Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Software Issues and Discussion => Topic started by: Angus on August 18, 2006, 11:53:37 AM
-
Hi,
I've been looking at emulation a bit recently, and as well as putting together a Shapeshifter/Fusion partition for Mac stuff, I want to try something similar with PCX/PC Task for the (stinking) pc.
I know what you're thinking...... :-)
Its going to be slow. Anyway, I want to try getting some really old games running, that hopefully won't be too worried about the speed of the emulation.
I gather I need a file called MSDOS.something or other. Is that something I can get from a modern pc, or possibly a Windows '98 startup floppy?
Thanks for any advice.
-
I don't know if Win98 works on PCTask, but Win95 does. However, it is *really* slow (4 hours to install, 30 Minutes to boot).
You should get a full set of installation disks of DOS 6.2 or Windows 3.1. This is quite usable on PC-Task.
PCX is nice to try once but for every day use PC-Task 4.4 is the only choice IMHO.
And of course you need a 68060 accelerator. Any slower processor does not allow to run anything useful on a PC emulator.
Bye,
Thomas
-
Hi,
To just boot into DOS you can just format a floppy on the PC and transfer the system to it, this is done by typing "sys a:" (if a: is your diskdrive, ofcourse). This does however not work on anything newer than Windows 98 (well, perhaps also with Windows ME?).
If you want to make a partition on the Amiga for use with PC-Task/PCX you need fdisk to partition it to a format the PC can understand.
-
Thomas wrote:
And of course you need a 68060 accelerator. Any slower processor does not allow to run anything useful on a PC emulator.
I don't fully agree on this, if it's just to play some really old DOS games a slower processor may work pretty well. Some EGA and CGA games runs pretty well on my 040/40.
But ofcourse, the faster processor the better.
-
I have a pc in the house, and I keep a 98 system floppy with that for making partitions and using ghost.exe. Would that floppy have the necessary files on it?
If it does I guess I could e-mail them to the Amiga, or would I need to format a 720k floppy for the Amiga using crossdos, and install them that way?
I'm obviously a bit confused about this. :)
-
Angus,
PCtask 4.4 is the best option
lot of games work there
for example I remember tested Wolfestein,monkey island and doom,legend of kyrandia and all worked
however I recommend at least a 040 and a gfx card for speed
btw, anyone here have tryed pctask under winuae?
Im asking now how fast and how good it can be there
under winuae
Pctask can be an alternative of DOSBOX for windows
who knows I will try that later
bye ,Laser
-
As there's some talk about PC-Task & stuff overhere I'ld like to budge in...
Is there anyone with a manual of PC-Task and/or a link on how to setup a partition on my Amiga for use with PC-Task? When I bought my original(!) PC-Task disks about two years ago from Softhut, there was no manual included. Not on disk and certainly not in any physical form. Not having a partition to run/install DOS-programs on really hinders the usability... ;-)
-
There's Pc-Task_guide in Aminet but I didn't check how good it is.
-
btw, anyone here have tryed pctask under winuae?
Err.. Yes! :-D
Had to give it a go, mainly because it's on my (real) A1200 and was transferred to WinUAE when I duplicated its setup on the PC.
Unfortunately, all I get is a visit from the Guru... That's using 68040 CPU emulation and JIT... I might try a few other settings to see what happens...
But you really don't want to run a PC emulation within an Amiga emulation!!! VMWare, QEmu or DOSBox make far better environments for running older PC stuff on a PC!
- Ali
EDIT: Doesn't seem to matter what I try, JIT on/off, 68020 through 68040, and either the interpretive or dynamic versions of PC Task, I get an illegal instruction Guru...
-
jiffy,
send me a mail and I will reply u with the manual of pctask 4.4.....aldozx@yahoo.es
inthesand,
vmware is very buggy under dos..games crash or not run at all...virtualpc is the same thing
of course DOSBOX is great and is the best....but I remember that PCtask was great and could play various dosgames on my a1200 040 /AGA...at descent speed
Imagine now on winuae with a fast 68k emulation and a gfx card...it can be very fast
btw,pctask here here is working under winuae....it boots perfect and using p96 uae gfx card but I can't initialize any emulation without a catweasel pci card...so
anyone can here send me a small pctask hardfile to initialize emulation under winuae?
bye,Laser
-
I am awed by the code writing ability of those emulator authors but wonder if the energy isn't misdirected now.
Very capable Mac and IBM-compatibles can be had cheaply,and for some years the monitors have been the same. So simply put the "other" computers under or over countertop and use a switchbox for the monitor.You can hardly hope to emulate a Pentium 3 800 mhz on the Amiga but you can buy one for $50 or less ,same with a nice 233-333 iMac.
Now what I think would be GREAT is an Amiga "emulator" running on a iMac PPC hitting the hardware! After all if linux is an alternative on an iMac ,and it is,I have ubuntu 6 on my $40 ex-university one.(Tehy cleaned the hard drive of even the MacOS before selling it,which is common these days.
