How to use DOSBox to play old PC video games

If you're like me, you have a box full of old PC CD Roms of games from the early to mid 90's. These games were probably written with DOS in mind; the Windows operating systems of the day were not game oriented. In Windows 95 and Windows 98, you had the options of bypassing Windows at bootup, creating a PIF file, creating a boot disk, or exiting out of Windows altogether. While cumbersome, these options worked.

As Windows has matured, its support for games improved - but not for these older DOS based games. In fact, with Windows XP, Windows Vista, and now Window 7 - these games are pretty much unplayable, at least directly. If you've been tempted to dig into some classics from your PC gaming collection, you may want to look at DOSBox.

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Review of Pandora's "Pandora One" Service

I've been a fan a Pandora's service in general. I recently heard about Pandora's Pandora One service (currently priced at $36 per year). I've been a longtime supporter of XM (now Sirius XM). After the merger, it seems like the various genre channels can't seem to find themselves. This is a void that Pandora fills much better. A primary account on XM can range as high as $180 annually when billed monthly, an additional radio account can cost $84 annual when billed monthly. $36 annually doesn't seem like much in comparison, and certainly not for better refinement on the genre of music you may be looking for.

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Fedora 11 Post Install Items

Fedora 11 (F11) was released recently. As Fedora prides itself on installing only truly open source software, there will always be a number of post installation tasks that you might want to take once installation is complete. Here's a quick guide of the tasks I performed. Hopefully they'll help you.

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Encrypting a Removable Drive with TrueCrypt (Windows and Linux)

Previously, I described the abilities of TrueCrypt for personal file encryption. Today, I thought I'd illustrate (video) how easy it is to encrypt your portable personal USB hard drive or USB flash disk, to prevent loss of personal information should these devices fall into the wrong hands.

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Three easy Linux Desktop Customizations (Fedora 10)

If you've just installed Linux, you've probably seen some rather customized desktop interfaces. Part of the power of Linux is the customization abilities it offers, and the desktops are no different.

In the examples (and video) that follow, I'll show you three quick tricks to make your Gnome desktop (Fedora 10 is used for the content below) come to life in a manner that personalizes things just for you.

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JMB38X Power Management Causes Vista Hang

The ongoing issues with "dialing in" my new laptop continue. This problem was manifesting as an occasional "hang" shortly after Windows startup. This time, it's the JMicron supplied flash media controller.

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Getting Intel HD Audio Driver to Behave on Linux

As I've mentioned recently, I purchased a new laptop. This is my third personal laptop. Each time I tend to personalize it by making sure I can dual-boot into Windows and Linux; and each time I have a few headaches getting everything to work. Obviously, the laptop you "just bought" at Best Buy or Fry's Electronics isn't in wide use yet. Thus, the Linux community cannot address all issues on this newer hardware. This laptop was no different, as I experienced a few annoyances with the built-in Audio.

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Unable to Burn "Recovery Discs" on New Laptop

Anyone who has purchased a new desktop or laptop recently (from most OEMs) have noticed that recovery discs (CDs or DVDs that allow for reinstallation of essential software) have become a thing of the past. To cut costs, these computer manufacturers are hoping customers are willing and able to pull out some blank discs and do the burning themselves. Recently for me, with a new laptop, creating these discs successfully simply was not happening.

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TrueCrypt: Powerful Personal Encryption

I'm sure you'll recall the headlines from a couple years ago. It seemed as though there were daily stories of large corporations and government agencies suffering data breaches by way of loss of laptops or hard drives. These losses put customers and employees at risk of identity theft. Simply relying on a Windows password wasn't good enough anymore. These entities have realized they may not be able to prevent loss of equipment, but they can eliminate the ability of data thieves to retrieve valuable data from recovered equipment. Fortunately, now you can as well...

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Possible Power Management Causes Hard Drive Noise

If you're like me, there are certain times you'd like your hardware (usually a laptop) to be quiet and non-obtrusive. I even don't think it's necessary that laptops have as many LED indicators on them as they do now... sometimes "cool" defeats functionality. I personally like to use my laptop to listen to some tunes or podcasts as I travel. I haven't been able to solve the brightness issue, but I have been able to fix an annoyance noise on a new laptop I've purchased.

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