Dosbox On Zaurus :), Really badly want dos on my zaurus Options

[alfie]

I'm an old game freak. Got tons of my XT games all nicely archived, was hoping to play them on my zaurus (C-700)

I've been reading around and realise dosbox and most of the dos emulators work only on X, so I'm venturing on getting pdaXrom installed instead of cacko-rom. (I dun use my zaurus as a pda anyway, more of a platform for code editing (joe) and viewing files.

Anyone knows of any good sites for dosbox on the zaurus ?

[Laze]

Basically just download dosbox of the feed and use it. Not much to setup you need to make a config file - do a search people have discussed it before but don't expect miracles. Its hard to emulate x86 but without sound it runs okay i think.

[raduga]

Anyone knows of any good sites for dosbox on the zaurus ?

Eh...
This one? -
or this - http://www.oesf.org/forums

DOSBox will run in SDL on Sharp-based roms, as well as X,
so it's not a technical requirement; but most of the other interesting
emulators require X, so if you want to emulate things *other* than DOS,
as well, go with pdaXrom.

Additionally, I've noticed some keyboard quirks under SDL-framebuffer
that I don't see under X11, in DOSBox, so it may be a good idea anyway.

Now... DOSBox builds prior to 0.62 seem to run fine, but >0.61 are BROKEN
by default, due to memory alignment problems. I'll post a patch for 0.63 if
you're interested; but I build binaries for pdaXrom only.

DOSBox IS SLOW. Games that are largely CPU-bound (or which halt on user
input frequently) have a subjective feel of a high-end 286, or low end 386.
Games that are heavily graphics-intensive have performance about that of an XT
or worse. Think "80286-12" on average.

[raduga]

Basically just download dosbox of the feed and use it. Not much to setup you need to make a config file - do a search people have discussed it before but don't expect miracles. Its hard to emulate x86 but without sound it runs okay i think.

thanks for the feed, Laze!
But I see you're still using 0.61. Who maintains DOSBox for pdaXrom,
that I can send a 0.62/0.63 arm patch to? Or should I build a new ipk myself?
0.62 has interactive keyboard mapper.
0.63 is reputed to be faster, but I haven't seen much improvement.
0.63 has some sound bugs; fixed in CVS
0.64 *may* have patch for ARM cpus in the main distribution. (not done yet by far)

Also, some keys are problematic, because of hardwired US-english BIOS
(you can assign Fn-G to Key_Semicolon but you have to press Shift-Fn-G to get colon)

I'll probably make a Zaurus keyboard BIOS patch, too. I *think* this is what LordDavon did, but haven't found his sources....

[ScottYelich]

rad --

is there a binary for 0.63 for pdaXrom somewhere?

Scott

[alfie]

I'm already reflashing to pdaXrom Will be very happy to get the latest dosbox 0.63 from you.

I'll be running stuff w/o sound. Hoping for the best.

Does the dosbox for pdaXrom uses X11 or SDL ? Is it possible to start it w/o starting X Then if its using SDL-framebuffer ?

Alf
-

Eh...
This one? -
or this -  http://www.oesf.org/forums

DOSBox will run in SDL on Sharp-based roms, as well as X,
so it's not a technical requirement;  but most of the other interesting
emulators require X, so if you want to emulate things *other* than DOS,
as well, go with pdaXrom.

Additionally, I've noticed some keyboard quirks under SDL-framebuffer
that I don't see under X11, in DOSBox, so it may be a good idea anyway.

Now...  DOSBox builds prior to 0.62 seem to run fine, but >0.61 are BROKEN
by default, due to memory alignment  problems.  I'll post a patch for 0.63 if
you're interested; but I build binaries for pdaXrom only.

DOSBox IS SLOW.  Games that are largely CPU-bound  (or which halt on user
input frequently) have a subjective feel of a high-end 286, or low end 386.
Games that are heavily graphics-intensive have performance about that of an XT
or worse.  Think "80286-12" on average.

[alfie]

Qn: If DosBox is an SDL app, why does it need X ? Or does it ?

[raduga]

Qn: If DosBox is an SDL app, why does it need X ? Or does it ?

Its an SDL app, it doesn't need X11, but seems to work rather better with it.

With SDL-fb some keys appear to be misfunctional, mouse doesn't work,
and consequently you can't use the GUI keymapper.
It may or may not be possible to manually remap extended key combinations in framebuffer mode. I haven't succeeded.

