IIRC, dates and file sizes are not cached in DOSBox....and you really shouldn't be using DOSBox with mapped drives anyway.

Use a VM if you want to run your old DOS apps with mapped drives.

The problem is that the application is using VESA modes which none VM i tried worked.

How many files/directory are in the share? Try to reduce the number.

around 1000 ... but can anyone suggest what can i do in code in order to improve this ? eg, with 10 files it's fast ...

Thank you

Well depends, if you got some dos app that needs 1000 files in the subdirectory
you're out of luck with a games-emulator over network obviously. Otherwise
copy the relevant stuff into a subdirectory and mount that.

After digging i found that the bottleneck is on the algorithm of the drive_cache.cpp ...

Anyone made improvements on this ?

Thank you

Nope.
I think Qbix was playing with it, but feel free to post more information about
it (maybe you can identify the routines that are slow, must be something that
actually accesses the remote data, not the caching algorithms themselves).

and you really shouldn't be using DOSBox with mapped drives anyway.

C'mon, it's 2008, you know... (; Having lots of data on network drives (NAS's, File Servers, etc.) isn't that uncommon anymore. I've also noticed that DOSBox is a bit slow on mapped drives, but until now that wasn't a real issue. 1000 files in a directory is not "normal" usage, though - i don't think any game has that many files in a single dir.

yeah I played with it. The algorithms itself are fast enough, but i think the attempts to get information on each file might be slow

ADDiCT wrote:

and you really shouldn't be using DOSBox with mapped drives anyway.

C'mon, it's 2008, you know... (; Having lots of data on network drives (NAS's, File Servers, etc.) isn't that uncommon anymore. I've also noticed that DOSBox is a bit slow on mapped drives, but until now that wasn't a real issue. 1000 files in a directory is not "normal" usage, though - i don't think any game has that many files in a single dir.

Yeah, it's 2008.....so why are we still using NETBIOS to map drives?

But the main reason not to use them with DOSBox is that the amount of DOS games that need mapped drives can probably be counted on one hand. The only one I'm aware of is nlsnipes.

Qbix,
Could you please tell me where in the code is the slow part ?

Thank you very much!

Well, DosBox isn't made only for GAMES but for applications too. I have a custom Made DOS application which make this an ISSUE! (at least to me) ...

It scan the directory files for information and when the files are located in the network DOSBOX delays but if i move them locally it's Super FAST! (I haven't notice any delay if i move the files to my local hard drive)
(Also i need to access this application on other computers that's why it's on network drive)

As Qbix said there's some bottleneck in the way DosBox Cache Drive get's the file information.

I Hope someone finds a solution ... I'll try too but since i'm not a C++ developer (i developing in Delphi) it's hard because my C++ knowledge is limited. 😁

Thank you

Well, DosBox isn't made only for GAMES but for applications too.

No it targets at games ONLY so if you got issues with some app you're either
lucky that somebody has fun investing time into it, or you got to do that yourself.

Hello wd,
Well you should change DOSBox website title from: "DOSBox, a x86 emulator with DOS" to "DOSBox, a GAME emulator with DOS".

As far for the time i'm willing to pay anyone who has a solution. Just PM me to discuss.

Thank you

It's not a matter of money but time 😀
Anyways feel free to keep posting information if you should figure something out,
just don't expect too much.
If you want to play with it try to compile dosbox from sources, and add some
logging (plain adding LOG_MSG()s with timing information to figure out what
parts might hurt speed). Just ask if something's unclear about compiling/modifying
the sources.

Hello wd,
I already compiled DosBox using Visual C++ 2008 SP1 and i'm trying to see if i can make it faster.

Thank you for your tips!

Speed up 1: There are some unnecessary "Log" functions left inside the drive_cache.cpp which aren't comment and produce slow down ...

Actually if i comment all the LOG* functions improves the DosBox Speed!
Maybe it's better to enable logging only on DEBUG mode.

Keep looking ...

seriously ? I designed the LOG()() class so that they should be optimized out in release mode. At least that happened last time I checked the compiled code (compiled with mingw though)

You said it only happens on network drives, so the LOGging is irrelevant.

Maybe you can try this: mount the network drive (only!) so the huge file
list is directly accessible, like mount k n:\ when n:\ is your network drive
and n:\ contains 1000+ files. Check the speed for a dir.
Then go to drive_cache.cpp, function CreateEntry() there is an if clause

1	if (stat(buffer,&status)==0)	info->isDir	= (S_ISDIR(status.st_mode)>0);
2	else							info->isDir = false;

which you replace (both lines removed) by an info->isDir = false;
Do the same speed test as above (note that you can't CD into directories
now but that does not matter).