| Emulator | n0p’s DOSBox 0.63 | Wall's pDOSBox 2 b 2 | PocketDOS 1.12.0 | Desktop DOSBox 0.70 | Wall’s pDOSBox 1.1 |
| Verdict | Highly recommended, particularly if you “only” have a low-resolution (QVGA) device or “only” play low-resolution games. Then, this should be the first emulator to deploy your games on (and, if you encounter problems, move to PocketDOS.) The pros: freeThe best sound emulation (as far as mobile emulators are concerned)in general, MUCH faster than Wall’s version (particularly Adlib / SoundBlaster sound emulation-wise)two additional mouse emulation modes (albeit neither of them are very easy to use): touchpad-like and D-pad-based excellent SIP supportThe cons: no high resolution support on hi-res devicesno settable zooming / panning at all, which makes it useless on QVGA devices for playing high-resolution games | Highly recommended if and only (!) if you have a high-resolution ((W)VGA) device and definitely want to play high-resolution games. Then, this should be the first emulator to deploy your games on (and, if you encounter problems, move to PocketDOS.) The pros: freesupports hi-res VGAThe cons: very bad (SLOW) sound supportno SIP transparencywith most (even low-res!) games, much slower than n0p’s app | Highly recommended: if, for some reason, the previous two emulators don’t work, give it a try, particularly if you have a low-res device but would want to play high-res gamesif you have a hi-res device and would like to run hi-res games you don't mind PocketDOS' being commercial The pros: support for both Landscape (both right- and left-handed) and Portrait, unlike with n0p's versionbest built-in DOS support (DOSBox ports don't have a fully-fledged DOS built-in), which may prove to be useful in some caseshi-res support (unlike with n0p's DOSBox port)indeed considerably faster than the previous version(s); in cases, even faster than DOSBox portsexcellent scaling / stretching for low-resolution (QVGA) devices to show (EGA/VGA) high-resolution originalsreliableThe cons: not freeless compatible with many games than DOSBox-based appsno Adlib/SB emulationbeeper emulation is definitely worse than with DOSBox-based appsSIP can’t be hidden in 640*480 entirely, which results in either scaling (which can lead to VERY ugly results or make render text plain unreadable) or in a need of panning | This is one of the desktop environments you should run your ancient games / apps in. | You may want to give it a try if nothing else works. However, don’t expect much. The pros: free hi-res support The cons: title bar will always be visible (with fullscreen enabled in the config file (it's disabled by default), at least the title bar is removed but the command bar is still there, taking up a LOT of screen estate, particularly if you’re running it in Landscape and/or on a non-VGA device, not running in native VGA mode. no sounduses system-level SIP |
| Based on? | DOSBox 0.63 | DOSBox 0.63 | 8086/80186: proprietary emulator code; 80386+: Bochs and DOSBox, configurable | DOSBox 0.70 | DOSBox 0.63 |
| OS compliance? | WM2003+; no MS Smartphone | WM2003+; no MS Smartphone (note the WM2003-only bug!) | ANY, even MS Smartphone! | n/a | WM2003+; no MS Smartphone |
| Screen, rendering: Support for VGA? | -; can’t be made it support hi-res at all. With both forced and real VGA, it entirely crashes the device | + | + | n/a | + (remember to uncomment the row fullresolution=640x480; you may also want to change fullscreen=false to fullscreen=true so that the contents aren’t shown in a window). Note that when you run low-res games on a VGA device, you'll need to change "scaler=none" to "scaler=normal2x" in the config file. Also see THIS for more info. |
| Manual resizing / stretching / compressing? | - | - | +, excellent with for example hi-res EGA screens on VGA devices (stretching to fill in the entire screen area etc). With VGA stuff, however, the situation is really different. Sporting no similar SIP to n0p’s version, the only way to maximize the screen estate is hiding the keyboard (Settings / Keyboard / Show onscreen keyboard) and, when visible, hiding the menu bar (Settings / Display / Show menu bar). This will only leave one row on the screen, which means far less panning if you don't want to lose any detail because of the entirely dropped scanlines in the compressed image (there're no dithered / antialiased scaling capabilities, unlike with, say, the new DeepFish browser). Panning is done with THIS icon (when it's - as in the screenshot - gray and not black, panning is disabled because every part of the picture is visible); zoom changing with THIS (in Landscape mode; in Portrait, they're both on the system command bar and look different) | n/a | -; however, the individual windows can be moved across the screen |
