I have been playing with dosbox v0.6.3, compiled by Chyang & packaged by Meanie as "dosbox_0.6.3_arm.ipk". It runs very well, though perhaps a wee bit slowly, on my C860 with stock Sharp ROM. No X needed. There are a couple of useful tricks that I have managed to stumble upon so far.
When the emulator is launched and the task bar area begins to flash & flicker, instead of pressing "Cancel" as Chyang has suggested, until the display finally decides to give up & clear, just pressing "Home" once should cause the display to correct itself without further delay.
The inability of DOSbox to see the keycodes for ":" is a major difficulty to using DOS.
spartan suggested placing the following lines in the [Autoexec] section of the dosbox.conf file:
mount c /mnt/card
c:\
which mounts your own working C: drive & changes to it. Great idea but it still leaves you stranded there. I prefer:
pause
REM Lets you read the opening screen if you want to do so.
mount c /home/zaurus/Documents/DOSbox-C
REM mounts the C: drive.
path=c:\;z:\
REM makes executables on the C: & Z: drives acessable from any location.
C:
REM changes to the C: drive. The "\" will keep this from working, BTW.
type quit.txt
REM displays a short test file reminding me how to get out without crashing the C860
The system doesn't seem to care that the Zaurus displays the yen instead of the slash, BTW.
quit.text
"To exit back to Qtopia without crashing, press the SHIFT + <LEFT JAPANESE KEY> + CANCEL combination.
Using EXIT to terminate the command shell and you will have to take the battery out."
Thanks go to Chyang for having "updated libsdl, added shift+ctrl+cancel to brute exit sdl apps"
Finally, I have 2 very simple batch files located on the virtual C: drive:
GOTO-C.BAT
C:
and
GOTO-Z.BAT
Z:
Trivial, but the only way that I have found so far, in combination with the path settings, to switch between drives. When I finally mount more drives, I'll just add more batch files (till someone finds a way to fix the keymapping).
Be aware that, if you are using KeyHelper, you will loose the key repeat once you start DOSbox AND it will stay gone when you exit back to Qtopia. I use QPE-SHUTDOWN v1.5 to restart Qtopia, but you could also probably use "khctl reload".
However, if you disable KeyHelper before running DOSbox, the 3 key combo above to gracefully exit the shell ceases to work.
Also discovered that SHIFT + Fn + C still acts as screen capture, although you won't hear the shutter sound effects to let you know that it is working.
So I took a shot of the screen.
But then thought, well how can I PROVE this actually came from my C860 instead of a regular desktop. Ah, but I also discovered that the Fn + <LEFT JAPANESE KEY> combination causes Qtopia to attempt to pop up the input pick list, fail & leave the task bar visable but DOSbox still running. So I took a shot of that screen.
A neat trick, but it also causes the SHIFT + <LEFT JAPANESE KEY> + CANCEL key combination to stop working leaving one with battery removal as the only way out of the shell.
Do NOT press the SHIFT + HOME keys. That combination causes a similar effect except with rotation to portrait mode & a real hashed up screen.
I tried an old PCTOOLS v4.1 but it wimps out claiming that both C: & Z: have damaged FAT sectors.
Lastly, just for grins, I ran Micro$oft's Diagnostics (MSD) to see what would happen. And it ran fine. Here is that screen shot.
[ Invalid Attachment ]
Now I await the howls of outrage at this perversion of an innocent Zaurus by having run Micky$oft code upon it .... put down those stones, people. (G)
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