I'm wondering if /vr/ can help a moron with my autistic goal. I have a somewhat old x64 PC (2010-ish) with a CRT monitor running Windows 7. My idea was to turn it into a multi system emulation station for old PCs in a similar way I have my Raspberry Pi setup for old consoles with RetroPie. I was thinking to have the PC emulate multiple PC systems and OSs such as Windows 98, OS/2, Amiga, Atari ST, etc. that I could use as if they were native machines. I'm planning on running software beyond games for these emulated machines so I'm seeking something that's less boxed in than Emulation Station, instead have some sort of minimalist Linux Distro that would boot straight into a emulation menu to select the system I want to virtually boot.
My wishlist of items with the PC is this
1. the emulation/virtualization can use the CRT display properly (no borderless fullscreen, 480p looks native as well as swapping between resolutions with ease)
2. can transfer files between my new systems and this PC. Most likely via SFTP like how I use my RetroPie, bonus for virtualization software to mount the computers physical drive rather than keeping it to virtual drives
3. has a minimalist interface for swapping between emulated systems, i'm not really looking to use the host OS for much outside of moving files and emulation configuration.
This way I can cut down on Windows 7 hogging the computers resources and disk space to power the emulation as well as make the emulation feel more immersive. Like a bare metal DOSBOX. I was considering a MiSTer for this task but afaik it barely gets up to Pentium speeds and ideally l'd like to game up to Win98 SE - WinXP. Plus i'd save me from getting rid of this old PC. Would this be doable with Linux or should I stick with Windows 7?
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Well, unfortunately you need windows bloat to emulate those pcs. Amiga forever, 86box, pcemu, virtualbox all work best on windows machines, newer windows machines for 86box. Maybe try custom windows configs to replace bloteware with minimalist programs. Things like codecs and drivers and such.
I use a special gdp win1 config for windows 10 that does this
Is PC emulation not good on linux? I wouldn't mind using a distro since I'll be emulating these older windows versions anyway. I was mainly looking to strip the UI of Windows 7 so that I could give these virtual machines nearly all of the screen and resources. linux is nice in that there's lots of UI options, I thought that maybe I could have a UI solely deticated to configuring virtual machines and emulators the sameway my Pi is solely for emulated consoles. A RetroArch kind of solution for retrocomputers would be really nice.
Yeah 86Box is slightly weak on that machine. I thought Win98 in Dosbox-X ran alright though. It beats having to wrap dgVoodoo around everything, not to mention the games still might freak out because the cpu is too fast. I thought that a linux setup might give a boost in emulation performance to 86Box if I used a lightweight enough distro.
>This moron thinks modern Linux is lighter than Windows 7
It is, because Linux is just a kernel. You can very easily go spin up an install of Arch or Alpine Linux and get a system with even less complexity than Windows XP and piecemeal only install the exact shit needed to fit your use-case.
>Is PC emulation not good on linux?
Both 86box and PCem run indentical to their windows counterparts in Linux.
Probably best if you stick to hot takes on retroarch zoom zoom
????
What, they all fun fine on Linux too.
As far as I know virtualisation sucks for Win 9x and a 2010 CPU is too weak to run 98 in PCem/86Box
This is the wrong place to ask tbh. I wish it was different but all this place does is wank each other off over original hardware and not using save states.
>Every post has been moderately helpful
You're the one shitting up the thread, homosexual.
I hope they continue to be helpful. I'll see myself out.
I'm afraid nothing can help you except medication
>have some sort of minimalist Linux Distro that would boot straight into a emulation menu to select the system I want to virtually boot.
How stupid are you? Google linux distro made for emulation. Can you tie your own shoes?
I did say I was moronic but I'm not unfamiliar with installing a distro. The issue is that Lakka, Batocera, etc. seem more geared towards console emulation. So if I were to launch a Windows 98 game it would either just boot up a virtual machine and I'd have to launch the game manually or I'd be wine with compatability issues that I wouldn't have if I just emulated the machine. I'm not looking to launch games individually but rather just have a front end for launching the virtualization/emulation itself. I suppose I'm out of luck in having a distro like that short of me trying to setup Arch with QEMU and making my own GUI which I am too stupid to do. So far my best chance might be to use something like Tiny Core Linux, install each emulator that I want and just have desktop launchers for them. I just hope that they would also scale properly with the CRT display that I have and not do borderless fullscreen which just has a 240p imaged stretched to be blurry on a 1024x768 resolution, not to mention that certain games use multiple resolutions at once and would be able to swap from 320x200 to 800x600 and back.
