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Reply 100 of 124, by Delphius

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BinaryDemon wrote:

Ok thanks for the testing, the default values in speedset are mostly pulled from ‘dosbox performance’ wiki. I would guess 80000 cycles is far too high at that point you might as well be using frameskip. When you add the usb cdrom does mnthelp see a new device?

I don’t think changing video memory setting will do anything other than make less memory available to the system because If I understand it correctly Xvesa really isn’t using any GPU acceleration. It’s probably possible to make some Linux tweaks for this specific hardware, but I’d also like to keep Dosbox Distro as compatible as possible. I think ALaricD is onto something with screen size / scaling since basically the cpu is doing all the work scaling 320x200 up to 1024x768 but at two different points (dosbox normal2x, then xvesa scaling 640x400 to 1024x768).

I haven’t tested hacking to terminal, but I think if you modify one of the script files to just launch terminal it might work. Try mounting a drive to ~/.local/bin/ then I would guess you could modify almost any of the script files to run xterm/aterm. bbs.sh is basically a terminal (just checking if window title is telnet), I would guess you could modify that, the alt-enter to the terminal after it goes back to dosbox. If you end up fighting with the window switching maybe modify something designed to run in background.

I agree that 80000 cycles seems a bit high for this type of thing. Which makes me think something needs to be better optimized. I think in my days of testing dosbox through retropie on my raspberry pi 3, it seemed like 14000-20000 cycles was sort of a sweet spot for most of these games. I think the thin client is capable of performing better than that. You might be on to something with the scaling set to 1024x768 as well. I havnt personally had any issues with running this at 640x480 on modern devices, but usually no lower than that. I think it would also be worth using opengl extensions instead of overlay if it isnt already set as well.

I have been trying to live boot the thin client in to 32-bit lubuntu or linux mint as well, but I havnt had much luck yet.

Reply 101 of 124, by Delphius

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Delphius wrote:
BinaryDemon wrote:

Ok thanks for the testing, the default values in speedset are mostly pulled from ‘dosbox performance’ wiki. I would guess 80000 cycles is far too high at that point you might as well be using frameskip. When you add the usb cdrom does mnthelp see a new device?

I don’t think changing video memory setting will do anything other than make less memory available to the system because If I understand it correctly Xvesa really isn’t using any GPU acceleration. It’s probably possible to make some Linux tweaks for this specific hardware, but I’d also like to keep Dosbox Distro as compatible as possible. I think ALaricD is onto something with screen size / scaling since basically the cpu is doing all the work scaling 320x200 up to 1024x768 but at two different points (dosbox normal2x, then xvesa scaling 640x400 to 1024x768).

I haven’t tested hacking to terminal, but I think if you modify one of the script files to just launch terminal it might work. Try mounting a drive to ~/.local/bin/ then I would guess you could modify almost any of the script files to run xterm/aterm. bbs.sh is basically a terminal (just checking if window title is telnet), I would guess you could modify that, the alt-enter to the terminal after it goes back to dosbox. If you end up fighting with the window switching maybe modify something designed to run in background.

I agree that 80000 cycles seems a bit high for this type of thing. Which makes me think something needs to be better optimized. I think in my days of testing dosbox through retropie on my raspberry pi 3, it seemed like 14000-20000 cycles was sort of a sweet spot for most of these games. I think the thin client is capable of performing better than that. You might be on to something with the scaling set to 1024x768 as well. I havnt personally had any issues with running this at 640x480 on modern devices, but usually no lower than that. I think it would also be worth using opengl extensions instead of overlay if it isnt already set as well.

I have been trying to live boot the thin client in to 32-bit lubuntu or linux mint as well, but I havnt had much luck yet.

Ok scratch some of this, I was able to live boot into Lubuntu by changing the HDD Boot Priority in the bios. Everything in lubuntu seems to be running quite well, and I am also able to edit the dosbox.conf with ease this way. I also noticed that the config is already set to opengl so thats good to know. Im going to continue to work on music and midi options for a bit and see if I can get a Dreamblaster X3M to work recognize through dosbox and alsa.

