PCem or VirtualBox - which is better? emulation or a virtual machine?
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For retro game compatibility you cannot beat PCem. There are tools like SoftGPU for VirtualBox, but PCem emulates the vintage hardware much more faithfully.
You're going to have a bad time trying to run anything 3D accelerated with VirtualBox, and there might also be issues with sound and cpu speed. It's just not designed with retro gaming in mind.
Windows 10 heads up. We can't rtclk HDD.vhd and mount it like Phil does here in his fine video using windows 11. Here's the solution. Shut down win98 emulation and then kill it to get back to PCem. Then in windows 10, rtclk Start and lftclk Disk Management then above choose Action and in there choose Attach VHD and browse to whatever you named it, wherever you put it and paste in your folders with the driver .exe / .inf files (it became the I: drive in my PC). Then eject it (unmount). Now you can start windows 98 again and continue. Around 8:14 mins in the video. BTW, that's the beauty and whole reason for going with .vhd instead of the Raw (.img) choice, you don't have to convert everything and I mean everything into .iso files. You just leave them as they are (.exe / .inf files)(dblclk .exe and use Device Manager / Update Driver for .inf). Hat's off to Phil for that. Every other video I've watched on PCem went with .img and converting to iso(s).
Still can't get it to work out days Virtual disk files must be uncompressed and unencrypted and mus.T not be sparce, omg 5hrs of this and can't get it to work any help please
@@johnflood6444 I don't use bite locker I'm on winblows 11 now. just got in before they deleted the last way to not have a microspy account. So if encryption is your problem, I'm sorry for your grief - bummer. Sorry for your grief if that isn't your problem. BTW, I went through the exact same process with win11 and it just plain works. Another thing to keep in mind is to NOT use / emulate a too powerful build. Let's see, I used a slot 1 gigabyte ga-686x; pentium ii / 233; 256 mb; sync host clock; 3dfx voodoo 3 3000 fast vlb/pci; sb pci 128; ide standard HDD; 3.5" 1.44M fdd1; none fdd2; cd model pcemcd at 72x; my vhd is D:\PCem PII 300 3dfx\HDD1.vhd at 31999 mb; cd rom; iomega zip drive; ms intellimouse (ps/2); standard 8-button joystick - that's w98se. I also have a w95 osr2 build which is socket 7 shuttle hot 557; pentium mmx 200; 128mb; sync host clock; s3 virge/dx; fast vlb/pci; ticked voodoo graphics; 4mb times 3 there; sb 16; ide hdd; 3.5 1.44m x 2; pcemcd at 24x; vhd is G:\Win95OSR2.vhd; cd rom; iomega zip drive; intellimouse ps/2; std 8 button stick
WoW! Thank you Phil! Another fantastic video! I will defiantly try this out, I have always used vintage equipment for my Retro setups but as parts get harder to find and more expensive this is is indeed a wonderful alternative for Retro Gamers!
Only 17 hours ago I said I'd be interested in a video about PCEm and Win98 and you just posted it! Amazing! I assume you already had this video produced, or mostly produced? I'd not, that must be record time for such a well put together video. Well done! And thanks Phil. You are awesome. Love your channel.
@@michalt362He is using Win 11 to do it. You simply shutdown PCEm, then right-click on the VHD and select the "Mount" option. That allows yo to easily copy files to the VHD. Once you're done, in Windows Explorer, just right-click the mounted drive and choose "Eject". Then fire up PCEm again :-) PS: It works the same way for me in Win 10 as well.
If you're using 86Box, the sound card you want is the [PCI] Ensoniq AudioPCI (ES1371). Purportedly, this is what the Sound Blaster 128 used on board. This combo worked great for me.
Phil you are treasure and the community would like to thank you again for being so fantastic, and for doing the hard work so that we don't have to. Thanks dude.
Very much like to echo those sentiments... Every time i come across a new video from phil i learn something new and useful regarding old retro stuff he does things the way i used to do them all those years ago....
For anyone who's having trouble mounting the virtual disk image: 1) Enter Computer Manager 2) Click on Disk Manager 3) Click on "Action", and select "Attach VHD" 4) Browse the location of the VHD file, and click "OK" 5) You can now access the disk image and copy files into it as normal. After you're done putting the files in, look for the disk in the disk manager menu, right click on it and select "Detach VHD" just in case. You can always attach it again if you need to add files.
Hello, you seem to have a partial answer to my question... I can't mount the HDD since it is still a VHD format. I tried what you said about the Disk Manager but there is no button "Action" nor "Attach VHD"... Maybe you can help me please? Or someone? Thank you very much, that's my first time on PCem, recommended by a friend to play an old pony game that was running under DirectX 8
@@MechagirlSachiko So I have to open PCem Configuration Manager, configure the machine, go into the disk... I only have the Drive 0 Primary Master thing, with the new button, the browse and the eject button, am I in the right place?
Really good guide! As a matter of fact, its the best one out there on youtube, so thumbs up ;-) One note, if you use a AMD K6 II+ CPU instead of Pentium 2, the performance on games are much better. For example, 3D Mark 99 has a total score of 4311 (11430 CPU). But it requires a very fast CPU to run this! On my 7950X (forced to 85W limit to prevent 90° heat) a AMD K6-II+ with 450 MHz works just fine with almost 100% speeds - when a game/application is already loaded. But loading something slows down that machine enormously and PCem drops to 60-90% of speed until the load is finished, but when its loaded it runs at 100% while in-game (tested with unreal gold)
Great video Phil. Pcem only uses 1 cpu core so the faster the better and hyper threading off. Also settting CD speed to 72x will speed up the windows install and game installs.
Started playing around with PCem the other month, making various setups was fun and I pretty much duplicated this one. Couldn't get Quake II running that great but was pretty good for everything else I threw at from before 1999. Looking forward to what the team produce in the future. It ended up a stepping stone to me getting a retro machine but I ended up concentrating on XP era as PCEM was working out so well and my space is limited.
Quake 2 isn’t going to run well on anything lower than a Pentium 133 or lower at lowest resolution. My i7 can Quake 2 on a Pentium 2 350 or K62 300 AFR with 3Dnow! at 1024x768 but oddly stutters at lower resolutions on the system. My sweet spot are 133 / 166 mhz for 320x240 resolution on Pentium 90 era games.
Hi Phil! Thanks for the compact tutorial, it's great to see you cover PCem! Maybe all the recent coverage will help/motivate the current maintainer(s) to get v18 out the door (and hopefully they will decide to change data storage back to the more intuitive/classic way it is handled in v17 prior to release, so that your tutorial remains more accurate). Greetings from Austria!
Wow that brings back so many memories :) Especially sitting at the Win98 Setup screen and waiting for that timer to go down to zero after another fresh install ... Thanks a lot dude! What I found strange with the installation here is, that a reboot seems to take quite a significant amount of time in a black screen state before the post screen shows up again. Actually a few minutes at times. Sometimes a hard-reset helps, sometimes even that not. Also upon a fresh start of the machine, sometimes it hangs for 2 minutes in a black screen at times. And one small remark: At 11:06 you change the sample rate conversion setting of your microphone ;)
Thanks for this, Phil. Despite emulating every console under the sun, I've held off on trying to recreate my old Win98 set-up until now, but you really have made it easy. All of your videos are great, and your work is much appreciated. Now, time to get back to playing some Pit Droids on my PCem install. . .
thx for this comprehensive guide ! and i want to say ... total annihilation was ahead of its time. still one of the best RTS ever made with the 3d height map and infninite yet meaningful possibilities for unit compositions. and alone the fact that there was no real grid on the map . you could click anywhere and the unit would stop exactly on that pixel. seamless turning, seamless placement of buildings... great stuff!
Absolutely fantastic tutorial! Thank you very much! One addition: I'm using Windows 10 and I can't simply mount that vhd image files as shown in the video. If you have the same problem, go to the Windows disk management and there you have a button on the right to mount an existing virtual drive. Just don't forget to unmount the device (right clicking on the grey area of the virtual drive in the disk management menu) before you reboot your Win98 machine, otherwise it can't access the hard drive.
I often get questions about how I setup my PCem for running those most problematic early Windows games. If you never did it in the past on actual harware it may seem daunting and I never get to making any tutorial on this. Now I have a really good tutorial video to point my viewers to. And with all the resources nicely linked - beautiful work!
I like your channel! Flight sim games are quite daunting to me, often I can't even take off LOL I played a lot of F-15 Strike Eagle II back in the day and Commanche with the Voxel graphics :D
@@philscomputerlab I;ve followed on your great tutorial and provided some additional steps needed for flight sim fans (joystick setup) as well as example of intsalling Jane's Longbow 2 - probably one of the most problematic flight sims to run on modern systems. I linked your video as a prerequisite. Thanks again for your wonderful tutorial! I hope you don't mind if I post a link here -> th-cam.com/video/7pPpoqtD9Og/w-d-xo.html
@@damsonn I'll have to check out that game. For some reason GOG had a lot of flight Sim games. I have two basic joysticks, one Logitech and another Thrustmaster...
@@philscomputerlab Sadly many good flight sims like this one are lost in licensing hell. Most flight sims from Jane's Combat Simulations or Digital Image Design are nowhere to be found. Even some of Microprose titles are missing from digital stores (F-15 Strike Eagle 3, Gunship 2000). But yeah, Jane's Longbow 2 is one of the best helicopter flight simulation of all time. And real pain to run on modern system without help of other software :)
At 07:07 in which I didn't know what to do and the installation just restarted from scratch. If you have the same problem reboot from hard disk and not from CD again. Thanks to you I can play to a super old game! Many many many thanks!
Finally, tested the PCem on the Ryzen 5600H CPU. Emulation of Pentium II 233 MHz together with Voodoo 2 and Windows 98SE goes really well. Quake II is playable like on the real hardware. Thief The Dark Project is running very good. Great project.
I prefer 86Box over PCem, myself. One great thing that 86Box has that PCem doesn't is the ability to mount folders as if they were ISO images; any folder you mount will show up as a CD-ROM in the emulated machine. The one disadvantage is that it doesn't (currently) have its own configuration manager, though they're working on it; in the meantime, you'd need to either install a separate one or use the command line if you want to manage multiple machines.
I didn't know that, this is very handy. You can also mount the virtual hard disks on the host Windows machine as ejectable, portable hard disks. This way you can copy to/from your virtual machines directly. Though i'm not sure if this can't be done with PCem disks too.
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@@Imgema this is the way I do it, however this requires the shut down of the virtual machine unfortunately. So a direct folder share sounds interesting, though missing from PCem. I solve this by creating virtual ISO files. It's also possible to create network sharing by firing up a tiny FTP server on the host for example and connecting to it from eg. Total Commander.
i prefer the performance from PCem in general, if i need copy some programs or data, just use daemon tools and mount the hard drive from the emulated machine for transfer the data in it :)
This video does what it says on the tin. After about 1 and a 1/2 hours following simple instructions, I now have a win 98 emulator and can play Stars. Thank you
It's awesome that stuff like this is being worked on, given the ever-growing price tags and ever-decreasing supply of retro hardware. Obviously it doesn't give quite the same buzz as working with classic parts, but it's extremely convenient.
My benchmark was extremely similar. Thanks for the guide! I had an issue with sound not working but what ended up fixing it was actually rebooting my physical PC.
You the man Phil! I even got it working on Linux (Pop! OS) with a little extra work to get the VHD mountable. There's a bug in the Linux version that makes the key combo to release the mouse not work. Pressing the middle mouse button does still release it though.
Well done Phil, you listened to my recommendation on using PCem, which come from my frustration on having to waste SPACE, MONEY, and TIME with real old hardware and going for a better alternative to DosBox. We all should contribute/donate as developers/users to PCem to keep it free. Michael Manley is the current project maintainer and the forum is open.
Mostly in many cases an average user doesn't need old hardware if it is not affordable. Emulation is fair enough. But you can't get the same joy from connecting Win98 to the Internet as it was back then. ICQ has gone, AOL has gone. OMG OMG OMG!! PalTalk is still alive!!!! Just got to know right now by searching 🤧🤧🤧
Awesome tutorial! Didn’t know the tool, very cool indeed - can play with different hardware. And TA is one of the best games ever - played a lot, including the expansions. It had toons of mods - and loved to play skirmishes against friends. Big Bertha cannon was so fun to use and send your enemies packing home.
PCem development has slowed significantly since the original programmer left. I recommend 86box instead. It's a fork of PCem that is still in active development.
@@mrcrue13 yeah, it may be, my Ryzen 9 definitely likes PCem a lot more than 86Box. I personally think PCBox(although it’s pretty much 86Box developer mode), kinda meets in the middle. Still has the newer stuff but has a slightly faster recompiler.
I own hardware similar very similar to this, but emulation is the future! PCem gives a really authentic experience provided you have the power to run it! The final boss would be an FPGA that can emulate an AthlonXP with a GeForce 🤩 future generations will get to experience the fun too. Love how you used the VDI to transfer files, I wouldn't have thought to do that.
Wow, didn't know PCem supported Voodoo emulation, wonder if it will support Creative EAX in the future. Also seeing videos with comparison against real hardware, accuracy, etc, would be awesome
I absolutely love PCem, unfortunately it's been in a state of limbo since the original developer quit the project. 86Box is another alternative though that is still continually being updated, so if you can't get something to work quite right under PCem, I suggest giving 86Box a shot as well! Happy retro gaming!
If I remember correctly, 86Box gives access to higher speed CPU emulation for performance. However PCEm is more accurate in a lot of cases. I would personally do the following. For games up to Quake II, use PCEm with Voodoo emulation. After that, use Virtualbox for Windows XP Service Pack 3.
This is awesome! I played with PCem a while ago but switched to hardware for the fun of it, I lack a Voodoo3 though, lol. Thank you for making this guide and doing all the work. Huge asset to the retro community.
Afaik PCem hasn't been updated in a while, there was a fork called 86Box, and a couple UIs for it. I found WinBox is actually really nice, it will download 86Box and all the Roms for you and the UI layout for setting up machines is really nice. Functionally I think you can do the same stuff with either, just one seems to be active while one isn't?
Yeah! Definitely makes things a bit easier for someone less techy, It's UI seems more modelled off something like virtualbox with a guided setup wizard for setting up a machine, with templates that select all the hardware for you, like the one for the IBM PC lets you select the 4.77 or 7.16mhz CPU, the memory, and display adapters it could have come with. I imagine it could be nicer than DOSBox for those really speed sensitive games. Oh also it has presets for old hard drives, like how old BIOSes had the predefined "types", which felt like a really cool touch.
@@Skiedeagle Ah, seems things have changed since the thing I read was posted? Looks like someone new took over the project if I understand this right? I like PCem's interface when creating machines a bit more than 86Box, but Winbox for 86Box is like a whole other animal. I also discovered something neat... I picked a compaq portal 3, and it mimicked the plasma screen! really cool. I also like the hard drive database.
I had some problems with sb 128. With awe32 some old games like DD2 worked flawlessly. So people if you have compatibility issues, do not just focus on the gpu or OS, voodoo 3000 now works with everything I like.
Thanks. I managed to get some life into one of my Win98 machines again but who knows for how long. It’s having some bizarre issues. So emulating is definitely the future as more and more old hardware dies.
You are the GOAT! I was using my Compaq Persario 1894 laptop forever, but it kept flipping out since its impossible to find the right drivers, this saves me tons of time trying to mess with actual hardware and get straight to the meat and potatos
Love PCem, it's great having options. As well as the ability to test stuff without having to rebuild or tear apart vintage PC's. Such as custom Windows install disks etc
Thank you so much for releasing this video, with all files included to make a virtual windows 98 system, running in Windows 11. Your video is easy to understand, information given quickly, and I really appreciate everything you have done in this video! =D
Fantastic! Can confirm these instructions work *perfectly* with PCem's v 17 Linux version. (note, if you are using a new distro with a Wayland based Window System you need to start the emulator with GDK_BACKEND=x11 before program name in terminal to make it run correctly) I was having some issues getting 98 installed with the other emulated system types, but Slot 1 works great. Was able to run games from when I was a kid (Diablo 1 and Sim Golf) flawlessly.
Great video Phil, i'd love to see more videos on PCem about building DOS configs too; as fun as searching the internet for weeks to hunt down a single driver for my retro pc's it would be nice to have dos & 98se rigs ready to go on my pc at a moments notice :)
Thank you, it's something I'm passionate about. Get people into this hobby with low difficulty so they have a positive first start and then can branch out to whatever they find interesting!
Thank you so much for this tutorial. Thanks to this I was able to convert my copy of pokemon project studio red version to an iso and actually run it on my computer. I wasn't able to print the fun stationary as a kid cus we didn't have a printer but now I can :D Made some post cards today thanks to you!
Thanks Phil. I've been meaning to mess around with win98 on PCem for months but never got around to figuring it all out and gathering all the software and drivers but this video gave me everything i need to get it up and running last night. normally i just like to play the old 3d games on modern system in 4k/2160p @ 144fps through various config tweaks, patches, or source ports but some like Dark Earth (16bit installer .exe and hard coded 640x480 at 256 color) are very stubborn and fussy in win10 but loaded up instantly on this. i don't remember if its any good of a game as i haven't played since 1999 but i sure do remember the female character printed on Disc 2 😉
Some issues i ran and the fixes: -PCem not recognizing the ROMS. Turns out if you have the program in a directory with special characters (example ~ ) it does not work at all. Move the program folder to C: or something. -Could not read the attached VHD. After attaching it to Disk Management you have to right click and assign a letter to it and it works.
Very good to see a new video on pcem. PCem is probably the best for emulating powerful retro hardware though i also really like using dosbox pure, it has a retroarch core so you can play with crt shaders and bezels which look really cool and even in EmuVR
For me, I'm having audio defects on usual Soundblaster cards running Windows 95 the jingle sounds a bit distorted. But I thinking having a PCI card like a Soundblaster 128 sounds promising! I'll have to test this on a Win95 VM! I'll be using PCEm to 'TAS' Abe's Exoddus, stay tuned!!
17:40 Ain't that a truth? xD Also Simply Lovely to see you do a video like this - Searching for ROMs myself was a Hustle - Couldn't find a Pentium II ROM, but found the ROM for a Whole generation of AMD K6, but you know - The more the better, in terms of amount of MotherBoards to choose from and whatnot.
Thanks for the video! I saw somewhere and cant find it: to setup a emulator, with a single game which will boot automatically after starting the VM, It is adding a few houndread megs for each game, but its not an issue for the modern storage and each game will act lika a console ROM, So you would setup one clean windows install, than for each game, copy it, install game and create autorun script for the game
PCem rocks I got my 1st pc from aldi in th 90s, pentium 100 i think it was, this takes me back to all the messing around and then finding voodoo3 ugrading ram and cpu to a cyrix god knows what but it felt quick running n64 emu back then.
Great video. I'm thinking about to replace my old hardware machine and this might be the right solution for that. Mounting a VHD and copying the nedded stuff is absolut perfect. Vielen Dank für die ausführliche Anleitung!
Bitte schoen :D Just wait before you throw out old hardware. I plan on spending more time with PCem and 98Box to really make up my mind. I've only started using it and don't want to make an oppinion video before really testing it and checking a range of aspects and configurations!
@@philscomputerlab I leave my system here, just as a backup. I just wonder, if I can, somehow connect my old Roland SC-D70 to the virtual machine. It's connected with USB. I think, you gave me a bit things to test this evening 🙂 The question in this virtual machine is: How high can you get the specs and can it run Crysis?
I set this up a while back on an intel i9 10850k box. I was playing around with the higher processor speeds and I realized your box definitely needs a heck of a setup to get max Pentium II speeds without it slowing down. I recently upgraded to the new i9 14900k and I am hoping it will be enough to emulate the speeds I am looking for. I have several old systems I can play with, but the parts are starting to fail. It is more of a hassle to keep them running than it would be to emulate a near perfect old system setup. Thanks for the easy guide.
this made my day....tried so many vms to get my Win98 back...and this works better than my original pc ten years ago... Thank you so much for the detailed guide!
Nice video! I really like emulation. I like real hardware too, but I have space constraints... I can have a couple of old PC's setup but that's about it.
This is an awesome resource and guide Phil! Here's some nitpicks To transfer files into PCem, if anyone is using older versions of Windows, e.g. Windows 7, then I'd recommend to pack everything (drivers, games) and create an ISO image and burn it to PCem. MagicISO works great, and the key is public already, so it'll be great ease. :) and if anyone is using Linux, there's mkisofs (also known as genisoimage) which will do the job! To get a higher clock speed, you can actually get this on a decade old CPU too! If it's an Intel CPU, make sure to enable hyperthreading, and you're ready to go. Intel CPU single core performance is still capable to emulate them. PCem heavily uses SSE varient instructions. Sometimes however PCem may slow down, but it's because of the emulation process, it's not exactly as raw hardware, but shouldn't have any major issues.
Happy Friday Phil! I like PCEm and have setup both 98 and ME systems with it. My challenge has been getting a beefy enough system to play smoothly without audio stuttering or visual freezing in gameplay. Lowering what CPU you’re using in PCEm usually does the trick.
