PCem

PCem v15 is (finally!) available. Changes since v14 :

• New machines added - Zenith Data SupersPort, Bull Micral 45, Tulip AT Compact, Amstrad PPC512/640, Packard Bell PB410A, ASUS P/I-P55TVP4, ASUS P/I-P55T2P4, Epox P55-VA, FIC VA-503+
• New graphics cards added - Image Manager 1024, Sigma Designs Color 400, Trigem Korean VGA
• Added emulation of AMD K6 family and IDT Winchip 2
• New CPU recompiler. This provides several optimisations, and the new design allows for greater portability and more scope for optimisation in the future
• Experimental ARM and ARM64 host support
• Read-only cassette emulation for IBM PC and PCjr
• Numerous bug fixes

Awesome job, thanks ever so much!

EDIT: FIC issue moved to buglist.

Can you just drop this on top of v14? Or should I delete\rebuild the folder. Guess I'll do a backup and try some stuff out, thanks!

Thank You very very much!

Thank you very much for continuing to develop this project after so many years!

Thank you!! It's really exciting to get more commit notifications in the mail, especially after all this time where we were in the dark on the recompiler work. Was really excited to see that "Update version number to v15." Keep it up!

I just started using PCem last week, and have been tweaking it constantly. What a nice surprise to wake up to. Thanks S.W. and everyone else that contributed to it.

I only have an I5 7400 @ 3.4GHZ, and MMX 166 runs nearly everything at 100%, so I'm excited if any optimizations were made, or if I could emulate another processor. Thanks again everyone.

Thank you! v15 finally arrived!
One question Sarah: do you have more ideas for further optimisations?

Ciongratulations!

tr.StEalTH wrote: ↑Sun 19 May, 2019 6:55 pm Can you just drop this on top of v14?

Should be fine, but if you have any existing '430vx' configs using IDT or Cyrix processors, you'll have to readjust them all since AMD was added to the Socket 7 list.

omarsis81 wrote: ↑Sun 19 May, 2019 10:09 pm Thank you! v15 finally arrived!
One question Sarah: do you have more ideas for further optimisations?

Yes. It's mainly a matter of time and energy, and I don't have any of the latter left at the moment!

Thanks for version 15.

One more thing, seem forget to change the version no. here....

YES!

rex_c wrote: ↑Mon 20 May, 2019 1:38 pm One more thing, seem forget to change the version no. here....

I forgot there even was an About dialogue. Fixed with a hex editor...

oiiiii

Thanks update time!

SarahWalker wrote: ↑Mon 20 May, 2019 4:59 pm

rex_c wrote: ↑Mon 20 May, 2019 1:38 pm One more thing, seem forget to change the version no. here....

I forgot there even was an About dialogue. Fixed with a hex editor...

You are so respectable

Amazing. Thank you SarahWalker! =)

So far I think v15 is a success. I am limited in what I can do with an old AMD A8 laptop, but with a new PC I should be able to do more thorough testing of the new features.

I am glad it was not too difficult to install and run the Super Socket 7 CPUs, including the K6 line. I am sure it will work well with the Voodoo 2.

PCem continues to show great promise.

Have a good day!

Many thanks for v15.

Given that there is a pattern now, will we expect v16 to be released on June 18, 2020? ... lol

Katakis wrote: ↑Thu 23 May, 2019 12:37 pm Many thanks for v15.

Given that there is a pattern now, will we expect v16 to be released on June 18, 2020? ... lol

I don't see a pattern here.
v15 demanded much effort and time, but Sarah has not stated there's going to be another mayor task for the next release.

Thank you Sarah for the new release.

So far it seems I can emulate a P166 on a i5-4670 on 100%. On V14 the max was P133. Unfortunately this CPU is not enough for a K6. NSF3 and M1 Tank Platoon II work perfectly, maybe image quality improved. Myth is the same: ground is not rendered, and it appears to run slower then it should. I will try more programs later.

omarsis81 wrote: ↑Thu 23 May, 2019 2:38 pm I don't see a pattern here.

The date of the releases so far was:

April 20, 2018
May 19, 2019

I thought there must be some kind of pattern there. As for the release, I may be right, I may be wrong.
Besides I was joking, hence the "lol" at the end.

I seem to running a 166Mhz Pentium S with a Voodoo in a usable state on an i5-6600k@4.2Ghz.

Out of curiosity how much does extra cores/thread help PCEM? I plan to upgrade to Ryzen 3600 when they launch since a quad-core is an aging platform for gaming and I'm curious how it would effect PCEM performance.

Not a lot for the most part; the main CPU load is the CPU emulation, and that's strictly single threaded. The only reason to go past 4 cores is if you want to emulate a Voodoo 2 SLI setup, as the Voodoo emulation can use up to 3 threads per card.

