DTBDeeRock wrote:

I tried a few more games last night. I was able to get Jazz Jackrabbit running perfectly after I bumped up the cpu cycles a few clicks. Indiana Jones and the last crusade needed a similar bump. I had a very weird sound issue with super solvers treasure mountain, that continued even after I exited the game.

What did you bump the cpu cycles to? I played it a little conservative with 38000 but it’s s fine line because if you set it too high games just drop frames or audio.

BeginnerGuy wrote:

I received the 10zig today. Unfortunately I'm sick so I only played with it for a little bit to amuse myself. I didn't browse through the filesystem or have a chance to try to "break" my way back into tiny core shell, though I would like to when I have a chance so I can download and install additional software, I do think "power users" of sorts should have easy access to the linux commandline while "basic" users should still be abstracted, that is a cool idea.

Good idea, I could do that easy although it might require a reboot. Something cool for you to try I you drop in Firefox-ESR.tcz , it will work with audio/video (youtube) although since there’s no video acceleration you will have to stick with watching at low resolutions. Locking down Firefox was tougher, so I dumped it.

BeginnerGuy wrote:

The only notes from my very short exposure were that the included Doom shareware (Zdoom?) would crash if I attempted to increase the music volume, but it suddenly started working. Not sure what that was about. Also none of the midi options would work, so I'm assuming timidity++ / etc were not installed on this system yet.

Also quake (glquake?) on the build included with this machine is defaulted to a widescreen resolution, I launched the game from the dbdmenu (or whatever it was called) script contained in startup.bat so I'm not able to pass any standard quake flags such as -width -height -bpp. Maybe that can be done within the games console or even in the menu, but my head is way too fuzzy to continue tonight.

I think I did try installing timidity++ to see if it fixed the Duke3D no music issues but when it didn’t help I dumped it. Honestly I’m surprised how much Dos Gamers also tend to be audiophiles,I was always content with FM Synth even for music. I didn’t know changing volume in doom crashes it. There are no resolution options for SDLQuake, 320x200 , run it Fullscreen or not. Now Tinycore has added a new version of quakeforge to repository, but I already had this version working.

Dragon Caesar wrote:

I also received the 10zig today. I plan on taking more of a deep dive with it over the weekend but I did try out Flappy Bird and Action Doom 2. Flappy Bird is a bit on the slow side, bumping up the cycles didn't seem to help. I have never played Action Doom 2 prior to today but one thing I noticed is if you hit F1 and then press Enter you get a missing credits texture.

Didn’t realize about the Action Doom 2 missing texture, guess I can look to see if other versions of the wad have it. It’s supposed to be a Total conversion. Yea dunno about Flappy Bird,I was just amused someone made a dos version.

BinaryDemon wrote:

Good idea, I could do that easy although it might require a reboot. Something cool for you to try I you drop in Firefox-ESR.tcz , it will work with audio/video (youtube) although since there’s no video acceleration you will have to stick with watching at low resolutions. Locking down Firefox was tougher, so I dumped it.

I think I did try installing timidity++ to see if it fixed the Duke3D no music issues but when it didn’t help I dumped it. Honestly I’m surprised how much Dos Gamers also tend to be audiophiles,I was always content with FM Synth even for music. I didn’t know changing volume in doom crashes it. There are no resolution options for SDLQuake, 320x200 , run it Fullscreen or not. Now Tinycore has added a new version of quakeforge to repository, but I already had this version working.

Heh I'll give firefox a try, I figured a browser and especially youtube would murder the lowly atom.

As for MIDI it's not a huge deal to me personally but I know plenty of people trying this will want GM, the hardware is certainly there to cover it with these thin clients.

Did you test SDLquake on a 4:3 monitor? I had blackbars on mine so if it was 320x200 it was also being mashed down to a 16:9 aspect

UPS dropped off a nice little package today. Going to open it up tomorrow, I just got 10Gb Ethernet working on my nas, so as soon as I button that up, this will be next.

Did you test SDLquake on a 4:3 monitor? I had blackbars on mine so if it was 320x200 it was also being mashed down to a 16:9 aspect

I think I tested both, there were always blackbars. There just aren’t any options with SDLQuake.

Looks like Ill be waiting until Monday to receive my unit. Excited and looking forward to trying out some tweaking!

Access to SSH over ethernet keeps coming to mind when I am thinking of power user stuff. I guess having access to it locally would be great to have as well but I usually prefer SSH with these types of devices. Or it could be an option to turn off and on to save resources if desired. Im excited im not the only one hoping for more extended music options as well. Timidy, munt, and Dreamblaster would be a really great combination to have available. Im curious if the motherboard has any USB pinout options?

Haven't received mine yet, but if it essentially autoboots into Dosbox. Then I'm curious how to go about getting something like my external sound module to work with it? I currently use a Roland usb-midi adapter on my windows PC now. I would assume something similar on this but it being Linux based I'm not sure how I will go about getting drivers added or modifying the DOSbox config file for the Midi side? Also does DosBOX see USB drives? How are you copying any games into your DOSbox instances?

luckybob wrote:

UPS dropped off a nice little package today.

Mine should be out today-- hopefully I get the text update soon and then I'll just go home to grab it.

EDIT:

Grabbed it! Box is surprisingly heavy. Haven't opened it yet, since I had other errands to run.

CrossBow777 wrote:

Haven't received mine yet, but if it essentially autoboots into Dosbox. Then I'm curious how to go about getting something like my external sound module to work with it? I currently use a Roland usb-midi adapter on my windows PC now. I would assume something similar on this but it being Linux based I'm not sure how I will go about getting drivers added or modifying the DOSbox config file for the Midi side? Also does DosBOX see USB drives? How are you copying any games into your DOSbox instances?

