Windows 95/98 on your PPC :)

[Miracle]

No, this is not another *what if* topic, this is a topic to show you the real deal, already running (not that fast though) and already proven to be real, by me .

If you don't believe it, don't click this link to view the post I wrote over at PDAi.org a couple of seconds ago, and please do not look at the images either .

(sorry for the cross-linking, but I thought it would be better then to copy-paste the full text ).

Before you start saying that it's a hoax, please note that I have tested it, installed windows and all that stuff, and as you can see it's running on my Asus A620BT (see the photo) WITHOUT overclocking and WITHOUT optimizations in the program itself, imagine what it can do with those 2 options .

So what do ya think of this?
Is it time for the developers to start optimizing this port to make it workable?

[sponge]

I see a download link on the guy's page? How is this not available?

[Blade Runner]

Omg wow.
How did you do that?

[Dan East]

I'm really surprised no one has ported it sooner. I never tested Windows on the port I did because I did not have a large enough storage card at the time. I did run a few different versions of DOS (FreeDOS and MS DOS) as well as various DOS apps and games (like RailRoad Tycoon).

The port I did is of such an old version of Bochs that it would not be useful. I'm sure the source base has changed to such a point that it would basically have to be ported again from scratch.

All computers are just fancy Turing Machines. In other words, at a low level any computer can do anything any other computer can do, given enough memory and enough time. Thus any computer, given the right software (emulator), can emulate any other computer, memory allowing.

Thus the only time I am truly impressed to see a Pocket PC emulating something is when it can emulate it quickly. Two such emulators that come to mind are PicoDrive and FPSEce.

The two big issues I ran into with a Bochs port was a decent input system (IE onscreen virtual keyboard) that would work with all the various VGA video modes (both text and graphics modes), and the fact that Bochs used an HDD image. I don't know if the newer versions of Bochs can simply mount a host directory as a virtual HDD. If not then you still have the problem of not being able to access the Bochs x86 filesystem from the Pocket PC filesystem and vice versa.

Dan East

[deciever]

The OS is gonna take up a lot of CF space....how large is win95 that you used? Also there is a Win98 patch thing I think called Win98 Lite that only installs the bare minimum it needs(if it isn't already), so maybe it will run faster. Also if Windows can finally be emulated maybe there is hope for directx on the PPC for more gfx intensive games or emus such as psx or even n64. If directx could run without loading the entire Win9x system it'd probably run even faster....but this is all speculation. I hope someone can optimize this =) plz!

[Caesar]

HA! TAKE THAT POCKET DOS!


This is incredible. I am definitely going to find all my old DOS games now and see what I can run.

[RChickenMan]

Pretty neat. From what you described, it's mostly a novelty as of now, right? Can't really run anything useful? Like Dan said, any computer can emulate other kinds of computers, for the most part, but not necessarily to the point that it's useful.

[Miracle]

I don't know if some of you check out the emulation of things like DreamCast, PS2 an Xbox, but I can tell you that when the guys start creating an emulator nothing runs at a decent speed, that's when people start making it faster (aka optimizing, rewriting some parts, I don't know it all ). you can't expect an emulator who hasn't even been optimized yet to fully operate. I look at this on the bright side, somebody started the port, it works, now it's up to those who believe in this project and think they can get it faster to MAKE it faster.

Info:
Windows 95 fit's on a 160mb HD Image (plus had some extra free space on it).
Windows 98 fit's on a 240mb HD Image (with like 20mb free ).

[Guest]

You could try something like 98lite to get the images smaller.

http://www.litepc.com

[Miracle]

Wow 16mb with W98 .
If I can find a trial or something I'll check .

Thanks for the link!

Anyone else tried Bochs yet? (on the PPC I mean)

[SmokingFish]

i tried ^^
i only tried dosbox , and hey, it seems to work great.

the only problem is that inputs are impossible =( the virtual keyboard is way too small in 640*480 and it only responds every 3-4 clicks...

but i managed to write "dir" and the directory was there instantly , so i think its emulating already as fast as a ~16-33 mhz 286/386 (on my old 16 mhz laptop it takes a few ms to build the directory listing)

so..please^^ someone optimize this emus ...and make a nice frontend too XD

[Miracle]

The developer stated that there was a bug with the keyboard (if you press a button, the next time it won't work anymore), but he solved it and I think there's going to be an update not to far away .

[Caesar]

I tried bochs and dosbox. Bochs just goes through a whole boot list then shsuts off. Dosbox loads up great but I can't do anything because there is no way to input anything.

[Dan East]

Does the version of Bochs this port is based off of require drive images?

Dan East

[Miracle]

Yes it still is based of disk-images.
But I think that's just a really easy way, since I can install the OS on my PC using bochs, copy it over to my PPC and then run it . It's only a bit harder to transfer files on it, but by making a CD image you can solve that too .