Reply 102 of 124, by BinaryDemon

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I don’t believe there is a performance difference between overlay and OpenGL because xvesa isnt hardware accelerated. I’m guessing it’s doing OpenGL in software.

My first attempt at this project was using a mini version of unbuntu but it literally took like 5min to boot to desktop.

Doing some 640x480 testing now... and DosBox does seem smoother. The linux Quake port doesnt show much difference tho, scaling from 320x200 -> 640x480 or 1024x768 the performance difference is <1% atleast on my c2d test system.

Update: I moved to the 10Zig Atom and tested - 640x480 made even less difference. So I think I'll keep 1024x768 as the standard because at 640x480 the web browser becomes much less usable.

AlricD, when I forced: config -set "cpu cycles=max" , Unreal demo became much more responsive, even better than the 7800 cycles.

So far the only tangible improvements for performance issues I can see making are -

1) Edit Dosbox config - cycles: auto 38000 (so at least user wont have to manipulate cycles for protected mode games)
2) add a MAX cycle option to: setspeed.bat

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 103 of 124, by AlaricD

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BinaryDemon wrote:

AlricD, when I forced: config -set "cpu cycles=max" , Unreal demo became much more responsive, even better than the 7800 cycles.

Even the sound? The stuttery sound is what reaallly breaks a demo (especially Future Crew, who have some amazing soundtracks). Strange that "max" would work better than a non-max setting (especially when very low settings work better with the sound).

So I think I'll keep 1024x768 as the standard because at 640x480 the web browser becomes much less usable.

Web browser? I hadn't found one installed; it goes right to DOSBox and exiting that just shuts down the machine. Is there a hotkey I should hit at boot to go into the X Window System? Not sure how I missed that!

*EDIT*
Ohhhhh, DBDMENU.

I'm an idiot!

I was playing Doom and Quake from PhilsComputerLab's DOS benchmarks. Didn't realize they were built-in! I did find Eliza by browsing the filesystem, but I could have found it all through the menu.

Reply 104 of 124, by BinaryDemon

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No that's good you were testing DosBox performance, thats the experiences I want to hear about.

MAX sounded pretty good to me, Im sure its not perfect but try for yourself.

Well the Doom and Quake that are built in are Linux Ports and run at the full speed of the system. For Quake this was sorta necessary - no one wants to play Quake at <15fps. For Doom I could have let people rely on Dosbox, but Zdoom can also take advantage of tcp/ip.

All the items in DBDMENU have their own individual *.bat files which might give a power user more flexibility, just do a directory listing of Y: to see all my custom batch files.

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 105 of 124, by cyclone3d

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Finally got a chance to mess with mine a little bit.

Noticed it was running pretty warm so I decided to take the cover off to see the insides.

These things were definitely meant to be standing on end for cooling purposes.

I will probably make a stand for it and also set up a 12v fan to help airflow through the system. I just don't like how hot it gets with the passive cooling.

BTW, any plans to change to DOSBOX 0.74-2? If so, I should be able to help optimize it since that is the version I am going to be working on.

Yamaha modified setupds and drivers
Yamaha XG repository
YMF7x4 Guide
Aopen AW744L II SB-LINK

Reply 106 of 124, by AlaricD

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I kept having things come up so I haven't messed with it too much.

I've found that it stands up just fine on end, and it doesn't get very warm at all-- if this were a space heater it'd be 41BTU/hr (compared to a normal 120V space heater at about 5120BTU/hr).

I thought about making a Windows-to-Go USB but the 945GSE doesn't do WDDM 1.2 as far as I can tell, so that might be spinning my wheels.

This guy is so purpose-built that doing a Phil's Computer Lab kindof retrogaming machine project is quite the challenge. I haven't booted directly to TinyCore yet to see if the 945GSE drivers are available as a renderer but maybe they are considering how well the source port of Quake seems to run (although when I try to change the renderer from 'software' it doesn't seem to work).

