By Jenny List
You’ll all be familiar with the PC, the ubiquitous x86-powered
workhorse of desktop and portable computing. All modern PC's are
descendants of the original from IBM, the model 5150 which made its
debut in August 1981. This 8088-CPU-driven machine was expensive and
arguably not as accomplished as its competitors, yet became an instant
commercial success.
The genesis of its principal operating system is famous in providing
the foundation of Microsoft’s huge success. They had bought Seattle
Computer Products’ 86-DOS, which they then fashioned into the first
release version of IBM’s PC-DOS. And for those interested in these early
PC operating systems there is a new insight to be found, in the form of
a pre-release version of PC-DOS 1.0 that has found its way into the hands of OS/2 Museum.
Sadly they don’t show us the diskette itself, but we are told it is
the single-sided 160K 5.25″ variety that would have been the standard on
these early PCs. We say “the standard” rather than “standard” because a
floppy drive was an optional extra on a 5150, the most basic model
would have used cassette tape as a storage medium.
The disk is bootable, and indeed we can all have a play with its contents due to the magic of emulation.
The dates on the files reveal a date of June 1981, so this is
definitely a pre-release version and several months older than the
previous oldest known PC-DOS version. They detail an array of
differences between this disk and the DOS we might recognize, perhaps
the most surprising of which is that even at this late stage it lacks
support for .EXE executables.
You will probably never choose to run this DOS version on your PC,
but it is an extremely interesting and important missing link between
surviving 86-DOS and PC-DOS versions. It also has the interesting
feature of being the oldest so-far-found operating system created
specifically for the PC.
If you are interested in early PC hardware, take a look at this project using an AVR processor to emulate a PC’s 8088.
Showing posts with label Emulation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Emulation. Show all posts
Monday, June 12, 2017
Friday, December 2, 2016
DS Programming For Newbies
This is a PDF file that contains the posts made by Foxi4 in this post as an introduction into C programming.
This is so that people can download & view on mobile devices or print out, without having to go through each & every post he's done.
This is so that people can download & view on mobile devices or print out, without having to go through each & every post he's done.
Sunday, January 3, 2016
Windows 95 Now Runs On The 3DS
By Wololo
Developer shutterbug2000 demoed Windows 95 running on a 3DS, yesterday. This is achieved by running a windows 95 image file from the DOS Emulator DosBox, on the 3DS.
Anybody who’s old enough to have used Windows 95 though will remember that most games from this era actually ran on DOS itself rather than Windows 95. It’s also likely that the layers of emulation involved here could mean no game will ever be playable through this.
Nonetheless, this is great to see such boiling activity on the 3DS scene.
People have mentioned that the Dosbox port used here does not run on the O3DS, only on he N3DS. Some people have claimed this could be because of lack of RAM on the O3DS: these claims are complete BS. Windows 95 used to run on the PSP (
through dosbox again. update: the DOS emulator running on the PSP was actually Bochs, thanks to everyone who corrected me on this)
with its 24MB of Ram, and the minimum RAM requirements for Windows 95
is 4MB. The reason this does not run on O3DS has nothing to do with
available RAM, and people are already looking into fixing this.
To achieve this magic, Shutterbug2000 ported the libretro dosbox core to the 3DS. Confused? To sum it up, the 3DS is running RetroArch (a popular meta-emulator), itself running the DosBox module (a popular DOS emulator) which then starts windows 95 (a popular GUI for DOS).
So, in other words, Shutterbug2000 made Dosbox compatible with the 3DS by tweaking the dosbox Retroarch module, and added a startup script to automatically run windows 95.
The sources for shutterbug2000’s changes can be found here. The actual code changes (the diff) from the original libretro dosbox core can be found here.
Source: Shutterbug2000 on GBATemp. Thanks @Neosabin for the heads up!
Developer shutterbug2000 demoed Windows 95 running on a 3DS, yesterday. This is achieved by running a windows 95 image file from the DOS Emulator DosBox, on the 3DS.
Windows 95 on the 3DS – compatible with N3DS only?
The port takes a while to start for now and doesn’t do let you do much for now. But once things are shaping up and a proper on-screen-keyboard is added to the build, this could be used to run old windows 95 games.Anybody who’s old enough to have used Windows 95 though will remember that most games from this era actually ran on DOS itself rather than Windows 95. It’s also likely that the layers of emulation involved here could mean no game will ever be playable through this.
Nonetheless, this is great to see such boiling activity on the 3DS scene.
People have mentioned that the Dosbox port used here does not run on the O3DS, only on he N3DS. Some people have claimed this could be because of lack of RAM on the O3DS: these claims are complete BS. Windows 95 used to run on the PSP (
Win 95 on 3DS – How it was achieved
Windows 95 booting on the 3DS
To achieve this magic, Shutterbug2000 ported the libretro dosbox core to the 3DS. Confused? To sum it up, the 3DS is running RetroArch (a popular meta-emulator), itself running the DosBox module (a popular DOS emulator) which then starts windows 95 (a popular GUI for DOS).
So, in other words, Shutterbug2000 made Dosbox compatible with the 3DS by tweaking the dosbox Retroarch module, and added a startup script to automatically run windows 95.
The sources for shutterbug2000’s changes can be found here. The actual code changes (the diff) from the original libretro dosbox core can be found here.
Windows 95 for 3DS – Download
You can download the files to run Win 95 on the 3DS here. Keep in mind that this is an early build, and more recent files might be found in the days to come on the original thread. you’ll also need an image of Windows 95, which is not provided in the release build for copyright reasons.
