softgpu

SW and HW accelerated GPU driver for Windows 9x Virtual Machines

JHRobotics
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SoftGPU: SW and HW accelerated driver for Windows 9x Virtual Machines

SoftGPU animated logo

This is ready-to-use compilation of my 4 6 projects:

Requirements

  1. Virtual machine with one of these VGA adapter support:
    • A) Bochs VBE (Bochs, VirtualBox, Qemu)
    • B) VMware SVGA-II (VMware, VirtualBox, Qemu)
  2. Windows 95/98/Me as VM guest system
    • A) Windows 98/Me - required is last version of DirectX 9 (included in package)
    • B) Windows 95
      • Last version of DirectX 8 (included in package)
      • Visual C runtime (version 6 included in package)
      • OpenGL 95 for versions without opengl32.dll (included in package)
      • dotcom for Windows 95 (required by DX, included)
      • Winsock 2 (LLVM depends on ws2_32.dll, included)

Feature support

Hypervisor Version Adapter VGA driver 32 bpp 16 bpp 8 bpp HW 3D Sound drivers
Oracle VirtualBox 6.1, 7.0 VboxVGA ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ❌ SB16, AC97
Oracle VirtualBox 6.1, 7.0 VboxSVGA ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ SB16, AC97
Oracle VirtualBox 6.1, 7.0 VMSVGA ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ SB16, AC97
Oracle VirtualBox 6.0 VboxVGA ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ❌ SB16, AC97
Oracle VirtualBox 6.0 VboxSVGA ❌ - - - ❌ n/a
Oracle VirtualBox 6.0 VMSVGA ❌ - - - ❌ n/a
Oracle VirtualBox 5.2 - ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ❌ SB16, AC97
VMware Workstation 16, 17 - ✔ ✔ ✔ ⚠ ✔ speaker, SBPCI128
QEMU 7.x, 8.0 std ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ❌ speaker, adlib, GUS, SB16, WSS, AC97, SBPCI128
QEMU 7.x, 8.0 vmware ✔ ✔ ❌ ❌ ❌ speaker, adlib, GUS, SB16, WSS, AC97, SBPCI128
QEMU 7.x, 8.0 std + qemu-3dfx ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ speaker, adlib, GUS, SB16, WSS, AC97, SBPCI128

SoftGPU can use 4 render drivers:

  • softpipe: software Mesa3D reference renderer
  • llvmlipe: software LLVM accelerated 3D renderer
  • SVGA3D: HW renderer for virtual GPU adapter VMWare SVGA-II (sometimes called VMSVGA, VboxSVGA or SVGA-III)
  • qemu-3dfx: 3D passthrough for QEMU by KJ Liew, allow bypass OpenGL and GLIDE primitives to hypervisor’s GPU. QEMU and fullscreen only.

Not all renderers supporting all application/games, performance expectation is in 1024x768 32bit:

Renderer Guest Requirements DX9 DX9 shaders DX8 DX8 shaders DX6-7 OpenGL OpenGL version multiple contexts window mode Glide Glide DOS Expected FPS
softpipe - ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ 3.3 ✔ ✔ ✔ ❌ 1-3
llvmlipe (128 bits) SSE ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ 4.5 ✔ ✔ ✔ ❌ 10-15
llvmlipe (256 bits) SSE, AVX ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ 4.5 ✔ ✔ ✔ ❌ 12-20
SVGA3D SVGA-II (gen9) ✔ ❌ ✔ ❌ ✔ ✔ 2.1 ⚠ ✔ ✔ ❌ 30-100
SVGA3D SVGA-II (gen10) ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ 3.3-4.3 ✔ ✔ ✔ ❌ 30-80
qemu-3dfx qemu-3dfx ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ native ❌ ❌ ✔ * ✔ * native/2 *

Note: expected FPS are for host with i7-4770 + GTX1650.

(*) Note for qemu-3dfx: performance depends on CPU emulation - you can reach about 1/2 of native GPU performance when using KVM acceleration on x86-64 host, about 1/5 when using Hyper-V, and about from 1/100 when is using accelerated emulation and about 1/1000 when using full emulation. DOS Glide and native Glide wrapper isn’t part of SoftGPU. You have to compile it from source or you can donate qemu-3dfx author.

