Portable X86 Device (Size Of Psp) To Play Ms-Dos Games Natively

[Exophase]

Buying something like this for DOSBox comes close to defeating the point, at least in the long run if we see faster DOSBox (or other DOS emulator) implementations for ARM. I think the idea is to run DOS natively, which probably has its own technical challenges with some hardware.

 

[moxie]

Well, after a quick Ebay visit I'm just waiting for the postman to start playing DOS games in a portable way on a...well, I'm not quite sure, but I think you might still call it an x86

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hp200lx,_open.jpg

However, there will be no Duke Nukem. I'm hoping for Might and Magic I and II, and maybe the Ultimas

Think you may be very disappointed with that. Its a monochrome display with a only a 186 processor.

No, I won't. I know exactly what it is It will do CGA graphics, though, which is enough for some of the oldies. Commander Keen 4, for instance, is reported to run fairly well.

 

[dmarschal]

Hello!

Here's my list of old cga games I play on my 200lx.

big top, blockout, im2, keen4, pango, prince of persia, soko-ban, spiderman, cat, space invaders, xonix, digger, bouncing babies, j-bird, roger rabbit (who framed), virus, risk, .. and so on

All games that require 10mhz 286 and cga graphics shall run fine.

I still use this computer to code my own games (x86 asm) and play with them on the move. (I'm thinking on to port them to Wiz or Pandora).
It also has unbeatable battery life. It's not hours but several days.

Have a nice day!

Dennis

 

[ashdjones]

Well, after a quick Ebay visit I'm just waiting for the postman to start playing DOS games in a portable way on a...well, I'm not quite sure, but I think you might still call it an x86

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hp200lx,_open.jpg

However, there will be no Duke Nukem. I'm hoping for Might and Magic I and II, and maybe the Ultimas

Think you may be very disappointed with that. Its a monochrome display with a only a 186 processor.

No, I won't. I know exactly what it is It will do CGA graphics, though, which is enough for some of the oldies. Commander Keen 4, for instance, is reported to run fairly well.

It doesn't. Imagine Game Boy levels of blur only with less constrast!

Oh and sound does work, but it's PC speaker. Hearing Outrun tunes in monophonic PC speaker format is awesome!

But yeah, as a 200LX owner, I can't think of many games which run enjoyably enough. I had more fun doing Qbasic programming on it to be honest (the keyboard is lovely, i've typed for hours on it). Enjoy your LX, but bear in mind there's a learning curve to owning one - there's a crapload of keyboard shortcuts for a start, not to mention all the little tools, tweaks and .bat files you'll need to get the most out of it!

Also, the battery life isn't quite what the above poster stated. On very high capacity Nihm rechargables it runs for about 15 hours. I know this because I disabled sleep mode, then ran a Qbasic program that time stamped to a file every 10 minutes and left it running overnight.

 

[gp32rich]

I still use this computer to code my own games (x86 asm) and play with them on the move.

Oooh! Yes please! :wub:


OT: I wonder why someone hasn't FPGA'd the x86 core and support chips like they did with C64(DTV) and Amiga(Minimig)

 

[skeezix]

Viliv - 1.3ghz UPMC PC (Intel Atom)

Holy shit!

I thought you all would be following gizmos on http://www.umpcportal.com/.

Viliv makes nice devices, but the S5 doesn't have a keyboard for DOSBox. I think the UMID M1 fits the bill, but if you go that route you should wait on the UMID BZ. The Viliv N5 is coming also. Then there's the Fujitsu U810 ... lots of options for small, powerful handhelds that could do DOSBox.

Then again, none of these offer what the Pandora does, for much less money, so why bother?

As a mobile dev for 10 years (ie: gadget nutbar), I've been following 'em all, but had my head stuck in Pandora-land for the last year Hidstorically the UMPCs and such have been 'too heavy/bricky/bulk' for their intended use IMHO, but this latest round seems to be getting there.

