Re: DOSBox 0.65 ... ftw
 

Cool a new build! :D

I'm busy installing Microsoft C++ 7.0 on DOSBox at the moment, but will try it out asap!

Heh. I spent my entire day off downloading packages and setting up everything for my newly installed OS 2007. I'll probably wait until next weekend to install OS 2008 again (I'm waiting on the next release of Evince for 2008).

BTW: I also prefer OS 2007 for now because the camera program can record video, Scite works with the keyboard, and Abiword, gFTP, and Samba aren't available for 2008 yet (as far as I can tell).

Re: DOSBox 0.65 ... ftw
 

these SDL programs are highly os-agnostic. my os2006 games run on os2007 and 2008. this 'chinook' build will also likely run on os2007.

Re: DOSBox 0.65 ... ftw
 

It works on 'bora' for me.

As I only used the previous version briefly to install a few applications, and am not much of a gamer, I can only say that the new release seems faster. :)

I'm really looking forward to seeing what 16-bit software I own works fine on it. So far W4WG 3.11, Masm 6.11d, and MSC++ 7 do.

Linux and DOS\Win16 ... now hopefully a Maemo build of Basilisk II is released to run 680x0 Mac software on our ITs.

Re: DOSBox 0.65 ... ftw
 

Hey guys,
Your work is great. I've been searching for nearly 3 days looking for a way to run a DOS platform on my N800. After finding dosbox and spending a couple hours figuring out how to get it started and get the XKBD keyboard installed i got stuck. I was wondering which directory the dosbox works in. I mean when i write "mount c X:\" what do i replace x with to get to mydocs?
Secondly i am stunned at the ability to run Win95 on the dos. I'm really sorry if this is counterproductive but is this true. If it is true should i try doing it through dosbox? And is there a quicker alternate?
Thank You,
Sorry if this is counterproductive once again,
Nick-

Re: DOSBox 0.65 ... ftw
 

Thanks! It works great on the N810.

Re: DOSBox 0.65 ... ftw
 

Yes, i understand this. I was trying to figure out what the folder is so that i could mount my internal memory card.
Thanks once again

Re: DOSBox 0.65 ... ftw
 

At the end of dosbox.conf I put
mount c: /media/mmc2/dos
to assign a directory named dos I have on my SD card to c:

If you want to mount your MyDocs directory as c: use
mount c: /home/user/MyDocs

BTW: Any lines like
set path=
c:\dos\smartdrv.exe
should be put at the end of the dosbox.conf file as well.

Re: DOSBox 0.65 ... ftw
 

Pure, unadulterated awesomeness ArnimS!!!

Your brain must be ginormous!

Anyway, school and work has me buried but hopefully I can check out your new build on Wednesday.

Many thanks for giving us such a treat with this latest release!

Pop tarts and beer for ArnimS! :)


EDIT: What needs to be done with the mapper.txt file that came with the download?
I'll need the exact command that needs to be typed in Xterm since I'm incapable of learning anything new on my own. :confused:

Thanks.

Re: DOSBox 0.65 ... ftw
 

edit /home/user/.dosboxrc or dosbox.conf and set the mapperfile to wherever you have mapper.txt

# mapperfile -- File used to load/save the key/event mappings from.
mapperfile=/home/user/mapper.txt

This gives you the maximise/minimize toggle, and cycles adjustment with +/- buttons.

The latest DosBox build *is* a decent improvement over the older ones, but personally, speed still not satisfying yet, and sound blaster emulation is not happy at higher cycles, so ... i will be sleuthing this stuff.

p.s. This is one case where gp2x community has done no useful optimizations.

Re: DOSBox 0.65 ... ftw
 

Guys,
Thank you so much for your help.
I cant wait to continue to f0llow your work. Good Luck.
-Nick

Re: DOSBox 0.65 ... ftw
 

With the latest build Lands of Lore is quite playable, even with sound. :D Can't say the same for World of Xeen.

Re: DOSBox 0.65 ... ftw
 

i am new and lost i have dosbox running on my n810 but it fails to recognize the directory i specified as dos and i cannot mount anything.
i have this in my config mount c: /media/mmc2/dos and yes i do have a memory card and a folder within it called dos. when i start dosbox it tells me that drive C and D do not exist yet i specified that in the config. my config is located in /home/user/ as dosbox.conf.

help thanks i am willing to try warcraft and dune2

Re: DOSBox 0.65 ... ftw
 

Maybe you need to change mmc2 to mmc1?

