yeah, it won't convert you to hardware version 9... make a backup of your files, then edit the vmx file and bump the version up to 9.... all I could tell that really changed was the USB controller, which is all that showed up as detected during bootup... that's not to say that the video hardware didn't get improved though

other way to do this is to download and install a trial version of workstation 9, then use its upgrade feature.... when the trial expires, go back to using player.... the VMs are compatible between each other and you won't lose them when the trial is up 😀

What I could never get is, why do most VMs ONLY support 3d acceleration in guests that are running windows XP/2000 on up, when the games you could run on such a setup will also run fine natively on vista/7? I mean there are plenty of win 9x games that use 3d acceleration that aren't properly supported on anything past 98.

NT based systems versus the inferior Windows 9x system, perhaps?

Dominus wrote:

NT based systems versus the inferior Windows 9x system, perhaps?

That's a matter of some debate, depends on what you mean by inferior.

For the 9x kernal yes, the crashes could be annoying but for me I have seen enough of these over NT kernal OS's too that it's a wash.

Also, unlike others, I never really did have issues with ME.

I gave it a lot of iron to play with when I first got it so maybe this is why.

I do however get the secuirty aspect of the latest NT kernal OS's when connecting to the inet and this makes sense.

The interesting thing I have liked to see is the folks over at MSFN have done with these older OS's like fixes for multi-core CPU and Hyperthreading etc...

I have a dual-boot machine with ME + 2K on a 3GHz P4 with Hyperthreading, I have never seen ME run so fast.

Now back on topic:

I have used VM's for awhile to mess around with differnt *nix distro's and such.

I also use a production VM for Windows XP 64-bit Edition or you could call this Windows Server 2003 Heavy Edition 😉

I work from home and needed something that would still run Office 2000, so it was either XP 32-bit or 64-bit.

I have tried VM's with 95, 98 and ME installed and none of them did what I wanted them to do hence why I created that dual-boot box.

Might be a matter of debate, but I'm not going to be part of that.
Especially as this was not aimed at general difference between those systems

TheMAN wrote:

yeah, it won't convert you to hardware version 9... make a backup of your files, then edit the vmx file and bump the version up to 9....

Surely the changes are lower-level than that?

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

What I could never get is, why do most VMs ONLY support 3d acceleration in guests that are running windows XP/2000 on up, when the games you could run on such a setup will also run fine natively on vista/7?

There are already games that won't run in vista/7 that will run in XP/2000, namely anything that uses the DirectX Visual Basic interfaces, as I mentioned in another thread. Also, in theory the emulated 3D device in the virtual machine may support different features than the 3D device in one's native machine.

I speculate that Win9x programs access the hardware at a lower level than 2k/XP programs such that Direct3D for Win9x guests is sufficiently complex as to not be worth dealing with.

BigBodZod wrote:

That's a matter of some debate, depends on what you mean by inferior. […]
Show full quote

Dominus wrote:

NT based systems versus the inferior Windows 9x system, perhaps?

That's a matter of some debate, depends on what you mean by inferior.

For the 9x kernal yes, the crashes could be annoying but for me I have seen enough of these over NT kernal OS's too that it's a wash.

Also, unlike others, I never really did have issues with ME.

I gave it a lot of iron to play with when I first got it so maybe this is why.

I do however get the secuirty aspect of the latest NT kernal OS's when connecting to the inet and this makes sense.

The interesting thing I have liked to see is the folks over at MSFN have done with these older OS's like fixes for multi-core CPU and Hyperthreading etc...

I have a dual-boot machine with ME + 2K on a 3GHz P4 with Hyperthreading, I have never seen ME run so fast.

Now back on topic:

I have used VM's for awhile to mess around with differnt *nix distro's and such.

I also use a production VM for Windows XP 64-bit Edition or you could call this Windows Server 2003 Heavy Edition 😉

I work from home and needed something that would still run Office 2000, so it was either XP 32-bit or 64-bit.

I have tried VM's with 95, 98 and ME installed and none of them did what I wanted them to do hence why I created that dual-boot box.

office 2000 won't run in vista/7? what's wrong with office 2003 which looked almost the same but much improved (although eating up more disk space)?

Office 97 still runs under Vista/7, though a tiny registry tweak may be necessary.

that's what I thought
if office 97 would work, then I'm sure office 2000 would work

leileilol wrote:

Early Virtual PCs (~2.01, 1998) for MacOS 8.x support 3dfx iirc, I recall it being advertised for supporting the voodoo hardware. This isn't in the Microsoft version.

They support it if you have the hardware - a real 3dfx in your Mac. It was supported from Virtual PC 2.0 until 3.0.3 (it was removed in 4.0 - here's why). The other VM supporting the Voodoo (in the same way - by using a real card) was SoftWindows 95 5.0.3 (based on Insignia SoftPC).

interesting...

