45
votes
Are there any good, non-abandoned PC emulators?
As others have mentioned, PCem is still perfectly usable, even if it’s no longer maintained by its original author (there is supposed to be a new maintainer, but there’s very little development ...
- 127k
37
votes
Accepted
Is there a simple way to display ANSI art and animation files in a modern terminal window?
There are various ANSI art viewers for modern platforms which satisfy all your feature requirements (command-line syntax excepted), for example:
PabloDraw for Windows, macOS, and Linux
ACiD Viewer 6 ...
- 127k
36
votes
How can I extract the contents of a Windows 3.1 (16-bit) game EXE file?
Executable files for 16-bit Windows are usually laid out in the now-rather-inaccurately-named New Executable format. Most current Windows executable analysis tools do not support this format; they can ...
- 23.3k
26
votes
Accepted
Is there a seamless, Wine-like AmigaOS emulator for Linux, specifically for text-based programs?
A solution like that already exists: it's called vamos (Virtual AMiga OS) and emulates a 68k CPU and a bunch of libraries - enough to get terminal only programs (like compilers and assemblers) running:...
- 1,694
25
votes
Accepted
How to keep running DOS 16 bit applications when Windows 11 drops NTVDM
In absolute terms yes, migrating to a current accounting system would be better. However, that will not be easy.
Migrating away from a Windows NTVDM-based solution won’t be easy either, but there are ...
- 127k
24
votes
What are my options for multitasking in MS-DOS 5.0 on an 80186 with EMS?
I think your best bet given the circumstances is DESQview; it works fine on pre-386 computers, especially if you have EMS. (There’s lots of confusion around the DESQview/386 terminology; that was ...
- 127k
24
votes
Accepted
Emulate a text-mode DOS program using a Unix terminal
As ecm wrote, DOSEMU supports this, using -t or -dumb. This works with the original DOSEMU and DOSEMU2.
-dumb runs DOS programs in “dumb” terminal mode, where output goes to DOSEMU’s standard output ...
- 127k
23
votes
Was there an autocomplete utility in MS-DOS?
Microsoft didn’t provide anything like this for MS-DOS, but there are a number of third-party tools which can add auto-completion to the shell (along with other command-line editing features). A ...
- 127k
21
votes
How can I run COMIT code?
Old question, but: I've just shipped an interpreter for a large subset of COMIT. Here it is.
http://www.catb.org/esr/comit/
Full documentation is included. There's a pretty good suite of ...
- 311
20
votes
Any tools (that actually work) for viewing PDF files in FreeDOS?
I discovered the answer on my own. Turns out PSVIEW requires GhostScript, PDFTOPS, and LXPIC to be installed on the hard drive in order to run. GhostScript must be placed in 'C:\gs'. PDFTOPS and ...
- 401
17
votes
Is there a simple way to display ANSI art and animation files in a modern terminal window?
This is a late answer to an old question, but there's a better way:
iconv -f 437 file-here.ans | pv --quiet --rate-limit 7000
and if viewing an online file:
curl www.ansi-art.com/ansi/ansi1.ans | ...
- 171
17
votes
What are my options for multitasking in MS-DOS 5.0 on an 80186 with EMS?
Suspending one program and switching to another is perfectly fine
GEOS may be well suited to your purpose.
It runs more famously on the Commodore 64, but it was ported to DOS also. It predates ...
- 39.5k
17
votes
Accepted
Good Z80 disassembler/decompiler on modern equipment?
The old IDA freeware ver.3.7 supports Z80. It has a Turbo Vision style interface, which may be something that puts you off. It is also no longer distributed officially. However, it is very powerful, ...
- 4,197
16
votes
Accepted
Testing RAM on an OmniBook 300?
The Omnibook has its own self-test which can be run by pressing Esc when powering it up.
The best freely-available general-purpose memory checker is PCMemTest; older versions of its predecessor, ...
- 127k
16
votes
What are my options for multitasking in MS-DOS 5.0 on an 80186 with EMS?
Windows 2.x or 3.0.
