If you're referring to running DOS/Win9x on the bare hardware in the case of the x86 boards, looks to me like the biggest challenge would be getting SB-compatible sound.

Otherwise, DOSBOX is an option.

I don't think the raspberry pi is fast enough to emulate what you want to have. It's already struggling with DOSbox

Deksor wrote:

I don't think the raspberry pi is fast enough to emulate what you want to have. It's already struggling with DOSbox

Well there are beefier ARM SBCs that are RPi compatible. I've had some experience with the Odroid C2, DOSBOX works fine in a pinch but I haven't done extensive testing with that. I played with an OrangePi as well, almost as powerful as the Odroid but cheaper - didn't try DOSBOX on it.

On the latest Raspberry Pi model, DOSBox will do just fine emulating ~386 speeds, maybe slow 486. Anything faster, you'd have to have a beefier CPU or it'd have to be x86 so dynamic translation can be applied.

Edit: There's also rpix86, which is optimized for the Raspberry Pi and does work a little better; I haven't done any controlled testing though.

Not DOSBOX, actually UT, UT2004, Quake3 and Doom3!

The LattePanda and the UPBoard can handle windows 10 quite well, and their gpu's are quite powerful for what they are. I guess the rasperberry is out. I've seen one of them even running Crysis which i find incredible, so Doom3 should be a piece of cake depending on the optimization of the GPU driver.

i doubt on these board there is any backward compatibility, especially vga standard seems improbable

stamasd wrote:

Deksor wrote:

I don't think the raspberry pi is fast enough to emulate what you want to have. It's already struggling with DOSbox

Well there are beefier ARM SBCs that are RPi compatible. I've had some experience with the Odroid C2, DOSBOX works fine in a pinch but I haven't done extensive testing with that. I played with an OrangePi as well, almost as powerful as the Odroid but cheaper - didn't try DOSBOX on it.

Did you determine if the OrangePi UART can be configured for MIDI I/O?

gdjacobs wrote:

stamasd wrote:

Deksor wrote:

I don't think the raspberry pi is fast enough to emulate what you want to have. It's already struggling with DOSbox

Well there are beefier ARM SBCs that are RPi compatible. I've had some experience with the Odroid C2, DOSBOX works fine in a pinch but I haven't done extensive testing with that. I played with an OrangePi as well, almost as powerful as the Odroid but cheaper - didn't try DOSBOX on it.

Did you determine if the OrangePi UART can be configured for MIDI I/O?

Sadly I didn't work on that project at all lately. The amount of junk (read: retro hardware) in my basement was overwhelming and I spent the last 2 months or so cleaning up, organizing, building shelves etc. I'll be done soon, and hopefully I can resume some projects I have put on hold.

Ok, cool! Same situation here. I've been wanting to do some further testing and documentation of my MIDI/message interface, but it's last on a long list of priorities right now.

I bought a PI some time ago and was very disappointed in its dosbox performance. I then looked at other SBCs but ultimately gave up on finding any that offered sufficient compatibility and performance.

My solution became 3 mini PCs /thin clients for my retro gaming needs. A Neoware Capio for DOS / 3.11, a HP T5720 for Win98, and an Asus EB1502p for early win XP gaming. All 3 combined take up less space than my primary computer and use a lot less power than contemporary hardware. I use an Aten CS-1734A KVM switch to toggle between the 4 computers and a DROK audio switch to adjust volume and toggle between headset and speakers. Its a very nice and compact setup if i may say so 😀

A heavily overclocked raspberry pi 3 with a specially compiled dosbox running from the command line will get about 35fps in doom 1 timedemo 3 and will play descent but not with the most amazing frame rate.

640x480 the pi really struggles because you cant really make use of opengl or anything its all surface rendering and it ties up too much CPU time.

if you install the dosbox version from the repository it will be awefull

the dosbox that you can tell retropie to compile is the easiest way to get a version compiled for the instruction set in the pi3, also if you run it from the X user interface rather than booting to the command line you are losing a lot of performance.