Thanks to a clever developer DOSBox, a DOS emualtor, has been ported to S60. This could potentially give you access to an essential applications from the past as well as a variety of games such as Tank Wars or Prince of Persia. Less usefully, given the speeds involved, it also means is now possible to run Windows 3.1 (and possibly Windows 95 too) on your phone.
Read on in the full article.
Let me disagree. Particularly on a high-resolution device like the 5800 or the N97, you can gain access to loads of high-quality games unmatched; for example, those of Legend Entertainment.
What is more, at mere 320*200, there is still a lot to emulate - for example, pre-80286 games. I've posted a lot of comparative pictures of DOSbox running on Windows Mobile mobile phones / PDA's to my DOSbox bible at, say, http://www.mobilitysite.com/boards/emulator-forum/153194-ms-dos-80x86-emulation-guide.html .
While the linked bible is for WinMo, you can still get a picture of what you can emulate and what you should expect.
These news are so awesome! 😃
Windows 3.1 is totally uninteresting here as far as I'm concerned, what matters is the DOS games. There are a lot of excellent games available for DOS, and the vast majority of them use a 320x200 resolution so they fit well into the QVGA screens of today.
I can't really imagine anything better on a longer bus/train ride, than to play UFO: Enemy Unknown and Master of Magic on the phone. Thanks to DOSBox, I can, albeit slowly, but fortunately that doesn't matter much since they are turn-based.
There are also a lot of great old adventure games that are now possible to play, which ScummVM doesn't support, like Dune & Dreamweb.
Now I just hope that someone will port UAE to S60 too, and I will be extremly content 😊 DOSBox and UAE has been the software I've wished for the most on S60 for years, and now we are half-way there, hooray! 😃
Also a big kudos to the AAS staff that gave proper credit to kolijoco who ported DOSBox to S60 3rd. Most news sites instead gave credit to Marcin-prv who only ran Windows 3.1 in DOSBox which has been done many times before, although on other platforms. Symbian-Freak (who corrected themselves after being told) went as far as saying he was a wonderful developer, writer and hacker, but he didn't write a single line. He just took what kolijoco had done and replaced the original readme.txt file with his own. Sorry, a bit of an off-topic rant there :tongue:
EDIT: kolijoco already made a lot of speed improvements since the last release, so the next release will probably be noticeably faster.
EDIT2: Another new emulator worth mentioning is AntSNES.
Windows 3.1, hmmmmm
Windows 7???
😉
Ahhh, it's like bumping into an old friend you haven't seen for years...and then realising why you haven't seen them for years 😊
ILG
Kazutoyo wrote:
Also a big kudos to the AAS staff that gave proper credit to kolijoco who ported DOSBox to S60 3rd. Most news sites instead gave credit to Marcin-prv who only ran Windows 3.1 in DOSBox which has been done many times before, although on other platforms. Symbian-Freak (who corrected themselves after being told) went as far as saying he was a wonderful developer, writer and hacker, but he didn't write a single line. He just took what kolijoco had done and replaced the original readme.txt file with his own. Sorry, a bit of an off-topic rant there :tongue:EDIT: kolijoco already made a lot of speed improvements since the last release, so the next release will probably be noticeably faster.
EDIT2: Another new emulator worth mentioning is AntSNES.
Thanks. I've been watching DOS box for a while and will probably end up writing more about if with the first 'proper' release, but since everyone else was doing some coverage it seemed sensible to comment as accurately as possible. And yes I'm keeping a close eye on AntSNES as well.
there is a video on youtube of n82 running windows 95 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Kazutoyo wrote:Now I just hope that someone will port UAE to S60 too, and I will be extremly content 😊 DOSBox and UAE has been the software I've wished for the most on S60 for years, and now we are half-way there, hooray! 😃
Let's hope the port won't be faced the same problems as the WinMo version - on WinMo, UAE is plain useless for serious gaming (compared to, say, DOSbox) - see http://www.mobilitysite.com/boards/emulator-forum/213567-emulating-home-computers-windows-mobile-part-i-commodore-amiga.html . That is, I don't expect much - emulating other,less demanding vintage platforms on mobile phones seems to be easier.
Kazutoyo wrote:EDIT2: Another new emulator worth mentioning is AntSNES.
Thanks for pointing this out; I'll update the Symbian-specific part of my SNES gaming bible ( http://www.mobilitysite.com/boards/emulator-forum/152670-nintendo-snes-emulation-guide.html ).
ashu wrote:Windows 3.1, hmmmmmWindows 7???
😉
Not even Win95 is usably fast, let alone later versions...
the app let me write only numbers insted of words...
how do i switch between numbers and words?
The S60 port got it's own website now.
Seems like gaming on phones is really no longer limited by cpu/memory performance and capacity. It wont be long until we see full Windows XP or such running on some Nokia model...
Unfortunatelly there is still inadequate controls that prevent any serious gaming on phones. Unless they invent some external joystick that you are willing toake with you .....
Frolf wrote:Seems like gaming on phones is really no longer limited by cpu/memory performance and capacity. It wont be long until we see full Windows XP or such running on some Nokia model...
Emulation is very demanding.
The DOS emulators that I have seen usually have a common problem.
They use POLLED I/O for the user interface so they really bog down the CPU and use up the battery quick.
The better implementations provide for the tuning of the cycles so that you can make it as robust or as slow as you want.
Another way to run DOS on a mobile platform is with JPC (Java PC emulator).
The mobile version of this has been run on some Nokia phones.
Still the problem seems to be speed.