DOSBox VGA Emulator, SDL, Svgalib

[Albert Cahalan]

James Cameron writes:

> In addition, the CPU load average climbs rapidly, the CPU is 100% used,
> all by dosbox, and the power consumption is at a maximum.  Batteries
> will not last very long like this.  It is not a good solution.  All the
> power seems to be going to flashing a cursor in the emulation.

DOS spins in a busy loop when it has nothing to do.
This is could be unfixable for compatibility reasons.

IMHO, DOS is a waste of time. It sucks, and all the
apps are copyright violations and/or shareware anyway.

> Memory usage 37Mb resident, 69Mb virtual.
>
> All this for an operating system that needs 640k?  I don't understand.

Lots of DOS apps use high memory, extended memory, expanded memory,
and other horrid legacy hacks. Probably you have 64 MB in a config
file somewhere.

Screen emulation is painful. It'll eat a bit of RAM.

AFAIK, this emulator uses a JIT. That costs memory for the translated
instructions and for various data structures to track self-modifying
code. Self-modifying code is standard in the DOS world.