dosbox flakey for regular user

[Member Walter Dnes]

Antix 17.4.1 32-bit on a Lenovo Core2 with 3 gigabytes ram. No hits on Google with site:antixforum.com

1) Except for item 2) below, dosbox seems very responsive when run as root. I haven’t tried any games yet. Regular (non-root) user is painfully slow responding. I type “exit”, and 10 or 20 seconds later it logs off. Is this a permission problem somewhere?

2) I don’t have a separate midi card, so don’t know if this is expected. Is some sort of midi emulation supported? When dosbox starts up (as root; similar as regular user), I get…

~# dosbox
DOSBox version 0.74
Copyright 2002-2010 DOSBox Team, published under GNU GPL.
---
CONFIG:Loading primary settings from config file /root/.dosbox/dosbox-0.74.conf
MIXER:Got different values from SDL: freq 44100, blocksize 940
ALSA:Can't subscribe to MIDI port (65:0) nor (17:0)
MIDI:Opened device:none

• This topic was modified 4 years ago by Walter Dnes.

[Moderator christophe]

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I run dosbox on my Dell Mini-9 & 10 (1 gb ram, 32-bit).
I also get the midi errors, but I never noticed them till I ran from terminal investigating your problem, because I generally keep the system sound muted. But yes (when I turn up the volume), in Doom (for example), I have no midi music, but I do have the sound effects.
Regarding the speed: Have you fiddled with the config file (~/home/.dosbox/dosbox-0.74.conf)? Perhaps it has something to do with the video system being used by dosbox. I found the best for my system is:
output=overlay
(Maybe a better computer would use something else? Possible values: surface, overlay, opengl, openglnb. Default is surface, which was slow on my system. Opengl* doesn’t work for me either, so test what’s best on yours.)
Maybe also adjust the cycles setting?

(You may know all this, so forgive me if I repeat what you know.)

• This reply was modified 4 years ago by christophe.
• This reply was modified 4 years ago by christophe.

confirmed antiX frugaler, since 2019

[Moderator christophe]

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I also notice much better performance with the 4.9 kernel over the 4.19.
(I realize that’s not you perceived issue, but it may have an effect on performance in general.)

confirmed antiX frugaler, since 2019

[Member Walter Dnes]

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Thanks for the ideas. “output=overlay” solves the regular-user-responsiveness problem. While I was at, I changed to “fullresolution=1280×800”, which gives me full textmode screen. Next step is to copy over some 25-year old DOS games from my desktop machine.

[Moderator christophe]

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Good!
Also: Using your monitor’s native resolution with aspect=true might give the best results.
Have fun!!

confirmed antiX frugaler, since 2019

[Member Walter Dnes]

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dosbox froze while on the first level of Xargon http://www.bestoldgames.net/xargon It didn’t take down the laptop. I’ll try again. Maybe root won’t have this problem.

[Member Walter Dnes]

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I got through the first level OK. I saved it, and I’ll get back to it later.

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