Hi! Dosbox for Wii with jmarsh great patches is available.

@jmarsh
Thank you very much for the great Dynamic Compiler patches!

@Stretch
A forked dosbox-wii version with the Dynamic Compiler patches from jmarsh is now available for the Wii (and WiiU).

I have synced the dosbox-wii to SVN r4301 and applied the patches from jmarsh for Dynamic Compiler support. Unfortunately, there is a bug at the Wii version (independent of the patches. The patches works great!). The bug is that the virtual keyboard cannot be used. A real keyboard is no problem.

For more informations see https://github.com/dborth/dosbox-wii/pull/57 and https://github.com/retro100/dosbox-wii.
I also made some benchmarks with PCPBench. With core=dynamic I get a result of 2.9 fps on my Wii and with core=normal the result is 0.5 fps. For the benchmark results see https://github.com/retro100/dosbox-wii/blob/m … rk_Wii_WiiU.txt. A pre-release is also available at https://github.com/retro100/dosbox-wii/releases.

Currently I applied the patches ppc_dynrec.diff and drive_fat_BE.diff from jmarsh. Have I forgotten any patches or are there any other patches that should be added to the Wii port?

Best regards
retro100

so, how fast is pcpbench? 😀

@Dominus: With dynamic enabled I get 2.9 fps. With disabled dynrec (core=normal) I get 0.5 fps. This is a factor 5.8.
Wenn I use Dos/32A instead of DOS4GW at PCPBench the results are 3.1 fps vs 0.7 fps. This is a factor 4.4.

1PCPBench 1.03c on Wii
2---------o---------------------------------------o-------------------o
3version: |     Dosbox WII r4301 with dynrec      |  Dosbox WII 1.7   |
4         |             master branch             |                   |
5---------o---------o---------o---------o---------o---------o---------o
6core:    | dynamic | dynamic | normal  | normal  | normal  | normal  |
7cylces:  |   max   |   max   |   max   |   max   |   max   |   max   |
8extender:| Dos/32A | DOS4GW  | Dos/32A | DOS4GW  | Dos/32A | DOS4GW  |
9result 1:| 3.0 fps | 2.8 fps | 0.7 fps | 0.3 fps | 0.3 fps | 0.2 fps |
10result 2:| 3.1 fps | 2.9 fps | 0.8 fps | 0.5 fps | 0.2 fps | 0.3 fps |
11result 3:| 3.1 fps | 2.8 fps | 0.6 fps | 0.5 fps | 0.3 fps | 0.2 fps |

For all results see https://github.com/retro100/dosbox-wii/blob/m … rk_Wii_WiiU.txt

Thanks! I was really interested in it

I highly recommend you solve the issues with using devkitpro's SDL, it is much faster than dborth's version.

jmarsh wrote on 2021-02-09, 20:16:

I highly recommend you solve the issues with using devkitpro's SDL, it is much faster than dborth's version.

Thanks for the tip! I hope to have time to solve the issues soon 😀 And thanks again for the patches!

I got a score of 95388 parrots, 35.4 XT in speedtst with core=dynamic, cycles=max, cputype=486_slow

I will try Jazz Jackrabbit on the wii later and report the performance.

Played the first level of Jazz Jackrabbit. It was very playable on low quality, no animation. Dosbox set with core=dynamic, cycles=max 90%, cputype=auto, with GUS at 22khz. Some occasional minor slowdown but not enough to ruin the experience.

The game will crash with an unhandled exception at startup if you don't have the wiimote pointing at the wii sensor bar.

Nice work. 🙂

Would this also be useful when building DOSBox for POWER9 (ppc64le) architectures, such as the Talos II workstation or the Blackbird motherboard?

Or would the different endianness and the fact that it's a 64-bit architecture make it practically a rewrite?

I believe that POWER9 CPUs can run in both little-endian and big-endian modes, if that helps.

Perhaps it would work if DOSBox on POWER9 were to be spun up inside a paravirtualized 32-bit big-endian VM instance?

You wrote the same thing at the beginning of this thread.

If you look around pages 3 or 4 you'll find discussion about porting to ppc64le.

Oh wow, that's embarrassing. I've been following so many threads both here and on GitHub, I got confused. Sorry about that. 😅

retro100 wrote on 2021-02-09, 16:55:

@Dominus: With dynamic enabled I get 2.9 fps. With disabled dynrec (core=normal) I get 0.5 fps. This is a factor 5.8. Wenn I use […]
Show full quote

@Dominus: With dynamic enabled I get 2.9 fps. With disabled dynrec (core=normal) I get 0.5 fps. This is a factor 5.8.
Wenn I use Dos/32A instead of DOS4GW at PCPBench the results are 3.1 fps vs 0.7 fps. This is a factor 4.4.

