awkduck

I'd be interested in the sources for the mod, and maybe which tools are used to compile it. I've also noticed that it cannot play an mkv that has ogg as the audio stream. Sherpya has built many Mplayer binaries for Windows. From the "old" folder on Sourceforge, one of the last builds (maybe the last) from 2010 seems to work pretty well with Win98. I would recommend reviewing the mplayer config file and associating mplayer.exe with the desired file types. It also works with the Hxdos extender on dos. But the forked version (hxdos), with support for ac97 and hda, is probably required; for most people. It does not work on Win95. I have also been able to use Mplayer, from the Freedos distro, inside a windows Dos windows. It needs to be a fullscreen Dos window. Depending on your video card support, for vesa access via a Dos windows, graphics may become crippled; when you leave the Dos window fullscreen mode. I have not tested it with Win3x, but it has worked with Win95. Edit: I suppose you could use newer versions of Sherpya's Mplayer, with Kernelex. And for anyone attempting to use Mplayer for Dos, keep in mind that it "does not" use Window's acceleration and "does" use Window's soundblaster emulation. Not ideal for slower computers. It's really more of a novelty.

I second Bruninho. I ran into something similar back when checking out the Lynx web browser. The homepage had a small graphic icon "Viewable by any browser". After looking around it turned up this Campaign. The link provided by Bruninho is more progressive and Retro targeted. But retro business aside, its an example of people creating the web they want. Rather than just complaining about JS. What would be really cool is a resurgence of Hotline or things like it. There was a small moment when people were integrating homepages into things like gnutella. Fear of exposing your real IP and the explosion of piracy's immediate gratification gave rise to bittorrent/filelockers and server based social networking. Now some really cool networks are gone or held up by dedicated grey beards, aided by a curious few. Modern devices all but put the final nails in the coffin. B.B.S. is dead, long live B.B.S. But back to Web 1.0, it would mostly support even dos webbrowsers. You could likely even use Amiga and a couple of 8bit systems, to view some content.

I've recently had luck with "VDMSound.win9x.bin.alpha3.zip", when using WDM drivers. Probably works with VxD drivers, too. It is just stitched together enough to work. There is some reg addition needed to kill the tip of the day. Once you understand how it is put together, you can fix it up to your needs. I've never tried the original VDMSound. It is for Win2k and up.

I'll be sure to add it to the collection. Is that a recent discovery, or did you pull that from memory? Good find, either way.

Hmmm. But it doesn't do this when you load a non-D3D game? If you are getting different video initiation on the host side, then you might have your answer there. Do you know what I mean? Edit:You could test your WineD3D build on other VM software (or real machine if available). This way you can determine if it works in it's own right (absence of pass-though). Others might even be willing to test, too. It it ran, it would be slow. But it could eliminate one variable in your process. This edited suggestion has nothing to do with the above questions.

So we could distill this down to, compiling newer versions of WinD3D for WinXP and Win98? And you are suggesting that he altered them in no way, for compatibility with his Qemu fork. But obviously they are altered. Unless you are suggesting that no one ever tried to target the newer versions to build for the older versions of windows.? Meaning you believe no one has actually bother compiling the newer versions (WinD3D), to build for (target) the unsupported versions of Windows. But he has tried, and had some success. Is that about it?

Thanks for looking into it :) They would probably work okay with Win98 and kernelex. But, with some trade offs, other might work better. Bochs works on Win95, but is hardly very useful. After Qemu 0.10.1 accelerated virtualization was moved to KVM. Qemu still works without KVM. But as version numbers increase the evolving compilers build less efficient binary(faster CPUs often more than make for the difference) and non KVM performance is less a focus. So in my tests, Qemu provides less performance beyond 0.9 and 0.10, unless you have a KVM capable CPU. Kqemu provides similar benefits to KVM, but doesn't require a KVM capable CPU. It doesn't compare in performance or features, but it is way better than nothing. Qemu with Kqemu is similar in performance to Virtual box, without KVM (Maybe Virtualbox 3-ish). You're not gonna wanna play heavy games through it. But it could still be very useful. Qemu dropped support for Kqemu after 0.10.1, to focus on KVM. So any version after that has no option for kqemu, without manual patching and rebuild. I am sure Kqemu >=0.10.1 would work with Kernelex and Win98. I am not too sure about Kqemu (maybe). But if you use Win95, you'll need to do some work. Maybe not that much. Kind of like Dosbox for 95/NT. It takes a bit of love. An older version of Qemu (without Kqemu) would perform worlds better than Bochs. As a Win95 user, I'm primed to want an alternative to running Win98/Kernelex or Bochs. Which seems to mean I need to roll up my sleeves. Without Kqemu, I can use Qemu >=0.9 under dos using with HXDos. I can even have sound, with a non-official version of HXdos. But depending of host card's VESA design, SDL can produce hairy results. Also, dos doesn't provide 2d VESA acceleration. On a machine with Windows 2D acceleration, SDL would perform more than well enough. As can be seen with the unofficial Dosbox build. The trade-off with older versions, is occasionally running into unimplemented hardware emulation. If accomplished, Qemu with Kqemu, would likely perform better than newer versions using Kernelex on Win98. And on 95, just about anything would be better than Bochs. Sorry Bochs, but its true.

You might not be interested in trying anymore. So I apologize if this reply bares no interest, as you specifically said you need someone to do it. I understand that, and have been there. But if no one comes along, you could list more details of the method(s) you tried, and the errors you ended up with. If nothing else, this provides someone (that knows what's going on) insight into the situation. I would certainly offer assistance, but I've yet to actually build anything Windows related. I'm nearing that point. I've been able to work out a lot of other compilation issues. I have never written a complex application, but can modify the heck out of one. So I'm not promising I could help much. But I'd for sure give it the time of day. I'm sure there are plenty around like that. Probably more competent than I. On a side note, I myself am looking into building Qemu 0.9-0.10 for Win95. Something before KVM came along. Maybe even get Kqemu for Win95. Although for completely different reasons. If someone else has already done it, feel free to gloat :)

I have this 2003 era laptop, with soldered ram (512Mb). But the initial 640k (and some above) are fine. The laptop includes an additional 512Mb memory stick. With Linux I can use a kernel boot parameter (mmap) and tell the OS to ignore the bad on board memory range. It runs very stable that way, other wise the motherboard heats up and the usual bad memory issue arise. What is the best way to deal with this in Win9x? A himem.sys configuration? Or maybe eat up the bad memory range with a ramdrive, that I never use?

These days, I am surprised someone doesn't sell printer kits. Some 3d printed parts, a couple of servos/motors, and a micro controller or small FPGA. We could be making printers for Dos. Might even be easier. Drivers seem harder to write, the more modern the OS. Well, that is unless you don't have the toolchain, documentation, etc. I suppose it would cost more, than a new printer. But that's pretty common, in the obs"ELITE" world of computing. Seriously, you'd think opensource printers would have been a thing by now. Some silly Slogan, "The FREEdom to print, Richard M. Stallman". I suppose he is more a free software guy. But the firmware could be opensource.

LoneCrusader, long time fan of the 95 work the two of you have done. I fortunately have one legacy port :)

The same driver supports 98 and 95. But either Win95 support is poor, or it doesn't support DirectX8(very well).

Yes, I have one of those (Sx0). I think the chip (V30) is a P4M800. There are plenty of handy tools for finding out specs. But A nice easy one is KolibriOS. The chip is displayed on the blue kernel boot screen. Once booted, there is a pci info tool that lists manf/dev ids. Its not bad for a 1.44mb OS. Any memdisk bootloader or direct map should work, for the 1.44 floppy img file. It has more applications from an addon pack (Doom/Quake/FFplay). But for me it is a nice quick tool for moving files from fat/ext*/ntfs to fat32. It has pretty good USB support and is only booted as a ramdrive. I totally hack the desktop, because its a bit cluttered for me. Hope no one minds me selling this thing, while posting in a Win95 section. As a Win95.... fanatic, Kolibri has been almost as useful as Grub4dos. Though there are probably plenty of machines it won't work on.

I think that has VIA in it. I have some V90, V90L, and V90LE clients. They install Win95 nicely. But the video driver is buggy. It only seems to work if you uninstall DirectX. I think the driver was designed for DirectX9. I have heard that there might be ways to fix this. But nothing has worked for me. VEMB works though. I don't think Scitech would work. But I haven't tried. Or you might have the Sx0 series. That is GeodeGX2. The older has CS5535 chip and newer (part number ending in L) has CS5536.

I should have tried this before. For whatever reason cancel on somethings and next/finish on others finally allowed me in. Not sure which combo did it, but it worked. I'll have plenty of other problems ahead of me. But this problem is fixed. This is still from a memory mapped boot. So I will keep trying to get a local boot working. Also, now it is possible that I might be able to change things from inside Win95; possible fix. If I find something that works, I will report back on it. Time to make a larger image file with more tools. Thanks for the ideas, everyone.

They seem to have gone up in price, since I last looked. In US ebay $16+8 S+H. It looks like it has a special pad, that might be needed to use with it. I see a Win logo on the back of the box. Here

I see, "usb --int". Good to know that its there. I am sure it will come in handy on many projects :) The blinking cursor only happens from USB boot. But there are all kinds of strange things with USB. Even with an ext4 partition, syslinux cannot traverse the root directory. The same is true with grub4dos. If I have menu.lst and grubldr in /boot/grub, it cannot be found. Everything needs to be in root. I've never seen that before. I tried again booting the USB with a fat16 partition, using Dos mbr. When starting Win95 (no bootloader) it exits initiation and outputs "It is now safe to restart your computer" or something like that. Then if you reboot, the famous "c> cannot locate command.com". That probably is due to the fat16 partition not having the correct geometry. I've not had that issue when using a fat32 partition. There are many MBR/PBR to choose from. Do you mean one from the actual IDE partition? BTW, Zeroshell, is cool.

I've also thought about disabling detection, just to see that everything boots fine. If it did, has anyone configured devices without detection?

Your enthusiasm/ingenuity is in line with mine. The problem is that the only successful load, so far, is from ram. Nothing is saved after shutdown. Even if I configure everything on another machine, for booting on this one, the reboot clears everything. So if the task could just exit to Dos, then maybe I could copy the registry for some tweaking.

Thanks Goodmaneuver, I was thinking I should pick up a serial mouse anyway. Optical serial mice are cheap on Ebay. And the idea of an optical serial mouse amuses me.

Its a GeodeGX2, in a thin client.

The only time Grub4dos has an issue, is when direct mapping is used on the USB or IDE. If bootlace.com is used to install to the MBR(USB), there is a A20 error of some kind, and grub4dos fails. I am guessing this is because the device uses PS2 emulation over USB for the keyboard. This could be the same reason that when I use grub.exe from the prompt(USB), grub does not load the image (direct mapping). But memory mapping does work, as you are not tethered to the USB any longer. As you have said, Grub4dos has its own USB drivers. This is probably conflicting with the USB PS2 emulation in the device. menu.lst map --heads=16 --sectors-per-track=63 /80mb.img (hd0) #image is fat16 formatted with this geometry map --hook root (hd0,0) chainloader /io.sys If "map --mem --heads=16 --sectors-per-track=63 /80mb.img (hd0)" is used, then booting works; both from USB and IDE. But Win95 either disables the USB keyboard (PS2 emulation) or hangs, when detecting the USB. Either way, no configuration can be completed. I am having no issue booting with memory mapping. But, I cannot configure Win95 without a reboot. Once you reboot everything is lost. So I must either get direct mapping working, or prevent detection of only the USB. I do intend to eventually run from ram. But Win95 must first be configured and saved. Thanks for helping. But it may be a lost cause. I even considered booting Linux into ram, and running Win95 though Dosemu; with device mapping to the actually hardware. But Dosemu would be emulating the PCI Bus, so nothing I configured would apply to actual use on the direct hardware. Detection would resume as normal, with all of the same problems.

