v17 released!

[SarahWalker]

PCem v17 is now available. Changes since v16 :

• New machines added - Amstrad PC5086, Compaq Deskpro, Samsung SPC-6033P, Samsung SPC-6000A, Intel VS440FX, Gigabyte GA-686BX
• New graphics cards added - 3DFX Voodoo Banshee, 3DFX Voodoo 3 2000, 3DFX Voodoo 3 3000, Creative 3D Blaster Banshee, Kasan Hangulmadang-16, Trident TVGA9000B
• New CPUs - Pentium Pro, Pentium II, Celeron, Cyrix III
• VHD disc image support
• Numerous bug fixes
• A few other bits and pieces

[omarsis81]

Jesus Christ! I knew the Voodoo3 / Banshee was going to be released in v17 but the PPro / Pentium II took me by surprise!
I believe this was the best release so far!
I take this opportunity to thank once again Sarah Walker for this huge effort in coding

[SarahWalker]

Updated downloads to include mda.rom. One of these days I'll get it in first time without forgetting.

[ZoltanTheHun]

Thank you Sarah! This is like a christmas present to me. I was not expecting so many new features. Kudos on the excellent delivery.

[Orchidsworn]

Nice now emulators can fake a machine better than the first family computer my family could finally afford it was a PII 350 with some integrated 4mb card. Could not even 3d Diablo II had a 4.3 gb harddrive that died about 6 months in and was replaced with a 6.4gb because that was the smallest ones Gateway had at the time... oh those where the days.

So excited really need to get me a new computer now.

[mr486nz]

Amazing! Thank you Sarah

[Xanarki]

Thanks to Sarah and all the others that helped with v17. I wasn't expecting PII to show up, but here it is. When I build a new PC next year, I'll be eager to try it out.

Also, and maybe it's all in my head or maybe I did something bizarre to my host PC during the v16 to v17 gap...but previously, I was only able to hit consistent 100% on the Intel Pentium 166. But now, I'm hitting consistent 100% on Pentium 200. Despite the small margin it's pretty exciting, and if some tweaks were involved with overall performance, thanks!

[menobug]

Thanks to Sarah and all the others that helped with v17. I wasn't expecting PII to show up, but here it is. When I build a new PC next year, I'll be eager to try it out.

Also, and maybe it's all in my head or maybe I did something bizarre to my host PC during the v16 to v17 gap...but previously, I was only able to hit consistent 100% on the Intel Pentium 166. But now, I'm hitting consistent 100% on Pentium 200. Despite the small margin it's pretty exciting, and if some tweaks were involved with overall performance, thanks!

Same here. 100% with Pentium 166 (bofore v17?) And now I have VERY good performance with the following tactic:

I found out that this is completely game dependent. Depending on how much CPU and GPU a game uses and how demanding the game is I take a stronger CPU like "Mobile Pentium MMX 300" and then, when emulation speed is too slow I crank it down to P200, P166, .... so games run better (on a constant 100%). Resulting CPU is different for many games for me. But the result looks great.

And yes: Thank you Sarah. Very good work. Sorry for many (stupid) posts and questions here but I found this emulator a few weeks ago and I am overwhelmed and cannot stop using and playing around with it.

[tk421]

Thank you Sarah.

I am amazed by v17 of PCem. Pentium 2 emulation is very fast, and the Voodoo 3 is impressive. I have been testing this version of PCem in an XP VM on VMware, so this is pretty good.

I can confirm that results depend on which game is being run through PCem.

I have quite a bit more testing to do, but so far this is probably the best version of PCem, and the best emulation or virtualization platform ever made.

Thank you!

[omarsis81]

SarahWalker: what did you take most time/effort to code? Pentium II and the chipset or the Voodoo3/Banshee?

[SarahWalker]

V3/Banshee easily.

[resle]

Thanks to Sarah and all the others that helped with v17. I wasn't expecting PII to show up, but here it is. When I build a new PC next year, I'll be eager to try it out.

