Pce/ibmpc - Ibm Pc Emulator Gp2X Port

[christo930]

I run this emulator to play game on my pc and it seems to be faster than dosbox. It emulates a 5150 with vga graphics and at least speaker sound. Would this be a better candidate for the gp2x/gp2x wiz and the caanoo? It runs keen 4 better on my laptop which has a AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-58(1.90GHz) with a low end graphics chipset. It also has a mac emulator built in. For more information see:

http://www.hampa.ch/pce/pce-ibmpc.html

Even if it turns out to not be a good option for the gp2x, maybe it would be a better option for the wiz, Pandora and the Caanoo.

Any thoughts?

Chris

 

[Pickle]

I run this emulator to play game on my pc and it seems to be faster than dosbox. It emulates a 5150 with vga graphics and at least speaker sound. Would this be a better candidate for the gp2x/gp2x wiz and the caanoo? It runs keen 4 better on my laptop which has a AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-58(1.90GHz) with a low end graphics chipset. It also has a mac emulator built in. For more information see:

http://www.hampa.ch/pce/pce-ibmpc.html

Even if it turns out to not be a good option for the gp2x, maybe it would be a better option for the wiz, Pandora and the Caanoo.

Any thoughts?

Chris

Looks portable with an SDL backend. Might be fastest cause it doesnt emulate as much, like sound. Might need code added to remap buttons to keys.
How hard is it to setup?

 

[skeezix]

And can it run win3?

Jeffphone

 

[ledow]

And can it run win3?

Jeffphone

Apparently it can - look at the screenshots page. 3.1 won't because this doesn't support a new enough processor to run 3.1, I don't think.

However, this is unlikely to be anywhere near fast. It also requires the user to supply an IBM PC BIOS ROM, which can't be legally distributed - it's doubtful the QEMU etc. BIOS's would be accepted because it's emulating an 80186 at best (yes, the predecessor to the 286 which begat the 386 which begat the 486 which begat the Pentium - damn this emulates an *OLD* PC). I also wonder exactly what versions of DOS it supports because it's so old that you might run into lots of problems trying to run anything near a decent DOS (e.g. 6.22, but 5 appears to work according to the screenshots).

Sound - not yet supported.
EMS/XMS - requires a custom DOS driver

It probably *would* work but I think DOSBox is likely to do a much better job if you tune it correctly. This is emulating a (very old) PC at the instruction level. DOSBox takes a lot of shortcuts so that you aren't "emulating" DOS but rather "simulating it" (i.e. providing something that looks and works like DOS with modern code, rather than trying to have a processor emulation accurate enough to run REAL DOS operating systems.

 

[Pickle]

And can it run win3?

Jeffphone

Apparently it can - look at the screenshots page. 3.1 won't because this doesn't support a new enough processor to run 3.1, I don't think.

However, this is unlikely to be anywhere near fast. It also requires the user to supply an IBM PC BIOS ROM, which can't be legally distributed - it's doubtful the QEMU etc. BIOS's would be accepted because it's emulating an 80186 at best (yes, the predecessor to the 286 which begat the 386 which begat the 486 which begat the Pentium - damn this emulates an *OLD* PC). I also wonder exactly what versions of DOS it supports because it's so old that you might run into lots of problems trying to run anything near a decent DOS (e.g. 6.22, but 5 appears to work according to the screenshots).

Sound - not yet supported.
EMS/XMS - requires a custom DOS driver

It probably *would* work but I think DOSBox is likely to do a much better job if you tune it correctly. This is emulating a (very old) PC at the instruction level. DOSBox takes a lot of shortcuts so that you aren't "emulating" DOS but rather "simulating it" (i.e. providing something that looks and works like DOS with modern code, rather than trying to have a processor emulation accurate enough to run REAL DOS operating systems.

yeah i was wondering about the bios too.
you know that dosbox can run "real" dos just fine?

 

[christo930]

And can it run win3?

Jeffphone

Apparently it can - look at the screenshots page. 3.1 won't because this doesn't support a new enough processor to run 3.1, I don't think.

However, this is unlikely to be anywhere near fast. It also requires the user to supply an IBM PC BIOS ROM, which can't be legally distributed - it's doubtful the QEMU etc. BIOS's would be accepted because it's emulating an 80186 at best (yes, the predecessor to the 286 which begat the 386 which begat the 486 which begat the Pentium - damn this emulates an *OLD* PC). I also wonder exactly what versions of DOS it supports because it's so old that you might run into lots of problems trying to run anything near a decent DOS (e.g. 6.22, but 5 appears to work according to the screenshots).

Sound - not yet supported.
EMS/XMS - requires a custom DOS driver

It probably *would* work but I think DOSBox is likely to do a much better job if you tune it correctly. This is emulating a (very old) PC at the instruction level. DOSBox takes a lot of shortcuts so that you aren't "emulating" DOS but rather "simulating it" (i.e. providing something that looks and works like DOS with modern code, rather than trying to have a processor emulation accurate enough to run REAL DOS operating systems.

I run dos 5.0 on it which works just fine. I haven't had much trouble with pc software running on it. The only game(s) I have tried and they didn't work is jrok's pacpc and mspacpc (pretty good ms/pacman games) which if I remember correctly don't run well under dosbox either.

Chris
PS Windows 3.1 in standard mode win/s should work if 3.0 works. I used to run windows 3.1 in standard mode on a 286 with 1 mb of ram (talk about slow). Also, dos 5 is a proper version of dos. There are no major upgrades to the way dos works after dos 4 and a 5150 can run dos 6.2, but there is no real reason to do so. Dos 5 uses less memory and the only "additions" to dos 5 are trivial and externala (dbldisk..) Handling of hard disks is exactly the same. The real advantage is moving to a 386 which allows upper memory blocks, not a newer dos.

 

[Pickle]

christo930, i may try this out if you can accelerate me in getting it setup.

 

[christo930]

christo930, i may try this out if you can accelerate me in getting it setup.

Do you mean getting it setup on your pc? If you need any help with configuring the machine, let me know. I could probably send you a hard disk image if you need it, but if I remember correctly, it came with dos 5 (at least I don't remember installing it).

Chris

 

[slaanesh]

I've been busy with DosBox 0.74 for the Nanonote/Dingux. However even with the dyna-rec it's still not hugely fast.

If this is twice as fast as Dosbox, this would work nicely on the Nanonote. May even consider GP32 if the memory requirements are low enough.

 

[jmetal88]

May even consider GP32 if the memory requirements are low enough.

That would be AWESOME!