PCem

PCem

AI Policy

PCem is AI-free, and will not accept any AI generated code, AI generated/assisted code is not allowed in PCem. Pull Requests with AI generated code will be rejected. Code subsequently discovered to be AI generated/assisted will be removed without warning.

License

PCem is licensed under GPL v2.0, see COPYING for more details.

Patch Submission

You can submit patches on our forum. Before you do, please note the guidelines for submitting patches.

Note about ROM Files

NO COPYRIGHTED ROM FILES ARE INCLUDED NOR WILL THEY BE. PLEASE DO NOT ASK FOR THEM.

How to Build

You will need the following libraries and buildtools (and their dependencies):

• SDL2
• wxWidgets 3.x
• OpenAL
• CMake
• ALSA (Linux only)
• GTK3 Dev Package (Linux only)
• PCap
• LibSlirp
• Ninja (Recommended, but you can use a Makefile generator if you prefer)

Open a terminal window, navigate to the PCem directory, create a build directory, then enter in that build directory:

cmake -G "Ninja" -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release ..
ninja

then ./src/pcem to run on most platforms, and open ./src/PCem.app on macOS

BIOS ROM images, configuration files, and other data are stored in ~/.pcem on non-macOS platforms. You can also create a .pcem folder with the Binary, and run it in a portable mode.

The configure options are specified below. They are in the format of -DOption=Value. Value under here is the default value.

  -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release : Generate release build. Recommended for regular use.
  -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug   : Compile with debugging enabled.
  -DPCEM_DISPLAY_ENGINE=wxWidgets : Compile with the WxWidgets Display Engine. Default
  -DPCEM_DISPLAY_ENGINE=SDL  : Compile with the SDL Display Engine. This is more of a sample for additional GUI's but is here for postarity.
  -DUSE_NETWORKING=ON        : Build with networking support.
  -DUSE_PCAP_NETWORKING=ON   : Build with pcap networking support. (Needs USE_NETWORKING to compile) Requires libpcap.
  -DFORCE_X11=ON             : Enables a hack to force X11 on Wayland systems. See #128 for details. (Linux Only)
  -DPLUGIN_ENGINE=ON         : Build with plugin support. Builds libpcem-plugin-api and links PCem with it.
  -DPCEM_MARCH=x86_64-v2     : Change the architecture used for generated instructions, by default we set it for
                               >= Nehalem for Intel, and >= Bulldozer for AMD. 

If you are using -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug, there are some more debug options you can enable if needed

  -DPCEM_SLIRP_DEBUG=OFF           : Build PCem with SLIRP_DEBUG debug output
  -DPCEM_RECOMPILER_DEBUG=OFF      : Build PCem with RECOMPILER_DEBUG debug output
  -DPCEM_NE2000_DEBUG=OFF          : Build PCem with NE2000_DEBUG debug output
  -DPCEM_EMU8K_DEBUG_REGISTERS=OFF : Build PCem with EMU8K_DEBUG_REGISTERS debug output
  -DPCEM_SB_DSP_RECORD_DEBUG=OFF   : Build PCem with SB_DSP_RECORD_DEBUG debug output
  -DPCEM_MACH64_DEBUG=OFF          : Build PCem with MACH64_DEBUG debug output
  -DPCEM_DEBUG_EXTRA=OFF           : Build PCem with DEBUG_EXTRA debug output

If you are using -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RelWithDebInfo, there are additional options you can do

  -DPCEM_RELDEB_AS_RELEASE=ON     : Builds RelWithDebInfo with debugging logging enabled when this is off

They are some extra modules you can add if you build with -DUSE_EXPERIMENTAL=ON. These modules are untested. incomplete, and may or may not be in a future build of PCem. We do not provide builds with these enabled as well. It is also possible they may not even build.

  -DUSE_EXPERIMENTAL_PGC=ON       : Build PCem with Professional Graphics Controller support.
  -DUSE_EXPERIMENTAL_PRINTER=ON   : Build PCem with Printer support. Requires freetype.

CD-ROM support currently only accesses /dev/cdrom. It has not been heavily tested.

On Windows, if you want to use PCAP networking, you will need to install npcap and replace the libpcap.dll in PCem dir using the wpcap.dll installed in C:\Windows\System32

Links

PCem emulates the following hardware:

Hardware	Links
Systems	8088 8086 286 386 486 Pentium Super Socket 7
Graphics	Basic Unaccelerated (S)VGA cards 2D accelerated SVGA cards 3D accelerated SVGA cards 3D only cards
Sound	Cards
HDD Controller	Cards
Misc	Cards

Software Tested:

• DOS
  
• Windows
  
• Windows NT
  
• OS/2
  
• Linux
  
• Applications
  
• Games
  
• Demos
  
• Emulators