How To: Windows 95 on YDL with Qemu

[rask]

If anyone cares here is how I got Windows 95 to work on YDL. It seems to be slightly faster than Windows 98 but takes a bit more work to set up.

Open terminal, log in as root:

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su -l
password: (your root password)


then install qemu if you haven't done so already

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yum install qemu


After you have installed qemu, create an image.

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qemu-img create -f qcow c.hd 1200M

Note: Your image can't exceed 2GB since Windows 95 uses FAT16.
Note 2: This will create the image on root, you might want to make the image adress /home/yourusername/c.hd

Now, download this boot disk:
http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stu ... basecd.iso

Copy it to /home/yourusername/

Run this command

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qemu -hda c.hd -cdrom /home/yourusername/fdbasecd.iso -boot d

This should launch FreeDoss.
Press 1 to boot the CD-ROM
Select the first option to Install to harddisk using FreeDOS SETUP
Then select to prepare the harddisk for FreeDos by running XFDisk

Now, what we will want to do once XFDisk is loaded is to press enter and select new Partition. Make it a primary partition and press enter on all the subsequent options. Once you've set up your partition you're going to want to press enter again and select change partition type. Make it FAT16 INT13X (windows 95 doesn't recognize FAT32). Once you've done this it should say FAT16 under system.. now you can press F3 to quit. Before you quit it will ask you if you want to write the partition table. Selecet yes and let it complete, then let it reboot.

It should go back into FreeDos. Boot up as you did previously, but this time select No (return to command prompt). In the command prompt type:

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FORMAT C: /S

Type a new volume name for your drive (it doesn't matter) and when it's complete you can exit out of qemu.

Now, we don't need the fdbasecd.iso file. Instead we'll need the floppy image of the Windows 95 Boot Disk. You can find it here:

http://www.allbootdisks.com/downloads/D ... ows95a.img
http://www.allbootdisks.com/downloads/D ... ows95b.img

Download the boot disk for whatever version of Windows 95 you have and place it in the /home/yourusername/ directory.

Now, run this command in terminal:

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qemu -soundhw sb16 -fda /home/yourusername/Windows95x.img -hda c.hd -cdrom /dev/scd0 -boot a

Note: If you have a image of Windows 95 you can use that path instead of /dev/scd0
Note 2: Remember to replace the x in Windows95x.img above to whatever image you downloaded.

It should boot into another command prompt.

Type this:

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R:

Then:

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Setup

And... voila! You're in the Windows 95 setup. Go through the set up. When Windows asks you to reboot, close qemu and run this:

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qemu -soundhw sb16 -hda c.hd -cdrom /dev/scd0 -boot c

It should now run windows! It will finalize the set up a bit, then you're good to go!

If you have any questions feel free to reply. Windows 95 should be slightly faster than 98. You should run the CPU HLT program that is referenced here:
viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2408&start=0

That mirror is broken, but it can be found here: http://toogam.com/software/archive/driv ... mnhltm.zip

A few other notes:

If you want to create an image of your Windows 95 CD, type this in terminal:

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dd if=/dev/scd0 of=/home/yourusername/win95.iso

Secondly, if you did this all in root, you're going to need to change the permission of c.hd so that your user can read and write. Otherwise, nothing you do in Windows 95 will ever save.



You can set up qemu to launch any way you'd like. This is how I have it launched:
qemu -soundhw sb16 -hda /home/michael/c.hd -hdb fat:rw:/home/michael/Shared -cdrom /dev/scd0 -boot c -full-screen

The -hdb fat:rw:/home/michael/Shared business is explained here: viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2408&start=0



Here is my fluxbox command for launching windows 95 from the menu:
[exec] (Windows 95) {/usr/bin/qemu -soundhw sb16 -hda /home/michael/c.hd -hdb fat:rw:/home/michael/Shared -cdrom /dev/scd0 -boot c -full-screen}
If you don't have fluxbox ignore this bit.



Hope this helps.

[Efaustus9]

Thanks for the walkthrough. Do you know how to get the internet up on old windows 95 using your Ethernet connection.

[billb]

Thanks for the walkthrough. Do you know how to get the internet up on old windows 95 using your Ethernet connection.

I can't recall if I had that set up or not ... Will have to boot up my old Win95 image today and see. And maybe ... just maybe ... I'll finally get around to making that Diablo + Starcraft video. Sure sounds like more fun than finishing the grout on my tile backsplash today.

[Efaustus9]

Thanks billb getting battle.net working would be sweet. Starcraft works fairly well, and the fscaler tool you found is also quite handy. I wonder how this handles other windows based games from the same era e.g. command and conquer gold, Age of Empires, maybe some earlier tycoon entrees. I would like to see how you get thoughs games running using the various tweaks at your disposal. So billb are you using the the version of qemu available on yum or did you compile a newer version?

