Dosbox Revisited

A while back, Purism did a video showing Dosbox working on the Librem 5, but I’ve never seen anyone actually try to use it, so I finally gave it a go to see how useable it actually was.

One issue I ran into is the touchscreen keyboard is wonky, the keys aren’t mapped correctly. I had to use an external keyboard, in my case, the Nexdock 360, to do some of the setting up. I started with a very simply game, Balloon Challenge, and used the Dosbox Config. file to auto exe the game. I then remapped the arrow keys and spacebar through Dosbox to make the game functional. When I get time, I’ll eventually try to remap the rest of the keys, but doing so messes with the function of the external keyboard.

All in all, it works very well for what it is. I’ve attached a video if anyone wants to check it out.

Dosbox on the Librem 5

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Just the thought of doing gaming on the small touch keyboard… gives me an idea that maybe there should be a gaming layout…? Just big arrow keys and maybe two other keys with extra spacing (2x3 layout or 6 keys with a 2x8 layout to accomodate left/right thumbs) or something like that. Wouldn’t that also help with the mapping problem?

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