| Showing high-res originals on low-res (for example, QVGA) screens? | - (no different zoom settings at all) | - (no different zoom settings at all) | In cases, pretty usable: EGA original: - scaling: vertical: 1, horizontal: 0.5 (most usable)
- no scaling at all (pretty useless because of the need to pan a LOT)
- using the full screen estate (scaling: vertical: ~0.65, horizontal: 0.5) (pretty bad because of the vertical scanlines thrown away)
- using the quarter of the original screen size (scaling: vertical: 0.5, horizontal: 0.5): not that bad (while, of course, the first case with 0.5 horizontal scaling and no vertical scaling is the best)
VGA original:- scaling: vertical: 1, horizontal: 0.5 (most usable)
- no scaling at all (useless because of the need to pan a LOT)
- using the full screen estate (scaling: vertical: ~0.47, horizontal: 0.5) (totally useless because more than half of the vertical scanlines have been thrown away, resulting in a totally unreadable text)
- using the quarter of the original screen size (scaling: vertical: 0.5, horizontal: 0.5): not that bad (while, of course, the first case with 0.5 horizontal scaling and no vertical scaling is the best)
| n/a | - (no different zoom settings at all) |
| Built-in Landscape rotation support? | + (uses LS by default; can’t switch to Portrait. When you do start the emulator in Landscape, it switches to Portrait – not showing the right part of the SIP.) | +; automatically rotates. On WM2003 where no op. system-level rotation is possible, the first 2-3 pixels of the screen are shifted to the right edge of the screen. No such problems with n0p's landscape mode on WM2003. | + (can switch from the app any time) | n/a | - (must switch to LS on the system level, which means no LS is possible with WM2003 devices. Unfortunately, changing fullresolution=320x240 to fullresolution=240x320 doesn't help either) |
| Left-handed Landscape? | +; see the "lefthand" entry in the config file. Note that setting it to true (instead of the default false), in some cases, didn't work on my devices - I don't know why. | + | + | n/a | n/t |
| Software Input (and other settings / on-screen mouse/D-pad button) Panels (SIP's): What SIP's are supported? | +: excellent: by pressing App button 4 or clicking the upper left corner of the touchscreen (you can even modify this behaviour by altering the fkswitchx/y (starting coordinate) and fkswitchw/h (width / height) parameters in the "Forced keyboard" section of the config file), you can either show it (in 640*480 mode) OR, using transparency, maximize (in other modes), any time. This means it doesn’t force parts of full hi-res VGA (640*480) apps out of the screen (unlike PocketDOS) and doesn’t hide what’s under the cursor either (unlike Wall’s both DOSBox ports) | The same as with n0p's app; differences: unfortunately, it isn't transparent (screenshots: default; after maximizing with the “Left” arrow on the D-pad)as can be seen below, can't be used at all with native VGA (640*480) apps, only with apps of smaller vertical resolutionsmust be brought up by pressing the Down arrow on the d-pad and not by clicking the upper left corner of the screen. This also means D-pad can't be directly used to control for example the sprite on screen; you must use the virtual D-pad on the new SIP panel meant for this (or, the traditional, small on-screen cursor keys). Note that the virtual D-pad has never worked for me. | Built-in two-row SIP, letting 320*200 (640*400) in Landscape. No transparency, unlike with n0p's DOSBox. Also see SETSCRN TOOLBAR ON and SETSCRN MENUBAR ON | n/a | Standard system-level SIP; hides lover part of the screen (in full screen mode too). This, in earlier versions, is supposed to be fixed by installing PocketConsole - I haven't tested this. |
| SIP + EGA 640*350? | Transparency works with the screen fully stretched (albeit you won't probably want to use hi-res modes) | +; fills in all the available screen estate (that is, 5 rows instead of the default 3) | + (default, no stretching; full screen (with stretching)) | n/a | n/t |
