I tend to prefer emulation with old consoles because the real hardware doesn't mesh well with modern TVs. It's also nice to eliminate CDROM noise and load times.

Although N64 emulation is still so poor that I've kept that console.

Yeah, N64 emulation was mainly a rushed scene of trying to get Ocarina of Time as playable as possible in the shortest hackfest of a timeframe. UltraHLE struck some sort of gold rush.

DosFreak wrote:

The latest version of Virtual PC works fine on Windows 7 Home Premium. "XP Mode" is just a installer that packages a .VHD containing Windows XP. You can probably figure out a way to bypass the installer and point virtual PC to it or just install a copy of Windows XP in Virtual PC.....or use a better emulator like Vmware/Virtualbox.

XP Mode activates using OEM SLP activation. Windows Virtual PC detects the edition of your Windows 7 then it will enable the SLP marker in the guest BIOS. Upon boot up of the XP Mode guest, the virtual XP will pick up this SLP marker and activate Windows using a special product key and OEMBIOS certificate files. VMware and VirtualBox also has XP Mode support and will therefore parse this SLP marker information to an imported XP Mode guest.

Installing XP the old fashioned way in Virtual PC will not be activated with this "offline" method regardless of retail or OEM versions due to this fact. Of course, if you are a volume license customer, there is no activation to be done. 😉

leileilol wrote:

Yeah, N64 emulation was mainly a rushed scene of trying to get Ocarina of Time as playable as possible in the shortest hackfest of a timeframe. UltraHLE struck some sort of gold rush.

The N64 scene doesn't seem to motivate the right people to make something quality finally happen. How many mediocre emulators have there been? It's really crazy.

Kerr Avon wrote:

How are Vmware/Virtualbox better than Virtual PC, what are the differences between the three?

Virtual PC has a special background mode where any apps you install in XP Mode, will show up in your Windows 7 Start Menu. Clicking on those entries from within Windows 7 will cause the virtual XP to be launched in the background and the app loaded, then its video output redirected into your Windows 7 host (using Remote Desktop technology). It seamlessly appears it is running in Windows 7. Cool stuff!

VMware is historically the oldest virtualization program out there and is regarded as the most stable, most refined. It also is the fastest in running XP mode and other modern operating systems. But running XP mode with it does not have Start Menu integration. It does however, have the next best thing... "Unity" mode. It still doesn't offer Start Menu integration, but the guest OS is hidden away for the most part and all apps you launch in it will show up seamlessly with your Windows 7 host, but with special colored window borders signifying they are running in VMware. It is not 100% seamless like Virtual PC does, but it's good enough and is a price to pay for faster performance (Virtual PC is slower than VMware).

VirtualBox is open source and is updated the most often (more often than VMware, which still does have periodic updates, unlike Virtual PC which has none). It emulates a Sound Blaster 16 completely except for the CSP/ASP chip due to how secretive its design was. Customization of the virtual machines is more difficult as many options are shielded from users for user friendliness. Its virtualization engine behaves differently from Virtual PC and VMware and therefore sometimes does weird things with older operating systems. It works fine for the most part. Using it is next to impossible through a Remote Desktop environment. The mouse doesn't behave correctly. I don't know if this issue has been fixed yet or not, but don't be surprised if it screws up on you if you run VirtualBox through Remote Desktop! That aside, VirtualBox's performance is about on par with Virtual PC, sometimes a little faster. Hands down, VMware is still the fastest though.

If anyone knows how to get 16-bit and 32-bit color along with hardware graphics acceleration working in a Windows 98 SE guest install using VirtualBox, do let me know, because I sure couldn't figure it out even after a bit of searching.

Also, which one of you just outbid me on this? That really sets my Win9x gaming computer build plans back quite a bit, especially if I can't even get my ol' BP6 board to work properly anymore.

NamelessPlayer wrote:

If anyone knows how to get 16-bit and 32-bit color along with hardware graphics acceleration working in a Windows 98 SE guest install using VirtualBox, do let me know, because I sure couldn't figure it out even after a bit of searching.

It's not supported. It's only supported on Windows 2000 and up. Really.