Reply 107 of 124, by BinaryDemon

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I think if you want hardware accelerated opengl, you need to switch from Xvesa to Xorg. I havent tried on these thin clients since I still want to be compatible with the most hardware possible.

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 108 of 124, by BinaryDemon

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cyclone3d wrote:

BTW, any plans to change to DOSBOX 0.74-2? If so, I should be able to help optimize it since that is the version I am going to be working on.

0.74-2 is more realistic than ECE version at this point since I think ECE would need hardware accelerated opengl. I'll look into it at some point.

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 109 of 124, by AlaricD

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It's been a while since I messed with that system. I was interested in if all the driver support for the 945GSE was there.
Also, I'm mystified how the .BAT works that launches the sourceport of Quake-- I'd wanted to edit one to be able to get into a shell of some kind.

Reply 110 of 124, by BinaryDemon

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AlaricD wrote:

It's been a while since I messed with that system. I was interested in if all the driver support for the 945GSE was there.
Also, I'm mystified how the .BAT works that launches the sourceport of Quake-- I'd wanted to edit one to be able to get into a shell of some kind.

So the batch files just create a txt file. Tinycore has a script constantly checking for the creation of certain txt files. When the monitoring script detects the file has been created it usually launches another script which hides the dosbox window and full screens the linux program.

So I'm actually super impressed with how well locked down the system is, but to give credit it's more linux being secure than my planning. My attempts to get to a terminal while using DosBox Distro have been thwarted by unable to change permissions on the folder containing all my linux scripts, or limited to 8.3 file size while moving and editing files thru dosbox.

The easiest method which I think will work is (but untested) ...

1) Enter bios and enable USB boot if it wasnt enabled. Default password is something like 10zig or 10ZIG.
2) Boot a different OS (version of linux, or whatever)
3) Mount the internal flash storage and Place this file: http://tinycorelinux.net/9.x/x86/tcz/flwm_topside.tcz in: sdb1/tce/optional (not 100% sure it would be 'sdb1')
4) Unmount, shutdown, remove usb stick, boot up thin client.

Placing flwm_topside.tcz in /tce/optional will restore much of the 'Fast Light Window Manager' functionality, enabling you to alt-tab out of dosbox and access the right click menu on the desktop. You can access terminal, FLWM settings, Editor, ect.

No, there is no 945SE driver support there, mainly because it's still my goal for DosBox Distro to be compatible with everything - so I didn't optimize this version for the thin clients. Tinycore Repository has 945SE video drivers (Might be Xorg only, you would have to install and configure that as well) and tinycore repository has a 945SE optimized version of mplayer (again which I didnt use, playback at 1024x768 seemed fine using CPU alone).

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 111 of 124, by AlaricD

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BinaryDemon wrote:

No, there is no 945SE driver support there, mainly because it's still my goal for DosBox Distro to be compatible with everything - so I didn't optimize this version for the thin clients. Tinycore Repository has 945SE video drivers (Might be Xorg only, you would have to install and configure that as well) and tinycore repository has a 945SE optimized version of mplayer (again which I didnt use, playback at 1024x768 seemed fine using CPU alone).

I'd guessed you were sitting on a HUGE PILE of those 10Zig devices, and so thought you wanted to optimize for it specifically.

Reply 112 of 124, by AlaricD

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BinaryDemon wrote:

So the batch files just create a txt file. Tinycore has a script constantly checking for the creation of certain txt files. When the monitoring script detects the file has been created it usually launches another script which hides the dosbox window and full screens the linux program.

So I'm actually super impressed with how well locked down the system is, but to give credit it's more linux being secure than my planning.

Oh, my, that is some clever stuff.

Reply 113 of 124, by CrossBow777

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I realize it has been sometime since this was first brought about, but about a week ago I finally had the means to hook mine up and check it out. I was pretty impressed with how well the default stuff on it runs! I did find that Heretic has the palate bug with the colors on it and so it just looks wrong and overly bright/washed out.

