Another game that doesn't work under PCE.

coolhaken

Hi all,

I tried to run the game "BigTop" with PCE a few days ago.
The copy protected version seems doesn't work under PCE, but the cracked version from abandonware site does.
Don't know what's the problem ?
Can anyone help me to take a look at it ?
Thanks.

Teledisk diskimage download : https://mega.nz/#!LtYkWTha!HjYNdTpyr4ZI ... 4MY5nwDxTQ

ibmpc5150

This is the message from author of PCE a few years ago.

---

This game measures the time it takes to read a specific
sector (16/0/1). This fails in PCE because the read timing is
not precise enough. The disk rotation speed is simulated
exactly while the FDC is waiting for the right sector, but once
a sector read has started, data is read as fast as the emulated
program can read it. This is also the reason why the FDC
emulation (even in accurate mode) is a little bit too fast.

The solution here is (once again) to reimplement the FDC
emulation. I'm not going to fix this problem before, because it
would take a lot of work to fix a problem that will be solved
later anyway.

---

I think Floppy/FDC emulation seems to be very hard to adjust the timing.
Big Top works on 486 machine, but too fast.

It is still impossible to run on PCE.

coolhaken

Thanks for your reply.
PCE's author seems too busy to maintain PCE regular. :?

ibmpc5150

@coolhaken

I think it is nearly impossible to implement any exact timings of FDC and CPU clock.
PCE developer seems to be very busy too.

Big Top runs on real DOS machine. (I also tested on Pentium II based PC too.)