Best hardware for portable DOS gaming? - Hardware & Software

Hi guys, For years I've dreamed of a portable DOS gaming console, what used to be a desktop 120Mhz 486DX4, can now be fit into a wrist watch. The only problem is the keys. So far I've tried running MS DOS (or Dosbox) from an android tablet (@800Mhz it equals roughly a 486 DX4 33-66Mhz); and an Atom netbook, compares roughly to a 100Mhz DX4. In other words, good enough to play most dos games, but runs a bit slow in sprites; unless you can find an original MS DOS operating system to boot from. For instance, the benchmark program of the game MDK runs both from (8-bit?) MS DOS, and 16bit windows. The MS DOS rates my Atom netbook at 62Mhz if I remember correctly. The Windows 95 version runs at 249Mhz (I believe to remember, which was basically the maximum of the benchmark, probably throttled by V-sync). In emulation, the atom netbooks usually give 3-6hrs of playtime. Tablets depend on what brand/type; ranging from 2 hours, to 6 hours... Anyone has tried to install MS DOS on an SD card, and had success running games natively? If so, the processor should be fast; and CPU usage should be either very low, or the game should run crazy fast! Thanks!

Linux on a Raspberry PI and then an emulator maybe?

[URL="http://openpandora.org/"]OpenPandora[/URL] maybe? Smaller-than-netbook sized Linux computer, about the same size as a Nintendo DS. Runs lots of emulators well, should do DOS games in DOSbox well too.

[quote](@800Mhz it equals roughly a 486 DX4 33-66Mhz[/quote] That's some shitty emulation if it can't top 66mhz.

An Android smartphone with a physical keyboard

[QUOTE=BBgamer720;36592398][URL="http://openpandora.org/"]OpenPandora[/URL] maybe? Smaller-than-netbook sized Linux computer, about the same size as a Nintendo DS. Runs lots of emulators well, should do DOS games in DOSbox well too.[/QUOTE] I've heard of Open Pandora before, however I was not too keen on the way the people treat each other on the forums. They totally turned me off buying one. Secondly, they only had a small window where one could buy one. MMissing that window, I wasn't able to buy a new device anywhere (at least for the time I was looking for one). And lastly, I don't know how an MS DOS would emulate on an ARM processor. It probably won't run better than on an atom system. [editline]3rd July 2012[/editline] [QUOTE=MIPS;36597567]That's some shitty emulation if it can't top 66mhz.[/QUOTE] Indeed. Do know that it's running in emulation mode. I'm sure DOSBOX has increased performance somewhat over time, but the numbers aren't exactly staggering. For that I wished I could have ran a game directly from an SD card with MS DOS natively installed (and perhaps an SB16 soundcard driver). No one has any experience in this? Even Netbooks would run DOS games better than a Pentium 3 from back in the days, even with CPU running half it's speed! [editline]3rd July 2012[/editline] [QUOTE=B!N4RY;36597731]An Android smartphone with a physical keyboard[/QUOTE] I've tried this before, however most android phones don't have (or never had) the screen estate to run both a game and keyboard. Also, aith an 800Mhz Cortex 9 processor, they where just powerful enough to run text based games, and with some luck 2D games. Forget about 3D games, wolfenstein or Stunts 4DDrive would not run with smooth framerates, even at the lowest settings

[QUOTE=ProDigit;36611751] I've tried this before, however most android phones don't have (or never had) the screen estate to run both a game and keyboard. Also, aith an 800Mhz Cortex 9 processor, they where just powerful enough to run text based games, and with some luck 2D games. Forget about 3D games, wolfenstein or Stunts 4DDrive would not run with smooth framerates, even at the lowest settings[/QUOTE] Try a Droid 4, it comes with a 1.2ghz dual core OMAP 4430 and 1GB of RAM, as well as a 4" screen.

