DOSBox-X screen size

mitu

Comment out the options in the [sdl] section and leave only fullscreen=true, see if this resolves the resolution problem.

TedMaul

@mitu I've just tried it and it stayed the same as before. Weirdly though, when I switched in and out of fullscreen with F12+F it made it somewhat better - still not the same as when done via Pixel / terminal though. Windows 98 loaded clunkily in widescreen (it is 4:3 via Pixel), and seemed to run a fair bit slower too.

TedMaul

@mitu I've now stumbled upon some progress (somehow!) - I changed the video mode just after launching in runcommand and now the size / position is exactly what I am after, which is great.

The only remaining thing now is that I think it is still not launching in X, meaning everything runs quite slowly. I'm not sure if any of the configs I outlined above need changing as a result? Or is there a way of changing the shell to launch from ES to make X open?

The shell now looks like this:

#!/bin/bash
dosbox-x -conf win98.conf

And I amended the emulators.cfg line to this (it still has all the other DOSBoxes there in with it)

dosbox-x = "XINIT:/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/pc/+DOSBox-X.sh %ROM%"

mitu

If the emulator command is prefixed with XINIT:, then the emulator command is started in an X.org session, nothing else is required. You can check by looking at the process list (use pstree from a SSH session).

TedMaul

@mitu thanks, I'll have a try with the ssh tomorrow and see what it says.

In the meantime I think I may have ruined something somewhere else - I updated lxde through the retropie-setup option because I wondered if it would update xorg (somehow) and now my previous method of opening dosbox-x through pixel+terminal is now much slower (i.e. unworkable, like it is currently through runcommand).

Is there anything that this update might have affected, or that I could potentially reverse? Happy to provide any further details if this sounds a little vague, and thanks for your help so far.

mitu

@TedMaul said in DOSBox-X screen size:

Is there anything that this update might have affected, or that I could potentially reverse?

No idea, but maybe the desktop package upgrades installed the pulseaudio sound server, which may affect performance. Do you have a log file from Dosbox-X (/dev/shm/runcommand.log maybe) ?

TedMaul

@mitu ah, that may be something - since the update it is now coming up with that "mixer elements" error message before launching anything from ES.

Here is the runcommand.log from opening DOSBox-X, and then quitting straight away:

Parameters: 
Executing: SDL1_VIDEODRIVER=dispmanx SDL_DISPMANX_WIDTH=1280 SDL_DISPMANX_HEIGHT=720 bash /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/pc/+Start\ DOSBox.sh "/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/pc/+DOSBox-X.sh"
LOG: Early LOG Init complete
LOG: Redirected "vesa modelist width limit" from [dosbox] to [video] section
LOG: Redirected "vesa modelist height limit" from [dosbox] to [video] section
LOG: Migrated realnic from [ne2000] to [ethernet, pcap] section
LOG: Set ne2000 backend to pcap during migration
LOG: DOSBox-X's working directory: /home/pi
LOG: Logging init: beginning logging proper. This is the end of the early init logging
LOG: Logging: No logfile was given. All further logging will be discarded.
LOG: DOSBox-X version 2022.09.1 (Linux SDL2)
LOG: Host keyboard layout is now us (US English)
LOG: Mapper keyboard layout is now us (US English)
LOG: SDL2 reports desktop display mode 1280 x 720
LOG: The default output for the video system: opengl
LOG: Configured windowposition: -
LOG: SDL: Current window pixel format: SDL_PIXELFORMAT_ARGB8888
LOG: Screen report: Method 'None' (-1.000 x -1.000 pixels) at (0.000 x 0.000) (-1.000 x -1.000 mm) (-0.039 x -0.039 in) (-1.000 x -1.000 DPI)
LOG: Screen report: Method 'None' (-1.000 x -1.000 pixels) at (0.000 x 0.000) (-1.000 x -1.000 mm) (-0.039 x -0.039 in) (-1.000 x -1.000 DPI)
LOG: INFO: switched to full screen mode
LOG: ISA BCLK: 8333333.333Hz (25000000/3)
LOG: monopal: green, 
LOG: Active save slot: 1 [Empty]
LOG: USING AVI+ZMBV
LOG: Max 1048576 sz 524288
LOG: Final 524288
LOG: SDLNet_TCP_Open: Couldn't connect to remote host
LOG: TiMidity: can't open control connection (host=127.0.0.1, port=7777)
fluidsynth: Using PulseAudio driver
fluidsynth: warning: Failed to set thread to high priority
fluidsynth: warning: Failed to pin the sample data to RAM; swapping is possible.
LOG: MIDI:fluidsynth: Loaded SoundFont: /usr/share/sounds/sf2/FluidR3_GM.sf2
LOG: MIDI:Opened device:fluidsynth
LOG: Pentium CMPXCHG8B emulation is enabled
LOG: VOODOO LFB now at d0000000
LOG: Serial1: BASE 3f8h
LOG: Serial2: BASE 2f8h
LOG: Parallel1: BASE 378h
LOG: MPU-401 Registering I/O ports as if IBM PC MPU-401 at base 330h
LOG: Screen report: Method 'None' (-1.000 x -1.000 pixels) at (0.000 x 0.000) (-1.000 x -1.000 mm) (-0.039 x -0.039 in) (-1.000 x -1.000 DPI)
LOG: Allocated APM BIOS pm entry point at f000:ce40
LOG: Writing code to fce40
LOG: Writing code to fce60
LOG: ETHERNET: NE2000 Ethernet emulation backend selected: pcap
LOG: Using Network interface:
wlan0
(no description)
LOG: NE2000: Base=0x300 irq=10
LOG: Screen report: Method 'None' (-1.000 x -1.000 pixels) at (0.000 x 0.000) (-1.000 x -1.000 mm) (-0.039 x -0.039 in) (-1.000 x -1.000 DPI)
LOG: ISA Plug & Play BIOS enabled
LOG: VGA ROM BIOS init callback
LOG: pixratio 1.000, dw false, dh false
LOG: Aspect ratio: 640 x 480  xToY=1.333 yToX=0.750
LOG: menuScale=1
LOG: Screen report: Method 'None' (-1.000 x -1.000 pixels) at (0.000 x 0.000) (-1.000 x -1.000 mm) (-0.039 x -0.039 in) (-1.000 x -1.000 DPI)
LOG: font texture id=2 will make 128 x 256
LOG: Screen report: Method 'None' (-1.000 x -1.000 pixels) at (0.000 x 0.000) (-1.000 x -1.000 mm) (-0.039 x -0.039 in) (-1.000 x -1.000 DPI)
LOG: WARNING: No translation support (to host) for code page 0
LOG:     437687 ERROR BIOS:Keyboard layout file auto not found
LOG:     437687 ERROR BIOS:Keyboard layout file auto not found
LOG: XMS: 50 handles allocated for use by the DOS environment
LOG: EMS page frame at 0xe000-0xefff
LOG: COMMAND.COM env size:             720 bytes
LOG: COMMAND.COM environment block:    0x0701 sz=0x002d
LOG: COMMAND.COM main body (PSP):      0x072f sz=0x009a
LOG: COMMAND.COM stack:                0x0749
LOG: pixratio 1.350, dw false, dh false
LOG: Aspect ratio: 720 x 540  xToY=1.333 yToX=0.750
LOG: menuScale=1
LOG: Screen report: Method 'None' (-1.000 x -1.000 pixels) at (0.000 x 0.000) (-1.000 x -1.000 mm) (-0.039 x -0.039 in) (-1.000 x -1.000 DPI)
LOG: font texture id=2 will make 128 x 256
LOG: Screen report: Method 'None' (-1.000 x -1.000 pixels) at (0.000 x 0.000) (-1.000 x -1.000 mm) (-0.039 x -0.039 in) (-1.000 x -1.000 DPI)
LOG: INFO: switched to window mode
LOG: Aspect ratio: 720 x 540  xToY=1.333 yToX=0.750
LOG: menuScale=1
LOG: Screen report: Method 'None' (-1.000 x -1.000 pixels) at (0.000 x 0.000) (-1.000 x -1.000 mm) (-0.039 x -0.039 in) (-1.000 x -1.000 DPI)
LOG: font texture id=2 will make 128 x 256
LOG: Screen report: Method 'None' (-1.000 x -1.000 pixels) at (0.000 x 0.000) (-1.000 x -1.000 mm) (-0.039 x -0.039 in) (-1.000 x -1.000 DPI)

