The great PC-Task thread

[freqmax]

Regarding the partition, check out which translation scheme your pc-task "BIOS" is using. Ie CHS, Large, or LBA. Use the last one if you can. Second, some BIOS have support for INT 13 extended disk drive. Which makes it possible to use LBA all over the place.

This just reminds me why I deplore x86-ms junk hardware and software.

[Digiman]

I remember a demo and when I ran it on my A1200 it was slower than an early 80s PC-XT so lost interest.

Also AGA is so slow compared to EGA or even VGA byte per pixel that the CPU was the least of my problems anyway. And nobody did a decent replacement plug-in for A500/A1200 for chunky graphics and given the A4000 was so overpriced it was a real dead end for me personally. I gave up and bought a cheap PC for my Dbase 3 stuff etc for my Uni course.

[rvo_nl]

Made quite some progress today. Was able to solve most of my problems but am still left with a couple of questions. Do not hesitate to reply with your suggestions -I've only started using a PC with Windows 2000!

- I haven't been able to get PC_Task-Interpretive to work. But since it doesnt support Windows95 its no big loss. And I have plenty of RAM to use PC_Task-Dynamic instead.
- I gave up trying PCx. I am a bit worried though, can someone tell me which of the 2 is the faster emulator? And am I right in thinking PCx can emulate a Pentium processor while PC-Task is stuck with 486 max? Does this have any consequences?
- I fixed the issue with the partition size. Apparently I was using a DOS bootdisk instead of the DOS installation disks. Ive mounted disk 1/3 of those and it was then able to recognise the full 1.4Gb of my drive. I didnt finish installation though, no idea how to swap disk images on-the-fly.
- I was able to install Windows3.11 aswell. Previous attempts failed because I did not have the right screenmodes set. Still, can someone explain the difference between VGA and Video 7? Cant find much about it online, which of the 2 is faster?
- I was able to mount my CD-Rom drive and am currently installing Windows 95 (this is quite slow I can tell you). Is it possible to install Win98Lite on top of this?
- Is it possible to enable network support in PCx or PC-Task?
- Can Crossdos mount the PC partition in a way that I can access the files on it on the Amiga side?

[Xanxi]

- Is it possible to enable network support in PCx or PC-Task?
- Can Crossdos mount the PC partition in a way that I can access the files on it on the Amiga side?

Network with PC-Task = no way, or you will have to make it over serial connection, if you have two serial ports on your amiga.

Crossdos= not required. Just use PCTCrossMount which is included with the PC-Task. This will mount your drive C as TCC: and your drive D as TDC: Actually, PCTCrossMount even works with hardfiles from Commodore Bredgeboards.


What do you mean about mounting the DOS installation disks?

[rvo_nl]

Thanks Xanxi, will try this out asap. Mounting the DOS installation disks was faster than writing them on pc and using pc0:. First off, Windows 7 wasnt able to deal with 720kb disks, second, the DOS 6.x images are 1,44MB each. So I created a DOSDriver for the installation disks using Crossdos7, then entered the name of the DOSDriver as drive A: in PC-Task. Damn useful.

[mongo]

Thanks Xanxi, will try this out asap. Mounting the DOS installation disks was faster than writing them on pc and using pc0:. First off, Windows 7 wasnt able to deal with 720kb disks, second, the DOS 6.x images are 1,44MB each. So I created a DOSDriver for the installation disks using Crossdos7, then entered the name of the DOSDriver as drive A: in PC-Task. Damn useful.

720KB disks work fine in Windows 7.

[rvo_nl]

well, you might be able to read them. but try formatting one or creating a bootdisk or extracting a diskimage onto one.

[mongo]

well, you might be able to read them. but try formatting one or creating a bootdisk or extracting a diskimage onto one.

FORMAT A: /T:80 /N:9 will format a 720KB disk.

Of course you can't create a boot disk. Windows 7 isn't going to fit on one floppy.

RawWrite for Windows will write a disk image to a 720KB floppy just fine.

[rvo_nl]

thanks, but:

1) I did try using /S:720 (or a similar flag) which appeared to work fine (readable) but it wasnt possible to write anything to it
2) the disk images Im talking about are 1,44MB
3) there is not one windows OS that fits on a 720kb disk yet creating a 720kb bootdisk was possible up to Win XP If im not mistaken -which is exactly my point
4) its no longer needed since mounting a virtual disk is a lot faster and convenient

[Xanxi]

Thanks Xanxi, will try this out asap. Mounting the DOS installation disks was faster than writing them on pc and using pc0:. First off, Windows 7 wasnt able to deal with 720kb disks, second, the DOS 6.x images are 1,44MB each. So I created a DOSDriver for the installation disks using Crossdos7, then entered the name of the DOSDriver as drive A: in PC-Task. Damn useful.

