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    RPi3 Win 3.1/95 Emulation In DOSBox?

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved General Discussion and Gaming
    scummvmresidualvmdoswindows
    70 Posts 13 Posters 34.9k Views
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    • S
      Spiky @edmaul69
      last edited by

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

      edmaul69E 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • edmaul69E
        edmaul69 @Spiky
        last edited by

        @Spiky dosbox does not natively support windows 95.

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        • S
          Spiky @edmaul69
          last edited by

          @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.

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          • hooperreH
            hooperre
            last edited by

            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.

            4B ~ RPi PSU 5.1V / 3.0A ~ 32GB SanDisk microSD ~ 128GB USB

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            • S
              Spiky
              last edited by

              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...

              edmaul69E 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • edmaul69E
                edmaul69 @Spiky
                last edited by

                @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.

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                • S
                  Spiky @edmaul69
                  last edited by

                  @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?

                  edmaul69E 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • edmaul69E
                    edmaul69 @Spiky
                    last edited by 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

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                    • S
                      Spiky
                      last edited by

                      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

                      edmaul69E 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • edmaul69E
                        edmaul69 @Spiky
                        last edited by

                        @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.

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                        • edmaul69E
                          edmaul69 @Spiky
                          last edited by

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

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                          • S
                            Spiky @edmaul69
                            last edited by

                            @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

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                            • S
                              Spiky
                              last edited by

                              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.

                              edmaul69E 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                              • edmaul69E
                                edmaul69 @Spiky
                                last edited by

                                @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

                                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                                • edmaul69E
                                  edmaul69 @Spiky
                                  last edited by 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"
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                                  • B
                                    bigflyer
                                    last edited by

                                    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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                                    • B
                                      bigflyer
                                      last edited by

                                      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...

                                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                                      • NastyButtler322N
                                        NastyButtler322
                                        last edited by

                                        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.

                                        Wazzz up

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                                        • S
                                          Spiky @edmaul69
                                          last edited by Spiky

                                          @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.

                                          edmaul69E 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                          • edmaul69E
                                            edmaul69 @Spiky
                                            last edited by

                                            @spiky win 95 image requires berry boot.

                                            S 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
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