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Emulation on pre 2000 x86 hardware.

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First post, by Caluser2000

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What emulaters have you used on pre 2000 x86 hardware? During the '90s there was an interesting number of operating systems available for x86 systems- OS/2, Dos/Win3.x, Win9x, NT, Solaris, Linux etc. 20 years later if you havent use any in the past you can now under some kind of emulator/virtual machine on newer kit. Back then emulation existed as well. One well known *nix Dos emulator is Dosemu, it's not targeted at the gaming comunity like DosBox is but more as a way of transferring data with your Dos underlings. There were emulators for older games consols an the like as well.

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Dosemu runs quite well on a P166MMX setup as does DosBox.

Last edited by Caluser2000 on 2019-09-14, 23:55. Edited 5 times in total.

There's a glitch in the matrix.
A founding member of the 286 appreciation society.
Apparently 32-bit is dead and nobody likes P4s.
Of course, as always, I'm open to correction...😉

Reply 1 of 9, by krcroft

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Nesticle, Genecyst, ZSNES, and Bleem.

Had lots of fun with those starting on my pentium 90 in the mid 90s. Bleem! was great on my Celeron 266 (OC'd to 400) starting with a Voodoo2 then TNT2.

Reply 2 of 9, by Jo22

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A while ago I've found a few emus for Windows 3.1x, all pre-2000, I believe.
Emulation on MS Windows 3.1x ?

Also, hera are emulators in harddrivespin's thread for Win95..
Emulators you can run on Windows 95?

WABI on Linux is pre-2000, too.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=WABI+Caldera

On Motorola/Power PC Macs, a lot of emulators existed, too.
Many related to x86 emulation (SoftPC, SoftWindows, Virtual PC etc).
But they doesn't exactly fit this thread's description, I suppose. 😉

On DOS and pre-2000 hardware, the oldest I can think of now is:
SIM51 on a PC/XT compatible PC (emulates BASIC-52)
"c64" on a 286 with Hercules graphics

Edit: I remember a few more. MZEmu emulates a Sharp MZ-700 on pure DOS. Runs on a 486 or so (clip).
No$GMB, a SGB/GB/GBC emu, runs on a 486es in DOS, too. Took a video here, along with my Speech Thing clone.

Then QB8086 on a PC/AT with 286 processor (beware, very slow, but imprerssive. Was written in QuickBasic)
Fellow, an Amiga emulator on a 486 laptop running DOS (clip 1, clip 2).

Last, and least, Z80/CPM86, the typical CP/M emulators. Video taken with DOS Plus (CP/M-86 based).
More DOS emulators at https://www.aep-emu.de (the HOST tab doesn't work for DOS, search manually)

Last edited by Jo22 on 2019-09-10, 15:13. Edited 1 time in total.

"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

//My video channel//

Reply 3 of 9, by zyga64

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ZX Spectrum emulator Z80 (version 3) is usable on 286/20MHz. Warajewo is close to it.
Miha Peternel's C64s emulator (old version) can run almost as fast as original on 486DX33 (at least for me).

On Pentium 233MMX I can run Spectrum emulator X128, CCS64 (2.0), Vice (old versions) and WinFellow (Amiga - old version) in full speed.
Some of DOS versions of emulators (C64 - CCS64, ZX - Realspec) can run in 50Hz screen refresh on my S3 Virge DX. However in this case speed is not perfect.
On the same hardware in standard screen modes it works just fine. Probably CPU is too weak.

1) VLSI SCAMP /286@20 /4M /CL-GD5422 /CMI8330
2) i420EX /486DX33 /16M /TGUI9440 /GUS+ALS100+MT32PI
3) i430FX /K6-2@400 /64M /Rage Pro PCI /ES1370+YMF718
4) i440BX /P!!!750 /256M /MX440 /SBLive!
5) iB75 /3470s /4G /HD7750 /HDA

Reply 4 of 9, by Caluser2000

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I guess we could also include Wine for *nix. It's been around since about 1993 or so. Though it's a compatibility layer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine_%28software%29

Looking a the above it doesn't seem like you to much of a power house to run a lot of the old console emulators. Good stuff.

There's a glitch in the matrix.
A founding member of the 286 appreciation society.
Apparently 32-bit is dead and nobody likes P4s.
Of course, as always, I'm open to correction...😉

Reply 5 of 9, by Jo22

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Caluser2000 wrote:

I guess we could also include Wine for *nix. It's been around since about 1993 or so. Though it's a compatibility layer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine_%28software%29 [..]

Yes, but good ol' WABI was so much more "hacky" IMHO. It ran Win 3.x on *nix so purely, without any DOS shaking its foundation. 😉
Edit: Some old school Linux desktops with WABI and other cool old programs of the 90s: http://nova.polymtl.ca/~coyote/linux_desktops.html

"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

//My video channel//

Reply 6 of 9, by Caluser2000

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Some pretty cool desktops. Gives you an idea on how customisable *nix can be.

There's a glitch in the matrix.
A founding member of the 286 appreciation society.
Apparently 32-bit is dead and nobody likes P4s.
Of course, as always, I'm open to correction...😉

Reply 8 of 9, by keenmaster486

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I used to run DOSBox on a Pentium III with Windows 98. It was as redundant as it sounds. I think I was doing it because I had not discovered the CRT bug patch for games made with Turbo Pascal.

World's foremost 486 enjoyer.

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