DOSBox, bad \, /, ” keys and you

DOSBox, bad \, /, ” keys and you

I was fooling around with some old GWBasic programs and needed to use DOSBox the other day.  When using DOSBox, however, I was getting bad characters for \,/,” and various other keys.  This makes using DOSBox almost impossible since you cannot change directories or issue load/save commands since they need the filename in quotes.   Yet the solution to this problem isn’t what you think.  DOSBox provides an internal key re-mapper, but it wasn’t working right and I still couldn’t get the keys I needed mapped.  Often they would just enter blank or incorrect characters.

It turns out the real culprit is a badly selected default Windows keyboard driver. Open your Windows device manager and look for the keyboards.  Often you’ll see one listed as:

“MCIR 109 Keyboard”

Change this driver to “HID Compliant device”
Then restart DOSBox and it should all be working like a champ.

Here’s the thread with more detailed info
http://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=18465

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.