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Reply 1060 of 2397, by sean_skroht

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Hi there,

I was wondering if someone could point me in the right direction as to where I could find an easy to follow tutorial on how to compile the latest version of DOSBox-X (including all it's features like SDL_Sound, SDL_net, LibPNG etc) with Visual Studio Community 2015 using Windows 10 x64. Or is there a pre-compiled version anywhere, as I couldn't find anything?
I've not really used Visual Studio before so this is a first. Not the first time I've compiled before since I do so on a regular basis with a custom version of MAME using MinGW.
Thanks.

Reply 1061 of 2397, by Dominus

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You could just use mingw to compile or follow the guide on how to compile Dosbox from the dosbox wiki. It's mostly the same.

Windows 3.1x guide for DOSBox
60 seconds guide to DOSBox
DOSBox SVN snapshot for macOS (10.4-11.x ppc/intel 32/64bit) notarized for gatekeeper

Reply 1063 of 2397, by avx

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1) Tracked down one part of why GUS sounded bad in Star Control 2 with dosbox-X..

I was using 0.74 configs and they did not have this line:
dynamic kernel allocation=false

For anyone testing SC2, be sure to start with starcon2.exe /S:GRAVIS and check the map for coords - the map bypass hacks (incl. GOG's) appear to bring about audio bugs with gus emulation depending on what dosbox build is running it.

2) I checked the reversed stereo issue extensively (bought the first ACE rev with reverse stereo) and it appears -X branch has the GUS stereo swapped incorrectly just like the first ace card. One test is to run doom(which doesn't allow reversing stereo), idclev 1 3, and listen where the shots come from. the LFN build on other thread has this right (I believe it's based on recent SVN so that should be ok too)

This is possibly a regression of X-branch caused by the stereo width patch and misleading videos recorded with the reversed stereo in ACE rev 1.0 leading as with older build the stereo is not reversed but the width does not match the typical very wide gus sound (which you could well argue is too wide for headphones but that's how it's in the hw, so similar width adjustment in mixer as in winuae would be useful).

3) There is still some subtle glitch in all dosbox builds I tried, most noticeably in OMF menu theme beginning. It's not present on hardware. I think it can be briefly heard in other places in "quiet" songs but much more rarely.

edit: After further comparisons with ace 1.0 hw, it seems that the OMF 3) issue is the clearest one with emulation having some problem. The hw had a short glitchy sound in SC2 few times in my short test.

Reply 1064 of 2397, by TheGreatCodeholio

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avx wrote:
1) Tracked down one part of why GUS sounded bad in Star Control 2 with dosbox-X.. […]
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1) Tracked down one part of why GUS sounded bad in Star Control 2 with dosbox-X..

I was using 0.74 configs and they did not have this line:
dynamic kernel allocation=false

For anyone testing SC2, be sure to start with starcon2.exe /S:GRAVIS and check the map for coords - the map bypass hacks (incl. GOG's) appear to bring about audio bugs with gus emulation depending on what dosbox build is running it.

2) I checked the reversed stereo issue extensively (bought the first ACE rev with reverse stereo) and it appears -X branch has the GUS stereo swapped incorrectly just like the first ace card. One test is to run doom(which doesn't allow reversing stereo), idclev 1 3, and listen where the shots come from. the LFN build on other thread has this right (I believe it's based on recent SVN so that should be ok too)

This is possibly a regression of X-branch caused by the stereo width patch and misleading videos recorded with the reversed stereo in ACE rev 1.0 leading as with older build the stereo is not reversed but the width does not match the typical very wide gus sound (which you could well argue is too wide for headphones but that's how it's in the hw, so similar width adjustment in mixer as in winuae would be useful).

3) There is still some subtle glitch in all dosbox builds I tried, most noticeably in OMF menu theme beginning. It's not present on hardware. I think it can be briefly heard in other places in "quiet" songs but much more rarely.

edit: After further comparisons with ace 1.0 hw, it seems that the OMF 3) issue is the clearest one with emulation having some problem. The hw had a short glitchy sound in SC2 few times in my short test.

Avx, I've made a lot of changes recently to GUS emulation to improve accuracy. I've gotten thanks elsewhere on Github for getting Quake to work with the Ultrasound. Could you verify audible glitches are fixed in that game? The only remaining use case left where GUS emulation has problems is Windows 3.1 digital audio playback with Ultrasound drivers, every other use case I've tested works fine.

Is the stereo still backwards? Should I add an option to swap stereo and/or switch the default channel order?

DOSBox-X project: more emulation better accuracy.
DOSLIB and DOSLIB2: Learn how to tinker and hack hardware and software from DOS.

