VOGONS


First post, by w0lf42

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After seeing this post of Doom running on three monitors, I want to accomplish the same thing. This requires a total of three computers and three monitors. The computers talk to each other on the network -- so, it's one computer per monitor.

Here is more detail about Three Screen Mode.

I currently have a system to run the primary setup. So, I'm looking for two small systems to run the other two. I believe that these systems only need graphics and IPX networking support -- sound will all be handled by the primary system that I already have.

They will plug into Dell 1909wb monitors. These monitors have a DVI and VGA connector.

I have looked a little into using a Raspberry Pi and Mac Mini. But, I'm getting conflicting information about this working. I am aware of this working in Chocolate Doom, but my project requires it to work with the primary system that I have currently setup.

Ideally, I'm looking for the smallest hardware that I can run Doom on that will also network with hardware from the era (Pentium III).

Last edited by w0lf42 on 2019-06-02, 19:09. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 2 of 10, by elianda

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What about running one of the Dosbox version with NE2000 support based on an installed pCap driver on a Raspberry Pi ?

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Reply 3 of 10, by w0lf42

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What about running one of the Dosbox version with NE2000 support based on an installed pCap driver on a Raspberry Pi ?

I didn't know that was a thing. Thanks. I'll look into that.

I did a quick search and found this site. Looks like a good start. And this sentence looks promising:

This patch can be used to play IPX / Netbios games between new computers with DOSBox and old DOS machines.

Reply 4 of 10, by chinny22

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$105.99! no need for anything that advanced!
As you said, the decider is if you can find dos driver for the network card.
If you wanted to keep to real hardware, couple of cheap thin clients or even laptops would do the job.

oh and I had a great idea, get a 4th and have that show the map the entire time 😀 just load another with the -left and press tab once the game starts.

Reply 5 of 10, by BinaryDemon

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I’m guessing the two supporting pc’s don’t even need SB compatible audio... just dos networking right? I would look at some cheap thin clients, either with a pci slot for a compatible network card or something older via based chipset so dos network drivers aren’t an issue.

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 7 of 10, by w0lf42

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I feel like I'm very close.

I have doom 1.1 installed on both my DOS machine and my Raspberry Pi 3

DOS Machine
IPX Networking

NetWare Link Support Layer V2.11 (940817) (C) Copyright 1990-1994 Novell, Inc. All Rights Reserved. […]
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NetWare Link Support Layer V2.11 (940817)
(C) Copyright 1990-1994 Novell, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

The configuration file used was "C:\DRIVERS\NETWORK2.CFG".

Linksys LNE100TX Fast Ethernet Adapter(LNE100TX v5) v1.14 (010403)

Slot 1, IRQ9, Port C800, Node Address C41EC205A L
Max Frame 1514 bytes, Line Speed 100 Mbps Full Duplex
Board 1, Frame ETHERNET_802.2, LSB Mode
Board 2, Frame ETHERNET_802.3, LSB Mode
Board 3, Frame ETHERNET_SNAP, LSB Mode
Board 4, Frame ETHERNET_II, LSB Mode

NetWare IPX/SPX Protocol v3.00 BETA 5 (940812)
(C) Copyright 1990-1994 Novell, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Bound to logical board 1 (LNE100TX) : Protocol ID E0

Run Doom

C:\Games\Doom1_1>doom -net 3 D_CheckNetGame: Checking network game status. D_CheckNetGame: Initializing network for 3 node game. […]
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C:\Games\Doom1_1>doom -net 3
D_CheckNetGame: Checking network game status.
D_CheckNetGame: Initializing network for 3 node game.
localnetid: 0xb661e041
Attempting to find all players for net play. Press ESC to exit.
look for player...found a player!
looking for players..._

Raspberry Pi 3

Mount Drive

Z:\>mount c ~/dos-games

Run Doom

C:\DOS-GAMES\DOOM1_1>doom -net 3 -left D_CheckNetGame: Checking network game status. D_CheckNetGame: Initializing network for 3 […]
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C:\DOS-GAMES\DOOM1_1>doom -net 3 -left
D_CheckNetGame: Checking network game status.
D_CheckNetGame: Initializing network for 3 node game.
OpenSocket: 0xff

C:\DOOM1_1>_

The DOS machine will just sit there until I press ESC. It won't get into the game. The Raspberry Pi 3 always dumps into the command prompt.

Does anyone have any advice? Thanks.

Reply 8 of 10, by chinny22

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How did you go? the other post about it just sitting there is definitely down to the -3 maning nothing will happen till another 2 PC's connect. but the above doesn't seem right at all.

For testing I would try 2 dosbox machines one with the command
One you want to control the game from: doom -net 2
One that will show the left perspective: doom -net 2 -left

If the game works (which I doubt) it means you have a problem between dosbox and the real dos network. I don't know enough about dosbox to help with this.

If they both crash back to the prompt then dosbox networking isn't working at all, Also out of my league, I like to keep things real 😉

Reply 9 of 10, by w0lf42

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Small Update

I did some searching and ran across this on the Chocolate Doom IPX protocol support page (The reason I started researching Chocolate Doom is because it can run on a Raspberry Pi.):

IPX protocol support allows Chocolate Doom to play multiplayer games with DOS vanilla Doom.

Another quotation of interest:

Once the server is running, DOSBox clients can connect to the server using the instructions above. Then on any DOS machines (emulated or real), invoke IPXSETUP

Under the section of "Setting up an ipxbox server", it says:

Follow the instructions on the ipxbox page for how to build a server and particularly, how to bridge the server to a physical network.

On the ipxbox page, it says this:

The following explains how to set up an IPX bridge server on Linux. This could be as simple as a Raspberry Pi that you connect to a network along with a retro DOS machine

I had to install Go (Google programming language) before doing this step. You just type this command at the command prompt on the Raspberry Pi:

sudo apt-get install golang

But, that is were I got stuck, I tried following the directions to install ipxbox and, no matter what I did, I couldn't get it to install.

I'll look for help on Stackoverflow and report back. If anyone has suggestions, I'm happy to hear them.

Reply 10 of 10, by w0lf42

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I might be getting closer. There is where I am.

I needed to install Go on the Raspberry Pi

sudo apt-get install golang

Then, I needed to install an IPX network bridge

go get github.com/fragglet/ipxbox
go build ipxbox.go
sudo ./ipxbox --port=10000 --enable_tap

The tap0 device is an isolated virtual network connected to any physical network. To connect to a physical network, you need to create a bridge device that bridges tap0 with a physical network.

sudo ip link add name br0 type bridge
sudo ip link set br0 up
sudo ip link set eth0 master br0
sudo ip link set tap0 master br0

In DOSBox I needed to Enable ipx over UDP/IP emulation
Make ipx=true in the conf file

/home/pi/.dosbox/dosbox-0.74.conf
[ipx]
# ipx: Enable ipx over UDP/IP emulation.
ipx=true

Connect to the server with DOSBox

ipxnet connect 192.168.1.104 10000

So, I *think* everything is working except I'm not certain what the server address is. As far as I can tell, the software is installed, but the two machines aren't talking to each other. I'll check back in when I have more updates.