how much memory does the target have and which screen resolution ?

For instance: Nokia N-Gage CLS with symbian s60v1:

Screen: 4096 colors, 176 x 208 pixels
Memory: RAM: 11Mb
Mem used for programs 3Mb and MMC card [ 32Mb / 1GB ]
Processor: ARM9 104 MHz

real tricky

DOSBox likes memory. you might want to ask n0p (a pocket pc dosbox porter) what the avarage memory usage is when stripped down. I'm afraid it's above 3 mb and the screen resolution might be a bit low as well.

Hmm, i think it is a small misunderstanding. Ngage uses 11Mb RAM, 3Mb is only for keeping java/s60 progs or games like HDD in PC.

This 3Mb is like HDD in PC and 11Mb is like a original PC RAM.
Also Ngage uses external MMC [ like many symbian s60 phones] card so you can copy dosbox on MMc card and run it from there...

How many memory MB needs DosBox to fully work for instance on win95 ?

I can only give you my linux line
(this is a fullblown dosbox on startup)

1 PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND           
2 4110 qbix      15   0 63968  32m  15m S 13.9  6.5   0:01.98 dosbox61           
3 4118 qbix      15   0 81740  30m  19m S  1.0  6.1   0:00.41 dosbox63           
44566 qbix      15   0 80632  44m  19m S  1.2  8.9   0:00.36 dosbox
5 4572 qbix      15   0 56964  28m  19m R  2.0  5.7   0:00.27 dosbox            

The last line being dosbox trimmed down using the configfile. There is probably more to gain by changing the code.

Ugh, thats bad.. using 28Mb but maybe if this s60 dosbox port can be optimised for instance to run like 286 16mhz / Standard Vga only, then the memory will bo not the problem. Just like e2mame / eemame for S60 is a sleek/thin version of original MAME form PC

Well, my advice is: forget N-Gage...
Slow processor, too little memory, inadequate screen resolution... Additionaly Symbian (which would probably mean a lot of work to adapt it anyway...).

Some months ago when I was thinking about what kind of new phone I should get, I spent a lot of time by looking for a Symbian DOS emulator (I was satisfied with my Nokia 6230 (not smartphone), so I thougth I would buy another phone - this time smartphone - from Nokia). Nothing... And it looks like not easy task to do. There are promises of "PocketDOS" port for Symbian, but they have been promising it for years... I do not know about any real attempt to port DOSBOX to Symbian (and I was searching the Internet for long time). So I had to abandon Nokia and to go elsewhere...

Even if anybody would do that, it would be for S60v3 (QVGA display, more power and the platform is being further developed).
In short: if you want a DOS emulator (PocketDOS, DOSBOX) on a phone buy something with Windows Mobile (PocketDOS is even for "Windows Mobile smartphone edition", DOSBOX only for "Phone Edition" - the one with touchscreen).

Alternatively you can try to port it, though I do not see any sense in that. I have MDA Vario (HTC Wizard) which is far more suited to DOSBOX than N-Gage (MDA Vario has "Windows Mobile 5 Phone Edition", QVGA touchscreen, 64 MB RAM, 195 MHz processor, QWERTY hardware keyboard). From my experiences - it is usable for PC XT games !
Thinking about N-Gage with 104 Mhz processor, small screen, small memory - even if you managed to do this it would be just a demonstration that it works, not usable for anything...
You want the power 16 Mhz 80286 VGA computer... Well, I am *unable* to get even close to this on far better hardware (MDA Vario)... It is an absolute nonsense to expect anything like that on N-Gage...

Saying that, if you want to do port, do it it for Symbian S60v3. That platform looks better. And I think many people would like it... Well, there was a time when I looked for this port deperately... - before realizing that only "Windows Mobile" is an alternative today (well, in future there may be some Linux based phones - but they are rare at the moment and I have never seen any myself and I certainly would not get one subsidized from my mobile phone operator)...

(Well there is also a port for Palm made by somebody last year - but from what I know it is nowhere near the real usability yet and since it is made by one man team it may never get there).

Mirek

The most I can get out of my MDA III (Intel XScale 400 MHz @530 MHz) is something like a 10-12 MHz AT (tested with MIPS, frameskip 2, no sound) with n0p's port. And his one is the fastest I know of (in fact the only one that has been properly developed).
That's enough to play Eye of the Beholder or Ultima VI (:happyhappy:), but that's about it - Wing Commander is unplayable, for example.

