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DOSbox on Gamecube?

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First post, by julius

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Hi everyone,

I've recently been playing with Linux on the Nintendo Gamecube (http://www.gc-linux.org/wiki/Main_Page).

So I was thinking of running DOSbox on that. I haven't got time to do it this week (exams going on), so this is speculative... I just wanted to ask for general thoughts. It shouldn't be a problem - you can run a fairly standard Debian system on the 'cube, which has SDL for video and sound (no X, usually, though that *can* be done, I believe). It doesn't have much RAM (24 MB, plus 16 MB very fast swap), but if the Linux system is sufficiently stripped down it should be possible to spare 8 MB or so for some older games. The CPU is quite slow - it's a ~500 MHz PowerPC, so this would only be for some really old, 286 or 386-era games.

But my main question is: Any ideas on how to make DOSbox controllable by the gamecube's controllers? Several other apps do it (mplayer and SNES9x) so it's possible, though I don't know what the details are.

As I said, there's little useful info here - I'm hoping to kick off some discussion on how to make this go, see if maybe someone else has tried.

Reply 1 of 9, by Qbix

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well you should use the source of one of the handheld ports of dosbox.
the default dosbox will not run in 8 mb.
I actually doubt that they can make it run in 8 mb.

Water flows down the stream
How to ask questions the smart way!

Reply 2 of 9, by Guest

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Sorry, I didn't express that very well.

I'm not saying that 8 MB is all that's available. The cube has 24 MB RAM, and with an idle (but complete) Debian it sits at about 18 or so free, plus the 16 MB of very fast swap. I don't know anything about the internals of DOSbox, but I'd think it would be possible to run a DOS game that originally needs, say, 2 MB in that?

Oh well. If it's not enough I might have to try running an X-server or VNC client and actually running DOSbox on another machine...

The other question is: Will standard (Linux) DOSbox run on SDL without X?

Reply 3 of 9, by Qbix

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there is no succesful report of that.
but then again not that many people have actually tried.

Water flows down the stream
How to ask questions the smart way!

Reply 5 of 9, by `Moe`

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If you set fullfixed=true and fullresolution=<your framebuffer resolution> and SDL_VIDEODRIVER=fbcon and fullscreen=true, it might just work. There may probably be a few lines of code that need altering, but I imagine it's really easy if you know your way around the sources.

Reply 6 of 9, by bkman

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I've done it before. 😁

It runs ok, but slow (with no dynarec, obviously). The biggest problem was mapping keys to the controller for me, so I didn't bother. Not terribly much you can play at that speed.

Reply 8 of 9, by Jorpho

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Holy 7-year bump, Batman!

You might be better off looking at the Wii port of DOSBox at this point. I reckon it is supported much better, particularly because you can plug a standard USB keyboard into the Wii.

Reply 9 of 9, by aea

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Yeah, you are right when you say Wii is more powerfull and so, but since gamecube scene is reviving and some of the Wii homebrew ported to gamecube, I would want how could be a port of dosbox or DSx86 for gamecube, you know.

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