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GPF
November 22nd, 2005, 22:25
http://gpf.dcemu.co.uk/files/DBDC.jpg

This is a port of Dosbox 0.60 for the Sega Dreamcast.

THIS RELEASE OF DOSBOXDC WAS CREATED FOR THE DREAM ON CONTEST 05

please check the other readme for more information about using dosbox.

included is a scrambled binary and a dosbox.conf with settings for the shareware version of Commander Keen.

to run other dos program copy them to the cd and change the dosbox.conf to mount and start the dos executable.

there are many more settings that can be tweaked as well, check out http://dosbox.sourceforge.net for compatibility list for dosbox 0.60 and for more
information about tweaking the dosbox.conf file.

download from my dosbox page now from my site
http://gpf.dcemu.co.uk

Enjoy,
Troy(GPF)

Eric
November 23rd, 2005, 14:37
This is amazing i have been waiting for this for the longest time. One question though so in order for me to play downloaded games i have to edit the dosbox.conf or whatever file?

fackue
November 24th, 2005, 05:49
Rock on, too bad I'm on vacation. :(

pauljake
November 24th, 2005, 17:42
Congratulatios GPF!! :D
One question, I want to use this emu in Chankast with an image drive emulation (so I can change config and games when I want) but it says "IO error" prior to start DOSBOXDC, anyways explorer don't read the virtual unit... what I'm making wrong? Thanks in advance!

GPF
November 24th, 2005, 18:52
seems like you dont have Chankast set up correctly.

i don't do test with images, I just use an iso with the 1st_read.bin unscrambled and start Chankast from commandline with Chankast_alpha_25.exe -file:dc.iso

check the chankast forum for solution to this issue, seems familiar.

good luck

JaqMs
November 24th, 2005, 19:23
For us unfortunate ones without a keyboard, is it a possibility that you will add controller key mapping?

pauljake
November 25th, 2005, 04:24
seems like you dont have Chankast set up correctly.

i don't do test with images, I just use an iso with the 1st_read.bin unscrambled and start Chankast from commandline with Chankast_alpha_25.exe -file:dc.iso

check the chankast forum for solution to this issue, seems familiar.

good luck
Yeah! this works nice! thanks a lot!! Now I'll give it a try!

DARKGATE
November 25th, 2005, 09:11
=\ small help please, i have a keyboard of dreamcast, have put single directory with games, the program if i made the procedure the dosbox of "mount c: ecc.."
see my directories, or i to go always in file cfg?
O_o i' m confuse.

DARKGATE
November 25th, 2005, 09:15
OPS, excuse me i have found some game with exstension .IMG what i made for convert in normal game?
Don't found the program, if someone can tell where find if. =|

Eric
November 26th, 2005, 08:59
I downloaded a game from Dosgames.com called Troy its running really slow. I have tested Keen it seems to run really good. Troy isnt to graphical that i believe but if you can test this game or somewhat let me know what type of games CGA or whatever is compatible it would be great help. Sorry if this question sounds rude its not implemented that way. Great work

Thanks

Eric

GPF
November 26th, 2005, 17:02
does it work on windows 0.60 version?

Eric
November 27th, 2005, 06:12
I went to the site and it didnt have the name on the compatibility list not even for 0.63 but it works for 0.63 cause i have it on PC. Thats why i asked it would be great if people could test the games and let us know what works what doesnt.

Eric

pauljake
November 27th, 2005, 15:03
I tested this emu, I want to say that is great for a first release! I've made some changes to "dosbox.conf" and, at this moment, those are my best results (of performance).
cycles=800
scaler=none
nosound=true
mpu401=false
adlib=false
cms=false
pcspeaker=false
tandy=false
disney=false

In this emu there is not a huge speed loss with sound enabled. But the "scaler=normal2x" was really slowing the whole emu down. Anyways, there is a problem with "scaler=none" in the game "Commander Keen" that crashes the game after the map screen, when you want to start the first level (this only happens on the real DC, not in Chankast). Another "note" is that disabling the Sound Blaster (via "sblaster=false") crashes the emu. Good luck GPF with this great project! :D

Eric
November 29th, 2005, 16:01
Okay i had tested you conf file i found maybe a bit of a speed up. It seems that Keen isnt the only one doing this from Apogee but DUKE is aswell. I got Duke to load one and after that it crashed my DC.

