PCem | Setup the Golden Age of Windows 95 & 98 PC Games With This PC-em Tutorial

Setup and emulate old Windows 95 PCs with DOSBox and PC-em. PCem let's you setup and install a working emulated PC inside your existing PC. In this brief tutorial, I take you through several PC emulators. Including how to set up VirtualMIDISynth in DOSBox and a quick guide for how to set up PC-em. And how I setup an emulated Windows 95 PC in PCem.
00:00 Intro
01:26 ScummVM
02:26 DOSBox
06:30 PCem
12:37 Outro
Links
ScummVM: www.scummvm.org/
DOSBox: www.dosbox.com/
VirtualMIDISynth: coolsoft.altervista.org/en/vi...
Phil Underhill's VirtualMIDISynth guide: • DOSBox - Getting bette...
WinWorld: winworldpc.com/home
PCem: pcem-emulator.co.uk/
S3 Virge (and other) Drivers:
vogonsdrivers.com/index.php?ca...
Voodoo Drivers: www.philscomputerlab.com/driv...
mega.nz/#!d4MhCYCD!kOkZFQaV8J...
#retrogaming #retropcgames #emulation
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🌐 www.stoked.blog

[@lottieroberts1596]

WHO CARES! #getstoked

[@mesterak]

Because of the ridiculous prices of old PC systems and parts now, I really hope the community can come together to make PCEm or 86Box even better with more graphics cards and at least Pentium 4 or Athlon CPUs. There’s still a small window of time where theses emulators fall short of covering games because you just need a little more beefier CPU and GPU. Pentium MMX and Trio w/Voodoo is pretty good for a ton of games, but man it would be great to have emulation up to the last supported hardware under Win9x.

[@Aint1S]

Well, you can now use later model PCIe with 8800/9800GTX GPUs within Windows 95 using VOGONS drivers. That's 2007 hardware worth peanuts these days. I still have my old QX6700, 2x 8800GTX in SLI, 2 GB Corsair Dominator1333, and it's a full loop system that I'd built in January 2007 for a grand total of... 5k. That's including 3x Mobo to give me the best clock speed/performance as some Northridge were running hotter than others and some could overclock the memory better than others and some couldn't. My third board was the ringer for lower NB/SB temps and I could go far beyond into 1400 on the memory. The good old days, back when work was plentiful and money was just money. That system is the king of the first 64-bit architectures, but I can easily disable all but one core in BIOS as well as enable some special options in said BIOS for older compatibility within earlier version of Windows. All of that geeking out of the way, I just grabbed the best candidate for running natively on hardware *WITHOUT* breaking the bank *$325!* There's a seller on eBay from Oregon who's building up insanely powerful vintage machines albeit within Dell Inspiron 9400 *LAPTOPS!* He's a legit good builder and my Windows 95 killer is a MONSTER! GTA 1/2 with zero issues! Only Rise of The Triad has given me any issues because of the sound card setup, but that's a non-issue as ROTT has always been a pain since my early days of buying the game in my early teens! 500+ FPS Unreal Tournament to Doom collection with zero issues. I love it so much, I don't even want to touch it it's that good! Dumbphone strikes AGAIN! I remember when smartphones were sorta smart and they didn't change nor try to predict words. All turned off and I think it's Google keyboard doing it now...

[@MattyStoked]

I'm with you on this! PCem is a free, community-supported piece of software and I know the creator(s) have a lot to deal with regarding feature requests and so on. They work extremely hard and I'm grateful for everything they do.

[@sammymcfone8281]

Always loved athlon. Never let me down. Duron got me addicted... Athlon was the cure lol

[@sammymcfone8281]

Also mmx is super hard to emulate on a stock cpu 8 instructions for every mmx instruction... Im amazed they got it that fast tbh.

[@AxiomofDiscord]

I have not found any games that have trouble on a modern computer that need a Pentium 4 to run. I would go as far to say a Pentium 3 is not really needed except for maybe higher settings/fps in few edge case games and in these cases a DX9 capable graphics card would be a dream come true as well.

[@chrissysonicutdrloz]

I hope you realize how much respect you earned in the first 30 seconds of talking.

