Hi,

In the gallery there is a screengrab of Windows `98 running in Morph OS - I am pondering getting a Pegasos II and although I am not really in interested in windows, due to the nature of some programs I will be forced to use Windows programs. So for the questions:

- Which Windows OS is it possible to Run in Morph OS? Just Windows 98, or Win ME, or perhaps Windows 2000 as well?

- I imagine that it is done through the emulation of a x86 machine?

- How fast does it run, on say, Pegasos II with G3 processor?

Thanks a lot!


Everblue...

BTW, Is Amiga OS4 release for Pegasos 2 official?

FYI :

http://lwn.net/2001/1213/a/bochs.php3

and

http://bochs.sourceforge.net/

No idea of speed. Shall ask to macos users.

Tcheko.

PS : AOS4? No idea. MOS's enough for me.

Thanks a lot for the information - that was very helpful.

Hello Everblue,

- Which Windows OS is it possible to Run in Morph OS? Just Windows 98, or Win ME, or perhaps Windows 2000 as well?
Win95, Win98, WinME, NT4. Win2000 I don't recall anybody mentioning this. Just try it

- I imagine that it is done through the emulation of a x86 machine?
This on already answered by Tcheko. The emu-prog Bochs can be downloaded from the FTP-site. I'm busy making a manual how to install Bochs and so on.

- How fast does it run, on say, Pegasos II with G3 processor?
This is covered in a few threads. Just type in 'Bochs' in the MorphZone search engine and it will show the right thread


Downside at this moment:
- No ethernet connection
- No GFX-support, so you've got only your 640x480x16 screen to work with
- No printer support
- Audio?? I believe also no audio

Upside:
- You can run MS Office and work with your Word-docs
- Uuh, laugh at the inefficient OS and switch back to Ambient??

Just kidding ofcourse.

Hope this was (afterall) usefull for you.

Bye,

Spidey

I've built a Bochs 2.1.1 binary but I haven't got any place where I can upload it.

2.1.1 has a ton of updates, one of them being proper VBE support. You will be able to run win9x in high resolutions using SciTech Display Doctor 7.

As for speed. Bochs isn't fast. It has not been designed to be fast. Bochs is targeted at x86 OS-developers and is therefore intended to work as a testing ground for new systems. Therefore it doesn't make intelligent optimisations that would break debugging support etc.

There is a new emulator called QEMU available (not for MOS yet though) that is a bit faster. Still, it cuts too many corners to be really fast. On my Pegasos II/G4 I get about the same speed (using simple benchmarks) that you would expect on a 70-90MHz Pentium.

about the speed :
peg1 g3-600 here

the only thing i would use windows for is deacing newer.ace files
which report "unsupported compression" with open source unace

unfortunately it is impossible with bochs+w98
it is much too slow, unacing a cd iso would need sereval days

There exists a Linux/x86 binary of unace which support these newer ace formats. You could try running that using the qemu-fast mode under Linux.

qemu-fast allows you to execute Linux/x86 binaries on any platform. It works quite well.
There is a version of QEMU in Gentoo portage. Newer ebuilds are available through http://dev.gentoo.org/~lu_zero

If you are not using Gentoo and there is no QEMU version available on the Linux you are using you can get it here: http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/qemu/

If you do not have Linux at all I'm afraid I can't give you any hints. Maybe you could bring the file to a friend for uncompression?

What about DosBox ?
http://www.ppa.ltd.pl/software/download/DOSBox.lha

I havent tested but some maybe is more faster that Bochs.

I haven't used DOSBox that much but I doubt that it is faster than Bochs because it uses the exact same emulation method (interpreting CPU-core).
BUT, it might actually be a good way of using UnACE as it boots into a simple DOS-clone which means you haven't wait all day for it to boot and it won't run a lot of stupid processes in the background like windows does.

DOSBox was meant to run only real mode programs 286/386. It won't run windows (atleast not 95 and up don't know about 1.0 - 3.1). And still has some BIG issues under MOS native version.

[Edit]
Sorry I wrote this before I saw the new version was available.

Actually the latest release (or was it CVS) supports protected mode. However, it probably doesn't run windows. Is UnACE a win32 binary though?

BTW, real-mode is not someting specific to 80286/80386. 80286-80686 all support both real-mode and protected mode.

How about FreeDOS ?

Tried to play with PCTask (3.x)

It doesn't seem to work with my catweasel floppies.

There were some harddisk files included with PCTask 3 (included on a CU Amiga (or was it Amiga Format) cover CD). I can't seem to boot from those hardfiles, but I'm unsure if it actually was a bootable hardfile anyway. Or maybe PCTask has a problem with SFS?

I could attempt to test this on my A4000, and move any hardfiles over? But I don't have an High-Density Floppy drive on my A4000 (it died on me long ago) so I can't read my dos disks.

FreeDOS is an implementation of DOS for x86. Not a emulator. You would still need something like Bochs or an x86 to use FreeDOS.

@dholm:

have you tried QEmu with Wine?

Yes, but I was unable to make it work :(

I will ask some Gentoo friends who managed to get it to work how well it performed.

I cant run cd-rom under Bochs. I have somewhere mistake in config, and I dont know where. Is there any gui or mounter? If yes, where?

Actually I couldn't get the CD support to work either. It seemed to just refuse whatever device I configured it to.
I ended up making an image in Linux and copied it to MorphOS.

Hi dholm and Jack,

The CD-ROM works, see my config on the "Hardfile Bochs"-thread.

@dholm:
I'm (and I think more people) very interested in your update of Bochs, did you manage to upload it somewhere?

Bye,

Spidey

ps: I'll make a little guide soon to install Bochs.

Thanks spidey, I'll check that thread later.

I haven't uploaded the updated Bochs yet. The problem is that I included the scitech displaydoctor in the archive as it seems that the version that works with current Bochs is hard to find. I'm not sure if it's legal to redistribute that binary so it might not be a good idea to upload the bochs archive to AmiNet. At least not without removing the sdd binary first.

Hey Spidey,

if you need a place to put that guide, I'm more than willing to host the thing here

I just recently installed Windows98 on Bochs.

I meant to make it a LOT faster by upgrading it to Windows 98 lite (that can remove Microsoft Internet Explorer with aid of some Win95 installer files) but the installer had some serious graphical problems.

BUT I'll try if I can get it installed anyway, and if I can, I sure tell you how.

I also tried installing latest freedos, but installer crashed always at same point of installation...

I managed to install Windows 98 in 2.1.1 without any graphical glitches or such. It took about 6 hours on a 400MHz G4 (PowerBook).

Hi dholm,

6 hours?
If my longterm memory still works , I installed Win95 in (perhaps) a couple of hours on my Peg I last year.

I already noticed with my Peg II, the whole system (DOS screen and FDisk) responds a lot quicker than with the Peg I.
I'll install Win98SE on it and will clock the whole operation

Bye,

Spidey