Real mode Windows is able to run DOS applications and switch between them, but not able to present them in a window or run them concurrently as the 386 version. Also, don't trust ...
- 13k
16
votes
How do I best simulate a 80386?
I don’t know about “best”, but Bochs includes a good debugger; here’s its most basic UI:
Other UI variants exist.
Note that Bochs emulates a Pentium MMX or later; it can’t be configured to ...
- 127k
13
votes
Is there a simple way to display ANSI art and animation files in a modern terminal window?
I got bored over the weekend and created Ansi-Cat for a Windows command prompt.
https://github.com/peteri/Ansi-Cat
Does code page 437 -> Unicode conversion, tested it on Windows 8.1 & 10 but you ...
- 5,327
13
votes
Accepted
Is there a generic VBE driver available for Windows 3.x?
It seems unlikely that a fully-functional VBE driver for Windows 3.x exists. Microsoft started bundling a VBE driver with the operating system only as late as with Windows XP, by which time the ...
- 23.3k
13
votes
How to determine BIOS-provided (INT 13h) hard disk geometry, and how to fix the MBR partition table to agree with it?
If you can manage to boot the computer from a DOS floppy or some other device, you should be able to use the classic partitioning tool, Ranish Partition Manager. (I recommend version 2.40 or 2.44; ...
- 23.3k
12
votes
Accepted
How to transfer AT&T 6300 ".360" disk images onto physical floppies
These are headerless sector dumps of the 360KiB disks, and can be written directly to the appropriate floppies. Since you’re using Windows 98, I suspect the best tool to do is ImageDisk.
You’ll need ...
- 127k
12
votes
Accepted
Dump process memory of Windows 3.1 control panel applet
Among the Borland Pascal 7 example programs, there is an OWL application called HeapSpy, which can inspect the list of memory blocks allocated by any running Windows module.
The demo is pretty ...
- 23.3k
12
votes
Is there a screen recording application for Windows 3.1?
There was Lotus ScreenCam, which was initially released for Windows 3. It used its own SCM format, which only recorded events and optional audio. Later versions (I’m not sure which, or whether this ...
- 127k
12
votes
Do any 'remote control' solutions exist for Mac OS 9.x?
One option would be mac-minivnc a recently published open source project on Github. It claims to be a VNC server for classic Macs (including the 68000 models!) but I haven't used it.
When classic Mac ...
- 14k
10
votes
Accepted
Graphics Editor for 16-Bit Games
Depending on the platform we're talking about, you've got a few choices. As the best platform for editing images at the time was the Amiga with its 4096 color palette in HAM mode on OCS/ECS (Original ...
- 1,037
10
votes
Accepted
Amiga File Manager with keyboard navigation
MCAmiga fits the bill, it’s pretty much Midnight Commander for the Amiga and uses the keyboard extensively.
- 127k
9
votes
Accepted
Slideshow software for Apple II?
If you don't need ProDOS, Frame-Up by Beagle Brothers might suit your needs.
The image there is a little hard to read, so here is the feature list:
PROFESSIONAL PRESENTATIONS: Frame-Up lets you ...
- 7,698
9
votes
Emulate a text-mode DOS program using a Unix terminal
There's also ecm's fork of 8086tiny, ecm-pushbx/8086tiny: ecm's repository for 8086tiny: a tiny PC emulator/virtual machine. Unlike dosemu, it runs on an emulated (not virtual) processor so will run ...
- 21.9k
9
votes
Are there any good, non-abandoned PC emulators?
There's quite a few browser-based ones on PCjs.
PCx86 emulates the Intel 8088, 80186, 80286 and 80386 CPUs, and it
faithfully renders characters and graphics produced by the IBM
Monochrome Display ...
- 4,997
9
votes
Is there a softmodem driver package for Linux?
There is the Linmodem project, made by (who else) Fabrice Bellard. Unfortunately, it is more of a proof-of-concept than a working, ready-to-use driver, and it has been abandoned in that state in 2000....
- 23.3k
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