[DOSBox] official thread

nemo93

@ecto thanks for that. I edited wiki with link to Vogons. I saw it yesterday so your timing is perfect. This decision by Wikipedia is really baffling to say the least.

retropi19

@nemo93 hello there

Is there a guide to install Windows 98 / ME in the Raspberry Pi 4???

I followed some guides before using dosbian but it crashes to the desktop on first boot with explorer crash and other misc errors

The only working dosbox was the dosbox-X

But the performance there was very very slow

I saw videos of dosbox-svn and dosbox-ece running very good Windows 98 but couldn't install them successfully i got the errors described above
I must do something wrong

Thanks

nemo93

@retropi19 as far as I know there's none. The reason is simple: DOSBox doesn't support officially anything after Windows 3.11. You're right DOSBox-X is the one to look after to achieve that task yet as you said performance-wise it won't be great (X does have a fine wiki with plenty of guides one of those is dedicated to Win98).

For Staging the actual stance is similar to DOSBox 'SVN': no official support (as stated on https://github.com/dosbox-staging/dosbox-staging/wiki/Windows-9x). Some users are really committed to get it to work but they're using much more powerful systems than RPi's.

Don't set your expectations too high for the time being. Perhaps you could check box86/Wine instead? There's already a topic in that forum.

If anyone knows a better way feel free to share in order to keep me honest. Thanks.

ParadoxGBB

Hello all, apologies if this is a newbie question --- I'm revisiting some of the custom DosBox mappings I have for a few games and for my RetroFlag GPi case (the original on a RPi Zero 2W) the axis mapping is 4/5 not 0/1.

I must be missing something because I thought the syntax was axis id and 0 if -, versus 1 if +.

So I thought

key_up "key 82" "stick_0 axis 1 0"
key_left "key 80" "stick_0 axis 0 0"
key_down "key 81" "stick_0 axis 1 1"
key_right "key 79" "stick_0 axis 0 1"

Would translate to

key_up "key 82" "stick_0 axis 5 0"
key_left "key 80" "stick_0 axis 4 0"
key_down "key 81" "stick_0 axis 5 1"
key_right "key 79" "stick_0 axis 4 1"

But that's not working. Normally I'd just fire up the keymapper to test but for this device I don't have a pointing device to drive it.

Please help!

nemo93

@ParadoxGBB let me point you first to that wiki entry. What kind of pad/controller do you rely on please?

ParadoxGBB

@nemo93 Yup, that wiki doesn't go into the specific syntax of the axis entries, or at least I'm not seeing it.

The controller I'm targeting here is the one built into the case itself, it is similar in form factor to the original gameboy. I've mapped out all the buttons but not sure how to translate the dPad.

nemo93

@ParadoxGBB I'm using a simple Xbox One wireless controller hence this is the controller which appears on the wiki. I'd love to add more controllers bindings on that page if I could. I understand you're relying on some custom pad.

I was pointing you to that page and specifically to that section as it looks like a case of finding the references of your buttons on your system. What's the output of the following command?

$ jstest /dev/input/js0

Did you try with hat instead of axis as described in that wiki as well?

stick_0 hat 0 1 (D-pad Up)
stick_0 hat 0 4 (D-pad Down)
...

nemo93

@mitu @BuZz apologies for pinging you straight yet I'd need your feedback on the following please.

Staging wants to switch as soon as C++20 compilers are available on all supported platforms. Therefore we need to assess if that would be an option in the near term.

Question: can RetroPie support or host a specific gcc for that purpose (eg. gcc-13 when it's available)? I understand you do that for SDL2 already and I wonder if that would be too much work or if you'd have any concern for doing the same with compilers?

Thanks as always and good luck with the (many) PRs opened lately ;-)

BuZz

@nemo93 said in [DOSBox] official thread:

Question: can RetroPie support or host a specific gcc for that purpose (eg. gcc-13 when it's available)

That's not something I'd want to do.

If newer versions need a GCC that isn't available we would have to lock it at an older release.

retropi19

Hi there

I been using dosbox pure and trying to set the ram from the config file to 224mb as the developer said is the maximum ram you can put,but everytime it defaults to 16mb by it self after i run dosbox pure
The maximum i can put that it doesn't change it is 128mb,i setup windows 98 but the ram is not enough to test some games,how can i put 224 ram or more???

Thank you

nemo93

@retropi19 Hi! Thanks for posting. I'm afraid I have no experience with "Pure" hence I'm not the best person to be asked for assistance here. Yet I just want to share a few comments, just in case.

It looks like your RAM setting is being overriden which could point to "Pure" using its own default values instead. Are you sure you've configured "Pure" to rely on whatever global config file instead of default values? Typically on other Dosbox forks there's a global config file named after dosbox.conf or dosbox-staging.conf for instance. Simply edit the following line to change amount of RAM available.

[dosbox]
memsize = 8

I have to say that running any Win9x on a RPi might be too demanding for such low-spec device. It's also not officially supported by the many Dosbox forks (unsure about Pure though). As far as I'm aware of only Dosbox-X supports Win9x. You can even find great documentation on the wiki on how to install the OS (ie: Win98).

