OK, now that's what I did. I've:

- downloaded the latest version of driver (vbempk.zip), unpacked it, made an .iso file with mkisofs
- ran BOCHS pointing to said .iso as CD-ROM
- copied the drivers over to emulated harddrive
- installed the driver (success!)

But! After restart BOCHS refused to use screenmode other than 640x480 in 16 colours (insane!).
I went to sleep solemnly promising myself to try again with the earlier driver the next day. Much to my suprise when I booted again Windows happily opened up in 800x600 16 bits. I've even managed to set the hardware acceleration to "full" in advanced display options. Talk about weird...

Now, to sync that crazy system clock and make mouse double-click working...