| SIP + VGA 640*480? | Transparency works (albeit you won't probably want to use hi-res modes) | -: Can't be brought up; pressing Down to do so results in a complete crash (1 2) | + (if you don't want to crunch the contents of the screen onto the screen because of the "dropped pixel lines" issue, panning is needed. No transparency.) Screenshots: default (heavy panning needed); default with on-screen keyboard disabled (less panning needed); scaling (resulting in the characters’ becoming less readable) with keyboard (the worst scenario) and without it | n/a | n/t |
| SIP + (M)CGA 320*200? | + | + | + | n/a | n/t |
| PC-based (for example, Pocket Controller) keyboard? | Partial (only alphanumeric chars; not even punctuation or space). Works OK with built-in thumb/keyboards. | Partial (only alphanumeric chars; not even punctuation or space). Works OK with built-in thumb/keyboards. | + (everything works) | n/a | Partial (only alphanumeric chars; not even punctuation or space) |
| Redefinable keyboard input via hardware buttons (for example Escape / Space / Enter etc. to quickly speed up input, particularly with hidden SIP's?) | + (any original PC keyboard key can be assigned to the (first) four hardware buttons of WM devices; see the hwkey* parameters in the config file) | - | + (nothing is assigned by default; you can assign any hardware button to any original key in Settings / Keyboard / Custom. Here, assigning a hardware button works pretty much like with assigning buttons to the left / right mouse click. Note that this functionality has been introduced in 1.12!) | n/a | - |
| Mouse support: in general? | As with all the other emulators, clicks are registered elsewhere with some games (Also see THIS, with PocketDOS and individual game compliance reports). Cursor must be “dragged” (if it works at all), and it’s pretty bad even then. This is the by default enabled (can be disabled) touchpad mode, where you use the touchscreen as a big touchpad for relative cursor positioning; single taps on the screen equal to left clicks. You can disable this, by default, enabled emulation by changing 'tpadmode' in the config file to false. This won't have an effect on games not having to rely on the touchpad emulation. Also note that this emulator offers a d-pad mouse emulation mode if you desperately want to play a game. It's disabled by default; to enable it, change 'dpadmouse' in the config file to true. | Mouse problems with some games. Note that, unlike with n0p's app, there isn't a D-Pad-based mouse emulation mode. | No D-pad-based mouse emulation, unlike with n0p's app. | n/a | No D-pad-based mouse emulation, unlike with n0p's app. |
| Right click (for example in Civilization or Hoboken)? | +; with the right virtual mouse button on the standard keyboard SIP, over the cursor blockusing the virtual on-screen gamepadpressing the third hardware button) | + (see with n0p's) (Hoboken: 1 2) | + (needs to be separately enabled in Settings/Mouse/Advanced (click "Capture Key" in the lower row and press the button when you're prompted)) | n/a (using a PC mourse, which does have a right button) | - |
| Mouse hovering (disabling auto left-click when tapping the screen); also see for example THIS for more info on mouse hovering used in remote desktop controller apps | +; after clicking this icon (then, it becomes enabled, which is shown by its background color changing to yellow), you tap anywhere on the screen to reposition the cursor; tapping won't result in clicking. You'll need to use either the on-screen mouse buttons or the dedicated hardware button to emulate clicking. | + (see with n0p's app; note that with Wall's apps, it's not possible to initiate clicking using hardware buttons) | + (if you also define a modifier for the left-click. Then, unlike with DOSBox (where no touchscreen tapping is necessary), you'll need to keep depressed both the modifier and the touchscreen for the left button to be activated. This is a bit more awkward than DOSBox' approach. | n/a | - |
| hx4700 touchpad in touchpad mode? | - (the DOS pointer is completely independent) | n/t | - (the DOS pointer is completely independent; as it has no problems with the mouse in slightly more games than DOSBox ports, this isn’t a problem in most cases) | n/a | - (the DOS pointer is completely independent) |
| Misc.: COM ports? | - | - | + | + | - |
