Running Frontier Elite 2 with DOSBox

Frontier Elite 2 was released in 1993 and was intended to run under DOS rather than Windows. This has caused difficulties for people wishing to play FE2 on their modern PCs, and a few unfortunate Windows XP users have been unable to run the game at all.
For all those people, here is a complete guide to getting the game running when all else has failed. The key is a freeware program called DOSBox

DOSBox sets up a DOS environment on your PC, with all memory issues etc addressed. The DOSBox website has all the details, including a list of all the games it will run, but for the basic purpose of getting FE2 to run, all you need is here at FrontierAstro.
It can be done in three easy steps

Firstly, create a folder on your C drive called Frontier.
Then download Shareware FE2 from FrontierAstro and extract the zip file to C:\Frontier

Download the DOSBox 0.74 Installer to your desktop and run the program, installing the program to the default location as shown above

Download this small zip file to your desktop and extract the contents to C:Frontier

Now execute the "run_FE2" batch file and, with a bit of luck, shareware FE2 should load up and run. If it doesn't then its possible you didn't place the files exactly as specified above. If that's the case, move them as appropriate or amend the batch files so that they match up with the Frontier and DOSBox locations.

The docs with the DOSBox program give more details on how to fine tune the game performance, but the easiest way to improve the framerate is to switch into windowed mode (Alt-Enter) and then press Ctrl-F12 up to a value of about 20000 (as shown in the title bar). Depending on your processor speed, FE2 should now run very nicely.



Early in the game there is a copy protection system which requires you to input a particular letter from the manual. There is a file included in the download called protect.txt which contains the necessary codes.
After you've answered correctly a few times, the program will stop requesting this information.