If no legal Amiga OS4 can be licensed for such things,can a BSD/linux based Amiga emulation be used if one has/buys Amiga forever to get the legal ROM imsage? Or if one owns an older Amiga?I am imaging my A3000 and/or A1200 features and functions running on a machine with 10 times the processor speed and 20 times the memory without going broke.
Has it already been done? I DON"T mean something running as a MACOS task but installed from a cd as did ubuntu linux. I wonder how much faster and better UAE would run if it didn't have to run on top of Windows. Or do I misunderstand how it works?
-
Sorry for poor spelling,I should have checked it first.
-
You have amigaos booting directly in your pc with Amiga Forever. It uses the Amiga emulation on top of a live-cd linux distro called kx-light.
Similar to amithlon, but with custom chip emulation :-D
-
So gents,
I'm confused - when they say that PC-Task or PCX needs MSDOS or equivalent to run, is that basically the contents of a 98 system floppy?
I have one of these and the listing is below - thanks for any further advice.
ATTRIB.EXE 15252 23-Apr-99 10:22:00p ----rw-d
CD1.SYS 34262 26-Sep-96 5:13:04p ----rw-d
CD2.SYS 16504 21-Nov-96 1:54:00a ----rw-d
CD3.SYS 19984 13-Aug-96 1:03:02a ----rw-d
CD4.SYS 41302 11-May-98 8:01:00p ----rw-d
CHKDSK.EXE 28096 23-Apr-99 10:22:00p ----rw-d
DELTREE.EXE 19083 23-Apr-99 10:22:00p ----rw-d
DISPLAY.SYS 17175 23-Apr-99 10:22:00p ----rw-d
EDIT.COM 69902 23-Apr-99 10:22:00p ----rw-d
EDIT.HLP 10790 23-Apr-99 10:22:00p ----rw-d
EXTRACT.EXE 93242 23-Apr-99 10:22:00p ----rw-d
FDISK.EXE 63916 23-Apr-99 10:22:00p ----rw-d
FIND.EXE 6658 23-Apr-99 10:22:00p ----rw-d
FORMAT.COM 49575 23-Apr-99 10:22:00p ----rw-d
HIMEM.SYS 33191 23-Apr-99 10:22:00p ----rw-d
IEXTRACT.EXE 17655 23-Apr-99 10:22:00p ----rw-d
LABEL.EXE 9324 23-Apr-99 10:22:00p ----rw-d
MEM.EXE 32146 23-Apr-99 10:22:00p ----rw-d
MOVE.EXE 27299 23-Apr-99 10:22:00p ----rw-d
MSCDEX.EXE 25473 23-Apr-99 10:22:00p ----rw-d
SCANDISK.EXE 143818 23-Apr-99 10:22:00p ----rw-d
SCANDISK.INI 7329 23-Apr-99 10:22:00p ----rw-d
SCANREG.EXE 165502 23-Apr-99 10:22:00p ----rw-d
SMARTDRV.EXE 45379 23-Apr-99 10:22:00p ----rw-d
SYS.COM 18967 23-Apr-99 10:22:00p ----rw-d
XCOPY.EXE 3878 23-Apr-99 10:22:00p ----rw-d
XCOPY32.EXE 3878 23-Apr-99 10:22:00p ----rw-d
XCOPY32.MOD 41472 23-Apr-99 10:22:00p ----rw-d
-
I am awed by the code writing ability of those emulator authors but wonder if the energy isn't misdirected now.
Very capable Mac and IBM-compatibles can be had cheaply,and for some years the monitors have been the same. So simply put the "other" computers under or over countertop and use a switchbox for the monitor.You can hardly hope to emulate a Pentium 3 800 mhz on the Amiga but you can buy one for $50 or less ,same with a nice 233-333 iMac.
Indeed a second machine is very cheap, but sometimes emulation is better choise, especially for some obscure machines like the Atari ST. I used to have Atari MegaSTE for some time and it was rubbish. It came with Black&White monitor on which the games didn't work, because they needed color monitor, the hard disk was small (easily solvable), but the transfer of files to it was pain. I am glad that I got rid of it pretty fast. Now with emulation I simply download Atari files to my Amiga hard disk, and run them under Hatari, plus when I need to take screenshot, I simply grab the window/screen contents. I also used to have PC before, but it was mostly sitting idle, wasting electricity, or leeching files off edonkey, while for some games it's better under emulation, sharing the same monitor, hard drive, Joystick, Audio Speakers and desktop, where all Amiga stuff is located.
Pros are that I don't need monitor/Keyboard/Joystick/Audio Speakers switch/es, I simply press Amiga+M and have the Atari or PC, or the others computers experience, if they aren't on Windows in the Workbench. Cons are that the current highend Amigas aren't that fast so you can't expect that fast emulated machines as well, but for most previous to 1991th year retroplatforms the A1 is okay.
-
by Angus on 2006/8/19 12:14:26
So gents,
I'm confused - when they say that PC-Task or PCX needs MSDOS or equivalent to run, is that basically the contents of a 98 system floppy?