Hypervisor translation to real HW GPU:

Renderer Host technology Hypervisor support
softpipe framebuffer all
llvmlipe framebuffer all
SVGA3D (gen 9) DX9/OpenGL 2.1 VirtualBox 6+7, VMware Workstation
SVGA3D (gen 10) DX11/Vulkan VirtualBox 7, VMware Workstation
qemu-3dfx native OpenGL QEMU with qemu-3dfx patch

VMware Virtual Machine HW compatibility:

Level GPU generation OpenGL version HW 3D in SoftGPU
17.x vGPU10 4.1, 4,3 ✔
16.x vGPU10 4.1 ✔
ESXi 7.0 vGPU10 3.3 ✔
15.x vGPU10 3.3 ✔
14.x vGPU10 3.3 ✔
ESXi 6.5 vGPU10 3.3 ✔
12.x vGPU10 3.3 ✔
11.x vGPU10 - ❌
10.x vGPU9 2.1 ✔
9.x vGPU9 2.1 ✔

Download

ISO image or ZIP package can be downloaded on release page: https://github.com/JHRobotics/softgpu/releases/

Installation

General instruction for most machines:

  1. Setup the Virtual Machine (VM)
  2. Copy installation files on formatted HDD and apply patcher9x [Optional but recommended]
  3. Install the Windows 95/98/Me [Windows 98 SE is recommended]
  4. [optional] install PATCHMEM by rloew and increase VM memory (1024 MB is usually enough)
  5. [optional] install audio drivers (the most common drivers are below)[1]
  6. Run setup with softgpu.exe
  7. Select Hypervisor preset to match your VM software
  8. Press Install!
  9. [optional] Install additional drivers, for example USB (if you added USB controller)
  10. Have fun!

Windows 95 installation

Windows 95 haven’t Setup API, or if has, it isn’t fully operable. This is reason why SoftGPU cannot install driver automatically.

Before installation you have to enable TCP/IP because Winsock 2 depends on that and LLVM in Mesa depends on Winsock. You can do it on Control panel, Network, add Protocol and choose Microsoft and TCP/IP.

Windows 95 TCP/IP

After it you can run SoftGPU, when press Start!, program will install all dependencies and configure and copy files but not install driver itself.

After SoftGPU installer is done. Open Device Manager (right click on My Computer, Device Manager). Find VGA adapter and click on Properties…, tab Driver, Change driver…, Have disk…, navigate to SoftGPU installation folder and click on OK.

Now you have to choose correct driver:

Windows 95 driver choice

  • QEMU STD VGA PCI Adapter = for QEMU with std vga adapter
  • VBox SVGA PCI Adapter = for VirtualBox when selected VBoxSVGA as Graphics Controller.
  • VBox VGA PCI Adapter = for VirtualBox when selected VBoxVGA as Graphics Controller or VirtualBox 5.x
  • VMWare SVGA-II PCI Adapter = for VirtualBox when selected VMSVGA as Graphics Controller or VMware Workstation.

Press OK, OK and after reboot, VM should start with the new driver.

Update

If you have an older version of SoftGPU installed, you can update without any problem: insert the CD with the latest version into the VM and click install. The installer will take care of all the necessary modifications, only to increase compatibility it is necessary to do some steps manually:

Update VirtualBox to 7.0.16

VirtualBox 7.0.16 correct some SVGA flags (my bug report). But this need for Mesa9x/SoftGPU to correct some behaviour. When you update from VirtualBox lower version, please run extra/tune/vbox-optimize-7.0.16.reg on SoftGPU CD/in SoftGPU ZIP archive. If you don’t do do this, you probably will see black screen on most 3D application/games.

Update to version v0.5.2024.27

SVGA3D (especially vGPU10) is very memory consuming. Please consider to apply additional patches and set RAM to 1024 MB. Driver itself can cache memory allocation and it is faster when you have 1 GB RAM and more.

