Author Topic: New squirrel sighting! (Emulators that you may not have seen)  (Read 3081 times)

akafox

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I have a few emulators I want to point out actually but I will post them in another thread. This tread is for emulators you probably have not heard of. One I want to bring up is Retro Virtual Machine. I don't think it can be run from the command line. But it does run on any of the major OSes. I think it is a nice emulator. Mostly I like how it looks with the tape player and disk on the side.... I like lights and noises on computers..they are there for a reason after all!

They are adding many machines to it as shown here.The one on the site allows you to emulate Spectrum and Amstrad computers but if you look at the video here you will see they are adding more systems to it. If you are a patron then you get the "full" version.

I don't like that it is closed source or that you have to "pay" for the full version

I do like that it is multi-system and all "das blinkin' lights". and the GUI is easy to use and understand. While yes you can use other emulators sometimes it is a pain in the tail so set up each one...or they are not for your OS ect. Yes you can use retroarch cores for some of the systems here...sometimes you want it to work like the computer it is instead of a "games console"

Next is MicroM8. This is an apple ][ emulator. Much in the same idea of how Retro Virtual Machine works.

Pros and cons...the same reasons for Retro Virtual Machine.

Last is Pcem. You WILL need BIOS roms for this emulator! This is not your vixen's Dosbox! This is real "low level" emulation! And for older systems it beats Virtual box paws down! (mainly because Virtual box doesn't emulate these old PCs!) You cna run anything from a TSR-80 to a Intel/AMD 486 Pentium. If you want to run real DOS(es) This is the way to do it! Warning!: If you do not know how to use an old computer from forty years ago...do some google-ing! These systems are not that easy to set up if you have no clue what you are doing!

Pros: Real emulation here..down to the bios setups! Very "native" so the machine works like it supposed to do with no tricks or hacks (well less then some other emulators anyway!  ;) ) Open source...and free!

Cons: Don't expect to run any windows 95 (though you can) games or higher versions of any OS for that matter.... It can be very difficult to set up for people who are not used to these machines.

I will be making another thread of other PC emulators...some you have heard about. Just wanted to spotlight these because they are "less known".

Happy retro computing!  ;D
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rand0m

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Re: New squirrel sighting! (Emulators that you may not have seen)
« Reply #1 on: July 24, 2020, 01:37:42 AM »
Great thread, Pcem looks very promising. Is it possible to create a one-button launcher for dos games on Pcem?

akafox

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Re: New squirrel sighting! (Emulators that you may not have seen)
« Reply #2 on: July 29, 2020, 06:13:51 PM »
Is it possible to create a one-button launcher for dos games on Pcem?

as for a one button launcher for dos games..I doubt it. except you could/might modify the autoexec.bat and start it that way? That's a lot of little hard drives! (A "full set" of DOS games is 100GB (don't ask how i know that)) and the is before it is all uncompressed/installed. Yeah I think it could be done once I can figure out how to start PCEM from the command line. DOSBox could work and be easier to set up...however DOS in PCEm is more "real" so compatibility would be higher?

soooo...

Code: [Select]
#! /bin/bash

pcem --config /home/username/.pcem/configs/amstrad.cfg --fullscreen

save this code as a sh bash script and make it executable (the above example is an amstrad PC1512). It will then:

1. run PCEM
2. load the config file (that you have made before!) of the system you want
3. start it in full screen

I would assume a bat file can be written just as easily for windows like

Code: [Select]
pcem.exe --config /home/username/.pcem/configs/amstrad.cfg --fullscreen
then saved as a .bat file

only thing I have not figured out is how to load a floppy disk from the command line for systems that do not have a hard drive (some systems PCEM emulate are that old yes!)

Anyone figures that out let me know! :)

« Last Edit: July 30, 2020, 07:00:13 PM by akafox »
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akafox

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Re: New squirrel sighting! (Emulators that you may not have seen)
« Reply #3 on: July 30, 2020, 03:34:09 PM »
Another emulator

RunPCM

It is used to run OLD..did I mention old? software. It is the grandfather (Kind of?) of MS DOS (yes Gates stole that from them..just like he stole the GUI from Steve (Apple) who stole it from Xerox. No really.).

And one day I will breakdown and make a list of all the PC emulators out there....one day..
People want life easy..then complain about it