| Device suspension compliance? | + on everything but the x51v; on the latter, it produces a fully messed up bitmap (even when run from main storage) | + | + | n/a | + |
| Save state? | - | - | +; works in most cases. However, after restoring, neither the tested S101 nor Eric the Unready displayed any kind of text | ? | - |
| Last touched? | 02/15/2006 | 03/31/2006. Discontinued; sources available (linked from HERE - see the bottom of the page). | 05/12/2007 | March 2nd, 2007 | 07/13/2005; fully discontinued |
| Norton System Info | +; index: depends on the FPS set. With the FPS set to 3 or 4 (which means the cycles being about 2500), it's around 15 when used with the 'verysimple' core. (With full core, the results need to be divided by ~1.57 to get the correct results.) | + (note that you will NOT want to use this app to benchmark Wall's app- see remarks in the text!) | +; benchmark (~index: ~26) crashes after a while (1.11: +; benchmark (~16) also crashes) | runs without framedrops even on slightly slower desktop PC's | n/t |
| Norton System Info benchmarks: effects of different fine-tuned parameters | Using the full core instead of the default 286-only 'verysimple' results in a 50% speed degradation at the same frame skipping settings. That is, ALWAYS try using verysimple and only modify the config file to switch to full core when absolutely necessary (when running a 386+ app/game). Frame drop settings: with minimal (1-2) frame drops, the performance degradation, CPU usage-wise, is between 20-30% compared to the most recommended frame drop of 4. | Note that the [cpu] section of config.txt lacks the 'core' parameter. However, it seems the app does parse it. | Display retrace simulation: same; DOSBox: ~17 (instead of ~26); Bochs: ~6. That is, whenever possible, use the DOSBox 386/486 emulator and NOT Bochs. In the Display settings, neither decreasing the FPS rate, switching to direct display memory access nor decreasing color depth helped anything. (Decreasing FPS did result in some ~0.5 index gain, though.). In System / Timer, decreasing the timer to 25 ms (instead of the default 5) resulted in about 4 index gain (~30); increasing it to 1ms resulted in a ~1 index loss (~25). | n/a | n/t |
| Mounting file system? | See with desktop DOSBox | See with desktop DOSBox | While PocketDOS automatically mounts the first enumerated external drive, this won’t work with devices with either two storage (CF & SD) cards (only the SD card will be mounted to c:) OR pre-WM5 devices with built-in storage (with them, the storage will be mounted). You can mount any directory (including storage card directories) with the setdrive command. You can also enter the storage card’s directory by using the cd command. Remember to use “’s with paths containing spaces. Also remember that this did NOT work in the previous (1.11) PocketDOS version. | Necessary; mount drivename [“]path[“]. “’s only need to be used when there are spaces in the path like “Storage card”; drivename must NOT contain :. Example: mount c "\sd card" | See with desktop DOSBox |
| Sound? | AdLib / SB / Beeper. No midi / GUS. | SB (AdLib) / GUS / Beeper. SB (AdLib) emulation much worse (slower, more stuttering) than with n0p's app. | Speaker only; unlike with DOSBox titles, it doesn’t work with the digitized sounds of Legend games. In general, beeper emulation is far worse than in DOSBox-based apps (see for example Sim Earth) | AdLib / SB / MT-401 / GUS / Beeper. Excellent! | No sound at all |
| Legend Entertainment: Spellcasting 101 | + | Completely messed up in-game chars; very slow (1 2 3 4) | + (at last!) | + | unbearably slow |
| Spellcasting 201 | + | Completely messed up chars; very slow | With the default FreeDOS 1.0, it displays an executable error at startup. With the Datalight DOS (which is the default DOS version in previous PocketDOS versions) the game runs OK. This means if you encounter messages like the above at runtime, consider reinstalling PocketDOS with installing Datalight DOS too; then, you'll be able to switch between the DOS versions from inside PocketDOS when you encounter incompatibility issues like this. | + | n/t |
| Spellcasting 301 | - (See with desktop DOSBox 0.70) | - (exits after a while, just like with all the other DOSBox alternates) | + | - (no title screen (no music either); doesn’t seem to go further | n/t |
