heh

My first thought was that the dates are wrong, they should be 2004.

Seems some people missed the DOSBox 0.70 release...

I can even run Tombraider on my Pentium 3 1GHz laptop without being jurky, let alone on my P4 3.2GHz. Well I can even run Carmageddon on it.

And well Java being faster then a compiled program, naa... can't be or ... can it?

Anyways, meh...

Erik.

and i can play doom on dosbox on my p2 233

wee

(no, seriously)

And well doing a statement 10% native speed when using a software CPU is a dangerous one when only showcasing 2D games.
Remember the thread on "why are 3D games so slow against the Voxel games?" Run a 3D game like Quake on a P3 without it being "jurky" and then I'll be very interrested.

Makes me think, did they read the FAQ doc?

Erik.

It looks like reading through that thread that the mods of that forum prefer DosEmu. I've noticed DosEmu fanatics for some reason cannot configure DosBox correctly and/or refuse to give it a chance so that's probably what the issue is.

I just wish that the ignorant masses who diss DosBox wouldn't sound so factual about it and put some IMO's in their statements....

Well after playing 5 minutes of space invaders, wich is quite fun in DOSBox, my thoughts where how do I speed this hup jeez IMO, 10% speed, faster then DOSBox, my a.. beep. 😈

As I said before it is nice to be able to play DOS games on the internet and but 10% speed, meh... IMO 🙄

Anyways enough from me...

Erik.

ErikGG wrote:

And well Java being faster then a compiled program, naa... can't be or ... can it?

Yes it can. Sun's HotSpot just-in-time-compiler is pretty smart and can do what no C compiler can ever achieve: recompile code parts optimized for the current data being processed. It's similar to profile-guided optimization found in current compilers, but it happens dynamically, matching the data that is processed at that very moment.

The reason why your average Java program still doesn't feel faster: That optimization won't work for complex code flow as it happens in an emulator, it is meant for mathematical algorithms and the like, which indeed can rival C programs (the IBM VM is famed for it). Furthermore, it must be enabled manually (the famous "-server" switch for java's VM), and since java uses a huge amount of main memory, loading and swapping that memory often negates any benefit.

Bottom line: won't work for emulators, unless someone writes a "dynamic core" that outputs java bytecode 😉

Never knew Java could do that, thanks for the intel.
Nice to know for in the future.

Thanks,

Erik.

Meanwhile 'Alun' a Mod @ Qbasic is...well..stupid.

"I haven't actually conducted any real testys but Quake 1 plays at a reasonable speed on a P166 with sound running at mode X 360x480. I've run Quake through DOSBox on a modern 3.2GHz PC at college and it's very jurky."

Why would you bother? Quake for DOS was pathetically slow on a non 3D OpenGL accelerated DOS machine. I guess he's never heard of local system ports of Quake.

"If DOSBox was 10% efficient then it would be able to run Quake on my 1.8GHz machine, if it was 5% efficient playing Quake on the college's 3.2GHz machine wouldn't be a problem, I would say that DOSBox only runs programs at 2.5% of native speed which is appalling in my opinion."

There's little chance that JPC is 10% efficient across the board, especially on the variant Java platforms around. I would say that Alun speaks from his nether regions.

"I don't normally use DOSBox, I normally use DOSEmu under Linux or reboot from a FreeDOS boot disk and run DOS programs from a FAT32 partition."

Horses for courses, but I find DOSBox to an admirable performer, especially in light of MT32 and Dynamic Core optimisations. Meanwhile what's the point in rebooting your functional OS away to zoom about at break neck speed in a real DOS environment that won't run most DOS software properly.

"Slow emulators likie DOSBox are pretty useless, the only advantage they have is convenience but that's outwheighed by their lack of functionality. As far as I'm concerned if you want to run DOS programs you need to run them under pure DOS either by booting from a disk, having a separate partition or both."

What the hell is 'pure' DOS on a modern machine that's too fast? A freaking nightmare in speed-driven crashes that's what.

Slowdown programs don't always work and just how the hell is his 'pure DOS' going to compensate for the lack of ISA 8 and 16bit slots on the vast majority of modern motherboards. We should just give up sound in 80s and early 90s DOS software in Alun's opinion. Hell in his opinion we should all be happy to reboot back to DOS to play with XtreeGold....as long as we don't mind it crashing while it accesses our hard disks that are larger than it was ever programmed for.