Appler runs on DOS, so first we need DOSBox. Yes, we're going to emulate while we emulate. If you already have DOSBox set up you can skip this part.

Get it from www.dosbox.com. It runs on pretty much everything - Solaris? Sure! OS/2? Of course. BeOS?! Why not?

I'll be installing it on a Mac but the procedure is similar on other systems. Download the DMG and extract it anywhere you like, I put mine in ~/DOSBox. You'll also need a folder for the C drive and all of your programs, I made a folder called ~/DOSBox/CDrive.

Run DOSBox for the first time and you'll arrive at a Z:\> prompt. We want to automate a few things, so type EXIT and press enter to quit. Now open ~/Library/Preferences/DOSBox 0.74-3-3 Preferences with your favorite editor. This file will live in different places on different systems - on Windows you can find it under Config in the DOSBox folder on the Start menu. On Linux it's the conf file in ~/.dosbox.

At the bottom of the file is an [autoexec] section. Commands placed here will be run when DOSBox starts, so we can mount drives, add devices, etc. For now we just need our C drive, so add this:

MOUNT C ~/DOSBox/CDrive

C:

In other operating systems use the appropriate CDrive path instead. You can also take a look at the other settings, but defaults will work fine for us.

Now get Appler from the GitHub page: https://github.com/zajo/appler

Click Code and then Download Zip. Extract that and copy the bin folder to your DOSBox CDrive folder. Rename it to Appler. Things should look like this when you run DOSBox:

Type in Appler and press enter. Press enter at the Appler screen and enjoy the demo!

The demo then launches Lode Runner, which you can have fun playing if you like.

Read on to learn how to use the various tools available and how to load more software.