While it’s exciting to see Android apps running on the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet with some degree of stability, you know what I really want to be able to play on there? Nibbles. Thanks to some tinkering by the BlackBerry community at large, popular emulation program DOSBox has been jammed into a BAR file and runs just dandy on RIM’s tablet. After launching it, all you have to do is run a few commands to mount the local storage, and you can access any old-school DOS programs stored on the PlayBook. Of course, you’ll need to be using a Bluetooth keyboard to get around, and the touchscreen for mouse input if you want to get fancy.
While I’m eager to dig into some old favourites like Dune 2, Castles 2, Legend of Kyrandia, Sam and Max Hit the Road, and TIE Fighter, I wouldn’t mind booting up into some blue-screen WordPerfect or Windows 3.1 at the coffee shop just to throw off passersby. It’s great to see the PlayBook is showing some flexibility to this level of tweaking, and will be interested to see developers expand the utility of the PlayBook in similar directions.
If you’d like to get started, you can download the DOSBox BAR file here, and sideload it to the PlayBook through the BBH Tool. Once the DOS prompt is launched, enter “mount c /accounts/1000/shared” to access any DOS apps you’ve also sideloaded.
[via BBIN]