[General Topics] Menneisyys:
4. The main comparison chart

Yes, I haven't given up throwing even more information at you :) This article also contains a VERY large comparison chart available HERE. CLICK THE LINK, YOU WILL FIND THE INFORMATION THERE REALLY USEFUL! Also, as usual, it's packed with screenshots. Also note that this chart has nothing to do with the previously linked dosbox.conf chart - they are completely different entities (yes, this article has a LOT of material!)

In addition to comparing the two DOSBox ports by Wall, the new one from n0p, the latest, just-released PocketDOS and, finally, the desktop DOSBox original, I've also made some extensive, real-world compliance testing with several games and utilities. Feel free to scrutinize these reports. Note that I've preferred checking my favorite titles; hence the several Legend Entertainment games (all of their (text) adventure titles, except for the late and, therefore, CPU/memory-hungry Death Gate and Shannara).

I especially recommend the "Norton System Info benchmarks: effects of different fine-tuned parameters" row to see how the performance of these emulators can be tweaked. As can clearly be seen, the only way to (slightly - but not much!) increase the performance of n0p's application is increasing the frameskip parameter. PocketDOS is more tweakable.

In the same row, I've also elaborated on the effects of enabling 286+ (with PocketDOS) /386+ (with the DOSBox ports) emulation. As can clearly be seen, the speed hit caused by these plug-ins is particularly high with PocketDOS. Try to stay away from the Bochs plug-in - it REALLY slows down the execution! The DOSBox plug-in of PocketDOS is clearly better. Too bad it has severe memory-related problems: the majority of 386+ games I've tested did run with "real" DOSBox ports but refused to start with the DOSBox plug-in of PocketDOS. They, on the other hand, generally ran under the (again, VERY slow) Bochs plug-in.

If you don't understand something in the chart, make sure you also check out the, in Section 2.1.3, already discussed dosbox.conf chart. I've elaborated on a lot of issues in there - for example, what the different mouse emulation modes mean, when they should be used, which games are affected etc.

Appendix A - SI benchmark results

In addition to the "tweaking" benchmarks I've elaborated on in the main chart (again, see the "Norton System Info benchmarks: effects of different fine-tuned parameters" row), I've made some really thorough benchmarks with n0p's DOSBox port to see how the frameskip parameter affects overall speed and what the speed of the different CPU cores are. This has all been measured on my 624 MHz Dell Axim x51v.

As can be seen (and has also been pointed out in the main chart),

it's not really worth using more frameskips than four or five; it won't result in further performance increase

the 'verysimple' core is about 50% faster at every frameskip settings than the full core. Interestingly, the, by n0p, not recommended, 386+-compatible normal / dynamic cores produced better results than the 'full' core. This also means if you need 386+ emulation, you may want to give a try to the 'normal' core first, and only then to the by n0p recommended 'full'.

Note that the tests were done using auto cycle settings. As has already been explained, you will NOT want to disable auto cycles. If you do disable them, you will have a hard time using these kinds of (synthetic) benchmarks to correctly benchmark your emulator. Some examples of this case (using Wall's emulator as an example):

The CPU cycles can be increased infinitively; at 9900 (instead of the, on the x51v, default 2700, where the SI index was supposed to be 16), it displayed an index of ~59. These values remained the same after starting a very CPU-intensive background process (Pocket Controller) to make screenshots. That is, the results are plain wrong.

The frameskip parameter doesn’t seem to have any effect (1 2), which is, of course, incorrect.

Recommended links / additional info

A trip down Memory Lane: PocketDOS and Realms of Arkania. The author asks whether the emulation speed depends on the speed of the medium PocketDOS is installed to / the games are stored on. In general, no; that is, you can keep your stuff on (even slow) memory cards and don't need to copy them into the main storage (let alone RAMDisks under WM5+).

Running Master of Orion under PocketDOS

A Russian thread on n0p's DOSBox

… and another, VERY long and informative one

A Russian thread on PocketDOS

Yes, and another one at www.soneric.ru

A German thread on n0p’s emulator, also pretty informative: DosBox für Pocket PC. It also contains a list of games running under n0p's emulator. Note that the original author states installing PocketDOS is very complicated because you need to get a copy of MS-DOS from somewhere. This is certainly not the case: later versions of PocketDOS have all come with MS-DOS built-in; on top of that, it's a free DOS version by default. No need to install anything else - and, if you install PocketDOS using the desktop installer EXE, you only need to run one EXE file and just press the Next buttons. He also states King's Quest 5 and 6 run slow under the emulator with 0.61 - that's not the case with 0.63 any more. Also note that, at first, he found that using the OpenGl value instead of Surface (see the Output parameter) results in slightly increased speed (using on a 400 MHz QVGA Loox). Later, however, he stated he didn't see any difference.

The old PocketDOS forum is HERE (was at Pocket PC FAQ; right now, the old contents is only accessible on the latter address); the new is HERE.

TIPS: How to get games working (well) under PocketDOS; a related remark & explanation on "Simulate display retrace" HERE

Working DosBox for X50v found (on Wall’s pDOSBox)

A Zodiac thread

A game compatibility list of (the old) PocketDOS 1.11. Note that its information isn't necessarily applicable to the latest (1.12) version; for example, the latter already runs both Spellcasting 101 and Populous without problems.

HERE: WM2003SE Dell Axim x50v + GAPI hack problems (NOT a problem with WM5-upgraded x50v's or any other models, including the x51v); some comparison between the current DOSBox ports

The Vogons (Very Old Games On New Systems) forum main page, listing all the other desktop DOS emulation projects (as has already been stated, DOSBox is "only" one of them)

Desktop DOSBox guide - really worth checking out for WM users too because it for example explains how MS-DOS apps should be configured, what drive names should be preferred etc. There is another tutorial HERE; it also explains the usage of the cycle and the frame skip parameters.

Some remarks on the two additional mouse emulation modes in the new n0p emulator version