virtualbox.org

Stop Sci-Tech Display doctor: do not remove all SDD related items from Start (right-click on "Start" etc.) but edit registry:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run]
del => "Check for SDD updates"="C:\\Program Files\\SciTech Display Doctor\\sddboot.exe"

Alt display driver: Bearwindows VBEMP (bonus: works for more than just Win9x).

ghr wrote:Stop Sci-Tech Display doctor: remove all SDD related items from Start (right-click on "Start" etc.).
Alt display driver: Bearwindows VBEMP (bonus: works for more than just Win9x).

Apparently Bearwindows is unstable. If I ever decide to replace the display driver, I'll search for something else.
For now I can put up with SciTech.

The Nostalgia Master wrote: Apparently Bearwindows is unstable.

Sez who? It's been stable for me for the last 12 years. We wouldn't put it in the tutorial if it didn't work.

And I'm not sure what other Win98 display drivers you have in mind. It has to be a straight VESA SVGA driver, that's the only interface VirtualBox provides that any Win98 driver can understand (apart from the original early 90's 16/256 color VGA interfaces, but let's not do that either). Your wording was a bit weird too - driver not "needed any more" - like there has been any new developments in Win98 drivers since the tutorial was written?

mpack wrote:Sez who? It's been stable for me for the last 12 years. We wouldn't put it in the tutorial if it didn't work.

Sez the tutorial itself:
[quote="On 23/09/2008, Technologov]3.1. bearwindows driver (unstable)
http://bearwindows.zcm.com.au/

NOTE: You must install "Universal version" (2nd link), as the "VirtualBox" version is known to have problems.
WARNING: This driver is buggy, and many Windows fonts do not render correctly with it. Not recommended.[/quote]

mpack wrote:And I'm not sure what other Win98 display drivers you have in mind.

Probably from the same place I got the ACPI driver I use, or maybe the same place where I found the display driver for Windows NT 5 (which had high resolution and 32-bit colour). There's likely to be a WHOLE BUNCH of display drivers for Windows 98 that are capable of high resolution and 32-bit colour.

mpack wrote:Your wording was a bit weird too - driver not "needed any more" - like there has been any new developments in Win98 drivers since the tutorial was written?

Well, it's been twelve years since the tutorial was written, and there is a chance that by then not only would new drivers be witten for Windows 98 by enthusiasts or that Windows 98-compatiable drivers would be discovered. Heck, even Windows 1.0 has had a program written for it as recently as 2013!

In all honesty, the Windows 98 tutorial is old and outdated; it does not reflect the current abilities of Virtualbox today (such as the ability for Virtualbox to have SOUND on Windows 98 without needing the Add New Hardware Wizard as well as CPU idle). The tutorial in my opinion, needs to be updated.

The Nostalgia Master wrote: Well, it's been twelve years since the tutorial was written

12 years ago the Win98 OS was already 10 years old, and I'd be surprised if the dozen additional years has increased the incentive to write new drivers for it.

Btw, this is the discussion topic for the tutorial contributed by Technologov in 2008. If you believe that tutorial is lacking then by all means have a go at writing an improved version. If it passes muster then we'll add it to the section.

The Nostalgia Master wrote: Probably from the same place I got the ACPI driver I use, or maybe the same place where I found the display driver for Windows NT 5 (which had high resolution and 32-bit colour). There's likely to be a WHOLE BUNCH of display drivers for Windows 98 that are capable of high resolution and 32-bit colour.

I don't see the download links that should have accompanied that comment?

The Nostalgia Master wrote:the Windows 98 tutorial is old and outdated; it does not reflect the current abilities of Virtualbox today (such as the ability for Virtualbox to have SOUND on Windows 98 without needing the Add New Hardware Wizard as well as CPU idle).

Can you provide references for both these points? The tutorial says that you only need "Add New Hardware" if you switch from AC'97 to SB16. Are you saying that SB16 is now a plug and play device? On the CPU idle point the problem has always been that ACPI is not the default for Win98 installs, because Win98 doesn't recognize the Bochs BIOS used by VirtualBox. It's possible this has been fixed, but I'd like more than your say-so.

mpack wrote:12 years ago the Win98 OS was already 10 years old, and I'd be surprised if the dozen additional years has increased the incentive to write new drivers for it.

Btw, this is the discussion topic for the tutorial contributed by Technologov in 2008. If you believe that tutorial is lacking then by all means have a go at writing an improved version. If it passes muster then we'll add it to the section.

I know that. But really all we need to do is just update the tutorial to include the effects of the changes to VirtualBox as well as clear up how stable Bearwindows is. Also, new drivers are still being written for Windows 9x, if the updates to Bearwindows count...

mpack wrote:I don't see the download links that should have accompanied that comment?