Despite all this it *may* run faster, due to less overhead.
Also, you'll have more free memory, which could help for some things.

[raduga]

rad --

is there a binary for 0.63 for pdaXrom somewhere?

Scott

http://zaurus.spy.org/feeds/raduga/
I'll post a source patch (alignment fix) in a bit.

try 'dosbox -startmapper' for some fun.
Mod1= CTRL
Mod2 = ALT
Mod3 = Fn

Do you know if Lord Davon secreted the source to his mods anywhere?
I'd really like to see what he did with the 0.61 sources to fix the Zaurus keyboard-
brute-hacking the BIOS or something more elegant.

[ScottYelich]

no.
and he seems to be gone, again.

[wendell]

Ok. I can't get 0.63 to work (libasound.so.2 missing. )

and pressing Fn still generates '1s' .. so how do you compile it yourself? anyone have the alignment patch for .63 ?

This is what needs to be done for the '1s' fix
replace the following lines in src/gui/sdlmain.cpp
/* Special Keys */
default:
code=KBD_1;
LOG(LOG_KEYBOARD,LOG_ERROR)("Unhandled SDL keysym %d"...
break;
/* change KBD_1 to something like KBD_leftshift */
/* or change 313 to just skip and go on? */

I will try to compile dosbox myself, I guess, but I have no idea what to do about the alignment patch and I haven't had great success doing that in the past.

Wendell

[muddog]

http://zaurus.spy.org/feeds/raduga/
I'll post a source patch (alignment fix)  in a bit.

try 'dosbox -startmapper' for some fun.
Mod1= CTRL
Mod2 = ALT
Mod3 = Fn

Do you know if Lord Davon secreted the source to his mods anywhere?
I'd really like to see what he did with the 0.61 sources to fix the Zaurus keyboard-
brute-hacking the BIOS or something more elegant.

The feeds of dosbox is greate!, works fast than the binary which i build from offical source by myself.
But the problem is the rigth mouse click is not vaild. And the touch screen does not work fine. Any patch or total patches for dosbox on Zaurus?

[Hrw]

raduga: can you finally share a patch?

[raduga]

raduga: can you finally share a patch?

I don't think I have the original patch anymore, but 0.64+ has support for ARM
in the main tree (0.65 is current)

when configuring, --disable-unaligned-memory
also, --disable-fpu --disable-opengl may help performance
also, --disable-sdltest --disable-alsatest --disable-debug may help avoid some problems when building and/or running

If the keyboard layout is all wonky, you may need to enable/disable
"usescancodes" in the dosbox.conf file

Some keys ( ex: ":" still needs <shift><fn>g ) need extra work-
a patch to make them work "right" on the zaurus hasn't yet been written.

If you use the current source, or CVS, it should work pretty much good.

[raduga]

http://zaurus.spy.org/feeds/raduga/
I'll post a source patch (alignment fix)  in a bit.

try 'dosbox -startmapper' for some fun.
Mod1= CTRL
Mod2 = ALT
Mod3 = Fn

Do you know if Lord Davon secreted the source to his mods anywhere?
I'd really like to see what he did with the 0.61 sources to fix the Zaurus keyboard-
brute-hacking the BIOS or something more elegant.

The feeds of dosbox is greate!, works fast than the binary which i build from offical source by myself.
But the problem is the rigth mouse click is not vaild. And the touch screen does not work fine. Any patch or total patches for dosbox on Zaurus?

Which version were you trying to build and compile yourself?
The feed I put up there is extremely old, and probably newer builds should be faster.

If you use GCC flags appropriate to your system, and an SDL that's optimized for your cpu/video, you'll have the best results overall.

I've seen both right and left mouse buttons fail in some applications; hard to track down, but it looks like an obscure emulation bug.

If the RMB never works, its possible your system is not generating them properly in the first place. Cacko/pdaXrom/opie/etc all have different ways to generate RMB.

Also... there *are* some problems with touchscreen calibration. I've been investigating this for awhile, and am.... closer to a fix, but don't have one working yet. I'll let you know when I have a chance to test it some more.

HRW: I *was* working on a 0.65 .bb; sorry, but I got sidetracked. I'll look into it, when I get a working OE build system back up.