You're going to find out that many of the windows 98 and XP games you want to play don't run well enough in PCem or 86box.
Yeah but Win98 or XP you could just use virtualbox or something if they don't run out of the box with Windows. I don't think there are many of those games that are so old they break on modern systems, especially on the WinXP side.
>I don't think there are many of those games that are so old they break on modern systems, especially on the WinXP side.
You thought wrong kiddo.
Name a Windows XP game that doesn't run on modern Windows then.
You can usually get them to run after doing some patching and other steps, but you can't simply install them and often times they have small problems even if they run. Like the game Black and White. But for the Windows 98 games you are especially fricked and won't be able to play many of them in PCem or 86box as you're thinking. You won't be able to play them at all without original hardware, and no amount of your temper tantrum can change that.
Wrong.
>Like the game Black and White.
Works absolutely fine.
>But for the Windows 98 games you are especially fricked
Like already mentioned in this thread, even most 98 era games work fine without patches and those that don't can use wrappers or patches. Yet alone XP.
Have you even tried any of this?
>no amount of your temper tantrum can change that.
People passionate about it will have dedicated hardware anyways, but that doesn't change the fact that compatibility is very good.
Did you mix something up in your head or? I'd understand if you'd argue about 9x era specifically but XP era has no problems on modern Windows what-so-ever.
>Works absolutely fine.
After some fixing.
>most 98 era games work fine without patches and those that don't can use wrappers or patches
Ask me how I know you don't actually play games.
Take the Windows XP game Space Cadet. According to you, it runs the same on Windows 7 and Windows 11 right? Perfect compatibility you say?
Sorry buddy but you've got a lot to learn before you should be sharing your opinions.
Are you talking about the fricking pinball game built-in to Windows?
Yes it came preinstalled with 98 and XP before you were born.
You can literally pull that off the Windows XP install disc and run it on modern Windows just fine. It just doesn't come preinstalled anymore.
>Take the Windows XP game Space Cadet. According to you, it runs the same on Windows 7 and Windows 11 right? Perfect compatibility you say?
Yes? Is this bait or something?
It runs differently on the two OSs because one of them is not as compatible with Windows XP era games.
In addition, it doesn't work perfectly as your screenshot implies. You are using an updated version of the game that has been fixed up and enhanced for modern Windows.
If you were to install the actual original game, there is a collision detection bug in modern Windows due 64bit floating point math being used.
Next you'll argue that having a fixed version of the game counts. Didn't they update the graphics/resolution too? Some of us just want the real original games. You keep getting BTFO in here.
>If you were to install the actual original game, there is a collision detection bug in modern Windows due 64bit floating point math being used.
That bug only exists when you try to build the game for x86-64 directly. If you just run the 32-bit version, it works fine.
>If you just run the 32-bit version, it works fine.
It has slowdown on Windows 7, it runs fine on 11 though.
It is the original game. It's not updated.
>Next you'll argue that having a fixed version of the game counts.
No, I'll argue that you actually have no idea what you're talking about.
This.
Works fine on 10 too.
>You keep getting BTFO in here.
Oh the irony.
We're all waiting to see you put that disc in and play it without fixes. At the minimum you'll need compatibility mode. How about Black and White, as previously mentioned? Can you put that disc in and play it just fine, too?
Nice goalpost moving and grasping for straws.
>play it without fixes
See
Already mentioned it's the original, you have problems reading or?
>At the minimum you'll need compatibility mode.
Nope. Didn't need it for original Space Cadet pinball.
Even then, why should build-in compatibility layers matter? The whole point was if it work transparently or not.
>How about Black and White, as previously mentioned? Can you put that disc in and play it just fine, too?
Yep, there's a patch for it. As I mentioned before, if you have bad reading comprehension, *MOST* games will work without fixes from the XP era, not all though.
Getting desperate or what?
Either you're just baiting now or actually too dumb or lazy to simply try yourself. You could have already spun-up a VM if you lack access to modern Windows versions to try it with.
>why should build-in compatibility layers matter?
And there it is. You've just stripped naked in front of everyone. You're someone that's actually too stupid to see when API changes aren't emulated well in compatibility modes and cause graphics or sound glitches. Or timing issues. You're probably one of those posters that says humans can't detect 15 ms of lag. There's no point in arguing with you, you probably don't even play games but just try to argue online.
