kjliew wrote on 2021-06-13, 20:58:

zyzzle wrote on 2021-06-13, 20:29:

Dosbox is just unsatisfactory because it's got a ton of problems, and, for me at least is slow, slow, slow --- even on a fast modern system. It seems wrong that DOS programs / games should run slowly with such beefy hardware as a decent i5 or i7 system with 8GB of RAM and a 3 Ghz+ clockspeed!

I would cordially challenge anyone to publish a list of **DOS games/apps** that DOSBox can be considered slow. So far, no one has yet to do that. If one looks at experience and usability point of view, DOSBox handsomely fulfilled such requirements. It is true that DOSBox can never be as fast as bare-metal, but the question really is if such bare-metal performance would even matter. For DOS games, when DOSBox runs them at 30fps while bare-metal at 200fps, there is really isn't any difference in experience and usability.

When x86 chipsets completely remove the logics that provide "Page Memory Attributes (PAM)" for memory regions 0xC0000-0xFFFFF, it will be the final nail in the coffin for DOS. UEFI class 3 does not need that. Thanks to the world we now live that "unused" codes and logics shall be purged to reduce potential security attack surface. DOS would remain alive & kicking in another dimension, in the VMs.

And an that old IBM PS/2, Amiga . P4 or whatever will still be chugging way in a IT cupboard/closet which was enclosed by dry wall during renovations a decade or more ago.....

You keep banging on about getting rid of logic which is quite illogical I'm afraid to say......Well,no I'm not.

To get rid of logic you need to use logic which is logical.

Caluser2000 wrote on 2021-06-13, 21:13:

You keep banging on about getting rid of logic which is quite illogical I'm afraid to say......Well,no I'm not.

That's a fair judgement. You have every rights to believe in that you believed.

But let me also share with you a broader prospect of what Intel has been doing in their open-source projects. Intel has been contributing to QEMU a machine model called "microvm". It is a simplified model that removes legacy PIT, PIC and DMAC. This gives a hint of future legacy-free x86 platform that only requires APIC, IOAPIC and HPET. All legacy-free PCIe endpoints can do MSI-X and DMA master on their own. When one booted modern OSes on modern platforms, those are what really required. RTC's fate is yet unknown, it is just a time keeping apparatus and perhaps does not have to be MC146818 compatible as in the 1st IBM AT.

It is logical that when Intel enforces UEFI class 3, they will plan for x86 chipsets to rid the logics that was only used for BIOS/CSM. (Correction) "Page Attribute Memory (PAM)" is a likely candidate.

Caluser2000 wrote on 2021-06-13, 20:45:

Industrial mobo manufactures a still manufacturing mobos with great ISA support complete with. shhhhhh don't tell anyone., real serial ports.

I recall NASA scalping as many old x86 systems as they could a while back.

The latest and greatest iSPY cpu based mobos are not needed at all.

Yes, I remmber that , too. Back then, massive 20 years ago, at the turn of the century,
NASA was looking for 8086 chips (rather than the "castrated" 8088 flavor) for their Space Shuttle programme.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20061109/142841.shtml

Edit:

kjliew wrote on 2021-06-13, 21:51:

But let me also share with you a broader prospect of what Intel has been doing in their open-source projects. Intel has been contributing to QEMU a machine model called "microvm". It is a simplified model that removes legacy PIT, PIC and DMAC. This gives a hint of future legacy-free x86 platform that only requires APIC, IOAPIC and HPET. All legacy-free PCIe endpoints can do MSI-X and DMA master on their own. When one booted modern OSes on modern platforms, those are what really required. RTC's fate is yet unknown, it is just a time keeping apparatus and perhaps does not have to be MC146818 compatible as in the 1st IBM AT.

It is logical that when Intel enforces UEFI class 3, they will plan for x86 chipsets to rid the logics that was only used for BIOS/CSM. (Correction) "Page Attribute Memory (PAM)" is a likely candidate.

Thank you for the detailed explanation. 😎

Intel seems to always have been sorta obsessed with "legacy free".
The company already tried getting rid of useful hardware with the PC98/PC99 specs.
Back then, ISA slots and PS/2 connectors were on their list, among other things.
Unfortunately, things didn't work as smooth, as intended.

For example, the USB-PS/2 emulation only worked at the BIOS level.
Once OSes, like Win98, took control over the USB controller, that PS/2 port emulation was gone.

