Search found 183 matches

by ecksemmess
Sat 02 Jan, 2021 12:10 am
Forum: General
Topic: AMD Ryzen 5000 series.
Replies: 11
Views: 7536

Re: AMD Ryzen 5000 series.

That's pretty awesome EluanCM. How does K6-2 performance compare with Pentium II for you? Is there a big drop in the highest attainable emulated clockspeed when you switch over to P-II? Also, relevant to that "Skylake-era IPC stagnation" mentioned upthread: in a couple of months, Intel wil...
by ecksemmess
Tue 29 Dec, 2020 1:02 am
Forum: General
Topic: Maximizing PCem performance
Replies: 15
Views: 15259

Maximizing PCem performance

I'm trying to wrap my head around which factors are most significant in determining the performance ceiling for PCem on any given host system. I'm fully aware that it's almost 100% about the CPU, and that single-thread performance is the crucial bottleneck there. However, I'm a bit unclear on how th...
by ecksemmess
Tue 29 Dec, 2020 12:39 am
Forum: General
Topic: dos program like prime95 to stress emulated CPU ?
Replies: 6
Views: 4160

Re: dos program like prime95 to stress emulated CPU ?

Interesting, thanks for clarifying this Sarah. Just to be sure I'm understanding correctly: you're saying you've implemented a dummy "internal cache enabled" property for the emulated CPU, toggle-able via the emulated system's BIOS? And that in lieu of anything to do with actual cache emul...
by ecksemmess
Sun 20 Dec, 2020 10:28 am
Forum: General
Topic: PII 233-300 Mhz runs perfectly except in daggerfall ?
Replies: 19
Views: 11151

Re: PII 233-300 Mhz runs perfectly except in daggerfall ?

OK, so that pretty much solves the mystery, I'd say. PCem has always been quirky when it comes to cache emulation (or the lack thereof). I'm not sure what would need to be tweaked to make those other BIOS settings playable, but it could probably be done without too much fuss, in the form of a hacky ...
by ecksemmess
Sun 20 Dec, 2020 9:36 am
Forum: General
Topic: PII 233-300 Mhz runs perfectly except in daggerfall ?
Replies: 19
Views: 11151

Re: PII 233-300 Mhz runs perfectly except in daggerfall ?

Yeah. You can also try P60, as well as the fast 486 options (DX4 100/120) on dynarec. When you experiment, try to figure out if the problem seems to be more caused by clock speed, or more caused by which CPU class you're using. The idea here is to narrow down the problem and rule things out.
by ecksemmess
Sun 20 Dec, 2020 9:19 am
Forum: General
Topic: PII 233-300 Mhz runs perfectly except in daggerfall ?
Replies: 19
Views: 11151

Re: PII 233-300 Mhz runs perfectly except in daggerfall ?

Could be a lot of things. If 486 dynarec is performing similarly to 486 interpreter (if I'm understanding you correctly?), then that's very telling. Maybe a Pentium-specific recompiler feature corner case? What happens when you compare, say, a 486/66 dynarec vs. Pentium-66 dynarec? Is the Pentium dr...
by ecksemmess
Sun 20 Dec, 2020 8:47 am
Forum: General
Topic: PII 233-300 Mhz runs perfectly except in daggerfall ?
Replies: 19
Views: 11151

Re: PII 233-300 Mhz runs perfectly except in daggerfall ?

Interpreter + top-of-the-line Overdrive chip might get you to a satisfactory framerate if all else fails.
by ecksemmess
Sun 20 Dec, 2020 8:35 am
Forum: General
Topic: PII 233-300 Mhz runs perfectly except in daggerfall ?
Replies: 19
Views: 11151

Re: PII 233-300 Mhz runs perfectly except in daggerfall ?

Must be some peculiar dynarec corner case. Unfortunate since Daggerfall is a landmark game. Can you try other old versions of PCem and see if it's the same? Maybe go all the way back to when the dynarec was first introduced, and see if it's always had this issue or if some PCem versions do better th...
by ecksemmess
Tue 15 Dec, 2020 8:50 am
Forum: Patches
Topic: [Patch] Floppy drive noises
Replies: 13
Views: 16012

Re: [Patch] Floppy drive noises

Been a while, but yes I agree, this is excellent work! Thanks for getting it this far, would love to see it finished someday. :)
by ecksemmess
Tue 15 Dec, 2020 8:49 am
Forum: Patches
Topic: [Patch] Leading Edge Model D
Replies: 9
Views: 12531

Re: [Patch] Leading Edge Model D

This is an excellent addition to PCem! The Model D is legendary. Hope to see this merged soon... :)
by ecksemmess
Tue 15 Dec, 2020 8:47 am
Forum: General
Topic: v17 released!
Replies: 33
Views: 33488

Re: v17 released!

