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Dosbian: Boot to DOSBox on Raspberry Pi

Dosbian: Boot to DOSBox on Raspberry Pi

20 comments

·October 19, 2025
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vunderba

Whenever I see stuff like this, the ITX Llama [1], Pixel x86, etc. I think it's finally the time to build my ultimate love-letter to old school DOS and retro computing but always stop short because of the monitor issue.

I feel like a lot of my nostalgia likely stems from the bright super low latency phosphor displays of a proper CRT. No amount of WebGL shaders/filters [2] ever quite seem to capture the original experience IMHO.

[1] https://smallformfactor.net/news/retro-sff-itx-llama-is-a-br...

[2] https://github.com/Swordfish90/cool-retro-term

InsideOutSanta

High-res high-refresh-rate OLEDs with modern shaders are getting close. Now somebody needs to make one that has a convex shape like an old CRT.

I wish we'd reach a point where modern technology allows us to make new CRTs relatively easily. I don't even necessarily care about the image quality, the screens and TVs I used in my youth were never particularly good. But it doesn't seem that this will become feasible in the next few decades.

gman83

This is a fun project - https://github.com/mausimus/ShaderGlass

AtlasBarfed

There's filters on retroarch for emulating or trying to recreate the appearance of a CRT. I have not personally tried them, but the screenshots are noticeable

haunter

On the other hand arguably the best DOSBox version now is the new Pure Unleased, just released 2 days ago (Dosbian is using DOSBox Staging)

https://schelling.itch.io/dosbox-pure

https://github.com/schellingb/dosbox-pure-unleashed

MaximilianEmel

Related: https://blog.tmm.cx/2022/05/15/the-very-weird-hewlett-packar...

jasperry

Projects like this are some of my favorite uses for single-board computers. Another one is Bare Metal C64, which aims for low-latency vsynced Commodore emulation on the Pi: https://accentual.com/bmc64/

rzzzt

There is one small difference, BMC64 uses Circle and circle-stdlib to produce a bare metal image and does not rely on a Linux distribution: https://github.com/smuehlst/circle-stdlib

rcarmo

I have an original Pi with BMC64 "permanently" slotted in. It seems to work great, even though I was a Sinclair ZX81/Spectrum kid.

shreddit

> Join the official Facebook group […]

Of all the things, why Facebook?

kwanbix

At least is not discord?

jhbadger

So many retro things are on Facebook. It's a stereotype that the GenX/Boomer audience interested in retrotech is on Facebook, but it's kinda true.

guestbest

Free hosting?

TacticalCoder

[dead]

ok_dad

> Dosbian is compatible with the following Raspberry Pi models:

I am amazed this doesn't run on literally any Pi since forever, it seems to be limited to Pi 3 and up. I have an old Pi 1B+ that I still use to host all of my websites.

zokier

I'd assume it is 64-bit, which would explain why it is limited to Pi 3 upwards

teaearlgraycold

Shame it doesn’t run on a Pi Zero (or at least a Zero 2).

geophph

So can I run Kings Quest on it if I get the files from GOG?

rhdunn

You should be able to -- https://www.dosbox.com/wiki/GAMES:King%27s_Quest:_Quest_for_....

indigodaddy

I was thinking how to “boot to Lode Runner” on my Pi400, so this might be close enough:)