[@MattyStoked]

Such a nice comment! I really mean it. I love the old PC scene. But we can't expect to build a sustainable community while the barrier for entry keeps creeping up.

[@kenfreeman8888]

Cool video. I appreciate that you care about making this hobby more available to others. I used to build systems for fun from trashed hardware. I want to get into virtual / emulation stuff like this. Thanks for the information here.

[@MattyStoked]

Thanks, Ken! I've been a part of the "retro PC" community before it was really a thing. I built my first old PC because I found an article in a magazine from 1999 and thought it would be fun to see how much it would cost, some 15 years later or whatever it was. It cost me fifty quid and was a right laugh. You just couldn't do that now, which is why I'm turning to emulation and recommending that. I like hobbies which are accessible to all. I want to kick open every gate that I can!

[@jordanmartinetti8224]

I think I watched two other videos, one saying something like "how to setup PCem FAST", and nothing was more clear than this. As someone that is trying to play games from their childhood, thank you so much for making this so straightforward.

[@MattyStoked]

Thank you mate. I also struggled to get this up and running, so this video was partly me learning it myself! I'm so glad you enjoyed the video and took the time to leave a nice comment.

[@ihateevilbill]

I thought I was aware of every emulator available on the PC. But a pc emulator emulating a PC? Thats awesome. Im off to try it right now. (Generally Id just VM windows 95, hence I never even looked for an actual PC emulator) Thanks, man :)

[@MattyStoked]

Hey I'm glad to be of some help! I'll be streaming some PCem this week too, so drop in and hang out :D

[@ihateevilbill]

@@MattyStoked Excellent. Will do :)

[@LuckStat]

This is going to be a huge help for me, as I’ve really wanted to get into dosbox and even vintage pc building but have been overwhelmed and priced out. Wonderful video!

[@MattyStoked]

I hope so. It's not a deep dive, more of a surface scan. I just wanted to illustrate that these options are out there, and there's tons of support from really clever people, too.

[@geraq0]

Seeing again that booting screen and Win95 splash screen really brings back some fond memories, along with seeing Quake II footage and hearing Age of Empires II music. Pulling all the heartstrings there huh. Anyway, I appreciate a lot the amount of effort and consideration you put into this video, keep it up!

[@MattyStoked]

Thanks bud. It's the little things like someone recognising the AoEII music that really pleases me :D

[@Ti-JAC]

Nice segment. Thanks for sharing.

[@MattyStoked]

Thanks for commenting :D

[@saurabhkulkarni8854]

This channel is so much better than the subscriber count would suggest. I HAVE been looking for exactly this but didn't find enough time to setup qemu, pcem is gonna be a big help. Thanks!

[@MattyStoked]

Now THAT is exactly the kind of thing I was hoping to see. Welcome aboard! And please, help spread the word.

[@Eleven17Studios]

WOW! I wasn't expecting that drastic of a change between midi synths. Night and Day!

[@MattyStoked]

I admit I do like the basic MIDI synth sound. It's very nostalgic for me. But yeah, using a "real" synth emulator can take the sound to the next level.

[@ustoopia]

oh my god, PC-em is awesome!!! I heard about it recently, and today I watched this video and downloaded PC-em and I am currently listening to a midi file that came packaged with windows 95. Sweet!! Thanks for sharing.

[@MattyStoked]

Is it town.mid? That's a personal favourite. Thanks for commenting, PC-EM is awesome isn't it?!

[@ustoopia]

@@MattyStoked Canyon.mid :-) Yes I'm really loving PC-em. I'm so glad that I accidentally bumped in to it while browsing the web.

[@MattyStoked]

@@ustoopia banger tune!

[@sammymcfone8281]

Your content is high quality. Stick with it your subs WILL rise.