I remember that my N-Gage was barely able to emulate the C64 (only with frameskip if sound was enabled).
Additionally, there doesn't seem to be much going on concerning cpu speed improvements for handheld devices, so I wouldn't expect anything during the next few years that could provide the processing power needed to run DOSBox properly.

Well, it would help significantly if somebody wrote a dynamic core for ARM... It would be quite usefull since nearly all smartphones/pdas run on ARM compatible processors...
Unfortunately it does not seem anybody is doing it. DOSBOX developpers are not interested and there is lack of volunteers. 🙁
Some time ago somebody mentioned here on Vogons having experience with such tasks and wanting to do it (WD probably remembers him), but he was not heard about since...

Mirek

Well the core is set up and somewhat working for x64, and the guy
said he was almost done with the arm adaption. But didn't hear from
him since then.
Maybe somewhen i'll clean that core, update it to current sources and
put it up so people who are interested in it can port it. But no priority
for that at the moment.

so a S60 3rd edition port wouldn't be a bad idea
the least powerful phones that run this OS
have at least 64 MB of RAM and an ARM 9 220 MHz processor

it would be nice to see a symbiam dosbox

Hola! I have Nokia E90 Communicator and have been looking for emulators to run old games in my phone.. Found this forum by DosBOX-site. It would be awesome if anyone who knows Symbian-programming could create DosBOX for Symbian S60 3rd!! Hopefully someone grabs this idea, I think I'm not the only one who would be happy about it 😁

While Dosbox on Symbian phones does sound cool, I doubt it would turn out usefull in the end.

ScummVM has a Symbian S60 3rd port and it goes without saying while it's cool watching a game like Full Throttle start up on a phone, playing point & click adventure game on such device is finger-breaking experience.

Not to mention that the backlight turns itself off when no input activity is present (cursor movement, clicking).
So, when watching a cutscene you have to constantly press keys in order to keep the backlight lit.

Can't imagine what Dos games could one play elegantly with a phone keypad.
Now a touchscreen with a pen would do wonders and I bet it does too on Windows Mobile Edition enabled PDAs..... as for standard phones... cool to watch, but nervewrecking to play.

Just my 2 cents.

I would love to see a S60 port for two reasons. The first two X-COM games.

Dont count on it, it will be too slow to play. Thats if it will even run under the memory available. Even the screen res is too small.
XCOM 1 actually loads on my GP2X, but is too slow to even get around the menu.

To any one interested there has been some development put into a ARM recompilier backend, the problem is that the original author ran into problems and lost interest. I believe its very close to working but would need some serious debug to find the remaining issues.
The actual discussion occured on the gp32x.com forums with the intent of getting a dyarec working for the GP2X port.
If anyone is interested in finishing this off, I will be glad to assist any way.

Pickle wrote:

Dont count on it, it will be too slow to play. Thats if it will even run under the memory available. Even the screen res is too small.
XCOM 1 actually loads on my GP2X, but is too slow to even get around the menu.

The S60 phones today have 128mb RAM so that's not an issue, and the vast majority of DOS games use 320x200 so that's no issue either.

The problem is speed. An ARM11 at 400 MHz found in the Nokia N800 (which runs Linux) can run about 1500 cycles without sound, which indeed is too slow for a comfortable gameplay with the X-COM games. But it would still be neat.

VoodooFX wrote:

Not to mention that the backlight turns itself off when no input activity is present (cursor movement, clicking).
So, when watching a cutscene you have to constantly press keys in order to keep the backlight lit.

I'd be very surprised if it isn't possible to have it on permanently by some API call. I'd be even more surprised if the backlite would be hardware rigged to the keys in order to light.

JAL

No, it's definitely possible, Garmin Navigation has the option to keep the backlight always turned on, I was just commenting on Symbian port of ScummVM.

Maybe the porter didn't want to bother with the code and making necessary changes, so he just made the thing compile for Symbian and that was that... but one thing stands solid... playing most of the DOS games on the phone would be very unkind to fingers.
I can't imaginge playing a game like Lotus on phone, maybe a turned based game or something that does not require quick and accurate responses.