Feedback on x86 emulator

[Moose or Chuck]

Benchmarking game my arse! Try Terminal Velocity or Need for speed.

[Jaybot]

From what I understand, you should be able to dump a raw disk image using the mtools program.... um I think it was here:<br><br>The mcat command is used to copy an entire disk image from or to the floppy device. It uses the following syntax:<br><br>       mcat [-w] drive:<br><br>Mcat performs the same task as the unix cat command. It is included into the mtools package, since cat cannot access remote floppy devices offered by the mtools floppy daemon. Now it is possible to create boot floppies remotely.<br>The default operation is reading. The output is written to stdout.<br>If  the  -w  option  is specified, mcat reads a disk-image from stdin and writes it to the given  device. Use  this carefully! Because of the lowlevel nature of this command, it will happily destroy any data  written  before  on  the disk without warning!"<br><br>Also, I have the file bochs-2000_0325a.tar.gz, I don't know if that's what you were looking for or not.<br><br>Here's some DOS becnhmark programs:<br><br>http://www.sysopt.com/3dbench.html<br><br>http://www.sysopt.com/pub/busperf.zip<br><br>http://www.sysopt.com/cachk4.html<br><br>http://www.sysopt.com/cbench.html<br><br>ftp://oak.oakland.edu/SimTel/msdos/sysinfo/ctest259.zip<br><br>ftp://ftp.zdnet.com/pub/zdbop/pcbench/pcben.exe<br><br>http://www.sysopt.com/pub/vidspd40.zip<br><br>http://www.holin.com/<br><br>a hardware detection utility<br><br>http://www.hwinfo.com/<br><br><br>AS for a game to be tested, how about any of the old Lucasarts games, e.g Monkey Island1 and 2 (Lechucks Revenge), Loom, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis/Last Crusade, Sam n' Max; any old Sierra games, Leisure Suit Larry series, Kings Quest series, etc.... let me see..... <br>here's a <cough> abandonware site if you need it: <br>http://granavenida.com/cyberia/total.htm<br><br>Just in case (I have no idea hwat this will do),here's a 3k mouse driver:<br><br>http://www.vein.hu/~nagyd/<br><br>and a hardware detection utility<br><br>http://www.hwinfo.com/<br><br><br>

[CARPEDIEM]

holy shit, i had no idea this was going on here. Keep that work up Dan!!<br><br>Last modification: CARPEDIEM - 04/28/01 at 19:48:53

[Moose or Chuck]

meat ew!!!!!

[Moose or Chuck]

Dan, if you cut back on the PQ releases for a while to work on this we won't mind a bit. I'd really enjoy an x86 emulator that ran at even half the speed of the PPC. Wouldn't it be easier to just have a DOS emulator though? So I don't have to find old DOS disks?

[Jaybot]

Moose, DOS is just an OS (hence the name Disk OS) and isn't really the thing to be emulated, the machine that the OS runs on (e.g. 286, 386, pentium) is what's being emulated.  Much like when emulating a console system like the SNES, you don't emulate each game (even though it may seem like it some times....), just the system it runs on.  <br>And don't worry about looking for DOS disks, the Bosch emulator is usually already bundled with a version of DOS called FreeDOS which is completely free (and pretty small).  I believe this is the same DOS that PocketDos uses.  The difference being that PocketDos only emulates up to a 80086 or an 80186, which is pretty worthless because the most advanced game you can play on it is like Leisure Suit Larry 1.

[Dan East]

Before people start expecting too much, let me warn you that it is slow. I don't think any real-time, action type game will be playable in it (on a 206 mhz iPaq).<br>On the other hand, you should be able to run Windows 95 / 98 / Me / whatever, and even Windows NT in this emulator. Of course you would need a lot of storage space for the virtual HDD, and it would run slow, but it will work.<br>This would be the ultimate slap in the face for Palm users. You could install Windows 95 in the Bochs emulator, then install the free Palm development tools. You could then write full-blown Palm applications on your Pocket PC. Talk about insulting. You could write big-Windows software in Visual C++. I think you could free enough memory for the emulator to run VC++. You could also install eVC++ / eVB, and write real Pocket PC apps on your Pocket PC. Again, it would be slow, but it would work.<br><br>Dan East

[Paul]

What do you mean by 'slow'? How many hours between the click and the response?

[SteveC]

Dan - I assume you got the disk dump thing sorted? (There was a util in the win32 zip you mentioned called Dskimg.exe which dows exactly what you wanted )<br><br>Anyway, is there a compiled version (even in pre-pre-beta-alpha stage) for the iPAQ which we could download and play with? The win32 version runs fine with an image of a WinMe bootdisk under windows 2000.<br><br>Cheers!<br><br>Steve

[999]

Man, this just keeps sounding better and better <br><br>Dan can you get Bochs running win95 on your CE Emulator? I don't know if you have the room on your iPAQ or not. It'd be really cool to see a shot of win9x/NT runnin'.<br><br>For ultimate shot props, it should be running winquake in a window, or better yet another emu (emu inside an emu). That is ofcourse if the shot doesn't take a year to setup. <br><br>If possible, it'd make a neat screenshot contest <br><br>

[SteveC]

I'm just trying to think about this 'running win9x in an emulator' thing. What drivers are you going to put onto the win9x install? Graphics/Sound/mainboard and so on.<br><br>I think first things first, see if the DOS benchmark programs run fine, and if they do , try out some DOS games (like commander keen etc). Then try moving to Windows 3.1. I know that win3.1 will fit into 5-6Mb of Disk space - not win3.11, that takes 15Mb+ for some reason.<br><br>Just seeing windows 3.1 running on the iPAQ would be very cool!

[Moose or Chuck]

Jaybot, thanks for clarifying that. Because, you know, I wasn't sure what DOS stood for and that it was an OS and all.~<br>I was talking about something simpler, like PocketDOS but faster.

[Moose or Chuck]

exactly, i dono't want huge options, just a speedy 386 or somethin

[Jaybot]

Moose, go back and read your post and you'll see why I responded that way.  sorry if i insulted your intelligence~<br><br>So you want something more simple but faster and with less options....?<br><br>sounds like an advertisment for a palm. <br>

[Jaybot]

oh, and Dan, my offer still stands on the microdrive.... and the money.