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DOS Emulation Arrives For the Raspberry Pi
An anonymous reader writes "Homebrew Coder Pate has released a DOS Emulator for the Raspberry Pi. Originally released for the Nintendo DS and Android, the emulator currently can emulate a CPU: 80486 processor, including the protected mode features (for running DOS4GW games) but without virtual memory support. The emulation runs at a speed around that of a 20MHz 80486 (which equals a 40MHz 80386) machine. It has support for Super VGA graphics, Soundblaster 2.0, Memory, USB keyboard and mouse. Perfect for playing old classics such as Doom, Duke Nukem 3D and Theme Park."
Other than as a proof of concept is there any fundamental use for this facility?
Does anybody want to play Doom like it was 1993?
Can someone explain why you wouldn't be able to run DOSBox? Isn't this reinventing the wheel?
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My main desktop machine for poking about with sound is a Dell Optiplex 755 with a "laptop-style" floppy drive. The Intel floppy controller works really well for weirdass formats like the Ensoniq Mirage with its mixed sector lengths, and disks like the Roland S-series ones where the low-level format is "normal" but the filesystem is weird.
What old musical equipment do you need to create floppies for?
Okay, this "now on the Raspberry Pi" craze is getting really ridiculous.
No, it isn't. Let's have it become a stable platform with a flourishing software and hardware ecosystem.
No, it isn't. Let's have it become a stable platform with a flourishing software and hardware ecosystem.
You can run all the popular Linux distributions on it; with a pretty full Desktop experience (all the packages are there performance is generally pretty good). So I think we are there.
The trouble is the ARM world is evolving pretty fast. The Raspberry Pi is so much faster than the Kirkwood based stuff that was filling the same niche spaces before it. I am really glad that $35 + a little extra for some storage and a power supply gets you a computer that is "good enough for most projects" that is great.
I don't want to see things get so tied to the RasPi that big FOSS projects get to tightly coupled to it. Because just like the Pi has replaced the Kirkwood stuffs; someone is going to put together an even more powerful, even more efficient just as cheap ARM SoC together sooner rather than later. I'd like to see the community benefit as greatly.
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As a Unix user, I expect to be able to run any software I own on any microprocessor architecture I can manage to get my hands on. That's just the way that Unix is supposed to work.
If I get a PI, then I expect it to run all of my non-commercial software that has source code available for it.
Just comes with the territory.
mysql, apache, mate, firefox, slrn, mame, mythtv, gimp, sane, libreoffice, xbill... pretty much everything except my Loki and Steam games.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Yes, a lot of people enjoy playing retro DOS games, especially LucasArts adventure games.
If your definition of "a lot" is a number less than 1000 then sure.
With only 1000 users, gog.com could not exist. AFAICT old dos games represent most of their business.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
-VOGONS /vr/ (retro games)
-GoG
-4chan
-Abandonia
All active DOS gaming communities.
There are certainly more than 1000 people playing DOS games today.
You can get a perfectly good little Linux running computer for $50 and you're whining about it? The Raspberry Pi Foundation was set up with the goal of getting more children to do programming at home and in school. That is their purpose. The board is as cheap as it is partly because Broadcom are supporting the initiative. I don't know what you mean by "the device doesn't work right". Of course it works right. Hundreds of thousands of people are using them.
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
You have X server and everything else sucking up the PI's limited memory
As far as I know, DOSBOX it self uses SDL (for portability). So instead of going after the whole X server, it would be possible to use a lighter SDL backend (framebuffer device, etc.) to avoid needing the whole X running.
That said yes it a bit of a wheel re-advent; but so was DosBox, DosEMU existed for what a decade before it?
Unlike what the name might suggest, DosEmu isn't an emulator. It only provides DOS APIs (mainly BIOS, and a few I/O ports for specific hardware that was programmed that way). The code itself runs natively on the CPU. Thus it requires a CPU which is able to run 16-bits x86 code (so its limited to 32bits Intel/AMD processors, because they have a "Virtual 86" mode to run 16-bits code alongside 32-bits. It does not even work on 64 bits processors, as there is no "Virtual 86" mode to run 16-bits code. Once the processor enters 64 bits mode, the "hardware virtual box" offered by Virtual 86 isn't here anymore).
It's close to the idea of Wine, it's very similar to the dos box of Windows (That's the same reason that the dos box got dropped out of the 64bits flavours of windows - their dos box also relies on Virtual 86 to provide the virtual sand box to run 16 bits code in it).
DosBox, on the other hand, isn't juse an API interface, it's a full virtual box emulating a complete PC. It does emulate the CPU too (like any other emulator - for exemple like a GameBoy emulator) and thus can run on anything on which you can compile it.
It also support dynamic recompiling, so it gets good performance for architectures it can target (currently: the x86 family, and ARMv4)
So they didn't really re-invent the wheel, they mostly solved different fundamental problems. That's why DosBox happened.
But, where we can criticise is that DosBox came with its own set of code to emulate the peripherals. DosBox and DosEmu could have shared much more (in terms of sound emulation for example) but each followed its way.
In this context, again - some of this project does make sense (they target a different CPU meaning the code could be better optimised for the RPi) but they'll have to reinvent the other parts. Thus prix86 emulates far less different options for audio (only FM + stereo digital) than dosbox (which in addition supported GUS-like wavetable synthesis, and MT-32-like MIDI).
Nothing wrong with having more options.
Well, they could have re-used some of the peripheral emulation of DosBox. On the other hand this might be power hungry for the small RPi (MT-32 is quite complex to emulate, and DosBox's OPL-FM is unoptimised and designed for fidelity rather than speed).
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You can do anything with Raspberry Pi...
Anything at all.
The only limit is yourself!
The infinite is possible with Raspberry Pi.
The unattainable is unknown with Raspberry Pi.
Welcome to Raspberry Pi.
This is Raspberry Pi... welcome!
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Cool, I wrote Stunts on a 16mhz 386 so this should be powerful enough to play it.
I'm not sure I know a single person I interact with face-to-face who has even booted up DOS for recreational purposes in the last 10 years.
Have you met me? You probably would not know that I play some retro games at times too. It's not exactly a fantastic conversation piece. But just because I don't shout from the rooftops that I have DOSBox installed with quite a library doesn't mean I don't do it.
Maybe you should ask some of the people you interact with face-to-face. You may be surprised.