Windows 95 on the 3DS – Screenshot by @RetroRampage37
Sunday, April 20, 2014
5 Unemulated Computer Experiences
By Jason Scott
While I and many others work to turn the experience of emulation into one as smooth and ubiquitous as possible, inevitably the corners and back alleys of discussions about this process present people claiming that there are unemulated aspects and therefore the entire project is domed.
I thought I would stoke that sad little fire by giving you five examples of entirely unemulated but perfectly valid vintage computer experiences.
Disk Drive Spin Vibration
Some games on home computers would feature permanent player death and the requirement to start over in the event of a catastrophic loss. To ensure the death was permanent, the player status would have to be recorded on a floppy disk drive with a floppy disk in it. Therefore, a trick could be implemented: by putting your finger underneath the latch of a floppy disk drive, you could feel the vibration of the disk beginning to spin, and you could flip up the drive door, disengaging the magnetic head and ensuring that the death was not recorded.
Computer Fans
There are currently no attempts to emulate the sound of a computer fan or have it speed up and slow down slightly over time, eventually reflecting the decay of the fan and the steadily noisier experience as time goes on. In a tangential relation, there are currently no emulations of system failure due to overheating.
Chip Unseating
One common cause of machine issues in older systems would be the slow working out of seated chips on motherboards and other circuits. The resulting glitches and behavior would be noticed by experienced owners, resulting in a reseating of the chips, either by full-board pressure or by pressing down on individual chips and experiencing the clicking into place.
Damaged Floppy Noise
One of the most terrifying and disheartening sounds was the sound of a distraught grinding across a damaged or demagnetized portion of a floppy disk. The noise told you that it was going to be a crapshoot whether the data would ever be heard from again. Variations in the sound also told you how close you were to total data loss, and whether you were at the beginning of a slow decline for that sector.
Power Outage
Emulators do not have an option for sudden and dramatic loss of power. Is not possible to indicate a lightning strike, a brownout, a black out, or the yanked out power cord. This is a central and fundamental aspect of the Atari 2600, where careful glitching of a system including yanking and replacing cartridges could allow you to access game options and experiences that would otherwise never be reached.
The point of me bringing all these up is not to be particularly weird, but to point out that emulation is not a binary experience – it is a continuum, a spectrum. For some people, the mere reappearance of older computing information is a miracle. For others, it is a endless opportunity to point out flaws, complain about glitches, and otherwise drag the conversation into a Xeno’s paradox of unfulfilled promises and impossibly high hurdles.
As time goes on, I expect some experiences to fall by the wayside, and to live only in lore and stories. Unfortunately, that is the nature of history, and computers don’t get a pass, just because the material involved gets re-created with such fidelity.
So, let’s focus on what’s been done and refine that, instead of a mystical set of experiences that may never see the light of day again except in our stories.
While I and many others work to turn the experience of emulation into one as smooth and ubiquitous as possible, inevitably the corners and back alleys of discussions about this process present people claiming that there are unemulated aspects and therefore the entire project is domed.
I thought I would stoke that sad little fire by giving you five examples of entirely unemulated but perfectly valid vintage computer experiences.
Disk Drive Spin Vibration
Some games on home computers would feature permanent player death and the requirement to start over in the event of a catastrophic loss. To ensure the death was permanent, the player status would have to be recorded on a floppy disk drive with a floppy disk in it. Therefore, a trick could be implemented: by putting your finger underneath the latch of a floppy disk drive, you could feel the vibration of the disk beginning to spin, and you could flip up the drive door, disengaging the magnetic head and ensuring that the death was not recorded.
Computer Fans
There are currently no attempts to emulate the sound of a computer fan or have it speed up and slow down slightly over time, eventually reflecting the decay of the fan and the steadily noisier experience as time goes on. In a tangential relation, there are currently no emulations of system failure due to overheating.
Chip Unseating
One common cause of machine issues in older systems would be the slow working out of seated chips on motherboards and other circuits. The resulting glitches and behavior would be noticed by experienced owners, resulting in a reseating of the chips, either by full-board pressure or by pressing down on individual chips and experiencing the clicking into place.
Damaged Floppy Noise
One of the most terrifying and disheartening sounds was the sound of a distraught grinding across a damaged or demagnetized portion of a floppy disk. The noise told you that it was going to be a crapshoot whether the data would ever be heard from again. Variations in the sound also told you how close you were to total data loss, and whether you were at the beginning of a slow decline for that sector.
Power Outage
Emulators do not have an option for sudden and dramatic loss of power. Is not possible to indicate a lightning strike, a brownout, a black out, or the yanked out power cord. This is a central and fundamental aspect of the Atari 2600, where careful glitching of a system including yanking and replacing cartridges could allow you to access game options and experiences that would otherwise never be reached.
The point of me bringing all these up is not to be particularly weird, but to point out that emulation is not a binary experience – it is a continuum, a spectrum. For some people, the mere reappearance of older computing information is a miracle. For others, it is a endless opportunity to point out flaws, complain about glitches, and otherwise drag the conversation into a Xeno’s paradox of unfulfilled promises and impossibly high hurdles.
As time goes on, I expect some experiences to fall by the wayside, and to live only in lore and stories. Unfortunately, that is the nature of history, and computers don’t get a pass, just because the material involved gets re-created with such fidelity.
So, let’s focus on what’s been done and refine that, instead of a mystical set of experiences that may never see the light of day again except in our stories.
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