Reply 1065 of 2397, by TheGreatCodeholio

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Avx, I just found out what makes the GUS playback in Star Control II sound so bad.

There's a bug in the GUS support code related to DMA to the GUS if the DMA channel is 8-bit. The DMA mode control setting given by the program is unusual, so I've added code to DOSBox-X to recognize that case and handle it. Can you confirm on your end that the latest commit plays the music correctly?

DOSBox-X project: more emulation better accuracy.
DOSLIB and DOSLIB2: Learn how to tinker and hack hardware and software from DOS.

Reply 1066 of 2397, by TheGreatCodeholio

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avx wrote:
1) Tracked down one part of why GUS sounded bad in Star Control 2 with dosbox-X.. […]
Show full quote

1) Tracked down one part of why GUS sounded bad in Star Control 2 with dosbox-X..

I was using 0.74 configs and they did not have this line:
dynamic kernel allocation=false

For anyone testing SC2, be sure to start with starcon2.exe /S:GRAVIS and check the map for coords - the map bypass hacks (incl. GOG's) appear to bring about audio bugs with gus emulation depending on what dosbox build is running it.

2) I checked the reversed stereo issue extensively (bought the first ACE rev with reverse stereo) and it appears -X branch has the GUS stereo swapped incorrectly just like the first ace card. One test is to run doom(which doesn't allow reversing stereo), idclev 1 3, and listen where the shots come from. the LFN build on other thread has this right (I believe it's based on recent SVN so that should be ok too)

This is possibly a regression of X-branch caused by the stereo width patch and misleading videos recorded with the reversed stereo in ACE rev 1.0 leading as with older build the stereo is not reversed but the width does not match the typical very wide gus sound (which you could well argue is too wide for headphones but that's how it's in the hw, so similar width adjustment in mixer as in winuae would be useful).

3) There is still some subtle glitch in all dosbox builds I tried, most noticeably in OMF menu theme beginning. It's not present on hardware. I think it can be briefly heard in other places in "quiet" songs but much more rarely.

edit: After further comparisons with ace 1.0 hw, it seems that the OMF 3) issue is the clearest one with emulation having some problem. The hw had a short glitchy sound in SC2 few times in my short test.

I just addressed the GUS backwards stereo issue.

DOSBox-X project: more emulation better accuracy.
DOSLIB and DOSLIB2: Learn how to tinker and hack hardware and software from DOS.

Reply 1067 of 2397, by Silanda

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I meant to mention this months ago, but it still seems to hold true. I'm having trouble mounting more than one CD drive from images. If I do, one CD drive will mount and work correctly but accessing the other will crash the emulator. This seems true whether the images are mounted from the config file or from the menu.

Reply 1068 of 2397, by OSH

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There's problem with joystick detection. I can't force DOSBOX-X to detect joystick under Windows 95C. It's no problem with system, but with DOSBOX-X itself, because the same system under Dosbox 3dfx form Kekko detect joystick properly.

Reply 1069 of 2397, by avx

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1. Doom stereo now ok

2. One Must Fall OMF menu music from ACE CD glitches ~4 times a second (not on HW, have tried on 2 different GUS and computers) and Star Control 2 intro seems to have similar glitches but not at such exact intervals, I'll need to verify on HW if this SC2 thing is also true there. ACE CD http://www.vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?file … 130&menustate=0

+ see #4

3. left handed only alternative to CTRL-F10 would be nice.. Like win+tab/shift/control. I don't like having to take my hand of the trackball to release the mouse while flipping through windows. IMO dosbox should not by default capture windows keys. If someone wants to install windows and then capture the alt-tab etc then have that a menu option.

http://www.maz-sound.com/archives/axsfree.zip
synth+sampler+drums+tracker for DOS.. Change .ini to use GUS. It's a bit "finicky" depending on the config. Starting at 110k cycles may help to avoid glitches.

4. If this doesn't happen for you, perhaps you could share your config with the build. The DosboxX release in github does not have any config and if it creates one, not sure where?

Reply 1070 of 2397, by avx

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Just had interesting idea that I want to copy paste here as it's worth doing given there's multiple wins.
Rather than implement EQ,stereowidth,effects etc into DosBox...

"You could wrap dosbox into a VST instrument with separate virtual output for each dosbox soundcard. Then run dosbox inside say Reaper, so you can then use the Reaper parametric EQ and various stereo width/invert etc plugins.

This would also get you ASIO support through the VST host (reaper) so you could use DOS synths with low latency."

...

