Windows 98 running on Dosbox Staging (Tips & Tricks + Findings)

[ThomasEricB]

Hello folks,

As I was made aware by @kcgen on Discord, Windows 98 and 95 is outside of the scope of the project... Nonetheless, I got it working with the Fat32 test (see #1964 ). Here some observations I had:

• DOSBox Staging gives a lot of errors if Win98 has any startup programs. So what I did was going on DOSBox-x and disabling it inside those programs.
• Windows 98 does not recognize any display settings inside DOSBox Staging, so what I did was altering them on DOSBox-x.
• I would recommend setting mcb_fault_strategy = repair because in my testing it made it run (reduced the crashing close to 0)
• I would leave machine = svga_s3 as loading anything above that (svga_et3000, svga_et4000, svga_paradise, vesa_nolfb, vesa_oldvbe) would instantly crash Windows 98
• vesa_modes = compatible and vmemsize = 8 works great!
• startup_verbosity = auto is recommended
• cputype = pentium_slow is recommended (though 486_slow also works and others probably will)
• core = dynamic is recommended
• EDIT 4: I do not recommend setting a fixed number of cycles for this. In my testing setting any amount caused a bunch of issues for me. However, keep in mind it might be my machine or my setup causing this issue. Either way, I strongly recommend setting your .conf file with either cycles = max 105% or cycles = max or cycles = auto.
• EDIT 2: I don't recommend moving the mouse during Startup (+ crashes) - that has increased the amount of errors for me.
• EDIT 3: Might be a placebo, but I recommend letting ScanDisk run if you had the notification in EDIT 1 on any app (below)
• EDIT 1 (as I forgot to add): Close [Kill] and Reopen Dosbox Staging if you get any notification like this (DO NOT CLICK OR INTERACT WITH IT):

Besides that, here is the autoexec I was running:

@echo off
mount c: e:\test\
imgmount 0 E:\test\win98c.img -t floppy -fs none
imgmount 2 E:\test\Win98SE.img -size 512,63,255,522 -t hdd -fs none
imgmount e E:\dosbox-staging-windows-x86_64-v0.79.1\dosbox-staging-windows-x86_64-v0.79.1\diablo.iso -t iso -fs none
COUNTRY 55 #sets country to Brazil
KEYB br275 #sets keyboard to ABNT Brazil
boot c:

And here are the results on DOOM!:

[ThomasEricB]

Yikes, I just found a nasty bug. Moving your mouse too fast causes Windows 98 to freeze and if you continuously do so will make it crash. See: https://youtu.be/IRprhj5nW-A?t=172 for the exact time of the crash. See entire video to confirm it was running.

[ThomasEricB]

Created issues #2056 and joncampbell123/dosbox-x#3801 about this.

[arrowgent]

fairly similar situation for win95

while it kind of works, there are limitations that make using win9x not reasonable in dosbox

[symbios24]

Hello

Im trying to run games like age of empires 2
In windows 95 and 98 using a raspberry pi 4 and Dosbox-x but they are running very slow,i get 5fps in Doom95, I've seen videos in youtube running age of empires 2 and other games very smooth in Raspberry Pi 4 in Dosbox svn and Dosbox ece but cannot install DOSBox-svn and ece successfully they crasyhing in first boot with explorer.exe and dll errors,any help here???

Thank you

[ThomasEricB]

???? I have no videos of the sort nor this is Dosbox-X

[symbios24]

Not your videos

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lYmfklwWK2k

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=W5vt6jtzhlg

[symbios24]

I said maybe you know how to make dosbox run in this speed that games

[almeath]

Most of this guide appears to hold true in the latest build of Staging (0.81.0). I had already worked out most of the above settings based on extensive testing with DOSBox SVN. Personally, I find "mcb_fault_strategy = allow" gives me better results than repair. I was getting a lot of crashes in File Explorer until I made that change.

I notice the autoexec bat contains a line to mount an ISO file as E: drive, but that has no effect in the Windows environment because there is currently no IDE emulation in DOSBox Staging, which is one of the reasons DOSBox-X has an advantage in this area. However, the raw speed of the dynamic core in the latest 0.81.0 alpha build does make up for this with demanding games, particularly those requiring 3DFX.

When I was using a Mac, I patched the DOSBox Pure implementation of the 3DFX emulation into DOSBox SVN, and it worked great. Much more stable and speedy, even with bilinear filtering enabled. I found the implementation of the older 3DFX patch in DOSBox-X to be very slow. I am happy that the Staging crew have seemingly taken the path of implementing the DOSBox Pure version of the patch into the current code base.

If only there was IDE emulation. That is the last remaining hurdle to making Staging a better option than DOSBox-X, at least for the purpose of playing games in a Win9x environment. I am sure DOSBox-X would still be superior for offering stability and a host of refinements to more properly support a fully functioning Win9x install.

So we now have:

1. sufficient dynamic core performance = check
2. Support for large RAM allocations = check
3. Support for large hard drive images = check

Missing IDE emulation means that using software like Virtual Clone drive is necessary for installing and running games. It also means that rare Windows-only mixed mode / Redbook audio CD games (i.e. Silent Thunder) still need DOSBox-X if you want to hear the music. I have tried every image-mounting program that ever worked in Win98 and none of them seem capable of reading Rebook audio off a bin/cue image.

