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0.83.1 release notes

Release date: 2026-11-14

Summary

The main focus of this maintenance release is to fix a few regressions introduced in 0.83.0 and earlier releases.

This release was made possible by everyone who tried our 0.83.0 release, reported bugs and pull requests, and tested the updates. Thank you!

0.83.0 regression fixes

  • Fix joystick becoming disabled after changing the joysticktype setting at runtime.
  • Fix IPX regressions when toggling the ipx setting at runtime.
  • Fix saving rendered screenshot when presentation_mode = host-rate or vsync = on is set.
  • Fix some games that support joysticks misbehaving with innovation = on.
  • Fix Zone Raiders displaying distorted graphics on macOS.
  • Restore the --noconsole Windows-only command line option.
  • Reduce the size of the DOSBox Staging executable from about 45 MB to 13 MB.

0.82.1 regression fixes

  • Fix running programs and batch files via relative paths without file extension.

Other changes

  • Add new CHCP command to change only the code page at runtime.

  • Remove automatic locale detection — it didn’t work reliably and consistently across our supported platforms (especially on Windows), so it had to go.

Installation

This is a (mostly) drop-in upgrade for users already on 0.83.0 — no configuration changes are necessary (except for changing the auto locale settings to concrete values for non-English users).

For those upgrading from an earlier DOSBox Staging version, please follow these upgrade instructions and read the earlier release notes to learn about the changes and new features.

First-time users and people migrating from other DOSBox variants should start by reading the Getting Started guide and the User manual.

Game compatibility fixes

  • Fix Zone Raiders displaying distorted graphics on macOS (0.83.0 regression).
Full PR list of game compatibility fixes
  • Improve CHOP rounding for near-integer FPU results (#5149)

Graphics

  • Rendered screenshots are now saved correctly when setting presentation_mode = host-rate or vsync = on enabled (0.83.0 regression).

  • Always sync CRT shader phosphor mask overlays to the output image. In some rare edge cases (e.g., black-and-white checkerboard pixel patterns), the lack of syncing resulted in different colour tints depending on the viewport/window size.

Full PR list of graphics-related changes
  • Only read back rendered captures after the capture path is allocated (#5081)
  • Sync CRT shader phosphor mask overlays to the output image (#5087)

Sound

  • The Entertainer, a variant of the Innovation SSI-2001 sound card, is no longer enabled by default when setting innovation = on. The Entertainer uses ports that overlap with the IBM Game Control Adapter port ranges, and this caused problems in some games with joystick support. Set innovation = entertainer if you want to emulate the board (0.83.0 regression).
Full PR list of sound-related changes
  • Make The Entertainer variant of the SSI-2001 opt-in (#5067)

Input

  • Fix joystick becoming disabled after changing the joysticktype setting at runtime, e.g., by running joysticktype 4axis (0.83.0 regression).
Full PR list of input-related changes
  • Fix i8042 word/dword read regression (#5065)
  • Fix joystick disabled after changing joysticktype at runtime (#5055)

DOS integration

  • Fix running programs and batch files via relative paths without file extensions. For example, ..\GAME did not run GAME.BAT or GAME.EXE in the parent folder (0.82.1 regression).

  • Repeatedly enabling/disabling EMS and XMS won’t leak paragraphs from the DOS private memory pool anymore. Enabling and disabling them more than about 70 times caused a crash (0.83.0 regression).

MOUNT command improvements

  • Unknown or incorrect parameters are now rejected with an error message (they were silently ignored previously).

  • Various other parsing fixes and enhancements to make argument parsing less ambiguous in some edge cases.

Full PR list of DOS integration related changes
  • Fix mount geometry option parsing (#5030)
  • Fix running programs via relative paths without an extension (#5116)
  • Fix runtime [dos] setting changes leaking DOS private memory (#5063)
  • MOUNT command parsing fixes (#5053)

General

  • Fix IPX regressions when toggling the ipx setting at runtime (0.83.0 regression).

  • Restore the --noconsole command line option on Windows (0.83.0 regression).

  • Fix the Windows no-console launcher so --noconsole detaches the console.

  • Reduce the size of the DOSBox Staging executable from about 45 MB to 13 MB (0.83.0 regression).

  • Fix context menu icons on Windows.

  • Improve the Linux man page.

Full PR list of miscellaneous enhancements
  • Remove weird stdout & stderr redirection to a file on Windows (#5007)
  • Remove large static framebuffer arrays from the executable (#5140)
Full PR list of miscellaneous fixes
  • Fix unit test fixture not applying its config file (#5061)
  • IPX fixes (#5064)
Full PR list of documentation-related changes
  • docs: Make man page OPTIONS section render correctly on POSIX 80 column terminals (#5133)
  • Document all ems setting options (#5054)
  • Fix man page to be fully conformant with IEEE Std 1003.1 (POSIX) attempt 2 (#5132)
  • Man page update with links to Getting Started and User Manual pages (#5130)
  • Standardise man page SPECIAL KEYS macro formatting (#5137)
Full PR list of project maintenance related changes
  • Fix Windows no-console launcher (#5057)
  • Update context menu icon references in installer script (#5034)

Localisation

Removal of automatic locale detection

The auto value has been removed from the keyboard_layout and country settings as they were not behaving reliably. Please set your locale settings manually in your primary or local configurations; see the Localisation user manual section for details.

Add CHCP command

International users have long been plagued by localisation issues. For example, German users might set a German keyboard layout and international code page 850 in their configs. In games that use fancy box graphics, like Tommy’s Manor, they then see characters like Ï instead of the boxes. Using KEYB, it was possible to change both the code page and the keyboard layout, but with a pre-existing local dosbox.conf configs, that meant forcing a layout on the player. In German, for example, that swaps Y and Z, among other things.

No more! This release adds the beloved CHCP command, which switches code pages at will without touching the rest of the localisation settings.

Full PR list of localisation-related changes
  • Add CHCP to allow changing only the codepage. (#4997)
  • docs: Add German translations for newly-added CHCP/KEYB changes. (#5001)
  • Remove automatic locale setting guessing heuristics (#5080)

Contributors

0.83.1 commit authors

  • dividebysandwich
  • Grounded0
  • gschmidl
  • johnnovak
  • kklobe
  • vvekic

Thank you

We are grateful for all the community contributions and the original DOSBox project, on which DOSBox Staging is based.