NT4 has 'Devices' in Control Panel. It looks from the UI very similar to Services, but thats intended, as drivers are very similar to services.

So, how is NT4.0 in 2019?

Can it run on dosbox? Vmware?

How about NT 3.5x?

NT 4 and 3.5 (client and server) both work within virtualbox. You'll need to sort out video and sound drivers yourself because vbox addons aren't available for an OS older than Windows 2000 but it can be done.

bfcastello wrote:

So, how is NT4.0 in 2019?

Can it run on dosbox? Vmware?

How about NT 3.5x?

NT 3.51 and 4 (mabye also 2K) can also run 16-Bit OS/2 programs, which has got a certain novelty factor to it. 😀
By default, only text-mode ones, but with the OS/2 Presentation Manager for NT add-on also graphical ones.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0oWo9kV9K4

Re: Windows NT 4.0

sgt76 wrote:

Nt4 uses fat16, not ntfs. Thus the max partition size of 2.1 gb.

My memory of NT4 is a bit rusty, but I seem to recall that NT4 used NTFS4 or FAT16. Windows 2000 added support for NTFS5 and FAT32.
I also seem to remember there is an annoying limitation to NTFS4. While the secondary partitions can be quite large, the primary boot partition is limited to 4GB. I think there are some hacks that can increase it to 6GB.

gca wrote:

NT 4 and 3.5 (client and server) both work within virtualbox. You'll need to sort out video and sound drivers yourself because vbox addons aren't available for an OS older than Windows 2000 but it can be done.

My host is macOS Mojave.

Both Virtualbox and Vmware Fusion have issues with sound. Vmware Fusion does not have sb16 emulation for some reason, and virtualbox has issues emulating it (crackling and stuttering). There are no drivers for es1371, unless I run w95 and above.

Moved to software.

The installation partition size limit for NT4 is 4 GB, but once installed (and probably patched with SP6a), you can use partition magic to increase NT4's primary partition size to about 7.8 GB. Other partitions can be much larger. You can use FAT32 for NT4 so that NT4 can read/write FAT32 partitions. For non DOS-gaming use, I remember NT4 being an excellent OS for its day. I used it until around 2004.

bfcastello wrote:

There are no drivers for es1371, unless I run w95 and above.

There are creative es1371 drivers for Nt4, they are working for me, except lag.

ruthan wrote:

bfcastello wrote:

There are no drivers for es1371, unless I run w95 and above.

There are creative es1371 drivers for Nt4, they are working for me, except lag.

Yes, for NT4. Unfortunately, not for NT3.51 🙁

Orkay wrote:

It's possible to extend the boot partition without the need for an external partition manager by initiating a fully or partially […]
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It's possible to extend the boot partition without the need for an external partition manager by initiating a fully or partially unattended installation of Windows NT from an MS-DOS startup disk. You only need four lines at most in a plain text file:

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1[Unattended]
2FileSystem = ConvertNTFS
3ExtendOemPartition = 1
4; additional blank line at bottom to ensure all lines are read
5

This file, when run with WINNT.EXE, will tell Setup to extend the primary FAT16 partition to 7.8GB as it is converted to NTFS. For example, you can execute the following command:

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1WINNT.EXE /B /S:D:\I386 /U:UNATTEND.TXT

For more unattended installation options, you can refer to this Microsoft KB article or run SETUPMGR.EXE which may be located in your installation CD somewhere under \SUPPORT\OPK or \SUPPORT\DEPTOOLS.

It's been a while since I ran an unattended Windows NT installation, so there may be some additional lines needed that I forgot about.

Really like this! Usually I like to keep to 2GB for compatibility but this is a nice clean way to max out the C:\ should I ever need

I was happy to see NT 4.0 go.
Too many problems with drivers and updates and limitations. A real nightmare to work with.
Win98se and Win2000 are much more stable and easy to work with.

Win NT 3.5.1 and NT 4.0 have to many problems with drivers, updates, patches and limitations.
But they do work well for networking clients and Servers. NT very good for gaming computers.

