was the speech in the intro to "The Big Red Adventure" played properly too? And if it was ok, have you used the D parameter in your config.sys:
DEVICE=c:\dos\emm386.exe D=64

robertmo wrote:

was the speech in the intro to "The Big Red Adventure" played properly too?

Yes, it was.

robertmo wrote:

And if it was ok, have you used the D parameter in your config.sys:
DEVICE=c:\dos\emm386.exe D=64

The games' setup program itself changed my config.sys; IIRC it put such a line in it, so the answer is yes. Because of this, there was some strange behaviour during system startup, I think both himem.sys and and diagnose.exe would complain about something; I didn't check what was going on, though, because the game worked as expected.

I think MS Virtual PC will be your best DOS environment, but even it's not perfect. VMWare Workstation is pretty good too, but since it doesn't emulate a real video card (like the S3 Trio), it won't have Win 3.1 drivers. VirtualBox, QEMU and the others are not as good. DOSBox rules them all for games. But if you miss config.sys & autoexec.bat file tweaking, see my post on memory management. You might get a kick out of it.

Virtual PC and VMware Workstation DOS memory management

I will certainly try Virtual PC. Today I've been reading a lot about all those virtualization programs and I agree with you that it probably best suits my needs.
I had a look at your config/autoexec. It's amazing how flexible they are and how much free conventional memory you got! Back in the day I would almost randomly enable and disable things until the damn game worked!

I personally had much better results with vmware compared to vpc and qemu.
Especially qemu was flaky (like the game renders 120fps but there's only a real
update of the screen every second so it's unusable).

Neither are perfect, but some games work better in one vs the other. I remember loading up my favorite 30 or so games and trying them out on each one. I can't remember which ones did better on which emulator, but both played a majority of them. Some did better on one vs the other, and some didn't play at all. But VPC was more stable in DOS and Windows 3.1, so it's my favorite. Some of the advanced features of VMware, like USB support and better networking don't matter for DOS, so they didn't factor in.

Sorry to butt in, but which of those virtualizers would you consider the best not for DOS, but for win98? Networking, and gfx wise.

temptingthelure wrote:

Sorry to butt in, but which of those virtualizers would you consider the best not for DOS, but for win98? Networking, and gfx wise.

Either Qemu or VirtualPC 2004. VirtualBox is only good for virtualizing Linux and Windows 2000/XP. It's no good for Win9X and DOS, since its emulated adapter doesn't even bother with VESA.

What's the difference between Virtual PC 2004 and 2007? Which one is best for running DOS games?

For Dos and Win9x I'd go with VPC 2004. AFAIR support for those were drastically reduced in VPC 2007 (I *think* the support files (graphics drivers and such) were removed as well, but not sure about this).

leileilol wrote:

temptingthelure wrote:

Sorry to butt in, but which of those virtualizers would you consider the best not for DOS, but for win98? Networking, and gfx wise.

Either Qemu or VirtualPC 2004. VirtualBox is only good for virtualizing Linux and Windows 2000/XP. It's no good for Win9X and DOS, since its emulated adapter doesn't even bother with VESA.

Going by both what you say and what Dominus says, why is VPC 04 better for win98 than VPC 07? Were the support files for win98, like the DOS ones, dropped too in VPC 07?

AFAIK, I have all the VPC support files for DOS and Win9x in VPC 2007. Works fine for me.

I haven't tried V3 of VirtualBox yet but have had stability issues with the 2.x versions. I have read that, among other things V3 offers improved DirectX and OpenGL support so when I have time I will setup a Windows 9x machine and test it out.

MS VPC is better for running DOS than VMWare or VirtualBox since it emulates both SB16 (No Midi/OPL), S3 Trio V2 with VESA and an Intel NIC.

(Click on thumbnails for larger images)

Looks like Vogons doesn't display properly in IE5 - but 99% of the sites I visitied don't either. You can install the S3 driver in WFW to get up to 1024x768 @16 million colors while VMWare/VirtualBox only support 640x480@16 colors. And yes, you can install Sound Blaster drivers for sound in the Windows Entertainment Packs.

Fasttracker 2 run fine in MS VPC:

Interia Player 1.21 plays music as well:

Demos? Forget it. Most don't work/lockup, the ones that do work are either too fast or have no sound. Here's one that does work:

Wolfenstein 3d works with sound:

Eye of the Beholder works with sound:

I haven't tried many other games in MS VPC. I find that DOSBOX is best for games and demos. If you want to fool around with Windows For Workgroups and have networking MS VPC is the best choice. If you decide to go down the MS VPC route let me know if you need any help. I don't honestly know what is the difference between VPC 2004 and 2007, I use 2004.

I *think* I ha dproblems with Joysticks under VPC, either under Dos or under Win311, but don't remember anymore

I think the only "changes" in VPC07 over 04 were just compatibility for vista as a guest, right? I could be wrong nonetheless. I dont know if some features and support for anything was dropped from 04 going to 07.

temptingthelure wrote:

I think the only "changes" in VPC07 over 04 were just compatibility for vista as a guest, right? I could be wrong nonetheless. I dont know if some features and support for anything was dropped from 04 going to 07.

Not specifically, no. Some changes to the VM additions means that the Windows ones no longer worked on W95 and those for DOS were no longer included with 07. Taking the appropriate VM additions from 04 work just fine.

VPC07 officially supported XPSP3 and Vista (as host and guest), whereas VPC04 didn't (note the word "officially" -- they worked just fine on 04 in my experience). It's not the only change, though. Much more important was the introduction of the use of hardware virtualisation features. Another cool thing was multi-monitor support on the host. Service pack 1 fixed some networking issues and enhanced the capabilities of the emulated graphics card to allow wide-screen and higher resolutions.

Norton Commander wrote:

Fasttracker 2 run fine in MS VPC:

Not quite. You're only seeing the top half of it. Anyway I tried running it in MS Virtual PC 2007 and experienced severe performance problems, although the music did play.

temptingthelure wrote:

I think the only "changes" in VPC07 over 04 were just compatibility for vista as a guest, right? I could be wrong nonetheless. I dont know if some features and support for anything was dropped from 04 going to 07.

I had severe stability problems in DOS and Win3.x in VPC2007. Downgrading to 2004 on the same host machine cured all the problems. In fact, taking and running the same VHD's HDD images on VPC2004 vs 2007 confirmed, for me at least, that 2004 is the way to go if DOS/WIN apps are your goals.

For games, DosBox is the hands down choice. No comparison.