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1PCPBench 1.03c on Wii
2---------o---------------------------------------o-------------------o
3version: |     Dosbox WII r4301 with dynrec      |  Dosbox WII 1.7   |
4         |             master branch             |                   |
5---------o---------o---------o---------o---------o---------o---------o
6core:    | dynamic | dynamic | normal  | normal  | normal  | normal  |
7cylces:  |   max   |   max   |   max   |   max   |   max   |   max   |
8extender:| Dos/32A | DOS4GW  | Dos/32A | DOS4GW  | Dos/32A | DOS4GW  |
9result 1:| 3.0 fps | 2.8 fps | 0.7 fps | 0.3 fps | 0.3 fps | 0.2 fps |
10result 2:| 3.1 fps | 2.9 fps | 0.8 fps | 0.5 fps | 0.2 fps | 0.3 fps |
11result 3:| 3.1 fps | 2.8 fps | 0.6 fps | 0.5 fps | 0.3 fps | 0.2 fps |

For all results see https://github.com/retro100/dosbox-wii/blob/m … rk_Wii_WiiU.txt

Hello retro100, as it is really hard to get your contact information I am glad you are here. I would like to contact you as you are the one releasing the most up to date version available for the wii. Maybe you saw here on vogons I was looking for a way to be able to switch the mapper on the go while dosbox is running. After googling for quite a while i found a different project that has it done and I got into the piece of code that does the job. Yet i am unable to produce a patch myself for the Wii version. Would like to hear from you, contact me on azn#7863 / Discord if you can. Or send me an e-mail - it is accessible from my web log(url on my vogons profile page). If you can implement this code into the wii version it would be really great news 😉

azn wrote on 2021-03-15, 20:31:

Hello retro100, as it is really hard to get your contact information I am glad you are here. I would like to contact you as you are the one releasing the most up to date version available for the wii. Maybe you saw here on vogons I was looking for a way to be able to switch the mapper on the go while dosbox is running. After googling for quite a while i found a different project that has it done and I got into the piece of code that does the job. Yet i am unable to produce a patch myself for the Wii version. Would like to hear from you, contact me on azn#7863 / Discord if you can. Or send me an e-mail - it is accessible from my web log(url on my vogons profile page). If you can implement this code into the wii version it would be really great news 😉

Hi azn!
I now have enabled "Issues" on my dosbox wii fork https://github.com/retro100/dosbox-wii
Please post on github as Issue your suggestion. I think this thread has the wrong topic for your intention 😁 Maybe you can also write some infos into the issue about were I can find the code for the "switch mapper" (if the code is public available).

retro100 wrote on 2021-03-17, 23:09:

Hi azn! I now have enabled "Issues" on my dosbox wii fork https://github.com/retro100/dosbox-wii Please post on github as Issue […]
Show full quote

azn wrote on 2021-03-15, 20:31:

Hello retro100, as it is really hard to get your contact information I am glad you are here. I would like to contact you as you are the one releasing the most up to date version available for the wii. Maybe you saw here on vogons I was looking for a way to be able to switch the mapper on the go while dosbox is running. After googling for quite a while i found a different project that has it done and I got into the piece of code that does the job. Yet i am unable to produce a patch myself for the Wii version. Would like to hear from you, contact me on azn#7863 / Discord if you can. Or send me an e-mail - it is accessible from my web log(url on my vogons profile page). If you can implement this code into the wii version it would be really great news 😉

Hi azn!
I now have enabled "Issues" on my dosbox wii fork https://github.com/retro100/dosbox-wii
Please post on github as Issue your suggestion. I think this thread has the wrong topic for your intention 😁 Maybe you can also write some infos into the issue about were I can find the code for the "switch mapper" (if the code is public available).

Thanks for your answer, I would do for sure, as it is at first cool feature, and the only thing that keeps me from turning my wii into nice dosbox gaming console 😉

Hi! Sorry for silly questions, I’m total noob in programming stuff, I was wondering how dosbox would run on my power pc iBook g4 with 1.33 cpu. At first I’ve downloaded latest official release, tried duke nukem 3d and it was bad. Then I found this thread and special dosbox version with patch applied sadly there was no change.

(https://sourceforge.net/projects/dosbox-ppcjit/)

That’s how game runs in 320x200: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgWM03LEyOE

I wonder if I’m doing smth wrong, maybe there is a chance for better performance?

I already had a thread about this subject, but this time I found the author of this patch. Can’t be a better place to ask about my situation 😀

I don‘t think you can do better, especially with later DOS games, especially more taxing ones like Duke 3D

Reduce the display size using the in-game settings, test different frameskip settings... Duke3D didn't run well on 486s, which is basically what you're emulating with a machine like that.

1992/93 seems to be the limit on my 2004 eMac. I use source ports found on the Garden for Duke3d, SW, Doom, Quake etc... I mostly play Frontier and Epic Pinball so I'm OK.