A guide to setting up the Rowan flight sim MiG Alley in the PCem emulator. MiG Alley can be a tricky sim to get running natively in WIndows 10, and in many cases switching to PCem has provided an alternative solution. So I've supplemented my previous MiG Alley setup guide with this one. It will cover running running MiG Alley in Windows 98 SE within the PCem emulator and setting up HOTAS controllers, if required.
It's recommended you take a look at the previous 'MiG Alley: Running in Windows 10' guide for background info and links to patches.
Versions
This guide assumes the use of the latest version of PCem v17, at time of writing. Either v1.0 or v1.1 cd retail versions of MiG Alley should be suitable.
PCem setup
If you're completely new to setting up PCem or need a refresher, I highly recommend the excellent YouTube tutorial video by PhilsComputerLab, PCem Windows 98 Setup.
The only change I'd make to Phil's advice may be MiG Alley specific. Using the SB PCI 128 sound card in the emulated machine, resulted in terrible audio crackling when flying a mission. Instead I'd recommend switching to the AWE32 or SB16 soundcards, once I switched to the AWE32 the crackling disappeared.
Obviously you'll need different sound card drivers once you switch and the 'Creative Sound Blaster sound card driver download links' thread in the PCem forum provides a handy collection.
Base game installation
To install run up the emulated machine in PCem. I normally rip my cd's to a cd image to save wear and tear on disc and drive and just use the cd image, although PCem supports using your physical drive so either method can be used.
Installation was as easy as installing on period correct legacy hardware. No issues encountered at all.
Patching
If you've followed Phils tutorial video, you know how easy it is to mount the PCem hard disk image (.vhd) file in modern Windows, and copy any files you need into it. Windows 98 doesn't have built in zip file support so unzip in modern Windows before copying into the mounted hard disk image.
You'll need to install the latest official patch and Battle of Britain / MiG Alley Development Group )BDG) patches in the following order:
BDG v0.85F (Bug fixes, QoL improvements, TrackIR support)
BDG v0.85F2 (Specific Windows 98/ME updates to BDG v0.85F)
All patches installed very easily, no issues at all. You should now have a fully installed, patched and working copy of MiG Alley running in Windows 98 under PCem!
HOTAS setup
Take a look at my Controllers and retro sims part 5: PCem guide for installing HOTAS controllers in PCem. Once you have a custom calibrated Windows 98 controller the hard work is done. All that remains is to open up the MiG Alley Preferences Controls menu and assign axes to your Windows 98 controller.
If MiG Alley detects the Windows 98 controller, it takes a pretty good guess at automatically setting axes to flight controls. In this screenshot the assignments were all set automatically, I didn't have to change anything!
Good hunting!
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