Because I was stupid enough to not add the link to that display driver upgrade to my favourites.

mpack wrote:Can you provide references for both these points? The tutorial says that you only need "Add New Hardware" if you switch from AC'97 to SB16. Are you saying that SB16 is now a plug and play device?

Oh, whoops. I didn't read the tutorial word by word. I kinda skimmed over it. >.<

mpack wrote:On the CPU idle point the problem has always been that ACPI is not the default for Win98 installs, because Win98 doesn't recognize the Bochs BIOS used by VirtualBox. It's possible this has been fixed, but I'd like more than your say-so.

I'll see about making a new Windows 98 VM to test this out. But at the time I'm writing this it's very late and I need to go to bed.

Alright, I installed Windows 98 SE on a new VM. Here are the results:
- CPU idle is supported. The VM uses nowhere near as much CPU as my Windows 1.0 and 2.0 VMs that don't have CPU idle.
- ACPI is working. The VM closed when I shut down Windows 98.

If you are not conviced, I can record it happening.

Edit: I managed to find exactly where I got the Windows NT 5 driver upgrade: https://forum.winworldpc.com/discussion ... -additions It also says that there are many ways to get at least 256 colours in Windows 9x.
Damn I love WinWorld.

I do vaguely recall that a user posted a BIOS patch a couple of years ago that may have had something to do with ACPI. If so then that could be why we no longer have to jump through hoops to get Win98 to use it.

The Nostalgia Master wrote:It also says that there are many ways to get at least 256 colours in Windows 9x.

Why not use the SciTech driver -> viewtopic.php?f=2&t=97563

jorgensen wrote:Why not use the SciTech driver -> viewtopic.php?f=2&t=97563

Already am. I have SciTech Display driver set at 32 bit colour and all that. I just wish there was a way to not have it appear at every startup.

I also tried out Bearwindows 9x and it seemed to support widescreen resolutions. However I have not been able to get it to run at 32-bit colour, and using larger resolutions forces it to 256 colours. The highest possible colour setting is 16 bit. Maybe I need to use the BIOS detection program it has.

The Nostalgia Master wrote:I also tried out Bearwindows 9x ... The highest possible colour setting is 16 bit.

I assure you that is not correct. The screenshot below is from my Win98SE VM, using the BearWindows Universal VESA driver as recommended by the tutorial. If you only get 16 color (that's 4 bit, not 16bit) then you are still using VGA, not BearWindows VESA.

mpack wrote:I assure you that is not correct. The screenshot below is from my Win98SE VM, using the BearWindows Universal VESA driver as recommended by the tutorial. If you only get 16 color (that's 4 bit, not 16bit) then you are still using VGA, not BearWindows VESA.

Actually, I got 16-BIT colour (not 16 colours). Also, as I said, the higher resolution settings knock the colour depth back to 256 colours. But the readme file suggested that it could actually go to something like 1920x1080 with 32-bit colours and I had simply suspected that I needed to run the BIOS detection program first before installing the driver (as per the instructions). Maybe then I would be able to access 32-bit colour, even at high resolutions. That is what I meant.

EDIT: I forgot to put this down when it happened, but I tried again with BearWindows, this time running the BIOS detection thingy and it worked. I have a high resolution and 32-bit colour. It does not seem to have widescreen, however.

So, I posted proofs that VBEMP driver is broken, does not support Unicode and RTL scripts and probably should not be recommended by default instead of the working SciTech driver. Why wasn't that reflected in Tutorial?

Our definition of "proof" seems to differ. As already demonstrated earlier in this topic, Win98 never supported Unicode natively (I'm aware that there was an addon pack that came out in the XP era). But I'm not going to discuss that with you again, nor will I discuss again how VirtualBox in any case could not possibly be aware of or influence the fonts used by a guest OS, particularly when there are no GAs for that OS. I'm not aware how a graphics driver can influence it either, since all that does is move pixels around.

If you have a problem with BearWindows' driver than I suggest you contact him and hash it out via email. Or, if you installed the aforesaid addon pack and it doesn't work, then contact the people who made that. In the meantime I'm not aware of any confirmed or even plausible issues that should cause us to change the tutorial.

Any further posts on this subject of Unicode will be deleted.

So, it's actually possible to run Windows 98 on modern CPUs, however it requires fiddling:

https://msfn.org/board/topic/177951-imp ... l-machine/

https://community.amd.com/t5/drivers-so ... td-p/55234

During installation after installing non-pnp devices you need to boot in Safe Mode (F8), in System Settings you'll have to enable "Disable all 32-bit protected-mode disk drivers", then you reboot, and then Windows installation completes without errors.