Problem with PCE (PC Emulator)

[gordonf]

I've been experimenting with PC and DOS emulators and I have hit a stumbling block with PCE (http://www.hampa.ch/pce/pce-ibmpc.html).

I am unable to figure out how to add software to the C drive. The C drive appears to be the windows file hd0.pimg. But I am unable to manipulate .pimg files with imaging software such as DAEMON Tools.

Does anyone have any experience with PCE that would help me install software (in this case Microsoft Macro Assembler) in PCE?

[Darkstar]

The usual workflow is:
* obtain floppy images of the software you want to install (or create them with winimage)
* install them inside the virtual PC as you would on a regular PC (unzip, setup.exe, whatever)

That being said, I guess *.pimg files are probably just renamed *.img files. Try renaming them and opening them in winimage or some other tool

[ramon]

.pimg are img, but with a short header. It's a PCE specific file format. Tried to open the file with winimage as .img and it doesn't work.

The hard drive file for PCE can be in the pimg, qed, img or cow format. In the "bin" folder of PCE, you'll find the pce-img.exe utility. Convert the .pimg to a .img with this command:

pce-img.exe convert hd0.pimg hd0.img

The file can now be edited in winimage. Note that winimage can only open DMF, VHD, FAT, ISO, NTFS and Linux file system disk file. I doubt it would work for CPM file system. Shouldn't be a problem for any IBM/DOS based system.

I hope this help,
Ramon

[asad10]

PCE (not to be confused with PCEm) emulates an IBM 5150. Did these computers ever support a hard disk? DOS 1.x certainly didn't, and the power unit was inadequate too. Hard disks first appeared for PC 5160 (aka XT).

[JustZisGuy]

Yes. Except for the very first BIOS revision, which was easily and commonly upgraded, the 5150 supports hard disks. With enough expansion RAM a 5150 can run up to MS-DOS 6.22.

If a 5150 user went the pure IBM route, they purchased the IBM expansion box (a 5150 case with a power supply and an ISA backplane rather than a motherboard) and put hard drives in that.

Some vendors offered external hard drives with their own power supplies.

As the clone market picked up, it became more common for 5150 users to just upgrade their power supply and/or use lower power hard drives that just fit within the energy budget.

These days, people commonly use XT-IDE cards with compact flash drives, that require little power.

IBM PC-DOS 1.x, as shipped by IBM did not support hard drives. The Davong hard disk system, however, modified PC-DOS 1.x to add hard disk support (but only for their proprietary card). MS-DOS 1.25 shipped with the Eeagle 1600 clone also supported hard drives. I believe Corvus and a few other MS-DOS 1.25 OEM may have had some hard disk support. These did not support subdirectories, requiring users to either make multiple partitions, or store everything in a few large files (fine for database use). But most hard disk systems made use of DOS 2.00 or later when it came out.

BTW, when I open a floppy disk .IMG file with WinImage in the same directory as the .pimg file, and then use File-Open to open it, it seems to open for me. But I don't know off hand if there are any issues doing it that way.

[ramon]

PCE (not to be confused with PCEm) emulates an IBM 5150. Did these computers ever support a hard disk? DOS 1.x certainly didn't, and the power unit was inadequate too. Hard disks first appeared for PC 5160 (aka XT).

PCE emulates a bunch of old PC, not limited to the 5150. Some with PC/M support.