I used to have DRDOS hardfile, downloaded for free from their site, which worked fine under both emulators. Can't remember how I built it, that was 6 years ago.
But check This site (http://people.freenet.de/selco/pcemulator.htm). The remember the author sent me a convertion tool, but I am afraid that I lost it somewhere.
-
I wrote that manual on Aminet (see docs/help/PC-Task_Guide.lha) and I wrote a FAQ.
PC Task and PCx work ideally with MS DOS or DR DOS (which is downloadable), although you need a 1.44MB floppy drive, although 720K drive will work it requires more fiddling to install DOS.
A 98 floppy will also work but has less MS DOS commands and files than previous dos'.
-
I wrote that manual on Aminet (see docs/help/PC-Task_Guide.lha) and I wrote a FAQ.
PC Task and PCx work ideally with MS DOS or DR DOS (which is downloadable), although you need a 1.44MB floppy drive, although 720K drive will work it requires more fiddling to install DOS.
----------------------------------------------------------
I saw your document, but I had to edit the start of the amigaguide file for it to open on my system (OS3.9) It said something about "Not enough data".
I couldn't find much about actually getting things set-up, but that may be me being dozy.
I have copied most of MSDOS 6 on to a 720k floppy, but PC-Task complains that the floppy is not bootable.
Any advice? :)
-
Angus,
you have copied all dos files on that disk but
your disk not works ob pctask cause is not booteable
make this:
insert the original DOS 6.22 disk1 on a pc
when a requester popus to install DOS press F7 to install DOS in a single floppy disk
insert then your 720 floppy disk and DOS will be installed on that disk..that's all..then use that disk on PCtask
bye, Laser
-
I may have not understood.
I rebooted the pc with the MSDOS 6.2 floppy inserted.
I pushed F7.
It made a some beeps.
Nothing else.
If I held F7 down continuously it "broke the startup-sequence" and said something about inserting the disk with the batch file. :-/
Have I misunderstood?
Thanks for your help.
-
Angus,
I will explain agin
insert your original dos 6.22 disk on your pc
wait before ends to boot..don't push any key
When the installation requester popus and asks what to do..check down on the screen..you will see that if you press F7 you can install dos on a single disk...so press F7 and check for instructions
or also you can make this:
insert your original dos6.22 disk and when finished booting
press F3 to exit the insstallatiion process
then type:
format a: /s
now insert your 720k floppy and press enter
when finished you will have a booteable 720 floopy to use on pctask
bye
-
I don't know what's going wrong then. :(
If I let the MSDOS6.2 disk boot up (after restarting the pc) I just end up with a DOS prompt. There are no requesters, and the F keys don't do anything. There is some text about 2 devices being called Banana unit 1 and Banana Unit 2 which I have seen before on other boot disks.
I tried typing
"Format A:/S"
But the DOS message was
"Formatting 1.44M floppy"
then it failed on my 720K disk.
I am wondering if the pc supports the 720K format.
I got the MSDOS 6.2 disk image from here:
http://www.bootdisk.com/
-
Angus,
DOS 6.22 support 720 disks
maybe the disk that you have it's not an original 6.22 installation disk
Get an original disk using emule ..there are lot of ppl that share DOS disks
but first try again using now this command:
format a: /F:720 /s
this should work
bye
-
but first try again using now this command:
format a: /F:720 /s
this should work
------------------------------------------------------
And you are absolutely correct - it worked a treat. :)
Thank you very much. I will try and make a safe note of this useful info.
P.S.
Did you get my message? :)
-
I suppose it's a bit late now, but FreeDOS (http://www.freedos.org/) would also have been worth a look. (Not that the way it's distributed is 720k-tiny, but...)
MSDOS.SYS and IO.SYS -- or IBMDOS.SYS and IBMBIO.SYS on PC-DOS -- compose the DOS 'operating system,' together with the COMMAND.COM shell and miscellaneous non-resident/non-embedded drivers and utilities (HIMEM.SYS, XCOPY.EXE, FDISK.COM, etc).
The SYS.COM utility, or FORMAT with the /S option (IIRC, at least pre-Win9x versions of FORMAT do depend on SYS.COM being present for the /S switch to work):
1. Writes the boot block, and
2. Copies the two system 'drivers' (*DOS.SYS, *IO.SYS) to the [top of the?] root directory entry and sets the +S attribute on them.
Note that I have no clue if the S ('System') attribute differs from the H ('Hidden') attribute in any other meaningful way, but the files do need to be set +S for the boot block to load them.
This disassembly of a DOS boot sector (http://ata-atapi.com/hiwdos.htm) might be handy for understanding the process. I was not aware that the two system files had to be the first entries in the listing, but it makes sense in retrospect -- a disk that was SYS'd once will likely always have those blocks held reserved by the two special .SYS files, so a second while a disk that was filled without ever being SYS'd will often give you a "No room for operating system." error if you try later.
Perhaps they invented the +S attribute in anticipation of making the boot block smarter later?