Congrats on the release, Sarah! A month or so ago I was wondering what you might be up to. Hadn't dared to think it would be anywhere near all of THIS... what an amazing Xmas gift ;)
by ecksemmess
Tue 15 Dec, 2020 8:45 am
Forum: General
Topic: Future sound card musings
Replies: 48
Views: 26690

Re: Future sound card musings

Great thread! I'd definitely love to see the Vibra16. Did all my gaming on one of those in the later DOS era, and the regular SB16 just isn't the same somehow with Doom etc.
by ecksemmess
Tue 31 Mar, 2020 3:22 am
Forum: Development
Topic: COVID-19 and v16
Replies: 6
Views: 9987

Re: COVID-19 and v16

Agreed with everyone else, the delay is 100% understandable and I think (hope) that everyone here is happy to be as patient as necessary. Thanks for the notice.
by ecksemmess
Tue 31 Mar, 2020 3:04 am
Forum: Development
Topic: v16 compatibility & bug list (WIP)
Replies: 55
Views: 60385

Re: v16 compatibility & bug list (WIP)

Sorry for asking this, Is the "Video BIOS messages not showing up on startup before BIOS POST screen" bug going to be fixed? No, because the fix will have a negative impact on compatibility in other areas and that's a problem I don't want to be trying to detangle right now. That's unfortu...
by ecksemmess
Thu 12 Mar, 2020 11:33 pm
Forum: General
Topic: Video BIOS messages not showing up on startup before BIOS POST screen
Replies: 9
Views: 14420

Re: Video BIOS messages not showing up on startup before BIOS POST screen

I've got a real Zappa with a Pentium 100 and it definitely always shows video POSTs normally on every video card I've tried, I think the Cirrus Logic cards are just funny that way. Anyway, this bug is also NOT machine-specific, which I guess I should have included in the list above. Every Pentium-cl...
by ecksemmess
Thu 12 Mar, 2020 10:56 pm
Forum: General
Topic: Video BIOS messages not showing up on startup before BIOS POST screen
Replies: 9
Views: 14420

Re: Video BIOS messages not showing up on startup before BIOS POST screen

I don't know offhand whether most video boards' POST screens are supposed to display for shorter times on faster CPUs, but in any case that's not relevant here; this is simply a bug. The video board POST is flashing by in a minuscule fraction of a second, far too dramatic of a change from expected b...
by ecksemmess
Thu 12 Mar, 2020 9:22 am
Forum: General
Topic: Video BIOS messages not showing up on startup before BIOS POST screen
Replies: 9
Views: 14420

Re: Video BIOS messages not showing up on startup before BIOS POST screen

Was this ever properly fixed? If not, is there any chance of getting it nipped in the bud before the v16 release? I can't quite tell how involved the fix would be, but not having the video board's POST sure is inconvenient sometimes.
by ecksemmess
Tue 10 Mar, 2020 7:17 am
Forum: General
Topic: Old Mac OSs on PCEM?
Replies: 7
Views: 7848

Re: Old Mac OSs on PCEM?

divingkatae is working on a PCem-inspired PPC Mac emulator though, motivated by frustrations of sheepshaver/PearPC stagnancy and how there's never focus on emulating the Rage GPUs (G3 iMacs had Rage Pros and Rage128s) https://github.com/dingusdev/dingusppc Wow, finally! Been waiting for a project l...
by ecksemmess
Fri 14 Feb, 2020 7:27 am
Forum: Patches
Topic: [Patch] CD-ROM model selection
Replies: 18
Views: 22355

Re: [Patch] CD-ROM model selection

Wow, fantastic work EluanCM! You're really on a roll lately with these patches. I'd love to see this approach adapted to HDDs as well.
by ecksemmess
Mon 03 Feb, 2020 12:24 am
Forum: Development
Topic: Dot-matrix printing in PCem
Replies: 14
Views: 14348

Re: Dot-matrix printing in PCem

As am I. Really excellent work! Hope to see this merged into mainline PCem sometime soon. :)
by ecksemmess
Mon 27 Jan, 2020 4:32 am
Forum: General
Topic: Any discussion on Slot 1 P3 Emulation?
Replies: 19
Views: 15270

Re: Any discussion on Slot 1 P3 Emulation?