@user-lk7cv8vg7r I am never able to get consistent performance out of stuff like PCem and Dosbox, even trying to emulate something that should be easy like a Pentium 90, you go try to run a game like Stargunner and its extremely inconsistent
@Пыль глотаю On my Beelink SER4 4800U Mini PC, I didn’t experience any stutters or slowdowns on my PCem guest system, which runs on my emulated Intel Pentium MMX 200 system with 128MB RAM, a 4GB IDE hard drive, a 3dfx Voodoo3 2000 video card, and a Creative SoundBlaster AWE32 sound card. My go-to operating system on my PCem guest setup is an unofficial version of Windows 95, namely Windows 95D Lite by Razorback.
What a fantastic upload. Hats off. Very meticulous and informative. I guess I can sell all the "old junk" computers I have been hoarding now. I struggled a lot with VirtualBox and VmWare but PCem seems to solve my problems. Thank you! Also....including System Shock 2 as a demo tells volumes about your IQ. Looking Glass all the way!
The 2nd advantage on such projects is to preserve the retro hardware - if you keep using it a lot, it will fail at some point. I like to turn it on once in a while, but not playing for hours like in the past. I would be very sad if my Voodoos fail and cannot be repaired. I do the basic recap, but if something blows or cpus/gpu just give up, it’s game over.
Great video as always! I had trouble with my USB joystick passthrough--for any others with this, I had to go into "add hardware" "sound, video and game.." manual search, add a microsoft standard gameport device. It went and got some files from the win98 setup folder (which you should always have on your machine) and then it recognized my joystick.
I followed the tutorial exactly, but somehow did not get the 'Hard disk image' shown at 8:12 in the video. Mine shows up as a Virtual Hard Disk and I am not able to mount anything. Anyone else ran into this issue? Edit: I looked up how to mount a virtual hard disk to Windows. But then PCem does not recognize the VHD anymore and throws an error. Edit 2: I looked up how to mount a VHD through 'Disk Management' via windows. Now I'm able to move my files, but doesn't look as nice as his PC shows.
I made a 486X2 66mhz Windows 98 machine and just for fun I wanted to see how the Voodoo3 would run on that machine. It won't boot at all with the Voodoo3 3000 selected but it will boot with the Voodoo3 2000. However I can not get it to work in Windows 98. If I select the Voodoo Banshee I can get it to kind of work. The desktop will display in proper colors but no 3D programs will run.
Awesome tutorial! One additional thing I'd recommend is disabling the primary and secondary slave in the bios so it doesn't try to search for them on each boot and speeds up the boot a little bit. Also at the Win98 components selection at 5:20 how could you not select Desktop Themes! That is a necessity! If I'm running Windows 98 I have to have the Inside my computer theme available! lol *edit at 11:01 I think you made a mistake. You changed the sample rate quality on recording and not playback. I'm assuming you meant to do it on playback, yes? One other thing, I'm using Windows 10 and when I right click on the vhd file mount isn't an option. I had to do it through disk management. Not a big deal but I'm curious as to why it didn't show up for me.
I'm glad somebody else saw the sample rate change error, I'm sure he meant to do it on playback. I believe mounting is built into the OS as of Windows 11. On Windows 10, I accomplish the same thing by using something like Daemon Tools.
So I wasn't able to right-click HDD to mount as the option wasn't there so I had to go into device management and add VCD then eject once the files were transferred so it would boot back up in PCem. Just a heads up if anyone else runs into that issue. Great tutorial. Have several older games that will be tested out. Thank you!
PCem or VirtualBox - which is better?
emulation or a virtual machine?
For retro game compatibility you cannot beat PCem. There are tools like SoftGPU for VirtualBox, but PCem emulates the vintage hardware much more faithfully.
You're going to have a bad time trying to run anything 3D accelerated with VirtualBox, and there might also be issues with sound and cpu speed. It's just not designed with retro gaming in mind.
Never used VirtualBox and haven't heard much talk about using it for retro games.
PCem is way better for older systems than VB is, VB is only really interested in somewhat recent systems.
I’ve have extensively tested both VMWare and VirtualBox for 98 and it’s terrible. PCEm or 86Box are the way to go for Win98 emulation.
Windows 10 heads up. We can't rtclk HDD.vhd and mount it like Phil does here in his fine video using windows 11. Here's the solution. Shut down win98 emulation and then kill it to get back to PCem. Then in windows 10, rtclk Start and lftclk Disk Management then above choose Action and in there choose Attach VHD and browse to whatever you named it, wherever you put it and paste in your folders with the driver .exe / .inf files (it became the I: drive in my PC). Then eject it (unmount). Now you can start windows 98 again and continue. Around 8:14 mins in the video. BTW, that's the beauty and whole reason for going with .vhd instead of the Raw (.img) choice, you don't have to convert everything and I mean everything into .iso files. You just leave them as they are (.exe / .inf files)(dblclk .exe and use Device Manager / Update Driver for .inf). Hat's off to Phil for that. Every other video I've watched on PCem went with .img and converting to iso(s).
This comment saved me asome headache.. thx bro!!
Nice save! A lot less convenient than the "Mount" option, which oddly does still exist for VHDX but PCEm doesn't output to that format.
Still can't get it to work out days Virtual disk files must be uncompressed and unencrypted and mus.T not be sparce, omg 5hrs of this and can't get it to work any help please
I did this and now i get Disk boot failure every time i try to run pcem
@@johnflood6444 I don't use bite locker I'm on winblows 11 now. just got in before they deleted the last way to not have a microspy account. So if encryption is your problem, I'm sorry for your grief - bummer. Sorry for your grief if that isn't your problem. BTW, I went through the exact same process with win11 and it just plain works. Another thing to keep in mind is to NOT use / emulate a too powerful build. Let's see, I used a slot 1 gigabyte ga-686x; pentium ii / 233; 256 mb; sync host clock; 3dfx voodoo 3 3000 fast vlb/pci; sb pci 128; ide standard HDD; 3.5" 1.44M fdd1; none fdd2; cd model pcemcd at 72x; my vhd is D:\PCem PII 300 3dfx\HDD1.vhd at 31999 mb; cd rom; iomega zip drive; ms intellimouse (ps/2); standard 8-button joystick - that's w98se. I also have a w95 osr2 build which is socket 7 shuttle hot 557; pentium mmx 200; 128mb; sync host clock; s3 virge/dx; fast vlb/pci; ticked voodoo graphics; 4mb times 3 there; sb 16; ide hdd; 3.5 1.44m x 2; pcemcd at 24x; vhd is G:\Win95OSR2.vhd; cd rom; iomega zip drive; intellimouse ps/2; std 8 button stick
Wow, this video was absolutely awesome! What a treat, especially having all the resources collected in one place!
WoW! Thank you Phil! Another fantastic video! I will defiantly try this out, I have always used vintage equipment for my Retro setups but as parts get harder to find and more expensive this is is indeed a wonderful alternative for Retro Gamers!