Update to version v0.5.2024.24

  • VirtualBox 7.0.x: it is possible to turn on vGPU10:
VBoxManage setextradata "My Windows 98" "VBoxInternal/Devices/vga/0/Config/VMSVGA10" "1"

SoftGPU in action

  • 3DMark03 in version 0.5.2024.29
  • 3DMark99 in version 0.5.2024.29 + llvmpipe (software only)
  • 3DMark99 in version 0.5.2024.29 + vGPU9
  • 3DMark99 in version 0.5.2024.29 + vGPU10

For comparison, video from real end-of-era PC is here.

Virtual GPU implementation

Here are compare between vGPU9 (VirtualBox 6.1 + 7, VMWare) versus vGPU10 (VirtualBox 7):

If we’re speaking about 3DMark99, there is also test width TNT PCI 16MB, © 1999 STB SYSTEM, INC. But on this ‘GPU’ isn’t Quake 3 playable neither in 640x480, so keep in mind that test performance and gaming performance can vary quite a bit.

Performance between SoftGPU version

Here are some videos from older versions of SoftGPU for performance comparison:

Hypervisor specific setup

Here are some brief steps for individual virtualisation software:

  • VirtualBox
  • VMware Workstation/Player
  • QEMU

VirtualBox VM setup with HW acceleration

  1. Create new VM selecting Machine -> New in menu
  2. Type: Microsoft Windows, Version: Windows 98
  3. Base memory: 512 MB (this is minimum (for vGPU10), but more 512 MB isn’t recommended without additional patches!), CPU: 1
  4. Disk size: recommended is at least 20 GB for 98/Me (you can select less, but HDD becomes full faster). Select 2 GB if you plan install Windows 95. Tip: If you storing virtual machine on classic HDD, check Pre-allocate Full Size, because it leads to lower disk image fragmentation.
  5. Finish wizard
  6. Open VM setting
  • In General change type to Linux and version to Other Linux (32-bit) => This setting haven’t any effect to hardware configuration but allow you to set GPU type through GUI.
  • Now in Display
    • Set Graphic Controller to VMSVGA
    • set video memory to 128 MB (VBox sometimes turn off GPU HW acceleration if this value is lower). More on this issue and more about VRAM usability.
    • Check enable 3D Acceleration
  1. Optional adjustment
  • set USB controller to USB 1.1 (OHCI) for 98/Me, or turn USB off for 95
  • Audio controller set to SoundBlaster 16 for 95 ~and 98~ or AC 97 for 98 and Me (working drivers for Windows 98 are below).
  1. Install system - Windows 98 SE is highly recommended (for newer CPU, you need my patch: https://github.com/JHRobotics/patcher9x)
  2. Optional increase memory - especially vGPU10 driver is relative heavy about RAM usage. Apply PATCHMEM by rloew, after it you can increase base RAM (768 MB or 1024 MB should be enough)
  3. Insert SoftGPU iso (can be downloaded in Releases) and run softgpu.exe
  4. Select profile match to your VirtualBox version