Re: DOSBox 0.65 ... ftw
 

Greetings kurupted!

I'm just going to take a quick stab at this and see if it helps you.
No promises though. :)

If you have your dosbox.conf file in
c: /media/mmc2/dos

Type this in Xterm
cp /media/mmc2/dos/dosbox.conf /home/user/.dosboxrc

This will definitely copy your dosbox.conf file to the right place inside your Nokia.
Hope this helps.

Re: DOSBox 0.65 ... ftw
 

Did I read correctly? Has someone re-compiled xkbd for OS2008? If so, where is it posted?

Re: DOSBox 0.65 ... ftw
 

No, we're talking about xvkbd.

Re: DOSBox 0.65 ... ftw
 

okay so now i have it mounted and i can browse the directory but how do i go about using commands,cant input slashs. (using n810) as the fn key cannot be used (yet?).

Re: DOSBox 0.65 ... ftw
 

I don't know why the fn key doesn't work with dosbox. It works with another sdl program I just built.

I'll try to fix this asap!

(edit) Oh, there are quick workarounds to start up games without the / or : keys

• rename your game dir to something without shifted symbols and create a .bat batch file to launch the game if necessary
• launch your game directly from the dosbox invocation: e.g. ./dosbox /media/mmc1/games/dos/uiv/ultima.exe
• make a dosbox.conf for each game with tweaked settings that work well for that game, then put the commands to mount, cd and launch the game at the end of the dosbox.conf file

Re: DOSBox 0.65 ... ftw
 

Hi. Um, where can I get assistance with this? :D

I've tried to use two different xkbd layouts (default and gameflat) and a few of the keys on both of them don't work.

^ (types a # on both keyboards)
= (works unless used under DOSBox?)
, (types a > on gameflat)

Maple 3 works great on DOSBox (N800, OS 2007), except I'm missing some vital keys.

http://fkwjcw.bay.livefilestore.com/...xmaplekeyb.png

Edit: Ah! I downloaded a different keyboard map elsewhere and see that each map is customizable. I'll try to work on something myself.

http://fkwjcw.bay.livefilestore.com/...maplekeyok.png

Re: DOSBox 0.65 ... ftw
 

Greetings OSEmuTech!

I've posted this before, but I'll post this once again.

Here's a custom keyboard that I put together that keeps all of the keys away from the Dosbox screen.

Attachment 891
Attachment 892

It's somewhat of a hassle to start it up, but it's definitely my personal preference to use.

Here's how it works after you put the x.kbd on your memory card:

Start up Dosbox. Fire up Xterm. Switch to full screen mode in Xterm. Then type:
xkbd -geometry -1-1 -k /media/mmc2/x.xkbd
For it to appear on the right side of the screen, I think, but I'm not positive, that it's:
xkbd -geometry +719-1 -k /media/mmc2/x.xkbd

Finally, just minimize the Xterm window.

The reason for going through all of those steps is for the keyboard to be pixel perfect and flush next to the Dosbox screen. You honestly don't have to be as anal as myself about this though. :)

As for the weird characters showing up in Dosbox, I get the same occurence.

For example, I specifically set a key for the pound sign "#" which works just fine in Xterm but not in Dosbox.

I think to produce a "#" key, I had to type something like "CTRL 3" or perhaps "Shift CTRL 3". I can't remember right this moment and I just did a fresh install on my Nokia.

Just mix around some different key combinations with CTRL, Shift, and the ALT buttons and perhaps you will be able to find the keys you need.

I don't get it, but that's the best suggestion I have for now.

Oh, and lastly. Gentlemen, this is an awesome build but it has serious, serious limitations.

I personally wouldn't test any game or application that is dated any later than 1990. :)

Cheers.

Re: DOSBox 0.65 ... ftw
 

Something that I've noticed about dosbox is that while running, it pegs the CPU. It must use polled I/O instead of interrupt-driven I/O.

This means it can chew up a battery pretty fast.

Software written for mobile devices needs to think "low power" first.

Re: DOSBox 0.65 ... ftw
 

Cool! Thank you very much Smothermunchie. I'll be trying that keyboard map out (it saves me time to create my own). I saw that you people were messing with keymaps earlier, but I didn't see any screenshot of one that looks as good as your's in the previous post.

I have meant to try it, but shell scripting should work under Maemo right? I plan on creating easy launch scripts and find again (somewhere on this forum) how to add program shortcuts to the menu.

PS: I edited my previous post (twice) before seeing your post.