[@MattyStoked]

"Stick with it". I've been doing this for 10 years 😂😂

[@sammymcfone8281]

@@MattyStoked lol ok then it may be time to change strategy.. but dont rush into anything 😂😂😂😂

[@MattyStoked]

@@sammymcfone8281 I don't care I love what I do :)

[@ekho_viktor]

Thanks for the help with PCem! ^.^ I saw Linustechtips's recent video where they got NFS SE running for W95, so using your settings choices I was able to not only successfully play it with a good fps but also (with trial and error) get an Xbox 360 controller working as a joystick! Good way to get vintage solitaire too! :D

[@MattyStoked]

THAT explains why more people are finding this video. Obviously Linus copied me haha. Yeah I've been playing classic windows space shooters with my Xbox controller as a joystick. Absolutely great use of the tool!

[@BlastProcessing]

PCem seems pretty incredible, looking forward to futzing around with it!

[@BlastProcessing]

Also shoutouts to the Australia track in the NFS footage, still confusing geographically in every way

[@MattyStoked]

NGL I thought you'd comment on that!

[@richardbailey1447]

This is brilliant. My friend mentioned PCEM to me after i bought "Ignition" from Steam. Unfortunately it's buggy as hell, i can't get it working using 3d graphics etc. This guide is perfect. im gonna have a go today.

[@GeneralFaliure]

Thanks for this, i haven't tried pc-em yet. I am playing around with dosbox, there are some good frontends for that. There is also a dosbox fork which emulates the Sigma fmv cards, there are some cool games for that.

[@jfitnesshealth]

thx for that tid bit!

[@NomadicDmitry]

Great video! Thanks man!

[@streamingvideo6654]

Awesome stuff! Thanks for sharing!

[@MattyStoked]

Thanks for watching!

[@wadams31]

Thank you for your hard work! Helped me a lot :)

[@MattyStoked]

Glad it helped!

[@eldontyrellcorp]

Pcem was my reference since I discovered 86box. It goes further and is still actively developed (what pcem is not anymore). It's the way to go for an amazing dos/windows emulation.

[@MattyStoked]

I keep hearing about 86box. I will definitely check it out!

[@ZacharyNoah]

I use ScummVM to play the classic Humongous Entertainment games from the '90s, DOSBox to play the classic DOS games and run Windows 3.1, and PCem to play the classic Win9x games.

[@MattyStoked]

Zachary knows!

[@mOddEdLiKeHeLL]

This is something I'll have to try. I did once install the 32bit version of windows 10 on a older optiplex and was able to play the few games I tried on it. They were win98 games.

[@MattyStoked]

It's really fun tinkering around with PCem. Especially swapping in and out the virtual hardware. So much easier and more affordable than sourcing all those parts!

[@clint9040]

Well shit! Thanks ! I do have a whole windows 98 pc working... but this is a whole new toy to play with !

[@MattyStoked]

Over the years I've had a few great little PCs. I still currently have a Windows ME machine, but emulation is the future for me!

[@clint9040]

@@MattyStoked yes I agree. But oh man just the fun to build a computer like that... I knew many years ago this was going to be a reality one day but I forgotten about it. This to me is is quite a toy

[@Mrinal523]

Was thinking maybe you could make a video on 86Box, since apparently it's a fork built up from PCem. And since PCem is no longer under development, 86Box tries to prolong it's legacy with updates. So far it's been a bless to use it. Tho it has performance issues compared to PCem, but from what I've seen, they're working on improving it. Once again, dope video.

[@MattyStoked]

Thank you! I hadn't realised PCem wasn't under development. The forums seemed to be relatively active. I could take a look at 86Box. I've heard of it at least. Perhaps I'll take a look. Cheers for the kind words mate.

[@rklewis2]

Back in the day, I had a Windows 3.1 machine. For my DOS games, I would move the installs into appropriate directories (3D, Space Games, Sports, Kids, etc...), and would write batch files to launch the games in. When the games closed, the bat file would cd back to the root of the game folder. I wrote menus within DOS (Notepad works...kinda, lol). Each game has its' own bat file, via a numbering system. It was quite tedious setting it up, but, I saved all of the menus and bat files. Fast forward a couple of decades, and, in DOSbox, I was easily able to reuse all of my menus and batch files for those same old games that I never got rid of. I've burned them to cd (I guess it's soon going to have to be DVD, lol). I'll probably just copy the whole works up to my server, to save time even copying that down. It works really good. No one that I've shown it to is all that impressed, lol. Maybe if THEY had taken all that time to set it up like that, it would mean something to them. The savages, lol

[@MattyStoked]

That is absolutely AWESOME. I'm so glad that the effort you put in all those years ago is still paying dividends. You're awesome for doing it and thank you for telling me about it

[@rklewis2]

@@MattyStoked I appreciate that. I'm happy that that past version of me decided to save all that work, lol

[@kuntul_burung]

Many thanks👍🏼

[@MattyStoked]

Hey you're welcome ☺️

[@AnnCatsanndra]

Thank you!

