Games and Game Ports On the Cx60 series machines

[omega]

Hi everyone, while i\'m waiting for USPS to find my lost C860 which is loaded with Qtopia 1.21A I\'m noticing that there is a bit of activity concerning the use of emulators and games on the Z. Hi TonyOlsen!

I think it would be very benefical if people could compile a list here of PC games that will run on the Zaurus and perhaps to then develop this into a FAQ.

I\'m trying to get my head around what exactly is required in terms of compability. I know that certain games have been ported from windows to linux and rewritten in sdl. What is the current state of SDL on the zaurus and how much does performance suffer between an i386 and the ARM?

For example I found a project called freecnc which is a SDL rewrite of Command & Conquer. I\'m not sure of what performance will be like but this game used to run fine on a 486 so intuitively the Z should have enough juice to cope.

http://holarse.wue.de/freecnc/index.php?co...ent=screenshots

I would appreciate if people could spend a moment to append to this list, and also to point out guides and relevant information including what cross compatible languages exist for porting games.

For example - How well does the ScummVM work on the Zaurus, because it supports about a dozen classic PC games including day of the tentacle and Sam & Max.

[omega]

What about Duke 3D? Apparently the original source has been released so it runs natively on linux... http://icculus.org/duke3d/

[CoreyC]

What about Duke 3D? Apparently the original source has been released so it runs natively on linux...http://icculus.org/duke3d/

I\'ll attempt to compile that this weekend.  I would try now but I am currently running make on a huge source, and I am expecting it to take a long long time to complete

[TonyOlsen]

Hi TonyOlsen

Hi, Omega!

how much does performance suffer between an i386 and the ARM?

The Qemu emulator has posted some benchmarks, (although I couldn\'t find anything specific to the Zaurus), but it looks like the x86 (i386) emulation runs at about 1/4th to 1/10th speed.  That would mean that my 400 MHz SL-C860 would run as an equivalent 386 at 40MHz to 100MHz, which doesn\'t appear to be all that bad!!   ...but I haven\'t seen any official posts regarding how fast it runs on the Zaurus.  (Doesn\'t anyone have this on their Zaurus?!?)  I\'m told that Qemu is faster than Bochs and DosBox, but it currently doesn\'t support as much as they do.  Bochs runs at about 1/60th speed... or a 386 at around 8 MHz or so...  DosBox says it support more than Qemu, but it\'s around 1/15th, or a 386 at around 30MHz.

These are all rough estimations (\"questimates\") from what I\'ve read.  They aren\'t scientific.

I haven\'t been able to get ScummVM to work.  I think it needs additional libraries.  I haven\'t had time to research this much yet...

[raduga]

I haven\'t used Qemu;  currently it\'s only useful for running i386 linux code on the Z (that may change some day).
The 1/4 to 1/10 Qemu speed drop is from i386 to 1386 virtualization:
it will be MUCH slower with arm to i386;  I\'d guess 1/20 or less.

C64 and Apple emulators are reputed (by people posting in other threads)
to run at emulated full speed, with decent framerate.

MAME is reputed (by people posting in other threads) to run at reasonable, if not quite full speed, with some tweaks (turbo key).

Dosbox I have used, and though I haven\'t run any benchmarks,
has the \"feel\" of a fast 286, or a slow 386 system.  It seems to run
well under pdaXrom, less well under X/QT and PocketWorkstation
(probably because of ATI X acceleration with pdaXrom)

Can anyone recommend a good dos-based benchmark utility to run (under bochs,  Dosbox),  so we can have some hard numbers?

[TonyOlsen]

Dosbox I have used

raduga, you\'ve just become my new best friend!   ...tell me how you got it working.  (I remember you mentioning you used DosBox in other threads) Where did you get the IPK, or how did you get it to work without one?  Does it need any additional libraries?  Please tell us everything so that I can put it on mine as well!   I\'ve downloaded the Tar Balls you mentioned, but I can\'t get it to work...

Also... what version of Zaurus were you using at the time?  Will it work on C860?

[omega]

Hi raduga,  about this ATI X acceleration - can you please expand and/or point me in the right direction. Can this acceleration be supported under Cacko?

[raduga]

Hi raduga,  about this ATI X acceleration - can you please expand and/or point me in the right direction. Can this acceleration be supported under Cacko?

