the player and AI pilots. The jettison controls were also changed. This patch would erase existing campaign and squadron data. The patch readme also contained the changes from v3.0c and v3.0a. Falcon v3.0d would also be a re-release version, this version appearing on the 'Tornado Falcon 3.0 Twin Pack' compilation on a single CD-ROM. A note on compatibility sets At this point the concept of a compatibility set is introduced. The developer/publishers of Falcon 3.0 now had multiple products that players may use for head-to-head or networked gameplay. Going forward, individual products would be patched to make them communication compatible with each other for multiplayer gameplay. The suite of products at particular versions which are communication compatible is considered a compatibility set. For additional expansions and patches it is useful to consider them in terms of their compatibility set. Each compatibility set will detail the products and version comprising the set. Compatibility set: Falcon v3.0e, OFT v3.01, OFT v3.01.1 This was one of the few compatibility sets to maintain comms compatibility between two different versions of the same product. Falcon 3.0: Operation Fighting Tiger v3.01 The first expansion to Falcon 3.0, Falcon 3.0: Operation Fighting Tiger was released in August 1992. Developed by Sphere, Inc and published by Spectrum Holobyte, Inc and MicroProse Software. Inc. The expansion was distributed on 2 x 5.25" HD or 1 x 3.5" HD and 1 x 3.5" DD floppy disks. A new title screen With Operation Fighting Tiger we also see the current Falcon title screen for the first time. The readme warns that squadrons created in earlier versions would be deleted during the install process, advising that campaigns in progress be completed before installing the expansion. In addition there is advice for dealing with installation problems and a manual addendum. Operation Fighting Tiger box rear From the readme file: The tactical environment of Operation: Fighting Tiger is significantly different than that of the original Falcon 3.0 theaters. Be sure to read the Operation: Fighting Tiger flight manual to learn about the new weapons, missions and other challenges which have been added to the game. For the rest of the article we will refer to Operation Fighting Tiger (or OFT). Falcon 3.0: Operation Fighting Tiger update v3.01.1 Released in October 1992, this was named the 'Falcon 3.0: Operation Fighting Tiger update'. The patch comprises of a new OFT installer, backup and boot disk utilities and bug fixes and changes. The readme includes installation instruction, changes and a manual addendum. This patch is only applicable to Falcon 3.0: Operation Fighting Tiger v3.01. Falcon v3.0e In order to maintain compatibility between OFT v3.01 and v3.01.1 a patch was released to update Falcon to v3.0e bringing it up to an OFT v3.01/v3.01.1 standard. It was a comprehensive patch, fixing numerous bugs and introducing changes to: Night mode Objects Sound and music Weapons Campaign, missions and waypoints Wingman views and commands ILS and landing Other miscellaneous changes This patch is no longer available and is very difficult to find due to it being superseded by the preferred v3.02 patch. This patch was only applicable to Falcon v3.0d or earlier. It's not clear when this patch was released but it would have been released in conjunction with OFT, the OFT update or shortly thereafter, around August-November 1992. A comprehensive list of changes and bug fixes for v3.0e were listed within the f3readme.txt file generated by the v3.03 patch and shown below: Compatibility set: Falcon v3.02, OFT v3.02, MiG-29 v1.0 MiG-29: Deadly Adversary of Falcon 3.0 v1.0 The second expansion to Falcon 3.0 was 'MiG-29: Deadly Adversary of Falcon 3.0'. Developed by Spectrum Holobyte, Inc and published by Spectrum Holobyte, Inc and MicroProse Software, Inc. It was released in July 1993 on installation media of 1 x 3.5" DD and 2 x 3.5" HD disks. Standalone edition MiG-29 would later be released as a standalone product, which was compatible with the Operation Fighting Tiger addon. The standalone edition uses a slightly different box design but with styling consistent with the rest of the product range. The release of MiG-29 also included the complete v3.02 patch for Falcon and Operation Fighting Tiger. The MiG-29 readme suggests distributing the first two disks (or backups) to other owners of Falcon or Operation Fighting Tiger to update to v3.02 to allow head-to-head play. This was the suggested update option given the choice between the MiG-29 update utility and the Falcon/OFT v3.02 patch. MiG-29 box rear The install utility would delete existing squadrons, so campaigns in progress would need to be completed before using the installer. Once installed, Operation Fighting Tiger could not be installed and would require a clean install of Falcon, followed by OFT and finally MiG-29. The readme notes mostly cover installation and installation problems with additional readme files generated by the patch. For the rest of the article MiG-29: Deadly Adversary of Falcon 3.0 will be referred to as MiG-29. Falcon v3.02 / Falcon 3.0: Operation Fighting Tiger v3.02 The Falcon/OFT v3.02 patch was the first to update multiple products. This patch was also known as 'Falcon 3.0 with MiG-29 add-on'. This seems to have been a decision to try and simplify the patching process, given the numerous patches that had preceded it. Released at the same time as MiG-29, in July 1993, the patch readme was identical to the one provided by MiG-29. This patch would would delete existing squadrons, so campaigns in progress would need to be completed before patching. Below is the additional Falcon 3.0 readme produced by the patch. A note on Falcon 3.0: Operation Fighting Tiger At this point it's worth noting that explicit references to Operation Fighting Tiger are often omitted in subsequent patch notes, with updates to OFT being implicitly included in later Falcon or MiG-29 patches. Compatibility set: Falcon v3.02.1, MiG-29 v1.01, v1.01.1 This is a rather convoluted compatibility set due to new bugs being introduced and deviation from what had become the patching norm for Falcon, as explained below. This is only compatibility set to cover two versions of MiG-29. MiG-29 v1.01 The first MiG-29 patch was released in October 1993. The patch was only applicable to the MiG-29 addon and was not compatible with the standalone product. The patch included the Falcon v3.02.1 patch and fixed a number of bugs. In addition the Acer Terminate & Stay Resident (TSR) bug fix was integrated into this patch. Unlike other patches there is no separate Falcon 3 update utility, with the patch automatically quitting once Falcon 3 is patched and MiG-29 cannot be found. This patch would introduce a comms bug allowing the MiG-29 v1.01 player to play head-to-head with a Falcon v3.02.1 player but not another MiG-29 v1.01 player! The standalone edition of MiG-29 v1.01 would later be released as one of the products on the Velocity Mile High Club 8 Pack CD-ROM Set in 1995. Falcon v3.02.1 It's not known if this was released as a separate Falcon patch or was only distributed with the MiG-29 patch, however it would have been available in October 1993. Unlike earlier patches this patch is not cumulative and only applicable to Falcon v3.02. Earlier versions of Falcon would need to apply the v3.02 patch before applying this one. The changes are covered in the MiG-29 readme file. This patch is also known as 'Falcon 3.0 with MiG-29 add-on update'. MiG-29 v1.01.1 The purpose of this patch was to address the bug introduced with MiG-29 v1.01. It