SoftPC 3.1

[Scott Baret]

After having this in my closet for over two years, I finally have decided to give it a try with my 180c. According to the manual, it emulates an 80286 and comes with DOS 5.0.

I have experience with Virtual PC 5 running Win2K (which I run on a 300MHz Clamshell for the sole purpose of using Office 2000) and Virtual PC 6 running XP Pro (which I used to run on my iBook G4 but currently am not using, as I currently have no G4 systems). I know both of these are rather slow, even with lots of RAM allocation and decent hardware.

Tentatively, I am planning on installing WordPerfect 5.1 on the 180c as well as a little CGA graphics game called Freddy's Rescue Roundup (similar to Lode Runner) that I used to play on my Toshiba T1200 in the early 1990s. I may also use Broderbund's Treehouse, which I believe requires VGA (or at least EGA--I know it doesn't work on CGA but I can check the manual sometime to verify this).

I get a feeling WP51 will run fine, but how about the other two programs? Does anyone have experience with this software? I'd like to have some idea of whether or not it would be worth running since I will have to clear some hard drive space to install all three (especially Treehouse, which is five floppies).

 

[LCGuy]

Ah, I've got the demo for this, it came on the "Business Productivity" Demo CD that we got with the LCIII back in 1993, and it times out after 20 minutes. I remember I started using it when I found it on that CD, and it was actually that demo that made me learn about the command line. Having had a Mac at home, and Macs at school I'd never used the command line until I was about 10, and I found that demo.

Anyway, I can't see any reason as to why either of those programs wouldn't work under it, I do believe it is supposed to support simple graphics, indeed I'm sure I remember the readme for the demo saying that it supported Windows 3.1, so I can't see why it wouldn't be able to handle the graphics of either program.

 

[Scott Baret]

There is no problem with DOS or WP51. However, just for the sake of anyone who wants to try something more graphically advanced, forget about running even the simplest of programs. Freddy's Rescue Roundup slowed to a halt even on EGA mode (it didn't work right under CGA). Freddy does work decently on my iBook G3 with VPC5/Win2K, but not on a 68030. I didn't even attempt Treehouse after watching how slowly Freddy ran.

The biggest problem seemed to be in the drawing times of the graphics. Moving the guy didn't cause a significant amount of jerkiness, but the sound was a bit off, probably due to processor limitations.

If I had an 040 laptop it would be interesting to see if it ran any better. For now I just uninstalled the entire SoftPC package and saved myself 6MB of hard drive space.