Replaying the classics from a NAS - Anyone else running into DOSBox quirks over the network?
Posted: December 31, 2025 • 3:57 am
Hey everyone,
I’ve recently been on a massive nostalgia kick and decided it was finally time to replay the "Big Three" (Under a Killing Moon, The Pandora Directive, and Overseer). I haven't touched them in years, but after listening to the soundtrack on YouTube the other day, I just couldn't resist diving back into the mean streets of San Francisco.
I’m running into a bit of a weird logistical issue, though, and I wanted to see if anyone here has tried a similar setup. I’ve recently moved my entire retro game library (mostly GOG installers and some old ISO backups) onto my home media server to save space on my main desktop. My goal was to install and run everything directly from the network drive so I can access the saves from my laptop or desktop depending on where I’m sitting.
Here is the funny part: I’m getting some really strange stuttering during the FMV sequences in The Pandora Directive, specifically when running through DOSBox mounting a network drive. I actually thought it was a throughput issue at first. I’m a bit of a hardware nut, so I recently upgraded the NIC on my storage box to a refurbished enterprise-grade server adapter just to ensure I had rock-solid stability and speed for file transfers. You’d think a card designed for heavy server loads would handle a game from 1996 without breaking a sweat, right?
It’s honestly kind of ironic. I’m sitting here with this over-engineered network setup—server adapters https://serverorbit.com/network-devices ... er-adapter, shielded cables, the works—just to try and watch Tex fumble his way through a case in grainy 90s video quality. It reminds me a bit of the "high tech" electronics Tex is always fiddling with in the games. We have all this incredible modern hardware, yet getting the software to behave is still just as much of a puzzle as fixing a fritzed fax machine in the game.
I suspect the issue might actually be how DOSBox handles the cache when the drive isn't local, rather than the network hardware itself. The read speeds are fine when I test them manually, but the game just hiccups.
Has anyone else here tried running the Tex games purely off a NAS or network share? Do you keep everything installed locally to avoid these headaches, or is there a specific dosbox.conf setting buffer I need to tweak to make it smoother?
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts (and hopefully getting back to the case without the video freezing)!
I’ve recently been on a massive nostalgia kick and decided it was finally time to replay the "Big Three" (Under a Killing Moon, The Pandora Directive, and Overseer). I haven't touched them in years, but after listening to the soundtrack on YouTube the other day, I just couldn't resist diving back into the mean streets of San Francisco.
I’m running into a bit of a weird logistical issue, though, and I wanted to see if anyone here has tried a similar setup. I’ve recently moved my entire retro game library (mostly GOG installers and some old ISO backups) onto my home media server to save space on my main desktop. My goal was to install and run everything directly from the network drive so I can access the saves from my laptop or desktop depending on where I’m sitting.
Here is the funny part: I’m getting some really strange stuttering during the FMV sequences in The Pandora Directive, specifically when running through DOSBox mounting a network drive. I actually thought it was a throughput issue at first. I’m a bit of a hardware nut, so I recently upgraded the NIC on my storage box to a refurbished enterprise-grade server adapter just to ensure I had rock-solid stability and speed for file transfers. You’d think a card designed for heavy server loads would handle a game from 1996 without breaking a sweat, right?
It’s honestly kind of ironic. I’m sitting here with this over-engineered network setup—server adapters https://serverorbit.com/network-devices ... er-adapter, shielded cables, the works—just to try and watch Tex fumble his way through a case in grainy 90s video quality. It reminds me a bit of the "high tech" electronics Tex is always fiddling with in the games. We have all this incredible modern hardware, yet getting the software to behave is still just as much of a puzzle as fixing a fritzed fax machine in the game.
I suspect the issue might actually be how DOSBox handles the cache when the drive isn't local, rather than the network hardware itself. The read speeds are fine when I test them manually, but the game just hiccups.
Has anyone else here tried running the Tex games purely off a NAS or network share? Do you keep everything installed locally to avoid these headaches, or is there a specific dosbox.conf setting buffer I need to tweak to make it smoother?
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts (and hopefully getting back to the case without the video freezing)!