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First post, by Daniel3D

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I have been looking for a way to turn an obsolete laptop into a DOS machine.
I found mention of the DOS + HX DOS extender + vdmsound solution, But not resent and not with much success, apparently.
Also, these mentions are more than 5 years old and as option to specific problems.

My old laptop has no legacy support and a 1Ghz core and 1 gig RAM, but the only real problem is sound. It is for gaming mostly.
So I am looking at a sort of emulation for that. I thought about the option above.
It should be possible, but with my skill set, I already have trouble getting DOS installed via USB.

Also, I think that with a piece of software that can bridge between DOS and modern hardware.
We could maybe solve a lot of compatibility issues in DOS programs and games.
And be able to run them directly on hardware without a full scale emulator on top of an OS.

Does anyone know if this can work or help me get something like it to work?
I would love to have a real DOS (not emulated or virtualized) running again.

Thanks,
Daniel

Reply 2 of 23, by keenmaster486

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The cost to you in time and headaches of getting vdmsound + HX running is going to be greater than just getting a real DOS machine.

Only do this if your goal is to play around with HX in and of itself rather than just to play DOS games on real hardware.

World's foremost 486 enjoyer.

Reply 3 of 23, by Daniel3D

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keenmaster486 wrote on 2022-10-13, 16:19:

The cost to you in time and headaches of getting vdmsound + HX running is going to be greater than just getting a real DOS machine.

Only do this if your goal is to play around with HX in and of itself rather than just to play DOS games on real hardware.

I feared this answer. But it should be possible to make a direct X like tool for dos...

Reply 4 of 23, by Daniel3D

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retroman90s wrote on 2022-10-13, 16:05:

Hi Daniel3D, can you provide your labtop Tech/Spech so i can post som tools to turn it to a dos machine.

Thanks. I will look for it.
I did get DOS 7. Something and freedos running. But no sound support.

Reply 5 of 23, by DosFreak

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Daniel3D wrote on 2022-10-13, 17:04:
keenmaster486 wrote on 2022-10-13, 16:19:

The cost to you in time and headaches of getting vdmsound + HX running is going to be greater than just getting a real DOS machine.

Only do this if your goal is to play around with HX in and of itself rather than just to play DOS games on real hardware.

I feared this answer. But it should be possible to make a direct X like tool for dos...

There is it's called HX. VDMSound and NTVDM is for Windows not for HX.
Without HX you'll need to use or design software with Allegro (or similar) or code everything yourself to talk to the hardware.
More realistic is to use the original hardware that is compatible with DOS or use new hardware designed for DOS OPL2LPT or similar

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Reply 6 of 23, by keenmaster486

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DosFreak wrote on 2022-10-13, 17:31:

OPL2LPT or similar

This is a pretty reasonable solution, actually. Forgot these existed. Helpful if your laptop has a parallel port.

World's foremost 486 enjoyer.

Reply 7 of 23, by Daniel3D

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keenmaster486 wrote on 2022-10-13, 20:28:
DosFreak wrote on 2022-10-13, 17:31:

OPL2LPT or similar

This is a pretty reasonable solution, actually. Forgot these existed. Helpful if your laptop has a parallel port.

I know, but the last device I had with a parallel port was a DOS machine.. so unfortunately not a solution in my case.
The only interface connections I have, are; USB, VGA and LAN.

Reply 8 of 23, by Daniel3D

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retroman90s wrote on 2022-10-13, 16:05:

Hi Daniel3D, can you provide your labtop Tech/Spech so i can post som tools to turn it to a dos machine.

Ok. I have the laptop in question. It's a Medion Akoya E1210.

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Reply 9 of 23, by oso2k

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I have a few HP t5745, a MSI Wind U100, which have similar Intel Atom and I can tell you you're also going to have issues with the on-board Intel GMA950 graphics. It's not quite VGA/SVGA/VBE compatible. If you use Phil's Computer Lab's DOS Benchmark, you'll see issues with choosing certain graphics modes in DOS. I have a few suggestions though.

Run Windows XP. This will be you best chance of getting your HW working as-is, Video, Sound, WiFi, Network. You machine probably also came with an XP CD & License if you're the original owner. Then use emulators or something like RetroArch.

