PCem

Download: Windows/Linux/vNext (Wise Global Solutions Mirror)

Latest version: v17 Changelog

PCem is licensed under GPL v2.0, see COPYING for more details.

You can submit patches on our forum. Before you do, please note the guidelines for submitting patches.

❗ Note: NO COPYRIGHTED ROM FILES ARE INCLUDED NOR WILL THEY BE. PLEASE DO NOT ASK FOR THEM.

BSD and Linux supplement

You will need the following libraries and buildtools (and their dependencies):

• SDL2
• wxWidgets 3.x
• OpenAL
• CMake
• Ninja (Recommended, but you can use a Makefile generator if you prefer)
• CLang Toolchain

Open a terminal window, navigate to the PCem directory, create a build directory, then enter in that build directory:

Linux/BSD

cmake -G "Ninja" -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release ..
ninja

then ./src/pcem to run.

BIOS ROM images, configuration files, and other data are stored in ~/.pcem. You can also create a .pcem folder with the Binary, and run it in a portable mode.

The configure options are specified below. They are in the format of -DOption=Value. Value under here is the default value.

  -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release : Generate release build. Recommended for regular use.
  -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug   : Compile with debugging enabled.
  -DPCEM_DISPLAY_ENGINE=wxWidgets : Compile with the WxWidgets Display Engine. Default
  -DPCEM_DISPLAY_ENGINE=Qt   : Compile with the Qt Display Engine.
  -DUSE_NETWORKING=ON        : Build with networking support.
  -DUSE_PCAP_NETWORKING=ON   : Build with pcap networking support. (Needs USE_NETWORKING to compile) Requires libpcap.
  -DUSE_ALSA=OFF             : Build with support for MIDI output through ALSA. Requires libasound. (Linux Only)
  -DFORCE_X11=ON             : Enables a hack to force X11 on Wayland systems. See #128 for details. (Linux Only)
  -DPLUGIN_ENGINE=ON         : Build with plugin support. Builds libpcem-plugin-api and links PCem with it.
  -DPCEM_MARCH=x86_64-v2     : Change the architecture used for generated instructions, by default we set it for
                               >= Nehalem for Intel, and >= Bulldozer for AMD. 

If you are using -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug, there are some more debug options you can enable if needed

  -DPCEM_SLIRP_DEBUG=OFF           : Build PCem with SLIRP_DEBUG debug output
  -DPCEM_RECOMPILER_DEBUG=OFF      : Build PCem with RECOMPILER_DEBUG debug output
  -DPCEM_NE2000_DEBUG=OFF          : Build PCem with NE2000_DEBUG debug output
  -DPCEM_EMU8K_DEBUG_REGISTERS=OFF : Build PCem with EMU8K_DEBUG_REGISTERS debug output
  -DPCEM_SB_DSP_RECORD_DEBUG=OFF   : Build PCem with SB_DSP_RECORD_DEBUG debug output
  -DPCEM_MACH64_DEBUG=OFF          : Build PCem with MACH64_DEBUG debug output
  -DPCEM_DEBUG_EXTRA=OFF           : Build PCem with DEBUG_EXTRA debug output

If you are using -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RelWithDebInfo, there are additional options you can do

  -DPCEM_RELDEB_AS_RELEASE=ON     : Builds RelWithDebInfo with debugging logging enabled when this is off

They are some extra modules you can add if you build with -DUSE_EXPERIMENTAL=ON. These modules are untested. incomplete, and may or may not be in a future build of PCem. We do not provide builds with these enabled as well. It is also possible they may not even build.

  -DUSE_EXPERIMENTAL_PGC=ON       : Build PCem with Professional Graphics Controller support.
  -DUSE_EXPERIMENTAL_PRINTER=ON   : Build PCem with Printer support. Requires freetype.

The menu is a pop-up menu in the Linux/BSD port. Right-click on the main window when mouse is not captured.

CD-ROM support currently only accesses /dev/cdrom. It has not been heavily tested.

