Using MESS for emulating older computers

Klez

Hi to everyone,

FIrst post

I discovered this website googling around and i must say i´m impressed by the clean design of the front page and the nice categorization of the Library.
I use MESS multiple emulator for enjoying oldies emulated on modern computers. While many different computers are supported, currently not all of them are stable enough to try. However some drivers like
at386, at486/ct486, apple2, apple3, msx among others currently are quite advanced.

So i downloaded from this site some original disk images and went ahead. Yummy that most are unmodified images of original disks.
You know that there are much better virtualization software, but this is somewhat low-level emulation only, and the supported ISA cards for ct486 for example is impressive:
# mess ct486 -lslot

mda             IBM Monochrome Display and Printer Adapter
cga             IBM Color/Graphics Monitor Adapter
wyse700         Wyse 700
ega             IBM Enhanced Graphics Adapter
vga             IBM VGA Graphics Card
svga_et4k       SVGA Tseng ET4000 Graphics Card
svga_dm         Diamond Multimedia Graphics Card
com             Communications Adapter PC/XT
comat           Communications Adapter
fdc             ISA 8bits AT FDC hookup
fdc344          Ably-Tech FDC-344
fdcmag          Magitronic Multi Floppy Controller Card
hdc             Fixed Disk Controller Card
side116         Acculogic sIDE-1/16 IDE Disk Controller
adlib           Ad Lib Sound Card
hercules        Hercules Graphics Card
gblaster        Game Blaster Sound Card
sblaster1_0     Sound Blaster 1.0
sblaster1_5     Sound Blaster 1.5
stereo_fx       ATI Stereo F/X Audio Adapter
ssi2001         Innovation SSI-2001 Audio Adapter
ne1000          NE1000 Network Adapter
3c503           3C503 Network Adapter
mpu401          Roland MPU-401 MIDI Interface
lpt             Printer Adapter
ibm_mfc         IBM PC Music Feature Card
fdcsmc          ISA 8bits SMC FDC hookup
dectalk         DECTalk-PC
pds             Programmers Development System
ide             IDE Fixed Drive Adapter
ne2000          NE2000 Network Adapter
aha1542         AHA1542 SCSI Controller
gus             Gravis Ultrasound
sblaster_16     Sound Blaster 16
svga_s3         Number Nine 9FX Vision 330 (S3 764) Graphics Card
s3virge         S3 ViRGE Graphics Card
s3virgedx       S3 ViRGE/DX Graphics Card
dms3d2kp        Diamond Stealth 3D 2000 Pro
gfxultra        ATi Graphics Ultra Card
gfxultrap       ATi Graphics Ultra Pro Card
mach64          ATi mach64 Card

However seem to be a regression somewhere because the WIndows95 installer hangs at the starting point, while its known to work as per installation instructions on the mess forums.
Anyway the are other plenty of software that i can try on these drivers for pure leisure.

And thats it.
Are there othe MESS users in this community? whould be nice to share ideas.

- Klez

calvinb

mess has a lot of work to be done, lots of stuff is half-hearted at this point.

PCem and Qemu are fairly good options, and lotsa others.

SomeGuy

Mess is pretty good at emulating the odd features and eccentricities of some of the early machines, such as the PCJr, Tandy 1000, and even the original IBM PC 5150.

But they don't/can't regression test each system so parts regularly break as shared bits change. You always have to search through the old versions to find one that isn't broken for what you want to do.

But the PCE emulator is looking pretty good too now, and can actually read Transcopy disk images for heavily copy protected disks.

dosbox

The only computer I to run correctly, is the Tandy 1000 HX. but apparently the audit in the MESS UI frontend says there is a missing rom. The only program I tried testing was the matching Deskmate version, but it won't start.

This is all I get.

Klez

I never used a real Tandy1000 before. :oops:

I´ve managed to boot into msdos 3.3 with a floppy image and then create and format a C: partition in a internal hard disk. Then F12 and start Deskmate, wich launchs desk.exe but then the process is stuck asking for disk #2. Maybe i don´t have the right set.

Got the disks from: oldskool.org/guides/tvdog/system.html the version here in Winworldpc is not an disk image file.

# chdman createhd -o Tandy-HD.chd.chd -c none -chs 930,5,17

# mess64 t1000hx -plus1 hdc -hard1 roms\Tandy-HD.chd -flop1 roms\DISK1.DSK

(set date and time)

# prompt $p$g
# ver
# fdisk > 1 > 1 > Y
(reboot)
# format c:
# c:
# dir
# F12
# F1 launch DeskMate
...

Anyway this was am interesting afternoon trying to make it work. Almost got it...

dosbox

This may sound like a dumb question, but how do you write-protect a disk in MESS?