SoftGPU profile selection

  1. Click on Install!
  2. You maybe need some reboots (after MSVCRT and DX installation) and run softgpu.exe again.
  3. After complete and final reboot system should start in 640x480 in 256 colours or in 32-bit colours.
  4. Right click on desktop, Properties -> Settings and set the resolution (which you wish for) and colours:
  • to 32 bits for 98/Me, because only in 32 bit real HW screen acceleration works and applications are much faster
  • to 16 bits for 95, because 95 can’t set colour depth on runtime (reboot is required) and lots of old applications can’t start in 32 bits (all Glide for example)
  1. Verify settings:
  • OpenGL: run glchecker.exe in tools on SoftGPU CD
    • If renderer is SVGA3D, you have HW acceleration, congratulation! If you OpenGL version is 2.1 you running on vGPU9 - most application works but none vertex/pixel shaders. If OpenGL version is 4.1 you have vGPU10 active, from SoftGPU 0.5.x this is preferred variant and most application should work.
    • If renderer is llvmpipe, you have still SW acceleration, but at least accelerated by SSE (128 bits) or AVX (256 bit). GPU acceleration is disabled or you real GPU isn’t sporting HW acceleration.
    • If renderer is softpipe, you have SW acceleration and running on reference (but slow) renderer, SIMD ins’t accesable somehow, or you on 95, where is softpipe renderer by default, even if SIMD hack is installed (more in Mesa9x documentation: https://github.com/JHRobotics/mesa9x).
    • If renderer is Generic, then ICD OpenGL DLL is not loaded. Something is wrong with system or you installed SSE instrumented binaries on no SSE enabled/supported guest.
    • If program can’t start by missing MSVCRT.DLL install MSVCRT (part of Internet Explorer >= 4 too)
  • DirectX:
    • On 98 you can run dxdiag (Start -> Run -> type dxdiag) and check all tests
    • On Me you can still run dxdiag, but works only DX8 and DX9 tests, because we cannot easily replace system DDRAW.DLL. But DX6 and DX7 games should usually run without problems
    • On 95 you can still run dxdiag, but if you run test, you only see black screens, but again, games (if supporting 95) games should usually run.

AMD Zen, 11th Generation Intel Core and newer

Newer CPU have excellent performance but needs some extra tune:

  1. apply patcher9x - this is required!
  2. Change TSC (Time Stamp Counter) behaviour (Warning: this options is not available when VirtualBox is using Hyper-V as execution engine!)
VBoxManage setextradata "My Windows 98" "VBoxInternal/TM/TSCTiedToExecution" 1
  1. (AMD ZEN 2+ only) Change too complex CPUID to something simpler (Windows itself is OK, but some programs may be confused - 3DMark for example)
VBoxManage modifyvm "My Windows 98" --cpu-profile "AMD Ryzen 7 1800X Eight-Core"

vGPU9 vs. vGPU10

There are 2 variant of graphical HW acceleration in VirtualBox 7:

vGPU9 (9 from DirectX 9) is older variant used usually to accelerate Windows Vista/7 aero and some desktop application. On host system is drawing by DirectX 9 (Windows) or OpenGL (Linux/Mac OS). Problem is very low pixel/vertex shader support, so DirectX 8 and DirectX 9 games can’t use shaders. Keep on mind that DirectX in SoftGPU is emulated by Wine, so some non-shaders applications can have problems, because some behaviour is emulated by shaders.

vGPU10 (10 from Windows 10) is newer variant and is intended for acceleration of DirectX 12 (and DirectX 12 can emulate all older DirectX API). On host system is drawing by DirectX 12 (on Linux is translated by dxvk to Vulkan). Main problem is a relatively large amount of bugs (see summary here). vGPU10 don’t work well with SoftGPU 0.4.x releases, but SoftGPU 0.5.x solved most of problems ~and now this is preferred variant.~ vGPU9 is usually faster in DX6-8 application and with Quake 2 engine games (paradoxically vGPU10 is faster with Quake 3 engine games).

Switch between vGPU9 and vGPU10:

  • Open command line
  • (on Windows) navigate to VirtualBox installation directory (default: C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox)
  • Enter this command to use vGPU9 where My Windows 98 is your Virtual Machine name:
VBoxManage setextradata "My Windows 98" "VBoxInternal/Devices/vga/0/Config/VMSVGA10" "0"
  • This command is force use vGPU10:
VBoxManage setextradata "My Windows 98" "VBoxInternal/Devices/vga/0/Config/VMSVGA10" "1"
  • vGPU variant is choose by VirtualBox (default) and vGPU10 is preferred if host hardware is support DX 11.1/Vulkan[2].
VBoxManage setextradata "My Windows 98" "VBoxInternal/Devices/vga/0/Config/VMSVGA10" ""

VMware Workstation setup with HW acceleration

SoftGPU with HW acceleration was tested only with lasted version of VMware Workstation (17 and 17.5), if you’ll be successful with older version or free VMware player, please let me know.