Only 17 hours ago I said I'd be interested in a video about PCEm and Win98 and you just posted it! Amazing! I assume you already had this video produced, or mostly produced? I'd not, that must be record time for such a well put together video. Well done! And thanks Phil. You are awesome. Love your channel.
Yea I think I started playing with PCem and 86Box a few weeks ago? I recorded it last weekend to give you an idea :)
@@philscomputerlab same here Phil since I’ve seen your video I’m back at messing around with 86box and PCem
Thanks for your video sir.
@@philscomputerlab Great videos, everything works but I have a problem with editing the vhd file - what are you mounting / editing it in ?
@@michalt362He is using Win 11 to do it. You simply shutdown PCEm, then right-click on the VHD and select the "Mount" option. That allows yo to easily copy files to the VHD. Once you're done, in Windows Explorer, just right-click the mounted drive and choose "Eject". Then fire up PCEm again :-)
PS: It works the same way for me in Win 10 as well.
If you're using 86Box, the sound card you want is the [PCI] Ensoniq AudioPCI (ES1371). Purportedly, this is what the Sound Blaster 128 used on board. This combo worked great for me.
Phil you are treasure and the community would like to thank you again for being so fantastic, and for doing the hard work so that we don't have to. Thanks dude.
Very much like to echo those sentiments... Every time i come across a new video from phil i learn something new and useful regarding old retro stuff he does things the way i used to do them all those years ago....
For anyone who's having trouble mounting the virtual disk image:
1) Enter Computer Manager
2) Click on Disk Manager
3) Click on "Action", and select "Attach VHD"
4) Browse the location of the VHD file, and click "OK"
5) You can now access the disk image and copy files into it as normal.
After you're done putting the files in, look for the disk in the disk manager menu, right click on it and select "Detach VHD" just in case. You can always attach it again if you need to add files.
Hello, you seem to have a partial answer to my question... I can't mount the HDD since it is still a VHD format. I tried what you said about the Disk Manager but there is no button "Action" nor "Attach VHD"... Maybe you can help me please? Or someone? Thank you very much, that's my first time on PCem, recommended by a friend to play an old pony game that was running under DirectX 8
@@CassieBaldur "Action" should be the option to the right of "File", and "Attach VHD" should be the final option that shows up when you click there.
@@MechagirlSachiko So I have to open PCem Configuration Manager, configure the machine, go into the disk... I only have the Drive 0 Primary Master thing, with the new button, the browse and the eject button, am I in the right place?
@@CassieBaldur No, no, no, to get to the Disk Manager you have to enter the Windows Computer Manager.
@@MechagirlSachiko Okay I did that, it created a new partition of C but it didn't change the file as a disk, it's still a VHD that I can't mount -_-
Really good guide! As a matter of fact, its the best one out there on youtube, so thumbs up ;-)
One note, if you use a AMD K6 II+ CPU instead of Pentium 2, the performance on games are much better. For example, 3D Mark 99 has a total score of 4311 (11430 CPU).
But it requires a very fast CPU to run this! On my 7950X (forced to 85W limit to prevent 90° heat) a AMD K6-II+ with 450 MHz works just fine with almost 100% speeds - when a game/application is already loaded. But loading something slows down that machine enormously and PCem drops to 60-90% of speed until the load is finished, but when its loaded it runs at 100% while in-game (tested with unreal gold)
Great video Phil. Pcem only uses 1 cpu core so the faster the better and hyper threading off. Also settting CD speed to 72x will speed up the windows install and game installs.
72x, nice 🙂
What is the fastest single core CPU to use in that case?
Started playing around with PCem the other month, making various setups was fun and I pretty much duplicated this one. Couldn't get Quake II running that great but was pretty good for everything else I threw at from before 1999. Looking forward to what the team produce in the future. It ended up a stepping stone to me getting a retro machine but I ended up concentrating on XP era as PCEM was working out so well and my space is limited.
Quake 2 isn’t going to run well on anything lower than a Pentium 133 or lower at lowest resolution. My i7 can Quake 2 on a Pentium 2 350 or K62 300 AFR with 3Dnow! at 1024x768 but oddly stutters at lower resolutions on the system. My sweet spot are 133 / 166 mhz for 320x240 resolution on Pentium 90 era games.
Hi Phil!
Thanks for the compact tutorial, it's great to see you cover PCem! Maybe all the recent coverage will help/motivate the current maintainer(s) to get v18 out the door (and hopefully they will decide to change data storage back to the more intuitive/classic way it is handled in v17 prior to release, so that your tutorial remains more accurate).
Greetings from Austria!
Just get 86Box, It's great and is under developing every single day.
Wow that brings back so many memories :) Especially sitting at the Win98 Setup screen and waiting for that timer to go down to zero after another fresh install ...
Thanks a lot dude!
What I found strange with the installation here is, that a reboot seems to take quite a significant amount of time in a black screen state before the post screen shows up again. Actually a few minutes at times. Sometimes a hard-reset helps, sometimes even that not.
Also upon a fresh start of the machine, sometimes it hangs for 2 minutes in a black screen at times.
And one small remark:
At 11:06 you change the sample rate conversion setting of your microphone ;)
Thanks for this, Phil. Despite emulating every console under the sun, I've held off on trying to recreate my old Win98 set-up until now, but you really have made it easy. All of your videos are great, and your work is much appreciated. Now, time to get back to playing some Pit Droids on my PCem install. . .
Have fun!
Awesome tutorial. I’m up and running and playing my old games!!! Thanks so much
Great to hear! 😊
thx for this comprehensive guide ! and i want to say ... total annihilation was ahead of its time. still one of the best RTS ever made with the 3d height map and infninite yet meaningful possibilities for unit compositions. and alone the fact that there was no real grid on the map . you could click anywhere and the unit would stop exactly on that pixel. seamless turning, seamless placement of buildings...
great stuff!
It's a game I actually want to play more :D
Absolutely fantastic tutorial! Thank you very much! One addition: I'm using Windows 10 and I can't simply mount that vhd image files as shown in the video. If you have the same problem, go to the Windows disk management and there you have a button on the right to mount an existing virtual drive. Just don't forget to unmount the device (right clicking on the grey area of the virtual drive in the disk management menu) before you reboot your Win98 machine, otherwise it can't access the hard drive.
I often get questions about how I setup my PCem for running those most problematic early Windows games. If you never did it in the past on actual harware it may seem daunting and I never get to making any tutorial on this. Now I have a really good tutorial video to point my viewers to. And with all the resources nicely linked - beautiful work!
I like your channel! Flight sim games are quite daunting to me, often I can't even take off LOL I played a lot of F-15 Strike Eagle II back in the day and Commanche with the Voxel graphics :D
@@philscomputerlab I;ve followed on your great tutorial and provided some additional steps needed for flight sim fans (joystick setup) as well as example of intsalling Jane's Longbow 2 - probably one of the most problematic flight sims to run on modern systems. I linked your video as a prerequisite. Thanks again for your wonderful tutorial! I hope you don't mind if I post a link here -> th-cam.com/video/7pPpoqtD9Og/w-d-xo.html
@@damsonn I'll have to check out that game. For some reason GOG had a lot of flight Sim games. I have two basic joysticks, one Logitech and another Thrustmaster...
