RPi3 Win 3.1/95 Emulation In DOSBox?
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Did anyone get further with this? (I know it's an old thread)
I had the same problem as Spiky, with Win95 just showing a black screen, unless it was in safe mode. I've just got a step further, and I can see the screen in normal mode on my Pi3 as well now !!
It's not great, but what I've done is set it to the standard VGA graphics driver (on its own, that wasn't good enough), and disabled the drivers for COM1, COM2, LPT1, Sound Blaster 16, Gameport Joystick and MPU-401 Compatible - and now it boots up and shows the screen. (I disabled the drivers in DosBox on my Windows PC and then transferred the HDD over to the Pi)
I'm now going to fiddle a bit and put it back as I want it, one step at a time, and see how far I can get before it all breaks again.
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OK - I've got the S3 Trio 64 drivers running (from here: http://dosbox95.darktraveler.com/important.html ) in 1024x768 x 16 bit colour (it doesn't seem to let me set 24 bit colour above 640x480).
So far, the performance doesn't seem that bad, to say it's emulated. Definitely not fast, but not unusable either.
Enabling the Gameport and MPU-401 drivers hasn't caused a problem either. When re-enabling the SB drivers, I get errors from the driver, but it still seems to reboot OK afterwards.
When re-enabling the COM2 driver (I didn't try COM1), Windows hangs totally (no mouse movement), so I suspect that may be the problem. As I don't actually want the COM/LPT drivers, I think I'll just leave those disabled.
So, it's looking good as far as base Win95 goes. I haven't tried any other programs on it yet. I need to work out how to get them on there, given that I can't load CDs...
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I got Windows 95 to work in a Dosbox version that is not on the Pi. It was extremely difficult to set up, and it ran awful. I wouldn't bother trying to get the pi to run it. It can be done. It might even be possible to get everything working right if you give the source code a massive adjustment.
Wine might be more with trying to get running on the Pi, and seeing what your games do. I doubt it would be good.
I don't see a reason why an emulator couldn't be created for win 3.xx and 95. I wouldn't want to be the one to write that program though lol. That would a lot of work.
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@edmaul69 so I got back to Pi to make Win95 work again, but it looks like every disk I download is "corrupted". would you be so kind to upload the working disk file somewhere and share with me? (I believe this is not a piracy, since it's just a empty image file) I followed what you said, but it looks like any disk file I get is corrupted.
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@spiky win 95 image requires berry boot.
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@edmaul69 you never mentioned that before. I am lost now :D
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@spiky download the berry boot image. Write that to the sd card. Put the windows 95 pi image on a thumbdrive. Plug the usb thumbdrive into the pi and boot the pi with the berry boot image. When it asks for an image to write to the sd card choose your win 95 pi image. It will wrote the image to the sd card. You no longer need the thumbdrive after that.
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@spiky running windows 95 in dosbox is completely useless so that method if you were trying isnt worth wasting your time. There is a windows 95 berry boot image. (Read my last post)
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If you want an awesome windows 3.1 game, try Fleet. It's a freeware Starfleet Battles clone that manages to get everything about the tabletop game right.
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@victimrlsh Don't forget Castle Of The Winds if it hasn't been mentioned already.
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@edmaul69 I couldn't stop trying to make Win95 work in RetroPie in DOSBox and finally, it works! What helped was removing COM1, COM2, LPT1 drivers. I also installed S3 before, so I am not sure if that affected anything or not. Also, I set extra config in DOSBox machine=svga_s3,core=normal,cputype=pentium_slow - not sure if that helps either. I will have to test it around a lot, but for now I ran out of time.
BUT
I tried to run simple game (Dangerous Dave from 80s) and it crashed back to RetroPie. On next startup, ScanDisk started - I stopped it and continued to run Win95. It booted just fine. This time I tried to enter command line from Windows and it froze (I had to kill DOSBox using CTRL+F9). Any idea how to solve this?
If I manage to make this work, I will make a guide.
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I managed to make things work! It looks like I finally have stable version of Windows 95 running under DOSBox on RetroPie. I tried to run few games and so far no problems. I am putting together complete guide... this will take some time.
EDIT: almost forgot to say big thanks to @bigflyer for very helpful comments and @edmaul69 for many advices
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@spiky said in RPi3 Win 3.1/95 Emulation In DOSBox?:
I managed to make things work! It looks like I finally have stable version of Windows 95 running under DOSBox on RetroPie. I tried to run few games and so far no problems. I am putting together complete guide... this will take some time.
Thanks! In closin' there is also this youtube vudeo from the user channel "Sir Randall", hope may be useful:
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@niculinux If you get Starcraft Broodwar running, let me know, that is one of my goals. Starcraft 64 doesn't do that well (graphical glitcches). I have heard some people succeeded in getting this to run, but have yet to do it myself.
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@victimrlsh said in RPi3 Win 3.1/95 Emulation In DOSBox?:
@niculinux If you get Starcraft Broodwar running, let me know, that is one of my goals. Starcraft 64 doesn't do that well (graphical glitcches). I have heard some people succeeded in getting this to run, but have yet to do it myself.
OK, sorry but i'm not a thinker guy, but here is somene manafged to run it using the stratagus engine:
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@niculinux said in RPi3 Win 3.1/95 Emulation In DOSBox?:
OK, sorry but i'm not a thinker guy, but here is somene manafged to run it using the stratagus engine:
Stargus (the Starcraft version of the Stratagus engine) is not really up to par with the full game - AFAIK doesn't even support playing campaigns.
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I joined a Windows archival site, and am currently downloading a win 95 install, we'll see how this goes. I might also install 3.1 just to play Fleet.
Edit: It looks like this is a pretty complicated undertaking. I'm still going to try, but it seems there might be easier ways. Exagear + Wine in particular. The devs of Exagear claim it can run Starcraft on the pi under Wine, has anyone here got this to work before I drop $30 on Exagear?
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@victimrlsh I was able to get Neverwinter Nights running on Exagear on the Pi. Haven't done a whole lot with it since. It ran poorly, but it ran. I had trouble installing Age of Empires Gold.
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@hooperre Worth the $30?
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@victimrlsh Depends on what you're going for. I would say no. Carmen Sandiego for PC (Win 95) didn't work also I just remembered... Idk just seems too rudimentary at this point.
Edit: But I was like... will it run NWN!? Which it does, so at least I have it to play it even though it was just re-released on Steam. Haha.
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