Also, and maybe it's all in my head or maybe I did something bizarre to my host PC during the v16 to v17 gap...but previously, I was only able to hit consistent 100% on the Intel Pentium 166. But now, I'm hitting consistent 100% on Pentium 200. Despite the small margin it's pretty exciting, and if some tweaks were involved with overall performance, thanks!

Same here. 100% with Pentium 166 (bofore v17?)

Stable 100% on a Pentium II 300, but I have to say I only use very old dos games (all the way to 1995), Windows 95 itself, and 3DStudio Max 3.0 (dos).
Very surprising, as my machine is not very good at single threaded performance (Threadripper 2990WX).

Cheers to that.

[ecksemmess]

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

[omarsis81]

I was highly surprised by this release too! Sarah should be awarded the Order of the British Empire

[dreamer]

Congratulations on the release! I am not following the project very closely, but it's a happy moment when it makes a big step forward. Lovely <3

[tk421]

I was highly surprised by this release too! Sarah should be awarded the Order of the British Empire

I agree. Version 17 of PCem is an amazing achievement. I am still testing the program but so far I am very impressed with how amazing PCem v17 really is. Sarah should indeed be awarded the Order of the British Empire.

Thank you!

[walterg74]

Updated downloads to include mda.rom. One of these days I'll get it in first time without forgetting.

LOL... I think we can all overlook that insignificance, opposed to the huge thing this wonder is...

[walterg74]

Hi Sarah,

Readme files are important, right...? It's what users are sent to read before asking...

Would it be of interest to report some typos/errors on the main readme file, or nobody cares? What about the GUI itself?


Cheers!

[SarahWalker]

Feel free.

[walterg74]

Feel free.

Ok, so it's just a few small items:

README FILE
----------------
Amstrad PC1512 [5]
- Readme states one of the ROM files as pc1512/40044.v2 when it is in fact pc1512/40044.v1

IBM AT
- Readme states ROM files are:
ibmat/at111585.0
ibmat/at111585.1

should state:
ibmat/62x0820.u27
ibmat/62x0821.u47

Epson PC AX2e
- Readme states ROM files are:
epson_pcax2e/EVAX
epson_pcax2e/ODAX

should state:
epson_pcax2e/EVAXE
epson_pcax2e/ODAXE

IBM PS/1 Model 2011 [5]
- Readme states ROM folder is:
ibmps1/f80000.bin

should state:
ibmps1es/f80000.bin

Samsung SPC-4620P
- Readme states:

spc4620p/31005h.u8
spc4620p/31005h.u10
spc4620p/svb6120a_font.rom
spc4620p/31005h.u8
spc4620p/31005h.u10

(two files are repeated)

IBM PS/2 Model 70 (type 4) [3]
- Readme file states:

ibmps2_m70_type3/70-a_even.bin
ibmps2_m70_type3/70-a_odd.bin

seems to be repeating previous model, should state:

ibmps2_m70_type4/70-b_even.bin
ibmps2_m70_type4/70-b_odd.bin

Intel Premiere/PCI (Batman's Revenge)
- Readme states:

revenge/1009af2_.bi0

should be:

revenge/1009af2_.bio (o instead of 0)

Intel Advanced/EV (Endeavor) [4]
- Readme states:

endeavor/1006cb0_.bi0

should be:

endeavor/1006cb0_.bio (o instead of 0)

Trident TGUI9400CXi 1MB - 2MB VRAM
- Readme states:

9440.vbi

seems to repeat previous model, should be:

9400CXI.vbi


MDA (1981) 80x25 monochrome text (none)
- Not sure about this one, but shows "(none)" as file required, but you do need mda.rom and in fact some don't work without it? (and it's what someday you will get right? )


GUI (see screenshots)
--------------------------
- Toshiba T1200 machine is 8086 based, but labeled as 8088

- Acermate 386SX/25N listed in readme but GUI just says "Acer" (not sure if intended or would look "nicer" as Acermate)

- IBM PS/1 Model 2121 "model" not capitalized (I know, that's just OCD, but since other ones are capitalized... )

PCem_8086_Typo.PNG (178.85 KiB) Viewed 33099 times

PCem_IBM_Capital_Acer_Name.PNG (201.65 KiB) Viewed 33099 times

[CryptidWorks]

This was a nice Christmas surprise checking back and seeing a big update dropped so soon.