That is a great suggestion. Thank you, for joining in. Unfortunately, the device is a Single Board Computer and lacks external PCI/ISA slots.

From USB, grub4dos just sits with a blinking cursor (direct map). Memory mapped loads fine from there. Forgot to mention that renaming the inf folder has no effect.

Sorry for the late reply. It was a long day. Took awhile to get back at it. Thank you both, RainyShadow and Jaclaz. Rainy, you have a good point. I had not thought of that. But I do not have Ps2 connectors. Maybe if I order a serial/com mouse it would install that before the USB. Its been years since I've even owned a com mouse. I don't know how well 95 picks that up, during boot. Jaclaz, the booting over USB is done by using a fat32 partition with msdos io.sys and mbr. So the bootloader is dos. Grub4dos is loading an 80mb image into ram and booting that (win95 with ultrapack drivespace3). I'll confess some things not originally mentioned. I left them out, as to not confuse the situation. The device does have IDE and I can boot dos from that. However, as soon as any advanced OS attempts to boot from the IDE (the exception KolibiOS), the connection to IDE is lost. This is intentionally set in the bios by the manufacturer. Essentially the bios is marked as disabled. But it is a little more complex than that, and the details are in-depth. So I have syslinux chainload grub4dos or grub2. It is from the IDE that grub4dos loads the 80mb.img to ram. But if Win95 can in anyway see any partition, on the IDE, boot will fail. It does not matter what boot switches you use. And it does not matter if you are not even using the IDE. At some point Windows cannot access its own files and errors out, in some way or another. Or if booting from ram, and the partition is still visible, you end up with a protection error. The same is true trying safe mode, either way. That is why some very ambitious people wrote a coreboot bios replacement for the device. So the Win95 image needs to be in ram, and it needs to be mapped over the any IDE partition(s)[or mark them hidden]. I do believe that, eventually, I may find a way to get IDE access working. But only after working from inside Windows. And it will be a terrible hack, I am sure. Linux can boot from ram, but cannot see the IDE. You can edit the (Linux) ATA driver to use MSR configurations instead of PCI, and activate the MSRs related to IDE enabling. But using grub2 with the same MSRs modified (wrmsr) changes nothing for Win95. Windows uses the PCI configurations, so the MSR modifications hardly mean anything. Booting anything from USB can be rough. Some people have gotten certain sizes and manufacturers' pendrives to boot. While other do not boot at all. The USB booting issues arrive from the bootloaders hardly working at all, with this device. For me, dos boot over USB works every time; no matter what. In a few minutes I will try direct mapping the image from USB, booting from USB dos mbr, and directly running grub4dos (grub.exe) from the prompt. I may have tried that before, but actually can't remember for certain. The only problem is that USB is 1.1 speeds. For now that would work. I'm hoping this way just slipped my mind. Or that when I, possibly, tried it before, I hadn't learned that Windows would boot; if it can't access an IDE partition. I've been working on this for a long time. Masochist, I am. Anyway, this is a little bit more of a full disclosure. In the end, I intend to run from ram anyway. Drivespace is actually pretty cool, now. Back when 95 was new, I wouldn't have touched it with a ten foot pole. With faster memory and CPU, its kinda like Squashfs for Linux. If only there was something like Aufs for Win9x. Trying to set this mean device up, has taught me some neat things. For example, I learned how to modify Grub2 2.06 for Windows, to work from Dos. It needs to be chainloaded, but it is usable with just dos and Hxdos (no mbr install).