Uh... Dos?

[Efompor]

I really dont know much about this topic as there is no real info about it on Google for as much as I'm willing to search and the Forum search doesnt let you have 3 letter keywords, soo... Is a DOS emulator possible for the GP32? I've seen emu's like that for the xbox and Dreamcast, but I'm unaware of how much it will take to emulate it on the GP32. It doesnt seem like it would be that hard, but what do I know about coding, right? So is it possible? I'd love to play games like Duke Nukem 2 and Blake Sone (maybe) on the GP32

 

[taras]

It is possible, but you would only be able to emulate a very, very poor spec x86 PC - maybe 10MHz (?)... I think this is something to do with the GP32 processor being completely different to the x86.

I know that my HPC running at 75MHz can run a DOS emulator, but it's very poor - it struggles running Qbasic.

 

[jlebrech]

emulating the cpu is the easy part, then u have to fake disc drives and even vga.

 

[Esn]

A lot of good games run at 10Mhz or below on DOS. Not Star Control 2 sadly (14Mhz I think), but *meh*.

P.S. Efompor: What the heck is that thing in your avatar?? :wacko: :huh:

 

[beef]

Efompor's avatar is a monster from Doom known as a ?Caca demon?. Something of the sort.

 

[Ernest]

Cacodemon to be precise

 

[_tyrell_]

I don't know if some of you had the chance to use it, or were already born but a looong time ago (13 years ?), during my graduate studies, I was using a DOS emulator ("transformer" if I remember) running on the amiga. It was emulating dos on a 7mhz machine (amiga 500). I was compiling pascal programs, running an asm debugger, and so on. It was slow, but perfectly usable !

So, I guess that with good optimizations, running simple games on a much more powerful cpu could be achieved at an acceptable speed.

_tyrell_

 

[lek]

The sources to DOSBox are available across multiple OS's:

http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/download.php?main=1

Maybe that would be a good starting point for someone to try writing a DOS emu. Not sure it would ever be possible with decent speed though, such a different architecture, and protected memory modes (which many later DOS games use), etc, arn't fully emulated even with the current DOSBox. Floating point emulation would slow stuff down as well.

 

[Swiss_Cheeseman]

I don't know if some of you had the chance to use it, or were already born but a looong time ago (13 years ?), during my graduate studies, I was using a DOS emulator ("transformer" if I remember) running on the amiga. It was emulating dos on a 7mhz machine (amiga 500). I was compiling pascal programs, running an asm debugger, and so on. It was slow, but perfectly usable !

So, I guess that with good optimizations, running simple games on a much more powerful cpu could be achieved at an acceptable speed.

_tyrell_

I'd love to have pascal on my GP32, its the only thing I can code in.

 

[_tyrell_]

Just tried DOSBox the last evening and this is running quite well. I tried System Shock (this game is very picky about available memory) and it ran at first try, complete with Adlib sound ! This could be very easily ported, because it uses SDL and SDL is also available for the GB32. For simple games like Day Of The Tentacles I guess it could be fast enough.

Anu candidate for a port ?

_tyrell_

 

[Swiss_Cheeseman]

Just tried DOSBox the last evening and this is running quite well. I tried System Shock (this game is very picky about available memory) and it ran at first try, complete with Adlib sound ! This could be very easily ported, because it uses SDL and SDL is also available for the GB32. For simple games like Day Of The Tentacles I guess it could be fast enough.

Anu candidate for a port ?

_tyrell_

You have no idea. DosBox can only be run on really powerful PCs. My Duron 700 has trouble running Wolf3D with it.

 

[_tyrell_]

I didn't say it would be easy. Probably that the CPU emulation would have to be entirely rewritten in arm assembly. From what I saw in the sources, it uses dynarec and this is the hard part to port but otherwise I'm pretty sure that for simple games (and without sound) it could run at decent speeds.

And I *have* an idea. I wrote an emu (even if it's a lot simpler) and know how hard it is to optimize.

_tyrell_

 

[Swiss_Cheeseman]

I'll retract my "no idea" comment, but theres still almost no chance someone will make a usable dos emulator.