jelbo
Nintendo emulation fanatic!
Help to speed up your emulation using GameOS.
GameOS is an alternate shell for use with Windows. Basically what it does is changing the default shell from Explorer (Windows) to GameOS in system.ini (shell=C:\GAMEOS\GAMEOS.exe). This may sound more dangerous than it is; it can easily be changed with GameOS itself. (Read on)
But the best thing about GameOS is its speed! When you normally run games on your PC, there's alway Windows running in the background consuming processor-power and memory. GameOS replaces Windows and thus makes running games (and emulators) much faster. It works great for me.
I tested GameOS on my XP Professional notebook (P4 2 GHz, 246mb RAM, Ati Radeon Mobility M6-P with Plutonium XP drivers) and I must say I'm impressed. Before, I could run Goldeneye on 800x600 16bbp decently with PJ64 1.5 (default settings, only using triple buffer as buffer display mode) and with GameOS I could use 1024x768 32bbp with great results. I have the same performance increase with many more N64 roms I play (Banjo Tooie, Zelda MM, etc.)
>>How to change it back to Windows
Windows 98/ME
The manual says 'For Win9x, go into system.ini and change the shell= line to:
shell=Explorer.exe'. So, when in GameOS, you should open system.ini in your Windows folder with Notepad and change the line 'Shell=C:\GAMEOS\GAMEOS.exe' (assuming you installed GameOS in C:\GAMEOS) to 'Shell=Explorer.exe'. Reboot and you're back in Windows.
Windows 2000/XP
When in GameOS, click on titlebar and select 'Set Explorer as default shell'. Reboot and you're back in Windows.
>>How to set GameOS as default shell
Easiest way; open GameOS.exe, select 'Set GameOS as default shell'.
>>What I recommend:
Extract the contents of gameos.zip in C:\GAMEOS (or any other drive you boot from). Place shortcuts to games and emulators in the 'games' subfolder of the GAMEOS folder you created. (You can open any program in GameOS though). Open GameOS.exe, click the titlebar and select 'Set GameOS as default shell'. Reboot. Play away with better performance! Don't forget to set the shell back to explorer if you need.
You can also choose from 3 performance modes in GameOS; Normal, High and Realtime. When in any other mode than Normal, certain things will be disabled, like system properties and display properties. When not changing the performance level back to normal, but do return to Windows, the limitations are the same. So, don't panic and return to GameOS to set it back to normal.
I hope people will enjoy GameOS as much as I do; I thought it would be handy for many emulator enthusiasts. I'm not responsible for any damage done to your computer, but if you ahve questions you may ask them here. So, use this program at your own risk!
GameOS is an alternate shell for use with Windows. Basically what it does is changing the default shell from Explorer (Windows) to GameOS in system.ini (shell=C:\GAMEOS\GAMEOS.exe). This may sound more dangerous than it is; it can easily be changed with GameOS itself. (Read on)
But the best thing about GameOS is its speed! When you normally run games on your PC, there's alway Windows running in the background consuming processor-power and memory. GameOS replaces Windows and thus makes running games (and emulators) much faster. It works great for me.
I tested GameOS on my XP Professional notebook (P4 2 GHz, 246mb RAM, Ati Radeon Mobility M6-P with Plutonium XP drivers) and I must say I'm impressed. Before, I could run Goldeneye on 800x600 16bbp decently with PJ64 1.5 (default settings, only using triple buffer as buffer display mode) and with GameOS I could use 1024x768 32bbp with great results. I have the same performance increase with many more N64 roms I play (Banjo Tooie, Zelda MM, etc.)
>>How to change it back to Windows
Windows 98/ME
The manual says 'For Win9x, go into system.ini and change the shell= line to:
shell=Explorer.exe'. So, when in GameOS, you should open system.ini in your Windows folder with Notepad and change the line 'Shell=C:\GAMEOS\GAMEOS.exe' (assuming you installed GameOS in C:\GAMEOS) to 'Shell=Explorer.exe'. Reboot and you're back in Windows.
Windows 2000/XP
When in GameOS, click on titlebar and select 'Set Explorer as default shell'. Reboot and you're back in Windows.
>>How to set GameOS as default shell
Easiest way; open GameOS.exe, select 'Set GameOS as default shell'.
>>What I recommend:
Extract the contents of gameos.zip in C:\GAMEOS (or any other drive you boot from). Place shortcuts to games and emulators in the 'games' subfolder of the GAMEOS folder you created. (You can open any program in GameOS though). Open GameOS.exe, click the titlebar and select 'Set GameOS as default shell'. Reboot. Play away with better performance! Don't forget to set the shell back to explorer if you need.
You can also choose from 3 performance modes in GameOS; Normal, High and Realtime. When in any other mode than Normal, certain things will be disabled, like system properties and display properties. When not changing the performance level back to normal, but do return to Windows, the limitations are the same. So, don't panic and return to GameOS to set it back to normal.
I hope people will enjoy GameOS as much as I do; I thought it would be handy for many emulator enthusiasts. I'm not responsible for any damage done to your computer, but if you ahve questions you may ask them here. So, use this program at your own risk!
