What exactly is DOSBox ECE and what can it do?
DOSBox is an emulator for old PCs running MS-DOS, focused on running classic PC games. Though it’s under constant development, new official versions are only released from time to time, with many updates inbetween only coming out as changes to the source code on SourceForge.
Here you can find compiled binaries of the original source, as well as an enhanced build and its source code, both created regularly soon after a new version is released on SourceForge. The enhanced build contains numerous patches with improvements that have been created by various users in the DOSBox forums on vogons.org. Because of that it’s called “Enhanced Community Edition“, ECE for short. The VOGONS community also is the place to go when you’re looking for news, help or if you have a problem with or a question about DOSBox.
ECE, currently available for Windows and Linux, is maintained by YesterPlay and currently differs from normal DOSBox in the following features:
- Emulation of a 3Dfx Voodoo card via internal (software or OpenGL) or external wrapper
- Improved emulation of OPL3 (a FM sound synthesis chip from Yamaha)
- Improved balance and authenticity in FM sound playback
- Improved PC speaker sound emulation
- Emulation of the Roland MT-32 Midi synthesizer
- Integration of Fluidsynth (a software midi synthesizer with soundfont support)
- Support for up to 10 joystick axes and 2 D-pads (allowing 2 complete Xbox360 compatible controllers to be used)
- Mouse buttons can be mapped to keyboard keys or controller buttons
- Support for up to 384 MB RAM, required for running Windows 9x in DOSBox ECE
- 4MB video memory, reducing sprite flickering in games with the Build engine (“Duke Nukem 3D”, “Blood”, etc.)
- Support for MSF timestamps in CUE files, MP3, FLAC, WAV and OPUS files are supported as cd audio replacement
A short overview of the integrated patches and their authors and contributors is also included in the corresponding downloads below. Older versions can be found in the “archive” folder.
