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64bit Vanilla Dosbox?

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First post, by Darklord42

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I know this has been discussed quite a bit in the past, but there is no recent information. I see daum can potentially compile 64bit, but what is the status of vanilla dosbox with 64 bit? What are the roadblocks stopping this from happening? Is there some inherent incompatibility? Here in 2015 everything is coming out 64 bit these days. Even if there is no real benefit outside of increased ram usage, there will come a time when 32 bit is no longer viable on some OS or another (I'm betting Apple will be the first). Should we not prepare? Come to think of it, I don't understand how this hasn't been a huge issue with 64bit linux for years already. Doesn't it require a whole slew of 32 bit dependencies that people might otherwise not want on their system?

Reply 1 of 40, by Dominus

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Same information applies from years before. On linux the SVN of Dosbox runs, perhaps even at full speed. On OS X are still problems and at a tremendous speed loss.
On Windows, no one cared to report back, I think

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DOSBox SVN snapshot for macOS (10.4-11.x ppc/intel 32/64bit) notarized for gatekeeper

Reply 2 of 40, by DosFreak

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I want to see the the stats on everything coming out in 2015 is 64bit.
Any desktop OS dropping 32bit application support in the forseeable future will be shooting themselves in the foot and you're probably right that it will be Apple but in that case like usual the Apple users will gobble it up due to the Apple mentality.

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Reply 3 of 40, by Darklord42

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It wouldn't be the first time. They will gobble it up because they won't know there is a difference, save 2 older applications suddenly won't work after the update. (which is par for the course) Do i understand that dosbox SVN compiles with 64bit just fine? As to how many applications are 64 bit only, for OSX at least, anything that has been compiled since 2009 on Snow Leopard, unless there was a reason to keep it 32 bit. (Most apple machines in use are probably newer then that) And for the record, do you realize how hard it is to keep 10.6 compatibility on 10.10? Apple has made it very difficult, unless the application was compiled on 10.6 itself. So no, there aren't a lot of 10.6 applications floating around. I have less experience with Windows, but any AAA utilizing DX11 are also most likely 64bit. But I wouldn't know any exact figures.

Last edited by Darklord42 on 2015-07-14, 13:35. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 4 of 40, by Dominus

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Don't bash Apple for something they haven't done (yet 😉). And yes when nothing depends on it anymore, good riddance.
Dosbox compiles in 64bit but is not as performant as in 32bit, very unperformant on OS X and having other problems as well.
Other software, like Wine are better left on 32bit as well.

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 5 of 40, by Darklord42

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Don't confuse a 64 bit compile of wine with the ability to run 64 bit software. The latter is still in the works and will be for a while. I'm still bitter for when they dropped PPC built apps when Rosetta was working fine. 😀

Regarding Dosbox, Thanks for info!

Reply 6 of 40, by Dominus

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I know about compiling and running things...
(I'm still compiling software as ppc even though I can no longer run it directly on current OS X...)

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 7 of 40, by Darklord42

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Out of curiosity, where is the OSX bottle neck? It wouldn't be rendering would it?

Naturally, but there is no issue with running a 64 bit compiled wine, in fact it's default on a 64bit system.

[EDIT] I apologize, That's not actually true, I was misreading the output of the wine configure script. It seems only wine64 is indeed 64bit which has it's own problems.

Last edited by Darklord42 on 2015-07-14, 15:02. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 8 of 40, by Dominus

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The bottleneck is that the dynamic recompiler is done for 32bit abd the 64bit one is not working nicely, roughly AFAIU.

And yep, as you've probably learnt now, a 64bit WINE is having problems running 32bit Windows programs (it can't). Currently it needs both arches. And it's having problems with 16bit programs - that's why they are using or exploring, Dosbox for 16bit dos programs in Wine.

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 11 of 40, by Dominus

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It definitely must have been a problem, the 64bit recompiler is or was an issue on all platforms, since it is NOT the 32bit one 😀
But I haven't paid attention when 64bit Windows came up.

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 13 of 40, by Dominus

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If we were to know that for sure, there would lilely be a fix.

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 14 of 40, by eraH_retired

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Here is a 64bit DOSBox for Windows if anyone is interested. I loaded up King's Quest, and it seems to work.
Compiled on Ubuntu 15.04 using MinGW-W64.

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  • Filename
    DOSBox x86_64 r3924.7z
    File size
    1.25 MiB
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    162 downloads
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    Fair use/fair dealing exception

Reply 16 of 40, by ovvldc

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At least Fedora is talking about relegating 32 bit to secondary status: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_it … 86-Non-Blocking

Microsoft will be slower to drop 32 bit. OS X will probably run 32 bit for a while, but new apps in the store are supposed to be 64 bit (not that BOSBox would fit the app store).

Reply 17 of 40, by Dominus

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What is BOSBox? 😉

DOSBox is incompatible with the AppStore license and the developers could always make Apple to pull it if someone were to put it there.
OTOH I'm kind of gkad that they didn't go this way in regard to iDos on iOS AppStore...

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