Re: DOSBox 0.65 ... ftw
 

Yes, shell scripting works well. And adding icons to the panel is easy as copying a .desktop file from /usr/share/applications/hildon and modifying it to do what you want.

I have a couple dosbox games with icons, as well as an ntp update script, reboot, and a backup script.

Re: DOSBox 0.65 ... ftw
 

Nokia should have a link to this helpful forum as it's as great as their tablets. Thank you Dick. :p

I noticed that Smothermunchie's keyboard map is also missing some keys I need, so I might investigate modifying it myself tomorrow.

Right now I'm installing MathCAD 6 on DOSBox and hope to get Visual C++ 1.52c installed soon too.

I noticed the other thread about games playable on DOSBox ... games test the limits of the emulator while applications run fine. Does anyone else run non-games on DOSBox here?

Applications that I've tested and work:

• Microsoft Macro Assembler (MASM) 6.11d
• Windows for Workgroups 3.11 (mouse has problems releasing windows)
• Microsoft C 6.0
• Maplesoft Maple V5 3.0

Re: DOSBox 0.65 ... ftw
 

Oooh.... Hey dick-richardson, any chance you could write up a fail safe, step by step direction on how to do this in a nutshell for idiots that don't know the first thing about linux?

It would be awesome if I could throw in a couple of icons on the desktop that would launch the custom dosbox.conf for each game as well as my generated custom keyboard as well.

That would be tight! :)

Re: DOSBox 0.65 ... ftw
 

User 'jott' in #maemo has found a workaround for the problem with SDL and the FN key on N810. I don't know if his changes are acceptable for general-purpose SDL programs, but my tests so far seem to indicate it works well enough.

Also note that if you have a non-us N810 keyboard layout, you can get improved (but not perfect) keymapping with the DOS 'keyb' command. For e.g. with a german keyboard, 'keyb gr' will get you a properly mapped ":". It appears however that we will need to create dosbox keymapper files for each N810 layout.

Re: DOSBox 0.65 ... ftw
 

MathCAD 6 Plus is choking on Win32s, so I'll try installing the last version of Win32s.

But Visual C++ 1.52 runs well on DOSBox.

http://fkwjcw.bay.livefilestore.com/.../dbvc152_b.png

Re: DOSBox 0.65 ... ftw
 

so how would i go about running this "work around" on my n810. i found a log using google. http://mg.pov.lt/maemo-irclog/%23mae...01-27.log.html
thats about as far as i can get about trying to figure this out by myself. help thanks

Re: DOSBox 0.65 ... ftw
 

Okay dude. Pop quiz.

In dosbox.conf I have replaced:

mapperfile=mapper.txt
with
mapperfile=/media/mmc2/mapper.txt


You stated that this gives you the maximize/minimize toggle, and cycles adjustment with +/- buttons.

But it's not working chief. I've tried everything including using the ALT key on Xkbd with the maximize/minimize buttons as well as trying it in combination with the Ctrl key.

So I give, what I am not seeing on this?

Thanks. :)

Re: DOSBox 0.65 ... ftw
 

He meant the hardware buttons :) And it is working for sure, so check the path too.

Re: DOSBox 0.65 ... ftw
 

Ah poopers.

I didn't read the fine print that it was the middle key plus the +/- keys at the same time.

What's my I.Q. again? :confused:

Re: DOSBox 0.65 ... ftw
 

Been doing some dosbox build performance tests with various compile-time flags. Finding a reasonable benchmark hasn't been easy. Since dosbox emulates several PC subsystems, I choose to test real-world apps. In this case Doom timedemos.

The results indicate time to start dosbox, run the timedemo and exit dosbox (from script). To compute the mean run time, I discard the slowest score of 5. Because a 'clean' run can be broken by various unknowns, the curve is more of a poisson than a binomial distribution.

dosbox_cvs_01_01_25_a -O3 -fomit-frame-pointer -fforce-addr -fforce-mem -falign-loops=2 -falign-functions=2 -falign-jumps=2 -funroll-loops -mabi=aapcs-linux -mcpu=arm1136j-s -mfpu=vfp -mfloat-abi=softfp

dosbox_cvs_01_01_25_novfp -O3 -fomit-frame-pointer -fforce-addr -fforce-mem -falign-loops=2 -falign-functions=2 -falign-jumps=2 -funroll-loops -mabi=aapcs-linux -mcpu=arm1136j-s

dosbox_feb12 -O3 -fomit-frame-pointer -mabi=aapcs-linux -mcpu=arm1136j-s -mfpu=vfp -mfloat-abi=softfp