I've tried both Win95 and Win98 on Staging with middling results to say the least on my (stock) RPi4 and with the default 16MB of RAM. It was too slow yet it was a brief testing. Perhaps it's better to wait for RPi5 to be released or to check PCEM/Wine? There's a thread about it on that forum.

jamrom2

@retropi19 Hi. It wont run on DosBox-Pure. It's not really made to handle Win95/98 emu. It was made to use the better aspects of the Libretro core. You can try to change the aspects in the core menu, and then change the configuration not to save to a global. It will then create a config file for dosbox-pure that should not be over-written. But again, I don't think you'll get it to work, but certainly try it.

ecto

Hi @nemo93!
I'm somewhat following the Dosbox Staging development and I'm thrilled to see that there will be 3dfx support in the (near?) future.

Do you maybe have a feeling if that's something a Pi4 can handle? I haven't found that info in the Dosbox Staging wiki so far and I'm still hoping that this might me doable.

Btw. a really great and informative Wiki!!

Ashpool

@ecto Had tried glide with dosbox-x and ece some time ago, sadly the only available glide wrapper on *nix systems (that i know of) openglide isn't (afaik) activily mantained anymore and are far away from the performance of nglide or dgVoodoo under windows. And though Dosbox-x has an internal glide-wrapper, at least in 2021, the performance is (was?) much better by using openglide as an external wrapper. Would be really cool/great if someone would come up with a modern glide2vulkan-wrapper on *nix systems :sigh:.

Do you know whether the glide support in staging would be based on the internal ones of ece/dosbox-x (can't remember the originof that code at the moment), or would that be an indipendend development?

ecto

@Ashpool a far as I understand it the 3dfx implementation in Staging is software only. So no need for a wrapper.

nemo93

@ecto said in [DOSBox] official thread:

I'm somewhat following the Dosbox Staging development and I'm thrilled to see that there will be 3dfx support in the (near?) future.

=> 3dfx support has been merged to the main branch. You can already give it a try if you want otherwise it will be part of the next release (0.81). Implementation is well done and the 3dfx card is enabled by default hence no need to fiddle with your confs. All you need is to patch your game(s) with the 3dfx binary.

Do you maybe have a feeling if that's something a Pi4 can handle? I haven't found that info in the Dosbox Staging wiki so far and I'm still hoping that this might me doable.

=> answer is straightforward: no it doesn't run well on Pi4. Yet there is notable exception like Descent 2 which runs great on 3dfx. Most games tested like Tomb Raider are running around ~10fps which is not that bad all things considered. Carmageddon, Screamer 2 and Rally are a slideshow.

Btw. a really great and informative Wiki!!

=> It's a team effort but thanks! A section for 3dfx has been added to the wiki.

@Ashpool as @ecto mentioned 3dfx implementation is software only as of typing. Plans exist to add more backends/renderers (eg. NEON) but no ETA. You could find more details on the PR.

ecto

@nemo93 thanks for your answer! I was thinking that much. Of course a wrapper to gl or something like that would make it much faster, but considering that there are not that many DOS-only 3dfx games it's probably too much to ask. My goal is to play Pył at some point in the future.

Btw I am using Openglide for some games under wine and got some pretty decent fps with that (much better than d3d). Sadly it's not developed anymore.

Yeah, I love the wiki and always come back to look for more tips on optimizing games (graphics and sound wise).

Dosbox (staging) is so much better that the real DOS from the olden days it's not even funny...

Ashpool

@ecto said in [DOSBox] official thread:

Dosbox (staging) is so much better that the real DOS from the olden days it's not even funny...

Oh, come on... the good ol' schoolyard talks about tweaking and configuring autoexec.bat and config.sys, it is a long time ago, but IIRIR, sometimes I had at least half a dozen entry points as menu options within my config.sys and don't know how many sub-entries... be it special cases for certain games like xwing, general ones, etc. ,386 noems/ems, choices of mouse and cd driver, variations of buffer, files and who_remember_what_else_settings there was to consider... Nowadays there's just with dosbox (whatsoever) it's config/setting... but in old times, it was so frustrating, but also satisfactory doing this (you where bound to the hardware you had) .... ah, memory-lane...

ecto

@Ashpool yeah, I did that, too! Although I needed your post to remember me of the config.sys / autoexec.bat menu options... :D
What program was it that optimized the loading order of the drivers to squeeze out every last kb out of the free low memory? I forgot that, too.

And of course it was cool and satisfactory... and also sometimes very frustrating. Yet, I wouldn't want to miss that time. In the end it now helps understanding what has to be done to configure games in dosbox.

But it's so much easier now to get a game to run and I like that very much. It leaves more time to get even more games to run ;)

Ashpool

@ecto said in [DOSBox] official thread:

What program was it that optimized the loading order of the drivers to squeeze out every last kb out of the free low memory? I forgot that, too

Ouch, you have me there... AFAIR I always ordered 'em myself... only think I remember as one of the culprits/nodal points in the config was the "DEVICEHIGH=" to put 'em drivers in the upper memory ... But I know of no app/program that was optimizing load order/memory settings for you/on your behalfe. ... If you can remember that prog/app, i would be really interested in it! (and be it by just coming to know of what I have missed out as an opportunity)

@ecto said in [DOSBox] official thread:

But it's so much easier now to get a game to run and I like that very much. It leaves more time to get even more games to run ;)

Yup!