[@MattyStoked]

You're welcome!

[@liamroberts7556]

Hi Stoked, thanks for the video. i can get as far a installing the VooDoo2 drivers but the drivers from PCL are as a .exe and not an ISO. Am I being silly here because I can't get them installed.

[@MattyStoked]

You're not being silly, not at all! You can wrap the .exe into an .iso using something like PowerISO or IMGBurn. Then you can loads that .iso into PC-em and it will treat it like a CD-ROM with the .exe burned onto it.

[@liamroberts7556]

@@MattyStoked awesome, thank you. Gonna do this tonight. Thank you for taking the time to respond to me.

[@MattyStoked]

@@liamroberts7556 absolutely no problem, mate. Always glad to help people. The old PC hobby has a hell of a difficulty curve, so I'm happy to spread the joy

[@liamroberts7556]

@@MattyStoked Sorry to be a pest. So, I created the iso, exact same version you use in the vid. 3.0.1.00 but when I update drivers after extracting the files it says that the selected location does not contain an updated driver :(. I wonder if I have gone wrong somewhere along the way. I think I see what i did wrong, hold fire. Edit: Yep, Would help if I selected the correct Voodoo graphics card. D'oh. All sorted now, thanks again.

[@Aint1S]

I have always assumed that your machine choice meant the very special and very pricey, SHUTTLE PC system. They built amazing SFF and shoebox machines that were pretty much bulletproof in every way, if you could afford them. 🤣 The Mobo is a Cyrix assembled board, so it's very much a monster too! I was just thinking about this conundrum yesterday! If they could find the simple engineering schematic for the Voodoo GPU processor, they could easily use a modern FPGA to supplement that design into the new silicon of said FPGA. It's very much the same as the Analog SuperNT and I do love mine... Minus the need to sit there backprobing and running multiple *channels* of logic analyzers to do the same thing. If only there was a schematic for the substrate! Dumbphone edit *corrected...*

[@MattyStoked]

I had a Shuttle PC back in about 2010! Great machine.

[@XInfinity2024]

Good video. Question though Does that program also emulate the actual performance of the parts like if you ran a benchmark on a Pentium 1 CPU and you picked to emulate that?

[@MattyStoked]

I stopped short of benchmarking in this video because I thought it would be a bit too dry haha! I actually don't know, but I imagine it emulates performance, yes.

[@XInfinity2024]

@@MattyStoked Maybe you could make a part 2 to that video testing it and see what happens

[@asnasc]

It´s been only a couple weeks since I started messing around with PCem, so no benchmarkings yet, BUT, from my experience emulating my old 486DX2 66 and the time it took to install Windows 95 on this emulated hardware, I guess the answer to your question is a resounding YES... Actually, it would not make sense to speed things up to match the host PC, as some older games would run tooooo fast (Wing Commander, I´m looking at you! kkkk)

[@nathanlamberth7631]

you lost me at "format C:" it just says "Bad command or file name" edit: My problem appears to be "Device driver not found: 'OEMCD001'." edit2: When I restarted, I didn't have the disc selected, so the PC couldn't see it. I restarted and put the disk in. Now the driver issue is resolved, but "The Windows 98Setup files were not found." is still an issue. format c: fails edit3: I switched to a windows 95 boot drive and installation. the 98 version doesn't contain the windows setup files". I can finally format c, but the D drive seems to not exist. When I try to type "d:" it just spits back "invalid drive specification". I don't understand.

[@KKolbet]

Any idea why the PCI thingy doesn't show? I can't install the voodoo driver.