@@philscomputerlab Sadly many good flight sims like this one are lost in licensing hell. Most flight sims from Jane's Combat Simulations or Digital Image Design are nowhere to be found. Even some of Microprose titles are missing from digital stores (F-15 Strike Eagle 3, Gunship 2000). But yeah, Jane's Longbow 2 is one of the best helicopter flight simulation of all time. And real pain to run on modern system without help of other software :)
At 07:07 in which I didn't know what to do and the installation just restarted from scratch. If you have the same problem reboot from hard disk and not from CD again.
Thanks to you I can play to a super old game! Many many many thanks!
Finally, tested the PCem on the Ryzen 5600H CPU. Emulation of Pentium II 233 MHz together with Voodoo 2 and Windows 98SE goes really well. Quake II is playable like on the real hardware. Thief The Dark Project is running very good. Great project.
Great to hear!
I didn't even know about the "integer scaling" tip, that's awesome!
I prefer 86Box over PCem, myself. One great thing that 86Box has that PCem doesn't is the ability to mount folders as if they were ISO images; any folder you mount will show up as a CD-ROM in the emulated machine. The one disadvantage is that it doesn't (currently) have its own configuration manager, though they're working on it; in the meantime, you'd need to either install a separate one or use the command line if you want to manage multiple machines.
I didn't know that, this is very handy. You can also mount the virtual hard disks on the host Windows machine as ejectable, portable hard disks. This way you can copy to/from your virtual machines directly. Though i'm not sure if this can't be done with PCem disks too.
@@Imgema this is the way I do it, however this requires the shut down of the virtual machine unfortunately. So a direct folder share sounds interesting, though missing from PCem. I solve this by creating virtual ISO files. It's also possible to create network sharing by firing up a tiny FTP server on the host for example and connecting to it from eg. Total Commander.
i prefer the performance from PCem in general, if i need copy some programs or data, just use daemon tools and mount the hard drive from the emulated machine for transfer the data in it :)
This video does what it says on the tin. After about 1 and a 1/2 hours following simple instructions, I now have a win 98 emulator and can play Stars. Thank you
Awesome!
It's awesome that stuff like this is being worked on, given the ever-growing price tags and ever-decreasing supply of retro hardware. Obviously it doesn't give quite the same buzz as working with classic parts, but it's extremely convenient.
i want to own things, and be happy
My benchmark was extremely similar. Thanks for the guide! I had an issue with sound not working but what ended up fixing it was actually rebooting my physical PC.
You the man Phil! I even got it working on Linux (Pop! OS) with a little extra work to get the VHD mountable. There's a bug in the Linux version that makes the key combo to release the mouse not work. Pressing the middle mouse button does still release it though.
I couldn't get the linux version to compile so im using windows version via proton and runs really well
Well done Phil, you listened to my recommendation on using PCem, which come from my frustration on having to waste SPACE, MONEY, and TIME with real old hardware and going for a better alternative to DosBox. We all should contribute/donate as developers/users to PCem to keep it free. Michael Manley is the current project maintainer and the forum is open.
86box will always be free.
Mostly in many cases an average user doesn't need old hardware if it is not affordable. Emulation is fair enough. But you can't get the same joy from connecting Win98 to the Internet as it was back then. ICQ has gone, AOL has gone. OMG OMG OMG!! PalTalk is still alive!!!! Just got to know right now by searching 🤧🤧🤧
@@ran2wild370 Uh Oh! I met my wife on ICQ (I'm from England and she from the USA) Married 23 years this November.
@@daishi5571 :-)) Lucky you are.
@@ran2wild370ICQ is still around.
Awesome tutorial! Didn’t know the tool, very cool indeed - can play with different hardware. And TA is one of the best games ever - played a lot, including the expansions. It had toons of mods - and loved to play skirmishes against friends. Big Bertha cannon was so fun to use and send your enemies packing home.
Perfect timing. I was going to suggest in a previous video whether you could look into PCem as it seems to have evolved nicely.
PCem development has slowed significantly since the original programmer left.
I recommend 86box instead. It's a fork of PCem that is still in active development.
I agree, plus it has a few more hardware options like pentium 3, and a handful more GPUs
th-cam.com/video/LnOcRqIhbFo/w-d-xo.html PCem have better performance in general, less options but more simple
@@coreyc6798 I also believe 86box is more accurate. It ends up running a bit slower than PCem due to the removal of some speed "hacks"
@@mrcrue13 yeah, it may be, my Ryzen 9 definitely likes PCem a lot more than 86Box. I personally think PCBox(although it’s pretty much 86Box developer mode), kinda meets in the middle. Still has the newer stuff but has a slightly faster recompiler.
@@coreyc6798 I'm in the same boat. I have a plenty fast Ryzen 7, but 86Box gives it a run for its money.
The cleanup of Win98 brought back memories. I did that so many times back in the day.
Thanks, your guide was supper easy to follow, I had some retro HW that supports win 98 but it broke and the PCwm look awesome.
What a perfect summarization! Virtual HDD is already 70% formatted. The time machine is almost on! Thank you for posting this, super useful!
I own hardware similar very similar to this, but emulation is the future! PCem gives a really authentic experience provided you have the power to run it! The final boss would be an FPGA that can emulate an AthlonXP with a GeForce 🤩 future generations will get to experience the fun too. Love how you used the VDI to transfer files, I wouldn't have thought to do that.
I've been trying different solutions for running old games and this is by far the best one. Thanks for sharing!
Really great walk-through, thanks Phil!
Great tutorial Phil! I'll have to give this a try with Carmageddon 1&2 in glide mode.
Wow, didn't know PCem supported Voodoo emulation, wonder if it will support Creative EAX in the future. Also seeing videos with comparison against real hardware, accuracy, etc, would be awesome
Easily the best tutorial out there. Especially when it comes to installing additional files. Great structured description as well.
@@yourcommander3412 Thank you ☺️
I absolutely love PCem, unfortunately it's been in a state of limbo since the original developer quit the project. 86Box is another alternative though that is still continually being updated, so if you can't get something to work quite right under PCem, I suggest giving 86Box a shot as well! Happy retro gaming!
Are they both similar in emulation speed/efficiency or is one faster?
If I remember correctly, 86Box gives access to higher speed CPU emulation for performance. However PCEm is more accurate in a lot of cases.
I would personally do the following. For games up to Quake II, use PCEm with Voodoo emulation. After that, use Virtualbox for Windows XP Service Pack 3.
This is awesome! I played with PCem a while ago but switched to hardware for the fun of it, I lack a Voodoo3 though, lol. Thank you for making this guide and doing all the work. Huge asset to the retro community.
Afaik PCem hasn't been updated in a while, there was a fork called 86Box, and a couple UIs for it. I found WinBox is actually really nice, it will download 86Box and all the Roms for you and the UI layout for setting up machines is really nice.
Functionally I think you can do the same stuff with either, just one seems to be active while one isn't?
WinBox sounds interesting 😮
Yeah! Definitely makes things a bit easier for someone less techy, It's UI seems more modelled off something like virtualbox with a guided setup wizard for setting up a machine, with templates that select all the hardware for you, like the one for the IBM PC lets you select the 4.77 or 7.16mhz CPU, the memory, and display adapters it could have come with. I imagine it could be nicer than DOSBox for those really speed sensitive games.
