pckDOS 0.63 and Wizardry screen trouble.

[Aswald]

Back in 2012, likely before I knew better, I picked up an old 2006 Sylvania Windows CE 6 netbook.

128MB RAM, 51MB available offline. Windows CE 6 Embedded Operating System. 800h x 480v resolution, color depth unknown. VIA ARM 8505 Processor running at 400MHz (oooo!). A real piece of junk.

However, old hardware intrigues me, how far can it go? Thanks to third-party applications like the amazing SoftMaker Office CE, Foxit PDF Reader, Opera Mini 5, the TCPMP and CORE Players, Green Software Audio Player, Resco image app (pity it's in Chinese), Wordpad CE, and others, it is a surprisingly useful device in 2019.

It's primary weakness offline is games. I have some Javascript games along with a limited number of SWF games (Flashlite), and a VERY limited number of EXE games, but that's it. Many "Windows CE" games won't run, period.

Recently, thanks to some research, guesswork, and dumb luck, I found a couple of versions of SCUMMVM that do work, courtesy of the GAPI app. "Inherit the Earth," "The Legend of Kyrandia 1-3," "LOOM," "Sam and Max Hit the Road," "Secret of Monkey Island 1-2," and "Return to Zork" so far run. Granted you're limited to a 320h x 240v screen in the upper-right corner, but they do run on a NETBOOK! Note that you must use a GAPI emulation mode which does slow things down badly if you attempt to enlarge the screen. But these games do run very well.


But my problem is with something called "pckDOS 0.63." It is a DOSBox-style emulator for such devices, and again thanks only to GAPI it does run. Sound has been a problem but I'm assuming the weakness of that netbook and the need for additional adjustments in the .CONF file can cover some of that, as it did in "Dreamweb."


The biggest problem, though, is that games like "Wizardry," "Akalabeth," "Shadowgate," and "Last Half of Darkness" will not run properly. They do run, but the screen is a total mess. In "Wizardry" the only colors are supposed to be black, white, cyan, and purple, but you will see keyboard characters and other colors onscreen. I've noticed games with "simpler" graphics, including CGA, are a problem. "Dino Park Builder" runs fine but the music crashes, and "Darkseed" as well as the afore-mentioned "Dreamweb"- far fancier-looking games (if not "Obitus")- do work properly.


So what is the problem here?

This is a copy of the .CONF file (unaltered):


[sip]
# firekey -- Fire button mapping in the game pad (2nd toolbar).
# northkey -- North/Up button mapping in the game pad.
# southkey -- South/Down button mapping in the game pad.
# westkey -- West/Left button mapping in the game pad.
# eastkey -- East/Right button mapping in the game pad.
# nwkey -- North-West button mapping in the game pad.
# nekey -- North-East button mapping in the game pad.
# swkey -- South-West button mapping in the game pad.
# sekey -- South-East button mapping in the game pad.
swkey=1
southkey=2
sekey=3
westkey=4
firekey=5
eastkey=6
nwkey=7
northkey=8
nekey=9

#[sdl]
autolock=true
fullscreen=false
fullresolution=640x480


[dosbox]
# memsize -- Amount of memory dosbox has in megabytes.
# -- auto, or integers between 1 to 8 is acceptable
memsize=8
#memsize=auto

[render]
# frameskip -- How many frames dosbox skips before drawing one.
frameskip=10
scaler=none

[cpu]
# cycles -- Amount of instructions dosbox tries to emulate each millisecond.
# Setting this higher than your machine can handle is bad unless you disable sound emulation
# and don't mind jerky graphics rendering. Your PPC device will also heat up very
# quickly. Recommended setting is "auto", where the emu cycles will be determined
# based on your actual device CPU (XScale/ARM) clock speed.
# nosound -- If set to "true", it will stop all sound emulation automatically,
# even if you enable [sblaster], [gus] or [speaker] sections below.
# Regardless of the nosound setting below, sound will be automatically disabled
# if your PPC has ARM/XScale CPU less than 400MHz.
cycles=auto
nosound=true

[sblaster]
# sblaster will be inactive if sound is disable in [cpu] section above.
# type -- Type of sblaster to emulate:
# none: no Sound Blaster emulation
# sb1: uses adlib's OPL2 mode
# sb2: uses adlib's OPL2 mode
# sbpro1: uses adlib's dual OPL2 mode
# sbpro2: uses adlib's OPL3 mode
# sb16: uses adlib's OPL3 mode
# base,irq,dma,hdma -- The IO/IRQ/DMA/High DMA address of the soundblaster. Hardly need changing unless your
# application say so.
# oplmode -- Type of OPL emulation:
# auto: determined by sblaster type above
# cms: use the good old gameblaster
# opl2: YM3812 16-bit mono
# dualopl2: Dual YM3812 16-bit stereo
# opl3: YMF262 16-bit stereo
#type=sb2
#base=220
#irq=7
#dma=1
#hdma=5
#oplmode=auto

[gus]
# gus will be inactive if sound is disable in [cpu] section above.
# gus -- Enable the Gravis Ultrasound emulation.
# base,irq1,irq2,dma1,dma2 -- The IO/IRQ/DMA addresses of the Gravis Ultrasound. (Same IRQ's and DMA's are OK.)
#gus=true
#base=240
#irq1=5
#irq2=5
#dma1=3
#dma2=3

[speaker]
# speaker will be inactive if sound is disable in [cpu] section above.
# pcspeaker -- Enable PC-Speaker emulation.
#pcspeaker=true

[bios]
[dos]
# xms -- Enable XMS support. Set this to false if you are booting MSDOS 6.22 image.
# ems -- Enable EMS support. Set this to false if you are booting MSDOS 6.22 image.
xms=true
ems=true

[directserial]
directserial=true
comport=1
realport=COM1
defaultbps=1200
parity=N
bytesize=8
stopbit=1

[autoexec]
# Lines in this section will be run at startup.

mount c ""

c:

[Nz17]

I don't know the answer, but I wish you luck! As you might imagine, this is a very specific case, so not many people would know the answer. Have you considered making a backup of your disk and then installing and running Linux on it with DOSBox, or is that not an option? If space is an issue, could you boot and run from a USB disk?

[Aswald]

I fixed it. There are two DOS emulators that run on that netbook: pckDOSBOX v0.63 (the one in question) and PocketDOS, in my case v1.2.1. The latter runs Wizardry and other CGA games just fine.

As a result of those two applications and SCUMMVM CE (esp. v1.3.1) that crummy netbook runs a number of fine games, so far about six dozen. In some the sound is a problem- e.g. "Lemmings" and "Oh No! More Lemmings!" as well as Dino Park Builder cannot play the music and with pckDOSBox there is a "double cursor"- and overall performance is not equal to a "real" computer, even the 2001 Sony VAIO, but they work well enough, and some work nearly as well as on the ASUS itself.

So as a low-power offline device the Sylvania netbook has decent value. Those stupid sign-in pages at the local libraries prevent it from going online, apparently they belive that while it is online the whole works for everyone slows down. Fine- then mobile devices must be barred, because surely they slow the mighty ASUS down.