But for us, it is a tough spot --

Phones and netbooks/laptops can do most of the high end and multimedia/ebooks-in-the-dark we need, so we're really talking retro-games and possibly video if your phone screen is no good. Pandora will take care of pretty much all of this so where is the niche, for us Pandora-guys?

Its the low-end Windows retro, but is it worth spending $500-$700 on yet-another-MID just to have Win 95 games? (ie: Starcraft, Civ III/IV, Wizardry 8 and that whole slew of games prior to current, but after DOS.)

So yeah, if you've got a Pandora-coming, its a tough sell; but without a Pandora, the market has gotten very interesting the last few years.

FWIW, I got Civ 4 working on Sony Vaio UX back in 2007, which is pretty awesome, but its far too heavy/bricky to realyl want to use, has an absolutely terrible keyboard, and watchign a video will drain the battery end to end in like 2 hours

OQO might've faired better in 2007, but nowadays I'd be aiming for Viliv S5 or N5 myself .. (I'm a fan of th eN5, but didn't even kow about the S5

jeff

 

[mali]

Menlow is quite ok, but it's still too expensive for what it does. If you buy an x86 UMPC you have different expectations than when you buy ARM. An 1.2 or 1.3GHz Atom running XP is a boring platform and you can't expect a community to form around such a device that takes care of optimizations and tweaks. You just get a soul-less random device that is overpriced. I'm watching the market all the time, thus I joined the Pandora Community as the most promising solution to the handheld problem that I have since PocketPCs were replaced by smartphones. Nokia's Internet Tablets were almost perfect, I just need a bit more punch and proper gaming controls are the icing on the cake When I think about twisting my thumbs while playing Quake 1 on my x50v or Quake 2 on my N800, I shudder.

 

[mali]

Btw, in around 50min you can watch a live presentation of the UMID BZ from Chippy and JKK
http://www.umpcportal.com/2010/01/umid-bz-live-on-live-monday-2130-cet/

 

[cbox]

My Mitsubishi palmtop runs Windows98 and can play anything from that era and older. I've played some Warcraft and Doom and stuff like that on it, also have an older version of MAME on it. Specs are Pentium 166, 192 megs of ram, 2.1 gig hard drive, 8 inch 800 x 600 vga screen. Can probably find tons of older pcs like that online cheap, think I paid $100 for mine refurbed.

 

[moxie]

But yeah, as a 200LX owner, I can't think of many games which run enjoyably enough. I had more fun doing Qbasic programming on it to be honest (the keyboard is lovely, i've typed for hours on it). Enjoy your LX, but bear in mind there's a learning curve to owning one - there's a crapload of keyboard shortcuts for a start, not to mention all the little tools, tweaks and .bat files you'll need to get the most out of it!

Also, the battery life isn't quite what the above poster stated. On very high capacity Nihm rechargables it runs for about 15 hours. I know this because I disabled sleep mode, then ran a Qbasic program that time stamped to a file every 10 minutes and left it running overnight.

Well, I do have a HP 95lx, and an Atari Portfolio, so I really think I know what I'm getting And I've been trying to do my homework on the config side of stuff. More seriously, I'm a bit of a handheld nut, so I'm mostly getting one for the reason of getting one - Also, it'll be nice to have a DOS portable which doesn't require scrolling the screen viewport around B) The gaming I'd do on it would be Might and Magic, as I said, and things like that. Which I do believe won't suffer too badly from the blur...

About the battery, though: If I remember correctly, the battery monitor of the lxes is tuned to the voltage charachteristics of alkalines. Alkalines get to 1.5 volts when new, and once they pass the 1 volt point, they're pretty much dead. NiMHs are at 1.2, fully loaded. They are not nearly as close to failing as the alkalines when they creep closer to that 1 v point, but the lx believes they are and shuts down to protect the (battery-backed) data. Have you tried the same test with the kind of batteries it is expecting?

