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RetroPie DOSBox Notes
The DOSBox config file is at ~/.dosbox/dosbox-SVN.conf
I put my C drive in ~/RetroPie/roms/DOS and then edit the launcher RetroPie/roms/pc/+Start\ DOSBox.sh to have the line:
params=(-c "@MOUNT C /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/DOS" -c "@C:")
This keeps the PC menu in RetroPie tidy.
params=(-conf "~/.dosbox/game.conf" -c "@MOUNT C /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/DOS" -c "@C:")
To have a custom key map, in that config file, set:
mapperfile=mapper-game.map
To get games to display in the correct aspect ratio:
windowresolution=1024x768
output=overlay
aspect=true
Setting output=opengl does not harm performance and applies bilinear smoothing to make things look nicer, though it also renders a mouse cursor in the top left corner which is rather annoying.
Setting windowresolution=1280x960 looks nicer but performance suffers. Maybe this is OK to use with less demanding games.
Setting scaler=normal2x doesn't seem to make any performance difference, unsure if it makes a graphical difference either.
I always configure my DOSBox with a fixed cycles count like:
core=auto
cputype=auto
cycles=20000
cycleup=1000
cycledown=1000
Doom maxes out the CPU at 21000 cycles, which gives about 21fps, about the performance of a 486-66 according to the Doom Benchmark.
Performance depends on the game, OMF2097 performs well on its "Pentium" setting with only 10000 cycles. IIRC from using real hardware, that setting actually did require a Pentium or faster.
Probably worth playing with cycles=max with some games.
The binaries RetroPie provides are compiled with the Pi 2 compiler flags, but recompiling on a Pi 3 uses different flags, which appears to give a boost in performance. I haven't benchmarked this.
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