x86 old games on H3 armv7 chip questions

f82 · December 7, 2020

Hello,

Thanks to the help here I got to install a latest armbian mainline version with the Lima OpenGL 2.1 support functional that might have not helped the desktop but is still nice to see the o.s. using any part of this system on a chip. To make some test after glxinfo e glxgears I tried the yquake2 engine with the demo old game and it works. I was expecting considering how old the game is to work faster even if it's accelerated for sure and expecting better quality results (bilinear filtering is not the best and sometimes objects disappear and reappear depending on the scene but it's a good test anyway).

I heard lately that has been released a free software for the rpi4 and other arm boards to run x86 programs and even Wine with it. I understand that its SoC and ram are far faster than the H3 ones but I was wondering if anyone tested if the pi One could run old x86 games (like late 90's Directx6 ones for example) on these board or tried to.

Thanks

NicoD · December 7, 2020

I've not tried on allwinner SoCs. You can try. Here the Box86 compilation instructions.
https://github.com/ptitSeb/box86/blob/master/COMPILE.md
Let us know if it works.

f82 · December 7, 2020

I compiled and installed already both Box86 and Wine but I still didn't understand how it actually works to launch a .exe installer/executable with both software running in which order. Should the launch of the apps be Box86 -> Wine -> x86 Win exe file? Both the software did compile without any specific config but even without errors.. now I only need to understand how they actually works..

I had memories of running Wine on x86 linux and it was great obviously on x86 for retrogaming but here things are a bit more difficult.