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Windows NT 4.0 in DosBox

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First post, by M8R-xyxof7

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Can I boot Windows NT 4.0 in DosBox ? I didn't succeed, the installer claims there is not enough free space on C.

I need NT for a legacy application with combination with a ISA card. I found a hardware manufacturer who has an ISA-to-USB converter that has a modified DosBox release so you can use the ISA card from within dosbox. Now only NT is missing.

Thanks!

Reply 2 of 9, by leileilol

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DOSBox is for DOS games, and Windows NT isn't really DOS, not in the slightest, which is why it exists in the first place.

Consider the alternatives, like everything that starts with the letter V. (VMWare, VirtualBox, Virtual PC) They're better for NT than DOSBox will ever be. I hope the manufacturer has support for at least one of those.

It's NT only right? Win95 drivers don't exist for it right?

If you seriously want to try NT or 95, you have to use hard drive images rather than mounting directories.

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Reply 3 of 9, by robertmo

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And if you start with such a lame question
>I didn't succeed, the installer claims there is not enough free space on C.
Don't even try too...

Reply 4 of 9, by M8R-xyxof7

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Thanks for flaming me (@robertmo)
, but that's the error message the installer gives me. If you know that there is no IDE controller present in DosBox, that makes perfectly sense.
I also tried to run my Bochs image files with NT, but they won't boot even for a second.

All those virtual machines don't allow IO access to the underlying hardware due to a lack of IO visualization.

Since I didn't want to start with writing a device plugin for Bochs, I preferred to find out if NT 4.0 would run on DosBox. But now it seems it's the only option.

Reply 5 of 9, by robertmo

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>If you know that there is no
I don't. It's just a matter of lazy ducks and manuals.

Reply 6 of 9, by ADDiCT

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All those virtual machines don't allow IO access to the underlying hardware due to a lack of IO visualization.

No VM or emulator allows this. Even if it would, there's still an OS "under" the virtualizer/emulator which already is in control of all the hardware in the host machine. I wonder how exactly a "ISA to USB" adapter is supposed to work. I'm no hardware specialist but i can't imagine how this could possibly work. Do you have an URL?

Why not build a cheap "oldschool" PC for whatever you want to do?

Reply 7 of 9, by M8R-xyxof7

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The adapter I was talking about is http://www.arstech.com/item-USB-2-0-to-ISA-ca … S-usb2isar.html

From my understanding, there's a low level driver which runs on your Windows 7 and catches all IO access to ISA memory space, routes them through USB to their card, and there it is then decoded into signals for the ISA card. They also have a software library which allows you to access those functions directly from your source code.

Why not build an legacy PC? Simply, they are becoming more an more scarce. And if you talk about used parts, there is reliability, and second there is support. If you have new hardware and an image of your system, you can just a backup to run your system again. And if the hardware fails, I just can mail-order a new part.

Reply 8 of 9, by DosFreak

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Is there a download available for their DOSBox build? Can't seem to find a copy on their webpage.

http://www.arstech.com/page--uniformdos.html

5. Utilities There is currently one DOS utility included with the install software - tst16.exe . […]
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5. Utilities
There is currently one DOS utility included with the install software - tst16.exe .

5.1. Resources access
The utility allows read / write to i/o ports, and memory areas.

Please note that the address range for i/o ports is : 0 to ffff , with the most widely used area of : 0 to 3ff , in hex addresses.

The address range for memory area is : 0 to ffffff , with the most widely used area of : b000 to fffff , in hex addresses. This is a 'memory hole' where some hardware peripheral cards and the system's BIOS are located.

/EDIT Found it: www.arstech.com/dosbox-rel.zip

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&safe=off&q=dosbo … 2bb30ecf4f91972

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Reply 9 of 9, by ADDiCT

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Well whatever this thing does I don't think it's "Plug and Play" in the sense that you pop in an ISA card, install NT4 in an emulator or on metal and - hey presto! - the OS will recognize something like a "virtual ISA card".

What you wrote about legacy hardware simply isn't true. It's no problem at all finding a machine with ISA slots that will run NT4, and you'll be able to find machines like that for quite a few years in the future. And the really good thing: it'll just work, no relying on magical voodoo hardware.