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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Software Issues and Discussion => Topic started by: foleyjo on April 15, 2011, 10:35:15 AM
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Just been going through some software on my Amiga and deciding what to keep and what to delete.
Came to PC Task 4 and thought I would give it one last try and to my surprise I got police quest 4 to start at a playable speed.
So I thought I would play around some more but couldn't work out a couple of things.
The main one being is it possible to emulate a sound card on an A1200 or do I need to use the PC internal speaker option.
I tried to download the guide on Aminet but it appears to be a dead link.
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Try again, it's not dead. It's only one mirror which does not work. To prevent sporadic file-not-found messages change mirror from random to one that works.
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The fact there was never a PPC specific version of PC-Task, or another x86 emulator, ultimately forced me into using a 486SX PC.
Funny how such big changes in life hinge on the lack of update by some small company for one small little application.
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Just been going through some software on my Amiga and deciding what to keep and what to delete.
Came to PC Task 4 and thought I would give it one last try and to my surprise I got police quest 4 to start at a playable speed.
So I thought I would play around some more but couldn't work out a couple of things.
The main one being is it possible to emulate a sound card on an A1200 or do I need to use the PC internal speaker option.
I tried to download the guide on Aminet but it appears to be a dead link.
PCtask haven't any sound emulation
but
PCX have pc speaker emulation.....I remember I tried the game lure of the tempest and worked with sound at real speed
also it seems PCX have soundblaster emulation but I tried and never worked...maybe need to install soundblaster dos drivers
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The fact there was never a PPC specific version of PC-Task, or another x86 emulator, ultimately forced me into using a 486SX PC.
Funny how such big changes in life hinge on the lack of update by some small company for one small little application.
you do have bochs x86 emulator for ppc, but it was probably not available back when you had to use a 486sx.
Bochs works, but not easy to get working, and not fast.
Its really a shame that PC-Task didnt continue to get developed. PC task was fast, considerering the hardware it ran on. I think a PPC version would have been multiple times faster than bochs is today.
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LaserBack - Was the full version of PCx released as freeware and if so where can I download it?
I can only find a demo and it seems to have too many limitations.
How does it compare to PC-Task and can I use the same hardfiles?
Thomas - You were right. I tried again and it downloaded fine
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Came to PC Task 4 and thought I would give it one last try and to my surprise I got police quest 4 to start at a playable speed.
So I thought I would play around some more but couldn't work out a couple of things.
The main one being is it possible to emulate a sound card on an A1200 or do I need to use the PC internal speaker option.
From what I remember, PCtask emulates (though I only use 4, not 4.4) the beeper, PCX does soundblaster. There are also several Mac classic emulators on http://macintoshgarden.org
that may be of some help. I use SoftPC 3.1 under shapeshifter.
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Well, for old pc games ScummVM is a lot better (I was shocked by its speed, tbh), and there are 68k and ppc compiles for that. Also DOSbox is notably faster, especially on PPC/OS4. That said, playing around with both PC-Task (isnt it freeware these days?) and PCx can be really fun! (if youre into that sort of thing)
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Dosbox wouldn't work for me as it uses the sdl.library
The adventure games that I was trying to play don't appear to work on the 68k version of scummVM
PC-Task 4 is free now but still has no soundblaster emulation. Just the annoying beeps
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Am I missing something? is it a PPC machine you have?
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Just a A1200 with 060
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LaserBack - Was the full version of PCx released as freeware and if so where can I download it?
I can only find a demo and it seems to have too many limitations.
How does it compare to PC-Task and can I use the same hardfiles?
look at eab file server
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I got PCTask (2.2 I think - if there ever was such a beast!) so I could play Mechwarrior (the original, programmed by Dynamix and published by Activision). I loooooved me some Battletech and the idea of a 'mech sim was exciting.
I got a copy of MW and fired up PC-Task on my AdSpeed powered A500. Whoa boy, disappointing doesn't even begin to tell the tale. First, I thought there was something wrong. After I'd fired up DOS and started the game, the screen went blank and my Amiga was just making this DEERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR noise. I killed PCTask and tried again. Same thing. Tried a third time and said "Okay, maybe it's taking a while to load." so I grabbed a shower and when I came back - ta-da! The main screen! Woo! So I started trying to move around the menu and could see the pixels slowly redraw as I highlighted each menu item to try to get to "new game".
Finally I got to it and clicked start. It was agonizingly slow. Each screen redraw was like watching Vista render. Once I'd slogged through the process of getting a mission I was ready to hit planetside...the loading took so long I was able to grab a bite to eat. When I came back the cockpit screen was there and the terrain outside consisted of a green sky and an orange plane. I could see something moving in the distance, like it was coming closer...but it turned out to be the game drawing polygons for distant terrain features.
I let it go for another hour, I read, watched some TV, came back and pressed a control and watched it draw one scanline at a time as it moved everything over one degree of FOV.
The real pisser was, I could've gotten a used '386 with 2mb RAM and a 256k EGA card capable of handling the game for what I paid for it and PCTask! x-(
I don't blame PCTask though, or Mechwarrior, or my Amiga (or DOS or Bill Gates or any other hair-brained thing). It was a high poly-count game (for the day) running on wholly emulated hardware on a low-CPU power machine: I was simply asking too much of the entire assembly of hardware and software. Looking back, had my needs been word processing, an accounting or spreadsheet app or text-based adventure game or something like that, PCTask would've been quite adequate.
I sold it with my A500 to finance the purchase of my A1200 which before I got rid of it had a 28mhz 030 and 4mb Fast RAM. I wonder what the performance would've been like under those circumstances? I almost (almost!) wish I'd kept up with the Amiga and run ShapeShifter for mac emulation; the software library (games!) for the Mac was pretty rich, too.
At the time didn't Jim Drew of Utilities Unlimited (which promised various hardware-only emulation solutions including as-fast-as-native '486 and Mac emulation) threaten legal action against the SS guys because (in his assessment) if it worked that well it must've been because they stole UU's source code and hacked it together? Or something like that? I remember Drama, but it's been close to 20 years ago now...
EDIT:
Well, here's Jim Drew telling his side of the story... (http://c64preservation.com/dp.php?pg=jimdrew1)
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Ive used PC-Task a bit on my amithlon box over the years, and it's surprisingly fast with a little grunt behind it. I actually used it for some work quite comfortably when Amithlon/os3.9 was my only computer, so it was pretty handy for me. I also spent a lot of time playing Wing Commander 2 and Magic Carpet with it. In my opinion it really is an impressive emulator, especially for the time it was developed. Not only is it very fast relative to the hardware its running on, but seems to do its job vey nicely.
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PCtask haven't any sound emulation
but
PCX have pc speaker emulation.....I remember I tried the game lure of the tempest and worked with sound at real speed
also it seems PCX have soundblaster emulation but I tried and never worked...maybe need to install soundblaster dos drivers
PCX also emulates up to a Pentium and PC-TASK only up to a 486. And PCX could use different bios.
On paper PCX can be seen as better, but PC-task is far better than PCX in practice IMHO
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PCX also emulates up to a Pentium and PC-TASK only up to a 486. And PCX could use different bios.
On paper PCX can be seen as better, but PC-task is far better than PCX in practice IMHO
PCX doesn't implement protected mode, so you can't run any 32 bit software.
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I think Police Quest 4 needs protected mode so it will have to be PC-Task.
I guess I have 2 options either play it on a PC or play it with annoying beeps and no speach.
Unless I can work out how to get shapeshifter to run properly. I got into the OS but can't do much else
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I could see something moving in the distance, like it was coming closer...but it turned out to be the game drawing polygons for distant terrain features.
:roflmao: