DOSBOX for Chrome (OS?) shows up as black screen

Question

I downloaded DOSBOX on my Chromebook and when I loaded it everything was a success till I got past the "hints". After that, everything was just a black screen, and in Chrome OS there are no "Program Files" or whatever, so i'm stuck without solutions. Is there any way to fix this? And just in case, my Chrome OS version is version 65.0.3325.184 (Official Build) (64-bit).

Solution

Edit: I just noticed that the Chrome "Web Store" still exists and that there is a DOSBox app by cichiou available there. Just remove or comment out the line (put # in front of it) that says output=opengl in your DOSBox Configuration file through the ? menu, then restart the app and you should get a working terminal. Then select the folder where you have downloaded the program files and you should be able to run them. Somehow my game won't run here, the screen just stays as it is after running the programm (C:\RAPTOR\RAP.EXE). Someone more knowledgeable with DOSBox or Chrome Extensions and probably video acceleration should look into this.

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I assume you installed DOSBox from the Play Store (this one?). I can launch the app, make some modifications to the configuration if necessary and get to a functional DOS terminal session after that.

I then download a program with Chrome—I chose the Raptor Call of Shadows shareware version for this example. I open the file manager, go to the Downloads folder and extract contents of zip archives if necessary. In the DOSBox app I go to the Downloads folder with cd DOWNLOADS, launch installers and setup programs if necessary, then run the game from the location where it was installed to (C:\RAPTOR\ in this case). This works with ChromeOS 65 on my N22.

Performance is not great and some optimizations may be required for certain games that require mouse support. I wasn't able to get my DS4 controller to work in the setup screen or through the options so far and I think Chrome OS won't allow the app to use the control key either. There is probably a better way running many of those games in a browser these days… or at least not as a confined or emulated Android app I have no problems on my C302 running this game in DOSBox on GalliumOS.

In earlier versions of Chrome OS Android apps may only have access to files from the emulated SD card. You may have to launch a browser as an Android app to download files to the SD card, then extract compressed files with an Android file manager app to access them in DOSBox. To my knowledge there is no wget or unzip utility in DOSBox.

Comments

[hoylecake]

In order to "extract" a .zip file you need to go into the .zip file, copy its contents, create a folder, then paste it in.