Anyone have a well-rounded PaCifiST installation?

[Evil Plant]

Greetings!

 

It looks like GamebaseST is it for a comprehensive working ST library, but out of the all the emulators it supports, none of them work in plain old MS-DOS. Now, I may be a vanishing breed, but when it comes to emulation, I thing DOS is a great way to go... if you've got the hard-ware for it. And by that I mean pretty much anything that's currently at the "I should throw this away" stage.

 

Bare in mind that all our Atari platforms were at that stage once . But DOS is great, not only can you make a setup that boots super-quick, it's clean and native DOS games run nicely in it too.

 

So yeah, DOS. That's the challenge, that and... I'll admit I never owned a ST... I had it's contemporary at the time... the Apple IIgs.

 

Which is oddly why I'm here. I'm just ironing out the last few IIgs games in my emulator setup. I actually owned (and really purchased) almost all the games for this system back when. The library is something like 200 games or so, and most of it is shareware. But there's some surprisingly good ones... LemminGS, Wolfenstein 3D, Out of this World, etc. And lots of unique games like Sensei, Gnarly Golf and One Arm Battle. It's kind of like a mini-ST library, with an Apple flavor.

 

I figure the Atari ST is the next logical step. Even though I'm a IIgs fanatic, I've always had a lot of respect for the ST. But I know when I'd be in over my head. I don't know this system, so I'm wondering if anyone else has ever taken the time to get most of the games set up in PaCifiST.

 

I've gotten as far as to get the emulator up and running. I've booted a few disks and I've gotten familure with most of the graphics modes. How compatible is it? and by that I mean... Do I have any hope of getting a library of games working on it? Has anyone here ever done it?

 

-Evil Plant

[ijor]

Pacifist is extremely outdated. Modern emulators are several orders much more accurate and powerful. Tons of software that runs perfectly well under latest emulators won't run at all under Pacifist.

 

Now, I may be a vanishing breed, but when it comes to emulation, I thing DOS is a great way to go...

 

In theory you are right. DOS, as any other kernel/OS that let you have full control of the machine should be much more efficiently for emulators. In practice it doesn't work like that, and then you won't find virtually any emulator for plain DOS.

 

How you could access modern sound cards under DOS? At one time all were SB compatible at the hardware level, not anymore. How you could access modern USB controllers, or firewire hard disks? How you would take advantage of hyperthreading or multicore processors?

 

It is feasible under DOS if you insist, but it is lot (and even more) of work.

[Evil Plant]

Indeed!

 

Well, since I'm looking at this as a purly gaming endevor, really my question is... which games will PaCificST run and which won't. I don't know how specific or general a question this is, so any information is helpful.

 

In practice DOS works pretty interesting, I'll say that! Yeah, DOS has a TON of disadvantages, but it's one of those enviorments you've got to love for its flaws as well as its strengths. The 640k of overhead conventional memory is a real pain sometimes, but like any operating system enviorment, you get used to dealing with it, and its million ways around it. You've got complete control over your drivers and GUIs for one thing.

 

Modern sound cards? In DOS there's no substatute for a Soundblaster ISA card. That's the MAIN thing. Anyone would get endlessly frustrated trying to run real MSDOS these days without one. But they aren't hard to find, and once you take the plunge, the DOS world opens opens up to you. Everything written for DOS supports one and requires no driver.

 

But try finding an ISA p4 motherboard... More possible then ya think... Soyo makes them. Still, it's something you definitely need to want to do.

 

Hah... and you are right... you can't access USB controllers, Firewire hard-disks, or hyperthreading advantages AT ALL. It's a BIG trade-off, but once you've got the sound-blaster, the complete control over the enviorment is nice. If you're as serious as I am with emulation and dos, you've gotten an I-Pac from ultimarc.com and a designated computer for it. It's also fun running Mechwarrior 2 at 1000fps.

 

Anyway, yeah, DOS is a pain. It's a nice challenge for my emulaion fun tho. Really, I'm just interested to see if anyone else here as installed PaCifiST and kept going with it into 2007.

Edited January 6, 2007 by Evil Plant

[ggn]

Well tbh when I switched to my athlon 1800+ xp, and changed my sound card to a sb live, pacifist kept dying at startup or at random points. I think it might be due to overspeed.

 

It's true that pacifist's emulation speed is far greater than steem's or saint's, but it's far far incomplete.

 

You need a decent vbe 2.0 vga card (modern cards claim to be vbe 3 and they're not too compatible) to be able to play games with raster spilts at all. And there are lots of games that use raster splits. And they're not emulated good in pacifist.

 

If you still insist then I wish you good luck!

 

Oh, before I forget it, look around for another dos emulator called Echo. Much better than pacifist, but that's been shelved for years now.

[Evil Plant]

Great! I didn't know about Echo! Thanks!!

[dinosaur]

Indeed!

 

Well, since I'm looking at this as a purly gaming endevor, really my question is... which games will PaCificST run and which won't. I don't know how specific or general a question this is, so any information is helpful.

 

In practice DOS works pretty interesting, I'll say that! Yeah, DOS has a TON of disadvantages, but it's one of those enviorments you've got to love for its flaws as well as its strengths. The 640k of overhead conventional memory is a real pain sometimes, but like any operating system enviorment, you get used to dealing with it, and its million ways around it. You've got complete control over your drivers and GUIs for one thing.

 

Modern sound cards? In DOS there's no substatute for a Soundblaster ISA card. That's the MAIN thing. Anyone would get endlessly frustrated trying to run real MSDOS these days without one. But they aren't hard to find, and once you take the plunge, the DOS world opens opens up to you. Everything written for DOS supports one and requires no driver.

 

But try finding an ISA p4 motherboard... More possible then ya think... Soyo makes them. Still, it's something you definitely need to want to do.

 

Hah... and you are right... you can't access USB controllers, Firewire hard-disks, or hyperthreading advantages AT ALL. It's a BIG trade-off, but once you've got the sound-blaster, the complete control over the enviorment is nice. If you're as serious as I am with emulation and dos, you've gotten an I-Pac from ultimarc.com and a designated computer for it. It's also fun running Mechwarrior 2 at 1000fps.

 

Anyway, yeah, DOS is a pain. It's a nice challenge for my emulaion fun tho. Really, I'm just interested to see if anyone else here as installed PaCifiST and kept going with it into 2007.

 

There are DOS drivers for USB drives.

[Evil Plant]

Yeah. There's DOS drivers for a surprising number of things. There's also a LACK of DOS drivers for a not-so-surprising number of things, like USB joysticks unfortunately.

 

Although I didn't realize there were drivers for USB hard-drives, to be honest. There's drivers for networking and all kinds of other stuff tho, most I've not even tried.

 

This is funny, since I'm a jack of all platforms but a master of none. DOS seems to be one of those, just like Atari or Apple. Here's a cool site that could make one a DOS master (I JUST found, so seems topical) http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/~ak621/DOS/Websites.html

 

Hmm. But on another line that might actually get somewhere... Okay, so in persuit of ECHO I found a version of StoneX and FaST that both work with DOS. Don't know which of these, if any, are better than PaCifST.

 

Another, ahem, better question... Which games are HARDEST to emulate? Like, are there any that ST emulators are notorous for having problems with?

 

Thanks and stuff!

[ijor]

Which games are HARDEST to emulate? Like, are there any that ST emulators are notorous for having problems with?

 

Original uncracked games are usually the most troublesome for emulators. But you won't be able to run Pasti images on any DOS based emulator.

 

A tough cracked one that comes to mind is Enchanted Lands.

 

But some demos are even more "emulators unfriendly'. Get the unpatched version for any demo that there is a patched version.

 

Just one note. In some case you will find a particular game that doesn't run on modern emulators but do run in olders ones. This doesn't (necessarily) means the older one is more accurate. Believe or not, emulators sometimes have a "one bug fixes the other" phenomenon. I've been there.