I'll have to test this and see if it improves on performance and some of the bugs I've been running into like quicktime content causing a resource leak on faster emulated CPUs. Wonder if my 3600X could handle stepping up to a Voodoo 3.

[CryptidWorks]

Found a small issue

Something with the way PCEM17 renders has broken Afterburner's ability to screencap it when it worked in all previous builds

[CryptidWorks]

A Pentium II 233Mhz and Voodoo 3 3000 actually work pretty damn good on my 3600X. I used Blood II to really push it and it and was maintaining close to 100% speed while hitting 76FPS as expected.

The mouse input still feels weird though, am I missing a setting to smooth out the mouse capture and movement?

[CryptidWorks]

Having used this for a while now I can say that Windows 98 runs a lot more stable with all the weird glitches and visual problems that could happen in previous versions ironed out. I even got it to launch the explorer on the CosmiCorp 1000 Best Windows Games disc without issues when that used to completely lock up the OS

[JosepMa]

Re: mouse: I ended tweaking the mouse acceleration options in windows 98 to the minimum.

I am assuming that the problems are currently a double-acceleration caused from the real OS + emulated OS.
Also, I am not sure if it is correctly compensating for high-dpi or fullscreen. (Never checked).

Back when we had the Allegro UI, I did some patches for mouse using Direct Input 8. It seemed to work better, but that doesn't apply now that we use wxwidgets.

[CryptidWorks]

Re: mouse: I ended tweaking the mouse acceleration options in windows 98 to the minimum.

I am assuming that the problems are currently a double-acceleration caused from the real OS + emulated OS.
Also, I am not sure if it is correctly compensating for high-dpi or fullscreen. (Never checked).

Back when we had the Allegro UI, I did some patches for mouse using Direct Input 8. It seemed to work better, but that doesn't apply now that we use wxwidgets.

Yeah, after leilei directed me to that option I ended turning mouse speed completely down to zero in the PCEM machine and it helped a lot.

[Slo2020]

When can we expect PCem v18?

[SarahWalker]

No idea.

[tk421]

v17 offers so much for people using modern computers that it is as close to perfection as anyone could hope to see on a PC.

I have recently begun a new round of PCem testing. I am very impressed with the program's ability to run not only games, but other programs like Visual Studio 6.0. System crashes do not seem to be an issue with v17, but more testing is needed.

I do not know if PCem can be used for non-gaming related purposes, but so far it is doing very well. I find that v17 restores much of the reliability and dependability that we came to expect from Windows 95/98 and PCs of that era. The number of blue screens I have had is very low and system speed seems to be reliable. I think we all miss the days before Turbo Boost.

v17 has successfully added a viable Pentium II and Voodoo 3 capability to PCem. For Windows 98 this is an important, game-changing development. Thank you Sarah for this amazing achievement.

I noticed a few bugs so far, but they are very small and in the end they do not impact the user experience.

The one bug that is easy to spot is when booting a Pentium II 350. On boot the BIOS will read a Pentium II 333. The emulated machine, once ready for use, corrects this to a PII 350. Apart from this 333 Mhz bug that only shows on boot, v17 is perfect.

Thank you Sarah for giving us such an amazing program. I could not do these things on a PC before PCem.

tk421

[Starfox]

Hi,

respect Version 17 is very good with new Graphic Cards.

The Bug with Wing Commander Prophecy stuttering is gone very fine

I have seen one Bug that´s present with the new Voodoo Banshee (reference), Windows 98 hangs up on Reboot at my Configuration (Super 7 FIC VA-503 , Pentium MMX 266MHZ, 256MB Ram, Windows 98 SE)

Only for reporting it not dramaticly

Great Work for PCEM V17