IBM & Compatibles

Created who knows how many years ago by International Business Machines these "PC's" (for those who don't know PC = Personal Computers, meaning home/personal use) have developed and changed from simple text only computers to the very fast & powerful computers they are today. The heart of the machine is now a Pentium processor the successor of the 80x86 range of processors. These went from the humble 8088, 8086 through to the 80486 where Intel, who manufacture the processors decided that they would change the name, the reason ? The US courts system threw Intel's case out when they tried to copyright the numbers "80586" in an effort to stop other companies copying their processor names !

Whilst many of todays IBM's can out perform the Amiga range in sheer processing power the Amigas can hold there own in an overall performance ratio, but only when the Amiga has been boosted to the maximum. Unfortunately this becomes VERY expensive compared to a basic PC clone nowdays. Then again I don't need 16 meg ram just to load my OS !

So here for your pleasure I have the two newest IBM emulators. Jim Drew's PCx claims to be Pentium/586 emulator, whilst Chris Hames' will only perform 486 instructions. Test them both and make your own mind up.

PC Task V4.2 Commercial
This is Chris Hames latest offering. Claiming to be a 486 emulator it made quite a stir when first released a few months back. Considering the machine being emulated it's actually quite fast at what it does. It will run on all machines with atleast an 020. Recommended are many megabytes of fast ram and an 040+. The demo is limited to not being able to write to disk in any form so either use floppies or try PCx to make the hard file and then test it with PC Task. This new version has some speedups and now has full FPU support, although an FPU is needed. Check the archive for more deatils. Commercial.

Compatible: 68020-68060, OS2.0+, 2meg+
PC Task USA
PC Task AUS

This is Jim Drew & Joe Fenton's latest emulation effort. After leaving Utilities Unlimited and forming their own company named MicroCode Solutions they have come up with what they claim to be the fastest PC emulator available. It is said to support all Pentium instructions and future versions are reportedly going to support MMX extensions ! This demo can write to disk so you can create hardfiles and test some real software, including Windows (TM) if your really want to. Limited to 4 meg ram, 10 meg partition and a few other things. A good effort and it is rather fast, check it out.

PCx V2.1 Commercial

Compatible: 68020-68060, OS2.04, 3Meg+ (fast mem)
PCX USA
PCX AUS

Compatible: 68020-68060, OS2.0+, 2meg+
PC Task USA
PC Task AUS
PC Task V4.2 Commercial This is Chris Hames latest offering. Claiming to be a 486 emulator it made quite a stir when first released a few months back. Considering the machine being emulated it's actually quite fast at what it does. It will run on all machines with atleast an 020. Recommended are many megabytes of fast ram and an 040+. The demo is limited to not being able to write to disk in any form so either use floppies or try PCx to make the hard file and then test it with PC Task. This new version has some speedups and now has full FPU support, although an FPU is needed. Check the archive for more deatils. Commercial.

Compatible: 68020-68060, OS2.04, 3Meg+ (fast mem)
PCX USA
PCX AUS
PCx V2.1 Commercial

There are a number of other IBM emulators available, but most are just too old to bother with. These are the latest demo versions so stick with one of these two. If anyone knows of another PC emulator that has been released recently then please let me know.

A lot of bitch fighting went on between these two people on the 'Net just before either of the two emulators were released and even after they were released the fighting went on. As an Aussie myself I honestly thought Chris might have been above the petty bickering that went on, but obviously not. Be very careful as to which emulator you buy (if you decide to get one) as some documentation is very misleading and I have read email from people who have bought one of these thinking it would run certain programs when it obviously would not. ASK BEFORE BUYING !!!!