was released in November 1993 as a partial cumulative update, as it included the MiG-29 v1.01 fixes, the Falcon v3.02.1 patch and the Acer TSR fix. This version retained comms compatibility with Falcon v3.02.1. Again, it was only applicable to the MiG-29 addon and was not compatible with the standalone product. Compatibility set: Falcon v3.03, MiG-29 v1.02, Hornet v1.0 With the release of Hornet: Naval Strike Fighter we begin to see standardization in patching and versioning across the product suite. Hornet: Naval Strike Fighter v1.0 The third and final addon to Falcon, Hornet: Naval Strike Fighter was released in December 1993. Developed and published by Spectrum Holobyte, Inc. Media consisted of 3 x 3.5" HD disks. The Falcon v3.03 / MiG-29 v1.02 patch was included in the installation and would automatically update any earlier version of Falcon to v3.03 and any earlier version of MiG-29 to v1.02. Hornet box rear Again it was suggested that owners of Hornet distribute the first two disks to any players of Falcon or MiG-29 to update to the latest version. Once installed, Operation Fighting Tiger could not be installed and a clean install of Falcon, OFT, optionally MiG-29 and then Hornet was required. For MiG-29 standalone owners it would be MiG-29, OFT and then Hornet. Again the installation would delete existing squadrons, so campaigns in progress would need to be completed before Hornet was installed. The installer readme contains a myriad of installation instructions for every possible combination of products as well as some undocumented features. For the rest of the article Hornet: Naval Strike Fighter will be referred to as Hornet. Falcon v3.03 / MiG-29 v1.02 A separate Falcon v3.03 patch was released in conjunction with Hornet v1.0 in December 1993, which would also update MiG-29 to v1.02, including the standalone MiG-29 product. Again the patch readme concentrates on the myriad of installation combinations available at the time. The only new change was to make both products comms compatible with Hornet v1.0 although the patch was cumulative, including all earlier fixes for Falcon and MiG-29. Compatibility set: Falcon v3.04, MiG-29 v1.03, Hornet v1.01 With the introduction of this compatibility set, the patching and versioning has become standardized. Patches are restricted to their respective product and all were made available in February 1994. In addition to product specific fixes and enhancements each patch contains the Acer BIOS compatibility fix and the Thrustmaster TM-STICK utility. Falcon v3.04 The patch notes limit the patch history to v3.02 with earlier fixes and changes described in the f3readme.txt file. This is a cumulative patch with all fixes and enhancements from earlier Falcon patches included. MiG-29 v1.03 There is a complete (if simplified) version history from v1.0. This is a cumulative patch with all fixes from all previous MiG-29 patches included. The patch is compatible with both addon and standalone editions. Hornet v1.01 As the first Hornet patch, all fixes and updates are detailed in the patch notes. Compatibility set: Falcon v3.05, MiG-29 v1.04, Hornet v1.02 This compatibility set sees each of the products reach their final release version. This set of patches was released in September 1994. Patches remain restricted to their product and in addition to the fixes and enhancements, the Thrustmaster TM-STICK utility was updated to v2.1. Falcon v3.05 The patch notes contain a complete patch history. This remains a cumulative patch with all fixes and enhancements from earlier Falcon patches included. This version would later be released on CD-ROM, featuring the readme file, a Falcon FAQ by Spectrum Holobyte and the complete manual in PDF format. MiG-29 v1.04 The patch notes contain a complete patch history. This remains a cumulative patch with all fixes and enhancements from earlier MiG-29 patches included. Addon and standalone editions of MiG-29 are supported. Hornet v1.02 The patch notes contain a complete patch history and a comprehensive description of changes. This remains a cumulative patch with all fixes and enhancements from earlier Hornet patches included. Falcon Gold Falcon Gold is a compilation comprising of Falcon v3.05, including Operation Fighting Tiger v3.05, MiG-29 v1.04 and Hornet v1.02. The release also included 'Art of the Kill', a series of instructional videos on fighter combat by Pete Bonanni. Developed by Spectrum Holobyte, Inc. and published by Spectrum Holobyte, Inc, MicroProse Software, Inc. and Tommo Inc. It was released in 1994 and later in September 1995 on a single CD. The cd contains the 3rd party Acer BIOS compatibility fix, Tseng ET4000 video card fix and the Thrustmaster TM-STICK utility. At least one release of Falcon Gold includes the earlier TM-STICK v1.9 rather than the later v2.1. The readme notes included, are for Falcon Gold edition with separate notes for Falcon, MiG-29 and Hornet. Falcon Gold is the version released on the Steam and GOG platforms. Art of the Kill The 'Art of the Kill' app received a single patch in July 1994, adding support for newer graphics cards to the video player. Official utilities There were a number of official utilities released as separate downloads or as extras in various products releases from Sphere, Spectrum Holobyte and MicroProse. Updated install program for Falcon 3.0 Released in December 1991 for Falcon 3.0 only. A number of customers had experienced difficulties in installing to a hard disk. This updated installer would be copied onto either a 3.5" or 5.25" floppy disk and run. During the installation process all five of the Falcon 3.0 disks would be required. This is probably identical to, or an earlier version of the improved installer which was included in the Falcon v3.0a patch. It can be found on the Internet Archive . Windows 95 boot disk maker Released in October 1995 by Spectrum Holobyte, after Falcon Gold was released. The boot disk maker made a boot disk that created an optimized Windows 95 configuration for use with Falcon 3.0 or a full installation of Falcon Gold. It is assumed this would be applicable to a Falcon v3.05, MiG-29 v1.04 and Horner v1.02 install, although this has not been tested. It is not known if this is compatible with Windows 98. It can be found on the Internet Archive . Boot disk maker for MicroProse games Developed in August 1996 and released on the Falcon 3.0 CD-ROM edition. This is an integrated DOS/Windows 95 boot disk maker, creating a standard boot disk for use with both DOS and Windows 95 environments. The boot disk should free up over 600k of conventional memory, and allocate 2mb of expanded memory. It is not known if this is compatible with Windows 98. This is available on the Internet Archive . Official 3rd party utilities Official 3rd party utilities are defined as official patches/utilities released by a 3rd party supplier, specifically for Falcon, MiG-29 or Hornet that were later integrated into official patches or releases. Acer BIOS compatibility patch Owners of Acer computers, Acros computers or other computers with Acer motherboards using BIOS v1.2 could not play MiG-29 or Falcon 3.02. When either game was run, it would simply freeze with a blank screen. A Terminate and Stay Resident (TSR) utility was developed to fix this problem and a beta v1.01 was released as a separate download in September 1993. The utility was included in the MiG-29 v1.01 and Falcon v3.02.1 patches in October 1993 and later patches thereafter and remains in the Falcon 3.0 CD-ROM and Falcon Gold editions as an extra. It can be found on the Internet Archive . Thrustmaster WCS profile A set of Thrustmaster