8086tiny - PC XT emulator interesting for really old DOS games?

[Exophase]

This is pretty cool.

But I do have a question..

Due to the complexities of the highly irregular Intel x86 instruction format, instruction decoding is assisted by a number of lookup tables which form part of the BIOS binary.

Why are you putting part of the emulator itself in the BIOS? I assume this applies to the IOCCC entry too, but I can't see a mention of it anywhere in the hint file. Not that this appears to be against any rules I can find but it does kind of call into question the claim of doing an entire x86 emulator in just that size..

 

[hmc]

Hi Adrian,

just packaging up 8086tiny for Pandora, but I thought it would be a good idea to use the latest version 1.11 of Feb 05.

However, I compiled it and tried to run it, but it doesn't work. Stops at display of "FreeDOS_", then nothing. 

I deleted the source of v 1.10, so I now don't have a working version for the PND package.

Daniel

 

[M-HT]

On the download page you can download older versions (at the bottom - Release History).

 

[hmc]

oh thanks, I didn't notice that.

I let the Pandora sit over night with 8086tiny running.

In the morning I still only saw the "FreeDOS" string, but when I hit Enter a few times, it kind of continued to boot, until the BIOS message about drive C: HD1 Pri... then it stopped again.

WIll try 1.10 again.

 

[hmc]

hmm, strange. 1.10 behaves the same now. So it must be something different.

Found out now, what the problem was. I didn't start 8086tiny via the runme script (so skipping the important stty command). Bummer!

Okay, now back to 1.11 again for packaging

Sorry for the noise.

 

[Linux-SWAT]

Cold, our head we must keep, when excited we are.

 

[hmc]

Right you are!

Not always easy this is...

 

[Adrian Cable]

hmc,

8086tiny 1.15 has just been released. The main new feature is full keyboard support in graphics/SDL applications, and also performance improvements which are useful on "slower" platforms like the Pandora. If your port to the Pandora is to include graphics support, this makes the emulator much more usable, so you might like to use this new release for your package.

Good luck and let me know how you get on!

-Adrian

 

[hmc]

Thanks Adrian, then I will use 1.15.

So little time - I have an 1.11 PND package ready, but it didn't work yet. Probably some problem in the PXML file. Will need some time to debug it. But I'm working on it

 

[FBnil]

Check the exec tag. command must be without path, and background="false" (for shell to work and be visible), standalone="true".

 

[hmc]

okay, PND is basically working now (I forgot a closing tag in the PXML.xml - as always just a small dumb error).

Thanks FBnil for your comments. I added the background and standalone tags per your suggestion.

However, there is a problem. Maybe Adrian can help?

If I start 8086tiny using the start script, manually, it works well.

If I let the PND system start it, I just get an empty terminal window with no output at all.

Any idea what the reason could be?

Here are the start scripts. The Pandora's package system (PND) launches run.sh, and run.sh uses runmepnd.sh (which is derived from your runme script in the distribution):

run.sh:


#!/bin/sh
 
#HOME=$REAL_HOME
#export HOME
 
USE_HD="hd.img"
 
if [ -f use_hd_img ]
then
  USE_HD=`cat use_hd_img`
fi
 
USE_FD="fd.img"
 
if [ -f use_fd_img ]
then
  USE_FD=`cat use_fd_img`
fi
 
terminal -e "./runmepnd.sh $USE_FD $USE_HD"
 runmepnd.sh:


#!/bin/sh
clear
stty cbreak raw -echo min 0
if [ -f $2 ]
then
    ./8086tiny bios $1 $2
else
    ./8086tiny bios $1
fi
stty cooked echo
 
Any idea what's wrong with that?