Working DosBox for X50v found

[Wall]

Oooh, I got it working by trying different combinations of removing things from the "\Windows\Startup" folder and today plugins. For me, removing "MultiIE" and stopping the "Journal Bar" today plugin makes the program run. But, only ONE TIME. If I exit from "DosBox" and then try to launch it again, I'll see the hour glass thingy.

Oh, and just to say it. Stopping the today plugin wasn't good enough. I had to reboot the Pocket PC before it worked. Why, why, why, why, why? This makes no sense to me personally.

Wait a minute... I just put "MultiIE" back into my startup and rebooted. At this point "DosBox" is still working with all of my startup stuff intact. The only thing disabled is "Journal Bar". But, I know I tried disabling it earlier and rebooting with "DosBox" NOT working. So, what gives? Did I upset the order of booting operation and that made some kind of difference? Aaaah, I'm tired of this.

Just stopping may not be enough for some apps because their associated DLLs remain loaded until you reboot.

In the end the real culprit is pDOSBox, because it requires huge (13MB) memory to run. The other culprit IMHO is WM which should have come up with better system error handling like a simple "NOT ENOUGH MEMORY" message rather than taking you for a ride with that hourglass.

Right after I published pDOSBox, I received some pointers from the real DOSBox team (dosbox.sourceforge.net) about how to make the memory footprint smaller, <10MB, which I will incorporate into release 2.

Even then, I suspect release 2 won't be for those with handful of apps launched during startup. I cannot shrink pDOSBox any further: it is after all emulating a 386 CPU core and an operating system.

Cheers
Wall

[DeadTaco]

It would be great if someone created a program that allowed you to boot up with different settings that you can select at startup. That way you can simply soft reset the Axim and select the startup config you want, like a config specifically set up for pDOSBox. Perhaps the "safe mode" guys could program that. It would be very beneficial.

Wall, thanks again for your effort here. You've created a pretty decent port.

[gjw]

The other culprit IMHO is WM which should have come up with better system error handling like a simple "NOT ENOUGH MEMORY" message rather than taking you for a ride with that hourglass.

It would be great if someone created a program that allowed you to boot up with different settings that you can select at startup....Perhaps the "safe mode" guys could program that.

Over on their forum they said they are working on something very close to that.

[Munk]

Hmmm, if I use MemMaid and kill the program called "Services.exe" I am able to start "DosBox" over and over without the hourglass. But, if I leave the "Services.exe" program alone, I can only launch "DosBox" one time. A second time will cause the hour glass to spin forever.

Does this help in some way? I read this about "Services.exe"

Often Pocket PC programs need a background process and most of existing Pocket PC programs implement it by creating an executable file which is started during system start-up. But Pocket PC has 32 processes limit and having many different programs running in background can be a serious problem. Pocket PC 2003 provides special mechanism implemented in Services.exe that allows Pocket PC developers to shape their background applications into services that run in one process as different threads.

Over here: http://www.pocketpcdn.com/articles/services.html

[Wall]

It would be great if someone created a program that allowed you to boot up with different settings that you can select at startup. That way you can simply soft reset the Axim and select the startup config you want, like a config specifically set up for pDOSBox. Perhaps the "safe mode" guys could program that. It would be very beneficial.

Wall, thanks again for your effort here. You've created a pretty decent port.

To make it simple [only for those with the spinning hourglass problem], just use Safe Mode if you want to use dosbox.

DeadTaco, perhaps this will make your upcoming guide simpler for people. Something along the line of, "if you experience the endless spinning hourglass, then you should boot using Safe Mode available at blah...blah"

Does this sound reasonable?

Wall

[Wall]

Hmmm, if I use MemMaid and kill the program called "Services.exe" I am able to start "DosBox" over and over without the hourglass. But, if I leave the "Services.exe" program alone, I can only launch "DosBox" one time. A second time will cause the hour glass to spin forever.

Does this help in some way?

Services.exe may be used by several other program which you will most probably need. I would leave it alone.

Wall

[gjw]

Killing services.exe doesn't do it for me anyway.
Safe Mode works fine to get it running but I'm still out of luck in that my DOS program needs a virtual display driver and Safe Mode doesn't allow for that.
:(

[Wall]

Killing services.exe doesn't do it for me anyway.
Safe Mode works fine to get it running but I'm still out of luck in that my DOS program needs a virtual display driver and Safe Mode doesn't allow for that.
:(

You don't need virtual display if you are using a VGA device (640x480) like x50v. Simply set fullresolution=640x480 in the conf file, and you will have an 80x25 char DOS screeen on your x50v.

If you have a QVGA device (320x240) like x50, and you DON'T need 80x25 char screen (i.e., can do with just 40x25, or just graphics), then you also would not need a virtual display.

The only time you need virtual display is when you have a QVGA device AND you need a 80x25 char screen.

Wall

[gjw]

I'm still doing something wrong then because my DOS program is still bigger than my screen.
The top, bottom, and both sides are all outside the screen area.

[Wall]

I'm still doing something wrong then because my DOS program is still bigger than my screen.
The top, bottom, and both sides are all outside the screen area.

Yeap, something is wrong. PM me your conf file.

Wall

[gjw]

PM incoming.

I was also able to up my StartUp memory to almost 27MB and pDosBox still wouldn't run without SafeMode.

[Wall]

PM incoming.

I was also able to up my StartUp memory to almost 27MB and pDosBox still wouldn't run without SafeMode.

That is strange indeed. I know people with only 15MB free program memory were able to run pDOSBox nicely. My best guess is either your PP or VC is doing something extraordinary to the system memory.

Wall

[Mattt]

anyone here used to play games created by the company apogee?

Wolfenstein, ah, happy times.
http://www.3drealms.com/games.html

I know i'm a little late for this comment :hide: but I must say this is simply amazing... finally got good ol' elder scrolls arena on my x50v. unfortunately the only way to get my screen taps to be accurate I need to run it in fullscreen/fixed so I can't use the onscreen keyboard

So many old dos programs... so much time... so much of everything!

I should try this i love eldar scrolls arena :approve: