The PCem developers have released more or less regular updates during the last few years, while the same thing cannot be said for PCSX2: the project that turned the dream of emulating the complex architecture of the PlayStation 2 console on PC into reality hadn’t seen a stable update in 4 years, and now PCSX2 1.6.0 brings forth an extremely long list of new stuff and bugfixes with substantial improvements for the compatibility, usability and performance of the program.ĩ6,17% of games supported by PCSX2 1.6.0 is now “playable”, and the continuous updates poured into the new release let the emulator support modern graphics features like adaptive frame rate synchronization, run games that weren’t working before, solve bugs and annoying graphics issues with no need for special hacks and much more. ![]() The latest PCem version released this past month ( PCem 16) further expands the number of emulated motherboards, graphics cards, sound cards and SCSI cards, adds FPU emulation on pre-486 systems and includes several bug fixes and updates here and there. ![]() An almost unique feature of the emulator is the ability to provide an extremely faithful and useful replica of 3dfx Voodoo and Voodoo 2 graphics accelerators, a feature I had the chance to test rather thoroughly as I will describe in a future post. PCem can emulate the most ancient x86 CPUs (from 8088 onward) up to Pentium MMX, in addition to a remarkable number of graphics and sound cards. The user will have to put together the puzzle for the machine they desire to emulate by choosing CPU, graphics card, sound card, storage etc., then booting the virtual system and installing an operating system like DOS, Windows or other. Unlike DOSBox, PCem doesn’t include a copy of an operating system but it just provides the virtualized hardware components. The first release concerns an emulation project that’s becoming more and more interesting and promising, while the second one sees the return of one of the most significant and complex emulators ever.Įven though it’s been around since 2007, PCem lately stood out as one of the most interesting projects for the faithful emulation of computer systems that came out before the 2000s. ![]() On the contrary: news on that front are always plentiful, and two new releases in particular highlight the good health the community, and luckily the developers involved, enjoy. In these weeks of lockdown, emulation certainly is one of the “businesses” that didn’t suffer the effects of the overall slowdown of activities and development.
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