So, a few months ago, I proudly rebuilt a late '90s-era PC with--
genuine late '90s-era hardware. It wasn't my dream machine (because
the glorious Gravis Ultrasound Max card wouldn't fit in the case! No,
I won't get over that!) but it was pretty close, and I was pretty
happy with the build. Finally, FINALLY, I could play all those
Win9x-era games that just don't play nice with modern hardware. Oh
fraptuous day! Truly, it was all effort well spent; I knew I'd be
enjoying that PC for years to come.
Oh, maybe just months.
Because, damn it, PCEm has gotten /really/ good.
PCEm is - as the name might imply - a PC Emulator*. It's actually been
around for years (Wikipedia says from 2007) but it's been of mixed
utility for a long time. Sure, you could get Windows95 up and running
on it, and even a lot of games, but compatibility and performance were
all over the place. Windows would sometimes blue-screen randomly, and
some games wouldn't run. Given that stability was already an issue for Win9x-era PCs, the added uncertainty of running everything under PCEm
just didn't make sense.
But PCEm has really improved since last time I got it. So far its run
pretty much everything I've thrown at it with out problem, and it's
now my go-to emulator for Windows98SE.
Which is absolutely infuriating, because it completely invalidates my
need for that computer I just finished building. Why bother powering
up a second machine across the room (and sitting the less comfy chair)
when I can just spin up an emulator and get the exact same experience
(minus the uncomfortable chair)? Do the developers at PCEm have no appreciation of the time and effort it took me to collect all the
components for that ancient computer?
Why must PCEm be so good?!?!?
It's not perfect, of course. There's no way to launch directly into an
app, and you can't have separate environments per application, which
are too features I really love in DOSBox. There's a lack of options
when it comes to video hardware, and no snapshot ability. But overall,
it's pretty awesome, to the point I'm actually considering whether or
not to scrap the real PC (I *really* could use the room ;-)
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* Available here https://www.pcem-emulator.co.uk/
No updates since 12/19/2021 though. :(
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* Available here https://www.pcem-emulator.co.uk/
On Fri, 09 Jun 2023 12:39:51 -0400, in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action,
Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
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* Available here https://www.pcem-emulator.co.uk/
Talk about burying the lead.
I remember all those years ago when I found that I could dock down a
Pentium machine to a C=64. I just thought it was so funny. All that power >for:
10 PRINT"HELLO WORLD ";
20 GOTO 10
RUN
Emulation is hilarious.
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