Neko Project II under Sigmarion 3 (PC-9801 series emulator)

I was trying to make PocketDOS run on my Sigmarion 3, but that failed for me.

So I tried another approach. I tried the Neko Project II, a PC-9801 series emulator that even runs on Sigmarion 3. (There's a separate binary for it.)

I haven't gotten around to making or downloading a DOS image, but it seems the Neko Project II will be able to run DOS on the emulated PC-9801 environment. I had to copy gx.dll from a Japanese site that is for Sigmarion 3, and edit a .ini file that came with it to adjust how the application will render (resolution setting, etc.) .

-stingraze

Edited by stingraze 2020-10-30 9:47 AM


















Attachments
----------------
sigmarion3_neko_1.JPG (108KB - 1 downloads)
sigmarion3_neko_2.JPG (112KB - 0 downloads)
sigmarion3_neko_4.JPG (104KB - 0 downloads)
sigmarion3_neko_5.JPG (113KB - 0 downloads)
sigmarion3_neko_6.JPG (113KB - 0 downloads)
sigmarion3_neko_7.JPG (102KB - 0 downloads)
sigmarion3_neko_8.JPG (111KB - 0 downloads)

I posted about my failed attempt to install PocketDOS on the other thread. See if you also came across the same issue.
As for the DOS images, it's not difficult to find one on the web.

Found NPII for SigIII here: http://tamaneko.world.coocan.jp/vz.htm#000004
Is this the one you are using, stingraze?

Thanks for the link.
That is not the same one I am using. I am using the one from here: https://www.yui.ne.jp/np2/

I think the link you showed me has good information!

I don't quite get the English translation on the tamaneko page. It's saying something like read-only. Is it referring to the content on the memory card or the emulated boot system itself?

Also, is the emulated PC9801 environment highly/fully compatible with MS-DOS and its programs?

And I am a bit confused by the many different versions. Which one do you think that would work best for the Jornada? I want to give it a whirl to see how it compares with PocketDOS.

As far as I know, PC98 architecture is quite different than IBM PC compatibles. Even though they can run DOS, I doubt it will be able to run regular IBM PC DOS binaries, especially graphic programs.

From wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC-9800_series

Yep, I know about PC-9801 series being different architecture from AT. These were very popular in Japan, and many enthusiasts still use it here. I will let you know if I progress.

I found a free DOS image for PC-98 here:

http://silphire.finito-web.com/freedos/image.htm

Will test it after I put it into the emulator.


I think installing from the site URL I mentioned will work the best, using a ARM binary of Neko Project II. The link says "HPC (204KB)". I hope it loads the screen well (I did a bit of tweaking for this on my Sigmarion 3).

Edited by stingraze 2020-10-31 1:56 AM

It works!

After trying several images without success, this site's image worked.
http://yotama.blog84.fc2.com/blog-entry-3.html







Attachments
----------------
sigmarion3_neko_9.JPG (147KB - 1 downloads)

Nice job! Does NPII mount a specific location as C, or does it mount its own virtual harddisk image? How about write access, which is important for saving data for real use?

The mount point for my case was A: using the image I linked above. I'm not sure about disk access. echo command worked, but I have to learn a bit more DOS commands to do anything useful.

Here's the video of it in action.

The yotama blog post seems to be saying that you can write to the disk image before loading it in NPII.
Apart from echo, can you, say, create a file using edit, etc., and then save to the buffer and even the disk image itself on the fly?

I tested using edit command, but it was not available. I guess FreeDOS (98) is really basic stuff.
I will try to figure out if I can edit the .hdi image file to put more applications into it. It seems like there are some tools like DiskExplorer to do this, but I'm not too sure.

-stingraze

So good news.

I got the DiskExplorer to edit the image file I used, and it wrote to the image file easily (just exit does fine).
I put in some PC-98 DOS programs in the image like a version of Emacs and a simple game of Tiny Star Trek.

The version of Emacs successfully wrote a text file into the virtual hard disk. Will have to see if I can get the text file out to a PC.

The experience is really fun.

Edited by stingraze 2020-11-01 12:35 AM










Attachments
----------------
sigmarion3_neko_trek.JPG (96KB - 0 downloads)
sigmarion3_neko_emacs1.JPG (83KB - 0 downloads)
sigmarion3_neko_emacs2.JPG (97KB - 0 downloads)