Weapon Control System (WCS) mark II (or mark I with UPROM upgrade) UPROM profile files were included with Falcon v3.02 and MiG-29 v1.0 in July 1993. They would continue to be included until Falcon v3.04, MiG-29 v1.03 and Hornet v1.01 when they were replaced by the TM-STICK utility. Thrustmaster TM-STICK utility Originally written by Ken "Stinger" Richardson, a prolific developer of Falcon utilities, and then jointly developed by Ken and Thrustmaster. There are currently three version commonly in circulation. Version 1.9 This version was, incorrectly bundled with on the Falcon Gold edition. It is not known if this mistake was corrected in the Steam and GOG digital releases. This version is compatible with: Falcon v3.02.1, v3.03 MiG-29 v1.01.1, v1.02 Hornet v1.00 Version 2.0 TM-STICK v2.0 would form the basis of joystick handling in Falcon v3.04, MiG-29 v1.03 and Hornet v1.01. These versions would include and retain compatibility with TM-STICK v2.0, allowing TM-STICK functions not included in the official patches to be used. Compatible with: Falcon v3.02.1, v3.03, v3.04 MiG-29 v1.01.1, v1.02, v1.03 Hornet v1.00, v1.01 Version 2.1 With the introduction of Falcon v3.05, MiG-29 v1.04 and Hornet v1.02 the TM-STICK utility was updated to v2.1. This is the version that should be used with the Falcon Gold edition. It can be found on the Internet Archive . Compatible with: Falcon v3.02.1, v3.03, v3.04, v3.05 MiG-29 v1.01.1, v1.02, v1.03, v1.04 Hornet v1.00, v1.01, v1.02 Tseng ET4000/w32 patch Owners of video cards using the Tseng ET4000/w32 chipset may have experienced problems with white flashing in the simulation. A file replacement patch was developed in September 1993 for MiG-29 v1.0, although this problem may have occurred across the product suite. It wouldn't be until the release of the Falcon 3.0 CD-ROM edition and later Falcon Gold that this patch would be integrated into releases as an extra. It can be found on the Internet Archive . Finally... Hopefully this is an accurate history of Falcon 3.0, Falcon 3.0: Operation Fighting Tiger, MiG-29: Deadly Adversary of Falcon 3.0 and Hornet: Naval Strike Fighter. It you notice any errors, mistakes, or stuff which is just plain wrong, please feel free to get in touch, so it can be corrected. If anyone has the Falcon v3.0e patch, please get in touch.

A guide to running the F/A-18 Hornet sim, BLACK KNIGHT: Marine Strike Fighter in DOSBox Staging. The sim was developed in 1995 by SE Software and published by FormGen Inc. Versions There are primarily two editions you may encounter when trying to obtain the sim. There is a widely distributed shareware edition. This was normally released on magazine cover disks around late 1995 and 1996. It is usually named 'BLACK KNIGHT: Marine Strike Fighter SE', it's not clear whether this is a reference to the developer, SE Software or a reference to it being a Shareware Edition. These are normally distributed with an order.doc and vendor.doc text files. When compressed the sim fits on 2 x 3.5" HD floppy disks which probably helped in sharing and distribution. Some shareware editions were pre-patched to the latest v1.33 version. The CD-ROM edition was released in October 1995 and is the complete game. Differences from the shareware edition (taken from the order.doc file) include: 60 combat missions 8 training missions unlimited free flight sight range to 20 and 25 miles create your own mission scenarios more deadly AIM-7 radar-guided air-air missiles MK-82, MK-83, MK-84 bombs and bombsight avionics on-board flight instructor for in-flight training VCR-like flight recorder with advanced camera control and playback television-guided Maverick air-ground missiles with in-cockpit imaging 80 page illustrated manual includes weapons systems and combat tactics The shareware and CD-ROM version may not be obvious as the version number was not reported until the later v1.33 version, but are probably v1.x. A number of CD-ROM editions cames in a jewel case without the 80 page manual although there is a retail box edition with the manual. Retail box front Retail box back Patches There is a single official patch which upgrades any v1.x version to the latest v1.33 version. The patch (taken from the patch readme) includes: Fixed analog joystick, throttle and rudder pedal problems. Fixed waypoint error in mission 38. Changed command line switches "-1", "-2", etc., to skip intro movie as well as pilot selection screen. Improved MIDI interface for broader compatibility. Improved accuracy of roll and pitch rate/momentum to match performance data. Added INSANE! graphic detail level. Added the mission overview message on mission start. Added transonic physical effects. Added Black Knight OS initialization messages. Added debug capabilities. Added limited Surround Sound. Added support for CH Products Flightstick Pro, CH Products F-16 Combatstick and CH Products Virtual Pilot Pro. The retail box edition had this included on a single 3.5" HD floppy disk. The patch bkupd133.zip is available on The Patches Scrolls website, and from the VOGONS post ' Black Knight - Marine Strike Fighter '. However recent Windows 10 updates may incorrectly flag this as virus infected. This may have to be downloaded and extracted on another platform before being copied onto a Windows 10 machine. Scanning the extracted files and even compressing them back into a zip file with 7zip reported no issues. DOSBOX Staging settings This guide assumes the latest version of DOSBox Staging which at time of writing is v0.82. This is particularly important as with this version, persistent screen flickering has been introduced which can be avoided by using high frame rate settings, as described in this article by Omnicydle. The settings that differ from the defaults will be covered and any settings of particular interest. [sdl] host_rate = vrr vsync = off presentation_mode = vfr The host rate is set to variable refresh rate which is optimum for my display, for non vrr displays this can be left as the default, auto. Vsync is disabled and a variable frame rate is used as the presentation mode for high frame rates. [dosbox] dos_rate = 1000 The DOS rate is set to 1000hz for high frame rates. [cpu] cycleup = 1000 cycledown = 1000 The default cpu settings are suitable although changing the cycles up/down setting to discrete increments makes it easier to tweak, although a smaller increment may be required depending on your setup. [mouse] dos_mouse_immediate = true This is useful for high frame rates. [mixer] reverb = large chorus = normal Mixer default settings are suitable although these reverb and chorus settings are a personal preference. [midi] mididevice = fluidsynth # mididevice = mt32 The game supports both MT32/LAPC1 or general midi so there is a choice of either fluidsynth or mt32. The method I use to organise soundfonts and MT32/CM32L roms is described in the earlier DOSBox midi article . [fluidsynth] # soundfont = "D:\Midi\Soundfonts\FluidR3_GM_GS.sf2" soundfont = "D:\Midi\Soundfonts\Shan SGM-X48 v1.0.sf2" These are a couple of fluidsynth soundfonts that seem to work well with the game, you may wish to try others. [mt32] romdir = "D:\Midi\Versioned" This specifies the location of MT32/CM32L roms. [autoexec] mount a "D:\Games\Dos\Black Knight\fdd" # imgmount a "D:\Games\Dos\Black Knight\fdd\patch.img" -t floppy imgmount d "D:\Games\Dos\Black Knight\cd\blackknight.iso" -t iso # use '-freesize 512' at the end of this line if the installer fails mount c "D:\Games\Dos\Black Knight\hdd" c: cd bk bk exit # close DOSBox when you quit the game The folders are organised using my DOSBox game management strategy. The a: drive mounts files from the update disk, extracted to the fdd folder. This is needed to use the patch installer or patching after a cd install. If you have the patch disk as a disk image the 'imgmount a' line shows an example of mounting a floppy image. The d: drive mounts the cd-rom as an cd image file, to save wear and tear on physical devices and media. The c: drive may require the freesize option as the Black Knight installer may read the huge disk size incorrectly and fail to install. The freesize option limits the reported free space to a smaller value the installer can cope with. If you use the later patch installer the issue is fixed and the freesize option is not required. The default folder the game installs to is c:\bk. Controller settings This will cover the physical and virtual controller setup in Windows, followed by DOSBox Staging settings, controller calibration is described later. TARGET settings Like many other DOS sims, Black Knight requires a HOTAS setup limited to 4 axes. For those with 4 axes or less this won't apply. For those with a HOTAS with more than 4 axes, HOTAS profiling software will need to be used to limit axes. In my case I'm able to use TM TARGET to create a suitable profile for a virtual controller  with only 4 axes. They are specified as follows: Physical axis Windows axis Joystick x-axis DX_X_AXIS Joystick y-axis DX_Y_AXIS Throttle DX_Z_AXIS Rudder pedals DX_XROT_AXIS If you can't use TM Target or your HOTAS supplier profiling software, then other profiling software, like Joystick Gremlin may provide a suitable alternative. DOSBox settings The following changes are made to the joystick section of the DOSBox configuration file: [joystick] joysticktype = 4axis timed = false swap34 = true deadzone = 0 4axis allows the use of throttle and rudder pedals in flight. Timed false is appropriate for my setup, you may wish to change this if setting to false results in joystick drift. Again swap34 true was appropriate for my setup, however you may need to test your particular HOTAS to see if this is required. The deadzone setting is personal preference and works well for my HOTAS. My config My config is shown below, you may wish to use it as a basis for your own config or for testing any changes you may wish to try. [sdl] host_rate = vrr vsync = off presentation_mode = vfr [dosbox] dos_rate = 1000 [cpu] cpu_cycles = 3000 cpu_cycles_protected = 60000 cycleup = 1000 cycledown = 1000 [mouse] dos_mouse_immediate = true [mixer] reverb = large chorus = normal [fluidsynth] # soundfont = "D:\Midi\Soundfonts\FluidR3_GM_GS.sf2" soundfont = "D:\Midi\Soundfonts\Shan SGM-X48 v1.0.sf2" [mt32] romdir = "D:\Midi\Versioned" [joystick] joysticktype = 4axis timed = false swap34 = true deadzone = 0 [autoexec] mount a "D:\Games\Dos\Black Knight\fdd" imgmount d "D:\Games\Dos\Black Knight\cd\blackknight.iso" -t iso # use '-freesize 512' at the end of this line if the installer fails mount c "D:\Games\Dos\Black Knight\hdd" c: cd bk bk exit # close DOSBox when you quit the game Installation, setup & patching There are two installation methods, using the patch installer to install and patch in one step, or install from cd and then update using the patch. Install with patch Installing with patch runs the installation and patching as a single step. You won't need the freesize option added to the c: mount command as it uses a fixed installer app. To install from patch you will need: An a: drive with a mounted folder containing the patch files or an a: drive mounting a patch disk floppy image. A d: drive with the cd mounted as a physical cd drive or a d: drive mounting the cd image. a: install # to run the installer readme # to view the patch readme Once the install is complete the sound and music setup will run. Install with cd-rom (or image) and patch To install and then patch, mount the cd (or cd image) and go to the DOSBox cd-rom drive and run: install Once installation is complete it will run the sound and music setup (see below). Once setup is complete go to the DOSBox drive or folder containing the patch files and run: update Once complete you may wish to run setup again to ensure sound and music settings are correct. Setup Music setup Setup will automatically run once an installation is complete, it can also be run at anytime by going to the installation folder and running the setup.exe app. There are 3 steps to setup: Sound setup. Setup should automatically find the Soundblaster settings, then just choose the Soundblaster 16 option, or whichever Soundblaster model has been configured in your DOSBox settings, if you have decided to change it. The selection will be tested and you should hear the example audio. Music setup. Setup should automatically find the Soundblaster settings again. Then you can choose Soundblaster for music, or MT32/LAPC1 if that is your DOSBox midi device. In my case I was using fluidsynth as the midi device, so I chose the General midi option. You could even try configuring a Gravis Ultra Sound (GUS) in DOSBox settings and giving that a try! The selection will be tested and you should hear the example music. Driver deletion. Setup will now ask if the unused sound and music drivers should be deleted. This was an option to save disk space, which is unnecessary today. If you keep the unused drivers you can experiment and try different options later on, so answer no. Setup should now be complete! Replacing the DOS extender This is an optional step and you may wish to skip it. Black Knight uses the older DOS/4G v1.97 extender allowing extended memory to be used. There are newer and more modern DOS extenders available. The extender is built into the bk.exe file, but can still be replaced. The process is described in the DOSBox Wiki article ' TOOLS: DOS32A ', under the Internally section. A modern DOS extender and utilities can be found at the amindlost/dos32a GitHub repository in the binw folder. Download the dos32a.exe dos extender and sb.exe utility and place them in your black knight installation folder. Make a copy of your existing bk.exe file (e.g. bk.bak) From within DOSBox, set the dos32a environment variable: set dos32a=c:\bk\dos32a Replace the extender with: c:\bk\sb /r bk.exe You should see the result of the binder utility reporting that the DOS/4G extender was found and then replaced with the DOS32A extender. You may see some warnings once you exit Black Knight but they can be ignored. If this replacement causes problems then you can always swap back to the original file. Command line options There are limited command line options but you can skip the intro movie and pre-select a pilot, as shown below: -[1-4] # skip intro and select pilot 1-4 e.g. c:\bk\bk -3 # skip intro and select pilot 3 Controller calibration Controller calibration is performed in-game, the v1.33 patch along with the DOSBox joystick settings described above will allow you to specify a 2/4 button joystick, a throttle and rudder pedals. The calibration process should be straight-forward although depending on your HOTAS setup you may need to tweak some DOSBox settings. Documentation The manual does exist! The retail box edition came with an 80 page manual which is unavailable these days. However the shareware editions did include a key reference guide, keys.doc and a limited 28 page manual, bkmanual.doc as text files. Finally... Black Knight: Marine Strike Fighter was not the most popular or well known sim, but if you've only played one or two F/A-18 Hornet sims and want to try something a little different from the well known classics, it's well worth a try and hopefully this guide will get you up and running well! Good hunting!

