Hi. Could it be the BIOS?
IBM didn't had a lucky hand for writing firmware software, I think. 😒

I'm thinking of the mess they created with PS/2 series (individual reference diskette needed for each PC) or the 8 MHz speed limit that was hard-coded into some AT BIOSes.
Or its lack for type 47 fixed-disks.

Another user here has trouble with the PC BIOS, too, maybe.
The floppy controller wouldn't work with a Gotek, because BIOS/FDC hold a pin low for too long. Not sure it's really related, though.

Unable to boot IBM PC (5150) with a Gotek emulator and FlashFloppy

Jo22 wrote on 2023-06-17, 13:50:

Another user here has trouble with the PC BIOS, too, maybe.
The floppy controller wouldn't work with a Gotek, because BIOS/FDC hold a pin low for too long. Not sure it's really related, though.

Happy user of a Gotek on an IBM 5150 here 😀

Hi,

A new PC emulator in C# ? Very cool ! 😀
C# is a great choice for any project. Especially since it is cross platform (any .NET project will run on Windows, macOS, and Linux).

Also, perhaps an example of other emulators in C# will help you both discover C# and write your own emulator. Here is an example:

https://github.com/OpenRakis/Spice86

Also this one:

https://github.com/gregdivis/Aeon
https://github.com/maximilien-noal/Aeon-Stagi … e/feature/xplat

(this fork runs on Linux and MacOS thansk to AvaloniaUI. The original depends on Windows).

Since C# has a lot of low-level features inspired by C++ (pointers, safe pointers with Span<T> or Memory<T>, structs, value types, unions, enums, flags, etc...) rather than Java, the code from 86Box, PCem, and DOSBox Staging can help too.
If you want to learn C#, I'd recommend the book C# in Depth.

^That's interesting!
Just found an interesting news from 2 years ago.

Microsoft Opens Up Old Win32 APIs to C# and Rust, More Languages to Come
https://visualstudiomagazine.com/articles/202 … 2-apis.aspx?m=1

I wonder if this will also cover those classic APIs used/supported by Win32s. ^^

I love Windows 3.11 with Win32S. I wish I could targer it with C# (although someone already did). 😁

Going the other way, there is a project to compile C# to native code for IBM PC computers: https://github.com/CosmosOS/IL2CPU
It uses this project, a high level assembler for X86 and X86_64 assembly: https://www.x-sharp.net/
The mainline .NET SDK already supports ahead of time compilation to native code (skipping the bytecode, and therefore the JIT compilation), but of course not for such a low level platform. 😁

@folkert:

You could try to run this BIOS: https://github.com/skiselev/8088_bios

xcomcmdr wrote on 2023-06-17, 15:53:

You could try to run this BIOS: https://github.com/skiselev/8088_bios

I'm a big fan of GLaBIOS too
https://github.com/640-KB/GLaBIOS/

This BIOS looks very fine indeed ! This will help a lot for anyone trying to emulate a BIOS in a high level language.

GloriousCow wrote on 2023-06-17, 15:54:

I'm a big fan of GLaBIOS too https://github.com/640-KB/GLaBIOS/ […]
Show full quote

xcomcmdr wrote on 2023-06-17, 15:53:

You could try to run this BIOS: https://github.com/skiselev/8088_bios

I'm a big fan of GLaBIOS too
https://github.com/640-KB/GLaBIOS/

Hm. Looks good. 😀 👍
Even has 736KB Coventional Memory support out-of-box.