1. Networking!
Yeah. This old chestnut. I've noticed the unofficial builds have added it, but I found their implementations severely lacking (or at least, I never got it working). I'd reckon an NE2000 ISA would be a good starting point for a NIC because it's pretty universal and should work anywhere. Something PCI too, like Realtek 8029 because again it's so ubiquitous and should have good support in many OSes. In terms of the 'network' side, I think bridging the NIC to a real network is a good starting point, as is a 'private' LAN. That way multple VMs could communicate in their own little bubble. Could play around with classic networking stuff (Banyan Vines?!) with a server/client. For a networking geek like me, that'd be all sorts of fun.
2. Config loading
Mentioned in another thread. It'd be nice to offer the capability to load a config at startup from a list, which makes launching VMs a lot faster.
3. Time/date offsets
An option to offset the time/date at startup. For example, set it to -20 years (yes, years), and the system clock in the VM is always set to 20 years earlier than the current time. For old betas, time bombed software, and other bits of oddness (or purists like me who want a total timewarp for their virtual PC - don't ask why, I just think it'd be neat!), it could prove very useful. It may also be nice to be able to nail the start time to something specific so every time the VM starts it's set to a a specific date.
4. Display disk activity at the bottom of the window.
Add some icons, buttons, lights, whatever, to the bottom edge of the window in a status bar which could flicker away so you can see what the VM is up to. Could even add a cylinder display for the HDD, much like PCs of old had!
5. Preset hard disk sizes when creating disk images.
Just a dropdown, select some pre-sized disks of 'sane' sizes that aren't odd geometry. I think I've encountered issues where I've randomly picked a number of cynlinders, but since I've been picking actual disk geometry from real disks (I find photos of old hard disks on eBay and use their geometry), I've had much better performance and behaviour of disks. Could just be fluke, but I found PCem V11 was better when I started doing that. It'd also be neat to set a custom name for the disk drive. Who wouldn't like a KingDaveRa-HDD100?!
I still think PCem is one of the best out there. If I can manage to set the dev toolchain up I might try and have a whack at some of these myself. Unfortunately, they'd be crude hacks, as a programmer I am not!
Thanks in advance