mitu

I see in the log that pulseaudio is used for Audio, so yes, I think it's been installed during the update. The Audio section in RetroPie has an option to disable it, but you should also uninstall the PulseAudio panel applet (sudo apt remove lxplug-volumepulse), otherwise starting the Pixel desktop would get your a crashing panel.

TedMaul

@mitu Thanks, I've now purged pulseaudio and removed the panel applet so the error message no longer shows and my sound is no longer messed up (!) Sadly it is still running as slowly in pixel so I think I've perhaps broken something else with the update.

I've now ran pstree anyway after opening DOSBox-X to its command line (from ES) and it output this:

systemd─┬─alsactl
        ├─avahi-daemon───avahi-daemon
        ├─bluetoothd
        ├─cron
        ├─cups-browsed───2*[{cups-browsed}]
        ├─cupsd
        ├─dbus-daemon
        ├─dhcpcd
        ├─hciattach
        ├─login───bash───bash───emulationstatio───emulationstatio───emulationst+
        ├─nmbd
        ├─rngd───3*[{rngd}]
        ├─rsyslogd───3*[{rsyslogd}]
        ├─smbd─┬─cleanupd
        │      ├─lpqd
        │      └─smbd-notifyd
        ├─sshd───sshd───sshd───bash───pstree
        ├─systemd───(sd-pam)
        ├─systemd-journal
        ├─systemd-logind
        ├─systemd-timesyn───{systemd-timesyn}
        ├─systemd-udevd
        ├─thd
        ├─timidity
        └─2*[wpa_supplicant]

For completeness, here is a runcommand.log from the same session when I've tried booting Windows 98: https://pastebin.com/dzUR5iJE

TedMaul

As it's been a week or so, just wondering if anyone has any other ideas for this (or can make any sense of the output I posted above) - I'm at a bit of a dead end myself, sadly.

mitu

Not a solution, but have your tried downgrading Dosbox-X (I see you're using 2022.09.1) to an earlier version just to check if things are different ? Or maybe compiling the SDL1 version of it and running it through Pixel ?

TedMaul

@mitu thanks for this, and sorry for the delay - I'll give that a go and report back :-)

TedMaul

@mitu I've recompiled it with the SLD1 version and the speed is up again (hooray!) but it doesn't seem to want to output as opengl, so the screen size isn't playing ball again, sadly.