On Windows, if you want to use PCAP networking, you will need to install npcap and replace the libpcap.dll in PCem dir using the wpcap.dll installed in C:\Windows\System32

Links

PCem emulates the following hardware:

Software Tested (list)

• DOS
  
• Windows
  
• Windows NT
  
• OS/2
  
• Linux
  
• Applications
  
• Games
  
• Demos
  
• Emulators
  

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Systems

8088 based

8086 based

286 based

386 based

486 based

Pentium based

Super Socket 7 based

Socket 8 based

Slot 1 based

Additional Notes

[1] Toshiba Button Mapping: PCem maps [Fn] to right-Ctrl and right-Alt. The following functions are supported:

[2] Amstrad MegaPC (386SX): The original machine had a built-in Sega MegaDrive. This is not emulated in PCem.

[3] IBM PS/2 Model 70 (type 4) (486DX): PCem's FPU emulation is not bit accurate and can not pass IBM's floating point tests. As a result, this machine will always print 12903 and 162 errors on bootup. These can be ignored - F1 will boot the machine.

[4] Intel Advanced/EV (Endeavor) (Pentium): The real board has a Sound Blaster 16 onboard and optionally an S3 Trio64V+. Neither are emulated as onboard devices.

[5] Some systems have fixed graphics adapters:
** = Can use external video card.

[6] Olivetti M24 (display): I haven't seen a dump of the font ROM for this yet, so if one is not provided the MDA font will be used - which looks slightly odd as it is 14-line instead of 16-line.

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Graphics Cards

Basic cards

Unaccelerated (S)VGA cards

2D Accelerated SVGA cards

3D Accelerated SVGA cards

3D only cards

Additional Notes

[1] Cirrus Logic GD-5434: Real chip also supports 1MB configurations, however this is not currently supported in PCem.

[2] Diamond Stealth 3D 2000: PCem emulates the ViRGE S3D engine in software. This works with most games I tried, but there may be some issues. The Direct3D drivers for the /325 are fairly poor (often showing as missing triangles), so use of the /DX instead is recommended.

[3] S3 ViRGE/DX: The drivers that come with Windows are similar to those for the /325, however better ones do exist (try the 8-21-1997 version). With the correct drivers, many early Direct3D games work okay (if slowly).

[4] 3DFX Voodoo Graphics: PCem emulates this in software. The emulation is a lot faster than in v10 (thanks to a new dynamic recompiler) and should be capable of hitting Voodoo 1 performance on most machines when two render threads are used. As before, the emulated CPU is the bottleneck for most games.

PCem can emulate 6 and 8 MB configurations, but defaults to 4 MB for compatibility. It can also emulate the screen filter present on the original card, though this does at present have a noticeable performance hit.

Almost everything I've tried works okay, with a very few exceptions - Screamer 2 and Rally have serious issues.

[5] Obsidian SB50: Drivers for this are a bit limited - the official drivers don't support 2 TMUs in Direct3D.

[6] 3DFX Voodoo 2: PCem can emulate both 8 and 12 MB configurations. It can also emulate 6 and 10 MB configurations (with 2MB framebuffer memory), which were never sold into the PC market but do exist for arcade systems.

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Sound Cards

Additional Notes

[1] Sound Blaster: Several Sound Blasters are emulated.

• SB v1.0 - The original. Limited to 22khz, and no auto-init DMA (can cause crackles sometimes).
• SB v1.5 - Adds auto-init DMA
• SB v2.0 - Upped to 41khz
• SB Pro v1.0 - Stereo with twin OPL2 chips.
• SB Pro v2.0 - Stereo with OPL 3 chip
• SB 16 - 16 bit stereo
• SB AWE32 - SB 16 + wavetable MIDI. This requires a ROM dump from a real AWE32.

All cards are set to Address 220, IRQ 7 and DMA 1 (and High DMA 5). IRQ and DMA can be changed for the SB16 & AWE32 in the drivers. The relevant SET line for autoexec.bat is SET BLASTER = A220 I7 D1 Tx - where Tx is T1 for SB v1.0, T3 for SB v2.0, T4 for SB Pro, and T6 for SB16.

AWE32 requires a ROM dump called awe32.raw. AWE-DUMP is a utility which can get a dump from a real card. Most EMU8000 functionality should work, however filters are not correct and reverb/chorus effects are not currently emulated.

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HDD Controller Cards

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Misc Cards