The best there is, is just the use of an experimental VESA video driver released somewhere, but that's not really "accellerated".

leileilol wrote:

NamelessPlayer wrote:

If anyone knows how to get 16-bit and 32-bit color along with hardware graphics acceleration working in a Windows 98 SE guest install using VirtualBox, do let me know, because I sure couldn't figure it out even after a bit of searching.

It's not supported. It's only supported on Windows 2000 and up. Really.

The best there is, is just the use of an experimental VESA video driver released somewhere, but that's not really "accellerated".

Yeah, that's what I remember. It's reason enough for me to use VMware Player over VirtualBox, but that has the quirk of supporting 32-bit color...and NOT 16-bit color, which some games absolutely insist on.

(As an aside, I figured out what was "wrong" with the BP6 setup. Thankfully, it wasn't anything wrong with the board itself, but the case having motherboard standoffs where they shouldn't have been. Remove those, and it works fine. I still can't get over how weak sauce a single Celeron 533 is for Win9x-era gaming, though.)

Virtual PC 2007 supports 98 SE guests... you can install it there, with the guest additions, then try to migrate it over to Windows Virtual PC and see if it works... hopefully it supports 16bit color too

I play more games when I have real hardware than when I use Dosbox. This is the case even when Dosbox supports more games than the hardware I have. It's just more compelling somehow.

I think you might as well ask why people still use vinyl, or why some people still drive cars from the 1950s. It's a hobby. There's a big part of my brain that's dedicated to knowing about IRQs and DOS extenders etc, and it feels good to use it.

The funny thing is, 5 years ago I had a huge console collection and swore I'd never deal with Microsoft's bullshit again. But today I have half a dozen x86 PCs from different eras and use them more than any of my consoles.

For most its the attraction of having something that is the real thing rather than an emulator. Second there is some status (Geek points) for having something that isn't modern like a 486 for example. Most of the newbies, kiddies, and the rich only strive for the most ultra modern builds. Plus it makes one appreciate the modern rigs a little more after working long and hard to get that 486 or pentium 1 machine to run just right. Then there is collectors like me that look at computers in general like they are potato chips, one isn't enough until you have had the whole bag. 😀

I've found emulation of all types to be not 100% accurate, erratic or different in terms of performance, and without the possibility of using period controllers such as a Logitech Cyberman 2 and various specialty controllers such as rotary, combined rotary/stick, etc...

To elaborate, I even keep an Atari 7800 for 2600 games, after being disappointed with the feel of emulation in Stella. Recently I tried Carmageddon 3Dfx version emulation and/or Glide wrapper, and on a much faster system (3.33ghz Core2 duo) it was unacceptably sluggish and choppy compared to a PII system with a Voodoo1 card. Sound card emulation does not capture the characteristics of the Yamaha Sound Blaster FM cards, the MT-32 emulation wasn't 100% the last time I tried it, and I'm not sure there is any emulation for the Aureal Vortex2 which I happen to like for certain games. Finally, certain things, like a generation of digital gameport controllers, have no possibility of being used outside of Win98, AFAIK, and some of these are better for certain games, since they made a much wider variety of controllers back then.

Partially it is because I already have all of this hardware that I kept in storage, or scavenged from machines being disposed of, and I wanted to see if I could assemble older systems that were faster than possible with what was available when certain games came out when the performance machines at the time struggled with the demands of each game.

Cheers

Regard vintage consoles and modern TV's. In my case, my TV still has an S-Video connector, so I installed S-Video outputs on my Atari 2600 and Atari 7800. The Atari 800 already has S-Video. I plan to add a scan doubler to some other consoles to get RGB into component video inputs.

It is possible, but perhaps with more effort than emulation.

Cheers

As i said earlier, i basically dont emulate however im missing some features from the world of emulators. Fast forward is great to skip boring repetitive parts, like easy combats in J-rpgs, and savestates for games that are too freaking long and dont have a save feature. (i.e Mario 3, jurassic parc on Snes... ) Also, if you want to practice some hard parts, savestates are handy.

speaking of vintage consoles, I went ahead and bought a new belt for my famicom disk drive today... I'm NOT looking forward to replacing it... I looked at the how-tos.... it's a real bitch to do!

I have the Famicom twin but do not have disk games. I bet the drive does not work anyway but ill have to try it one day.

