DOSBox and laptop heat.

[Tawmis]

So I have an ancient Dell Inspirion 1011, Windows XP (1GB Memory). When I run DOSBox (3000 Cycles), the laptop gets pretty warm (up to 129F, according to Speedfan). Once I closed out of DOSBox and let it sit for just a few moments, it dropped down to 117/118F. Which is a pretty big difference in heat for one program, I'd think?

Is it due to the Cycles? Should it be raised? Lowered?

[Collector]

If it is old enough to have XP, perhaps it is a bit on the old side? how much of CPU time is it using during normal play?

[Tawmis]

If it is old enough to have XP, perhaps it is a bit on the old side? how much of CPU time is it using during normal play?

It is old. Now doubt (that's why I called it ancient!) However, if I use Firefox, Word, Excel and have all three open - just copying, pasting, writing - it gets warm - but not to the degree it does when I use DOSBox.

What made me initially think it was DOSBox - I pretty much took everything else off the laptop, except the XP OS, and then all my Sierra games are on there. I figured, having them on a travel little laptop would be nice (if I ever go anywhere, or even sit in bed during one of those nights my BFF Insomnia comes to visit), I could play Sierra (and other Dos games).

So I was playing KQ1 AGI, through DOSBox. And eventually noticed how hot (just below the arrow keys) it was getting. So I flipped the laptop over to touch the bottom - and it was noticeably hot to the touch. Like very, very, very uncomfortable to keep my hand on the bottom. I also noticed that during actual game play, eventually the character became sluggish when moving around. (Like you'd see his torso and above move, then his torso and below would move). It was within milliseconds, but it became noticeable (when playing for the first 15 minutes, it was all smooth).

That's what made me install the Speedfan, and it was registering 129F (I put it to F rather than C, so my brain would understand how hot it was). Only other application I had open was Firefox. Closed DOSBox and within 5 to 10 minutes, it had dropped to 117/118F. Opened other things, and it remained about 118/119F. Launched DOSBox again, within 10 minutes it was up to 128F again.

Now the weird thing is, it doesn't seem to have normal fan vents on the side. And googling where the heck the fan vents are located yielded no solid results. It would seem that the fans would be located on the bottom (which might make sense, because the way the battery is, it forces the laptop to sit up an an angle so that air can pass through the bottom, possibly) - but I am seeing no solid evidence of a fan. (I was thinking maybe cleaning out the fan might help...)

[Collector]

If you had not noticed before, I would suspect that it may be clogged with dust. There is a service manual for it on HP's site you can look for, if you need to take it apart.

[DeadPoolX]

That doesn't really seem too hot to me. 129F is 54C and that's well within safe working temperatures.

In contrast, my laptop (a Dell Studio 1558 from 2010, with an i7, and has Windows 7 on it) gets so hot I need a separate cooler for it. Even with the cooler, normal temperatures for the processor are around 70C to 80C (158F to 176F). It still functions just fine and I've read that so long as it stays below 100C, the processor itself won't throttle back.

You can't really expect a laptop to have similar temperatures to that of a desktop. Laptops simply have less room to vent heat, and so they tend to get really hot, really fast.

Regardless, if you're worried -- and like I said, you really don't need to be for temperatures like that -- just buy a cooler for it. Unless you go really heavy duty, they're not expensive and most plug into a USB port on your laptop. That does make your laptop less portable, but that's the tradeoff.

[audiodane]

I have noticed even on newer machines, that DOSBox requires quite a bit of processing power to properly emulate these old machines.. I think it's just down to emulation overhead that doesn't apply to "native apps" like word and firefox.. That said, if even running MS Word makes your system warm up, then yes, its time for a cleaning ...

[BBP]

Just a little extra note of warning - laptops can become scolding hot and in the long run can cause permanent marks on the skin. When I went to Paris I noticed I had burn pain even though I hadn't used my laptop in a while. So nowadays I'm computing extra safely using one of those cushion tables.
'Course that didn't stop the virus, but...

[Qbix]

Yep, DOSBox can use a lot of resources. It does depend though on how certain things are configured. Things like a fixed cycles count and a non-3d graphics output might help