[@SidorovichJr]

Nfs 4 and 5 are working preety slow. Any ideas how I can spped up the emulation? Already set celeron 533 and voodoo3 but its too low spec

[@MattyStoked]

At this point I think you're trying to emulate a Y2K-era PC, you're probably going to need a monster PC.

[@nathanaelhontz346]

So essentially the virtual hard drive is just an empty folder? I'm trying to install Windows 95 via PCem/steam deck and I'm a bit of a novice. If you can answer me I'd be grateful. 🙂

[@MattyStoked]

Essentially, yes. It's empty, but it will still take up the space you allocate to it.

[@nathanaelhontz346]

@@MattyStoked Interesting. I was raised on the Windows 95 and I think this video is the answer to my problem. Thanks.

[@nathanaelhontz346]

​@@MattyStoked Sorry for bugging you, but can you tell me what the file is called that you used? In the new hard drive section where you placed a file of your's. What was it exactly? I'm trying to follow your video to the letter. Thanks

[@MattyStoked]

@@nathanaelhontz346 when I created the virtual hard drive, I didn't place any files. PC-em does everything for you. I created a folder in the PC-em directory to put the virtual hard drive in, but you don't have to. You just need to tell the emulator where to put the virtual HDD once it's created it.

[@mspeter97]

About DOSBOX, please do not use the "normal" version. Look for DosBox-X It's much easier to configure and supports a lot of stuff including full Windows 98 install & 3DFx support

[@MattyStoked]

Good info! Thanks for that :)

[@AxiomofDiscord]

My favorite added feature is 9801 support. I wish the fontsets were internal though it hurts portability and flexibility to have to find a file on the computer for them.

[@randomwrestlingarchive3937]

This a superb walkthrough. My sound keeps stuttering when i try and play anything with audio. Any fix ideas?

[@MattyStoked]

Stuttering audio is caused by your real CPU struggling to keep up emulating the emulated CPU. You can fix this every time by emulating a less-powerful CPU. If you're trying to emulate a Pentium 3, drop your emulation settings down to emulate a P2 or a P1.

[@vidrax3481]

Miss those times

[@MattyStoked]

Hell yeah!

[@bigrobotnewstoday1436]

Can PC-em run dos games? I still have games that run on both Windows and Dos and those games I ran on Windows mode.

[@MattyStoked]

Yes! You could run them in DosBox for more granular control. But nothing is stopping you installing DOS inside PC-em or using the DOS version that comes with Windows 95...

[@denisbarac4871]

in my case, the sound blaster 16 does not appear, so i have no sound....any ideas?

[@MattyStoked]

You could try selecting another sound card?

[@maxmuster7003]

I am on an Android tablet with the Magic DosBox app installed, but i never play DOS games. I like to program new executable for DOS/DosBox using the assembly programming language.

[@MattyStoked]

Awesome! What are you working on?

[@maxmuster7003]

@@MattyStoked Because of using a touch screen i make only tiny executable com files and i put all instructions into batch files, because batch files are executable, suitable to contain a visible source code of a routine and easy to copy&paste. All other executable are not made for copy&paste, because not all bytes of a mashine code are visible as an ASCII character.

[@maxmuster7003]

@@MattyStoked The batch file contains some pipe operators (> >>

[@maxmuster7003]

