3 ms·

I had a bit part writing upgrades to the PC emulator, getting Duke Nukem to run. On the boot time - 2s was only realistic until you owned a hard drive! Then th

I had a bit part writing upgrades to the PC emulator, getting Duke Nukem to run. On the boot time - 2s was only realistic until you owned a hard drive! Then there was a boot sequence that was more like 15s after the drive span up, bringing new OS updates into play etc. And then you probably had some more customisations and apps, so my memory was more like a 30s boot. My cold Windows boot is faster than that now, but suffers from UI sludge for about 60s after I've logged in, so that counts as boot time too :( No post-boot sludge on RISC OS. The save dialogue was really fiddly and needed some pro-level window management and mouse skills :) but I appreciated not having two UIs, one for loading and one different for saving.

scruffyherder 6y ago
Any link to your writing on the emulator and getting duke3d running? I’d at least find it interesting
- mattbee 6y ago
  https://web.archive.org/web/20020806023145/http://www.aleph1.co.uk/AcornProd/Software/PCPro3Demo/index.html https://web.archive.org/web/20020806023145/http://www.aleph1... was the announcement but - the main work was adding VESA 2.0 support to the BIOS from the spec, organising sharing the screen memory with the host side. Unlike VESA 1.2, the pixel formats were compatible so DOS could just write direct to the RISC OS hosted screen, getting some good frame rates for Duke, Tomb Raider etc.