Linux Netmech how-to

Collection of useful posts.
Forum rules
If you write a FAQ be sure that you are accurate as possible!
No General posts in this forum!
Post Reply
skipg77
I.S. Baby
Posts: 1
Joined: Mon Jul 14, 2008 8:48 am

Linux Netmech how-to

Post by skipg77 »

Hi all, I'm new to this particular forum, but was an early member of the original (I think it was the original) "Netmech Revival" site/forum. (as skip77) I remember Myg and Sir_MMPD, as well as posting the netmech95 on WinXP how-to. I also helped set up our first hamachi network, played some, and then sort of faded out of touch.

Anyway, enough about me! On to the tutorial...

This should work on any reasonably recent Linux distro. You will need the following:
-Some kind of graphical interface, doesn't really matter which desktop manager
-Myg's NetMech DOS package (available here: http://www.mech2.org/downloads/mech2/NetmechDos.exe)
-Wine (http://winehq.org, the version I used to test was 1.0)
-Dosbox (the native Linux version, not the Windows EXE)
(Dosbox and Wine should probably be installed with your package manager program)

My test machine is an Ubuntu 7.04 laptop with Dosbox 0.70, Wine 1.0, an ATI mobility graphics card, 1 GB RAM, and Centrino processor. (oh, and the connection is wireless ;) )

1. After installing Wine and Dosbox, you want to grab the Netmech installer and run using Wine. (either double-click on it, or execute "wine NetmechDos.exe" in the console)

2. Select default options for everything, and the installer should run flawlessly. If it doesn't, you probably need a newer version of Wine.

3. Now, you need to fire up a terminal, (unfortunately) and navigate to the netmech folder (e.g. "cd ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/NetmechDos")

4. Finally, type "dosbox" to launch dosbox inside that folder. It will auto-read the included custom dosbox.conf file (which I assume Myg created) and launch Netmech DOS just like on Windows. From there you can chat, connect to games, etc.

5. (OPTIONAL): I like to edit the "dosbox.conf" file inside the installed folder and change "fullscreen=true" to "fullscreen=false". This starts Netmech up inside a window and will let you alt+tab to do other things, etc.


Obligatory screenshot:

Image


Hopefully these steps work as well for you as they did for me. If you have any questions/problems, go ahead and ask in this thread, I'll try to solve what I can. Happy hunting!

-Skipg77
Post Reply