SarahWalker wrote: ↑Sun 26 May, 2019 7:04 am Not a lot for the most part; the main CPU load is the CPU emulation, and that's strictly single threaded. The only reason to go past 4 cores is if you want to emulate a Voodoo 2 SLI setup, as the Voodoo emulation can use up to 3 threads per card.

This disappointing but understandable since it's hard to multi-thread emulation of components that were originally single-threaded.

On another note is there a plan to eventually let the problem use more of the CPU? On mine hang-ups and speed drops can happen even though I'm not even hitting 60% usage on any of the cores. Seems to be caused mostly by the emulator reading data from my optical drive so I'm tempted to try ripping my games to ISOs when I play them in PCEM.

CryptidWorks wrote: ↑Mon 27 May, 2019 12:22 am

SarahWalker wrote: ↑Sun 26 May, 2019 7:04 am Not a lot for the most part; the main CPU load is the CPU emulation, and that's strictly single threaded. The only reason to go past 4 cores is if you want to emulate a Voodoo 2 SLI setup, as the Voodoo emulation can use up to 3 threads per card.

This disappointing but understandable since it's hard to multi-thread emulation of components that were originally single-threaded.

On another note is there a plan to eventually let the problem use more of the CPU? On mine hang-ups and speed drops can happen even though I'm not even hitting 60% usage on any of the cores. Seems to be caused mostly by the emulator reading data from my optical drive so I'm tempted to try ripping my games to ISOs when I play them in PCEM.

I've said this in multiple threads so far, no idea if you were one of the ones I said it to, but I once had an issue where CD reads would cause extreme PCem slowdown and stuttering. I never did find what caused it, but I solved it by starting over with a fresh new PCem and machine configuration. I kept the drive image, of course.

Cheez wrote: ↑Mon 27 May, 2019 6:13 am

CryptidWorks wrote: ↑Mon 27 May, 2019 12:22 am

SarahWalker wrote: ↑Sun 26 May, 2019 7:04 am Not a lot for the most part; the main CPU load is the CPU emulation, and that's strictly single threaded. The only reason to go past 4 cores is if you want to emulate a Voodoo 2 SLI setup, as the Voodoo emulation can use up to 3 threads per card.

This disappointing but understandable since it's hard to multi-thread emulation of components that were originally single-threaded.

On another note is there a plan to eventually let the problem use more of the CPU? On mine hang-ups and speed drops can happen even though I'm not even hitting 60% usage on any of the cores. Seems to be caused mostly by the emulator reading data from my optical drive so I'm tempted to try ripping my games to ISOs when I play them in PCEM.

I've said this in multiple threads so far, no idea if you were one of the ones I said it to, but I once had an issue where CD reads would cause extreme PCem slowdown and stuttering. I never did find what caused it, but I solved it by starting over with a fresh new PCem and machine configuration. I kept the drive image, of course.

So I should try making an identical machine with the same hardware and directing it to the same HDD image, then?

Well, You can try. It's up to you. I don't know if it'll actually fix your problem, but it fixeed mine, and if it doesn't really work you can just keep using your old one. I also have no idea if this mattered, but I created a whole new pcem folder fresh from the zip to do it. I just copied over my roms and pointed my new config to the same hard drive image.

Thank you for the emulator update.

Hello there, This new PCem Seems to work much better, I can emulate at PentiumMMX200 no problem and it stays at 100. But once in a rare while I get the odd stutter and drop, But much less frequent then version14 of PCem.

On my super huge host Windows computer I see PCem.exe only peak at around 6% of my CPU usage, MY computer more or less idles while running PCem (Win9x Desktop) and I would like to give it more power to make PCem work better. Is there an easy fix? Would setting something in the bios help like disable multi core if we can still do that?

Else wise great release I was waiting a while for. Thanks for the hard work!

CryptidWorks wrote: ↑Mon 27 May, 2019 12:22 am

SarahWalker wrote: ↑Sun 26 May, 2019 7:04 am Not a lot for the most part; the main CPU load is the CPU emulation, and that's strictly single threaded. The only reason to go past 4 cores is if you want to emulate a Voodoo 2 SLI setup, as the Voodoo emulation can use up to 3 threads per card.

This disappointing but understandable since it's hard to multi-thread emulation of components that were originally single-threaded.

On another note is there a plan to eventually let the problem use more of the CPU? On mine hang-ups and speed drops can happen even though I'm not even hitting 60% usage on any of the cores. Seems to be caused mostly by the emulator reading data from my optical drive so I'm tempted to try ripping my games to ISOs when I play them in PCEM.

On 2 seperate machines, I have noticed the optical drive will almost surely cause a slowdown. Making ISOs and putting it on the virtual drive is highly recommended.

I dunno why, but using an external virtual drive like PowerISO versus PCEM's gives me better performance, too.