VOGONS


First post, by divinity

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Hello!

I installed FreeDos on my old laptop but i could not get sound to work. DOS seems to require some specific Soundcards which i do not own.
So i thought i should make a Linux OS which boots direct into a Dos Emulator (Dosbox and DosEmu2)
I couldn't accomplish making an Linux OS for now, i'm struggling with Buildroot. https://www.buildroot.org/

But i wrote some scripts for Dosbox and DosEmu2 for launching, copying files to Images and automatically making ISOs(*.cue,*.bin) from CDROM compatible with Dosbox.
And i made a frontend for launching these tasks. (the frontend does start in fullscreen with an intro video - frontend is "Attract Mode" http://www.attractmode.org)
I uploaded a first Beta which should run on all major Linux x64 Distros. (Tested on Arch Linux and Ubuntu Mate)
It uses relative paths, so you can extract and run it wherever you want.

Download here:
http://www.mediafire.com/file/2c2jgfljlw12auz … 1_beta1.tar.bz2 ~568MB <--old version
Download the fixed version here:
http://www.mediafire.com/file/k31gp1kedfs8dtf … eta1fix.tar.bz2 ~57MB

It requires at least 5,8 GB HDD space for extracting.
DosEmu2 is interesting because it can run Quake1 with QDOS engine http://dk.toastednet.org/QDOS/ in 1024x768 resolution with 60-70 FPS on my Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3570K CPU @ 3.40GHz.
I've included Quake1 Shareware for testing.

And i have some questions:
1) Is there a way to mount Images bigger than 2GB in Dosbox? Or is there a Tool which can create Images from Files/Directories?
2) Does anyone have experience making a Linux Distro? I know there are a lot of applications out there, but most of them can only make a LiveCD.
I need a Distro which can run LiveCD and an Installer or a .img file which can be written with Etcher https://etcher.io/ like Batocera Linux https://batocera-linux.xorhub.com/ .
And it should be able run a lightweight Desktop like Openbox or Fluxbox. It does not matter which Linux x64 because FreeDosEmuBox is made to run on all Linux Distos.
Are there any tools you can recommend? (other than Buildroot)
3) Does DosEmu2 run that fast on your PC? (seems like it needs a KVM enabled CPU to run fast)

my TODO list:
- make Linux Distro "FreeDosEmuBox-OS" which boots into the frontend or Dosbox/DosEmu2 (can be choosen by a script)
- DosEmu2 make CDROM and IPX working
- the ability to select and edit different Dosbox config files
- polish some of the scripts
- Dosbox and Dosemu2 startup script - IPX startserver/connect & mount ISO files

I made a video of the frontend artwork and DosEmu2 with Quake1 running:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIIvR2A9_3A

that's all for now,
regards - Tom (divinity)

EDIT: forgot to make ./emus/Filesystems/isos folder - please add "isos" folder manually or ripping cds and mounting with dosbox does not work
EDIT 2nd: i could reduce the filesize for the download to 57MB. And ISOs folder is now there.
Download the fixed version here:
http://www.mediafire.com/file/k31gp1kedfs8dtf … eta1fix.tar.bz2 ~57MB

Reply 1 of 12, by derSammler

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Getting old DOS games working. (DOSBox topics belong in DOSBox areas below, not here).

Reply 2 of 12, by divinity

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I wasn't sure where to post this. If it's a problem maybe the admin can move this topic to Dosbox section.

Reply 3 of 12, by Stiletto

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Because it's for DOSBox AND DosEmu2, moved to "PC Emulation".

"I see a little silhouette-o of a man, Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you
do the Fandango!" - Queen

Stiletto

Reply 4 of 12, by divinity

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Ok, i gave up making a Distro for Dosbox. It's too dangerous for me not to accidentally delete your Windows or any other Distro's partition.
What you can do is install a x64 Linux Distro, i recommend Lubuntu https://lubuntu.net and add "Launch_FreeDosEmuBox.sh" to the Autostart applications.
Install Linux only if you know what you are doing!

Download FreeDosEmuBox x64:
http://www.mediafire.com/file/k31gp1kedfs8dtf … eta1fix.tar.bz2

Reply 6 of 12, by leileilol

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I thought of a similar idea for PCem last year but as to booting a computer straight into a single PCem configuration with a minimal LibreElec core and the configuration remotely configured by SSH (no gui). The application of this is limited without real disk drives however though (especially when I had ARM SoCs in mind, which PCem doesn't really compile for at this moment)

tl;dr: pi3b = XT/AT/286/386/486

apsosig.png
long live PCem

Reply 7 of 12, by gdjacobs

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Nope. The Pi3 doesn't have enough snoot to comfortably run DosBox at 486 equivalent speeds.

All hail the Great Capacitor Brand Finder

Reply 8 of 12, by leileilol

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It runs a little better if you disregard its terrible desktop video driver (akin to using a hacky VESA 1.x driver in Windows), if the dosbox core in retroarch through its EGL backend is any indication..... you can almost push 14,000 cycles on the normal core. and that's not even considering the changes in this.

apsosig.png
long live PCem

Reply 9 of 12, by BinaryDemon

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Wow, how did my search not find this post. I was asking this question just the other day. (DOSBox as a Linux Distro)

I'll have to compare OPs method to this (https://github.com/superjamie/lazyweb/wiki/Boot-to-DOSBox), but if your ISO saves me some work I'll gladly switch to this method.

Have you considered not using an x64 kernel? I doubt it matters much for speed, and I would think there are plenty 32bit cpu's that could run DosBox and simple emulators at acceptable speeds.

Check out DOSBox Distro:

https://sites.google.com/site/dosboxdistro/ [*]

a lightweight Linux distro (tinycore) which boots off a usb flash drive and goes straight to DOSBox.

Make your dos retrogaming experience portable!

Reply 10 of 12, by divinity

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Hi BinaryDemon!

You should be able to run my "Launch_FreeDosEmuBox.sh" script even on Tinycore Linux x64.
I'm worried about not to delete my or anyone else Partition by accident so perhaps you can make an ISO which works.
x86 in some ways is obsolete, Arch Linux even decided to drop it. And in my package there is DosEmu2 included which runs Quake1 with 1024x768 resolution in 60FPS.
Maybe we can make a Dosbox Distro together?

And i discoverd that on my PC with WINE https://www.winehq.org/ Windows Dosbox runs 3 times faster than native Linux. Can someone validate this? (And why does this happen?)

Reply 11 of 12, by BinaryDemon

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I'm probably the wrong person to help, I'm still very new to linux. Just excited that others are working on similar ideas. I think I'm going to attempt a combination of what has been done so far. I'm interesting in getting the LIVECD image working so you don't need to install on a harddisk, but you still could if you want to.

Looking at the other instructions: I don't understand they put the C:\Games in the persist user space, anything in those directories should have nothing to do with the OS. I want to try and have a 2nd partition on the flash drive which is fat32 (to simplify adding games also without the 4gb total persistence size restriction), Linux will mount that before launching DOSBox, I dont think LiveCD's have an issue reading or writing to external media so saving games and other minor dos config files changes should save correctly.

If I get that working, I will surely attempt to make an ISO to save others some headache. 😀

Check out DOSBox Distro:

https://sites.google.com/site/dosboxdistro/ [*]

a lightweight Linux distro (tinycore) which boots off a usb flash drive and goes straight to DOSBox.

Make your dos retrogaming experience portable!

Reply 12 of 12, by CasualRobert

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Not the Solution to your Questions but:
I once tried the same with own OS and DosBox,but it gave me so many headaches, that i just decided to install Windows 2000 and make DosBox autostart.

😀