dosemu 1.1.3.9 user report
Hello.
Quoted 2 lines · Jan Willem Stumpel
According to "top", 1.1.3.9 takes up 99 % CPU even when just displaying the C:> prompt.
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$_hogthreshold = (800).
Sure with such a hogthreshold value. Since 1.1.3.8 you don't need to set most of the options manually, so just delete the $_hogthreshold from your dosemu.conf and you're fine.
Quoted 5 lines
Wolfenstein 3D:
1.0.2.1, 1.1.3.7, 1.1.3.9 play with $_sound = (off) . 1.1.3.0 hangs (with or without sound) after displaying the start-up (setup) screen. Control-Alt-PgDn is the only way out. 1.1.3.7, 1.1.3.9 hang with $_sound = (on) .
Very strange... Wolf is the one of those few progs that used to work with sound even on early dosemus (like 1.0.2.1) and that was my main testcase for the new sound engine and I think I made wolf to sound flawlessly.
So I would suspect there are some problems in your dosemu.conf again. Probably XMS/EMS are too low.
Try to throw away all the options from your dosemu.conf (except for the most important ones like $_hdimage if you use some non-standard booting methods) because the default options are just fine.
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1.1.3.7, 1.1.3.9 play, with $_sound = (on) and soundblaster selected in Duke Nukem Setup.
So you have applied some patches, havent you?
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(sounds, no music).
Well, getting sound and music together is currently not always possible. But if you have an SB Live card or some other card with a hardware mixing abilities (and the driver supports this), you can get music working together with sound. sound-usage.txt of 1.1.3.9 describes the ways of doing that (thanks to Rob Komar for the detailed instructions about getting the music to work on ALSA).
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however, when I try to
select the difficulty level the program hangs.
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$_dpmi = (8192)
Too low. Remove that option from dosemu.conf and see if it helps (Duke works perfectly here most of the time) and if not - try this:
http://dosemu.sourceforge.net/stas/pic_prot.diff
However yes, 100% reliability of DPMI progs is not yet.
Quoted 1 line · Stas Sergeev
Hello.
And hello to you too!
Quoted 7 lines
Quoted 2 lines · Jan Willem Stumpel
According to "top", 1.1.3.9 takes up 99 % CPU even when just displaying the C:> prompt.
Sure with such a hogthreshold value. Since 1.1.3.8 you don't need to set most of the options manually, so just delete the $_hogthreshold from your dosemu.conf and you're fine.
OK.. used the new dosemu.conf (everything commented out), set hdimage to "dos" to make it boot on my system, then only changed hogthreshold. Tried it (1.1.3.9) with
hogthreshold = 0 --- 99 % CPU
hogthreshold = 1 --- quiet behaviour
hogthreshold = 800 --- 99 % CPU
hogthreshold commented out altogether --- quiet behaviour
Mmm.. not very intuitive, this. Somewhere in the DOC's it says that hogthreshold should be related to the clock speed, and the higher hogthreshold, the quieter dosemu gets. Anyway, you know what I think about the dosemu doc's.
With all these values of hogthreshold Wolfenstein 3D hangs (it keeps saying "one moment" forever). This is with everything commented out apart from hdimage and hogthreshold.
Now I uncomment sound, and set it to 0. Now it works with hogthreshold values 0, 1, 800, and commented out altogether.
This suggests that sound (on) is the default (as you surely intended). OK, now trying Nukem 3D (*everything* commented out now apart from hdimage). Use Duke3d "setup" program (in dosemu) to select the Sound Blaster card for sound, nothing for music. Run duke3d. Result: sound, demo visible and audible, when I want to play it hangs when I choose the difficulty level.
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So you have applied some patches, havent you?
Well of course I did. The patch set posted yesterday by Bart Oldeman. Or isn't that what you mean? Anyway I get a boot-up message which begins
Linux DOS emulator 1.1.3.9 $Date: 2002/12/15 $
Extra info: I use ms-dos 6.00. Maybe that's relevant.
Regards, Jan
Quoted 6 lines · Jan Willem Stumpel
OK.. used the new dosemu.conf (everything commented out), set hdimage to "dos" to make it boot on my system, then only changed hogthreshold. Tried it (1.1.3.9) with
hogthreshold = 0 --- 99 % CPU
hogthreshold = 1 --- quiet behaviour
= 1 is the default. This is what dosemu.conf mentions.
Quoted 7 lines
hogthreshold = 800 --- 99 % CPU
hogthreshold commented out altogether --- quiet behaviourMmm.. not very intuitive, this. Somewhere in the DOC's it says that hogthreshold should be related to the clock speed, and the higher hogthreshold, the quieter dosemu gets. Anyway, you know what I think about the dosemu doc's.
Much of what is in the docs is out of date that it one of the problems. Anyway the thing you stated was taken out of context:
"Usually it is a good idea to format the drive after it."
this applies to a new disk image. The other "problem" is that new Linux users are in general less technical than they were in say 1994, and while this statement looks obvious to me it apparently does not do so for you. (violating the art of technical writing).
"the drive" here means, "the DOS drive that you get if you use the freshly created hdimage". in any case, hdimages aren't necessary for most people anymore and here the out-of-date problem shows its ugly head.
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Mmm.. not very intuitive, this. Somewhere in the DOC's it says that hogthreshold should be related to the clock speed, and the higher hogthreshold, the quieter dosemu gets. Anyway, you know what I think about the dosemu doc's.
now to the point: hogthreshold, see README.txt:
The HogThreshold value determines how nice
Dosemu will be about giving other Linux processes a chance to run.
$_hogthreshold = (1) # 0 == all CPU power to DOSEMU
# 1 == max power for Linux
# >1 the higher, the faster DOSEMU will bewhat this means is that the higher, the _faster_, not _quieter_, DOSEMU will be, that is, the more CPU time DOSEMU will get! So (800) will get DOSEMU much more CPU time than (1). You can basically view (0) as (infinity).
and there's also something in README-tech.txt
The HogThreshold value determines how nice Dosemu will be about giving other Linux processes a chance to run. Setting the HogThreshold value to approximately half of you BogoMips value will slightly degrade Dosemu performance, but significantly increase overall system idle time. A zero value runs Dosemu at full tilt.
the HOWTO says:
Daniel Barlow([email protected]) reported (95/4/8) that
HogThreshold should now be set to approximately half of the BogoMips value that the system reports on boot.
this is really out-of-date, as you have seen. hogthreshold has been tweaked recently, it is really something you have to play with to see what's the best compromise, mind you, you can use "speed" inside dosemu to change it, ie.
c:\>speed 1
(be nice)
c:\>speed 0
(be fast)
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Quoted 1 line
So you have applied some patches, havent you?
Well of course I did. The patch set posted yesterday by Bart Oldeman. Or isn't that what you mean? Anyway I get a boot-up message which begins
well there are some related (experimental) patches at
http://dosemu.sourceforge.net/stas
to get sound going for duke3d and doom.
Bart