This was a rather unlucky situation, because installing the keyboard/mouse drivers sometimes required user interaction.. So a legacy (PS/2) keyboard/mouse was required. 😉

Jo22 wrote on 2021-06-13, 23:00:

Yes, I remmber that , too. Back then, massive 20 years ago, at the turn of the century, NASA was looking for 8086 chips (rather […]
Show full quote

Caluser2000 wrote on 2021-06-13, 20:45:

Industrial mobo manufactures a still manufacturing mobos with great ISA support complete with. shhhhhh don't tell anyone., real serial ports.

I recall NASA scalping as many old x86 systems as they could a while back.

The latest and greatest iSPY cpu based mobos are not needed at all.

Yes, I remmber that , too. Back then, massive 20 years ago, at the turn of the century,
NASA was looking for 8086 chips (rather than the "castrated" 8088 flavor) for their Space Shuttle programme.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20061109/142841.shtml

Thats also about the time the SCO(with MickkySoft quietly in the background) vs FOSS/GNU/Linux mushroomed. Jennifer did a great job of keeping the rest of us informed about that. Despite receiving death threats.

Google Groklaw and you should find heaps of info about that fiasco.

Jo22 wrote on 2021-06-13, 23:00:

For example, the USB-PS/2 emulation only worked at the BIOS level.
Once OSes, like Win98, took control over the USB controller, that PS/2 port emulation was gone.

You are indeed right about PS/2 emulation. Intel's ambition of past legacy-free PC wasn't doing so well with regard to PS/2 ports, compared to the rest such as LPT and COM ports. One of the excuses was legacy BIOS. With UEFI class 3, almost all the troubles with legacy BIOS were gone. There hasn't been any application for LPT ports nowadays and FTDI is quite successful in converting COM ports application with their family of FTDI USB-to-serial convertor chips for industrial equipment. UEFI class 3 also only boots Win8+, the concerns of booting into legacy OS no longer hold. UEFI is also exclusively 64-bit implementations for x86_64.

All the ingredients are well lined up now, for the final blow to rid x86 from its long entrenched legacy. It is just a matter of time and it will be on accelerated obsolesce path compared to the last 20 years.

kjliew wrote on 2021-06-13, 23:41:

Jo22 wrote on 2021-06-13, 23:00:

For example, the USB-PS/2 emulation only worked at the BIOS level.
Once OSes, like Win98, took control over the USB controller, that PS/2 port emulation was gone.

You are indeed right about PS/2 emulation. Intel's ambition of past legacy-free PC wasn't doing so well with regard to PS/2 ports, compared to the rest such as LPT and COM ports. One of the excuses was legacy BIOS. With UEFI class 3, almost all the troubles with legacy BIOS were gone. There hasn't been any application for LPT ports nowadays and FTDI is quite successful in converting COM ports application with their family of FTDI USB-to-serial convertor chips for industrial equipment. UEFI class 3 also only boots Win8+, the concerns of booting into legacy OS no longer hold. UEFI is also exclusively 64-bit implementations for x86_64.

All the ingredients are well lined up now, for the final blow to rid x86 from its long entrenched legacy. It is just a matter of time and it will be on accelerated obsolesce path compared to the last 20 years.

Keeee? I'm sure industrial mobo and equipment manufactures will depute that 🤣.

Well, the flipside is that with FPGA, the oldschool DOS system will never die, as cloning such is entirely possible in that realm. In 10-20 years, speeds and costs of FPGA will be low enough to accomplish it at reasonable cost and speed, for that 30 / 60 fps DOS gaming experience without emulation's faults or problems.

DOSBOX is not bad for what it is -- I'll grant you that, but to me it's like reading a book on a Kindle or a digital medium, it just rings false after 40 years of personal experience with DOS and the 16-bit hardware arena. I'd much rather read a real, physical book and savor the high-quality paper and experience of the real printed page than "simulate" or "emulate" that with a poor digital facsimile. In a way, I'd much, much prefer to boot a DOS memory stick in 3 - 5 seconds and be up and running in native DOS on a modern PC, even if I do get a framerate of 200 fps in my games. I can always sync to VBL and slow it down if I need to.

And, there's a Quake 2 port for DOS that wouldn't run well at all in DOSBox... It manages 80 fps at 1024x768x16bit color -- with small textures on a fast, modern system. With large textures, it barely gets 30 fps on a fast i5 8600 system in baremetal DOS, with VESA LFB writecombining *enabled*!

Most DOS games can of course be run well at the level of a fast Pentium III. Many or most DOS applications benefit from any and all additional speed that they can get, up to and beyond what a modern i7 system with fast DDR4 memory will provide.

