A trip down homebrew lane – DosBox PSP
DosBox is probably one of the most-remembered homebrew on PSP, not because of functionality but because of the coolness factor. This homebrew not only allowed you to play your favourite DOS games but also run Windows 9x/ME!
What is DosBox?
Dosbox is an open-source DOS emulator that’s been ported to countless systems including the Raspbery Pi and OpenPandora amongst others. You can play a whole library of old games and since there’s keyboard and mouse support on the PSP version, almost anything can open. What can be played however, is another story.
A bit about the PSP version
The PSP version is a port of version 0.71 which isn’t too old as the latest version is only 0.74. DosBox didn’t run too well and it could only emulate some less demanding games at lower resolutions.
Windows 95 on PSP via DosBox. You can even play Minesweeper!
It had the following issues:
- 640×480 looked stretched on the PSP (4:3)
- Speed wasn’t anything to be proud of
- Keyboard input was pretty annoying (even with keyhint in later versions)
- Mounted hard disk images didn’t allow you to save to them
What it had going for it:
- Decent support for older games (such as Commander Keen)
- Mouse support
- Ability to map PSP buttons to keyboard keys with a text editor
- Cool factor (come on, playing DOS games on the go back then was quite cool)
Commander Keen 4
The homebrew ought to have caught your attention if you were interested in any type of homebrew back then. Something that many of us have tried is running Windows 95/98 on their PSP. While it’s pretty cool and definitely doable, it’s almost useless because peformance is quite awful and not much runs. Windows 3.1 fares better but you still can’t save to disk..
Conclusion
This was quite a decent homebrew that some us spent quite a lot of time on. While not the best PSP homebrew, it’s still an interesting find and it’s the only way to run DosBox on the PSVita. DosBox for PSP works on the Vita, both on VHBL and Adrenaline. There’s a RetroArch version that doesn’t support keyboard input.. yet.
Download: http://www.theisozone.com/downloads/playstation/psp-homebrew/psp-dosbox-signed/
Thanks to developer “CrazyC” for this homebrew
A very interesting read. I would assume it would run better on vita because of the upgrade hardware but not sure if that’s the case. Overall a great emulator and great read.
Funny, I had a PSP from day one, and never saw dosbox.
You’re not active in the homebrew scene then.
i wonder… can ps vita support decently, windows XP? man oh man the games on that OS, even at 20fps id take it.
Cant wait till vita gets more fully hacked.
I doubt that the Vita will be able to decently support XP as not even Android devices do. The best it could do would probably be a decent version of DosBox that would allow you to run *some* Win9x games.
Well its not that simple , first off there is something called as CPU Architecture , as far as i know , windows xp cant support ARM architecture but windows Mobile can , but as u know linux can run on phone so i think some kinda distrbute of linux can run on Vita too , maybe Steam OS….. 😀 Who knows
While they’re both of the same architecture, the PSVita is still very different. The lowest level of the PSVita’s security is still not hacked (F00D) so you can forget running another OS natively for the time being. That being said, even if the lowest level gets hacked, it would be very hard to write drivers for the PSVita as documentation is pretty scarce. It’s theoretically possible to run Android/Linux on it but simply not feasible.
What’s the cut-off point for games on this emulator? I’d be interested in trying this if only to kick the tires of some old homebrews I wrote, but I’d hope that it could at least handle 386 games. Also, would there be a way to set up a batch file so it jumps straight to the game you want to play, rather than having to fiddle around in DOS?
Most DOS games can be run directly by adding a few lines to the end of the dosbox.conf file.
For example, to run carrier command I wrote the following:
[autoexec]
mount c carrier
c:
cd carrier
carrier.exe
The best reference source is …
file:///C:/Users/farrantd/Cookies/Desktop/wololo2/DosBox_Manual_by_Howling_Mad_Murdock_1.9a.pdf
Have fun …
Sorry, mistake in web address … !!
http://www.pspdosbox.co.uk/DosBox_Manual_by_Howling_Mad_Murdock_1.9a.pdf
Happy New Year …
i enter the dos window in my vita with Adrenaline , it do nothing whatever i push any button , and bebfore these i already rewrite the cfg file!! So, don’t post it before u test it !!! wasting my time!!!