Run Linux. There's still a couple of 32-bit distros out there. While awkward for typical Linux users, TinyCoreLinux is a really great, low resource, 32-bit Linux distro once you get used to it. Then run emulators or RetroArch on top of it.

Now, somethings that has been more popular as of late is to run DOSBOX or Lakka or DOSBIAN as the OS. This gives a nice gaming focused UI, utils for managing DOS games plus other consoles if so desired.

https://youtu.be/gKAO13LBnkc
https://youtu.be/qiJfugnd0BI
https://youtu.be/YREU5Jpcilo
https://youtu.be/PFDmTarJLRU
https://youtu.be/sTDqf8TAjZQ

Reply 11 of 23, by Daniel3D

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A raspberry with DOSBIAN is a very cool idea. That is certainly worth some exploring.

I still would like to find a way to run DOS on bare-metal modern hardware (regardless of the chipsets).
I didn't start with DOS until after I had a windows 95 PC, but I made it dual boot (W95 / DOS) and I loved it that way.
But on my current laptop (dying by the way so not one I want to test this on) it's also not possible to run dos.
So WX / DOS is not possible. I had a Linux alternative that booted into DOSbox. But, although funny, it had no benefits to running DOSbox in windows.

I know that VDMSound is not made to run in DOS. And HX might not have everything needed (i'm not sure). But then it is close and should be possible to solve.
I would make a lot of hardware of the last 10 / 15 years able to run DOS again.

Reply 12 of 23, by oso2k

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Daniel3D wrote on 2022-10-14, 06:15:
oso2k wrote on 2022-10-14, 05:45:

I have a few suggestions though.

It can not run an os(any) and keep enough power for emulation. I've been down that path.. Unfortunately

I used to run emulators all the time when I bought my MSI Wind U100 new. It’s an Intel N270, Intel GMA950. It might even be the same OEM if the Wikipedia page is accurate. In fact, I installed WindOSX, a hack of 10.6 OSX Snow Leopard that was heavier than XP or Linux at the time. But it ran all my OSX NES, SNES emulators fine. With these early Intel Atoms, Virtualization isn’t very good because of the lack of CPU support for VT-x, VT-d. But running DOSBox on Linux or DOSBox Pure on Lakka should be an ok to good experience. I’ll try this today.

Reply 15 of 23, by oso2k

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I got it going with TimyCoreLinux 13.1 and DOSBOX-X. Perf wasn’t good though but I also know next to nothing about tuning DOSBOX. Maybe the regular DOSBOX tcz would perform better with fewer features.

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Reply 16 of 23, by DosFreak

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IIRC, that CPU is likely slower than a P3 1GHZ. XP NTVDM (assuming the graphics card isn't an issue) w/VDMSound, ScummVM and ports are your best bets. For non-protected mode games (pre-1993) DOSBox performance will be fine except for edge cases.

You can try ReactOS if you want, I haven't kept up with it's NTVDM progress and I think they use CPU emulation instead of virtualization so it's likely slow.

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Reply 17 of 23, by oso2k

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DosFreak wrote on 2022-10-15, 01:26:

IIRC, that CPU is likely slower than a P3 1GHZ. XP NTVDM (assuming the graphics card isn't an issue) w/VDMSound, ScummVM and ports are your best bets. For non-protected mode games (pre-1993) DOSBox performance will be fine except for edge cases.

You can try ReactOS if you want, I haven't kept up with it's NTVDM progress and I think they use CPU emulation instead of virtualization so it's likely slow.

Ah yes, another good suggestion.

Reply 19 of 23, by darry

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@Daniel3D

What games do you want/expect/hope to run ?

How much faster would they need to be ?

Is this your only (or fastest) machine ?

I can understand and sympathize with trying to get the best performance out of that laptop, but if the purpose of all this is to play DOS games with reasonable performance, IMHO it is worth taking a step back to try to evaluate what the best case scenario might be .

In other words, if it is too slow in DOSBox in Windows or Linux and, for example, even a 2X speed increase wouldn't be enough to make things playable, IMHO, you are potentially grasping at straws and competing with Don Quichotte.