 

[palmertech]

If you're looking for a stock x86 motherboard to use you won't find one even remotely small enough to fit in something PSP-sized, no matter how much you modded it. So it would have to be a custom made board.

Dead wrong there. I started work on a project like this, but got sidetracked by the gamecube portable I am building. There are tons and tons of MIDs out there with Atom based X86 motherboards that are very small. In fact, if I did not have to worry about batteries, a screen, controls, etc, I could probably fit the motherboard I am using into a GBA SP shell.

I started work on the faceplate, I am using DS Lite face buttons and dpad and two PSP 2000 analog sticks (Shit, I know, I know...) wired up to a cut down generic USB PS2 style controller. Going to be a tight fit, but I have just enough bezel space between the screen and edge of the device.

900mhz Atom
512mb DDR2 RAM
GMA 500
8gb SSD, SDHC Slot, 60gb 1.8" HDD
GPS
Wifi B/G
Bluetooth
800x480 4.8" touchscreen LCD
2200mah 7.4v li-po

Under full brightness, all wireless functions at full power, and CPU at max load, running the 1.8" HDD, I can pull about 45 minutes of battery life. Keep LCD at full, all wireless off, and playing some SNES or PSX at 640x480 off an SD card, I can easily pull almost two hours! Bump everything down to minimum, doing nothing but scrolling through a text document, it lasts about three hours. I contacted Craig about getting some pandora nubs, and he said I should be able to get some one they start shipping (Cannot wait for my pre-order unit). That is actually the man reason the project is on hold, I have absolutely no desire to build it with terrible PSP sticks as planned, then gut it later to replace them, since that would mean new joystick holes, bondo, paintjob...

 

[Exophase]

Dead wrong there. I started work on a project like this, but got sidetracked by the gamecube portable I am building. There are tons and tons of MIDs out there with Atom based X86 motherboards that are very small. In fact, if I did not have to worry about batteries, a screen, controls, etc, I could probably fit the motherboard I am using into a GBA SP shell.

Dude, I was talking about an off the shelf motherboard, you know, the kind that costs maybe $50-$150 at the most, NOT repurposing a MID or UMPC that costs several hundred dollars. There's a big difference, don't you think?

Now, I don't know about the new VIA one, but that was only very very recently announced so I think you can pardon me.

 

[palmertech]

Dude, I was talking about an off the shelf motherboard, you know, the kind that costs maybe $50-$150 at the most, NOT repurposing a MID or UMPC that costs several hundred dollars. There's a big difference, don't you think?

Now, I don't know about the new VIA one, but that was only very very recently announced so I think you can pardon me.

Eh, Via is interesting, but still not good for portables. A small Ion based mobo could be made, but so far they are only available in nettops that insist on an impossible use square motherboard.

And what would you say if I told you the hardware for this cost me under $150 shipped, brand new? If you want to put the reasonable price limit at that mark, then don't worry, this easily meets it: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001LMCPQ8?ie=UTF8&tag=modr0f-20&link_code=as3&camp=211189&creative=373489&creativeASIN=B001LMCPQ8

They were discontinued by the maker because they suck, Amazon is clearing a lot of stock from different people right now for bargain basement prices. It is a shitty GPS, but if you install a new OS on it, it is actually pretty nice! It uses the same reference design as the Aigo MID P8860, so there are plenty of drivers out there for it. I got mine for $139 shipped, the price fluctuates wildly at the moment, they have even dipped under $100 in the past few weeks a few times.

And if you got the impression I just wanted to prove the mighty Exophase wrong, I apologize. I just have this compulsive habit of arguing, and for the most part, you are completely right. You not knowing about a limited time, little known clearance on a re-purposable device does not make anything you pointed out invalid, and once these are gone, there will be no cheap alternative. The cheapest equivalents that are actually sold as computers start at $600 or so. Not to mention that playing games on a portable X86 based handheld is a nightmare... Watt for watt, I have installed a battery very similar to the one in the Pandora, yet I will just BARELY manage two hours doing anything fun, while the Pandora can keep going for easily quintuple that.

