Introducing: NTVDBM – An alternative to NTVDM for machines that do not support it. \ VOGONS

Introducing: NTVDBM – An alternative to NTVDM for machines that do not support it.

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First post, by Rikintosh

Rikintosh Offline

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I won't write an encyclopedia here; I'll try to keep it brief. Someone figured out a way to boot XP via EFI, and another person used that to boot Windows XP on a 1st-gen Apple TV. I own a 1st-gen ATV and wanted to experiment with it; it's too weak for most games, but I wanted to play my old titles. However, NTVDM relies on BIOS extensions that EFI doesn't provide. So, I thought: why not use DOSBox instead of NTVDM?

My project isn't just about swapping NTVDM for DOSBox, nor did I recompile it solely to run better on limited hardware; the nitty-gritty details of the "how" and "why" are up on GitHub.

You install it, and then you can simply double-click your favorite game to play—no need to mount folders, create batch files to launch DOSBox, and so on. It automatically creates a configuration file for your game and places a shortcut to that config right next to your executable. It assigns an icon to games that lack one and can detect whether an executable is MS-DOS or 16-bit Windows. If it's Win16, it launches a minimal version of Windows 3.1 to run the program; it also mounts your drive as C:\, which is handy if you're dealing with a 16-bit installer (like the *SimCity 2000* installer) that you need to run.

It’s not perfect yet—I’ve been working on this for six months. I know others have tried creating something similar, but... oh well, screw it—this is my way of doing things! 🤣

- Oh, why didn't you use DOSBox-X? It's much better!

It is better, but it's much more complex and resource-heavy. I used DOSBox-ECE + 0.74-3 as a base, but I made *a lot* of optimizations based on the DOSBox-X source code. Audio output is now exclusively DirectX—no SDL—and I capped it at 22,050 Hz to ease the load on the CPU. Remember to configure the sound in setup.exe for 22050Hz output! The goal here was to create something very lightweight that would run well on the 1GHz Pentium M and 256MB of RAM found in the 1st-gen ATV.

Download here: https://github.com/RicardoRamosWorks/NTVDBM-Suite

Take a look at my blog: http://RicardoRamosWorks.com
My Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfRUbxkBmEihBEkIK32Hilg

Reply 1 of 5, by wierd_w

Posted on Yesterday, 23:20

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While not really all that mature, you might look into WINE's VDM.

https://github.com/otya128/winevdm

It's also GPL, and is able to do WoW surrogacy with the host-- It might be a better option to look at, than attempting a minimalist win3.x, at least legally speaking.

Reply 2 of 5, by Robbbert

Posted on Today, 01:33

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Interesting. Do I need to download both release things, or will the first do it all?

Reply 3 of 5, by wierd_w

Posted on Today, 01:36

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Wine's NTVDM is distinct and different than the one posted in 1st post. It's also kinda warty.

I have not tried the OP's.

In theory, the OP's is more robust, as it should work on ARM versions of windows (after a recompile), because it uses Dosbox's x86 core.

I was alterting the OP to the existence of this other software, as the licenses are compatible, and some features might be.... Adaptable.

Last edited by wierd_w on 2026-07-01, 01:37. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 4 of 5, by Rikintosh

Posted on Today, 01:37

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Robbbert wrote on Today, 01:33:

Interesting. Do I need to download both release things, or will the first do it all?

The first is the project release; the second is just a ready-to-use Windows 3.1 setup. I won't leave it up for long because it's not exactly legal. I put it up mainly for testing and debugging purposes.

I chose DOSBox instead of creating a new NTVDM because, even if NTVDM worked, it would still suffer from the typical issues found on a standard Windows machine running NTVDM—such as problems with sound cards, execution speed, and MS-DOS compatibility.

Technically, it wouldn't be that difficult to adapt DOSBox-X to create something like "Wine" for running legacy Win32 applications (on win9x) on recent versions of Windows. The core of this would likely involve creating a VxD for ifshlp.sys so that Win9x could boot directly within DOSBox's MS-DOS emulator, giving it access to the mounted virtual file system. However, that would require a lot of time, and I have other projects to finish.

Take a look at my blog: http://RicardoRamosWorks.com
My Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfRUbxkBmEihBEkIK32Hilg

Reply 5 of 5, by Robbbert

Posted on Today, 14:12

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Rikintosh wrote on Today, 01:37:

Robbbert wrote on Today, 01:33:

Interesting. Do I need to download both release things, or will the first do it all?

The first is the project release; the second is just a ready-to-use Windows 3.1 setup. I won't leave it up for long because it's not exactly legal. I put it up mainly for testing and debugging purposes.

Thanks, grabbed it while I can. Will investigate it later.

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