dosbox_feb14a -Os -fomit-frame-pointer -fforce-addr -fforce-mem -falign-loops=2 -falign-functions=2 -falign-jumps=2 -mabi=aapcs-linux -mcpu=arm1136j-s -mfpu=vfp -mfloat-abi=softfp

dosbox_feb14b -O3 -fomit-frame-pointer -fforce-addr -fforce-mem -falign-loops=2 -falign-functions=2 -falign-jumps=2 -mabi=aapcs-linux -mcpu=arm1136j-s -mtune=arm1136j-s -mfpu=vfp -mfloat-abi=softfp -ffast-math

dosbox_feb14c same but with --disable-core-inline


While the data are inconclusive on effects of build flags, I think we can conclude that for doom timedemo, variance is reduced when the dosbox cycles significantly exceed what the emulator can achieve in realtime.

It appears that increasing cycles well above the point at which dosbox pegs the N810 CPU effectively defeats doom's internal frameskip so that a faster dosbox build+options will finish the run earlier than a slower one.

A seperate test series would be manually running the timedemos and jotting down doom's internal performance reports, using a very small game window and cycles=max.

Re: DOSBox 0.65 ... ftw
 

Greetings again ArnimS.

I'm not all too sure what those numbers mean with your testing results for the Doom demo but could you also run them in comparison to the latest version of the OS 2007 software?

I'm still on 2007 because of the unusual feedback by some of the members here on how it's less stable than 2008. I'm just not finding the courage to upgrade since I can't seem to understand the reasons to do so at the moment.

I've only got Dosbox and Xkbd running on a fresh install of 2007 and nothing else, no other applications have been downloaded. Would I see a better performance if I went ahead and upgraded?

I posted this earlier, but your mapper keys for the cycles, for some reason, isn't working again. I don't know what happened because there's nothing that stands out on what I'm doing differently than before.

There's something wrong with the mapper.txt feature but I can't make any connection on what might be causing the problems.

Don't get me wrong on this, your releases are extremely cool. The only thing is, you usually have very poor documentation for extreme newbies, such as myself, to help understand the genius world that you come from.

A little knowledge thrown my way and to others would very much be appreciated (but most likely still misunderstood) :)

Thanks chief!

Re: DOSBox 0.65 ... ftw
 

Considering that you get 70 extra megahertz . . . yes.

Re: DOSBox 0.65 ... ftw
 

I'm sorry, complete newbie here, but is that money? :o

Re: DOSBox 0.65 ... ftw
 

Speed, not money.. the CPU runs faster (330 MHz -> 400 MHz) with OS2008.

Re: DOSBox 0.65 ... ftw
 

The one thing I find a bit unstable is xkbd in OS2008. To do commands in DOS most times I have to have the CapsLock key turned on or it won't work. And then sometimes it won't work and sometimes it will with games using the alphabetic keys (it's hit or miss). Since your sidescreen-key version doesn't have CapsLock, that was one of the reasons why I haven't used it. Looks nice though. Other than that, DosBox seems to work fine in OS2008.

Re: DOSBox 0.65 ... ftw
 

There's no reason to. I posted these as references to people who might want to do similar tests. One thing that does seem clear is that for Doom at least, cpu=simple is much faster than either 'normal' or 'full'.
Yes
I just confirmed that latest hosted build http://pupnik.de/dosbox_N8x0.tgz works with the mapped keys (cycle up/down and fullscreen toggle). I don't know why they stopped working for you. If you inadvertently changed something then

• make sure you are launching the latest dosbox
• redownload the mapper.txt
• make sure that .dosboxrc or dosbox.conf points to the mapper

Acknowledged.

These newbie difficulties occur because there is no gui frontend.

There are things standing in the way of a gui-frontend.

DosBox as-is runs too slow on the N8x0s for everything but cga/pcspeaker era games.

An effective gui frontend will need configuration profiles and mappers for various games.

Creating these profiles with a broken/slow core dosbox build is useless because when that is fixed, they will all need to be redone.

so....

I'm trying to fix the sound/performance problem so that at least 286-class games using vga/ega and sound blaster can run playably.

Re: DOSBox 0.65 ... ftw
 

Something must have gone seriously wrong...

Re: DOSBox 0.65 ... ftw
 

Hope not. I've heavily relied on ArnimS's expertise on helping me get this cool gaming stuff running on my N800 and owe a ton of thanks. I hope ArnimS is okay and everything is fine.