[almeath]

That might be it. I followed the traditional SVN approach of copying the "Win98" folder onto a blank disk image and installing from that. I will see if I can re-install using a mounted ISO.

[johnnovak]

What @Torinde and @shermp said. We only emulate the Voodoo 1, and these are just various configuration options. Different companies did different 3rd party Voodoo board implementations.

Voodoo 2 is pointless for DOS emulation, as nothing supports it. So I don't see why we should even bother.

[almeath]

Coming from SVN, I am new to this approach of installing Windows 98 directly from an ISO, and need a bit more help.

I have this in my conf file:

imgmount a media\WIN98C.IMG -t floppy
imgmount 2 harddisk\hdd.img -size 512,63,64,1023 -t hdd -fs none
imgmount d media\Windows98SE.iso -ide 2m -t cdrom

What would be the correct boot command to allow Windows to install directly off the ISO onto the (already formatted) C drive image?

When I launch Staging with only the above commands, I can see the contents of A and D, but C is not detected.

If I boot off the floppy image with "boot media\WIN98.IMG" then I can see the ISO file as R drive, but C drive is still not detectable.

[shermp]

[autoexec]
imgmount 2 "C:\DiskImages\db-staging-98se.img" -fs none -t hdd -size 512,63,255,1023
imgmount d "C:\DiskImages\MS\Win98.iso" -ide 2m -t cdrom
# boot -l c
boot "C:\DiskImages\MS\Win98SE-BootDisk.img"

This is what I start with. First boot with a 98 boot disk. It should give you the option to start setup from CD, or boot with CD enabled. I usually choose the second option, and run fdisk to create my disk partition. Then I restart dosbox, and choose the option to start setup from the CD.

From there, the Win 98 setup should find the hard disk, and prompt to format it.

Windows 98 will then proceed to do the initial installation, and copy files across. Once it wants to restart the first time, close Dosbox, and comment the boot disk line, and uncomment the boot -l c line, and start Dosbox again. Setup should continue.

Note that subsequent reboots will hang at the "Windows is shutting down" screen. Just exit dosbox, and start it again to continue.

[almeath]

Thanks, that did allow me to install off the CD iso.

When I have a CD iso image mounted, Windows gives me a black screen for about 10 seconds between the Windows loading screen and the desktop appearing, but then everything proceeds to run normally. If I only have a hard disk image mounted, and no CD iso, then there is no black screen or delay. Weird issue, but not a show stopper. When I load images from Daemon tools and similar applications, the black screen issue does not occur , so it appears to be caused by something specific to having a CD image actively mounted via the IDE emulation when Windows 98 starts.

Also, I tried mounting a bin/cue game with Redbook audio (Nightmare Creatures) and it freezes when the first level is about to start, but I can hear the music starting to play - essentially it totally freezes and I have to force quit DOSBox.

Interestingly, when I load the same bin/cue pair on my earlier Windows 98 install (the one I brought across from SVN without the IDE CD-ROM support) with Daemon tools 3.47 and a hacked version of the SB16 drivers (allowing digital audio to be enabled), the game runs fine with both 3dfx and the Redbook audio working.

So, I guess what I am saying is, that the ability to mount ISO and bin/cue directly is promising, but it is definitely showing signs of being unstable. However I do need to conduct further tests.

[FeralChild64]

More is missing regarding Windows 9x support, comparing to DOSBox-X. The CPU core does not handle page faults correctly enough which might lead to emulator crash, S3 card emulation is behind X and you have to be careful which driver you install, lack of FAT32 support makes data exchange less convenient, etc.

[rderooy]

There are some other areas that Staging is behind on for running Win9x. PCI, PnP, APM are some that come to mind.

[Torinde]

Related: #3426 (comment), #3687 (comment)

[almeath]

Yeah, not disputing any of that. DOSBox-X has for years focused on the odds and ends needed to better support Win9x. My objective has been firmly set on maximizing raw performance for games within the Win9x environment, and I found that for the last three years or so, up to date SVN was stable enough for most to work fine - I believe this has carried through into Staging. My day-to-day experience has been very little crashing once a game is running. Any instability, errors, sudden quits etc. have all happened when trying to do various things within the File Explorer. If key features are missing, most games do not seem to need them in order to run.

[almeath]

Thanks, I will try the fresh installation first, to see if that clears it. One thing I can confirm is that it only affects Windows 98. Windows 95 installs with the same DOSBox config settings are unaffected. Also, Reelmagic is disabled.

[shermp]

I just discovered this yesterday on a fresh Windows 98 build (the extra device).

On a side note, I tried mcb_fault_strategy = repair for the first time yesterday, and it was noticeably more unstable then when I had previously used allow.

[almeath]

I entirely agree - crashes all over the place when using repair, but allow is about 90% stable.

[almeath]

I tried a fresh install of Windows 98, and it comes up the same ; "PC Early Non-VGA Device", and it keeps re-detecting on boot even if I disable Voodoo and ReelMagic on the configuration settings. As reported earlier, it does not happen in SVN and DOSBox-X, so it is peculiar to DOSBox Staging 0.81.0

[johnnovak]

I entirely agree - crashes all over the place when using repair, but allow is about 90% stable.

That's some useful info.