Hi!

i want to use a old pc running windows xp professional, i´m planning to put dosbox
on it to play some games that didn´t work on my other pc.
here are the specs:

pentium 2 processor running at 450 mhz
nvidia tnt graphics card, can´t remember the full name of that card
384 mb ram
soundblaster live sound card.

the question is if dosbox is gonna work any well on this machine?
i hope it´s going to work because i love playing old pc games on real computers with real hardware, just for nostalgic reasons.

Windows XP ran DOS games natively, so why not try that first?

Perhaps a bit low on RAM (then again maybe not depending games you intend to play), but should run happily on your old x86 XP, only way to find out is go ahead and install, check their site for the version best suited for you.

Plokite_Wolf also has made a very valid point to consider.

I had a similar PC, the same graphic card a tnt m64, a soundblaster (good choice) and similar ram. Why do you not install a Win 98 SE? It´s support dos and you don´t need to use dosbox.

Please do go further and explain what is real hardware and real computers? You are living in a very privileged environment whereby dosbox and scummvm and others now all work on “fake” computers and hardware like win10?

He might then run into the problems of old.
Are there still easy to find guides on setting up all the memory and driver settings in the system config or a boot disk?

That hardware is a bit on the slow side for emulation :-( You will probably not have a good experience. Why not make a (max) 1.99GB partition and install DOS on it?

This ^^^

Or

Maybe go the Win98/95 route ?, as suggested earlier, which will run Dos games and programs via the underlying DOS, which earlier versions of Windows run on top of....

In the past run games was sometimes an odyssey, as when games required more XMS memory.

I have floppies to use as boot disk when i had to reinstall W98 and used to visit pages like vogons. For the tnt drivers search the detonators drivers ;)

A thing that i did is create a folder or a cd with all the drivers from a PC to not forget them. Indeed i have 4 or 5 old retro computers, that i don´t use excepts on holidays and some of them are broken (a 386 is pending for repareing the power supply after almost 20 years without on.

Sure... and why not run Dosbox in Windows 10 in VirtualBox on that? I prefer Dosbox on my fake i7 with imaginary hardware. It's the best way to play fantasy games!

Dosbox probably won't run great on that old of a pc. ScummVM might work. So I'd also recommend installing Windows 98se, a DOS partition, or VDMSound. Depending on how hard you want to work on it.

If you decide to use a DOS partition, head over to Phil's Computer Lab and grab his MS-DOS Starter Pack. It'll make your life easier. https://www.philscomputerlab.com/ms-dos-starter-pack.html
And you'll need the SB live DOS driver
https://www.philscomputerlab.com/sound-blaster-live.html

For 98se you'll need
1. A 98se Boot Disk (you can get this online) and a floppy drive.
2. Windows 98se cd and key
3. Drivers
4. Time
And if you need help, Phil probably has a video on his YouTube channel.

If you just want to stick with Windows XP, most DOS games likely won't have any sound. The easiest way to fix that would be to install VDMSound.
https://sourceforge.net/projects/vdmsound/

Good luck!