RPi3 Win 3.1/95 Emulation In DOSBox?

drake999

I've recently become aware of an open source emulation / virtualization suite called QEMU, which can apparently run Windows 95 and Windows 98 on the Raspberry Pi, and may even be able to run Windows XP (but don't expect awesome performance from XP). Now I just heard about it so take it with a grain of salt, but apparently there is a guy on Youtube running Windows 95 and 98 simultaneously on a Pi2. I'm curious about this and may look into it when I have time. I'll post the results when if / when I get the opportunity to play with this. If someone else wants to give it a whirl feel free. I'm curious to hear your experiences.

hooperre

Please do!

Spiky

So I just installed Windows 3.11 with video and audio drivers successfully on my Pi3 with RetroPie, everything is working. Now, did anyone try to make Windows 95 work? That's probably what I am gonna do next, so I would be happy if anyone could share his experience.

edmaul69

@Spiky you need to make a specific image file (fake hard drive). Only problem is the program isnt available anymore and nobody seems to have made it downloadable on another site.

Spiky

@edmaul69 Could you explain that a bit? Why do I need image file as HDD? I did not need that for Win 3.11

edmaul69

@Spiky dosbox does not natively support windows 95.

Spiky

@edmaul69 I see. By the way, I think I found the image you talked about: https://sites.google.com/site/dotalshoff/games/dosbox. Here is a guide that looks useful http://dsync.blogspot.sk/2014/03/a-complete-guide-to-install-windows-95.html, but I will most likely not be able to give it a try today.

hooperre

I have 3.1 up and running as well and was going to post a couple of DOSBox related questions trying to autocall "win winexit.exe D:\Civ2\Civ2.exe" always causes a low memory error. I'll revisit it later I guess, but it's nice to have my favorite game of all time on my RPi3.

Anyway, this is the guide I was going to try to follow to get Win95 working, but think I'm going to work on 3.11 for a bit longer.

Spiky

So I "almost" managed to make Windows 95 work. My goal was to prepare HDD image on my notebook and then copy it to RetroPie on my Pi3. When I finally made it, my Win95 was installed, but sadly with few graphical glitches - mouse was a big black square and there were icons appearing/disappearing on the desktop - but as far I know, there is some way to fix this from DOSBox settings.

Anyway, it was already too late and I had to get some sleep, so I still have to give it a try on my Pi3. I only tried it with HDD image with Windows just installed (before the first real run) and it took 10 minutes until I gave it up, as there was only black screen after letting me know that Windows is being prepared...

edmaul69

@Spiky the big block is normal. Once you get into windows, change it to 16 colors. This corrects that. Then it will always be fixed anytime after that. Even when you make a new image you wont have to change it to 16 colors. Only that first time. You can change it back but you want it to be in 16 colors when you put it on the pi. But make sure you have the s3 trio 64 pci driver on your image before putting it on the pi. We only found one 95 disk that worked on the pi though. There is a guide being put together for all of this.

Spiky

@edmaul69 I followed this guide http://dsync.blogspot.sk/2014/03/a-complete-guide-to-install-windows-95.html, except few mistakes, I had no problem. No clue if it contains s3 trio 64 pci driver. Do I need to explicitly install it? If so, could you provide source?

edmaul69

@Spiky s3 still has a webpage with all of their drivers. I cant verify for sure if the trio 32/64 pci or the trio 3d is better but they both work on dosbox. Run in 256 colors good. Better than the default s3 drivers.

http://www.s3graphics.com/en/drivers/legacy_software_archive.aspx

Spiky

OK, so I finally managed to make it work... Problem is that it only runs in safe mode on Pi3, while it works great on my notebook with Windows 8.

There is this legendary Win95 loading screen for 1-2 seconds, then it goes black and that's it. I have to CTRL+F9 out of DosBox. When I run it again, I am asked if I want to go to safe mode - when I do it, Windows boots up in few seconds. Any idea what could be the problem?

Also, I set it up to 16 colors in safe mode and I am using following steps to run it:
imgmount c hdd-1gb.img
boot hdd-1gb.img

edmaul69

@Spiky that is why i said you need a specific iso file. All others only work in safe mode. Look for a file called W95_PLUS_AR.iso . Also make the image file a .vhd and not .img. That way in windows you can mount it and add files like drivers and game files like any hard drive.

edmaul69

@Spiky also make a 2gb image. 2048 instead of 1024. Then it will be 512,63,128,520

Spiky

@edmaul69 okay, thanks.

what about the way I boot Windows? is it correct?

what I do is following:
imgmount c hdd-1gb.img
boot hdd-1gb.img

but some sources state that I should do following (this makes my DOSBox freeze):
imgmount 2 hdd-1gb.img -size 512,63,64,520 -fs none (of course the values depend on disk size)
boot -l c

sorry I ask so many questions, but there is too much misleading information in guides I followed, which makes me suspicious about every step

Spiky

maybe one more detail. every time I tried to run Win95, on both Pi3 and my notebook, ScanDisk found some parts of the disk being corrupted and obviously it was not able to fix it, as the same thing appeared every time.

edmaul69

@Spiky the disc corruption isnt in the disk i mentioned. All others have it. The website you probably got this from, all their discs are bad. Here is how you need to mount your file:

1gb version

imgmount 2 hdd-1gb.img -t hdd -size 512,63,64,520 -fs none 
boot -l c

You forgot the -t hdd

edmaul69

@Spiky instead of putting that info in the dosbox config file you should create a .sh file in your /roms/pc folder, give it 0777 permissions and put this info in it and use this to boot windows 95. notice i put vhd instead of .img as it is better to use a .vhd since you can mount it in windows and what we have it working with on the pi. also make it 2gb. it says 128 to reflect a 2gb partition

/opt/retropie/emulators/dosbox/bin/dosbox   -c "imgmount 2 /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/pc/NAMEOFYOUR2GbFILE.vhd  -t hdd -size 512,63,128,520 -fs none" -c "-boot -l c"

bigflyer

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.