General information

  • Use Windows 98 SE, newer Mesa is not currently working in 95 and Windows 98 FE (first edition) hasn’t supporting WDM sound cards so you might have a problem with sound.
  • Fresh install, Windows 9x doesn’t like hardware changes and if you import import VM from somewhere, strange problems may occur.
  • SoftGPU is now partly compatible with VMware additions, when you decided to install it, please uncheck “SVGA driver”.
  • (optional) set as hardware compatibility to Workstation 9.x for vGPU9 or leave it on default level for vGPU10.

Step by step guide

  1. Create new VM - from menu File->New Virtual Machine
  2. In wizard choose Custom (advanced) click on next:
  • For vGPU9 in Hardware compatibility select Workstation 9.x
  • For vGPU10 leave Hardware compatibility on default choice.
  • Select I will install the operating system later.
  • As Guest operating system choice Microsoft Windows and as Version select Windows 98 (this is optional, driver itself reporting system version)

  • Type VM name and number of processors keep on 1
  • Set the memory to 512 MB (but without additional patches not more!)
  • Network choice is your own (default NAT should work all cases) and SCSI Controller keep on BusLogic
  • set Virtual disk type to IDE (important)
  • create new virtual disk and set space at last at 20 GB (but lower than 127 GB without extra patches!)
  • type or keep HDD file name and at last page before finish click on Customize Hardware
  1. Now VM needs to be a bit reconfigure:
  • click on Add… and Floppy drive

  • click on USB Controller and set USB compatibility to USB 1.1 or remove USB controller completely

  • click on Display but make sure, that Accelerate 3D graphics is turned off for installation = VMware 17.x is painfully slow on 4/8-bit mode when is 3D acceleration enabled. So, turn in off for installation and turn in on after SoftGPU is installed. On VMware 17.5 this was fixed, so you can enable HW acceleration before installation.

  • (optional) click on Printer and click Remove (if you don’t plan to use this feature, you’ll save yourself from a pointless warning message)

  • click on New CD/DVD (IDE) and point Use ISO image file to your Windows 98 installation CD ISO.

  • (optional) click on Floppy and point Use floppy image file to your boot floppy (only if you plan boot floppy)

  1. Click on Close, Finish and Power on machine
  • TIP: if you wish customize boot order, right click on the new VM, choose Power and Power on to Firmware - VM will boot to environment very close to common PC BIOS.

  1. Install the Windows 98 - this step is really pain, VMware VM in BIOS VGA mode is hyper slow and mouse isn’t usable - you have navigate through installation by keyboard (TAB, Shift+TAB, cursor keys, Enter).
    • TIP: apply patcher9x. If you have Intel 11th gen. CPU or newer or AMD Ryzen (any model) or other AMD ZEN architecture CPU and newer, this is necessary.
  2. After installation isn’t system very usable until you’ll install GPU driver! So, insert SoftGPU iso (can be downloaded in Releases) and run softgpu.exe.
  3. Set Hypervisor preset to VMware Workstation (compatible). (“Compatible” profile install bit older Mesa but works for both vGPU9 and vGPU10).

VMware profile

  1. Click on Install!
  2. You maybe need some reboots (after MSVCRT and DX installation) and run softgpu.exe again.
  3. After complete and final reboot system should start in 640x480 in 32 bits per pixel colors.
  4. If you have mouse trouble, open Device Manager (by cursor keys select My Computer and press Alt+Enter to open properties), then disable all HID-compliant mouse. Reboot VM after done!

VMware HID devices disabled

  1. Turn off VM, open VM setting and under Display check Accelerate 3D graphics

  1. Start VM and use glchecker.exe to verify settings.

VMware Workstation Player

VMware Workstation Player hasn’t GUI option to select virtual machine version. But you can set it manually by editing *.vmx file:

  1. Turn VM off
  2. Open folder with Virtual Machine (How to locate: Right click on VM -> setting… -> tab Options -> General -> Working directory)
  3. Open file *Virtual machine name*.vmx in text editor (for example in Notepad if you haven’t something better)
  4. Search for virtualHW.version
  5. Modify line to:
virtualHW.version = "9"

(Original values are 18 for VMware 16 or 19 for VMware 17)

  1. Save file, start VM and run glchecker to verify setting:

VMware Player + SoftGPU

QEMU

There is no native 3D acceleration support for QEMU yet, but you can apply QEMU-3dfx patches.