>*MOST* games will work without fixes from the XP era
Sure buddy, you've convinced everyone that most games from the XP era work without any glitches.
>You could have already spun-up a VM if you lack access to modern Windows versions to try it with.
Let me guess, you got to the boot screen or 2nd level in some games so it works according to you. There are more nuanced problems that mouthbreathers like you don't understand because you literally can't see, hear, or feel them. It's kind of sad.
Bro you already deleted shit from the thread when you got shown up for your space cadet pinball moronation
At the very least, you should proceed with humility rather than acting like an insecure 25 year-old zoomer's idea of what a smug 40 year-old millennial is like on the internet.
I deleted it because it was (one?) sentence of redundancy. Anyone can view an archived version of the thread. You have to resort to this attack however and avoid the topic at hand because you just got BTFO due to lack of technical knowledge and experience actually playing retro PC games.
Just ignore the moron.
>I don't think there are many of those games that are so old they break on modern systems, especially on the WinXP side.
Anything that runs on XP can almost always run fine on modern windows using a wrapper or some sort of community made patch.
Win98 and below is when shit starts getting tricky.
Yeah, my understanding is that the main bulk of the issues with early Windows 9x games is shit that predates DirectX and uses some kind of ersatz graphics API. Glide has wrappers obviously but there's also a ton of weird bespoke 3D APIs that were written for one specific accelerator card and are supported by like two games.
Usually don't even need a wrapper or patch.
Win9x era is where you start needing that, but even then a lot of games just run fine, I'm playing games from 1996 without any problems or patches/wrappers.
>This way I can cut down on Windows 7 hogging the computers resources and disk space to power the emulation as well as make the emulation feel more immersive
No, the bulk of what is 'bloated' about Win7 is WoW64 which is needed by Win7 to run 32-bit applications properly due to the moronic shit the win32 api used to let you do.
if you want to run anything pre 98 ...just install 98.
XP introduces the NT kernel and completely changes how Wangdoze works, and those changes carry through to today. there isn't really an advantage to using a Win 7 mahcine versus one you bought yesterday.
i remember having a laptop in 2010 that i ran Virtualbox for a 98 setup but that's not a great way of doing things really.
I thought about that but I'm worried that the PC itself is too new for the hardware that a real 98 machine would want. I don't think it would like the AMD hardware that's in it as well as the more modern peripherals like the flight stick I have. With a Linux Host and Win7, the emulator could translate the newer hardware that would be more era accurate. Plus it would be nice to also emulate other systems but I guess a 98 rig could emulate Amiga and older DOS fine? I could try it as I'm in the middle of distro swapping anyways. If Windows 98 plays nice with the system then I don't really need to do much else.
If you want to emulate you're better off getting the most powerful system possible.
Recently I fricked around with virtualbox and got Windows 98 working, however it was more effort than it was worth tbh when I've gotten 99.9% of old games working on windows 10 with a small amount of googling/patching.
Finding the windows 98 se iso was piss easy, along with installing it. To get programs onto it, you need to put everything on via the virtual optical drive which only accepts .iso files, at least until you find a usb 2.0 driver which makes it a million times easier to put new programs/games on and allows you to transfer files out of windows 98. Fixing the resolution is a bit of a nightmare and breaks other stuff, especially installing opengl and directx9. Even then, I've had pretty poor results running games and only really got doom working without any issues, whereas quake 3 had hardware issues and age of empires had issues witht he beefed up resolution [1024x768]. I probably could solve all of these issues, but honestly the juice isn't worth the squeeze so I gave up. It took days of effort to get my computer to do what it already does worse.
>To get programs onto it, you need to put everything on via the virtual optical drive which only accepts .iso files, at least until you find a usb 2.0 driver which makes it a million times easier to put new programs/games on and allows you to transfer files out of windows 98.
Just add the VM into the emulator's virtual LAN and create an FTP website on the host. I've settled on this solution after years of mounted images, shared USB, network shares and other shit that had all kinds of annoying little downsides now and then.
last time I checked EAX sound was not working beyond windows XP. Has that been fixed yet?
You can use something like DSOAL (https://github.com/kcat/dsoal) to emulate it.
cool, that looks promising
Apparently this is missing effects but I'm not sure if that's true or cope from morons clinging to their old soundblaster.