@@MattyStoked I made batch files for the text mode and the graphic mode in 320x200x8 and 800x600x32. Here is an uncomplete list of my batch files: 4GB.BAT switch into 16 bit big real mode BIGSCROL.BAT scroll first 8 rows of text screen (from right to left side) BIGTEXT.BAT display 10 big letters in the first 8 rows of text screen BOX.BAT display a box on the text screen CHARANI.BAT make an animation with 2 ASCII CHARANI2.BAT make an animation with 2 ASCII CHARGEN.BAT use own character for animation CHARTGA.BAT convert picture to character CIRCLE.BAT draw a circle in 320x200x8 graphic mode COLOR.BAT color entire text screen COLTEXT.BAT print colored text CUROFF.BAT hide cursor CURON.BAT unhide cursor CURSOR.BAT set cursor position DEC2HEX.BAT convert decimal to hexadecimal DUCKLING.BAT play a song on pc speaker HELLO.BAT print hello world HEX2DEC.BAT convert hexadecimal to decimal MCGACLS.BAT clear the graphic screen in 320x200x8 graphic mode MCGALINE.BAT draw a line in 320x200x8 graphic mode PIXEL.BAT set a pixel in 320x200x8 graphic mode RECT.BAT draw a rectangle in 320x200x8 graphic mode SCROLL.BAT scroll text SETMODE.BAT set video mode SHOWTGA.BAT print a block of 14*7 ASCII for to show a picture inside SMILEY.BAT draw a smiley in 320x200x8 graphic mode SOFT25.BAT scroll text screen on 25 rows SOFTSCRO.BAT scroll text screen on 50 rows TEXT25.BAT switch to textscreen with 25 rows TEXT50.BAT switch to textscreen with 50 rows TEXTCOL.BAT print colored text TEXTPAGE.BAT switch text page TGAREAD.BAT display a picture within graphic mode 800x600x32 VESA800.BAT switch into S3-VBE graphic mode 800x600x32 WRITDAC.BAT set color rgb components for 4 bit mode and 8 bit mode (text and graphic screen)

[@rhuwyn]

Award is the company that made the BIOS. Shuttle is the name of the motherboard manufacturer and yes HOT is the model number. I have a real one.

[@MrDoomGrey]

What should I do if Phil's site doesn't load? It's a consistent issue I encounter with his site. It seems like no matter what I do it just can't load.

[@MattyStoked]

That's bizarre. I have never had that problem!

[@Cartoondude135]

Will this work for defunct websites like Treehouse TV of 2007 via Wayback Machine?

[@KKolbet]

No because for that you have to connect to the internet.

[@mmmttt-jv8xv]

god save the emulators and roms!!!!!! thanks for this video

[@MattyStoked]

You're welcome! Thanks for the positive comment :)

[@funnyanon-iq6un]

I need to give you my indirect thanks - I just got an old PC today and it happens to have the same graphics card that you used. I wasn't able to find drivers for it otherwise!

[@MattyStoked]

Haha, I'll take it! Thanks for watching the video :D

[@enigma776]

PCem does require a lot of horse power to get things up an running, so far on a i9-10850k I can get a steady K6/2-233, a voodoo 2 and the virge and a SB AWE32 running just fine, I should push the cpu a bit more and see what I can get but so far a 233 is plenty.

[@MattyStoked]

My i7-4790k happily cruises a P133 with V2 and the S3 ViRGE at 100% accuracy _most_ of the time. Not all of the time, though. It's a great emulator and I can only hope that the creator(s) get the support they need to take the platform further.

[@SebastianS72]

You might want to try out "Munt" the Roland MT-32 emulator, or even build an external emulator with a Raspberry PI

[@MattyStoked]

Or get that adorable little one that's shaped like a space shuttle 😍

[@alexb3d]

DOSBox PURE de RetroArch... Juegos de MS-DOS sin sufrir configurando y en Windows, no tiene la mejor aceleración gráfica, pero, para juegos 2D o 3D básicos es una maravilla.

[@alexb3d]

P.D: Estaba a punto de preguntar, cual era el primer juego de pcem que se parecía a "Blade Runner" 🤦

[@Gelu1992]

Easyest way to use dosbox is just to Drag &Drop exe file to DOSBox icon. Most of the games do not need anything more.

[@thomasbisset4544]

would a ryzen 5 3600 and a gtx 980 be enough to emulate windows 95?

[@MattyStoked]

MORE than enough! That's more grunt than my setup and I've not had any significant problems

[@GustavoBataglia14]

Hola, hice todo al paso pero me dice que no encuentra nada para leer. Que no hay disco

[@KKolbet]

No seguiste todo paso a paso.

[@fremenondesand3896]

Now I hope I can finally get firestorm thunderhawk 2 to work. Was unplayable under dosbox. A shame as there's a lot of effort to get tomb raider (also made by core design after firestorm thunderhawk 2) working in it.

[@MattyStoked]

Let me know if you get it working ☺️

[@fremenondesand3896]

@@MattyStoked wish I could say yes but I've been having worse luck with it. First I was struggling to get cd to work in dos, then I thought "I'll just make a new virtual hard drive" I did, fdisk it, but now I can't even boot from it. I might be doing something wrong with the boot order.

