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[Japo]

In order for the poll to be useful, please refrain from voting randomly if you don't know anything about the topic. You're still free to do so, I'm only asking you politely.

I've recently got interested in virtual machines, yes I know nothing beats or comes near DOSBox to emulate a DOS machine, but I'm talking about emulating any OS here. I finally summoned the will to install this software in order to take some screenshots from Hind, a Win95 game whose colours were screwed through Prn Scr, but now the main reason for my interest though is that I'm a geek, always been.

Somebody has to start so I'll tell you my own experience, which extends all the way back to yesterday. First I installed MS's Virtual PC. Some say it's too inefficient, but I don't think that's the issue since an advanced 3D game like Hind works wonderfully in a Win98 virtual machine. Also Faery Tale Adventure II, which has issues with DOSBox and runs slow at 40,000 cycles with dynamic core. FTA2 runs much better than in DOSBox, just like it ran perfectly in my old Win98 system. I think FTA2 was programmed for DOS but with Win95 in mind, actually it's more problematic to run it under DOS6 than under Win9X.

However for example and ancient flight sim like Jetfighter II runs slow, yet it's obviously much less advanced than Hind. Wacky Wheels as another example runs fine during races but the menus are sluggish. Quake on the other hand runs too fast to play! :blink: Believe it, it runs okay with Moslo at 30 per cent or less of CPU full power! That's the most astonishing thing, that it depends on the program, not the virtual machine. For JF2 is equally slow if I run it from Windows 98 rebooted in "DOS mode" or if I run them in a separate DOS6 virtual machine! Within Win98 it won't even run, it does strange things to RAM, the same things that make it crash in DOSBox, and either it crashes, or Windows shows a warning if run in protected mode. JF2 is a little bugger though, it runs at proper speed in the real DOS partition of my old machine, but the image flickers, hardware related I guess.

I ventured that if advanced 3D games like Hind or Quake run fine, perhaps DOS games run slow because of too much CPU power. So I tried Moslo but what I got was JF2 and WW's menus running more slowly, surprisingly enough. :P

So Virtual PC is great for emulating other versions of Windows, and that's exactly what Microsoft intends it to, but not so for running DOS programs. Then I installed VMware. My first unpleasant surprise was that I haven't yet got the sound to work. Virtual PC emulates a Sound Blaster 16, which is just perfect, whereas VMware emulates a "Sound Blaster Audio API" according to its help resource. I just don't know what that means and where to get the drivers for DOS, or simply how to get the damn sound working in a DOS machine in VMware, so somebody please tell me, I would be enormously grateful. In Virtual PC I only needed the good old "SET BLASTER=...". In VMware it won't work and not knowing what to do I tried with the SB16 emulation drivers from my SBPCI128, which get me sound with that card in the real DOS partition of my old system, but that won't do the trick (error report --could some parameters in the EMM386 line of CONFIG.SYS fix this?). Besides that method sucks big time because it requires EMM386.EXE, and the DOS7 version of it into the bargain, that means no games that conflict with EMM386.EXE, and less compatibility.

So there's no sound for the moment being. :not_ok: As for the speed, I only tested a couple in VMware as well as in Virtual PC. Quake runs at proper speed, no Moslo required. Wacky Wheels runs great, both races and menus. Jetfighter II won't even start --yes I know it's a little bugger, but I have fond memories of it, which I'll have to discard I guess. Besides I prefer VMware's interface (who thought nobody would mind about Virtual PC's hijacking the right shift key!?), so it would be my primary option, but first I'd have to make the sound work. Maybe I'll try with FreeDOS, maybe it comes with its own appropriate drivers for whatever VMware emulates --maybe I can copy them to DOS6 and maybe they'll work. I haven't even tried Win98 in VMware yet, I don't know if my Second Edition CD will have the sound drivers, in my old Win98 machine my SBPCI128 needed its own CD.

I'd greatly appreciate any info about the features and performance of any virtualization package, if some of you experienced these problems or others and how to solve them. Does it happen the same to you, that the older the game, the slower it runs?