Cacko pdaXrom runs a native X server, with acceleration code for the ATI chipset in C7xx series.  Cacko Qtopia natively runs QT, and has no X.
There is an X/QT port with VNC services, that allows X apps to run
but since it\'s not native, you don\'t gain benefit of any acceleration,
and VNC drops frame rate quite a bit.

If you want a useable PDA and also ability to run speedy X / emulation
you may want to look at the dual-boot Cacko effots being discussed elsewhere in ZUG.  In short,  dual-boot isn\'t quite working yet.

For the time being, you have to choose between QT and X, or suffer a major performance hit.

[raduga]

Dosbox I have used

raduga, you\'ve just become my new best friend!   ...tell me how you got it working.  (I remember you mentioning you used DosBox in other threads) Where did you get the IPK, or how did you get it to work without one?  Does it need any additional libraries?  Please tell us everything so that I can put it on mine as well!   I\'ve downloaded the Tar Balls you mentioned, but I can\'t get it to work...

Also... what version of Zaurus were you using at the time?  Will it work on C860?

It sounds like you have paths or permissions issues, or both.
Possibly you are somewhat unfamiliar with basic Unix operation, or still learning.  (note, we\'re all still learning)

As I told you in the other thread, there IS NO IPK FOR DOSBOX,
unless you want to make one yourself.

IPK is not needed, as dosbox is one monolithic binary execiutable.

what I did:

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wget http://zaurus.spy.org/feeds/davonz/dosbox-6.1-r3.tar.gz

tar xzf dosbox-6.1-r3.tar.gz

./dosbox

the \"command not found\" messages are most likely because the current working directory is not in your path.  typing dotslash before the filename will give it an explicit path.

You also may need some SDL libraries;  they should be available as IPK on http://zaurus.spy.org/feeds somewhere.

also, Dosbox seems to run nicer in \"full screen\" mode; you can toggle it with <CTRL><ENTER>.
There are a few glitches;  entering special characters with <Fn>-key seems to cause extra text  to be generated - the Dosbox developers consider it a feature, so you may be stuck with it for now.

[TonyOlsen]

Thanks!!   I\'ll give that a try!

Possibly you are somewhat unfamiliar with basic Unix operation, or still learning.

Very true... it\'s a learning curve, but someday I\'ll get it.  Especially with the wonderful help I\'ve been getting (thanks everyone!  ).

[TonyOlsen]

(My Zaurus isn\'t web enabled yet... I don\'t have my Wireless card yet and the USB networking drivers don\'t work in Windows98SE for me... so I wasn\'t able to follow your directions above exactly)

Using my laptop I downloaded dosbox-6.1-r3.tar.gz.  I placed the uncompressed dosbox file on my CF and placed the CF in the Zaurus.  I then opened Terminal and typed the following:

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bash-2.05$ cd /mnt/cf

bash-2.05$ ./dobsbox

./dosbox: error while loading shared libraries: libXft.so.2: cannot load shared object file: No such file or directory

I take it I need a shared library called libXft.so.2.  I\'m searching Google...

[Zazz]

We could send you all the needed shared libraries but it would probably still not work since you need some sort of X server to see the result. Maybe upgrade to pdaxrom?

[raduga]

Moving to pdaXrom is your best bet, if the major intent of the Zaurus is for DOS and other system emulation.   The downside is, you\'ll lose all your nice PIM and PDA functionality, and what you\'ll get is a small, ordinary linux Laptop.

If you stay with QT, there\'s a MAME, and a Frodo port to SDL;  I don\'t know if they are any good or useable.  Dosbox, Qemu and Bochs will probably never run adequately in the QT environment.

[TonyOlsen]

What... so dosbox doesn\'t work on QTopia at all?     I thought it was supposed to be a stand-alone executable?

x86 emulation is part of what I need, but not everything.  I have a list of things I need to set up on my Zaurus so that it can replace my laptop as my home and work computer.  I\'m about half way through my list.

I\'ve never heard of MAME and Frodo.  Are they x86 emulators too?  (I\'ll look that up)...

btw.. what does \"SDL\" mean anyways?

[TonyOlsen]

Ah... Commodor 64 and Arcade Game emulation.  Could come in handy...