VOGONS


Windows 95/98 emulation/VM options?

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Reply 20 of 31, by Bruninho

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_Rob wrote on 2020-03-08, 08:06:

I'm using DOSBox-X for running Windows 95/98. It works quite well these days and includes support for Glide. It works better then VM's as there are no Win9x accelerated drivers for those.

But there are still some issues to be "fixed", such as dynamically mounting Floppy or CD images when you want them, instead of having to specify them before starting DOSBox-X.

+1, I agree. However, networking - DosBox-X includes NE2000 - is quite difficult if you don't have an ethernet cable. The patch for networking does not work with wifi, only with ethernet, which is the main reason why I am on vmware instead of DosBox-X.

"Design isn't just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works."
JOBS, Steve.
READ: Right to Repair sucks and is illegal!

Reply 22 of 31, by Bruninho

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I just wanted to let you guys know about getutm.app, UTM is an app to run Qemu on iOS. The latest beta release has improved a lot, I can now run Windows 2000 Professional on my iPad Pro 2nd gen 64GB, I created a 16GB hard disk image for that. I went with Win 2k to see how far I could go. Currently I can allocate 1GB of RAM for that machine - But I believe I can allocate twice more, so I could probably have a smooth FIFA 99 or Need For Speed II gameplay.

I have almost everything working (sound, networking, vga...) except clipboard copy/paste and file sharing. So far so good, I havent tested games or apps. But I suspect it wont be powerful enough for this. And I wanted a DOSPad replacement anyway, DOSPad is too old (2015 / iOS 10), so I will transfer my VMWare Win 3.x machine to replace and use less storage and resources. I could run Win 98 - But without a good browsing option, I quickly discarded the idea.

"Design isn't just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works."
JOBS, Steve.
READ: Right to Repair sucks and is illegal!

Reply 23 of 31, by Asaki

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I just use Virtual Machine or DOSBox. I've never found much joy with Glide wrappers or whatever, so I just stick with older hardware for those. Or, depending on the game, I'll just play it in software mode.

MrGlasspoole wrote on 2020-03-04, 19:40:

Also EAX will not work i guess...

Will most 95/98 games run on XP?

I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure the majority of games that support EAX will run in XP.
It's also pretty common to find integrated AC'97 audio, which only needs specific drivers installed to enable EAX support, no emulators required.

Reply 24 of 31, by robertmo

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Asaki wrote on 2020-03-23, 17:48:

I just use Virtual Machine or DOSBox. I've never found much joy with Glide wrappers or whatever, so I just stick with older hardware for those. Or, depending on the game, I'll just play it in software mode.

with glide wrapper you can play games in 4k and see distant objects clear

Reply 25 of 31, by tk421

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EAX will work fine for XP games on an XP system.

In my experience, these XP games will retain EAX sound in VMWare, and even in VirtualBox.

I find that PCem is an excellent choice for a game that requires a Pentium MMX system. If you have a really powerful CPU, then the K6-2 will work well too in PCem.

The PCs outlined above are excellent machines for running these great old games.

Reply 27 of 31, by Bruninho

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3D acceleration may be possible, MAYBE, in two scenarios:

DosBox-X with glide passthrough;
QEMU 3Dfx with glide passthrough.

In these two, you need glide support on your host machine AFAIK.

Another third scenario is VMware with Windows XP. I have a XP vm with Direct3D support

"Design isn't just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works."
JOBS, Steve.
READ: Right to Repair sucks and is illegal!

Reply 29 of 31, by 2mg

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Bruninho wrote on 2020-11-21, 22:36:
3D acceleration may be possible, MAYBE, in two scenarios: […]
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3D acceleration may be possible, MAYBE, in two scenarios:

DosBox-X with glide passthrough;
QEMU 3Dfx with glide passthrough.

In these two, you need glide support on your host machine AFAIK.

Another third scenario is VMware with Windows XP. I have a XP vm with Direct3D support

Do modern GPUs even do glide?
Otherwise, what, a glide wrapper around DosBox-X/QEMU?

XP isn't an issue, never was, thankfully...

PS: Is QEMU really that much of a hassle to setup to run Win9x on Win7?

Jorpho wrote on 2020-11-22, 00:38:
2mg wrote on 2020-11-21, 21:17:

And what about WineD3D?

I had the impression it didn't really offer anything compared to dgvooodoo2. (I could be wrong.)

Dunno, I'm clueless about passthru, even more for legacy OS passthru, and especially how QEMU works (virgl3d, looking glass, vfio?!), that's why I'm asking here.

Reply 30 of 31, by Jorpho

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2mg wrote on 2020-11-22, 03:07:
Jorpho wrote on 2020-11-22, 00:38:
2mg wrote on 2020-11-21, 21:17:

And what about WineD3D?

I had the impression it didn't really offer anything compared to dgvooodoo2. (I could be wrong.)

Dunno, I'm clueless about passthru, even more for legacy OS passthru, and especially how QEMU works (virgl3d, looking glass, vfio?!), that's why I'm asking here.

WineD3D has nothing to do with passthrough. Pretty much all it does is translate DirectX calls into OpenGL - but it happens to be more compatible with old versions of DirectX than some of Microsoft's official solutions.

Reply 31 of 31, by wadrasil

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There is another emulator SPC / AT EMULATOR. It's older and no longer worked on. However it is fairly quick and a middle ground between qemu and PCEM.

I only used it to test some bootable cds and floppy's I was making and it's pretty quick for that.

I would not use it over a more modern solution.

But it's useful if your testing things as it's another x86 emulator.