[@freesaxon6835]

Pcem seems like a fantastic piece of software...... Will have to try it my problem is finding the roms or games software..... Any ideas ?

[@MattyStoked]

OSs can be found at winworldpc Games can be found on archive dot org or abandonware sites Enjoy!

[@freesaxon6835]

@@MattyStoked thanks!

[@freesaxon6835]

I downloaded DOOM files bt they appear to be 4 disc images, I assume they are 1.44 mb floppy images, how can I load these into dosbox ?? @@MattyStoked

[@jess648]

most people can comfortably play games that ran on mid range hardware of the era but it becomes costly to own hardware that can comfortably emulate 3D accelerated systems with a Pentium II at good performance

[@Larry]

That PCem is super impressive, can it also do those late '80s Japanese DOS based machines like the X68000? Also, did you ever try emulating through Windows own legacy mode?

[@MattyStoked]

I don't believe it does support the X68k. There are emulators out there (like XM6) which emulate the whole OS environment. From what I gather, the Motorola 68k DOS is _not_ the same as PC DOS or MS DOS, so isn't a case of running it in DOSBox, but it requires its own separate interpretation. Re: Legacy emulation. I have have some (but very little) success with Legacy Mode. There are things that older games need that is just not present in the modern PC or OS. Examples of this would be 16-bit support, specific chipset firmware etc. It does work sometimes, but I've found much better success using emulators. In the case of newer games, API wrappers or compatibility layers like DGVoodoo are also incredibly useful.

[@AxiomofDiscord]

@@MattyStoked At least one Dosbox does a non-compatible Dos environment with Dosbox-X doing 9801. I wonder if they thought to add other Japanese and maybe even other computers from other nations that did not stick to the IBM formula.

[@EuanMatthews]

There is also 86box and DOSBoxPure

[@MattyStoked]

Yes indeed, there are alternatives out there!

[@matthi321]

if you got the space on your harddrive i can recomend using exodos

[@MattyStoked]

7,000 games?! That's more games than anyone would be able to play, surely! Too much choice for me, I'd be paralysed with indecision 😃

[@JdMetal]

Unlike consoles, the best thing about PC games or apps that there's always a way to run on current PC tech.....buying old/retro PCs kinda useless especially its getting more and more expensive .....

[@MattyStoked]

I *love* old PCs. But one of the reasons I used to enjoy that hobby was because it was cheap enough that you could afford to play around with builds. It's not that you can't do that any more, it's just more challenging. But I also really love emulating. I can mess around with stats and builds without spending hundreds of pounds on eBay 😎

[@JolanXBL]

The link to the s3 drivers doesn't contain s3, it contains voodoo

[@bf191306]

how do you install bios on pcem?

[@MattyStoked]

The mobo BIOSes I used are included in PC-em. I couldn't say how to add new ones :/

[@RamBeuk]

Holy shit! 8GB of HDD space on a Pentium 166? I used to be stoked when I got a Pentium 1 with 2GB HDD back in 1997. 😂

[@MattyStoked]

Mate, I remember getting my first 1GB HDD and thinking I would _never_ fill it 😂 I also remember my first game to require 1GB of install space. Star Wars Supremacy!

[@jess648]

you could run Windows 98 with a 32gig VHD image if you wanted

[@dave24-73]

Boxer is DosBox without the headaches

[@MattyStoked]

Will look into this

[@gullf1sk]

Dude, get Sound Canvas VA for midi music

[@MattyStoked]

Good shout! I'm still enjoying VMS though!

[@CraftingTable3076]

5:50 hello, what's the game name?

[@MattyStoked]

That's Star Wars Dark Forces. One of the best DOS games ever

[@SolSeal]

Probably the biggest problem about this kind of emulation is fullscreen scaling. The screen doesn’t scale properly to it’s resolution because it’s “fake” fullscreen. It stretches the image to achieve that resolution. Gets very “blocky” image. Atleast is what I can perceive.