Oh also it has presets for old hard drives, like how old BIOSes had the predefined "types", which felt like a really cool touch.
@@Skiedeagle Ah, seems things have changed since the thing I read was posted? Looks like someone new took over the project if I understand this right? I like PCem's interface when creating machines a bit more than 86Box, but Winbox for 86Box is like a whole other animal. I also discovered something neat... I picked a compaq portal 3, and it mimicked the plasma screen! really cool. I also like the hard drive database.
I have been playing around with this configuration the last few weeks. A lot of fun going through my favourite PC games from when I was a child. :)
Great to hear!
Where do you download these games from?
"I like it easy, life is hard enough" - Phil 2023
I had some problems with sb 128. With awe32 some old games like DD2 worked flawlessly. So people if you have compatibility issues, do not just focus on the gpu or OS, voodoo 3000 now works with everything I like.
Great tip! The Sound Blaster 16 PnP is also a great option.
we retropc and retrogaming lovers should make you a monument. Thank you🤩
Nice I like the Soundblaster 16 drivers or the Ensoniq AudioPCI Drivers drivers. For comparability and that what I grew up with. Love your videos.
Phil, please, PCem vs 86Box video. I all found on YT are very old videos... What is best?
+1 for this comparison!
It is just great. I didn't try out any game yet but I am feeling very excited to play Imperialism and Phantasmagoria II on it. Thank you.
Phantasmagoria installed and runs perfectly!
Very informative. I want to have this video up when I set up my machine. Thank you.
I press delete nothing happen
You need to do it before it fails the boot. I bash it a couple of time
Thanks. I managed to get some life into one of my Win98 machines again but who knows for how long. It’s having some bizarre issues. So emulating is definitely the future as more and more old hardware dies.
DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER
How do we fix it???
@@brooksboystudios idk, bro told me to put the 98 cd in. i found a solution. PUT THE 98 BOOT DISK IN
Lol
Wrong windows install CD my friend downloaded the update file sure its the OEM
Amazing tutorial, thanks Phil, us older guys can enjoy our youth, nostalgia! Thank you my friend!
WHAT?? You didn't installed Themes! Shame on you!
These aren't needed
You are the GOAT! I was using my Compaq Persario 1894 laptop forever, but it kept flipping out since its impossible to find the right drivers, this saves me tons of time trying to mess with actual hardware and get straight to the meat and potatos
Love PCem, it's great having options. As well as the ability to test stuff without having to rebuild or tear apart vintage PC's. Such as custom Windows install disks etc
Thank you so much for releasing this video, with all files included to make a virtual windows 98 system, running in Windows 11. Your video is easy to understand, information given quickly, and I really appreciate everything you have done in this video! =D
Fantastic! Can confirm these instructions work *perfectly* with PCem's v 17 Linux version. (note, if you are using a new distro with a Wayland based Window System you need to start the emulator with GDK_BACKEND=x11 before program name in terminal to make it run correctly)
I was having some issues getting 98 installed with the other emulated system types, but Slot 1 works great. Was able to run games from when I was a kid (Diablo 1 and Sim Golf) flawlessly.
Awesome!
Thank you for the walk-through and providing links to all the files!
Great video Phil, i'd love to see more videos on PCem about building DOS configs too; as fun as searching the internet for weeks to hunt down a single driver for my retro pc's it would be nice to have dos & 98se rigs ready to go on my pc at a moments notice :)
Great idea making this guide! Quick and easy way to set up PCem. It can be somewhat daunting for new users.
Thank you, it's something I'm passionate about. Get people into this hobby with low difficulty so they have a positive first start and then can branch out to whatever they find interesting!
Thank you so much for this tutorial. Thanks to this I was able to convert my copy of pokemon project studio red version to an iso and actually run it on my computer. I wasn't able to print the fun stationary as a kid cus we didn't have a printer but now I can :D Made some post cards today thanks to you!
Thanks Phil. I've been meaning to mess around with win98 on PCem for months but never got around to figuring it all out and gathering all the software and drivers but this video gave me everything i need to get it up and running last night.
normally i just like to play the old 3d games on modern system in 4k/2160p @ 144fps through various config tweaks, patches, or source ports but some like Dark Earth (16bit installer .exe and hard coded 640x480 at 256 color) are very stubborn and fussy in win10 but loaded up instantly on this. i don't remember if its any good of a game as i haven't played since 1999 but i sure do remember the female character printed on Disc 2 😉
Some issues i ran and the fixes:
-PCem not recognizing the ROMS. Turns out if you have the program in a directory with special characters (example ~ ) it does not work at all. Move the program folder to C: or something.
-Could not read the attached VHD. After attaching it to Disk Management you have to right click and assign a letter to it and it works.
Thank you for sharing your workarounds!
is it case sensitive?
@@jess648 From my experience i did not have any problems with that
did you run into issues mounting it on modern windows too?
@@jess648 Yes as i said, on Windows 11. I could only access the drive after assigning to it a letter on disk management
Thanks Phil, this is fantastic! 😀 I want to have a crack at getting Jane's F-15 and other games in the series to work with pcem...
Very good to see a new video on pcem. PCem is probably the best for emulating powerful retro hardware though i also really like using dosbox pure, it has a retroarch core so you can play with crt shaders and bezels which look really cool and even in EmuVR
For me, I'm having audio defects on usual Soundblaster cards running Windows 95 the jingle sounds a bit distorted. But I thinking having a PCI card like a Soundblaster 128 sounds promising! I'll have to test this on a Win95 VM! I'll be using PCEm to 'TAS' Abe's Exoddus, stay tuned!!
You rock Phil - thanks for hosting the drivers!
Genio Maestro gracias por el tutorial, un saludo desde Argentina
17:40 Ain't that a truth? xD
Also Simply Lovely to see you do a video like this - Searching for ROMs myself was a Hustle - Couldn't find a Pentium II ROM, but found the ROM for a Whole generation of AMD K6, but you know - The more the better, in terms of amount of MotherBoards to choose from and whatnot.
Thanks for the video!
I saw somewhere and cant find it:
to setup a emulator, with a single game which will boot automatically after starting the VM,
It is adding a few houndread megs for each game, but its not an issue for the modern storage and each game will act lika a console ROM,
So you would setup one clean windows install, than for each game, copy it, install game and create autorun script for the game
PCem rocks I got my 1st pc from aldi in th 90s, pentium 100 i think it was, this takes me back to all the messing around and then finding voodoo3 ugrading ram and cpu to a cyrix god knows what but it felt quick running n64 emu back then.
You are a real super hero, thank you so much for making this video and having all the resources for us! Can't thank you enough!
Great video. I'm thinking about to replace my old hardware machine and this might be the right solution for that.
Mounting a VHD and copying the nedded stuff is absolut perfect.
Vielen Dank für die ausführliche Anleitung!
Bitte schoen :D Just wait before you throw out old hardware. I plan on spending more time with PCem and 98Box to really make up my mind. I've only started using it and don't want to make an oppinion video before really testing it and checking a range of aspects and configurations!
