Moving to Milliways.

Oh well i guess no one does...

would it be possible to program a DOS shell that allows for direct hardware access in win2000/XP?

I think that would require even more work, and it may not be feasable because you'd somehow have to get access to the hardware without stepping on Windows' toes...It's probably part of why DOSbox is a full emulator instead of just a hack to get access to the hardware - it's actually easier (although by no means easy) to emulate the hardware than to try to use tricks to get around Windows' abstraction layers.

It would be cool if someone were to make something like GliDOS for VESA though - make a VESA "driver" that actually is a wrapper that routes VESA calls to DirectX calls. I guess that might not work though because many games probably try to access the hardware directly in conjunction with using VESA, and also VESA may be too low-level to be able to be translated to DirectX.

Another question

I found my long lost copy of windows 98, but I already have windowsXP installed.
Is it possible to partition existing unused harddrive space to make a win98 partition or do I have to reformat

You should be able to use a recent version of Partition Magic to shrink your WinXP partition and add a FAT32 partition. The trick is setting it up so you can choose which OS to boot. I know it can be done but I haven't ever had to set it up myself so I can't help.

Installing Windows 98 on another partition after installing Windows XP (or any other OS for that matter) will write a new MBR (master boot record) on your C drive. Thus you won't be able too boot XP, but I think that if you boot from the XP CD after that there is a repair command or something that could give you the multi-boot menu, if not just fix the MBR and tweak boot.ini manually.

Or try searching for at Microsofts site.

Know any freeware parition utilities?
Partitionmagic wont let me partition with the demo version (piece of crap)

Originally posted by Duffman I found my long lost copy of windows 98, but I already have windowsXP installed.
Is it possible to partition existing unused harddrive space to make a win98 partition or do I have to reformat

Ow.

It can be done, but there's room for a lot of potential errors.

It was discussed in this thread:
showthread.php?threadid=988

Even then, I made a goof about "active" drives, corrected later in the thread. If reading all that and manually editing a BOOT.INI file doesn't spook you, then it may be worth a shot.

On the other hand, if you just want a second partition for DOS games, you can make a non-bootable FAT32 (DOS 7+) or FAT16 (DOS 6.2x and below) partition and boot DOS from a floppy disk. It will then read that partition as drive C: (and won't see your NTFS partition at all).

I booted Linux that way when I used to have it installed 😮

I dont have to purchase partition magic 8 to make a new partition without reformating do I?

Do you know any other utilities that are similar to PM8?

Waiting for a reply

A combo of Presizer and Ranish (dos apps)
http://www.zeleps.com http://www.ranish.com

Use this at your own risc

Originally posted by Duffman I dont have to purchase partition magic 8 to make a new partition without reformating do I?

well, you need something that can modify partitions without destroying the data within them. None of Windows' tools can do that.

Do you know any other utilities that are similar to PM8?

Well, "Partition Commander" also resizes/moves/etc... partitions, but I'm betting that you're looking for something free...

Originally posted by 3803 A combo of Presizer and Ranish (dos apps)http://www.zeleps.com http://www.ranish.com

These are good, but have their downsides...

Presizer can move/resize partitions if they are FAT32, but can only move NTFS partitions. I'm not sure if this is actually compatible the 5.1 (XP) version of NTFS. So if you already have a Gig or more free space (or you are already using FAT32), you could use these. Be warned however, the Ranish partition manager isn't for the timid.

Here's what I've found:
Paragon/7Tools Partition Manager Demo: No Resize
Ranish/Muthu Partition Manager: Experts only, No resize AFAIK
Acronis "Partition Expert" Demo: won't apply anychanges

Luckily it looks like BootItNG may do all you need (and it's a full-featured 30-Day trial version). I'm still testing however, and have yet to get a dual-boot using it (couple of lockups in "Virtual PC" and it seems to have "lost" the XP partition on my test setup).

Might want to hold off on this until I can come up with an alternate guide for use with BootItNG.

Whoops. This was a minor indescretion on my part, asking for Windows 98 CD keys. I know that the administrator won't hold it against me, especially since they are Microsoft products, but it still wasn't very smart of me to ask, especially since there are plenty of other places (like Google) that I can find one of these with.

Anyway, why does VirtualPC need to emulate some hardware, why can't it use your hardware or does it cause horrible hardware conflicts?

VirtualPC emulates the hardware for two reasons:
1. This allows it to run on other platforms such as the Macintosh
2. It creates a safe environment in which you don't have to worry about your real hardware being damaged by malicious software

Is there a way to get Direct3d/OpenGL to work? The S3 364 or whatever doesn't support it (well DirectX says it doesnt anyway)

Haha yeah right...AFAIK the emulated video hardware is rather primitive - nowhere near good enough to support hardware 3D. Besides, you'd need a computer faster than anything that currently exists to emulate it at a usable speed.