Welcome. It is generally advisable to try to do your own research before answering a question, or at least to have a specific goal in mind. What sort of computer do you have for this virtual machine? Is there a particular game you want to run? In many cases a virtual machine is entirely unnecessary.

Generally PCem is likely to provide the best accuracy, though it requires a powerful PC, particularly for demanding games. BoxedWine can also be an option, although it is not a virtual machine; alternatively, Windows 98 can also be installed in DOSBox-X. VMware is another option, but it completely lacks support for 3D hardware acceleration.

If you search the Internet you should be able to find pre-built distributions of PCem with a Windows 98 installation, though of course such packages are not technically legal to distribute. I have no idea what you mean by "upgrade it everything possible".

I use Virtual Box and have already a Win 98 VM. Mi real computer is a good one, with 16 gm ram and other stuff, so that isnt a problem for me.

Raguixxx wrote on 2021-06-19, 18:26:

I use Virtual Box and have already a Win 98 VM.

Okay, so: what is your question? Does Virtual Box do everything you need?

Raguixxx wrote on 2021-06-19, 18:26:

I use Virtual Box and have already a Win 98 VM. Mi real computer is a good one, with 16 gm ram and other stuff, so that isnt a problem for me.

You will not be able to get hardware accelerated 3D (OpenGL/Direct3D/Glide) in a Windows 98 Virtualbox VM . This will render pretty much all Windows games that require 3D acceleration unplayable in such a VM . If you want 3D acceleration support, you might consider trying one of these approaches instead :

https://pcem-emulator.co.uk/
https://github.com/kjliew/qemu-3dfx/wiki
https://dosbox-x.com/wiki/Guide%3ASetting-up- … OSBox%E2%80%90X

In recent years, I have preferred to run 3D accelerated stuff under Windows 98 on actual hardware, so I have not played with these aforementioned currently available options . There are likely other options too .

darry wrote on 2021-06-20, 00:14:

You will not be able to get hardware accelerated 3D (OpenGL/Direct3D/Glide) in a Windows 98 Virtualbox VM .

Virtualbox 6.1 broke 3D acceleration on WinXP and earlier, but it should work fine if you use Virtualbox 6.0

WDStudios wrote on 2021-06-21, 18:21:

Virtualbox 6.1 broke 3D acceleration on WinXP and earlier, but it should work fine if you use Virtualbox 6.0

Are you suggesting that 3D acceleration was working in guest operating systems older than XP or 2K? That is news.

Jorpho wrote on 2021-06-21, 18:48:

WDStudios wrote on 2021-06-21, 18:21:

Virtualbox 6.1 broke 3D acceleration on WinXP and earlier, but it should work fine if you use Virtualbox 6.0

Are you suggesting that 3D acceleration was working in guest operating systems older than XP or 2K? That is news.

Do Win98 guest systems suffer a different set of problems related to 3D acceleration than WinXP guest machines do?

WDStudios wrote on 2021-06-21, 19:47:

Do Win98 guest systems suffer a different set of problems related to 3D acceleration than WinXP guest machines do?

Absolutely. Windows 98 can directly access hardware in ways that Windows 2K and XP cannot. That is precisely why the low-level emulation offered by PCem and DOSBox-X is necessary for 3D acceleration in Windows 98 guests.

WDStudios wrote on 2021-06-21, 19:47:

Jorpho wrote on 2021-06-21, 18:48:

WDStudios wrote on 2021-06-21, 18:21:

Virtualbox 6.1 broke 3D acceleration on WinXP and earlier, but it should work fine if you use Virtualbox 6.0

Are you suggesting that 3D acceleration was working in guest operating systems older than XP or 2K? That is news.

Do Win98 guest systems suffer a different set of problems related to 3D acceleration than WinXP guest machines do?

Yes, Win98 guest systems do indeed suffer a different set of problems related to 3D acceleration than WinXP guest machines do under Virtualbox .

Actually, there is one fundamental problem : there are no Windows 9x drivers for the virtual video card that Virtualbox exposes to guest VMs . Oracle (and Sun Microsystems before them) never wrote/published any such driver and no third party has either (unless that has changed recently). Hence, there is no way for applications/games running in a Windows 9x guest VM in Virtualbox to make use of the hardware accelerated 3D functionality exposed by the host system's video card driver.

EDIT :
That being said, there is a theoretical way to get 3D acceleration in a guest VM in VirtualBox, regardless of the guest OS : PCI Passthrough .

This requires :
a) Running VirtualBox under Linux (not supported under Windows, unless that has changed recently)
b) Having a PCI/PCI Express video card ( and connected monitor) dedicated to the guest VM and for which the OS in the guest VM has drivers
c) Having a CPU/motherboard with a functional IOMMU implementation

This is currently experimental in VirtualBox and I have no idea if or how well it works (or not). Other virtualization solutions which have support for PCI passthrough have been used to successfully do this .

EDIT : See https://docs.oracle.com/en/virtualization/vir … assthrough.html for more info about PCI passthrough functionality using VirtualBox .

darry wrote on 2021-06-21, 21:00:

there are no Windows 9x drivers for the virtual video card that Virtualbox exposes to guest VMs . Oracle (and Sun Microsystems before them) never wrote/published any such driver and no third party has either (unless that has changed recently). Hence, there is no way for applications/games running in a Windows 9x guest VM in Virtualbox to make use of the hardware accelerated 3D functionality exposed by the host system's video card driver.

That is EXTREMELY useful information. What about VMware?

darry wrote on 2021-06-21, 21:00:

b) Having a PCI/PCI Express video card ( and connected monitor) dedicated to the guest VM and for which the OS in the guest VM has drivers

Ah, yes, GPU passthrough. According to Oracle, even AGP cards are supported as long as they don't use GART.

EDIT: and apparently, the graphics card itself must also explicitly support passthrough: https://wccftech.com/nvidia-enables-gpu-passt … rtual-machines/

WDStudios wrote on 2021-06-21, 21:31:

EDIT: and apparently, the graphics card itself must also explicitly support passthrough: https://wccftech.com/nvidia-enables-gpu-passt … rtual-machines/

That is not what I understand from the article .

1GPU passthrough on NVIDIA GeForce graphics cards has been used for a while now and it allows virtual machines to access the GPU from the host machine. However, this technology has not been supported in the past by Nvidia, but that has changed. Nvidia now fully supports GPU passthrough on GeForce cards.

I take that to mean that it worked and was being used by some people, but was not officially supported by Nvidia .

This is further corroborated by the fact that PCI passthrough can and does work with a Geforce 6600 family member from 2004 : KVM(QEMU) Win98 videocard passthrough.I finally got it working- with full 3D API support Quake III 1600x1200 90+ FPS!

Well in that case, what exactly does "support" even mean?

WDStudios wrote on 2021-06-22, 00:26:

Well in that case, what exactly does "support" even mean?

In all likelyhood :

"Supported" means we (Nvidia) have tested it, expect it to work and can help you if you need assistance with it (probably not for free).

"Unsupported" means we (Nvidia) have not explicitly tested it, do not guarantee it will work and won't help you if it does not work (even if you want to pay us).

An imperfect analogy would be running an Intel Tualatin CPU in an SE440BX-2 board using a third party slotket adapter . Intel does not support this, but it can be made work nonetheless as tested by a (relatively) good number of people . Don't expect help from Intel if it does not work .

So, no actual change in their hardware or software offerings.

WDStudios wrote on 2021-06-22, 01:57:

So, no actual change in their hardware or software offerings.

My understanding is that there is some additional software stuff, at least for guest VMs running Windows .