A quick guide to the things I have discovered about Mac emulation and what it means for retro flight sim gaming. The Mac platform isn't exactly well known for a plethora of flight sims, but there are some retro classics that are worth looking up, the most noteworthy being F/A-18 Hornet Classic (Hornet v1.1.2) and Hornet 2.0 from Graphsim and A-10 Attack the prequel to A-10 Cuba and finally the Mac version of the Microprose classic F-117 Stealth Fighter 2.0. But how to play these classics? Well unless you have any old Mac's lying around the easiest way is probably going to be emulation. Creating an Emulated Mac Firstly we need to create an emulated Mac, after a lot of trial and error I've found the following to be a suitable emulated hardware/software combo for running those sims mentioned above: Quadra 800 ROM 64 or 128MB RAM 200MB - 500MB hard disk Mac OS 7.5.3 or 7.6.1 This is the emulated Mac I used to compare the various options. Mac OS 7.1.1 worked with some emulators so if you need to use a particular version anything from 7.1.1 to 7.6.1 may be suitable. Emulation Options So if we go the emulation route it's worth looking at the pro and cons of the options available. It's worth noting that the simulations were around at the time Apple had both Motorola 680x0 (m68k) and Power PC (PPC) processors and the sims above can run on either platform due to Apple fat binaries which supported either hardware. Basilisk II Sadly a common occurrence when running F-117 under Basilisk II Still considered the gold standard in m68k Mac emulation, it has a lot going for it. A fairly straightforward GUI to setup the Mac, still actively developed with releases, setup guides and forums available through the Emaculation website. On a modern monitor the graphics scale beautifully through Basilisk II. However it suffers from one serious drawback which makes it problematic for running sims, the lack of any sort of speed control. Basilisk II will run as fast as possible and without any ability to throttle its performance, this results in sims running too fast or with controls too sensitive to be able to fly properly. Earlier titles which may be speed sensitive such as F-117 Stealth Fighter 2.0 may also suffer from crashes due to the performance. In fact this is very easy to see in Stealth Fighter where switching speed in game to 'realistic' or switching to an outside view in flight will cause an 'Error of type 4' (a divide by zero error). Sheepshaver A-10 Attack! running in Sheepshaver Sheepshaver can be thought of as Basilisk II for the PPC, in fact Basilisk II and Sheepshaver share a lot of source code. Like Basilisk II it has it's own setup GUI and is actively maintained with releases, guides and forums available through the Emaculation website. Like Basilisk the scaling on a modern monitor is good. However unlike Basilisk II there is an option to throttle performance. It isn't available through the setup GUI, but the preferences file can be edited and a 'cpuclock' parameter added. Defaulting to 100Mhz which is too fast for the sims mentioned, it can be lowered. I've found going as low as 16Mhz, reduces control responsiveness to a good level while maintaining fluid framerates. F/A-18 Hornet Classic in Sheepshaver In addition it's easy to mount a host folder through the setup GUI allowing files to be transferred to the emulated hard disk easily. In fact Sheepshaver can also mount images created by Qemu m68k making it useful to have around for that reason. However it's not all good news, F-117 will still experience random lockups, although much less frequent, it still places F-117 in the unplayable category. F/A-18 Hornet 2.0 will run fine until it's time to fly, then lock up as the flight engine initializes. Qemu m68k Hornet 2.0 running in Qemu m68k Qemu is a suite of emulation and virtualisation applications but one we are interested in, is Qemu m68k as it supports the Quadra 800 and Mac OS 7. Unfortunately Qemu ppc doesn't support Mac OS 7 at present. There is no setup application for Win10 so it's command line and batch files to setup and run. Fortunately the guys at the Emaculation website maintain Qemu m68k releases, setup guides and forums. Be warned Qemu is used for serious stuff so it's all too easy to go down a Qemu rabbit hole and get overwhelmed by a daunting array of setup options, so stick to the Emaculation guides and you should be fine. There is no speed/performance controls but I've found Qemu to emulate at a suitable rate 'out of the box' so sim controls were fine on my pc, but it may depend on your own setup. There are some downsides along with the Mac setup, it's tricky to get files onto the emulated drive. It's actually easier to mount the Qemu drive image in Sheepshaver to get the files across and then run in Qemu. Although I haven't got it to crash in F-117 and the cockpit graphics are fine, unfortunately the environmental graphics are pretty messed up right from the start. It's weird to see an airbase cut across your cockpit at a 45 degree angle at 500ft. Hornet 2.0 works without issue, the scaling isn't quite up to Basilisk/Sheepshaver standard but it isn't bad at 1024x768. Mini vMac Mini vMac an older emulator but with a Win-64 release available from the project homepage reference on Emaculation website along with guides/forums. There are limited speed controls available. And unlike most of the emulations it supports the Mac specific 512x384 resolution, which is useful for older Mac software. Unfortunately it does have issues with F-117, which are almost the opposite of Qemu. While the environmental graphics are fine there are graphical issues inside the cockpit and a number of key controls are unresponsive. MAME (m68k driver) F-117 Stealth Fighter 2.0 (Mac version) running under Mame MAME is the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator or at least it was some time ago, but it's become far more than that and in the projects own words, it's become ' a multi-purpose emulation framework '. A framework which has grown to encompass Mac emulation. In fact Mame not only emulates the CPU but controllers on the motherboard as well, requiring not just the main Mac rom but roms from other components as well. When I started writing this article I was prepared to write off MAME as unsuitable due to serious jerky mouse controls that would develop a mind of their own midway through a mission. This seems to be due to the Mac I was emulating, a Mac II ci, a known issue due to the hardware being emulated. However further investigation revealed the Quadra 800 didn't have any of these problems and can run F-117 flawlessly. Due to the accuracy of emulation the performance initially isn't as smooth as you would like, but MAME has hidden depths and the emulated CPU can be overclocked for better performance. However the performance