MS DOS Emulation

[kvasir]

Been reading this thread for a few minutes, being an extensive user of PC-Task 4.4, I figured I'd throw my 2 cents in... I've been impressed by the speed of the ms-dos emulation, even with graphics. Most messydos stuff doesn't go over 320x200, though. I've also used it to record ms-dos stuff to vhs cassettes. (Nice being able to jack a "vga" machine to my NTSC TV) I most recently found it usefull when I found an old copy of Descent at a thrift shop, and had to use a ms-dos patch to get the files up to the Amiga versions requirements. Then I did a search on Aminet and found an Amiga version of the same patch... Anyway, I have 2 ms-dos partitions set up, one with windows3.1, and windows95 on the other. (3.1 boots alot faster, and all my DOS stuff is in there) The only problems I've had that I can think of are:

Mounting both win3.1 and win95 partitions as C: and D: apparently, windows detects a boot partition installed on D:, and rewrites the RDB. (I'm guessing here) When I do this, the D: drive is no longer bootable.

Copytoa and Copytoi commands don't like windows 95

pctcdrom.sys (for installing cd-roms on the emulator) is MS-Dos based, and some win95 cds won't work right. Plus my old scsi cd-rom used with a dataflyer scsi card (known bug with the dataflyer) didn't work. Fixed the latter with an IDE drive and a 4xeide card on my 1200.

pctmouse.exe mouse driver doesn't like some stuff, but works with MOST dos apps. (Windows chokes with it, if I recall... it likes its own mouse driver, which works, except I would like to use the amiga mouse pointer rather than windows, as the software controlled sprite running on emulated hardware slows things down quite a bit on my AGA system)

Trying to use nullser.devive (Reassigning the comm port to nullser.device,0, and using nullser.device,1 in MIAMI) to establish a crude LAN with the amiga has proven too troublesome to really work.

Can't install my copy of Amiga Explorer for use in the previous setup because of aforementioned cd-rom problem

Writing to the ms-dos partitions while running pc-task DOES scramble the partition pretty badly.

Other than all this, I've done some curious things with PC-Task. Mostly use it to rip windows icons that I like, and transfer them to the Amiga. Also used a term program to test communicating with the Amiga OS and Shapeshifter Macintosh OS with nullser.device. Worked pretty well, too. I've used it to cross-compile some Amiga programs I wrote for some windows friends of mine, too. Most serious work like that typically requires preparing all the files on the Amiga, saving as a pc-ascii file to the pc partition, running pc-task and letting the thing compile when I go to bed, wake up, and see what errors I got.... I've never had problems with serial/parallel port access (other than the usual ones associated with the operating systems the thing runs), and got a few classic games running on it. (alternate reality the city is my favorite of these) Anyway, I'm just rambling here, so I'll quit now...

Screenshot here, more pics here

[kvasir]

ouch... that makes my head hurt. I thought prince of persia was available for amiga, though? And of course, lemmings.