Patience and perseverance is part of the joy and requirement of the early NT's.

Split.

Sorry for necromancy of this topic, but I think it is relevant to the subject (old Win + Virtualbox).

I have been doing some testing on Virtualbox. It has an issue with SB16 emulation, the sound has a constant crackling noise.

Using MSDOS 6.22 and WfWg 3.11, when one starts windows, there is some "explosion noise" before you hear the complete start sound. If you go to control panel and play test of system sounds, they are crystal clear. But when you exit Windows, the crackling sound is there again. Oracle and its developers NEVER, EVER, attempted to fix this (I recall it having been fixed in 5.1.x builds before macOS Mojave came in and disrupted it again).

I tested nearly all Virtualbox versions (5.2.14+ and 6.x) that are supported by Mojave currently. Most of them didn't even play the sound correctly, just the crackling noise. But I noticed something that wasn't mentioned in Virtualbox forums. When I lowered massively the "execution cap" slider, I made the virtual machine slower, but it actually was able to play the full start/exit sounds of Windows 3.11, although the crackling noise was still there. The machine was massively slower, but the sounds were almost playing fine. So it has something to do with the speed? Dunno. The smaller the execution cap, the better the sound, but slower is the machine. It was too damn slow when I almost got there.

Another problem I've found when running SB16 Diagnose program on MSDOS was, if I do c:\sb16\diagnose /dmpu (To bypass the MPU-401 diagnosis, because VBox does not have it) I stop at the detection of the DMA Channel. There are three channels to select, the autodetect fails saying that another peripheral is possibly using the same DMA Channel. I tried to figure out which one but no luck. That problem must be related to the one above too. I run the default SB16 settings, the sound is played (crackling though) despite of this issue with the DMA channel being possibly used by another device.

The Virtualbox versions that worked this way are 5.2.20, 5.2.22 and 6.0.4. Latest version is 6.0.10 (Released last week) and it still doesn't work properly. All the other versions were garbage. I would post it on their virtualbox forums, but some moderators there simply don't care (in particular the one nicknamed socratis, is very rude with the other members on this subject).

I didn't even bother with VMWare Fusion, because this macOS version does not have SB16 emulation. It does emulate some sort of ES1371, but no DOS/Win3.x drivers were made for that, so no sound in VMWare Fusion.

For Dos or Windows 3.x don't bother with the big Virtual Machine programs. Use Dosbox, PCEm, Quemu etc. superior support than those big ones

Dominus wrote:

For Dos or Windows 3.x don't bother with the big Virtual Machine programs. Use Dosbox, PCEm, Quemu etc. superior support than those big ones

Hi, good night! (well, night here in Rio de Janeiro, actually).

Well, I know that. The problem is that I have more three VMs running on VMWare Fusion/Virtualbox (Win 10 x64, Raspbian and elementaryOS) and I didn't want to run different programs for different machines, I wanted all in one place.

Also, DosBox with NE2000 patch only works over ethernet, not wifi, so this is the reason I started looking for other VM programs. I thought about QEMU but it looked far too complicated and without a GUI for an easy job on macOS. I would consider QEMU with some improvements in this area.

If you run Windows 3.1 or DOS in VMs, make sure the CPU speed is either limited in the VM settings or run DOSIDLE (DOS), POWER (DOS) or WQGHLT (Win 3.x Enhanced Mode).
Without these things, CPU load will be 100% all the time. In Emulators and DOSBox with low fixed cycles, things won't be that worse, though.
Some tools can be found here: http://www.scampers.org/steve/vmware/

PS: These tools will try to detect idle loops and execute HLT instructution (486+) or APM BIOS calls (386SL etc.) to put the system to sleep for a while.
However, this doesn't always work. For time-critical applications, it might be better to not use these utilities and instead just limit CPU power in
the settings of the emulator or virtualizer in particular.

Didn't know you needed WfW with network. Who needs that? 😉