of the Hornet sims or A-10 Attack still needs to be investigated, my subjective feeling is that it still might struggle with these titles. Controller support is excellent in MAME but again some trial and error configuration is needed. There's a huge amount that can be configured which can feel a bit daunting at first. Probably the biggest downside is hunting out the roms you need to get the emulated Mac up and running. The hard disk image is in a chd format, I didn't create this myself but found a suitable Mac 7.6.1 hard disk image for use with MAME. In order to transfer files onto the disk the recommended approach is to place files into a folder and then generate an iso image from the folder, then mount the iso onto the emulated Mac in MAME, which is a bit more involved. MAME issues a warning about sound not being fully implemented for the some of the emulated Mac machines but I had no issues in F-117 and active development means this may be resolved at some point in the future. Recommendations For games compatible with System/Mac OS 7.1 - 7.6 during the m68k/ppc period your first port of call should be sheepshaver. It's fairly easy to setup, the guides are easy to follow and it's simple to transfer files onto the hard disk image and you can throttle performance if things are running too fast or controllers are too sensitive. Make sure to get the latest build or try an experimental one. It may be all you need for a particular game. If Sheepshaver has issues then give Qemu m68k a try. It's more involved to setup but if you follow the guides it shouldn't be too difficult, and you can use Sheepshaver to mount the Qemu hard disk image to transfer files. Pick one of the latest builds, each release sees bugs fixed and enhancements. If you have an earlier title which Sheepshaver and/or Qemu has issues with you'll want to try MAME. The accuracy of the hardware emulation means MAME may succeed where others fail. However this accuracy comes with a higher processing overhead so you may want to save MAME for earlier/less demanding sims unless you have a powerhouse of a PC. Basilisk II and other Mac emulators may be recommended by others but in my opinion they've fallen behind these three when it comes to retro flight sims. Some final thoughts When I started looking at Mac emulation for retro flight sims I ran into numerous issues and it was beginning to feel like some of these classic titles would be lost to time. Each sim and emulator had it's issues and difficulties and there didn't seem to be a single all encompassing app that made these sims 'just work'. However, it's taken a lot of work but it turns out we do have the tools (and more importantly the dedicated volunteers who maintain them) to run these classic sims on modern hardware and these emulators are improving (admittedly some quicker than others) as time goes on. So on reflection we aren't in such a bad place when it comes to it and these retro classics are still playable, which in my opinion can only be a good thing. It turns out that when it comes to the art of running Mac sims, it's in a pretty decent state. You can see a quick showcase on my YouTube channel.

An actual fix to get these pedals working! This is an update to an earlier post Unresponsive Thrustmaster rudder pedals in TARGET: A workaround , an actual fix! Firstly a huge thank you to DCS World Form member Guppy for identifying and describing the fix in this message . In my case I had to download the Advanced Calibration Tool (v2.12) from the T.RJ12 USB Adapter support page . Once downloaded, run the advanced calibration tool and follow the instructions. Since then the TFRP pedals remain active once the virtual controller is created by TARGET. Process Adding the steps of the process here in case the message or forum becomes unavailable in the future: Launch the Package Drivers installation software to uninstall the TFRP rudder pedals and their associated applications. Restart your PC. Go to Settings > Devices > Devices and printers. Right click on the T-Rudder device > Game controller settings and select T-Rudder. Then select Properties > Settings > Reset to default. Restart your PC. Launch the Package Drivers installation software to install the rudder pedals.

Wing Commander Privateer A guide to running Wing Commander: Privateer in DOSBox Staging. This was configured and played to completion a while ago but I've only just gotten round to writing this guide. Editions, expansions & upgrades These are the editions, expansions and upgrades available. Wing Commander: Privateer The original base game developed by Origin Systems and published in 1993 by Origin Systems and Electronic Arts. It was distributed on 6 high density (1.44MB) floppy disks. Wing Commander: Privateer Speech Pack An upgrade pack to add speech to in-flight comms. Developed by Origin Systems Inc and published in 1993 by Origin Systems and Electronic arts. It was distributed on 3 high density (1.44MB) floppy disks. Wing Commander: Privateer - Righteous Fire The one and only expansion pack, which adds a new plotline continuing from where the original game left off. Developed by Origin Systems and published by Origin Systems and Electronic Arts in 1994. It was distributed on 2 high density (1.44MB) floppy disks. Wing Commander: Privateer CD-ROM Edition A release of the original game, speech pack and Righteous FIre expansion, with further speech enhancements. Developed by Origin Systems and published by Origin Systems and Electronic Arts in 1994, released on a single CD-ROM. Wing Commander: Privateer GOG Edition Equivalent to the CD-ROM edition but distributed on-line by Good Old Games (GOG). This is the preferred version due to it being the complete Privateer package, easy to obtain and install. GOG also provides extensive documentation with this release. This is the version used in this guide. Patches There is a spaceflight music speed patch which is applicable to the CD-ROM and GOG editions, if a controller isn't going to be used. It is a file replacement patch and can be found at PCGamingWiki . Once downloaded extract into the Privateer installation directory replacing the prcd.exe file. Credit goes to HCl for producing this patch. Installation Installation on modern systems is straightforward through the GOG Galaxy app. For those with a different edition, I recommend converting any physical cds into an iso image format and especially any floppy disks into an img image format which can be read by DOSBox/DOSBox Staging/DOSBox-X. This will save wear and tear on the physical media and drives. Who knows how long those old floppies or a cd drive will last? Once you have your images, use DOSBox to install the game (and any upgrades or expansions). Once installed the patch can be applied, if applicable to the edition. Game Management I use my game