First post, by ruthan
- Rank
- Oldbie
Hell ou,
I worked Windows 98 videocard passthrough during last week and finally got it working with Mint 19.3 (which has old Qemu 2.11) and Z170 MB and Geforce 6 videocard.
Before it, 2,5 years ago i made KVM pass-through working with Unraid on Z97 and Geforce 7950 GT, Unraid has its issues has to be booted as main OS, you need your there disc formats and its not really multibooting or debugging friendly.
I always wanted to continue with it, but never had time or right mood and week ago someone pointed that you should be possible to done it just with vanilla KVM with any deskop Linux of your choice as main OS. So i started to work on it..
End of header bla,bla..
Most important thing is that you just can play Win 98 games with within any modern Linux of your choice just by addition some Win98 capable videocard to your machine.. and all videocards is running on native speed.. and paravirtualized cpu at ~90% of speed of real HW. I case of Win98, it use just 1 core and small ammount of ram from todays perspektive.. and with power of KVM, you can start few such machine in paralell, or use Win98 / XP / Win 7 kvm beside or along side of it (if you are ok with emulated slow videocard or have more than 2 videocards).
For example on my shoebox size Nas case when i tested it Quake 3 demo in full details in 1600x1200 at 90 FPS (it has such FPS cap) with Geforce 6600LE and low power slimmer Core i5 6500T (35W), which runs most of the time so silent that you cant say if i is running or not.
Everything is very fast, look at disk performance on picture, even RLoews driver cant do it:), Quake 3 framerate is actually more stable than with XP or Win7 on same machine KVM. SB16 emulation sound in quite is nice, no stutering etc.
But depends on game, i tried Unreal Tournament demo and there is big lag, but im emulation only SB16, which even admits..that its emulation is not final and are other sound cards to test, if its not good enough for your you can pass through pci sound card (through PCI-E to PCI adapter too, its no more chipset related is Win software thing) or usb one.
Im not feel any lag etc. Virtualized networking is fully working.
We are at the start it could only better. Maybe easily just with newer about of distro channel Qemu, 2.11 is quite old.. We now that nGLide is working even in Win98, so this really much better that any other Windows 98 emulation options.
Before some will startard with that Geforce 6 is too new spiel, I tested Geforce 6600LE because it was PCI-E and fit into my shoebox nas case, when i experimented with it, so any main machine harmed:) There are other cards to test, even some PCI onces are proven to work through PCI-e to PCI adapters.
Used MB Gigabyte Z170 MB, which has even PCI slots, but they are covered by primary videocard additional fan (its fanless one)
Im not any Youtuber, etc so will not ask for likes or subscribing etc , i just wanted to show that it working and discuss it further.. I because im quite happy from it, i blown on it lots of time.. This is really niche thing, so find in research 2 successfull projects from the pass 1 one was mine.. and one was with 2d only Cirrus card..
There are some great side effect like that you can use newest and greatest USB keyboards and mice as Windows 98 PS/2 ones even in safe mode.
Is someone has problem to understand you its working here is good KVM video, only imagine that its working with Win98 + old videocard instead of WIn 10 new videocard.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16dbAUrtMX4
If you are looking for some details from whole make it possible process, or technical gets, how to look here:
https://www.win-raid.com/t6017f53-Windows-SE- … n-Hardware.html
But, i dont mind to discuss it here too.. Win-raid is more about technical parts, but when its proven that is working, is more gaming topic 😀
Picture style lend from AgentOO7 (thx)..
Im old goal oriented goatman, i care about facts and freedom, not about egos+prejudices. Hoarding=sickness. If you want respect, gain it by your behavior. I hate stupid SW limits, SW=virtual world, everything should be possible if you have enough raw HW.