[@MattyStoked]

The trick to any kind of pixel scaling is to scale by whole even numbers. I would upscale an 800x600 by two, resulting in 1600x1200. 640x480 you could go up to x4, giving you 2560x1920. That way you will always keep square pixels. Unless you have a monitor that meets that, you'll always get squonky pixels. FWIW I always run this stuff in a window so I can control that sort of thing.

[@SolSeal]

@@MattyStoked the problem isn’t the uneven pixels. It’s how the image scales or in this case… doesn’t. It stretches. Atleast … for I can see from your usage of Pcem. I don’t have a powerful pc to run even the basic pentiums to test it. Some years ago… there was a version of VMware Workstation that had and still does “exclusive mode” that makes your vm work as a native pc. When you started a game with a resolution different than the of OS… the vm forced the OS and the monitor to run at that resolution natively. In some cases you can get a very sharp and clean image. The newer versions of Workstation still have the “exclusive mode” but now only “stretches “ the image to the host resolution. It’s a “fake” fullscreen. They probably changed how it works now because sometimes you had to exit the mode and re-enter it for it to work. Since it’s a “fake” fullscreen you can’t use technologies like “freesync “. Although… at the time… the hardware didn’t support it ;). Sorry… I might be wrong… soo take this statement of mine as a grain of salt.

[@hrr597]

3:03 what game is this??

[@MattyStoked]

That's Star Wars: Dark Forces! An absolutely classic DOS game and a classic Star Wars game. It recently got remastered, too.

[@elalemanpaisa]

I think the emulator is the lesser legal concern but the Roms are more the problem .. see kickstart with amiga.. oh dear. They even sell them .. nearly 40 year old

[@MattyStoked]

That's very true. You can buy Kickstart for a quid, which isn't too bad.

[@elalemanpaisa]

@@MattyStoked Yep the others not so those Roms keep illegal to obtain - if you find them somewhere online on some shady sites you end up in the best case with malware

[@GenreFluid]

As far as I know windows xp also works in pcem

[@MattyStoked]

Now that I'd love to see!

[@yakovkhalip9714]

nice video ! Though I have a collection of 1981-2001 computers in real h-w, I have PC_EM installed on my main modern laptop)

[@andrewdupuis1151]

i use dos box

[@MattyStoked]

DOSBox is great!

[@KKolbet]

minecraft builds be like...

[@highestsettings]

Why are there so many videos being made after PCem stops being worked on, when you should be talking about dosbox-x or 86box instead? Because those are both still being worked on. 86box for when you have a good enough PC, dosbox-x for when you don't.

[@ukeyaoitrash2618]

If everyone pirates, no new games/anime/series/manga/etc will be made. And since my life is 100% weeb fandom, I would hate that. A lot. So I buy as many as I possibly can. Then when my desire to play/watch/etc is bigger then my budget I start pirating lol

[@MattyStoked]

I think the reality is more nuanced that that. We've seen recently that companies like Warner Bros can _actually_ make more money by making a film but burying it forever, than they would have by releasing it. Just this week I wanted to buy the Fall of Cybertron game, but it's been withdrawn from sale on all storefronts. That's two different examples of piracy not harming anyone, but our only option for experiencing those products being piracy. It's not quite as simple as _piracy is killing music_.

[@mercster]

1) You lost me at "it is always moral to pirate stuff." That's a straight-up zoomer take, buddy. Hoping that was a joke. 2) No, SCUMMVM is not like running the original machine. It's an interpreter/"virtual machine" emulating the same script engine the original platform's game used. If I use a Java virtual machine to run Java code on a mac, that doesn't mean I'm emulating Windows or any other OS. 3) DOSBOX left someone confused enough to give up? DOSBOX is dead simple to get up and running... you have to TYPE?!?! Anyway there are frontends for DOSBOX that you can download that pretty much take all the (tiny amount of) configuration you might need for a specific game.

[@MattyStoked]

You say I lost you but you continued to watch :) Thanks for the high effort comment :D

[@mercster]

@@MattyStoked Ahh, "yEt yOuRe sTiLl hErE"... you've met high effort with low.

[@retrogaminga1072]

Any good old PCs emulator for Mac with Apple Silicon ? UTM is still not reliable...