Remote Gaming Goodness!

Author: Glenn Scrima

Maybe I'm behind the times or spending too much time playing games from another one. Either way I came upon a seemingly mundane device that now has some other great uses thanks to Dosbox.

Now all you Mac fans will recognize this as Apple's Time Capsule. For those who are not familiar with the device it is essentially a server grade hard drive, full wifi base station/router and a print server mashed into one. This device was made foremost for Apple's new Time Machine backup software and their new Macbook Air due to the Air's limited drive space and its lack of an external drive. The great thing for me (since I currently have a PC) is that its hard drive is also accessible to Windows users. When the included Airport (Apple's Wifi Software) disc is installed on a Windows PC and you are connected to the Time Capsule it becomes just another accessible drive on your machine.


The drive icon above is Time Machine showing up as my Z: drive. The very cool part about this is that if you have a large classic game collection (and assuming all of these games run solely off a hard drive) you can essentially make them immediately available to anyone in your network. So say if you have 2 or 3 computers, maybe a laptop (since Time Capsule's wireless) or friends who stop by from time to time with their own machine, they can now all access that game without having to install it multiple times. There is also no need to swap out game saves when moving between machines as well and you could literally start a game indoors, save your progress, then load up and continue the game outside in the yard on a laptop. Now this is by no means a simple plug for the Time Machine. Even though I have had great first experiences with the device I assume that other remote disc devices like it should work as well. I can't say however what the performance of those devices will be like. However to give an example I tried running Under a Killing Moon with all the CD's copied and running on the Time Capsule and it played flawlessly as if it was on my own machine.

One other thing to keep in mind if you in fact decide to buy or already have this or a similar device is that you will have to change the dosbox config commands that I have in my guides. It is thankfully a simple process though. Visit the FAQ section of any of the PC game guides on this site if you have trouble or need to learn the steps to mounting a hard drive. Once you have this info it is a simple process of changing the drive letter(s) to Z: and making sure everything else is the same when you install the game on the Time Capsule. So for those with more than one machine who can find use in the scenarios listed above and maybe need a backup device, this piece of hardware or ones similar to it provide some untethered gaming that can be surprisingly convenient.

See You Tommorow & Happy Gaming!

-Glenn

FAQ:
The config file is missing what do I do?
The game won't run on Windows Vista. What should I do?
The game runs sluggish. Is there a way to improve this?
How do I make the game launch in fullscreen mode?
How do I change the amount of RAM available?
How do I mount a hard drive or CD-ROM drive in Dosbox?
How do I change my machine type in Dosbox?
How do I capture a screenshot during gameplay?
I can't download from Abandonia. What should I do?
How do I close or exit Dosbox?