Pentium 166 MMX · 64 MB · S3 Trio64

Airtime in DOSBox

My games are built for a high-end 90s PC, roughly a 166 MHz Pentium MMX with 64 MB of RAM. They make extensive use of MMX, which is not supported on all DOS emulators. Here are some tips for getting my games going.

Pre-packaged builds

I have pre-packaged Airtime with emulators that work well, and have been configured appropriately. This is the easiest way to get Airtime running on your local machine.

If these, for some reason, don’t work, you can always play it in your browser. However, saves will not persist, and performance will likely be worse.

Setting it up yourself

Airtime should run on any emulator that supports MMX (I use a ton of MMX in my games).

I recommend the following:

  1. Install DOSBox-X or DOSBox Staging.

  2. Download airtime_dos.zip and unzip it. You get an airtime folder.

  3. Download my custom settings and put them beside the airtime folder: dosbox-x.conf for DOSBox-X, or dosbox.conf for DOSBox Staging.

    Games\                  <- the folder you unzipped into
├── airtime\            <- from airtime_dos.zip
│   ├── airtime.exe
│   ├── data\
│   └── res\
└── dosbox-x.conf       <- my settings go here, next to airtime\

  4. Then run dosbox-x or dosbox from that folder.

What I’ve tested

Frame rates for Airtime 0.9.13 on my test track, with the frame rate uncapped, on Linux with a Ryzen 9 9900X.

Emulator Frames a second
Reference (a real Pentium MMX 200, Windows 98) 108
DOSBox 0.74-3 No MMX
DOSBox-X 2026.10.01, my settings 77
DOSBox Staging 0.83.0, my settings 725†
The browser player (js-dos 8.4.1), headless Chrome 114

† I’m still looking into this, but it appears that DOSBox Staging really is much faster than DOSBox-X.

Tips for those who like to tinker

The downloads already do all of this for you. If you want to change the settings yourself, here’s what Airtime needs.

  • cputype=pentium_mmx Set the processor to a Pentium MMX.
  • memsize=64 Airtime sort of runs in 32 MB (start it with --force), but you really want 64 for things to run smoothly.
  • core=dynamic_rec for DOSBox-X, and core=dynamic for DOSBox Staging. Currently DOSBox-X’s core=dynamic has a bug that causes Airtime to crash, so don’t use it.
  • cycles=max limit 97240 is roughly P166 speed. You might find that sound stutters if you use fixed cycles without using limit, and your host machine can’t keep up. If you want the game faster, try doubling it.
  • sbtype=sb16 A Sound Blaster 16 is required.
  • machine=svga_s3trio64v+ in DOSBox-X, machine=svga_s3 in DOSBox Staging. I built the game for an S3 video card. It should work with any VESA 1.2 SVGA card, but I use hardware copying on an S3, so it’ll run better with that enabled.