Eric
November 30th, 2005, 14:50
Here is another thing that can help you out if no one knows. During a game you can increase and decrease framerate by holding ctrl+F8 to increase and ctrl+F7 to decrease. You can also increase and decrease cpu by holding ctrl+F12 to increase and ctrl+F11 to decrease. Thats how i got games like Leaper to run fullspeed a clone of frogger. I would also like to mention that there is some high graphic games running at quite a good speed supaplex i believe is one of them but crashes after the intro screen. I dont think the fullscreen had anything to do with a slow down as i didnt see much improvment of speeds for Leaper.

Anyways i hope this was of some help

Eric

pauljake
November 30th, 2005, 16:05
Not the fullscreen, but is the scaler what is slowing the emu down. According to Chui (who made the version of SDL that this emu is running on) fullscreen should give minor to no speed gain. But try enabling the scaler, maybe the emu wouldn't crash. I'm a learning coder, but I'm sure that this emu will need a big work to do in the "display department" to run old DOS games at full speed.

Eric
December 20th, 2005, 16:05
Well i hope Paul Jake that this can be updated big time i think it would be great to have a fullspeed running DosBox on Dreamcast and i do think its possible. But heres the total slow down is the VGA.

pauljake
December 21st, 2005, 03:30
Yeah, I think so. It would be nice if more coders want to help in this project.

M Dash
December 22nd, 2005, 05:02
the DOSBOX doesn't work with me! :\

1st off: the DC doesn't mount the images correctly! I follow line-by-line the way to mount the CD, it says that it's mounted, but when i make DIR it says it's empty!

2nd: the dosbox.conf - the AUTOEXEC doesn't work too! i simply modified the command to load what i wanted and the console simply doesn't run anythng about it... i changed:

[autoexec]
# Lines in this section will be run at startup.
mount c "/cd/Keen"
c:
Keen1.exe

to this:

[autoexec]
# Lines in this section will be run at startup.
mount c "/cd/KGEN"
c:
KGEN.exe


the DC simply doesn't run that!

i mean: i can't do nothing!! i try to mount some DIR of the CD... mounts, but it says that the dir is empty, and i KNOW i typed everything correctly!

and the AUTOEXEC simply doesn't even run!

help plz? :/


UPDATE: I just realized the error in my DOSBOX. he site says the 1ST_READ.BIN is scrambled, but in fact, it's NOT!

Still: one thing i don't get it.... how did i managed to make the DOSBOX SELFBOOT IF the 1ST_READ.BIN file WAS NOT scrambled??? :confused:

it was weird... i burned 3 cds, all the same way. the first one was salfbootable, the IP.BIN had something modified, but i can't remmeber very well what... the other 2 had another IP.BIN and they just crashed in the IP.BIN screen. anyways... it's weird how did i managed to make the DOSBOX selfboot without being scrambled...

getter
March 9th, 2006, 16:18
help! it's one week i want try it i dont know how to burn

1st_read.bin
dosbox.conf
keen (folder)

i start chankast without utopia the emu dont go, with utopia the loader stop at 98%

how i can burn the files to start it??? i'm trying everything of everything help!

Eric
March 30th, 2006, 15:44
Sorry i know this is really late and you might possibly have this working already. But this is for anyone whose just downloading the emulator. You should have 1ST_READ.bin dosbox.conf and of course all the games in seperate folders aswell as the IP.bin which i dont know if i can tell you where its at or not but search it over the web and you should be able to find it.

Eric

Starscream
April 3rd, 2006, 23:06
Out of curiousity, is this actually still a active project, or for now freezed?

GPF
April 3rd, 2006, 23:27
Out of curiousity, is this actually still a active project, or for now freezed?

The code is available for anyone who would like to continue on it.

I am not actively working on it anymore.

Troy(GPF)

lorddeathmark
January 5th, 2007, 11:22
i have grabbed copies of cygwin and kos, and i'm going to attempt to build dosbox 0.65 (as it fixes most games) using troy's 0.60 code as a template.

i have little coding experiance beyond some work i did in the gbc scene, including initiative's freespace project. (where i was just art director)

any help with getting this up and rolling would be appreciated.

i'm gonna start a new thread for this tho in my own privboot forum at http://beam.to/privboot

GPF
January 5th, 2007, 17:59
i have grabbed copies of cygwin and kos, and i'm going to attempt to build dosbox 0.65 (as it fixes most games) using troy's 0.60 code as a template.

i have little coding experiance beyond some work i did in the gbc scene, including initiative's freespace project. (where i was just art director)

any help with getting this up and rolling would be appreciated.

i'm gonna start a new thread for this tho in my own privboot forum at http://beam.to/privboot

Good luck, I ported 0.63 also but they made changes to the dosbox codebase after 0.60 that requires alot more memory then the dreamcast has. Maybe its changed it in 0.65?