 

[Exophase]

Wow, that clearance is insane. Are you planning on doing controls over USB? I bet the OP would love for you to mod one of these for him.

 

[palmertech]

Wow, that clearance is insane. Are you planning on doing controls over USB? I bet the OP would love for you to mod one of these for him.

[I am using DS Lite face buttons and dpad and two PSP 2000 analog sticks (Shit, I know, I know...) wired up to a cut down generic USB PS2 style controller.

I wrote lots of words, read them. Yes, the controls are wired to an internal hub, then to the gamepad, then to the controls I am embedding in the faceplate. This thing will be for sale after I have a few weeks to play with it and stress test it after it is finished (Probably late march/early april). Heck, I might beat the Pandora! It might not be practical, but boy is a tiny X86 based gaming handheld awesome. I tried it out with the controls simple hanging and taped in place, and it was still very, very awesome. Plays Starcraft, Diablo and Fallout 1 just fine, a real retro PC powerhouse if I ever saw one.

I am debating keeping full MID functions or not... See, WiFi and GPS are hard to turn off in software, so I disabled them in hardware. I am tempted to just go with a custom frontend at boot with access to a media player and game selector, with the ability to get out to windows to install new games or change settings. That way, I could just gut the wifi and GPS and save a heck of a lot of trouble and power. The display drivers also have issues with XP... It runs 100% perfectly at 640x480 with no scaling, but getting it to do the full widescreen in anything other than the OS and static images is proving to be a challenge.

Another thing... Seen Streammygame? Not tested, but I really should. If this thing can handle local/internet streaming from my gaming rig, I would be tempted to keep it... Mmmm, tasty TF2 on the go. Of course, wifi would be needed.

Any input on what you think would be good ideas? I know how to make hardware, and I have good case crafting skillz, but I was not really into gaming back when these old games were popular. Do you think it might be a good idea to just run it at 640x480 and cover the extra 160x480 on each side? This would actually give me more room for buttons, too, less cramped by throwing them on the edge. There is a reason home game consoles do not put the buttons right on the edge of the controller face.

 

[mali]

palmertech, this sounds really interesting
Please make a new thread if you like and post photos of your MOD.

 

[gruso]

Yeah, I'd love to hear updates too. Those little Clarions are mighty tempting at that price!

 

[andwan0]

My Mitsubishi palmtop runs Windows98 and can play anything from that era and older. I've played some Warcraft and Doom and stuff like that on it, also have an older version of MAME on it. Specs are Pentium 166, 192 megs of ram, 2.1 gig hard drive, 8 inch 800 x 600 vga screen. Can probably find tons of older pcs like that online cheap, think I paid $100 for mine refurbed.

Please tell me more about this palmtop. You got a URL/link ?

 

[andwan0]

I might test try netbooks since they now should be USB bootable. Can easily setup a MS-DOS with games on a bootable USB ( eg. with help from http://blogs.sun.com/dragonfly/entry/dos_bootable_usb_flash_drive ) ... and see how it runs... ofcourse taking into account it might be a little sluggish when running off USB... but it's just to see compatibility and whether it REALLY can run without freezing or crashing.

Next problem is sound.... since most 1990 MS-DOS games mainly used Sound Blaster Pro compatible or Gravis Soundcards..... any ideas on sound? Can you get a Sound Blaster/Gravis PCMICA or USB? I think the last Sound Blaster Pro compatible was Audigy 1??

 

[andwan0]

<snip>

900mhz Atom
512mb DDR2 RAM
GMA 500
8gb SSD, SDHC Slot, 60gb 1.8" HDD
GPS
Wifi B/G
Bluetooth
800x480 4.8" touchscreen LCD
2200mah 7.4v li-po

Wow! Are you going to write up a guide? How much is the total for parts? Guess it's over kill to run MS-DOS natively....