QEMU/Guests/Windows 98: Difference between revisions

small but major adjustments
(small but major adjustments)
 
=== SoftGPU ===
We'll also be using the SoftGPU driver, to add 32-bit color and high-res support, and also to enable 3D acceleration. Grab the ISO from GitHub [https://github.com/JHRobotics/softgpu/releases/download/v0.5.2024.29/softgpu-0.5.2024.29.iso here].
 
== Starting up ==
<pre>qemu-img create -f qcow2 win98.img 4G</pre>
 
'''4G''' can be replaced with however big or small you want the hard drive to be (with G standing for Gigabytes). Windows 98 is a very old OS and does not take up a lot of space.
 
When that's done, start up QEMU with a command like the following:
<pre>qemu-system-i386 -hda win98.img -cdrom win98_iso_name.iso -device VGA,vgamem_mb=64 -cpu host -m 256 -accel kvm -M pc-i440fx-2.4,hpet=off -netdev user,id=lan -device pcnet,netdev=lan -usb -device usb-tablet -rtc base=localtime -monitor stdio</pre>
 
For audio add <code>-device AC97</code> to the parameters and use the [http://a320.the-cake-is-a-lie.com:8000/pgm/drv/sound/ac97/ac97_362.zip ac97_362.zip] driver. This driver provides Sound Blaster Pro 2.0 PCM emulation out of the box which is compatible and fully functional on QEMU.
 
The machine argument is set to pc-i440fx-2.4, this is to get around the PCI Bus bug that persists within QEMU, and the <code>VGA,vgamem_mb=64</code> parameter allocates 64MB of VRAM onto the generic VGA adapter QEMU provides to allow higher resolutions and color depths within 98SE.
After the first boot, you will notice that the display is small and very low quality. This is because, without drivers, Windows 98 runs in 16-color mode, fixed to 640x480 resolution.
 
This is where <code>-cpu host</code> comes into play, as SoftGPU provides SSE3 optimized binaries by default for in this case, software accelerated 3D rendering. Although you could compile yourself SSE4.2 binaries if you wished to do so. Now yes, you could use this with <code>-cpu pentium3</code> but do keep in mind MMX optimized binaries are very slow as the maximum performance you can reach with those is around 5 to 10 FPS if you are lucky and may or may not have tons of bugs that just don't make them worth using.
 
We will now install the SoftGPU driver to enable higher resolutions and 32-bit color support.