The perfect DOS gaming PC isn’t an old 486: It’s a Raspberry Pi

abdulmanannet77@gmail.comFebruary 2, 2026

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The perfect DOS gaming PC isn’t an old 486: It’s a Raspberry Pi

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Raspberry Pis are fantastic if you need a versatile, low-power device for any range of DIY projects, including robotics and simple self-hosted services. With a little work, they can also become a fantastic DOS gaming station.

Why run DOS for gaming?

When people talk about DOS, everyone thinks of clunky command-line interfaces and a never-ending stream of hardware compatibility issues. However, DOS also had, for its time, a large catalog of games that simply didn’t work on modern versions of Windows.

If you want to revisit these classics, you’ll need to run DOS.

Use a Raspberry Pi for DOS emulation

Even though Raspberry Pis are built using Arm and DOS was designed around the x86 architecture, they are a great option if you want to build a small, dedicated DOS gaming setup yourself.

One of their main advantages is their size and power consumption: even when running Raspberry Pi at maximum power, they will consume less power than a full desktop computer.

Plus, their compact size means you can easily hide one if you’re building a dedicated emulation station.

A Raspberry Pi 5 in a 3D printed case compatible with active coolers.

The only downside is the Arm architecture: this means there’s no chance of running anything DOS-related natively. You must use emulation. Fortunately, even the Raspberry Pi 3 is powerful enough to handle DOS emulation, and the Pi 4 and 5 are even better.

You just need to make sure you have enough RAM. I would recommend the 4GB variants at a minimum.

Choose an operating system

When building your Raspberry Pi DOS emulator station, one of the most important things is a lightweight operating system.

When creating my setup, I tried four different operating systems: DietPi, Raspberry Pi OS Lite, Raspberry Pi OS, and Ubuntu Server, which is my preferred operating system for self-hosting.

This is my favorite way to play DOS games on Windows 11

Old doesn’t mean bad.

The problem with the headless versions was the lack of user interface. In the end, I chose to just use the Raspberry Pi OS, as it simplified things considerably.

If I was running my setup on a Raspberry Pi 3 instead of a 4, I would probably opt for DietPi instead, as it is very light on resources.

Choosing and installing a DOS emulator

There are a handful of DOS emulators, but I’ve narrowed my choices to DOSBox-X and DOSBox Staging.

An old computer with a CRT monitor running Wolfenstein 3D.

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They are both frequently updated, reliable, and popular with the community. I chose to use DOSBox-X only because it’s the version I’ve used in the past when playing DOS games on my Windows PC.

You would be just fine with either one.

To install DOXBox-X, make sure to install Flatpak on your distribution, if you haven’t already. Normally you can just run the following two commands:

sudo apt install flatpak
flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://dl.flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo

Once done, you can install DOSBox-X by running:

flatpak install flathub com.dosbox_x.DOSBox-X

Then you’re done.

Getting DOS games

Unfortunately, setting up a DOS emulator on the Pi is actually easier than playing DOS games.

Most DOS games are considered abandonware, meaning no one actively sells or maintains them. This makes them buy.

As unfair as it may seem, it also doesn’t mean you can just download abandoned DOS games wherever you find them on the Internet – technically, that’s piracy. They will not enter the public domain until the end of the 21st century.

Fortunately, some of them have been released and can be acquired from legitimate sources.

Galaxy of Gamers (GOG) has launched an initiative to make older games, including some DOS titles, available for download. If you’re looking to get legitimate DRM-free copies of DOS games, this is your best bet.

The Breath of Fire IV poster with a GOG preservation program badge

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This belongs in a museum!

A few years ago I had some old floppy disks that I use for mine.

Once you have your DOS games, simply transfer them to the appropriate folder on your Raspberry Pi DOS machine. I put mine in my home folder, although you’re not limited to that. DOSBox has built-in documentation that makes the whole process extremely simple.

The Raspberry Pi is a great little computer if you want to do low-power emulation. If you want to do more than just DOS emulation, you can check out RetroPie.