| Frederik Pohl's Gateway | - (Black screen) | - (black, then white with a "requested" message, then, again, black) | + | n/t | n/t |
| Gateway 2 | +: See with desktop DOSBox 0.70. Being second-generation (as opposed to first-generation, EGA adventures like S101 – screenshot here), the in-game text is readable in QVGA resolution (but not the conversations - they are pretty much illegible). On the iPAQ 2210, heavily stuttering (almost useless) in-game music. | + ; See with desktop DOSBox 0.70. Much worse Adlib music than with n0p. | + | + (note that if the path settings in legend.ini don't match the actual home directory of the game, no animations / title screens will be shown). | n/t |
| Callahan's Crosstime Saloon (requires ~8M XMS and 386; gets along with 7M too but, then, it won't play some animations) | + (with 12M memory allowed for the app), pretty fast (because of QVGA); no mouse problems | n/t | Partial: only works with the Bochs plug-in (free XMS memory set to 12M) - pretty slowly (a bit slower than with the DOSBox-based Wall app.) The DOSBox plug-in immediately restarts when given 8..12 and the game is started. With 7M, it doesn't start: just prints the "1M more XMS is needed to display all the goodies", and, then, Callahan's Crosstime Sal in the next row and that's all | n/t | + (with 12M memory allowed for the app), slow (because of VGA); the usual mouse problems; both the upper some dozens of pixels and, at the bottom, about half of the screen (around the SIP icon) is hidden, which makes gaming very hard / most texts unreadable. |
| Companions of Xanth (low-res MCGA; XT; needs some XMS memory) | + (all OK; the music stutters a bit even with large(r) frameskip settings). | + (Adib music useless, as opposed to n0p's app, even with drastically decreased CPU cycles settings) | - (the game starts, but, sooner or later (1-2 minutes at most), the beeper starts to beep like some Morse code and the entire device crashes. This happens with all the three (no / Bochs / DOSBox) plug-ins. Disabling the beeper emulation (after all, no digitized music /sound effects can be heard) doesn’t help. The case is the same with 1.11. | n/t | n/t |
| Superhero League of Hoboken (low-res MCGA; XT; needs some 400-500 kbytes of XMS) | In the first screen, trying to open the cabinet or going to East results in a freeze | + | + | n/t | partial (VGA, with 2* scaling: completely messed up mouse) |
| Timequest (EGA, XT) | + | - (messed up chars) | + | n/t | n/t |
| Eric the Unready | + (low-res, of course, but, except for the list of discussions (the actual questions / answers are OK), it’s passable, Eric being a second-generation Legend adventure) | + (uselessly stuttering Adlib sound) | + (albeit sometimes it crashes with the usual beeping sounds) | n/t | + (albeit for example the initial title sequence is VERY slow) |
| Magnetic Scrolls: The Pawn | + (but almost unreadable because of the hi-res EGA) | +, excellent. It's only the drop-down menu clicks that are problematic | - (“EGA device not found. Please use text only version.”. When PocketDOS is manually switched to CGA mode, it displays an error dialog at start telling the app tried to use an unsupported video mode.) | n/t | n/t |
| Jinxter | + (but almost unreadable because of the hi-res EGA) | + (1 2) | - (“Unable to locate EGA device. Please use text only version.”) | n/t | n/t |
| Guild of Thieves | + (but almost unreadable because of the hi-res EGA) | + | - (“Unable to locate EGA device. Please use text only version.”) | n/t | n/t |
| Misc: Day of the Tentacle | -: mouse doesn't at all work (not even for dragging) - it's only "click" that the system gets notified of the stylus (then, setting the target to be the current position of the cursor) | -: Non-working mouse | -; non-working mouse | n/t | n/t |
| Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes | +, everything OK | + | - ("Unable to Install Driver for some reason" right after the starting animation. Nothing helps; enabling PocketDOS even worsens the situation as it decreases the size of the available conventional memory by some 40 kbytes (from ~600k), which makes the program even display an error message about being unable to run) | n/t | n/t |
| Leather Goddesses of Phobos 2 | - (as the mouse isn’t correctly emulated, you can’t click anything – for example, one of the three main characters on the player selection screen) | - (no mouse) | - (bad mouse pointer emulation: dragging needed. Note that the game won’t start with SB enabled, only if you disable all sounds with install.exe. Don’t even select the beeper because it’ll result in a constant high-pitch sound) | n/t | n/t |
