PC Prevue Tutorial

Since late-2020, it has been possible to emulate PC Prevue, the third major revision of (although seemingly offered as an alternative to) the Prevue Channel software.

This guide is meant as an overall tutorial for setting up PC Prevue on virtualized and physical environments. In addition, I wrote a tutorial for getting it set up in DOSBox(-X), while tobskep contributed a tutorial for settoing it up with QEMU.

Requirements

• A copy of Microsoft Windows- The earliest release of Windows that PC Prevue can operate on is Windows NT 3.x, however Windows 95 and later (as late as Windows 11) have been tested to work. I have not tested this in Wine yet as of writing.
• A physical or virtual machine- Self explanitory. You are probably using one right now to view this guide.
• PC Prevue- Available with it's original 16-bit installer or as a batch script for Windows 2000 and Win9x-based operating systems.
• An RS-232 serial port- A serial port is required for PC Prevue to operate (and to get data from.)
  • If the computer you plan to send listings from does not have a serial port, you will need to purchase an RS-232 to USB adapter.
  • If you plan on sending listings from your host OS to a guest OS (in other words, a virtual machine), you will need to install a virtual serial port like com0com or the [Virtual Serial Port Emulator (VSPE)].

Installing PC Prevue

Assuming you already know have an environment (virtual or otherwise) to run PC Prevue, installing is very straightforward. There are a few different installer packages available:

• Original installer - Bundled with the dump provided in 2020 by AriX.
• Installer as a batch script - Compiled by me around the same time. Additional versions exist for Windows 2000 and Win9x-based operating systems.

Once downloaded, extract, put onto your virtual environment or whatever, and click install.bat (run as administrator in newer Windows versions). It should put everything where it needs to be.

Before you can start PC Prevue, you might see an error upon startup:

PC Prevue receives data over serial, therefore requiring a serial port to start the software whatsoever. All accessible ports are defined within pcepgsys.ini. In particular, you are looking for the BaseBand section:

[BaseBand]                  ; Config parameters for the BaseBand device
Mode=2400,n,8,1
Handshaking=None
CommPort=2
MaxLines=100

Depending on your computer's configuration, you might need to modify the value of CommPort before you can launch PC Prevue.

To view a list of serial ports in Windows:

• Registry Editor: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\HARDWARE\DEVICEMAP\SERIALCOMM
• Command Prompt: Enter the mode command.
• Device Manager: Expand Ports (COM & LPT). You may need to check Show hidden devices within the menu bar (under View) for this branch to pop up.
  • Under Win9x, right-click ‘My Computer’ on the desktop, click ‘Properties’, then click the ‘Device Manager’ tab.

Once you have identified an available COM port, go back to the pcepgsys.ini file and change CommPort to the number of your specified COM port. When done, save the file.

• Depending on version of Windows, you might need to have administrator privileges to save to C:\Windows, or to have Notepad open as Administrator.

From there, you should be able to launch PC Prevue successfully.

Receiving listings

I already wrote guides for various programs and utilities (currently only PrevueCLI) to provide the Prevue Channel software with data, as this section assumes you have the software and data you want to use prepared.

The first thing you will see upon starting up PC Prevue (if you get into the software without the port error) is “No data. Call for download.” within the grid.

Sending listings from another machine (or your host OS to a guest OS) is simple. All you need is a serial port (or adapter) and a serial cable (unless you are virtualizing).

If you are virtualizing PC Prevue, you may need to make some modifications to your virtual machine's configuration to get data over:

VirtualBox: Serial settings are accesible within the virtual machine's settings window.

VMware: First, make sure all VMware software is closed. Then, add the following lines to your virtual machine's .vmx file:

serial0.startConnected = "TRUE" <br/>
serial0.fileType = "pipe" <br/>
serial0.fileName = "/tmp/serial2" <br/>
serial0.tryNoRxLoss = "TRUE" <br/>
serial0.present = "TRUE" <br/>

(you may need to replace the number in serial0.fileName with a different port depending on setup.)

Save the file, then relaunch VMware.

QEMU: In your QEMU command, add a line utilizing the -serial option:

qemu-system-x86_64 \
    ...
    -serial telnet:localhost:4321,server,nowait \
    ...

DOSBox: Under the serial section of your DOSBox configuration, change the dummy value under serial2 to nullmodem port:1234.

• If the program you are using only supports sending data over serial, you might need to download [SerialToIP].