PCem powering real hardware video
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darksabre76
- Posts: 69
- Joined: Tue 12 Sep, 2017 4:33 am
- Location: Seattle, WA, USA
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PCem powering real hardware video
I'm not the originator of this, but I saw this on Reddit and thought I'd share here. This person was able to rig things up to have PCem output over a real ISA graphics card: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jW1dGRhmsE
Re: PCem powering real hardware video
This is amazing, but shows it's currently impractical. Is that less than the 8-bit bus speed?
Also I hope it doesn't lead to IT pros coming here for industrial manufacturing/life support systems tech support like it's been happening for DOSBox.
Also I hope it doesn't lead to IT pros coming here for industrial manufacturing/life support systems tech support like it's been happening for DOSBox.
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darksabre76
- Posts: 69
- Joined: Tue 12 Sep, 2017 4:33 am
- Location: Seattle, WA, USA
- Contact:
Re: PCem powering real hardware video
This experiment seems relatively niche compared to what DOSBox might have run into, so I really hope it doesn't end up going that direction. Unless they pay for support and that ends up funding PCem more 
Re: PCem powering real hardware video
I believe DOSBox's issues are both from the name and functionality
- there's lots of pre-DOSBox references to "a DOS box" which typically meant any DOS prompt window in Windows 9x, so ancient technical support and advice will lead to that, and "dosemu" has been taken.
- DOSBox's designed to be (almost) as functional as a typical DOS prompt window from Win9x but with a focus on games, which throws vital calculations off, and with no support for networking protocols other than its own IPX-over-TCP.
At the time of this writing, PCem's for games and isn't very FPU precise either, so PCem in industrial use with the ISA output would be ill advised. There's already enough references to PCem as a virtual machine, and VMs are typically business oriented and have passthroughs and no speed adjustments nor scope for emulating old guest hardware since that would contradict their points of ease...
still though, it's amazing to see PCem power through an old motherboard's bus, even at a snail's pace. When the speed's figured out later, could be useful for MIDI out purposes, FM reverse engineering (ESFM and CQM), using real vintage joysticks, etc... and if there's ISA reading: bios dumping, timing dumping, and maybe exhaustive memory dumping
- there's lots of pre-DOSBox references to "a DOS box" which typically meant any DOS prompt window in Windows 9x, so ancient technical support and advice will lead to that, and "dosemu" has been taken.
- DOSBox's designed to be (almost) as functional as a typical DOS prompt window from Win9x but with a focus on games, which throws vital calculations off, and with no support for networking protocols other than its own IPX-over-TCP.
At the time of this writing, PCem's for games and isn't very FPU precise either, so PCem in industrial use with the ISA output would be ill advised. There's already enough references to PCem as a virtual machine, and VMs are typically business oriented and have passthroughs and no speed adjustments nor scope for emulating old guest hardware since that would contradict their points of ease...
still though, it's amazing to see PCem power through an old motherboard's bus, even at a snail's pace. When the speed's figured out later, could be useful for MIDI out purposes, FM reverse engineering (ESFM and CQM), using real vintage joysticks, etc... and if there's ISA reading: bios dumping, timing dumping, and maybe exhaustive memory dumping