The external midi device might be difficult to support. Flash drives are easy, mnthelp.bat will show you all connected devices, then use dosbox mount command on that device.

BinaryDemon wrote:

CrossBow777 wrote:

Haven't received mine yet, but if it essentially autoboots into Dosbox. Then I'm curious how to go about getting something like my external sound module to work with it? I currently use a Roland usb-midi adapter on my windows PC now. I would assume something similar on this but it being Linux based I'm not sure how I will go about getting drivers added or modifying the DOSbox config file for the Midi side? Also does DosBOX see USB drives? How are you copying any games into your DOSbox instances?

The external midi device might be difficult to support. Flash drives are easy, mnthelp.bat will show you all connected devices, then use dosbox mount command on that device.

It might not be too bad, but I guess that is dependent on tinylinux which I have very little experience with. However if it supports class compliant devices like other linux distros that I think it can be ready right out of the box. I use an iConnect Uno device that works for just about everything I have plugged it in to mac, windows, linux and works without any drivers. Then it is just a matter of changing dosbox config to use that midi device just like with timidy. I will try to test this out as soon as I get my hardware in. Is there any way to access the dosbox config as it is right now?

CrossBow777 wrote:

Haven't received mine yet, but if it essentially autoboots into Dosbox. Then I'm curious how to go about getting something like my external sound module to work with it? I currently use a Roland usb-midi adapter on my windows PC now. I would assume something similar on this but it being Linux based I'm not sure how I will go about getting drivers added or modifying the DOSbox config file for the Midi side? Also does DosBOX see USB drives? How are you copying any games into your DOSbox instances?

The Roland should work class compliant with linux because I see it can also be used with an ipad with lightning adapter. The tricky part with setting this up in dosbox is that it usually requires access to the linux terminal part of the system to identify the midi ports it is connected to. This is assuming alsa is already set up and ready to go. If we can find a way to get into terminal access I can help you with this.

Has anyone tried Ctrl - Alt + T to open terminal yet? Im going to try this on my Dosbox Distro USB to see if it is that simple or not.

I have been trying a few things with Dosbox Distro on the USB. I have found a way to edit the dosbox.conf file by opening the persistent restore image on a linux computer. It looks like it is very close to being set up for external midi I just have no way how alsa is setting up the midi ports on the linux side of things. I have tried all types of possible default ports but so far I havn't nailed it. I think we will need access to linux terminal to figure this all out. As a side note, I tried finding a way to edit the dosbox.conf from the dos prompt by doing mount d ~/.dosbox/ and mounting the directory to the D:. Then you can change to d and edit dosbox~1.con to edit the config. However, the persistent image will always load and restore defaults on load. This is why I edited on the image side instead. It is a tgz file so Im not sure how this will work in windows, but it was very simple in linux os to open it and make changes and allow it to update the file. This is a bit tedious however and I became very tired of guessing midi ports to try. Also this wont be as easy on this thin client hardware because the image file wont be as accessible as on a usb thumb drive. It might be a good idea for dev to have the dosbox config in a non-persistent part of the drive, like in the dosbox folder. That way this can be edited freely and immediately in dos.

I have spent some time trying to figure out how to get in to terminal with tinybox. So far I have no success since tinybox loads the dosbox extension first off. I have been trying to figure out how to modify the boot config file and maybe change the boot codes but it is all new to me. I am thinking about installing tinybox distro stand alone so that I can figure out how it is all working. What would be great is to have a terminal or SSH enable / disable option in dbdmenu or something.

Tinycore is pretty minimal linux, also see above I don’t think timidity++ is installed. Anyone check if the Midi device can be modified from within dosbox with the config command? If that works I’ll pretty it up with a midimenu.bat

I’ll probably end up posting instructions to get access to terminal, guess it needs a power user mode.

I did experiment with allowing dosbox.conf to be edited by user, but then it’s also possible for them to completely hose the system. Dosbox might crash, system just boot loops then.

BinaryDemon wrote:

Tinycore is pretty minimal linux, also see above I don’t think timidity++ is installed. Anyone check if the Midi device can be modified from within dosbox with the config command? If that works I’ll pretty it up with a midimenu.bat

I’ll probably end up posting instructions to get access to terminal, guess it needs a power user mode.

I dont think timidity is required to get external midi to work. Though it would be great to have timidity installed as well. As mentioned above I did try to edit the midi device in dosbox and was able to achieve it. However since it is restored from the persistent boot image all of the changes to it in dosbox change back to the original. It would be nice to have the dosbox.conf in a non persistent area that is easy to access. I can understand the issue with having the ability to break the system though. Perhaps at least for the current testing purposes however, it would be good for us to have some access to these things so that we can see what its capable of doing.

Its good to know that terminal access is possible. It would even be nice to have a dbd menu option to get in to terminal.

Thanks for all of the support!

Arrived today, will start testing this weekend. Cannot do much before then as I work in retail and we are getting ready for inventory. 😵

Got mine today will be testing this weekend. Thank you.

Set it up and WOW, bare bones 😀

I'll copy some games to a USB stick and see how that goes. Right now, it's set up in my 'office' instead of my retrocomputing area, but I may put it in the master bedroom and hook it to the TV in there. I'm fairly certain once I find my DVI-I to HDMI adapter it will work well there. I'd envisioned using the Raspberry Pi 3 in there for retrogaming but I think this will outperform it in the end. Wing Commander and full-screen on the Pi didn't get along well at all, and Doom was a mess. Staying with x86 architecture seems to make more sense, even emulating MS-DOS.

Played around a bit with Dark Forces tonight, mnthelp is definitely helpful! With the graphical options in-game set to max, it's a little choppy. Decreasing the graphic options improved things but the cutscenes were still pretty sluggish.