PCem Alternatives

PCem

PCem offers emulation of various IBM PC compatible machines, from the original 1981 model 5150 to later successors and clones by third party manufacturers. The software includes emulation of several compatible graphical video adapters, audio devices, and other peripherals of the day.

Among the machines emulated are the IBM 5150 PC, IBM 5160 XT, IBM PCjr, IBM PC AT, IBM PS/1, as well as more variations and clones from manufacturers such as Olivetti, Tandy, and Amstrad; spanning roughly from 1981 to the mid-1990s and up to Pentium class processors.

Emulated graphics adapters include MDA, Hercules, CGA, EGA, VGA, various SVGA chipsets, and 3Dfx Voodoo. Emulated audio interfaces include PC speaker, Tandy, Creative Gameblaster, Adlib and Adlib Gold, various versions of Creative Sound Blaster (from 1.0 to 16 and AWE32), and Gravis Ultrasound. Further, the application emulates various mice and a CD-ROM drive.

It has been tested to successfully run versions of MS-DOS and clones, Windows 1 to Windows XP, OS/2 1.0 to Warp 4, and several flavours of Linux and BSD.

Unlike other PC emulators, PCem doesn't aim to provide a "compromise system" to support as many applications as possible in one environment, but focusses on authentic recreation of actual machines, that offer neither more nor less functionality than the originals they're modelled after. And in contrast to projects like DOSBox, it doesn't emulate an entire operating system environment, but is a true hardware emulator that allows (and requires) the installation of any operating system compatible with the original machines.