Another way to do this is a virtual soundcard that the apps like dosbox output audio to, then the output is patched to a VST host as input. I've tried various things that attempt this before but they were always either buggy or complicated, high latency...
It might be possible to do a appcompat style load-time patch of exe's that intercepts Windows audio API calls and replaces them with VST output/inputs. So when you load the VST it asks what exe to run and patches that exe's audio api calls. The probability of this working well etc...

I read that if you buy something like the RME USB audio card, you get a mixer that should allow doing this stuff. It just would be nice to have something like Surface Book with these capabilities built in, no need for extenal dongle. Maybe what is needed is some sort of wide expansion slot where you can plug in PCIe card that has room for multiple small outputs without a big extrenal dongle. Similar to Amiga expansion slot.

Reply 1071 of 2397, by crawlingChaos

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Just discovered dosbox-x. Amazing work.

Has anyone considered supporting mounting qcow2 images with backing image support directly? It would make testing and supporting multiple win9x games and setups much easier as you'd only ever need one vanilla install of the OS to support an unlimited number of mutually incompatible games.

I'm a developer and thought I'd dig around in the source to see if it's feasible, but thought I'd see what others thought were on the matter. How does everyone else handle dealing with multiple win9x games and configurations?

Reply 1072 of 2397, by bigjackskid

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Does Scaling work yet? I tried Dosbox SVN Daum with Opengl-HQ but it ctd's on my desktop with a GTX970. However opengl-hq works fine on my laptop with in integrated Intel HD 4400.

Reply 1074 of 2397, by valnar

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Hey everyone...

Without reading the whole thread, is there a quick synopsis of how the DOSBox-X branch differs from regular DOSBox, or even better, from ykhwong's last build with all his add-ons? It doesn't appear Taewoong is updating his version any more and that was my go-to build. Thanks.

Reply 1075 of 2397, by crawlingChaos

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Question: How do I get general midi emulation to work under Dosbox-x?

With Dosbox 0.74 I run timidity.
My dosbox-0.74.conf has the following midi settings:
mpu401=intelligent
mididevice=default
midiconfig=128:0

I've read that Fluidsynth can work, but I haven't gotten it working because I haven't gotten Dosbox-x to compile with support for Fluidsynth. Is Fluidsynth the only way?

Reply 1076 of 2397, by NewRisingSun

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TheGreatCodeholio wrote:
NewRisingSun wrote:

Any booter game that uses Int 13 to directly read picture data from floppy diskette into CGA video memory at B8000 will use DMA from the floppy controller (originally an ISA card) to video memory (on another ISA card). BIOS does not buffer the data. Try any Electronic Arts booter and see. The reason it works under mainline DOSBox is that mainline DOSBox's Int 13 emulation does not actually program DMA and floppy controller like a real BIOS would.

Huh, didn't know that. So perhaps I should add test cases to DOSLIB that allows you to see what happens when DMA is directed at VGA memory vs system memory. I guess I started playing with DOS when booter games had already disappeared and that's why I figured nobody did that. I'm curious if that's only possible on earlier motherboards (pre-386) or if that works on later motherboards that have some separation between CPU, memory, and the ISA bus. That would be interesting to see if Pentium motherboards support ISA DMA directed at VGA memory when the VGA card is on the PCI bus.

Reviving an old post: I have just tried an original disk of an Electronic Arts booter ("The Seven Cities of Gold") in an Asus P2B-LS from 1998 with an AGP graphics card. The Electronic Arts logo, seen on an ancient PC when the code reads the picture data directly into the B800 segment, is NOT seen on that machine. Make of that what you will. 😀

Reply 1077 of 2397, by crawlingChaos

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If anyone is interested, I have added support for QCow2 images in my fork of DOSBox-X. It autodetects the image type instead of relying on problematic things like the file extension. There is currently no support for compresed images, internal snapshots, or encryption, but it does support any level of nested backing files so long as they use full paths.

Reply 1079 of 2397, by crawlingChaos

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My code was accepted into dosbox-x last night. 😀

I'm working on supporting compressed images, although the behavior of qemu-img when creating them is rather puzzling. It does several things not mentioned in the docs I've found.

I'd also like to address some issues regarding backing files, which is perhaps my favorite feature of QCow images. Both absolute and relative paths are acceptable, but I don't yet support relative paths because of the need to know where the original file is located. Beyond that is the issue of Windows vs *nix paths. I don't currently run Windows, so testing will require me to get a Windows box with qemu on it. It'd be nice if I could parse the paths in such a way to make the files created under Windows usable on linux and vice versa. Stand alone images should be completely portable.