Any interest in a MiSTer DOSBox pack?

[ItalianGrandma]

I've been working on adding some games to the 0MHz collection for the AO486 core and I've run into a few games that don't work well with the core. Thusfar, I've found that these problem games have worked just fine in DOSBox for MiSTer, so I've been thinking about working towards putting together a MiSTer DOSBox pack at some point and I guess I wanted to gauge interest and see if this is something that anyone else would be interested in?

The goal for this pack would of course be to only include games that either have noticeable issues or don't work at all in the AO486 core. The games would be packaged similarly to 0MHz in that they'd be self-booting.

I'll more than likely do it for myself regardless of whether anyone else cares, but I just thought I'd put the thought out there...if other people are excited about the idea like I am, it might be good motivation for me

[LamerDeluxe]

Options are a great thing to have, wherever an FPGA solution is not available or working well enough (yet). I also appreciate the option to use ScummVM on MiSTer.

[ItalianGrandma]

Options are a great thing to have, wherever an FPGA solution is not available or working well enough (yet). I also appreciate the option to use ScummVM on MiSTer.

Agreed! I think it would be a great supplementary pack to have. I’ve also considered that maybe eventually I could do a ScummVM pack as well, but I’m not as familiar with point and click games so the interest isn’t super strong for me at the moment. Maybe after I get to a good place with DOS games

[hitm4n]

Maybe the games that don't seem to work well in 0mhz but do work well in DosBox (its all running on the same fpga/cpu in the end), can be looked at to determine why? I'm also a "want it all" kinda guy, but i hate overlap in these projects too. I don't need 17 versions of Day Of The Tentacle, i don't care if it runs in dosbox or on the ao486 core, so long as it runs. And i'd hate to have to grab another packgage just to grab a few extra games that aren't represented elsewhere.

I think what i'm getting at is collaboration and a focused set is what i would prefer. But thats just me

[ItalianGrandma]

Maybe the games that don't seem to work well in 0mhz but do work well in DosBox (its all running on the same fpga/cpu in the end), can be looked at to determine why? I'm also a "want it all" kinda guy, but i hate overlap in these projects too. I don't need 17 versions of Day Of The Tentacle, i don't care if it runs in dosbox or on the ao486 core, so long as it runs. And i'd hate to have to grab another packgage just to grab a few extra games that aren't represented elsewhere.

I think what i'm getting at is collaboration and a focused set is what i would prefer. But thats just me

That is fair, and for my part I can say I have been trying to get these few problem games running in the AO486 core, but haven’t been successful yet. If it runs in the AO486 core perfectly fine, I wouldn't bother adding it to this pack. My thought is that this pack would supplement the 0MHz pack and if games get fixes for AO486, I would remove them from the pack.

A pack like this could also be a great starting point and help raise awareness for anyone that was interested in trying their hand at getting some of these games running in AO486.

Also, if a game just truly refuses to work at all or with noticeable issues in AO486, wouldn’t it be preferable to have it playable on MiSTer in some fashion as opposed to not at all?

[hitm4n]

Absolutely, so if you plan to have games that aren't represented elsewhere, then i'm all for it And giving the end user more shizzle to play with, that can't be a bad thing eh.

I did something similar with DamienDs WinUAE Game Collection. Created an addon set of games i felt worthy of inclusion (he didn't mostly, he did add some...) Whenever he added one that was in my pack i removed it and re-released.

[Neocaron]

Great idea! I'm all in for a packk like that! Especially since we have the ARM OC script that can make Dosbox run much much faster. I usually daily drive my ARM at 1.2ghz and the DDR3 OC at 1050mhz. It's great for anything Arm related, game loading, update all, ScumVM it's awesome.

[limi]

Agreed! I think it would be a great supplementary pack to have. I’ve also considered that maybe eventually I could do a ScummVM pack as well, but I’m not as familiar with point and click games so the interest isn’t super strong for me at the moment. Maybe after I get to a good place with DOS games

I think they are referencing the fact that there is already a SCUMMVM port for MiSTer that works great, similarly to a DOSBox setup, it also runs on the ARM side

[ItalianGrandma]

Great idea! I'm all in for a packk like that! Especially since we have the ARM OC script that can make Dosbox run much much faster. I usually daily drive my ARM at 1.2ghz and the DDR3 OC at 1050mhz. It's great for anything Arm related, game loading, update all, ScumVM it's awesome.

Oh really?! I didn’t even know about that! I am definitely going to look into it!

