https://www.ebay.com/itm/191322319264?itmmeta … ABk9SR5LRy-CgZA

I'm with the opinion that real DOS on a modern PC is still more authentic than DOSBox. Every time I revisit DOSBox I feel the differences more. The boot process is different, being in a window is different, mounting, setup, no real hardware... and so on.

Im not saying that DOSBox gives an authentic feel of a DOS PC (e.g. boot up etc.). But the OP wants to play games and once everything is set up properly the emulation and high compatibility with a large number of games is very good. Im not quite sure what the OP actually wants to do, but if your goal is to play DOS games on a modern PC, than DOSBox is by far the easiest, cheapest and most authentic option. I would consider your solutions as advanced sophisticated tinkering and those HP workstations while also already 10+ years old are still not really cheap. Btw, I had a z820 workstation from 2012, which weighted 29kg! It sounded like a jet engine test ground - incredible loud - may be good if you play a lot of flightsims, but otherwise...

I'm just chiming in to thank you all for your insights. 😀

It's a modern computer. Nothing authentic about it where DOS is concerned. SBEMU is certainly not authentic. You will probably have memory management issues too, most likely with EMS. No guarantees on the CGA/EGA/VGA compatibility of a modern graphics chip either, beyond 640x480 16 color mode.

There is no free lunch. If you want authentic, buy a real 90s PC and get a CRT. You can do it for anywhere from $20 if you get really lucky at recycle centers to $300 on eBay if you play your cards right. But if you are inexperienced you will end up spending a lot more than that as you make mistakes and learn, no matter what you do.

wbahnassi wrote on 2024-07-30, 17:40:

My setup is with a YMF-744 and a Voodoo3 PCI.. giving great sound, original OPL3, correct aspect ratio even on an LCD (but you can use a CRT of course). It boots to an IDE HDD running Win95, with DOS 6.22 and Win3.11 as a "Previous" menu option.

These aren't modern PC parts...

wierd_w wrote on 2024-07-30, 21:18:

However, I have one I flashed a built version of Coreboot/Seabios on, and it legacy boots. (And can run XP!)

It's a baytrail based SoC, with a weaksauce atom cpu, 2gb ram, an ethernet connector, 1 sata port, and 2 usb ports. It runs on 5.25v dc @ 2.5A.

Hey, can I ask you how you managed to build a correct Coreboot/SeaBIOS image for an Intel Bay Trail SoC?

I have a passively cooled Intel Compute Stick clone, which also comes with a 32-bit UEFI without a CSP, and I would love to flash Coreboot on it to fully unlock its capabilities.

I've done some searching on-line, but didn't find any clear instructions or success stories. Just forum posts by people who would like to accomplish the same.

Thanks!

keenmaster486 wrote on 2024-07-31, 04:59:

It's a modern computer. Nothing authentic about it where DOS is concerned. SBEMU is certainly not authentic. You will probably have memory management issues too, most likely with EMS. No guarantees on the CGA/EGA/VGA compatibility of a modern graphics chip either, beyond 640x480 16 color mode.

There is no free lunch. If you want authentic, buy a real 90s PC and get a CRT. You can do it for anywhere from $20 if you get really lucky at recycle centers to $300 on eBay if you play your cards right. But if you are inexperienced you will end up spending a lot more than that as you make mistakes and learn, no matter what you do.

There is a special kind of kick that some of us get from running DOS games on modern x86 hardware. Indeed, it's not "authentic", but it's not the same as full software emulation either.

It's fun to get things to work together that were never meant to do so. It's a different category of retro gaming in and of itself, and not everybody is into it, but some of us are. 🙂

Last week, I found a Toshiba Satellite I15-s104 laptop at a local thrift shop in excellent condition for $10. It hits most of the bases, even though it's not "modern" but circa 2006-07 vintage. Most importantly, it has a decent quality, AR-correct 4:3 LCD screen which no modern laptop has. It has a good-quality keyboard with some travel in the keys. It has VGA out, and even S-video out. The battery still holds a charge, and it has run every bare-metal DOS program I've thrown at it so far. SB-Emu compatibilty is good (it has the Intel HDA version 4). It also supports mtrr write-combining and has enough RAM (768 mb) and speed (1.3 Ghz processor) to run all the games with max speed and at high resolutions.

The most "modern" system I own which still boots to bare-metal DOS has an i5-8250 CPU and 16Gb of RAM, but of course the bastardized non-DOS native 16:9 display, bad VGA compatibility (no write-combining and many display bugs and missing VESA features, although it does still support VBE3 high resolutions in games, the speed is much-reduced because of no MTRR write-combining support, some sort of intentional (?) bug in the BIOS and / or system. Its SB-Emu compatibility is also good (It has IHD audio). It is much *faster* than the Toshiba system I just found, but its bare-metal DOS experience is much less satisfactory because of the problems noted.

Aui wrote on 2024-07-30, 10:58:

The experience will not be authentic (in comparison to real DOS hardware) . On the other hand Dosbox can provide a pretty authentic experience ?!