management strategy described in DOSBox game management . The game itself will remain where GOG Galaxy installed it (along with a vanilla version of DOSBox), in my case D:\Program Files (x86)\GOG Galaxy\Games\Wing Commander Privateer. The DOSBox Staging config file will be in the same parent folder as all my other non-GOG DOS games and DOSBox configurations, D:\Games\Dos. So in my case, the config file can be found in the folder D:\Games\Dos\Wing Commander Privateer\conf. If you installed a different edition with DOSBox (and followed my strategy), then in your own Wing Commander Privateer folder you might have the following folders: hdd, hard disk drive, the folder acting as a hard disk in DOSBox. fdd, floppy disk drive, the folder holding any floppy disk images. cd, the folder holding any cd images. conf, the folder storing the DOSBox config file. DOSBox Staging This guide assumes the latest version of DOSBox Staging will be used, at time of writing this was v0.81.2. This section will cover changes from the default DOSBox Staging config and any settings of particular interest, listed by configuration section. [render] aspect = auto integer_scaling = vertical viewport = 89% glshader = crt-auto The integer_scaling and glshader are default settings in DOSBox Staging but nice to include in case you want to experiment. They give a nice emulated CRT look to the game. The correct aspect rendering (4:3) will be used by default. The viewport setting of 89% corresponds to a retro CRT screen size. These settings are a personal preference but getting the game to fill a modern monitor doesn't look as good. [cpu] cycles = fixed 50000 cycleup = 100 cycledown = 100 These are good settings for my system, you may need to tweak them, but this should be a good starting point. [mixer] rate = 22050 reverb = large chorus = normal Again personal preference but I feel these settings enhance the midi music in-game. Reducing the rate seems to improve performance without affecting sound quality. [midi] mididevice = fluidsynth # mididevice = mt32 The fluidsynth midi device allows you to use of soundfonts to enhance the midi, or for a retro midi sound you could try the MT32 option (if you have the required ROMs). [fluidsynth] soundfont = "D:\Midi\Soundfonts\FluidR3_GM_GS.sf2" The soundfont is down to personal preference but I thought this one suited the game quite nicely. [mt32] romdir = "D:\Midi\Versioned" If you have MT32/CM32L ROMs this is where you can set the folder where they are located. [sblaster] irq = 5 It's very unusual to have to change any Soundblaster settings, however Privateer really didn't seem to work properly using the default IRQ 7. [joystick] joysticktype = 4axis timed = true swap34 = false deadzone = 0 This will probably be dependant on your own controller setup. I use profiling software to create a virtual controller limited to 4 axes which I then use as the basis for a game specific HOTAS config for DOSBox games, which is why I set 4axis. However Privateer will only use the 2 Joystick axes. Deadzone is a personal preference that suits my setup. The timed and swap34 are default settings, although you may need to change these depending on your controllers. [dos] ems = false Again, very unusual to have to change [dos] settings, but EMS needs to be disabled for Privateer. [autoexec] mount C "D:\Program Files (x86)\GOG Galaxy\Games\Wing Commander Privateer" mount C "D:\Program Files (x86)\GOG Galaxy\Games\Wing Commander Privateer\cloud_saves" -t overlay imgmount d "D:\Program Files (x86)\GOG Galaxy\Games\Wing Commander Privateer\game.gog" -t iso -fs iso mixer FSYNTH 33:33 c: call gog-menu.bat As the games is installed by GOG Galaxy in the 'D:\Program Files (x86)\GOG Galaxy\Games\Wing Commander Privateer' folder, this becomes the DOSBox C: drive. Next, the overlay mount may (or may not) allow GOG cloud saving to work, if GOG Galaxy is running, but you use this at your own risk as I haven't confirmed this. 'D:\Program Files (x86)\GOG Galaxy\Games\Wing Commander Privateer\game.gog' is the cd iso image (or equivalent) so this becomes the DOSBox D: drive. With the previous fluidsynth settings, I find the midi music can drown out the in-game speech. The mixer command reduces the volume from left and right channels to 33% which seems a better midi volume. The call command is described in the extras section below. The complete configuration [render] aspect = auto integer_scaling = vertical viewport = 89% glshader = crt-auto [cpu] cycles = fixed 50000 cycleup = 100 cycledown = 100 [mixer] rate = 22050 reverb = large chorus = normal [midi] mididevice = fluidsynth # mididevice = mt32 [fluidsynth] soundfont = "D:\Midi\Soundfonts\FluidR3_GM_GS.sf2" [mt32] romdir = "D:\Midi\Versioned" [sblaster] irq = 5 [joystick] joysticktype = 4axis timed = true swap34 = false deadzone = 0 [dos] ems = false [autoexec] mount C "D:\Program Files (x86)\GOG Galaxy\Games\Wing Commander Privateer" mount C "D:\Program Files (x86)\GOG Galaxy\Games\Wing Commander Privateer\cloud_saves" -t overlay imgmount d "D:\Program Files (x86)\GOG Galaxy\Games\Wing Commander Privateer\game.gog" -t iso -fs iso mixer FSYNTH 33:33 c: call gog-menu.bat HOTAS Config If you have a HOTAS with 4 axes or less, this won't apply. If your HOTAS setup has more than 4 axes you may wish to create a virtual controller, limited to 4 axes, through your profiling software. This is to prevent DOSBox Staging from assigning the axes oddly (e.g. assigning a throttle axis as a joystick axis). Privateer only uses the 2 joystick axes. For reference this is what I set: Physical axis Windows axis Joystick x-axis DX_X_AXIS Joystick y-axis DX_Y_AXIS Throttle DX_Z_AXIS Rudder pedals DX_XROT_AXIS Game Configuration Installer/config utility To use general midi in-game you may have to run the installer, install.exe which is an installer/music and sound config utility. Once sound and music is selected use ' Install with these options ' to write the changes to the game config file. Extras If you try and use the GOG DOS menu from within DOSBox Staging, you'll find it looks odd, this is because the menu is trying to use a Codepage 437 character encoding and the DOSBox Staging config file uses a UTF-8 character encoding. This article, ' DOSBox Staging: Why do GOG menus look bad? ' goes into a bit more detail about it. As a workaround, if you copy the menu to a separate batch (.bat) file, it will use the correct character encoding and work as intended. The last line of the config file calls a separate gog-menu.bat file. call gog-menu.bat This is a zipped copy of my gog-menu.bat file, I have also added the installer/config utility as an option, to make it easier to select/switch music and sound options. It's entirely optional but if you want to use it, It should be unzipped and added to the Privateer install folder. Good hunting!

