Release Qemu for Pandora (for rebirth competition)


mcobit

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Jul 28, 2008
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Hello everyone,


this thread is just to let you know, what IngoReis and I work on for the Rebirth Competition.


Ingo had the idea to compile qemu for the Pandora and he tested some stuff, that works really well.


Because he wasn't able to make a pnd of it, because he compiled on the Pandora, I tried to make it work in the toolchain.


Now what is the purpose of this?


- DosBox on Pandora works fairly well, but booting a Windows system in it is too slow and even games run not the way i liked to play them. This approch is much faster.


How does it work?


- You can create a virtual machine with qemu and install an operating system of your choice into it.


This operating system can be any os, that runs on a x86 machine.


What works?


- We tested to run DOS, Windows 95, Windows XP, FreeDOS and ReactOS in it. All of them worked fine. Newer Systems are of course slower than older ones.


(Thanks to slaeshjag, foxblock and others for testing!)


A lot of games work, too and many of them with really good speed compared to dosbox.


How fast is it?


- It depends on the games you want to run. Sometimes games, that need a Pentium 90 run acceptable, but sometimes games struggle, that just need a 486 33 MHz PC.


So, it depends. I think all in all we have the speed somewhere between a 486 66 MHz to a Pentium 60 MHz.


What doesn't work?


- Some games, that are too resourcehungry, as well, as the touchscreen (it is off, but we are working on that). External mice and nubs do work though.


- What you will tell us after release ;)


Where can I download it from?


- You can't download it right now, as it is work in progress and will be released after some more optimizations for the Rebirth Competition.


I have never used qemu before, how can i possibly use this thing?


- We will provide a customized, easy to use gui for it, that makes it easy to create an image, mount an image or mount additional isos or change the most useful options for graphics, sound, networking and emulation.


And now, videos say more than thousand words. Enjoy:


Warcraft 2 (DOS):

https://www.youtube.com/embed/CXRE36Yxb2k?feature=oembed

The pink tint is due to the ptod-LCD of IngoReis. Sorry for that.


More to come. Stay tuned!
 
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I've been seeing these video's appear on YouTube over the last couple of days and have been VERY impressed.


The DOS games run way better than in DOSbox.


Many thanks for your work on this.
 
Are you taking requests for stuff we'd like to see running on it?


If so any of the Wing Commander games.
 
Wow! Awesome stuff and this will be a fantastic entry into the rebirth contest.


I look forward to using it. These old(er) DOS games are really fun on the pandora.


Thanks!
 
Wow very impressive mcobit, I never expected so much performance out of Qemu and never bothered with it.
 
Really a big and great addition to the Pandora Software library. :) Dungeon keeper on the pandora, very nice. (I guess the DOS version works better than the Win Version? ) Diablo1 also is a great game to play, especialy with Touchscreen.


Is it possible to install some OS in parallel, for example DOS and Windows? (i guess Win 95 and 98 need Dos though) I still have Win95 and Win98, would be interesting to see how they perform on the Poandora. :)
 
Wow, this is going to be a very strong entry in the competition! Great project, looking forward to see more extensive compatibility lists.
 
Forget Smplayer and accidental porn posts, this is the real porn for the pandora! Amazing stuff, really can't wait to have a "play" with it.


I have a question about touch screen support, ok we'd all love it by default for every mouse enabled game, but isn't there a way to install genuine touchscreen drivers on some of the available x86 OS's that are being emulated? I'm curious abouthow that would work as opposed to the TS emulating a real mouse.
 
Really, we all just want to know if Starcraft 2 will run ;)


(and for me, I want to know if Wizardry 8 will run; Wiz 8 is my last holy grail point for mobile emulation :)


Kudos .. I didn't think qemu would perform so well; this is using the ARM dynarec I guess eh?


Very nice!


jeff
 
Oh wow! Can't wait to see command and conquer in action on this bad boy!
 
Great stuff! Looking forward to playing Ultima VIII and TIE Fighter on Pandora.
 
How fast is it?


- It depends on the games you want to run. Sometimes games, that need a Pentium 90 run acceptable, but sometimes games struggle, that just need a 486 33 MHz PC.


So, it depends. I think all in all we have the speed somewhere between a 486 66 MHz to a Pentium 60 MHz.

So a 486 66 MHz could probably be reached? Then here's finally hoping for Realms of the Haunting, which is among my favourite games all time.


I'd love to have this gem tested if by any chance you accept suggestions. They still have a free demoversion available for download, just for you to know ;)


http://www.realmsoft...m/downloads.php


Oh well, and I'm really going to freak out some of my favourite Sierra-Adventures (Gabriel Knight 2, Phantasmagoria 1+2, Shivers etc.) will work (incl. touchscreen support).
 
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Thanks for the nice comments!


We will test some more games and we are creating a compatibility sheet.


Also there will be some nice documentation for you to read later.

Nice.


One of the best qemu frontend is aqemu :


http://sourceforge.net/projects/aqemu/
Nice, but we will ship our own ui, that includes the functions, that make sense on the Pandora. It won't be bloated and you will have a good overview about everything.


I will post some screens later today.

Really a big and great addition to the Pandora Software library. :) Dungeon keeper on the pandora, very nice. (I guess the DOS version works better than the Win Version? ) Diablo1 also is a great game to play, especialy with Touchscreen.


Is it possible to install some OS in parallel, for example DOS and Windows? (i guess Win 95 and 98 need Dos though) I still have Win95 and Win98, would be interesting to see how they perform on the Poandora. :)
You can have any os in its own imagefile and switch this images between bootups or you may install more than one os into the machine with a bootloader like grub or the ms bootloader thingie.

Forget Smplayer and accidental porn posts, this is the real porn for the pandora! Amazing stuff, really can't wait to have a "play" with it.


I have a question about touch screen support, ok we'd all love it by default for every mouse enabled game, but isn't there a way to install genuine touchscreen drivers on some of the available x86 OS's that are being emulated? I'm curious abouthow that would work as opposed to the TS emulating a real mouse.
Not tried to install touchscreendrivers, but Ingo will have to do that, as I am waiting for my Pandora to return to me from repair.

I wonder if urjaman's work in this old thread would be of any use to you? (He modified Win3.1 video & mouse drivers, for 800x480 display and touchscreen control.)
Maybe it will, as long, as you will use win3.1.


But maybe some of this can be used in Win 95, too. We'll have to test and see.


When this is released, I think people will do a lot of testing and stuff for it.
 
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Here are some pictures of the UI:


Hope you will like it.


Main screen:





Image tool:





Options:





Edit: This is an older Version. Text and spaceissues are already eliminated now. But you get the idea :)


Edit2: Some elements are in german, as these screenshots are from my dev-vm.
 
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wow! how fast/slow does winxp run?
veeery slow, with only 256MB RAM on current pandoras (which cannot be fully utilized as the system that runs Qemu and Qemu itself need some memory too), Windows XP will swap as if ther was no morning


b2t:


can't believe I'm already ranting :unsure:


do you think it is a wise idea to have the appdata directory as the default location for images?
 
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WinXP needs about 10 mins to startup (iirc from tests with slaeshjag). It is useable (quote from memory: slaeshjag: "I can open stuff, but there is something still loading in the background") and doesn't swap too much, if you give 128MB RAM to the vm.


Of course for games, it will be far too much overhead.


Edit: thatgui: As for the ui, there is nothing set in stone yet. Maybe it is a good idea to let the user decide, where to create the images.
 
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