Emulating old PCs

[Class316]

All this talk about emulating other systems, what about emulating old PCs?

I used to use VMWare. But after I discovered PCem I removed that from my system. This emulator actually uses BIOS roms from old computers and emulates all sorts of old processors, graphics and sound cards (and hence require their drivers). 

Here I have PCem running both Windows 3.11 and Windows 98SE. The latter is especially good for running old Windows and DOS software games on modern PCs.

Just a side note, it was a bitch to setup windows 3.11 to get 67 million colors, sound, and networking all working. Took a lot of youtube guides and trial and error. But was fascinating when it all worked. It's quite an experience to browse the web on windows 3.11.
 

 

[mr_me]

You had windows 3.x running under vmware?

 

There are preinstalled windows 98 downloads for Pcem; couldn't find one for windows 3.x.

Edited December 16, 2020 by mr_me

[zzip]

There's a few different approaches to running old PC software

 

Virtualization - VMware, Virtualbox and company.   These are good for running alternate OSes, however usually the legacy Windows like Win95, Win98 don't work well under them.   The pros of this approach are speed since it's not really emulation.

 

Pure emulation - PCem is a good example of this.  Emulates specific hardware configurations.  Requires actual BIOS images, and has to be configured exactly like a legacy PC would, including installing DOS, loading all TSRs, memory management.

 

App/Game focused - DOSbox and variants.    This has a built-in DOS interpreter, built in drivers for the hardware it supports (no loading TSRs, no associated memory issues).   You just start it and tell it what app to run.    You can still load your own version of DOS, drivers and Windows if you like

 

I prefer the latter for running 90s stuff.   I get nostalgic for the old games,   I don't get that nostalgic for MS-DOS and its quirks.

[mr_me]

Dosbox is an x86 emulator like Pcem, except Dosbox includes enough software to run most dos application programs.  If you want a proper dos or windows operating system you can install it on Dosbox just like Pcem.  But like Zzip says, Pcem is better suited for that.

 

With virtualisation you are basically installing the os on your existing hardware, so your computer has to support whatever operating system you hope to install in vmware.

[Class316]

7 hours ago, mr_me said:

You had windows 3.x running under vmware?

 

There are preinstalled windows 98 downloads for Pcem; couldn't find one for windows 3.x.

I absolutely did have it installed in VMWare. But the colors were only 256. Couldn't have more. 

 

Yes it's not pre installed like windows 98. But it can be done. Just look on youtube there are guides. But it's useless cause PCem is superior in every way because that's actually emulation. 

 

Made an error in my first post but it's 67K colors (the choices were that or 16 million at a lower rez).

 

And I use Dosbox as well. For whatever reason when I tried to run Prince of Persia 2 on Windows 98 Dos Prompt the controls wouldn't work. But worked perfect on Dosbox. Didn't know you could install a whole OS on there. But PCem works great for that.

 

It Feels much more authentic to run Duke Nukem or Doom on Windows 98 Dos mode than it does on Dosbox.

Edited December 16, 2020 by Class316

[mr_me]

That's because there wouldn't be windows 3.x drivers for your graphics adapter but your graphics adapter supports standard vga.  What about audio; did you have windows 3.x audio support under vmware?

 

edit:

Actually, it looks like vmware does emulate soundblaster and graphics hardware.  So it's like a hybrid emulator.  

Edited December 16, 2020 by mr_me

[Class316]

3 hours ago, mr_me said:

That's because there wouldn't be windows 3.x drivers for your graphics adapter but your graphics adapter supports standard vga.  What about audio; did you have windows 3.x audio support under vmware?

 

edit:

Actually, it looks like vmware does emulate soundblaster and graphics hardware.  So it's like a hybrid emulator.  

Actually out of the box it only worked with 16 colors. I actually needed a patched VGA driver in order for 256 colors to work. But luckily that doesn't matter to me cause I will never use VMWare again since I have PCem. I'd rather it take a little longer than load and have a better (more authentic) performance. 

 

And yes I definitely had audio.

Edited December 16, 2020 by Class316

[Keatah]

I have Win 3.1 working in DosBox. Yet to set it up on PCem.

 

6 hours ago, Class316 said:

I'd rather it take a little longer than load and have a better (more authentic) performance.

That PCem models the slowness of early IDE is a good thing. Some games' text load screens fly by too fast, misses important diagnostic and configuration or confirmation information. Like if your wad loaded right. And speaking of Doom. It's great to see the blue disk icon in the lower righthand corner. Always was nostalgic for it!

 

[Class316]

27 minutes ago, Keatah said:

I have Win 3.1 working in DosBox. Yet to set it up on PCem.

 

That PCem models the slowness of early IDE is a good thing. Some games' text load screens fly by too fast, misses important diagnostic and configuration or confirmation information. Like if your wad loaded right. And speaking of Doom. It's great to see the blue disk icon in the lower righthand corner. Always was nostalgic for it!

 

 

Yea I agree the fast speed is a bad thing. Again, better performance and more authentic performance. And hence more compatibility. 

[zzip]

8 hours ago, Class316 said:

Yea I agree the fast speed is a bad thing. Again, better performance and more authentic performance. And hence more compatibility.

I prefer emulators to load things as fast as possible, except when there is good reason to emulate the original performance.  95% of the time, there is no good reason for slowing it down.   Most emulators that implement some kind of warp speed loading will give you the option to emulate original speed if needed/desired.

 

[Class316]

3 hours ago, zzip said:

I prefer emulators to load things as fast as possible, except when there is good reason to emulate the original performance.  95% of the time, there is no good reason for slowing it down.   Most emulators that implement some kind of warp speed loading will give you the option to emulate original speed if needed/desired.

 

 

Well for old operating systems warp speed not a good thing. 

 

For CD loading times would be nice if they could load it faster. For instance Mortal Kombat Trilogies for the first PlayStation. Especially when doing Shang Tsung morphs. Totally ruins what would be the best version of the game. 

 

The "go to" version of the game is the DOS version that is tailored to run via DOS box.

[zzip]

3 minutes ago, Class316 said:

 

Well for old operating systems warp speed not a good thing. 

 

For CD loading times would be nice if they could load it faster. For instance Mortal Kombat Trilogies for the first PlayStation. Especially when doing Shang Tsung morphs. Totally ruins what would be the best version of the game. 

 

The "go to" version of the game is the DOS version that is tailored to run via DOS box.

Yeah running the whole system at warp can cause issues.    But I'm talking more about fast I/O.   I don't want to wait for emulated floppy or cassette load times, I want it to load in as fast as possible.  Old hard drive games usually aren't as bad for load times, but some could use some improvement.

 

I've seen emulators like FS-UAE add realistic floppy loading sounds.   While that is kind of cool,  I'd rather not wait the extra load time to make it happen. 

[Class316]

5 hours ago, zzip said:

Yeah running the whole system at warp can cause issues.    But I'm talking more about fast I/O.   I don't want to wait for emulated floppy or cassette load times, I want it to load in as fast as possible.  Old hard drive games usually aren't as bad for load times, but some could use some improvement.

 

I've seen emulators like FS-UAE add realistic floppy loading sounds.   While that is kind of cool,  I'd rather not wait the extra load time to make it happen. 

Oh yea for load times I completely agree. Sounds are cool but actual waiting I could do without. For disc based consoles like Playstation I believe it's more obligatory than anything else. 

Edited December 17, 2020 by Class316