Troy(GPF)

lorddeathmark
January 5th, 2007, 18:29
can i get a copy of that and the source too?
i'm stuck trying to compile kOS and i'm not getting very far, so any short cuts anyone can afford me would go a long way.

the real purpose of the project is to run one very specific game called Privateer which only requires:
386 processor
vga video card
8 megs ram
Sound Blaster/Adlib
Joystick/Mouse
it uses a built-in memory manager called JEMM

whats funny is that 0.61 fully supports this game

GPF
January 5th, 2007, 19:26
can i get a copy of that and the source too?
i'm stuck trying to compile kOS and i'm not getting very far, so any short cuts anyone can afford me would go a long way.

the real purpose of the project is to run one very specific game called Privateer which only requires:
386 processor
vga video card
8 megs ram
Sound Blaster/Adlib
Joystick/Mouse
it uses a built-in memory manager called JEMM


I recommend setting up the dc dev iso, if you have a windows box, otherwise ask for specific errors/questions in the dreamcast dev forum here.

here is my dosbox 0.63 port that doesn't work, right now my dc dev environment is messed up so I can't compile it and see at what state I left the code.

http://gpf.dcemu.co.uk/dosbox-0.63DCsrc.rar

Troy(GPF)

lorddeathmark
January 5th, 2007, 22:53
i got the DDE installed, i'm looking at code and i am lost, but i'm comparing the 0.60 to 0.65, hopefully i find out what was enabled that chew the memory so badly and either turn it off or replace it with the older code

i've just noticed several things about dosbox, primarily dynamic memory use. running any game using a 386's memory map is almost impossible, the emulator itself exhausts the memory before anything can be loaded. a port of dosbox to gamecube to run protected mode games would likly work; mostly because of the memory available to the gc but also because the cpu could handle the additional emulation needed for the gpu's fpu functions (which the gc's ati video adapter could handle nativly anyhow, in theory). this is all with out mentioning the 386's 32bit multiplication error that privateer itself compensates for and the problems arising from that on the dc.

this is depressing, the project dies before it really gets off the ground, dosbox for dc will be stuck with 286 functionality and cga graphics.

how did you guys (those in the scene and know what they are doing) get ScummVM and all those delphine games running? that maybe privateer's only hope.

GPF
January 5th, 2007, 23:20
what about porting something like this?
Gemini Gold is a "purist" remake..

http://priv.solsector.net/files.htm

This is the nonpurist remake..

http://wcuniverse.sourceforge.net/

I just did a little googling and am not familiar with the game so I have no idea if they are worth porting or if its possible.

I am not familiar with ScummVM on the dreamcast so not sure how they handle memory.

Maybe there is an open source engine that uses the original data files somewhere?

Troy(GPF)

lorddeathmark
January 5th, 2007, 23:33
yeah i know both versions, i've used both and they are good but they were written by the same group of guys lead by hellcatv aka tigershark. and i was thinking about that last option just now, i imagine one would be able to exist, but there is none now that i know of. and i'm not the guy to make one, i'm just a cut and paste hack.

i'm cracking open trillian, i'm gonna hit a chat room i love and see if someone might know if one exists or even help coding one. beyondirc.net's #wing-commander room, previously on dalnet before it started sucking.

MYJEMM, it runs the original executables under windows 9x and ME. it IS open source, but it seems most of the links are dead.

i'm trying to compile at least the original 0.60 source, i plan on using this as experiance once i get my hands on a copy of myjemm14src.zip

lorddeathmark
January 7th, 2007, 05:26
i keep trying to edit my last post to add on to it as i work.. oh well, forgivness please oh admin.

i have found another emu called BHole over at screamcast.net and it claims to run like a 386. chances are it just runs like a 286; which supported but never completely implemented protected mode. but maybe thats all priavteer needs, a patched and overclocked 286?

Eric
February 17th, 2007, 10:23
Yeah Bhole doesnt have much of any chances to run a crap load of games like Dos Box or perhaps some of the games that others do that GPF had mentioned to check out. The author was going to do some updates when quzar was in control of the emulator maybe you can get into some contact with the author again and see if he will do anything more with the emu.

Eric

lorddeathmark
February 23rd, 2007, 08:30
yeah, this project is officially dead from my end. nothing got accomplished and i don't have time to upkeep even that. i hope someone with some real talent can pick this up, cuz i know that guy ain't me.

AdamRav
February 28th, 2009, 00:17
Sorry to bring back a out dated thread, but dcan anyone help me burn this to disc ???

Thanks

Eric
June 25th, 2011, 03:03
http://web.archive.org/web/20060502172000/http://gpf.dcemu.co.uk/dcdoxbox.shtml