I sometime boot DOS on modern PC's - usually to run a DOS only tool like ImageDisk, which works well - but anything that uses more
that text video, PC-built-in-speaker sound etc. often doesn't work at all, of it it does, does not have the feel of my classic systems.

I do find that DosBox emulates classic system hardware really well, down to being able to control how fast the CPU is!
The DOS implementation itself is somewhat limited (to be fair with its focus on being a "classic gaming" environment",
it implements not much more of DOS than various games need/use)

But.. if you want the experience "the real thing", you CAN boot actual DOS within DosBox - I find this works quite well,
and effectively gives you a truly separate DOS system - and like a separate system the only way to communicate with the
host is via network or floppy diskette images - (I don't know if newer DosBoxs have gotten better, but the older one I use
has problems writing IMGMOUNTed drives from within DosBox itself - a booted DOS has no problem)

Don't forget that you can configure it to start full-screen or use alt-ENTER (At least on the one I use) to switch it to
full-screen which really does make it feel like a separate system!

Dave ::: https://dunfield.themindfactory.com ::: "Daves Old Computers"->Personal

digger wrote on 2024-07-31, 07:31:

Hey, can I ask you how you managed to build a correct Coreboot/SeaBIOS image for an Intel Bay Trail SoC? […]
Show full quote

wierd_w wrote on 2024-07-30, 21:18:

However, I have one I flashed a built version of Coreboot/Seabios on, and it legacy boots. (And can run XP!)

It's a baytrail based SoC, with a weaksauce atom cpu, 2gb ram, an ethernet connector, 1 sata port, and 2 usb ports. It runs on 5.25v dc @ 2.5A.

Hey, can I ask you how you managed to build a correct Coreboot/SeaBIOS image for an Intel Bay Trail SoC?

I have a passively cooled Intel Compute Stick clone, which also comes with a 32-bit UEFI without a CSP, and I would love to flash Coreboot on it to fully unlock its capabilities.

I've done some searching on-line, but didn't find any clear instructions or success stories. Just forum posts by people who would like to accomplish the same.

Thanks!

Sadly no, I built that image almost a decade ago.

I remember that it needed the intel baytrail platform support module and some other BS.

That's about it.

wierd_w wrote on 2024-07-31, 16:52:

Sadly no, I built that image almost a decade ago.

I remember that it needed the intel baytrail platform support module and some other BS.

That's about it.

I'm intrigued as well, as what you've done proves that it's possible to nuke UEFI (at least, 32-bit UEFI) and replace it with a proper real BIOS and enable 16-bit bare-metal DOS compatibility on such a "modern" system. Are you able to somehow resurrect your image and post it here or provide a place where it may be downloaded? I abhor UEFI-only and this sounds like a project definitely worth trying (at least on this Baytrail Intel SoC).

In the case of Minnowboard, it's got mainline support in coreboot.

You just need the prereqs and the toolchain, then pick it as the target.

I had to get the platform support module from internet archive due to Intel's schizophrenic stance on old package retention.

zyzzle wrote on 2024-07-31, 22:24:

wierd_w wrote on 2024-07-31, 16:52:

Sadly no, I built that image almost a decade ago.

I remember that it needed the intel baytrail platform support module and some other BS.

That's about it.

I'm intrigued as well, as what you've done proves that it's possible to nuke UEFI (at least, 32-bit UEFI) and replace it with a proper real BIOS and enable 16-bit bare-metal DOS compatibility on such a "modern" system. Are you able to somehow resurrect your image and post it here or provide a place where it may be downloaded? I abhor UEFI-only and this sounds like a project definitely worth trying (at least on this Baytrail Intel SoC).

Combing through old threads, wasn't there some business about getting Win2K to run on modern stuff?

Found it. Sadly inactive for 218 days:

new Windows 2000 fan project writes drivers for modern hardware

digger wrote on 2024-07-31, 07:31:

Hey, can I ask you how you managed to build a correct Coreboot/SeaBIOS image for an Intel Bay Trail SoC? […]
Show full quote

wierd_w wrote on 2024-07-30, 21:18:

However, I have one I flashed a built version of Coreboot/Seabios on, and it legacy boots. (And can run XP!)

It's a baytrail based SoC, with a weaksauce atom cpu, 2gb ram, an ethernet connector, 1 sata port, and 2 usb ports. It runs on 5.25v dc @ 2.5A.

Hey, can I ask you how you managed to build a correct Coreboot/SeaBIOS image for an Intel Bay Trail SoC?

I have a passively cooled Intel Compute Stick clone, which also comes with a 32-bit UEFI without a CSP, and I would love to flash Coreboot on it to fully unlock its capabilities.

I've done some searching on-line, but didn't find any clear instructions or success stories. Just forum posts by people who would like to accomplish the same.

Thanks!

Just because I feel like a masochist, I'll wade down this rabbit hole again.