| Populous | + | + | + | n/t | n/t |
| Dune 2 | + | + | + | n/t | n/t |
| Sim Earth | + (in 320*200*256 MCGA mode so that something is visible) | VGA: missing text; EGA: missing text; MCGA: OK | + in low-res MCGA mode only; in VGA, all texts are heavily messed up. Beeper emulation is far worse than in DOSBox-based apps. | + in VGA | n/t |
| Prince of Persia | + (pretty cool, even with Adlib emulation; the latter will be a bit descynched (late) though) | Pretty slow | + (about the same speed as with n0p’'s emulator; the latter with enabled Adlib emulation) | n/t | n/t |
| Prince of Persia 2 | + | +; music emulation is awful. Emulation slower than with PocketDOS, completely disabling sound doesn't help. | + (bad sound, as usual) | n/t | n/t |
| Master of Orion | - (mouse can only be used in touchscreen mode; occassional bitmap problems) | n/t | + (excellent) | n/t | n/t |
| Settlers 1 (requires 386+ and at least 4M of either XMS or EMS) | - (starts but the mouse is useless) | -: with the default settings, it complains about XMIDI sound hardware not being present. Disabling GUS emulation (it's enabled by default) doesn't help either. | - (DOS immediately reboots with both XMS and EMS raised to 4M) | n/t | n/t |
| Operation Wolf | Runs, but only works in the mouse dragging mode - that is, could be better (albeit still better than D-pad-based play) | n/t | Unfortunately, the mouse clicks are registered elsewhere on the screen. It seems there is a coordinate mapping problem with the emulator. Very close to the left border of the screen, screen tap coordinates are registered OK. However, the more you go right, the bigger the difference between the actual and the perceived screentap. This means if you click, for example, the rightmost area of the screen, it's registered at about the 70% of the width. This makes playing the game pretty much impossible - unless you're ready to use some kind of a drag mode & strictly hardware button-based firing to avoid constant shooting, quickly depleting your ammo reserves. | + | n/t |
| Soul Crystal; to supply a link to the download page, use THIS link, by adding ANYTHING after the question mark like in http://www.winmobiletech.com/i.html?thisisranomtext. Also see THIS for more info on the game. | + (but, of course, useless at low res) | +; SB sound really stuttering | + | n/t | n/t |
| Civilization | + | + | - (run-time error R6003 on the “A Microprose presentation” title screen) | n/t | n/t |
| King's Quest 5 VGA | + (just great) | + | + (make sure you run install.exe to set sound to internal beeper instead of Adlib and enable Simulate display retrace in Settings / Display / Advanced!) | n/t | n/t |
| The Light Corridor (also see THIS) | +. As the Adlib emulation is uselessly stuttering, make sure you copy BUZZER.COR into ADLIB.COR to get rid of the emulation. Then (with the verysimple core, of course), the game will be pretty OK. Use the d-pad to control the bat and the touchscreen to move forward. | -: the game itself can't be played (if you can get past the main menu, that is: in many cases, I was unable to move the selection cursor upwards. I only succeeded in this once.) to control the bat as the D-pad is used by the SIP display switch / enlargement. Unfortnately, I don't know a way of fighting this problem - the settings in the #Forced keyboard section of n0p's emulator don't work and removing the original direction settings don't work either. Nevertheless, the emulation is decidedly slower than with n0p's emu; therefore, you may want to skip it. | - (Invalid opcode) | n/t | n/t |
| F29 Retaliator | + (albeit pretty slow - decidedly slower than on a, say, 12 MHz original IBM AT) | - (doesn't go past the initial Ocean logo) | - (doesn't go past the initial Ocean logo) | n/t | n/t |
| PC-CONFIG V9.33 | + (1; further tests are VERY slow) | (Only the first dialog is shown in full; stops during the presentation of the second one) | + in 80186 mode (1 2 3). Runtime error with Bochs right at startup. DOSBox plug-in works (1 2 3). With version 1.11, the screenshots of the basic emulator (DOSBox throws an error when starting the app): 1 2 3 | (Only the first dialog is presented; the second throws a runtime error) | n/t |
