BOCHS and DOSBOX-0.61 Uploaded

[LordDavon]

The latest DOSBox was compiled eith the new SDK, so the latest ROM is most likely required.

LD

[ScottYelich]

the dosbox site has those rom bios and vga bios....
I\'ll see what I can do to get my copies uploaded.

Scott

[Reaper]

Tried new Dosbox...
In window mode, it is a bit faster than previous release, but still isn\'t fast enough to emulate even PC XT in CGA mode (again, keyboard and especially redrawing). Next day I\'ll try to configure Dosbox and give it a try in a fullscreen mode...

[LordDavon]

Tried new Dosbox...
In window mode, it is a bit faster than previous release, but still isn\'t fast enough to emulate even PC XT in CGA mode (again, keyboard and especially redrawing). Next day I\'ll try to configure Dosbox and give it a try in a fullscreen mode...

I tried some of the optimization techniques that were recommended.  Of coarse, try again with the framerate at 3 and let me know.  This will let me know what changes I need to make in the next version.

LD

[Reaper]

Tried full-screen VGA mode with 1500 instructions (up to 2500) and 3 skipped frames. Finally, I\'ve been able to run old CGA \"Arcade valleyball\" game like real PC XT. Gee, thank you, LD!  

Keyboard response is, well, more than reasonable. At last, key pressed change the situation quickly enough. The main (but not the only) problem is screen redrawing, which is still very slow (tried turning on double buffering - it helped, but only a little). Besides, screen (especially cursor) now flickers a little, a problem that isn\'t serious, I report about it \"just in case\".  

Two other problems that are rather annoying are: 1) all the Fn+key symbols still appear only with 1 (like 1: instead of just : - check for yourself) and 2) when some application (like a game  ) processes functional keys as well as Esc key, I can\'t enter functional key as usual (Esc+number). I know it\'s more of ROM problem than of Dosbox\'s, but Linux programs like MC process functional keys normally and differ one Esc press (which may be followed by the number) from two Esc presses (which is definitely a Cancel). Please try to fix these two problems.

[LordDavon]

Tried full-screen VGA mode with 1500 instructions (up to 2500) and 3 skipped frames. Finally, I\'ve been able to run old CGA \"Arcade valleyball\" game like real PC XT. Gee, thank you, LD!    

Keyboard response is, well, more than reasonable. At last, key pressed change the situation quickly enough. The main (but not the only) problem is screen redrawing, which is still very slow (tried turning on double buffering - it helped, but only a little). Besides, screen (especially cursor) now flickers a little, a problem that isn\'t serious, I report about it \"just in case\".    

Two other problems that are rather annoying are: 1) all the Fn+key symbols still appear only with 1 (like 1: instead of just : - check for yourself) and 2) when some application (like a game  ) processes functional keys as well as Esc key, I can\'t enter functional key as usual (Esc+number). I know it\'s more of ROM problem than of Dosbox\'s, but Linux programs like MC process functional keys normally and differ one Esc press (which may be followed by the number) from two Esc presses (which is definitely a Cancel). Please try to fix these two problems.

Sounds like we are making progress.  

I am not sure how to handle the function key/ESC key situation.  Any suggestions are appreciated.  There are some speedups that I can try for the video.  The nice thing is that it is the speed is about the same in CGA as VGA.  Too bad we couldn\'t get X to run in 256 colors.  ;-)

LD

[Reaper]

I just meant that old CGA games run in reasonable speed, but even EGA 320x200x16 games still redraw the screen VERY slowly (let alone 640x200x16 EGA or 256 color VGA games). Maybe it\'s a problem with overall performace of the game though (I\'ll try those games in monochrome CGA mode to say that for sure).

What \'bout the key presses... I\'m in no way a programmer, but I suspect that pdaX doesn\'t process one Cancel (Esc) key as a Cancel (if it processes it at all - I haven\'t found a program but MC which responds to Cancel key) - it processes only two sequential Cancel keys like that. Or, if pdaX doesn\'t process Cancel keys presses, try to tune Dosbox source to process as Cancel only two Cancel presses, not one.

[Reaper]

By the way, two more problems that are still to be solved: 1) Stylus isn\'t calibrated at all (Dosbox seems to be getting its coordinates from nowhere  ) and 2) Even in CGA games PC Speaker sound (let alone Soundblaster) is very jerky and interrupts approx. 2 times a second, no matter what I do to change the bitrate and so on...

[LordDavon]

Ok.  I am just trying to address speed issues at the moment, but try the latest version:

dosbox-6.1-r3.tar.gz

I tuned it for the xscale a little more as well as disabled a few features that may/may-not affect the speed.

LD

[Reaper]

Recently tried it. Just a bit faster, but the only game I\'m able to play is still CGA Arcade Valleyball and only because it doesn\'t offer much sound. In all the other games (even in CGA Cat) sound is still jerky (though a little less jerky than in previous version  ).

Mouse emulation is a bit improved, but many games (like King\'s Quest I EGA) still don\'t locate the stylus properly. Redrawing is still VERY slow (in KQ1 different parts of the Graham\'s body move at the different quarks of time; it would be even funny but I say about skipping 3 frames  )

I suspect that Dosbox would run significantly faster without running X, just from the command prompt. But it needs SDL libs and like so it can\'t start without X...

[TonyOlsen]

Ah... this is the Gem Forum I was looking for!

So... you\'ve all been able to get DosBox working on your Zaurus?  Any of you using QTopia?  Please give me the details.  I tried running it but it says that I\'m missing the libXft.so.2 library.  I was told that QTopia doesn\'t have all of the needed libraries.  Can anyone comment to that?  Can I download the missing libraries from somewhere?

Thanks in advance!

[TonyOlsen]

(Yes, I believe in recycling!     )

[Reaper]

Just install pdaX ROM. Dosbox compiled by Lord Davon won\'t run under Qtopia. Your quest is mine  , too, so please feel free to ask.

[TonyOlsen]

Could we create a location where all of the missing libraries could be uploaded to?  Would DosBox theoretically work on QTopia if all of the missing Libraries are there?... or is there more to it than that?

[jmbowman]

The main dependency of Dosbox is SDL, which normally is compiled to use an X server for most of its graphics work.  However, SDL can also be compiled to use Qtopia for graphics instead (several games and emulators on the Zaurus use this), so in theory it should be possible to compile a version of Dosbox that links against that configuration and hence would run on Qtopia natively.

I briefly tried this last year (I think using Dosbox 0.58 and SDL 1.2.6); I got to the point where it compiled cleanly, but would immediately exit with no error message when I tried to run it.  Didn\'t have time to debug it, so I didn\'t get any further; there are new versions of both available now, so it\'s probably worth trying again (although looking at the Debian package for the latest Dosbox, it may have a few more dependencies now).  Basically, I suspect that it won\'t work \"out of the box\", but probably wouldn\'t take too much coding to work out the bugs; the trick is finding somebody with the skill and time to do it.