Hello,

i would like to ask if you think it's possible to port DosBox, a x86 emulator with dos to the iPhone?

Here is a link to the software page:

http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/

Greetings
CoDeX2k

I took a crack at this, but it looks like SDL will need to be ported.

I'll put this in my queue of things to get working.

It's entirely possible. We already have SDL (from SDL-MAME) so somebody just needs to work on porting it over.

Are there instructions on getting the SDL-Mame port building on the iPhone?

I downloaded the main SDL sources and they definitely didn't want to build for me... if somebody wants to point me in the right direction I'll take a crack and DOSBox.

Wow awesome response ;-)

I would help but I really don't know how....

Greets
CoDeX2k

That would be SO awesome! We could play all those old games on iPhone!..

These used to be websites all i get is Error 403

Forbidden
Your client does not have permission to get URL /p/iphone-dos-box/ from this server.


http://code.google.com/p/iphone-dos-box

and

http://code.google.com/p/iphone-sdl-mame/

gonna be difficult or impossible, unfortunately.

Sadly, there isn't an extant SDL port for touch/iPhone.

One intrepid developer working on a Google SoC project managed to cobble together something over a few months of steady work-
but only afterward found out the NDA wouldn't let him actually release anything.

More info in here:

http://lists.libsdl.org/pipermail/sd...er/thread.html


EDIT:
Oh. Lantiga talking to Apple? Heh.... worth a try...

* Bring SDL to iPhone and iPod Touch
by Holmes Futrell, mentored by Sam Lantinga
- This was fully implemented, however due to Apple's NDA the snapshot only
includes the OpenGL ES video driver. We are in discussion with Apple now.

To make it work, dosbox would definitely require some major adjustment-
even with SDL available. Fortunately, a lot of the heavy lifting for ARM
has already been done. Unfortunately, a lot of it would still need to be done all over again.

At best, you'll get a fast 80286/ slow 80386 without a keyboard, and 320x200 screen.
80x25 DOS text mode will be slow or unusable or both.

Good enough?

Edit #2:

dead thread. *sigh*

Apple lifted the NDA

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles..._software.html

Perhaps it could be soon......

Has there been any progress on this? 286/386 would still be fast enough for many games like Quest for Glory 1/2 and the earlier Space Quest series.

Sounds like a great deal to me.

What are the next steps needed to port it over?

Thanks,
Will