DOSBox game shortcuts This is my suggested scheme for managing a large number of DOS games under DOSBox. This scheme can cover vanilla DOSBox, DOSBox-X and DOSBox Staging. This is taken from my earlier Gunship 2000 setup, which I thought covered a little too much. This concentrates on my generic scheme for managing multiple DOS games. Installing DOSBox You can get the latest version of DOSBox-X from the DOSBox-X website . Installation is straight-forward so I won't cover it here. Likewise DOSBox Staging is available from the DOSBox Staging website , again it's a straightforward installation. Once one or both are installed, remember to run each one, this will create a default configuration, which we will use later. One of the advantages of this scheme is a single installation of DOSBox, DOSBox-X or DOSBox Staging which can be used by multiple games. However each game can have a specific DOSBox configuration. DOSBox upgrades The biggest advantage of using a single installation of DOSBox, DOSBox-X or DOSBox Staging is the ease in upgrading. To upgrade you simply need to download the latest version and install it in the same location as before, overwriting the old version. As separate game config files are used, they can still be used with the new version. All that remains is to optionally tweak any existing game configurations to make use of any new enhancements or options in the new version of DOSBox-X or DOSBox Staging. How I set things up This bit is very subjective and based on my personal preference. I have a lot of DOS flight sims and this approach allows me to keep things organised while only using a single copy of DOSBox-X/Staging. Firstly I have a folder where all the DOS games live, D:\games\dos Within that folder there's another folder for the game, D:\games\dos\ The folder can contain spaces if you wish. Within the folder there are a number of sub-folders, each one has a particular purpose: hdd folder This is the folder that will be mounted in DOSBox as a hard disk drive, the C: drive in DOSBox. cd folder Stores the cd image of the game, the D: drive in DOSBox. I tend to rip my cd's to cd image files as who knows how long the cd or cd drive will last and it's generally faster. I normally use iso for data only (or cue/bin if there are audio tracks on the cd). For example .iso format is fine for Gunship 2000 as there are no audio tracks on the cd. fdd folder Stores the floppy disk images of the game (normally older games not found on cd) and acts as a floppy disk drive, the A: drive in DOSBox. We won't need this for games on cd. conf folder Stores the DOSBox-X/Staging configuration(s) specific to a game. docs folder Stores any game related documents, so manuals, reference cards, addendums, hints & tips, strategy guides, release/patch notes, etc. will be here. patches folder Stores any patches I've downloaded from the internet for a particular game. Once a patch is applied you may just want to keep the original patch .zip file here. icon folder Store an icon image (in .ico format) I use for a DOSBox shortcut for the game. I normally find the box art and convert it, giving me a very nice box art shortcut. I also use this folder to store the box art in it's original image format, eg. .jpg or .png. This is entirely optional and based on personal preference. misc folder For anything else game related I want to keep. So using Gunship 2000 as an example we'll have a minimum of: hdd, cd, conf  and docs  folders within a D:\games\dos\Gunship 2000  folder. This is all subjective and based on personal preference so feel free to use a folder/naming scheme that works for you. Initial DOSBox setup If you haven't run DOSBox-X or DOSBox Staging before, start them up, there will be a shortcut on your desktop. This will create default configuration files which we'll use next. Next we'll want to copy the default configuration to the game configuration folder. The default configuration for DOXBox-X is: C:\Users\\AppData\Local\DOSBox-X\dosbox-x-.conf While the default configuration for DOSBox Staging is: C:\Users\\AppData\Local\DOSBox\dosbox-staging.conf You may have to set the file explorer to show hidden files and folders as AppData is hidden by default. So in my case I'll be copying dosbox-x-0.83.15.conf  and dosbox-staging.conf  to the D:\dos\games\\conf  folder. I normally change the name of the config file to something more descriptive, like .conf . If you're trying DOSBox-X and Staging you might want to call them something like -x.conf  and -staging.conf . We now have a games specific configuration(s). Next we want to Copy and 'Paste shortcut' (not Paste) the DOSBox-X/Staging shortcut on the desktop, we can also change the shortcut text to , in DOSBox-X, in DOSBox Staging or whatever you prefer. Now our new shortcut will still be using the default DOSBox config, so we need to tell it to use the game specific one. We need to go into the shortcut properties and in the Target box add a -conf option followed by the game config folder and game specific config. So for me the DOSBox-X Target becomes: C:\DOSBox-X\dosbox-x.exe -conf "D:\Games\Dos\\conf\-x.conf" And for DOSBox Staging: "C:\DOSBox Staging\dosbox.exe" -noconsole -conf "D:\Games\Dos\\conf\-staging.conf" If there are any spaces in , I need to use double quotes around the config. We now have a game specific shortcut using a game specific config. If we start it up we won't see any difference because our game specific config is identical to the default one. Now it's time to make our game specific config suitable for the specific game. Installation The installation is game specific so I won't cover it in this general guide. I'll cover specific games installation in any game setup guides. Further DOSBox setup Right now if we wanted to play the game we would start DOSBox from our DOSBox game shortcut, then we'd have to go to the C drive and then we'd have to change directory to the game installation directory. Then we can start the game or run any setup utilities. Having to change drive and directory each time would get a bit tiresome after a while, so we can tell DOSBox to do this for us by adding some commands to the end of the autoexec section in the DOSBox config. After doing so my autoexec section becomes: [autoexec] mount c "D:\games\dos\\hdd" imgmount d "D:\games\dos\\cd\" -t cdrom c: cd Where c: changes to the C drive. And cd changes to the game installation folder. As DOS is not case sensitive lowercase or uppercase commands will both work. Running the shortcut now takes us to the correct drive and folder to run the game or the setup utility. If you have made a full install of the game and don't need to the cd to run it, we could remove the imgmount command, but it doesn't hurt to leave it where it is. Getting the documentation Now for something completely different. At this point it's probably a good idea to grab any documentation. This bit is entirely optional but I find it useful. The manual Depending on the release of the game you are installing the manual may be included as a document on the cd or cd image. This is normally the case for budget rereleases or compilations. Copying this to the docs folder can make referencing this manual a bit easier. If the manual is on a physical cd and you have a physical cd drive you can just copy the manual into the docs folder. You can also use Windows Explorer if it is a cd image in a .iso format. Windows Explorer doesn't support the .cue/.bin pair. So you can either obtain a 3rd party app to mount this kind of cd image and then copy it. Alternatively you can mount the cd image using DOSBox and copy the manual from the D: drive onto the C: drive. You will need to be fairly comfortable in using DOS to change drive, navigate directories and copy files. Once copied you can use Windows Explorer to copy the manual from the hdd folder (mounted in DOSBox as the C: drive) to the docs folder. An example During the installation of Gunship 2000 the manual is copied from the cd onto the hard disk. Windows Explorer can be used to copy the manual GS2000.PDF from the  D:\dos\games\Gunship 2000\hdd folder into the  D:\dos\games\Gunship 2000\docs folder. Other documents It's worth checking the installation directory for any useful documents. You can use Windows Explorer and go to the game installation folder and copy any useful .txt, .doc or README files. It's also worth checking any zipped up patch files for documents that may be useful. You can use Windows Explorer to copy these documents to the docs folder. Creating a shortcut When playing a particular sim I like to keep the docs close at hand. To do this I'd copy the D:\dos\games\\docs folder and 'paste it as a shortcut' on the desktop, making it easy to find. Open the shortcut and all the documentation is there! Shortcut icon As pretty as the DOSBox-X and DOSBox Staging shortcut icons are. I prefer to use some retro box art instead. After finding a suitable image, I use a suitable website service to convert it from it's original .jpg or .png format to a .ico format, used by Windows icons. I think it makes for a nice flight sim collection!