Firstly, you need the appropriate (ANCIENT) baytrail FSP package. You can ONLY get this through wayback machine.
https://web.archive.org/web/20160212102909/ht … /download/25063

Again, this is because Intel is schizophrenic with old downloads.

Second, you can use (and modify as you go), the instructions found here:
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978 … 1-4842-0070-4_4

You can then use GIT to checkout the coreboot tree, and build an appropriate image.

Instructions are linux specific, Sorry.

Thank you for the effort of going down that rabbit hole, @wierd_w! I'll see if I can get it to work with my Bay Trail device as well. It would be really cool if I could manage to liberate it from its 32-bit non-CSP UEFI constraints!

I am noting that the most recent head of coreboot does not list baytrail.

It may be necessary to limit ourselves to the SPECIFIC commit specified in the documentation, OR, try to hunt down when Baytrail was no longer supported officially.

I can confirm that minnowmax is available as a target in the specified commit. I needed to comment out line 101 in the makefile to make menuconfig.

So, at least for Minnowboard Max, building with the instructions provided can be completed with the above data.

(edit)

I have been able to determine that Minnow Max remained a target up into 2019. Thats a good 5 years of development improvement over the commit in the cited build.

GIT checkout number 5ebe4310875f5eb01bda69c144204ba8d89f967e seems to support minnow max still. I am attempting a build.

Baytrail was dropped as an official target 2 months later.
https://mail.coreboot.org/hyperkitty/list/cor … 7OP36NUSVXWHS6/

So, I'm probably not missing much with that specific commit branch.

As I understood it, coreboot began and is probably gonna stay a few years behind state of the art, because not all the information necessary to implement it is publicly available.

So I'm having a little difficulty understanding how dos can be booted from some modern pcs. But win2k is a problem? Or is this issue about drivers and sound and whatnot.

If it's about drivers, win2k will never run on myriads of modern computers. Hell it's a problem sometimes getting a motherboard to support the prior or sunsequent version of windows. Linux seems to do a much better job.

Dos ran by interfacing directly with the bios.
The bios was all the basic io drivers.
More modern systems got more complicated and the bios wasn't extended.

There are 16bit compatibility modes in modern bioses that pretend to be the 1980s pc. So 16bit dos still works.
There isn't the same compatibility mode for the 32bit era.

Not exactly true.

The original BIOS was indeed, a combination of an IPL (Initial Program Loader) and a toolkit of useful IO service routines.

To say it was never extended though, is just wrong. Some noteworthy modifications/extensions to old fashioned BIOS are the many INT13 improvements, El Torito and USB booting, USB Legacy support for keyboards and mice, fancy new chipset features, including PCI CLK and pals, Plug and Play extensions, and many many more.

The actual thing that happened, was that Intel and Pals decided (tm) that its days were over, and switched whole-hog to the New!(tm) Universal Extensible FIrmware Interface. (UEFI)
This does not start the processor in real mode anymore, (which Intel REALLY REALLY WANTS. They have wanted to axe realmode for over a decade now, and have wanted very hard to not have back-compatible ISA for even longer. Remember Itanium? I DO! Remember Pentium-Pro before that? I DO!)

The MAIN selling point of UEFI is that it starts immediately in flat mode, and can supply more sophisticated services (like straight up ethernet stacks, audio processing stacks, complex biometrics bullshit, you name it), and allows the CPU to better do fancy shit with its spiffy new Secure Enclave, (Trusted Platform Module, and the Secure Enclaves baked into Intel and AMD processors, respectively) and to be able to deal with GPT partitioning, so that it can handle modern "Its ENORMOUS!" disk drives.

However, this means old legacy utilities and routines are "NO LONGER NEEDED!!", so, you see only the most vestigial trappings of such things on these systems. Just enough to display video before the GPU driver loads, etc.

Since CSMs are no longer being baked into UEFI firmwares, legacy DOS support is becoming more and more impossible to pull off outside of emulation.

The afore-mentioned SoC I wasted 6 posts on, uses only UEFI out of the box. It was DESIGNED this way, as it is an Intel product, designed by Intel, and pushes the "NO, WE HATE THAT!!" philosophy. They even tried to go so far as to claim it was not actually a "computer", and was instead a "Hobby Platform". This is WHY I wasted 6 pages, answering how to gut that UEFI firmware out, and get a FOSS minimal BIOS on instead. (Coreboot + SeaBios).

Still lacks a suitable audio chip, but it could potentially be convinced to have one. (On the underside, is a compact high-density header that has a PCIe 1x lane, which could have a PCI bridge chip put on it, and a PCI Soundblaster clone. I wont hold my breath-- the MinnowBoard is EoL, out of production, (but DOES have FOSS published Gerbers, so if somebody wants to have some made, they CAN....) and did not sell well when it WAS in production. It cost too much, and was crippled from the gate for what most enthusiasts would have wanted to do with it, due to Intel's characteristic lack of vision on what the market wants. (VS what THEY want.)

Regardless, we are stuck with Intel's lacklustre future with UEFI for the foreseeable time being.