The original Pi is rather weak. I know it can't run Munt for the life of it (I tried to make a little portable MIDI module with an USB MIDI interface) even when OCed to 1GHz. The Pi2 does manage to run it... but with really high CPU usage even when OCed. I've seen topics with people saying Munt works with 800MHz P3, so I would not dispute the claim that the original Pi would equate to a Pentium 2. It does have vídeo decoding capabilities a P2 could not dream of having, though, thanks to the IGPU.
Also beware that the analog audio sucks on both versions, which is sad.

I have put an bunch of time into configuring and benchmarking dosbox on the pi and pi2

I actually have deployed about 20 pi2s at work as thin clients to a Microsoft Server 2012 remote desktop server using xfreeRDP and they work quite well

if you...
overclock a pi2 to 1.1ghz (not tooooo hard on your average pi2)
force 640x480 output on hdmi in the config.txt file
use an external midi module for music
compile dosbox to use dynamic recompilation and all of the arm7 optimizations it can support
set scaling in dosbox to the least amount you can still get away with it scaling to full screen

your looking at about 17or 18fps in the doom1 timedemo demo3

the scaling is largely what kills it and if you have to load X your going to take a performance hit on top of that.
the pi port of DSx86 works pretty well too but has less compatibility than dosbox

alexanrs wrote:

The original Pi is rather weak. I know it can't run Munt for the life of it (I tried to make a little portable MIDI module with an USB MIDI interface) even when OCed to 1GHz. The Pi2 does manage to run it... but with really high CPU usage even when OCed. I've seen topics with people saying Munt works with 800MHz P3, so I would not dispute the claim that the original Pi would equate to a Pentium 2. It does have vídeo decoding capabilities a P2 could not dream of having, though, thanks to the IGPU.
Also beware that the analog audio sucks on both versions, which is sad.

Audio quality can be addressed fairly cheaply by running off-board codecs, so not a big issue. I'm interested to know if the Pi 2 could realistically be used as a sort of external MT-32 emulator, or if Munt really pushes it to the raggedy edge. It might be better to use a slightly more capable solution, like a Hummingboard or an Odroid U3,

What was the minimum Pi 2 clock which allowed Munt to function properly? Also, please confirm if you noticed any bandwidth starvation, as ideally the Pi 2 would drive an external LCD off a spare core to replicate the MT-32 display.

An AMD E-450 can't handle Munt, so I doubt it. Should be ok for General MIDI SoundFonts though.

gdjacobs wrote:

Audio quality can be addressed fairly cheaply by running off-board codecs, so not a big issue. I'm interested to know if the Pi 2 could realistically be used as a sort of external MT-32 emulator, or if Munt really pushes it to the raggedy edge. It might be better to use a slightly more capable solution, like a Hummingboard or an Odroid U3,

What was the minimum Pi 2 clock which allowed Munt to function properly? Also, please confirm if you noticed any bandwidth starvation, as ideally the Pi 2 would drive an external LCD off a spare core to replicate the MT-32 display.

Unfortunately I don't have the Pi2 with me anymore. What I do remember is that I didn't really need much of an OC, but I THINK it only worked after I messed around with the compiler options to activate the optimizations (whithout those even a Pentium M 1.73 GHz + Debian was struggling). Also JACK2 had to be compiled from the source, as the version in Raspibian's repository is bugged (tries to get the processor clock using a deprecated way that has been disabled in RPi)

Another option instead of using dosbox and CPU emulation would be to try one of the small boards that use an x86 chip.

Something like the 86duino, which was previously covered here.

DM&P now also sells a minipcie video card for the 86duino One.

I have Raspberry Pi Model B+ with Arch Linux ARM. It runs 24/7 and works as a small NAS (SMB/SFTP/FTP), a print server and a TV (DVB-T) streaming server. Controlled through SSH.

Enclosed in the cotton buds box. 🤣

I got a Pi model B+ for Christmas last year, used it for a very light duty living room PC (my main is in my bedroom) and it worked rather well for that using Arch Linux ARM with IceWM. I OC'd it to 900MHz (pretty easily with the heatsinks my kit included, but didn't feel comfortable pushing it much further than that) and manually allocated 448MB RAM to system RAM and 64MB to VRAM. Would have pushed it lower than that had it let me. Sadly when I moved earlier this year it got lost in the mess of stuff coming with me, I did find it but it was dead when I went to hook it up.

What's funny is that for me my PIII performs much better in this role even saddled with Windows 98SE and PC100 RAM. It feels much snappier even with the slow ATA-33 hard drive when web browsing with Opera 12.02. Maybe it's a psychological thing, i probably expected more from the RPi and less from the PIII and that influenced my perspective.

I've tried Raspbian, it's just really really slow. Like to the point that I don't wanna bother with a GUI. This is even when OC to 900MHz. Maybe my 64GB card is to blame, I dunno. RISC OS is a completely different story, it works extremely fast. Problem is RISC OS doesn't have much for software, and a lot of what's available is old and 26bit only or is commercial. Apparently enough people are willing to spend hundreds of dollars for word processors, email and instant messaging software for an extreme minority platform...

RISC OS itself is a nice little retro OS.

zstandig wrote:

I've tried Raspbian, it's just really really slow. Like to the point that I don't wanna bother with a GUI. This is even when OC to 900MHz. Maybe my 64GB card is to blame, I dunno. RISC OS is a completely different story, it works extremely fast. Problem is RISC OS doesn't have much for software, and a lot of what's available is old and 26bit only or is commercial. Apparently enough people are willing to spend hundreds of dollars for word processors, email and instant messaging software for an extreme minority platform...

RISC OS itself is a nice little retro OS.

I would like to try RISC OS but I don't really know how fast it will handle web surfing or what software is free for daily office usage.
Using the official Debian based os IMHO it actually performs as I expected, just like the old smartphones did with the never ending ARMv6 processors where surfing and general speed was actually fast enough but not never enough.
But anyway I am still amazed by the concept of a ~3W powered computer being that capable, fast or not. It would be nice to compare these cpu with AMD K6-2 or AMD Geode.

Yeah, it was the power consumption that made me want one too. I read that it was roughly equivalent to a mid-range Pentium II, and was alright with that. For very basic web surfing and fetching email, as well as chatting on IRC, it worked extremely well. The fact that it was capable of streaming media from my server/desktop was a big bonus.

386SX wrote:

But anyway I am still amazed by the concept of a ~3W powered computer being that capable, fast or not. It would be nice to compare these cpu with AMD K6-2 or AMD Geode.

I guess the issue with comparing the RPi with retro-PCs lies in software. You can put an old version of Windows (NT or 9x) and older software on an old K6-2 and it will be snappy, whereas the RPi will be on the sluggish side. Internet browsing is, really, the only thing that would realistically stress the PC. The biggest plus of the Pi is hardware decoding (as anything that depends on software decoding will be unuseable), so it can be used for media streaming.
One also should not compare it with older PCs because, it you want to play games, older x86 processors will run them natively, whereas you'll need DOSBox on Raspibian... As someone that tried DOSBox back in the day on a P3 computer, I can safely say that it isn't a pleasant experience for SVGA games a K6-2 would not break a sweat running. And if you are going for emulation, you might as well just use your main PC, where you can also enable scalers, filters, Glide emulation, etc.
Bottom line is: the Pi/Pi2 are mostly about streaming and very light usage. They are not very good as a fully fledged machine.