rpix86 v0.06 released! - Dos(PC) Emulator for RaspBerry Pi Released

April 21st, 2013, 23:03 Posted By: wraggster

The Dos emulator for the RaspBerry Pihas been updated:

This new version has the following fixes and enhancements:

• New serial port emulation support, with rpix86 now forwarding data between emulated serial port COM1 and a USB-to-serial device connected to your Raspberry Pi. This new support might work also with the GPIO UART connection, but this is completely untested. Note that you will need to give the new -s[NUM] parameter to rpix86 when you launch it to enable serial port support. For example, if your device is connected to /dev/ttyUSB0, you would give parameter -s0. There is a special parameter -sA, which attempts to use the /dev/ttyAMA0 GPIO UART device.
  Note that I have only tested this serial port emulation with the Telix communications program talking to my old modem, so it may or may not work with other serial port programs and serial devices. Let me know if you have problems with it, I can then try to improve the support.
  
• Changed the -w and -h parameters to not force 4:3 aspect ratio. In prior versions you could change the screen size using those parameters, but rpix86 always attempted to keep 4:3 aspect ratio (as used in practically all monitors during the DOS era). If you do not give those parameters rpix86 will still attempt to keep 4:3 aspect ratio. Note that you can also combine the overscan parameters with the screen size parameters, to get the rpix86 window to be pretty much whatever aspect ratio and located anywhere within your physical screen area.
  
• I also added a simple dialog window to show up when launching rpix86 inside the X Window environment, when rpix86 can not find 4DOS.COM. Previously rpix86 would just quit without showing anything in this situation. This feature is mainly to avoid frustration with new users (who don't RTFM :-) failing to launch rpix86 for the first time.
  Now rpix86 will show the above dialog, and wait for the user to press either Y or N. The dialog will show the directory that will be used as the C: root, so if that is wrong you can just press N and adjust your launch directory or rpix86 parameters.
  If you press Y, rpix86 will download 4DOS.COM to the directory shown, and then attempt to launch the actual main window. For some reason this seems to often fail with a "BadMatch" error message, so you may need to restart rpix86 manually.
  
• Added an icon to rpix86 application when running in X Window. The icon is shown also in the title bar of the above 4DOS question dialog.
  
• Added also the current version number to the X Window title bar.
  
• Enhanced the keyboard and mouse reading system, so that it will not slow down the actual emulation quite as much as before. I also added the joystick and serial port reading to the same system, so all of those are now handled somewhat more efficiently. I hope I didn't break anything when making this change.

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