Also on most of the games like Quake, Heretic, etc...I have to start the game first and then access the menu to make setting changes. If I go straight to change something even as simple as the volume, it would cause the game to crash out completely and take me back to the menu loader.

I'm sure this might have been mentioned elsewhere in this thread, but how do we go about adding additional games onto this to test? Is it possible to mount an external USB device? I'm not that versed in Linux as I last touched it about 15 years ago with a Redhat distro that was required for a class I was taking at the time.

Still for a plug n play device this is pretty slick. Even with the sound studdering in some games, I find it quite playable.

g883j7-2.png
Midi Modules: MT-32 (OLD), MT-200, MT-300, MT-90S, MT-90U, SD-20

Reply 114 of 124, by BinaryDemon

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So I have a script that monitors new devices, so Tinycore Linux will automatically mount a usb flash drive. But you still have to connect dosbox to the new device. I created a batch file to help with this called:

mnthelp

That will guide you through it.

So basically insert a usb flash drive, wait 2 seconds, and run mnthelp.

For the sound stuttering, I recommend putting the line:

config -set "cpu cycles=max"

In startup.bat unless you have specific reasons to run at a fixed cycle count.

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 115 of 124, by CrossBow777

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Thanks BD for the information! I wasn't sure how to edit the config itself though? I'm used to modifying the config files where they exist in my user profile on Windows machines, but then I'm not restricted on that either. So again, with this Tinycore setup, It is all quite alien to me.

g883j7-2.png
Midi Modules: MT-32 (OLD), MT-200, MT-300, MT-90S, MT-90U, SD-20

Reply 116 of 124, by BinaryDemon

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CrossBow777 wrote:

Thanks BD for the information! I wasn't sure how to edit the config itself though? I'm used to modifying the config files where they exist in my user profile on Windows machines, but then I'm not restricted on that either. So again, with this Tinycore setup, It is all quite alien to me.

You can't make changes to the config files, and even if you could the config files are in the linux part of the filesystem aren't preserved, you would lose them at reboot. I might add saving and restoring the ZDoom/Quake/EDuke32 settings to my list, because it is annoying to redefine your keyboard config every time you reboot. For DosBox, I think there is very little you cannot change in realtime with the config command. And startup.bat is called by autoexec.bat so I would put any modifications you want perform every reboot in there.

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 117 of 124, by CrossBow777

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Well no luck getting a USB drive to mount. I've tried 3 different ones and I wait until their LED indicators stop blinking. I type in MNTHELP and it just states that the drivelist cache has been cleared and has an error stating the drivlist.txt not found? so basically it either isn't detecting the flashdrives or something else is off? Happens in all USB ports as well but since my keyboard is working and that is usb I know the ports appear to be good.

*Edited* - I did get this working. It requires that I have the USB thumbdrive plugged in as it boots up. For some reason, plugging in the USB after it has booted up to the C: prompt, it doesn't seem able to see the USB flash drive or any flashdrive I plug into it. But yeah, leave it plugged in during boot and it will then show up in the list of mountable devices.

In fact, I went ahead and added the mounting for it in my startup.bat so that I can just leave it plugged in at all times and use it as a secondary drive.

Now if the volume could be fixed it would be getting there.

g883j7-2.png
Midi Modules: MT-32 (OLD), MT-200, MT-300, MT-90S, MT-90U, SD-20

Reply 118 of 124, by BinaryDemon

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I’ve seen it work both ways, probably a bug in my auto mount script. Similar with network detection, if your plugged in at start it always works. Sometimes it can detect the change if you plug in Ethernet later.

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 119 of 124, by CrossBow777

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One thing I do find odd (Unless this is normal). Is that the USB drive is detected as sdb1? I thought the internal storage comes up with that ID? Anyway, I just added it to the startup.bat like I stated as drive D: since C: is already claimed with the startup.bat in it.

g883j7-2.png
Midi Modules: MT-32 (OLD), MT-200, MT-300, MT-90S, MT-90U, SD-20