PC Emulation

[drHirudo]

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.

[drHirudo]

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. The remember the author sent me a convertion tool, but I am afraid that I lost it somewhere.

[pjhutch]

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'.

[Angus]

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.
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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?  

[Wayne]

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

[Angus]

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.

[Wayne]

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

[Angus]

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/

[Wayne]

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

[Angus]

but first try again using now this command:

format a: /F:720 /s

this should work

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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?  

[Floid]

I suppose it's a bit late now, but FreeDOS 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 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?