Hey ... where's the mouse?

While I’ve been on a retrocomputing kick, I decided to try to see what it takes to emulate an original IBM PC.  I found Pico-XT, which runs on Windows.  (I’d rather have one that runs on Linux.)  Since I’m running Ubuntu, I used Wine and had to chuckle.

Then I needed a floppy disk.  I downloaded a ton from The Boot Disk Project.  I started with MS-DOS 3.30.  It didn’t work the first time and I realized I had to convert it from a 1.44MB floppy to a 360k.  I did that with WinImage.  It requires that you open the original image file and pull down “Image / Change Format”, select 360k, then save.

When Wine opens Pico-XT, you must pull down ‘File / Floppy Drive A: / Insert”, then choose the floppy filename.  Here’s what it looks like.

My next project is to take an image file from my Mom’s old office PC and get it to work in the emulator.  I made it with dd, but it doesn’t seem to be a format recognized by Pico-XT yet nor WinImage.

Update

Special thanks to my neighbor Vince who just gave me a 5150 that he rescued from a dumpster.  I’m going to try to see if it works.

Playing clones or knock-offs don’t always feel as good as the real thing. Thankfully, some very ingenious and resourceful people have preserved the genuine experience with a program called MAME.

MAME stands for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator. (click) It lets you run the REAL original arcade games on your computer.  The catch is that you have to find the actual program that ran on the original arcade console machines.  They’re called ROMs, but who cares what that stands for.  There are plenty of sources on the ‘net.

Here is a small sample of the ones I have loaded:

Here’s a sample:

Asteroids

Omega Race

Joust

Red Baron