In my case it was to use period peripherals. I justed picked up an Amiga 4000. Yeah, I know UAE exists, but for many years, accurate Amiga emulation with all its custom chips was impossible and SLOW. That and it will never run a Video Toaster 4000 card! Likewise I'm not impressed with all these FPGA replica machines. None of them have slots to run system specific peripherals. The Amiga came with the ability to genlock to external video sources out of the box, so a ton of unique add-ons to take advantage of that appeared on the market.

I've tried on DOSBox for many years... however, I eventually got my old pentium 1 system again... never looked back.

The problem with emulators is that they are not seamless and I require many variables to be fulfilled:
#1 3dfx support, including for certain drivers (some games I have will only work with monster 3D drivers, others with later stock 3dfx drivers, etc: requiring different 3dfx-equipped computers).
#2 MS-DOS support, along with real hardware: I can't stand emulated FM chips, and because my favourite OPL3 synthesizer is a clone, no emulators exist for it.
#3 Windows 9x support.
#4 emulators don't account for a full hardware experience (including PROPER CRT monitor, mechanical keyboard, etc)

I have some DOS games which have certain elements running in windows 9x (like map editors), and some games ONLY work with windows 9x: but then I may want to play a DOS game later on after that.... or what if it requites glide? etc.

So it's a crazy combination of discreet hardware I want to run, as well as a whole multitude of different software... which is sometimes dependent on specific hardware. In order to emulate all of the games I play, it would require so many emulators piled on top of one another that I just don't it's possible?
I certainly wasn't able to get some games running with emulators (and had a lot of trouble getting them working even with hardware as it has to be sooooo specific).

I've created two 98 machines to fulfill both ranges. A P1 233 with a voodoo 2, and a P4 northwood with a voodoo 4500 AGP 4x.

raymangold22 wrote:

I've tried on DOSBox for many years... however, I eventually got my old pentium 1 system again... never looked back. […]
Show full quote

I've tried on DOSBox for many years... however, I eventually got my old pentium 1 system again... never looked back.

The problem with emulators is that they are not seamless and I require many variables to be fulfilled:
#1 3dfx support, including for certain drivers (some games I have will only work with monster 3D drivers, others with later stock 3dfx drivers, etc: requiring different 3dfx-equipped computers).
#2 MS-DOS support, along with real hardware: I can't stand emulated FM chips, and because my favourite OPL3 synthesizer is a clone, no emulators exist for it.
#3 Windows 9x support.
#4 emulators don't account for a full hardware experience (including PROPER CRT monitor, mechanical keyboard, etc)

I have some DOS games which have certain elements running in windows 9x (like map editors), and some games ONLY work with windows 9x: but then I may want to play a DOS game later on after that.... or what if it requites glide? etc.

So it's a crazy combination of discreet hardware I want to run, as well as a whole multitude of different software... which is sometimes dependent on specific hardware. In order to emulate all of the games I play, it would require so many emulators piled on top of one another that I just don't it's possible?
I certainly wasn't able to get some games running with emulators (and had a lot of trouble getting them working even with hardware as it has to be sooooo specific).

I've created two 98 machines to fulfill both ranges. A P1 233 with a voodoo 2, and a P4 northwood with a voodoo 4500 AGP 4x.

Very similar here, except I'm coming round to emulators these days:

- For old home computers, emulators mean avoiding those hassles with TV cables and crappy cassette decks.

- For old arcade games, no way do i have the time or money to set up the real thing. Let alone space.

- For DOS games, I suspect if my hardware had been good enough to run them in dosbox in the first place I would not have got hooked on old machinery. But glide, A3D, old directx support are the main reasons I use old gear. I keep a socket 7 box for DOS games but I've given up on 486s and 386s for now - they are fun but take a lot of space for something that doesn't do much. And the old hardware is often problematic too; what with conflicts, crackles pops and whines; and so on. I've decided I want to play games again instead of sitting there fiddling with a sound card settings and wondering the experience of using card X is really any different from Y or Z, so I got rid of a lot of my "collection".

- For Mac games I've just given up. I don't have the room for a Mac, nor the time or inclination to get one and set it up even if I did. Some great titles, but you can't take 'em with you when you go. Same with amigas.

Anyone else notice that the OP is long gone? 😜