I see. This gave me the idea to use DiskImageGUI (available on aminet) to see if i could read PC floppy disk images from PCTask, and it works with IDF0. This method allows to swap disks on the fly. Just go back to the WB with LAmiga-M, switch the floppy in DiskImageGui, and go back to PC-Task. :-)

[rvo_nl]

ofcourse! thats even better! thanks, will try this out myself

[jakov]

To write from a PC 1.44 drive, it is often necessary to FIRST format the disk in a DD drive, for instance in an Amiga. (Format to PC mode, FAT.)

And don't fast format, the goal is to blank the disk.

[Xanxi]

ofcourse! thats even better! thanks, will try this out myself

Thanks to you
I haven't thought of that myself so far.
It's great to see how we can benefit of other people ideas.
Feel free to tell us your next steps with PC-Task

[HotRod]

Made quite some progress today. Was able to solve most of my problems but am still left with a couple of questions. Do not hesitate to reply with your suggestions -I've only started using a PC with Windows 2000!

- I haven't been able to get PC_Task-Interpretive to work. But since it doesnt support Windows95 its no big loss. And I have plenty of RAM to use PC_Task-Dynamic instead.
- I gave up trying PCx. I am a bit worried though, can someone tell me which of the 2 is the faster emulator? And am I right in thinking PCx can emulate a Pentium processor while PC-Task is stuck with 486 max? Does this have any consequences?
- I fixed the issue with the partition size. Apparently I was using a DOS bootdisk instead of the DOS installation disks. Ive mounted disk 1/3 of those and it was then able to recognise the full 1.4Gb of my drive. I didnt finish installation though, no idea how to swap disk images on-the-fly.
- I was able to install Windows3.11 aswell. Previous attempts failed because I did not have the right screenmodes set. Still, can someone explain the difference between VGA and Video 7? Cant find much about it online, which of the 2 is faster?
- I was able to mount my CD-Rom drive and am currently installing Windows 95 (this is quite slow I can tell you). Is it possible to install Win98Lite on top of this?
- Is it possible to enable network support in PCx or PC-Task?
- Can Crossdos mount the PC partition in a way that I can access the files on it on the Amiga side?

PCx is kind of nice for what it is and it got support for a soundblaster 16 soundcard, right?

Regarding speed I'm not sure... JIT compilation is known to be faster but AFAICR when I ran it on my a4k on a 060 with windows 3.1 and some games it was about the same. It was so long ago that I can't remember for sure though.

When it comes to CPU emulation the first thing I'd like to say is that you shall never care about things like 486, Pentium and so on when it comes to speed. Real hardware got nothing to do with software emulation. The other thing is that PC-Task can run in something called enhanced mode according to the manual which makes Windows 95 run and Windows 3.11 for example which you can't run with PCx. PC-Task also supports graphicscard in all resolution while PCx only got a driver that lets you run 320x200 or 320x256 on a graphics card, else you need AGA.

I think that PC-Task are better over all, it's too bad that they didn't develope PCx further. Fusion from the same company (Mac emulator) was very, very good, especially if you only had AGA, MacOS was faster than Workbench for some reason and you could use 15-bit mode in MacOS. Don't know how that was done. Anyway, sorry for going OT.

Regarding Windows 3.x, if it supports standard mode instead of enhaced it will run faster. You run it in standard mode by typing "win/s" in DOS.

Windows 95... it is useless in PC-Task. Speed is the major thing here. Windows 3.x and DOS are usable though.

VGA is up to 648x480 while Video 7 is 1280x1024 IIRC. In Win 95 you are stuck with one resolution IIRC. I think that you're stuck with some VESA mode.

[rvo_nl]

Thanks for your reply. Now that you mentioned the screenmode restriction Im really forgetting about PCx. I'm quite satisfied with PC-Task anyway. Windows 95 works and seems stable. It is ofcourse very slow but I dont care, I just want to see if it would be possible at all. I will give Win98Lite a try and after that test I think I'm done with this whole PC emulation thing. BTW, yes, Fusion is a great emulator, that provides a fast MacOS8 experience for me. Thanks for the tip regarding Win3.11 standard mode, I was using that already.

[spirantho]

Network with PC-Task = no way, or you will have to make it over serial connection, if you have two serial ports on your amiga.

I think PC-Task supports the GoldenGate II doesn't it...? In which case any old ISA network card should do....

Never tried it though.