FreeDOS

[Amuro-san]

The Dosbox emulator in the Wii is precarious, and I remembered that it has an alternative to the MS-DOS that is open source and that is 100% compatible (including games) are the freedos, which was originally done in 1996 but that You are always receiving updates, other than current resources (besides the old ones) would not be possible to make an emulator base on it? Because it would be amazing to play games in my wii (since my pc is horrible for emulation)
https://www.freedos.org/

 

[Latiodile]

freedos is an operating system, not an emulator. you could probably run freedos inside of dosbox

and afaik freedos isn't 100% compatible, it apparently has a lot of issues with games in particular

 

[KleinesSinchen]

As said above: FreeDOS is not an emulator. It is a complete implementation (including a complete distribution of various applications) of a DOS based operating system for the x86 platform/CPU family (I think back to the very first 8086).

There is nothing to base an emulator on here. You would need an emulator like QEMU to run x86 code or a complete x86 operating system on the WIi.

That is precisely what DOSBox already does; and it does this quite good. The Wii versions aren't updated and not optimized and the Wii will struggle with more complex DOS games (or even trying to install DOS based 32-Bit Windows).

(since my pc is horrible for emulation)

Are you sure about this →
I have a few PCs in active, offline usage much weaker than the Wii, but for going online they don't suffice. Whatever you have been using to post the message above is probably stronger than a Wii (or you have quite some patience with you online experience). Even the weak for it's time 2005 laptop currently in front of me has more compute power than a Wii (the graphics acceleration of the console aside as it will probably not do anything for DOS emulation).

 

[Amuro-san]

As said above: FreeDOS is not an emulator. It is a complete implementation (including a complete distribution of various applications) of a DOS based operating system for the x86 platform/CPU family (I think back to the very first 8086).

There is nothing to base an emulator on here. You would need an emulator like QEMU to run x86 code or a complete x86 operating system on the WIi.

That is precisely what DOSBox already does; and it does this quite good. The Wii versions aren't updated and not optimized and the Wii will struggle with more complex DOS games (or even trying to install DOS based 32-Bit Windows).


Are you sure about this →
I have a few PCs in active, offline usage much weaker than the Wii, but for going online they don't suffice. Whatever you have been using to post the message above is probably stronger than a Wii (or you have quite some patience with you online experience). Even the weak for it's time 2005 laptop currently in front of me has more compute power than a Wii (the graphics acceleration if the console aside as it will probably not do anything for DOS emulation).

well, my PC is good, but I don't use it for games in general, just watching and downloading things, I only play on the Wii, the funny thing is that ScummVM is doing very well on the Wii and that's why I put games that are from W 95 on it , including Broken Sword

 

[KleinesSinchen]

well, my PC is good, but I don't use it for games in general, just watching and downloading things, I only play on the Wii, the funny thing is that ScummVM is doing very well on the Wii and that's why I put games that are from W 95 on it , including Broken Sword

SCUMM is a script language. When you have an interpreter for that scripting stuff (ScummVM) said interpreter runs in native manner on a system. You "just" have to port the interpreter for have all supported SCUMM games work nicely on a target platform (resolution is an issue on things like the 3DS).

Running arbitrary x86 machine code is something different. A PC is clearly in advantage here… having an x86(_x64) processor.

i agree with you: Proper DOS emulation on the Wii should be in range – if good developers would be interested in making it happen. Currently the situation is unsatisfactory in this regard.

 

[Amuro-san]

SCUMM is a script language. When you have an interpreter for that scripting stuff (ScummVM) said interpreter runs in native manner on a system. You "just" have to port the interpreter for have all supported SCUMM games work nicely on a target platform (resolution is an issue on things like the 3DS).

Running arbitrary x86 machine code is something different. A PC is clearly in advantage here… having an x86(_x64) processor.

i agree with you: Proper DOS emulation on the Wii should be in range – if good developers would be interested in making it happen. Currently the situation is unsatisfactory in this regard.

the PS1 emulation is excellent, easily (I believe) that DOS could be improved and as far as I know Microsoft itself released DOS with open source, so basically I'm going to look for DOS games that are available on the PS1, even though they already have games open source and could easily port them, among them are Little Big Adventure 1 and 2, which will even be remastered next year

 

[Latiodile]

as far as I know Microsoft itself released DOS with open source

only very very very very early versions of dos have been made open source, the most typical version people would want to use (6.22) is still closed source

 

[KleinesSinchen]

only very very very very early versions of dos have been made open source, the most typical version people would want to use (6.22) is still closed source

Only some very rare edge cases (supposedly some stubborn BIOS flasher) require the actual MS-DOS… while other BIOS flashers officially came in the form of a FreeDOS boot floppy.

There are some undocumented quirks showing the usual Microsoft business attitude.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AARD_code

FreeDOS should suffice in most cases (and supports way more modern hardware). But we can't run either on the Wii without a good x86 emulator.

But yeah, only the earliest MS-DOS versions have been published as open source.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_DOS_operating_systems

Dang it! Why!? Just release the source code, Microsoft. And while you're at it, do the same with Windows XP.

 

[Disorarara]

The Dosbox emulator in the Wii is precarious, and I remembered that it has an alternative to the MS-DOS that is open source and that is 100% compatible (including games) are the freedos, which was originally done in 1996 but that You are always receiving updates, other than current resources (besides the old ones) would not be possible to make an emulator base on it? Because it would be amazing to play games in my wii (since my pc is horrible for emulation)
https://www.freedos.org/

Have you been using the new dynarec build of DOSbox? It came out just recently. Ive heard reports of games like Dark Forces running decently on this new build.

 

[Amuro-san]

Have you been using the new dynarec build of DOSbox? It came out just recently. Ive heard reports of games like Dark Forces running decently on this new build.

I will see this version

 

[Subzero100]

The Dosbox emulator in the Wii is precarious, and I remembered that it has an alternative to the MS-DOS that is open source and that is 100% compatible (including games) are the freedos, which was originally done in 1996 but that You are always receiving updates, other than current resources (besides the old ones) would not be possible to make an emulator base on it? Because it would be amazing to play games in my wii (since my pc is horrible for emulation)
https://www.freedos.org/

Horrible for emulation? any pc made in 2 decades can easy handle that stuff.