WANTED: Patch for Risc PC support of Acorn's software PC Emulator (!PCEm)

[flibble]

In theory there's a patch around that makes Acorn's software PC emulator (!PCEm) work on the Risc PC rather than just the 3.10 era machines.

Does anyone have this patch?

As a backup, does anyone have a patched copy of the program?

Peter

[BeebMaster]

I've got several copies of this (all appear to be identical) beneath Utilities in my RISC PC 600 hard drive.

This is a zip made with Spark FS on the RPC 700, so it should preserve file types etc.

[flibble]

Many thanks, it's working!

[flibble]

[sbadger]

You need to a beeb emu running in that there PCem

[steve3000]

Interesting, what version of Windows runs under PCem? Does 3.1 run, or something even earlier?

[flibble]

Interesting, what version of Windows runs under PCem? Does 3.1 run, or something even earlier?

PCEmu is an old 'real-mode' 8088/8086 emulator so the latest Windows that runs is 3.0, 3.1 dropped support for it. I've read a compatability note that suggested Windows 2 and 1 also worked.

I paired Windows 3.0 with DOS 5 instead of the 3.30 that normally shipped with PCEm, this let me get around the 32MB HD partition limit that was in 3.30.

I also installed the DOS version of BBC BASIC from Richard Russell's site, it's working well.

But I've yet to figure out the mouse driver ... this makes using Windows a bit of an arse.

[hubersn]

But I've yet to figure out the mouse driver ... this makes using Windows a bit of an arse.

ISTR that no mouse driver was needed for Windows 3.0, since it was "hardcoded" to support a Microsoft bus mouse, which was emulated by PCEm.

For DOS of course, you needed the Microsoft mouse driver, which was supplied with PCEm, but the standard DOS (delivered with MS-DOS 5.0 and PC-DOS 6.3) mouse driver worked fine, once you figured out that autoexec.bat/config.sys stuff. Very IIRC.

Have fun
hubersn

[flibble]

ISTR that no mouse driver was needed for Windows 3.0, since it was "hardcoded" to support a Microsoft bus mouse, which was emulated by PCEm.

Ta for the pointer (no pun intended), the mouse was already working. I just hadn't realised that mouse didn't work unless PCEm was in non-windowed 'single tasking' mode.

[BeebMaster]

When I ran PCEm to see what versions I had, it went into single task mode and I couldn't get out of it without pressing the reset button, which was annoying as the RPC was doing other things at the time. Is there a less destructive way to exit?

[flibble]

I had to read the manual ... down with this sort of thing.

Press the middle mouse button to leave single tasking.

Manuals here,

http://4corn.co.uk/articles/docs/#soft

[steve3000]

Does Alt-Break also exit PCem single tasking, or is that just for the podule PC card?

[BeebMaster]

Great, I will try this when the RISC PC isn't doing something else. Currently it's been running VKiller for the last 22 hours, and still only about 60% finished!

[philpem]

Great, I will try this when the RISC PC isn't doing something else. Currently it's been running VKiller for the last 22 hours, and still only about 60% finished!

Killer's surprisingly slow... you might find Kiwisoft's Slayer a bit quicker, if you can find a copy. It was released as open-source some years ago.