Jorpho wrote:

Surely the changes are lower-level than that? […]
Show full quote

TheMAN wrote:

yeah, it won't convert you to hardware version 9... make a backup of your files, then edit the vmx file and bump the version up to 9....

Surely the changes are lower-level than that?

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

What I could never get is, why do most VMs ONLY support 3d acceleration in guests that are running windows XP/2000 on up, when the games you could run on such a setup will also run fine natively on vista/7?

There are already games that won't run in vista/7 that will run in XP/2000, namely anything that uses the DirectX Visual Basic interfaces, as I mentioned in another thread. Also, in theory the emulated 3D device in the virtual machine may support different features than the 3D device in one's native machine.

I speculate that Win9x programs access the hardware at a lower level than 2k/XP programs such that Direct3D for Win9x guests is sufficiently complex as to not be worth dealing with.

You have a good point there, though I wish the VM developers would actually take gamers seriously for once and not just go through the minimal effort required to make their software "good enough" for just business applications.

Research seems to indicate that more money lies in business and non-gaming users. Why spendmoney on the more difficult gaming support when you believe there is not much return possibility?

TheMAN wrote:

office 2000 won't run in vista/7? what's wrong with office 2003 which looked almost the same but much improved (although eating up more disk space)?

Because I do not *own* Office 2003 but do own Office 2000 😉

Just because it's Microsoft doesn't mean I should not pay for software/apps that they publish.

And no I'm not going to try to find a copy on Fleabay when it works just fine.

Back OT.

I do think that VM's have been getting better and better over the years, not just from a feature stand-point but also what kinds of software they can run now.

There is indeed a convenience factor in running VM's from a single-box, if you have the iron to dedicate resources to it that is.

Has anybody tried out Tier 1 type Hypervisors yet like Xen and run a bunch of guest clients ?

BigBodZod wrote:

Has anybody tried out Tier 1 type Hypervisors yet like Xen and run a bunch of guest clients ?

I'm running several VMWare ESXis with Linux on them. It works, but it's nothing really exciting. I have yet to try Hyper-V on Windows 8.

GL1zdA wrote:

BigBodZod wrote:

Has anybody tried out Tier 1 type Hypervisors yet like Xen and run a bunch of guest clients ?

I'm running several VMWare ESXis with Linux on them. It works, but it's nothing really exciting. I have yet to try Hyper-V on Windows 8.

It's something I have yet to try out myself, I was oogling a 4 socket, Opteron Server board by Tyan the other day, it would be sweet to have 4, 16-core cpu's along with 512GB of ram installed just to see how many VM's I could run at the same time.

Dominus wrote:

Research seems to indicate that more money lies in business and non-gaming users. Why spendmoney on the more difficult gaming support when you believe there is not much return possibility?

I guess you're right. There aren't too many people out there who are itching to play win9x-exclusive games on their modern systems. 😜

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

Jorpho wrote:

Surely the changes are lower-level than that? […]
Show full quote

TheMAN wrote:

yeah, it won't convert you to hardware version 9... make a backup of your files, then edit the vmx file and bump the version up to 9....

Surely the changes are lower-level than that?

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

What I could never get is, why do most VMs ONLY support 3d acceleration in guests that are running windows XP/2000 on up, when the games you could run on such a setup will also run fine natively on vista/7?

There are already games that won't run in vista/7 that will run in XP/2000, namely anything that uses the DirectX Visual Basic interfaces, as I mentioned in another thread. Also, in theory the emulated 3D device in the virtual machine may support different features than the 3D device in one's native machine.

I speculate that Win9x programs access the hardware at a lower level than 2k/XP programs such that Direct3D for Win9x guests is sufficiently complex as to not be worth dealing with.

You have a good point there, though I wish the VM developers would actually take gamers seriously for once and not just go through the minimal effort required to make their software "good enough" for just business applications.

it will improve over time... businesses are moving to the thin client model and this is starting to become more important... many graphics software such as AutoCAD, Photoshop, 3D Studio, etc are really dependent on 3D graphics performance... if VMware can make their stuff work good, especially if they're able to utilize graphics cards to process those things while redirecting the output to the virtual environment, we will all benefit!

TheMAN wrote:

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

You have a good point there, though I wish the VM developers would actually take gamers seriously for once and not just go through the minimal effort required to make their software "good enough" for just business applications.

it will improve over time... businesses are moving to the thin client model and this is starting to become more important... many graphics software such as AutoCAD, Photoshop, 3D Studio, etc are really dependent on 3D graphics performance... if VMware can make their stuff work good, especially if they're able to utilize graphics cards to process those things while redirecting the output to the virtual environment, we will all benefit!

Except AutoCAD, Photoshop, 3D Studio, etc are all well-supported programs with new versions coming out all the time. There does not seem to be any particular benefit to running them on virtual machines.

there is.... LIKE I SAID IF YOU HAVE ALREADY READ... the trend is deploying thin clients in companies, and that will always involve a centralized server of some sort... virtualization is a key piece of this idea!