[QUOTE=B!N4RY;36612137]Try a Droid 4, it comes with a 1.2ghz dual core OMAP 4430 and 1GB of RAM, as well as a 4" screen.[/QUOTE] Problem is that Android mainly is a single core operating system. Perhaps the OS runs from one core, but any app ran from the OS is always ran in one thread. Meaning it doesn't matter if you have 1 core, or 6 cores; they'll still run very slow. The way I see it, even an Atom Z-processor, with 800Mhz, and a 2W TDP would be powerful enough to run any MS DOS game in real time, with enough processor power reserve, if only ran natively. But for compatibility reasons, MS DOS runs emulated. Perhaps I should ask tha Bill fella, to create a fully compatible MS DOS 6.0 for Windows, instead of their trimmed down CMD version. Running MS DOS natively would save some serious battery, and would be like running an MP3 file on windows; in other words, on most netbooks, you'd be able to run MS DOS games for 4-10 hours per battery charge (depending if you have a 3 or 6 cell battery)! Under emulation it's between an hour to a few hours at most

[QUOTE=ProDigit;36614176]Problem is that Android mainly is a single core operating system. Perhaps the OS runs from one core, but any app ran from the OS is always ran in one thread. Meaning it doesn't matter if you have 1 core, or 6 cores; they'll still run very slow. The way I see it, even an Atom Z-processor, with 800Mhz, and a 2W TDP would be powerful enough to run any MS DOS game in real time, with enough processor power reserve, if only ran natively. But for compatibility reasons, MS DOS runs emulated. Perhaps I should ask tha Bill fella, to create a fully compatible MS DOS 6.0 for Windows, instead of their trimmed down CMD version. Running MS DOS natively would save some serious battery, and would be like running an MP3 file on windows; in other words, on most netbooks, you'd be able to run MS DOS games for 4-10 hours per battery charge (depending if you have a 3 or 6 cell battery)! Under emulation it's between an hour to a few hours at most[/QUOTE] But doesn't DOS also lack support for modern power saving features as well? So wouldn't his computer be running at full power anyway?

Maybe something like [URL="http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2009/08/how-i-rode-a-samsung-tablet-pc-to-retro-rpg-nirvana/"]this[/URL], with dosbox installed. Very old ultraportable pc in unusual form-factor. Now image that thing with modern led lcd, 22nm intel CULV processor and very small solid state storage. I would buy that in an instant, not some f**cking tablet. Photo of the device running Baldurs Gate: [URL=http://img25.imagehaven.net/img.php?id=EIBABN9VO0_tablet-hand-pst.jpg][IMG]http://img25.imagehaven.net/img/thumbs/EIBABN9VO0_tablet-hand-pst.jpg[/IMG][/URL]

[QUOTE=MIPS;36597567]That's some shitty emulation if it can't top 66mhz.[/QUOTE] Emulating an x86 CPU on other architectures isn't easy due to the fact with x86, you have 30 years of backwards compatibility to deal with. That's thousands of different opcodes that you have to emulate, which is very inefficient. Even by the time you got to the i486, you had the opcodes from the 8086 to the 80286 to contend with, and many opcodes did the exact same thing. When writing a proper emulator, you can't just pick one opcode to emulate and not emulate another opcode that does the same thing, because not every program follows the same programming path, especially DOS applications. back then, people did crazy things with assembly to get every last ounce of speed out of a machine. CPU architectures like ARM and PowerPC concentrate on keeping opcodes simple and relying on loops to do more complex things, which is why it may take those architectures several dozen cycles to emulate an instruction that may only take a couple of cycles on an x86. [QUOTE=Demache;36615259]But doesn't DOS also lack support for modern power saving features as well? So wouldn't his computer be running at full power anyway?[/QUOTE] Correct. Most every version of DOS for the PC came from a common source base and all used basically the same method of idling when nothing was running. Instead of inserting NOPs into the pipeline, they ran a simple loop that basically did nothing, but kept the CPU pipeline full and therefore the CPU was always under a full load. One exception is FDos (Free Dos) I think they added proper ACPI support to the kernel so the machine isn't always running at full power.