[ItalianGrandma]

Agreed! I think it would be a great supplementary pack to have. I’ve also considered that maybe eventually I could do a ScummVM pack as well, but I’m not as familiar with point and click games so the interest isn’t super strong for me at the moment. Maybe after I get to a good place with DOS games

I think they are referencing the fact that there is already a SCUMMVM port for MiSTer that works great, similarly to a DOSBox setup, it also runs on the ARM side

Oh yeah, I already know the ScummVM port exists, I have it installed too

I was more just saying I’m unfamiliar with a lot of the point and click games since I haven’t played many (other than Myst and a bit of Full Throttle).

Slightly Embarrassed Edit : I get what you meant now. I kind of responded like they were asking about a potential ScummVM pack, but they weren’t really saying that

[LamerDeluxe]

That's all fine. I'm sure people (also outside of the MiSTer community) would be interested in a ScummVM pack, if there isn't a good one available already.

[ItalianGrandma]

One thing I forgot to mention is that this pack will probably take a while (though I do have someone else helping) due to the fact that we are going to target the AO486 core first in all cases. So we'll only add games to the pack as we find good ones that will not work in the core

That said, if anyone knows of some good games that have already been confirmed as either not working or having noticeable issues or problems in the AO486 core, please post them here as it will help us a lot!

[Neocaron]

Agreed! I think it would be a great supplementary pack to have. I’ve also considered that maybe eventually I could do a ScummVM pack as well, but I’m not as familiar with point and click games so the interest isn’t super strong for me at the moment. Maybe after I get to a good place with DOS games

I think they are referencing the fact that there is already a SCUMMVM port for MiSTer that works great, similarly to a DOSBox setup, it also runs on the ARM side

Oh yeah, I already know the ScummVM port exists, I have it installed too

I was more just saying I’m unfamiliar with a lot of the point and click games since I haven’t played many (other than Myst and a bit of Full Throttle).

Slightly Embarrassed Edit : I get what you meant now. I kind of responded like they were asking about a potential ScummVM pack, but they weren’t really saying that

If you want to try it out it's over there, it's a drop in scripts and you can even combine both into one script. The script(s) will turn itself off when the Mister is turned off. Reboot will keep it on if I remember correctly:
https://github.com/coolbho3k/MiSTer-Overclock-Scripts

[ItalianGrandma]

I think they are referencing the fact that there is already a SCUMMVM port for MiSTer that works great, similarly to a DOSBox setup, it also runs on the ARM side

Oh yeah, I already know the ScummVM port exists, I have it installed too

I was more just saying I’m unfamiliar with a lot of the point and click games since I haven’t played many (other than Myst and a bit of Full Throttle).

Slightly Embarrassed Edit : I get what you meant now. I kind of responded like they were asking about a potential ScummVM pack, but they weren’t really saying that

If you want to try it out it's over there, it's a drop in scripts and you can even combine both into one script. The script(s) will turn itself off when the Mister is turned off. Reboot will keep it on if I remember correctly:
https://github.com/coolbho3k/MiSTer-Overclock-Scripts

I was literally just about to ask you about this! So for DOSBox, I really just need to use the CPU overclock script it seems?

[Neocaron]

Oh yeah, I already know the ScummVM port exists, I have it installed too

I was more just saying I’m unfamiliar with a lot of the point and click games since I haven’t played many (other than Myst and a bit of Full Throttle).

Slightly Embarrassed Edit : I get what you meant now. I kind of responded like they were asking about a potential ScummVM pack, but they weren’t really saying that

If you want to try it out it's over there, it's a drop in scripts and you can even combine both into one script. The script(s) will turn itself off when the Mister is turned off. Reboot will keep it on if I remember correctly:
https://github.com/coolbho3k/MiSTer-Overclock-Scripts

I was literally just about to ask you about this! So for DOSBox, I really just need to use the CPU overclock script it seems?

I don't know if the DDR3 OC helps much for Dosbox, but it's rock solid stable at 1000mhz for the memory and 1.2ghz for the CPU for me.
You can use a Dos benchmark and see if the memory OC increases performance as well.

[ItalianGrandma]

If you want to try it out it's over there, it's a drop in scripts and you can even combine both into one script. The script(s) will turn itself off when the Mister is turned off. Reboot will keep it on if I remember correctly:
https://github.com/coolbho3k/MiSTer-Overclock-Scripts

I was literally just about to ask you about this! So for DOSBox, I really just need to use the CPU overclock script it seems?

I don't know if the DDR3 OC helps much for Dosbox, but it's rock solid stable at 1000mhz for the memory and 1.2ghz for the CPU for me.
You can use a Dos benchmark and see if the memory OC increases performance as well.

Ok, cool! Now, I noticed that it mentions in the script that you want "active" cooling. Does that mean that passive aluminum case users might want to proceed with caution? It does have me thinking that there might have to be like a "Power User" pack that has a disclaimer to use it at your own risk since it uses overclocking

[Neocaron]

Oh yes, I wouldn't use anything over a 1000mhz if you don't have a fan. Disclamer is in the script as well if I recall. With a fan the temp increase at 1.2ghz was around 1.5 degree on my setup after 2 hour. There is no voltage increase though so it's still very safe but I wouldn't recommand it without a fan.
The expected gain in DosBox at 1.2ghz is kind of insane though, so it's absolutely worth it ^^

[FPGA64]

Oh yes, I wouldn't use anything over a 1000mhz if you don't have a fan. Disclamer is in the script as well if I recall. With a fan the temp increase at 1.2ghz was around 1.5 degree on my setup after 2 hour. There is no voltage increase though so it's still very safe but I wouldn't recommand it without a fan.
The expected gain in DosBox at 1.2ghz is kind of insane though, so it's absolutely worth it ^^

And the cautious viewpoint is why put any risk on the Arm chip of your expensive DE10. Personally its something I would never do I own vastly more powerful devices if I want to emulate modern systems.

[ItalianGrandma]

Oh yes, I wouldn't use anything over a 1000mhz if you don't have a fan. Disclamer is in the script as well if I recall. With a fan the temp increase at 1.2ghz was around 1.5 degree on my setup after 2 hour. There is no voltage increase though so it's still very safe but I wouldn't recommand it without a fan.
The expected gain in DosBox at 1.2ghz is kind of insane though, so it's absolutely worth it ^^

And the cautious viewpoint is why put any risk on the Arm chip of your expensive DE10. Personally its something I would never do I own vastly more powerful devices if I want to emulate modern systems.

Absolutely a fair point and why I’m tentative on ever including that as part of (or as an add-on to) the intended pack. I’m willing to take the gamble and test it on my own MiSTer because I know I can afford to buy a new DE-10 if I had to, but I don’t take the idea lightly of flippantly recommending it to anyone else unless they understand the risks. I’m also pretty keen on having “one box to rule them all”, so to speak, so I definitely want to test the limits a bit.

I am quite curious to see if there are games that won’t run well in DOSBox unless you overclock, though.

[Neocaron]

FPGA64 has been against this since its inception, and was pretty annoyed when it was merged into the kernel, but the reality of it, is that year long testing showed no risk whatoever, voltage is the same, temp are margin of error higher and if it's not stable it will just crash and you'll be back to stock. As long as you don't involve votage tweaking and have a basic fan (and then again it's a precaution I don't know if it would get hot per say without one). Overclocking the arm to as high as it is stable on your Mister is basically free performance, with no side effect. This arm chip is meant to be run at twice the speed in the first place with way higher voltage, so the arm is not even running at the expected speed in the first place. This will never kill your arm chip.

[FPGA64]

FPGA64 has been against this since its inception, and was pretty annoyed when it was merged into the kernel, but the reality of it, is that year long testing showed no risk whatoever, voltage is the same, temp are margin of error higher and if it's not stable it will just crash and you'll be back to stock. As long as you don't involve votage tweaking and have a basic fan (and then again it's a precaution I don't know if it would get hot per say without one). Overclocking the arm to as high as it is stable on your Mister is basically free performance, with no side effect. This arm chip is meant to be run at twice the speed in the first place with way higher voltage, so the arm is not even running at the expected speed in the first place. This will never kill your arm chip.

You are quite correct I view it as a terrible mistake.

This will never kill your arm chip.

That is quite an impossible statement to make. It may do absolutely nothing, you may however not of been so lucky in the Silicon Lottery and as I stated many times it makes debugging and problem repporting near impossible since no one bothers to mention they have a safe 50 % overlock on

People are perfectly allowed to risk their chip, but dont paint it as a dead cert that nothing will happen. we simply dont know.

[ItalianGrandma]

Just a small update...

I'm still actively working on adding games for the 0MHz pack, but funny enough we actually figured out that the first three games that were contenders for this potential DOSBox pack work fine in AO486 so long as you run them from Windows 3.1

So, at the moment my list of potential games for this pack is back at 0, but I'm sure we'll eventually start building that list back up again.

EDIT: Ok, I thought of a couple games that are contenders for this pack potentially. I haven't tested them in DOSBox yet, but I figured why not just post a running list here and if anyone has anything they want to add, just comment and I'll update my list below. I'll also update as I test things.

Potential DOSBox List
Rayman - [crashes in AO486]
Big Red Racing - [works in AO486, but could perform better in DB?]