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Installing Blown Away or Panic in the Park on a PCem Virtual Machine

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Setup a WINDOWS 95 PC EM Machine, in order to play old games
like Blown Away, Panic in the Park, etc.
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                                         by Daniel Marschall
                                             22 January 2022


You need to download the following:
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1. PC em version 16:
   https://pcem-emulator.co.uk/downloads.html

2. ROMs:
   https://github.com/BaRRaKudaRain/PCem-ROMs/archive/master.zip

3. Windows 95 Boot Disk "Windows95b.img"
   https://www.allbootdisks.com/download/95.html

4. Windows 95 ISO:
   https://winworldpc.com/product/windows-95/osr-2


Step by step guide:
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1. Unpack PCem somewhere.

2. Delete the contents of "roms" and replace them with the ROMs you have downloaded.

3. Run PCem.exe

4. Click button "New machine", and enter a name for your virtual machine.
Enter the following settings:

Page "machine":
	Machine: [468] AMI WinBIOS 486
	CPU type: Intel
	CPU: i486DX/50
	Memory: 32 MB

Page "video":
	Device: ATI Graphics Pro Turbo (Mach64 GX)
	Speed: Slow VLB/PCI

Page "sound":
	Device: Sound Blaster AWE32

Page "storage":
	HDD: [IDE] Standard IDE
	FDD1: 3.5" 1.44M
	FDD2: None
	CD Model: PCemCD
	CD Speed: 24X

	Drive 0 Primary Master (C:)
	Type: "Hard drive"
	Click the green "+" button to create new hard disk, type "Custom type", size (MB): 4095
	Recommended: Save the hard disk file (.img) somewhere in your PC EM directory.

5. Run the virtual machine.

6. In the first time, you will receive a BIOS error. Press F1 to enter BIOS.
If you don't get the message, press DEL during startup to enter BIOS.

7. In the AMIBIOS setup:

7.1 Click "Advanced", and then scroll down to "IDE LBA Mode".
Press ENTER and then select "Enabled".
Press ESC.

7.2 Click "Detect C:", wait and then accept the parameters.

7.3 Press ESC and then select "save changes and exit" and press ENTER.

8. Once you see the error "DRIVE NOT READY. Insert BOOT diskette in A:",
click at "CD-ROM" and then "Load image..." to include the Windows 95 CD-ROM ISO.
and "Disc" and then "Change drive A:..." to include a Windows boot floppy disk image.
(Please note that the BIOS does not recognize the CD-ROM drive without drivers,
 so you have to use a boot disk, even if you have a bootable ISO image.)

9. Click "System" then click "Ctrl+Alt+Del". This will reboot the virtual machine.
It should now boot from the boot floppy disk.
Wait until you see:  "A:\>"

10. Enter "fdisk"

10.1 In the next dialog: Accept large disk support: "Y" (Germans need to press "Z")

10.2 Select 1 = Create DOS partition or Logical DOS Drive

10.3 Select 1 = Create Primary DOS Partition

10.4 Do you wish to use the maximum available size.... Y = Yes

10.5 Press ESC

11. Click "System" then click "Ctrl+Alt+Del". This will reboot the virtual machine.
It should now boot from the boot floppy disk.
Wait until you see "A:\>" again

12. Enter "Format C:" (Germans need Shift+"Ö" to type ":")
Accept with Y (Germans type "Z")
Volume label can stay empty.

13. Run Setup by typing R:\Setup.exe
	Germans type:
	R:  (":" is Shift+"Ö")
	ENTER
	Setup.exe
	ENTER
  
14. Install Windows 95
Some notes:
- Don't create a boot diskette.
- At the Plug'n'Play installation, when you are asked to insert the CD, then select drive D:\Win95
  (Setup thinks that R: is the CD-ROM drive, because R: was the drive that the boot floppy disk had chosen)

15. Go into the hardware assistant check if all devices are installed correctly.

16. Change the monitor settings to 640x480 with 256 colors.
You are now ready to play old games!

17. Recommended viewing settings:

17.1 Main menu "Video" => "Fullscreen on input grab" (exit fullscreen with Ctrl+Alt+PgDown)

17.2 Main menu "Video" => "Output stretch-mode" => 4:3


To play Imagination Pilots games (Blown Away, Panic in the park):
-----------------------------------------------------------------

18. Install the game from CD (this step is necessary to install VfW and the IPMA driver)

19. Copy the CD contents onto your hard disk (e.g. C:\BA) and edit config.ini to adjust the paths

20. Please consider applying patches by Daniel Marschall / ViaThinkSoft which fixes some bugs in the game.
	Blown Away: https://misc.daniel-marschall.de/spiele/blown_away/patch/
	Panic in the park: https://misc.daniel-marschall.de/spiele/panic_in_the_park/patches.php


Some further notes:
-------------------

- If the sound "stutters", you have to chose a slower CPU, e.g. i486DX/33.
  i486DX/50 will run fine for most host machines.
  An indicator that you have chosen a too fast CPU is when the percentage indicator at the titlebar drops below 100%.

- If you want to open the .img hard drive image to copy the CD contents from your host machine,
  then use the program OSFMount. Don't forget to uncheck "read only" when you mount the image.

- In the control panel you can choose between 2 MIDI devices. Please chose the one you like more:
  * MIDI for Creative Advanced Wave Effects ...  (more natural instruments)
  * MIDI for internal OPL2/OPL3-FM  (more "synthetic" instruments)


Open questions/problems:
------------------------

- In Panic in the Park, the Gopher Gong game is quite laggy. Probably the MHz specs need to be increased.

© 2024 Daniel Marschall - - www.daniel-marschall.de

Please also see my pages for other Imagination Pilots games:
Blown Away | Panic in the Park | Waldo at the Circus | Waldo Exploring Geography | Eraser Turnabout | Virtual K'Nex