The key is very fast *single*-core performance, of course, as multicore is useless for DOS.

Well, that really comes down to one's personal choice then, not that DOSBox isn't capable of delivering similar experience.

You are right about the analogy of eBooks vs physical books, it is one's personal choice, nothing's wrong with that. The same applies to DOSBox, too, I can play the games anywhere, anytime, on Windows 10 desktop/laptop, on Linux and macOS just the same as eBooks are more easily accessible from mobile devices, Kindles and etc.

Another equation is cost of ownership. If eBook and physical book costs the same, then one has the freedom of choice. If eBook only costs 99 cents with instant digital delivery while physical book cost $25 + shipping, then the choice will be different. The same applies for DOSBox. If you had a spared machine capable of booting DOS, then just use it if you don't mind. If you don't and acquiring one would cost several hundreds $$$, then DOSBox will be the obvious choice.

DJGPP DOS ports are different beasts, but that beasts have been tamed with virtualization, including 3Dfx Glide pass-through for true 3D acceleration at any resolution with maximum quality. Because of true 3D acceleration, the bare-metal DOS does not offer the same rendering quality, even if it can achieve the same speed with VESA LFB write-combining.
Check it out 😁
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xi8YHBePaUA

All known DJGPP DOS ports work with virtualization at quality exceeds most real DOS machines, QDOS, Q2DOS, GLH2DOS and SM64 when one adopts the right technology.

Out of interest what are the minimum hardware requirements to run DosBox?

I most likely use it because because I prefer the tactile feel of real hardware. Other folk will have differing viewpoints and that is fine by me.

Caluser2000 wrote on 2021-06-14, 01:16:

Out of interest what are the minimum hardware requirements to run DosBox?

I run DOSBox on hardware as low as Thinkpad 600X and ASUS EeePC 401. Almost all VGA 320x200 or 320x240 games will just play with flawless audio and BGM. The EeePC is also good enough for MT32 emulation for Sierra/LucasArt point-n-click games. More demanding games what supports SVGA 640x480 will require more powerful PCs with sustain base CPU clock of 1.5GHz. I use the rule of 10X to qualify games on DOSBox. When the rule of 10X meets the game CPU requirements, then it is very likely to be playable.

kjliew wrote on 2021-06-14, 01:40:

Caluser2000 wrote on 2021-06-14, 01:16:

Out of interest what are the minimum hardware requirements to run DosBox?

I run DOSBox on hardware as low as Thinkpad 600X and ASUS EeePC 401. Almost all VGA 320x200 or 320x240 games will just play with flawless audio and BGM. The EeePC is also good enough for MT32 emulation for Sierra/LucasArt point-n-click games. More demanding games what supports SVGA 640x480 will require more powerful PCs with sustain base CPU clock of 1.5GHz. I use the rule of 10X to qualify games on DOSBox. When the rule of 10X meets the game CPU requirements, then it is very likely to be playable.

Thank you.

Caluser2000 wrote on 2021-06-14, 00:17:

kjliew wrote on 2021-06-13, 23:41:

Jo22 wrote on 2021-06-13, 23:00:

For example, the USB-PS/2 emulation only worked at the BIOS level.
Once OSes, like Win98, took control over the USB controller, that PS/2 port emulation was gone.

You are indeed right about PS/2 emulation. Intel's ambition of past legacy-free PC wasn't doing so well with regard to PS/2 ports, compared to the rest such as LPT and COM ports. One of the excuses was legacy BIOS. With UEFI class 3, almost all the troubles with legacy BIOS were gone. There hasn't been any application for LPT ports nowadays and FTDI is quite successful in converting COM ports application with their family of FTDI USB-to-serial convertor chips for industrial equipment. UEFI class 3 also only boots Win8+, the concerns of booting into legacy OS no longer hold. UEFI is also exclusively 64-bit implementations for x86_64.

All the ingredients are well lined up now, for the final blow to rid x86 from its long entrenched legacy. It is just a matter of time and it will be on accelerated obsolesce path compared to the last 20 years.

Keeee? I'm sure industrial mobo and equipment manufactures will depute that 🤣.

I guess the industrial "scene" will do their own stuff then.. 😉

zyzzle wrote on 2021-06-14, 00:32:

Well, the flipside is that with FPGA, the oldschool DOS system will never die, as cloning such is entirely possible in that realm. In 10-20 years, speeds and costs of FPGA will be low enough to accomplish it at reasonable cost and speed, for that 30 / 60 fps DOS gaming experience without emulation's faults or problems.

