VOGONS


First post, by Cursed Derp

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Hello,
I am experiencing some issues emulating a Windows 98 SE pc with PCem.
The emulated machine has a [Slot 1] Gigabyte GA-686BX motherboard, a Pentium 2 300, 256 MB of RAM, a Voodoo 3 3000 (Fast VLB/PCI), and a Sound Blaster PCI 128. I followed this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rx2H3IV9SG4) very comprehensive guide by Phil's Computer Lab very closely (including using all of his download links) up until the "Install 3DMark" chapter of the video.
My host pc has a Ryzen 5 7600x3D cpu with an RTX 2060 Super.
I tried playing Duke Nukem 3D from the original version 1.3d cd and once I begin playing the game (after the menus) the audio becomes fraught with constant staticky buzzing and popping sounds. According to my research, this can be attributed to host pc that is too slow to efficiently emulate a Pentium 2. However, I believe my pc's cpu should be fast enough, and while in-game the "100%" on the top of the PCem window doesn't change. Also, the game runs mostly consistently but with a low fps.
I also tried Unreal Gold and despite having set up the 3dfx drivers, the game ran horribly.
Let me know if yall have any ideas or advice on how to fix this problem. I'm new to PC emulation beyond Dosbox, so I still have a lot to learn.
Thanks!

I am as smooth as a gravy train with flaming biscuit wheels.

Reply 1 of 2, by leileilol

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The AudioPCI family is a poor choice for DOS games. Duke3D will eventually crash when you're entering an echoey area, and that will be normal behavior (not a PCem bug).
other than that, Duke3D also has issues playing on FAT32 partitions while in pure DOS so cache thrashes will occur frequently if you don't load SMARTDRV (also not a PCem bug)

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long live PCem
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Reply 2 of 2, by NeoG_

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Cursed Derp wrote on Yesterday, 23:40:

I also tried Unreal Gold and despite having set up the 3dfx drivers, the game ran horribly.

Define horribly? What performance numbers are you getting in unreal gold? I ask because Unreal Gold is going to be significantly CPU limited by P2 300 and Voodoo 3. 20-30fps would not be unreasonable.

Also I would suggest changing the sound card to an AWE32 if you plan on running native DOS software inside the emulator, trying to troubleshoot PCI->DOS audio behaviour on top of the emulator (which is an issue which exists in real hardware) is unnecessarily complicating things.

98/DOS Rig: BabyAT AladdinV, K6-2+/550, V3 2000, 128MB PC100, 20GB HDD, 128GB SD2IDE, SB Live!, SB16-SCSI, PicoGUS, WP32 McCake, iNFRA CD, ZIP100
XP Rig: Lian Li PC-10 ATX, Gigabyte X38-DQ6, Core2Duo E6850, ATi HD5870, 2GB DDR2, 2TB HDD, X-Fi XtremeGamer