[billb]

Thanks billb getting battle.net working would be sweet. Starcraft works fairly well, and the fscaler tool you found is also quite handy. I wonder how this handles other windows based games from the same era e.g. command and conquer gold, Age of Empires, maybe some earlier tycoon entrees. I would like to see how you get thoughs games running using the various tweaks as your disposal. So billb are you using the the version of qemu available on yum or did you compile a newer version?

The version available in the repos works fine for me.

I haven't tried Command and Conquer on it. It seems to work well for most games which aren't 3D and less than 100 Mhz Pentium CPU required, though ...

[rask]

I've tried these games, if anyone cares:

Myst - Cinematics are painfully slow, otherwise playable
Roller Coaster Tycoon - Kind of slow, I'd say playable
Theme Hospital - Movies are a bit slow, but otherwise seems playable
Grand Theft Auto - Menu is fast, everything else is too slow to play
Diablo - A bit slow but still playable

And sorry, I didn't try setting up the internet

[Efaustus9]

thanks rask, good info. When you did the testing are you using YDL 6.1 with vram swap enabled? also what window manager are you using? Are you using qemu available on yum or the newest version 0.9.1?

Has any one tried to see if XEN performs any better?

I wonder if any of this is useful for Windows 95 Networking.

[rask]

Hi, I'm using YDL 6.1 with vram swap enabled and fluxbox as my window manager. I'm using the qemu from the yum installer... does the newest version of qemu offer a signifigant speed increase? I ought to try it out.

As for getting the internet set up... maybe you could try this out: http://greek0.net/win95_qemu.html

[Efaustus9]

Thanks rask after a little hair pulling and some extensive googling I was able to figure it out, though my method is a little different then the one you posted. I had to jump through a few forums to collection the necessary information and yet you have it handily on one page, sigh. anyways I updated my version of starcraft through battle.net but after doing so when I boot the game I am presented with a black screen. I can hear the game music and menu cues when I move the mouse around however I cant see a thing. I tried updating to the newest version of directx that win95 supports (8.0a), I also installed service pack 1 for windows 95, no luck. Any ideas any one I am so close to playing battle.net on my ps3 .

[Ankka]

I installed this windows recently, so I kinda have problem with the color display. I can't change from 16-color display to anything. Am I writing this right? Whatever. My English needs kinda fix. So how I can change color display to 16-bit?

[reddragon2987]

Im trying to install win95, but Im stuck. I am on the step where I ran the command given:

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qemu -hda c.hd -cdrom /home/yourusername/fdbasecd.iso -boot d

which gave me an output of:

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Warning: No DNS servers found
qemu: could not open disk image c.hd

[ppietro]

Im trying to install win95, but Im stuck. I am on the step where I ran the command given:

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qemu -hda c.hd -cdrom /home/yourusername/fdbasecd.iso -boot d

which gave me an output of:

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Warning: No DNS servers found
qemu: could not open disk image c.hd

Did you create the c disk with this command?

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qemu-img create -f qcow c.hd 1200M

If so, are you running qemu from the directory you created the c disk in?

Cheers,
Paul

[reddragon2987]

Thanks to billb, I learn to use the ls command to verify that all files are in there even the output of c.hd

So yes, everything is in the "/home/user/", all the downloaded files and the c.hd which upon creating it, gave me and output of:

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Formatting 'c.hd',fmt=qcow,size=1228800kb

I tried making the c.hd being and not being root, same output

[ppietro]

Thanks to billb, I learn to use the ls command to verify that all files are in there even the output of c.hd

So yes, everything is in the "/home/user/", all the downloaded files and the c.hd which upon creating it, gave me and output of:

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Formatting 'c.hd',fmt=qcow,size=1228800kb

I tried making the c.hd being and not being root, same output

So - there may be some confusion here.

Just to be clear - when the guide says use /home/yourusername, it means your home directory. e.g. If your login is reddragon, your home directory would be /home/reddragon. This is the directory you should be creating c.hd in, and it is also the directory you should place fdbasecd.iso into.

So - here's what you should do.

1. Log in as your normal user - not root
2. Open a terminal window
3. Issue this command: qemu-img create -f qcow c.hd 1200M
4. Download this link to your home directory:
http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stu ... basecd.iso
5. In the same open terminal window, do an ls command to make sure c.hd and fdbasecd.iso are there
6. In the same open terminal window, Issue this command: qemu -hda c.hd -cdrom fdbasecd.iso -boot d

That's it - it should work.

UPDATE: Ooops - cut and pasted without editing. Line 6 fixed. Just tried it and it worked great.

Cheers,
Paul

[ppietro]

ops revising

Don't revise - just create a new post. I've restored your old one.

Cheers,
Paul