Well, yes and no. The thing with programmable hardware like FPGA is.. It's programmable. xD
It surely is useful, practical and can mimic the conventional ciruits on the logic-level rather well, but..

It's just not the same thing anymore.
It's a technological changeling that can transform into everything needed.

Old school hackers like to work with older technology, not modern technology based on tens of millions of transistors.
That's like replacing a 90s era 640x480 LCD panel with a 2010s 1600x1200 panel that does pixel-doubling. Same effect, but different technological level.

That's the "problem" with FPGA as a replacement. It's a very complicated, very powerful technology.
It contains technology like FLASH that didn't exist in, say, 1976.

And that's taking away the fascination. It's like replacing a mechanical relay or a tube with a silicon diode.

For someone that loves to understand a piece of technology at the lowest-level and observe it's reactions,
an FPGA is not better than an emulator. In some ways, even worse. Because it's possible to look inside an emulator.

Edit: I didn't meant to sound rude. I share your optimism, too. 😀
Maybe it will be possible to "3d print" circuits in the future.
That way, maybe, replicas of older tehnology could be made.

kjliew wrote on 2021-06-14, 00:55:

Well, that really comes down to one's personal choice then, not that DOSBox isn't capable of delivering similar experience. […]
Show full quote

Well, that really comes down to one's personal choice then, not that DOSBox isn't capable of delivering similar experience.

You are right about the analogy of eBooks vs physical books, it is one's personal choice, nothing's wrong with that. The same applies to DOSBox, too, I can play the games anywhere, anytime, on Windows 10 desktop/laptop, on Linux and macOS just the same as eBooks are more easily accessible from mobile devices, Kindles and etc.

Another equation is cost of ownership. If eBook and physical book costs the same, then one has the freedom of choice. If eBook only costs 99 cents with instant digital delivery while physical book cost $25 + shipping, then the choice will be different. The same applies for DOSBox. If you had a spared machine capable of booting DOS, then just use it if you don't mind. If you don't and acquiring one would cost several hundreds $$$, then DOSBox will be the obvious choice.

DJGPP DOS ports are different beasts, but that beasts have been tamed with virtualization, including 3Dfx Glide pass-through for true 3D acceleration at any resolution with maximum quality. Because of true 3D acceleration, the bare-metal DOS does not offer the same rendering quality, even if it can achieve the same speed with VESA LFB write-combining.
Check it out 😁
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xi8YHBePaUA

All known DJGPP DOS ports work with virtualization at quality exceeds most real DOS machines, QDOS, Q2DOS, GLH2DOS and SM64 when one adopts the right technology.

Indeed. What also made me wonder is how much emulation is already going on in modern CPUs themselves..
I mean, does microcode count as a form of "emulation" if it performs the work of something than would normally have been done by dedicated hardware ?
I'm thinking of the 808x, for example, which has to perform memory arithmetics in its ALU to determine the resulting address of segment+offset.
If we say "yes", then all the Intel/AMD chips down to the 8080 or 8086 are not executing their instruction code by 100% "in hardware".
Which leaves the question whether or not the Zilog Z80 and the NEC V20/V30 are due to their hard-wired functions (?) actually more
"natively" working than their role models (th originals). 😉

I hate it when folk just generalise like your comment about old school hack don't hack on new hardware just old hardware. What a load of absolute bollocs.

One is Chuck(G) over at vcfed.

Caluser2000 wrote on 2021-06-14, 03:12:

I hate it when folk just generali8se like your comment about old school hack don't hack on new hardware just old hardware. What a load of absolute bollics.

Wait, a minute, sir. I didn't say that at all. You're accidently twisting my word.

I said:

[..]Old school hackers like to work with older technology, not modern technology based on tens of millions of transistors. That' […]
Show full quote

[..]Old school hackers like to work with older technology, not modern technology based on tens of millions of transistors.
That's like replacing a 90s era 640x480 LCD panel with a 2010s 1600x1200 panel that does pixel-doubling. Same effect, but different technological level.

That's the "problem" with FPGA as a replacement. It's a very complicated, very powerful technology.
It contains technology like FLASH that didn't exist in, say, 1976.

And that's taking away the fascination. It's like replacing a mechanical relay or a tube with a silicon diode.[..]

Just have a look at hackerday.com, for example.

