More Info On Dosbox Internals?

[bender.tx]

Hello - The season treated me well with a Wiz, I am really enjoying cracking into it.

I have some general fronts to tackle, but my focus at the moment is DosBox. I understand that it is a tricky emulator, and I applaud the grounds that Kasumi89 has covered.

I can run Bard's Tale with Kasumi's build, but cannot get my own games to kick off. Even after carefully doctoring his files, I am not finding luck.

The game that I would most like to see run in DosBox is ElFish - Again, I have not gotten it all the way there.

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I am curious to see what DosBox thinks it is. I am trying to get Norton Commander to run (for system analysis), but again no luck. Has anyone gotten a DOS tool to report what CPU and configuration Wiz's DosBox is emulating? Maybe its a curiosity thing, but the information could help one gauge which titles from the old era are appropriate for this DosBox build.

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When I use DosBox on my main computer, I treat the disk environment as a single hard-drive with multiple game installs. This is in contrast to what I see on the Wiz, with each game in it's own little world. Other than game specific emulation settings, is there any reason the multiple-game-on-a-drive model is deficient? This may be a matter of personal preference, but I am curious.

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So far, this forum has been the best source of information in my new adventure. Much thanks all.

 

[Pickle]

Hello - The season treated me well with a Wiz, I am really enjoying cracking into it.

I have some general fronts to tackle, but my focus at the moment is DosBox. I understand that it is a tricky emulator, and I applaud the grounds that Kasumi89 has covered.

I can run Bard's Tale with Kasumi's build, but cannot get my own games to kick off. Even after carefully doctoring his files, I am not finding luck.

The game that I would most like to see run in DosBox is ElFish - Again, I have not gotten it all the way there.

Make sure your getting the paths right and that your using a unix friendly text editor

I am curious to see what DosBox thinks it is. I am trying to get Norton Commander to run (for system analysis), but again no luck. Has anyone gotten a DOS tool to report what CPU and configuration Wiz's DosBox is emulating? Maybe its a curiosity thing, but the information could help one gauge which titles from the old era are appropriate for this DosBox build.

Dosbox can be many things depending on whats its told, really the cycles are what matter. The wiz can run cga/ega types fairly well. Maybe vga things that dont push the emu too hard.
I think 1000-1500 cycles is about where the wiz hits it limit.

When I use DosBox on my main computer, I treat the disk environment as a single hard-drive with multiple game installs. This is in contrast to what I see on the Wiz, with each game in it's own little world. Other than game specific emulation settings, is there any reason the multiple-game-on-a-drive model is deficient? This may be a matter of personal preference, but I am curious.

Well you hit on the main reason each game can have its own settings, plus a separate launcher script is needed for each game. Also each game has its own dosbox.conf, the path that is mounted to C is a mute point

 

[bender.tx]

Much thanks PickleMan -

Unix friendly, yup.

1000-1500 cycles is a closer read than the guidelines I have found so far (600 - 1800). I will experiment with your numbers.

Your last comment is encouraging. DosBox can be configured to look at games individually, even in a larger storage context. You are right; for configurations and key mappings, it's a must. I am going to play with this drive-model some more.

Thanks again Pickle!

 

[Exophase]

You can't expect there to be a specific number of instructions per second that DOSBox can emulate. Some instructions take much more time to emulate than others. So unless DOSBox is making a lot of effort to make heavier instructions take more cycles (and what they took on the real thing doesn't really map with what it takes to emulate them) you can expect the cycles it can handle to vary tremendously with what it's currently running. My expectation is that DOSBox just does one instruction per cycle.