@@philscomputerlab I leave my system here, just as a backup. I just wonder, if I can, somehow connect my old Roland SC-D70 to the virtual machine. It's connected with USB.
I think, you gave me a bit things to test this evening 🙂
The question in this virtual machine is: How high can you get the specs and can it run Crysis?
It would have to pass through USB, I'm not sure it support this...
@@philscomputerlab I'll have a look. There are Windows 98 drivers for my Roland and if the VM supports USB hardware, it might work
@@octopusgaming4027 MIDI passthrough is an option, as you can connect eg. Munt to PCem to have more faithful MT-32 emulation.
I set this up a while back on an intel i9 10850k box. I was playing around with the higher processor speeds and I realized your box definitely needs a heck of a setup to get max Pentium II speeds without it slowing down. I recently upgraded to the new i9 14900k and I am hoping it will be enough to emulate the speeds I am looking for. I have several old systems I can play with, but the parts are starting to fail. It is more of a hassle to keep them running than it would be to emulate a near perfect old system setup. Thanks for the easy guide.
this made my day....tried so many vms to get my Win98 back...and this works better than my original pc ten years ago...
Thank you so much for the detailed guide!
Glad to hear that!
Great video! I couldn't manage to get it running smooth. It's like 30 FPS and a lot of sound glitches. I have a mid end gaming PC with a 5600X
Yea that CPU is getting a bit outdated in regards to single thread performance I'm afraid...
Same with R5 5600g, constant 75% in most of games, returning to p1 200mmx
Nice video! I really like emulation. I like real hardware too, but I have space constraints... I can have a couple of old PC's setup but that's about it.
"Don't need Paint..." Blasphemy!!!
Thank you so much for this in-depth config tutorial, helped me out big time!
This is an awesome resource and guide Phil! Here's some nitpicks
To transfer files into PCem, if anyone is using older versions of Windows, e.g. Windows 7, then I'd recommend to pack everything (drivers, games) and create an ISO image and burn it to PCem. MagicISO works great, and the key is public already, so it'll be great ease. :) and if anyone is using Linux, there's mkisofs (also known as genisoimage) which will do the job!
To get a higher clock speed, you can actually get this on a decade old CPU too! If it's an Intel CPU, make sure to enable hyperthreading, and you're ready to go. Intel CPU single core performance is still capable to emulate them. PCem heavily uses SSE varient instructions. Sometimes however PCem may slow down, but it's because of the emulation process, it's not exactly as raw hardware, but shouldn't have any major issues.
Happy Friday Phil! I like PCEm and have setup both 98 and ME systems with it. My challenge has been getting a beefy enough system to play smoothly without audio stuttering or visual freezing in gameplay. Lowering what CPU you’re using in PCEm usually does the trick.
@user-lk7cv8vg7r I am never able to get consistent performance out of stuff like PCem and Dosbox, even trying to emulate something that should be easy like a Pentium 90, you go try to run a game like Stargunner and its extremely inconsistent
@Пыль глотаю On my Beelink SER4 4800U Mini PC, I didn’t experience any stutters or slowdowns on my PCem guest system, which runs on my emulated Intel Pentium MMX 200 system with 128MB RAM, a 4GB IDE hard drive, a 3dfx Voodoo3 2000 video card, and a Creative SoundBlaster AWE32 sound card. My go-to operating system on my PCem guest setup is an unofficial version of Windows 95, namely Windows 95D Lite by Razorback.
What a fantastic upload. Hats off. Very meticulous and informative. I guess I can sell all the "old junk" computers I have been hoarding now. I struggled a lot with VirtualBox and VmWare but PCem seems to solve my problems. Thank you! Also....including System Shock 2 as a demo tells volumes about your IQ. Looking Glass all the way!
Thank you very much Phil.
You have a new subscriber, and I love your site too. You are a blessing, thanks for all your work.
The 2nd advantage on such projects is to preserve the retro hardware - if you keep using it a lot, it will fail at some point. I like to turn it on once in a while, but not playing for hours like in the past. I would be very sad if my Voodoos fail and cannot be repaired. I do the basic recap, but if something blows or cpus/gpu just give up, it’s game over.
Great video as always! I had trouble with my USB joystick passthrough--for any others with this, I had to go into "add hardware" "sound, video and game.." manual search, add a microsoft standard gameport device. It went and got some files from the win98 setup folder (which you should always have on your machine) and then it recognized my joystick.
Oh wow thanks for testing this!
You da man! This was a fantastic video! Easy to follow, links to download. Thank you!
Enjoy!
with this you can have it all in one!! Thank you Phil
I don't know how to thank you so much for such a detailed video... Thank you!!!!!
I really need to look at this. It would be so much better than just building/buying a period-accurate PC.
I followed the tutorial exactly, but somehow did not get the 'Hard disk image' shown at 8:12 in the video. Mine shows up as a Virtual Hard Disk and I am not able to mount anything. Anyone else ran into this issue?
Edit: I looked up how to mount a virtual hard disk to Windows. But then PCem does not recognize the VHD anymore and throws an error.
Edit 2: I looked up how to mount a VHD through 'Disk Management' via windows. Now I'm able to move my files, but doesn't look as nice as his PC shows.
Glad you've figured it out. You're not alone with issues mounting the image. I'm still not sure what causing it to not work for some.
I made a 486X2 66mhz Windows 98 machine and just for fun I wanted to see how the Voodoo3 would run on that machine. It won't boot at all with the Voodoo3 3000 selected but it will boot with the Voodoo3 2000. However I can not get it to work in Windows 98. If I select the Voodoo Banshee I can get it to kind of work. The desktop will display in proper colors but no 3D programs will run.
Same here.
Awesome tutorial! One additional thing I'd recommend is disabling the primary and secondary slave in the bios so it doesn't try to search for them on each boot and speeds up the boot a little bit. Also at the Win98 components selection at 5:20 how could you not select Desktop Themes! That is a necessity! If I'm running Windows 98 I have to have the Inside my computer theme available! lol *edit at 11:01 I think you made a mistake. You changed the sample rate quality on recording and not playback. I'm assuming you meant to do it on playback, yes? One other thing, I'm using Windows 10 and when I right click on the vhd file mount isn't an option. I had to do it through disk management. Not a big deal but I'm curious as to why it didn't show up for me.
I'm glad somebody else saw the sample rate change error, I'm sure he meant to do it on playback. I believe mounting is built into the OS as of Windows 11. On Windows 10, I accomplish the same thing by using something like Daemon Tools.
Many thanks for this, has helped a lot.
Happy Phil's day
Thank you ☺
Glad you listened to me and tried PCem ! ❤
So I wasn't able to right-click HDD to mount as the option wasn't there so I had to go into device management and add VCD then eject once the files were transferred so it would boot back up in PCem. Just a heads up if anyone else runs into that issue. Great tutorial. Have several older games that will be tested out. Thank you!
Thank you! Definitely going to have to give this a try.
Tried and it worked great, thank you!
This is brilliant. I'll be returning here to install NFS4HS and American McGee's Alice wih EAX sound - thank you!