Emulating p3 with winxp?

[evil nemesis]

What's the best setting for emulating p3 with windows xp support? Thanks.

[ppgrainbow]

I don't think that it's possible to emulate a Pentium III under PCem. As far as I know, PCem doesn't have full Pentium II support at this time. :\

If you want Windows XP support, I suggest using a Type 2 Virtualiser such as VMware Workstation Player/Pro or VirtualBox.

[Arjen42]

What games do you want to play? There might be alternatives.

[tk421]

PCem v17 is really good so if your game can run on a Pentium II I recommend it without hesitation.

Pentium II emulation is top notch. I am not yet able to run all of my programs on the P2 450, but Jedi Knight and Episode 1 Racer run just fine in-game. Video cutscenes and in-game menus are a different story, but the gameplay is impressive given the all core turbo speed of my i7 9750h is only 4 Ghz.

For games that need a Pentium 3 or Pentium 4 I recommend either VMware or Virtualbox. Both run XP without much fuss and can work with many of the games from that era. It is almost like having an XP PC on your desk.

If your game does not work on XP in VMware, then you can try Win7. I have at least 3 games working that way, namely the early Star Wars Battlefront games and Empire at War.

If you still have your game CDs, then you should be able to get your games working using these methods.

I have yet to try games like Dominion Wars on XP through PCem. I did try NHL 2000 on such a configuration and it did not work.

One game that does not work well in VMware, let alone Virtualbox, is Rome Total War. I recommend Steam for that game, although I have yet to be able to use my old MOD files with the game through Steam. Specifically, the in-game music mod I wrote for my CD version of RTW does not work through Steam, yet it ran just fine on my old XP and 7 PCs using my trusty old CD-ROM drive.

There are real alternatives for running P3 and P4 games on modern hardware, namely VMware, virtualbox or even Steam.

[gen_angry]

Truthfully, for P4 level 'xp emulation' - you're better off getting yourself an actual Pentium 4 S478/LGA775 rig for dirt cheap. I've seen them as low as $20 CAD for a board, CPU, and RAM on ebay. Throw in a cheap $10 Geforce 6200, visit a computer recyclers for a cheap/free HD + case + PSU and you've got something that's usable for a good chunk of early XP games that just don't have Vista+ support. Hell, your local recyclers may even have a P4/early Core2-era computer already that they haven't torn up yet. They're everywhere.

VMware, while very good software, it's main focus isn't retro computing. Neither is VirtualBox. While you can get some games working - you'll often find quirks here and there that just doesn't manifest on real hardware.

Anyways, on topic for the OP - it's very unlikely that Pentium III support will ever be fully added. Sure one could likely just copy/paste the P2 code and make go up to '1ghz' but it won't be a Pentium III in any regards - and likely struggle to idle at 100% speed much less run anything at all. Maybe in 10 years if we're all still alive.

[leilei]

Practically speaking, the SSE games that'd be requiring a minimum P3/AthlonXP would be late 2005 stuff also requiring GPUs far beyond feasible emulation (and also at this time, pixel shader 2 was starting to be seen as obsolete by some big developers already as nVidia pushes ps_30 hard)...

[Arjen42]

How many games from around 2005 run just fine on Windows 10?

[leilei]

As-is? Not many, as that's when CD protection started to peak.

[ruben_balea]

I'm using VMware Player 16 (it's free for personal use) to run Windows XP, with the emulated accelerated graphics (without PCI passthrough or the like) some Direct X based games run fine, I tried Age of Empires 1 & The Rise of Rome, Age of Empires 2 & The Conquerors, Commandos Behind the Enemy Lines and Beyond the Call of Duty, Command & Conquer Red Alert 2 & Yuri's Revenge. I haven't tried others because I have the Steam and/or GOG versions that work on Windows 10.

For some reason VMware Player 16 has no option to keep the mouse locked inside the window, you have to edit the vitual machine configuration file.
It's a .vmx file with the name of the virtual machine located wherever you have selected when creating that virtual machine, normally all the files for a virtual machine will be in the same directory, so if you don't remember you just have to look in the virtual machine settings "Hardware" tab where the hard disk file is saved.

Then, at the end of that vmx file and with the virtual machine powered off, add those two lines:

Code: Select all

vmmouse.present = FALSE
mouse.vusb.enable = "FALSE"

Exactly as shown above, in one parameter FALSE does not have quotes and in the other it does, they really made it complicated...
Also for that trick to work you have to click inside the virtual machine already during the Windows XP boot screen, to lock the mouse at least once before the welcome screen appears, even if you release it immediately afterwards with Control+Alt
Otherwise the mouse will not respond at all and you will have to shut down the virtual machine from the Windows XP Start menu (using the keyboard!) and try again

[Orchidsworn]

I have found most games run just fine in Windows 10 from even as early as 2003 and beyond. At least the games I have. Hell once you get to even 2000 there are few I have trouble with mostly 16 bit installers being a problem and the few that still existed often have work arounds.

[ruben_balea]

I'm using VMware Player 16 (it's free for personal use) to run Windows XP, with the emulated accelerated graphics (without PCI passthrough or the like) some Direct X based games run fine, I tried Age of Empires 1 & The Rise of Rome, Age of Empires 2 & The Conquerors, Commandos Behind the Enemy Lines and Beyond the Call of Duty, Command & Conquer Red Alert 2 & Yuri's Revenge. I haven't tried others because I have the Steam and/or GOG versions that work on Windows 10.

Update: I think Age of Empires III is the most graphically demanding game I have from about 15-20 years ago, and it works 100% fine in VMware with a resolution of 1600x1200x32 and all settings enabled and at maximum levels, while on a computer with an Athlon XP 2000+ CPU, 2GB of RAM and a Radeon HD 2600 Pro 512 MB AGP graphics card I had to disable/set to minimum all water effects and tweak some other settings to make the game playable at 1920x1080x32

For some reason VMware Player 16 has no option to keep the mouse locked inside the window, you have to edit the vitual machine configuration file.
It's a .vmx file with the name of the virtual machine located wherever you have selected when creating that virtual machine, normally all the files for a virtual machine will be in the same directory, so if you don't remember you just have to look in the virtual machine settings "Hardware" tab where the hard disk file is saved.

Then, at the end of that vmx file and with the virtual machine powered off, add those two lines:

Code: Select all

vmmouse.present = FALSE
mouse.vusb.enable = "FALSE"

Exactly as shown above, in one parameter FALSE does not have quotes and in the other it does, they really made it complicated...
Also for that trick to work you have to click inside the virtual machine already during the Windows XP boot screen, to lock the mouse at least once before the welcome screen appears, even if you release it immediately afterwards with Control+Alt
Otherwise the mouse will not respond at all and you will have to shut down the virtual machine from the Windows XP Start menu (using the keyboard!) and try again