For sure. Couldn't help grinning from ear to ear when I first saw those screenshots in the dev thread a couple weeks back.
by ecksemmess
Mon 27 Jan, 2020 12:48 am
Forum: General
Topic: Any discussion on Slot 1 P3 Emulation?
Replies: 19
Views: 15270

Re: Any discussion on Slot 1 P3 Emulation?

It shouldn't be that much more difficult to implement a rough model of P6 timing than it was for the K6. I simply haven't done it yet. Oh, that's great news! As you say, all those later generations of P6 wouldn't be practical on any present or near-future host machine, but something a bit more humb...
by ecksemmess
Sun 26 Jan, 2020 6:01 am
Forum: General
Topic: File x87_timings.h is missing
Replies: 4
Views: 4480

Re: File x87_timings.h is missing

I didn't want to muck up the board with a separate new thread to say this, but since we've got a vaguely relevant one here let me just say, this is really awesome to see in PCem! Bit of a specialty/niche thing I suppose, but for those few of us who wanted it, this is a huge step forward and very muc...
by ecksemmess
Sun 26 Jan, 2020 5:52 am
Forum: General
Topic: Any discussion on Slot 1 P3 Emulation?
Replies: 19
Views: 15270

Re: Any discussion on Slot 1 P3 Emulation?

The question of P6 microarchitecture emulation (i.e. Pentium Pro, Pentium II, Pentium III) comes up a lot on these forums and Sarah has patiently explained numerous times why it's likely never going to be feasible, at least not without an unthinkably drastic change to the entire structure of how PCe...
by ecksemmess
Sun 26 Jan, 2020 5:41 am
Forum: General
Topic: Packard Bell PB570/Hillary Board bios sees all CPUs as "100MHz"
Replies: 1
Views: 2719

Re: Packard Bell PB570/Hillary Board bios sees all CPUs as "100MHz"

Advanced/ZP does the same thing. Not sure if the PB570 is doing it for the same reasons, but in the case of the ZP, I looked into it a while back and it turned out to just be a motherboard DIP switch setting or something like that--the idea being, if you wanted the real machine to work properly, you...
by ecksemmess
Tue 07 Jan, 2020 9:20 am
Forum: Development
Topic: Bitbucket deleting all Mercurial repositories on June 1, 2020?
Replies: 21
Views: 18932

Re: Bitbucket deleting all Mercurial repositories on June 1, 2020?

I don't like the whole git pushing either and I use git and Github for my code and I find version control as some complicated suffering with web-based repositories getting random functionality regressions. Dropping a post with a diff here feels comfortable enough This is how I feel as well, I'm def...
by ecksemmess
Sun 05 Jan, 2020 9:09 am
Forum: Development
Topic: Bitbucket deleting all Mercurial repositories on June 1, 2020?
Replies: 21
Views: 18932

Re: Bitbucket deleting all Mercurial repositories on June 1, 2020?

Yeah I hadn't noticed either until just now. Methinks there will be some rude awakenings in store for a lot of developers on that day, given how little they're publicizing this... I agree that switching to Git is likely to be the most palatable way to handle it, but don't have the experience to know...
by ecksemmess
Sun 05 Jan, 2020 6:47 am
Forum: Development
Topic: Bitbucket deleting all Mercurial repositories on June 1, 2020?
Replies: 21
Views: 18932

Bitbucket deleting all Mercurial repositories on June 1, 2020?

I see from https://bitbucket.org/blog/sunsetting-mercurial-support-in-bitbucket that Bitbucket will be deleting all Mercurial repositories (presumably including PCem) on June 1, 2020, and will only be supporting Git thereafter. I'm sure Sarah has been totally on top of this, but can anyone say what ...
by ecksemmess
Wed 08 May, 2019 5:53 am
Forum: General
Topic: [Bug] Window size changes when leaving fullscreen
Replies: 15
Views: 12673

Re: [Bug] Window size changes when leaving fullscreen

I hate to even ask, but is there any chance of getting this fixed for v15? If not, hopefully v16? I've found it to be surprisingly intrusive and distracting in certain use cases.