People there are facinated by vintage technology, still.
Sure, they do use FPGAs, too. But they do not using them as a substitute.

And that's what I meant to express. The context, is important. 😉
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/de/worterbuc … nglisch/context

OH my goodness did you edit your post again after I posted/ Seems to be a bit of a habit of yours 🤣

*CLICK*

You must be fun at parties, sir.. 🙄

The problem with dosbox is not performance, but that it looks gross. The scaling is horrible and the full screen aspect is stuffed. My 19" lcd scales perfectly (aside from the unavoidable vertical stretch), and fills out the screen exactly.

The biggest problem of DOSBox for me is that it doesn’t run at the right refresh rate. That may be due to my system and monitor though. That aside, DOSBox still feels a bit clinical to me. I have no audible fans, no vintage hard drive noise, no floppy seek sounds, and even the sound cards sound a bit polished to me. That part will be difficult to emulate, the same with the CRT look. I can get used to how a LCD looks, but it is not like a CRT and all the shaders I have seen are still quite far off, except for the ones that try to preserve the pixels. But then again, they look fine to me, but they are not the same as a CRT. And let’s not dive into how a real pc speaker sounds verses the emulated one 😉

kolderman wrote on 2021-06-14, 04:01:

The problem with dosbox is not performance, but that it looks gross. The scaling is horrible and the full screen aspect is stuffed. My 19" lcd scales perfectly (aside from the unavoidable vertical stretch), and fills out the screen exactly.

Hi, sorry to hear! 🙁 Does changing output=opengl, fullresolution=desktop, machine=vgaonly, aspect=true make it look better by any chance ?
- That's what I used to use. DOSBox looked almost as a I rembered DOS from my blurry IBM Model 8512 monitor, maybe even better.
However, sometimes I miss my Model 8512. Its picture was much softer/more organic than that of an LCD or a late 90s CRT.

digistorm wrote on 2021-06-14, 06:03:

The biggest problem of DOSBox for me is that it doesn’t run at the right refresh rate. That may be due to my system and monitor though. That aside, DOSBox still feels a bit clinical to me. I have no audible fans, no vintage hard drive noise, no floppy seek sounds, and even the sound cards sound a bit polished to me. That part will be difficult to emulate, the same with the CRT look. I can get used to how a LCD looks, but it is not like a CRT and all the shaders I have seen are still quite far off, except for the ones that try to preserve the pixels. But then again, they look fine to me, but they are not the same as a CRT. And let’s not dive into how a real pc speaker sounds verses the emulated one 😉

I see. That's why way back in the 2000s, I connected my big LCD monitor via VGA still insetad of DVI-D/DP/HDMI. 😉
VGA allowed my to drive my monitor at any refresh rates (even though it would only accept a fraction). This was very conveniant when it came to all sorts of emulators.
Ironically, it also looked best via VGA. Reason was, that the LCD monitor was using all sorts of visual "enhancements" on the digital input(s).
Not sure why. I guess the monitor was derived from a TV set. They just removed the tuners, maybe. 😅

On my Raspberry Pi 4, in DOSBox-X, I found the crt-pi.glsl and crt-lottes-fast.glsl shaders to be promissing.
However, my LCD (1024x768 pels) isn't capable of running at a such insane high resolution that's required to make the shader look correctly. 🙁

Some screenshots of DOSBox-X:
https://krystof.io/dosbox-shaders-comparison- … s-retro-gaming/

Or ty DOSBox-CRT, an unoffical build (not supported here, I know):
https://mattiasgustavsson.itch.io/dosbox-crt

Btw, you would make a very fine Amiga user, also. 👍 The Amiga folks try to replicate these details carefully in soft/hardware emulators.
What I do miss a bit in DOS is the seek sound of the HDD. More precisely, that of an early IDE Conner HDD with roughly 40-120MB..
Back in the late days of DOS, I could recognize what's (roughly) going on solely by ear. 😁

Edit: I did forget - Cool-Retro-Term has a sophisticated CRT emulation!
In fact, it's the first one I can relate to so far. Too bad it's not available to emulators yet.
Even though it exagerrates a bit in the default configuration, it comes close to my green/amber monitors.
Its CRT emulation would be really, really cool for DOSBox's Hercules emulation..

Like virtual sex, it's no where near as good as the real thing 😉

And people complained about the different variants of Linux......

I've got plenty of Conner hdds. Every Acorn system I've purchased has had one in it.

You come across like a used car sales man." It runs land handlesl ike a new BMW but.....you need to put wheels on it first."