Next problem with QEMU is, that Windows 98 incorrectly detected PCI bus as PnP BIOS. There is 2 solutions for it.

Non-PnP BIOS

This is best for fresh installations. First you need SeaBIOS with disabled CONFIG_PNPBIOS. You can compile manually from source or you can use my binary: seabios-qemu.zip. Extract bios.bin somewhere and run QEMU with ‘-bios /path/to/somewhere/bios.bin’. Windows 9x installation with this BIOS should detect all hardware without problems.

PCI bus detection fix

If you have already installed system and you don’t see any PCI hardware, use these steps:

  1. Open Device Manager and locate Plug and Play BIOS (Exclamation mark should be on it)

QEMU PCI: Plug and Play BIOS

  1. With this device selected click on Properties, select Driver tab and click on Update driver

QEMU PCI: Plug and Play BIOS properties

  1. In Wizard select second option (Display a list of all drivers in specific location, …)

QEMU PCI: list drivers

  1. Select Show all hadrware and from models list choose PCI bus, click on next, confirm
    warning message and reboot computer.

QEMU PCI: select PCI bus
QEMU PCI: warning message

  1. After reboot, system will ask you for drive on every new discovered device. All you need to do, is select Search for the best driver… and clicking on next. Please don’t select new or updated drivers here - you can do it later. You may need reboot computer several times.

QEMU PCI: new PCI device
QEMU PCI: select best driver

  1. You will be asked for VGA driver and unknown device drivers. Still select default generic driver here!

QEMU PCI: standard PCI VGA
QEMU PCI: unknown device

  1. After last reboot open Device manager again - as you see, you have 2 VGA cards now, so select Standard Display Adapter (VGA) (the working one) and click on Remove.

QEMU PCI: 2 VGA adapters

  1. After reboot (again), you have working system now and you can install SoftGPU and other drivers.

QEMU-3dfx

  1. Built patched QEMU
  2. Install Windows 98 with disabled CPU accelerator (it’s a bit slow)
  3. Check if you see PCI bus on Hardware manager
  4. (optional) Install audio driver you’re using AC-97
  5. Mount SoftGPU ISO and install SoftGPU
  6. Reboot and check if video driver works
  7. Now you can shutdown VM and run again with CPU accelerator enabled
  8. Now navigate to SoftGPU CD to extras\qemu3dfx folder and you have do set the signature:

For QEMU-3dfx need both wrapper and hypervisor same signature to works. This signature is first 7 characters from GIT revision hash. You can obtain the hash by this command in cloned qemu-3dfx repository:

git rev-parse HEAD

Binaries in SoftGPU allows to override build signature registry keys. To check that you have same signature as QEMU run testqmfx.exe (in extras\qemu3dfx). If you see error 0x45A (= ERROR_DLL_INIT_FAILED), you have wrong signature. In this case edit set-sign.reg (copy it from CD to writeable location) and rewrite the value REV_QEMU3DFX to revision hash obtain from GIT (you need only first 7 characters, retype full hash isn’t necessary). After it apply file to registry (by double click on file) and run testqmfx.exe to check the result - you should see rotating triangle on success and see OpenGL information from your host GPU.

  1. Copy fxmemmap.vxd and qmfxgl32.dll to C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM and apply file icd-enable.reg (this tells to driver using qmfxgl32.dll when system opengl32.dll ask about OpenGL driver).
  2. reboot (required)
  3. run GLchecker or some other 3D application to verify settings.

Bugs

Currently there are known these limitations:

Vertex Shaders

Update for 0.5.x versions: Vertex Shaders works on vGPUv10 (VirtualBox 7) and for qemu-3dfx. For vGPU9 (VMware, VirtualBox 6.1) are DirectX shaders disabled, so most of applications can use shader alternative (most of DX8 games lots of DX9).

Windows 95 support

Windows 95 support is limited - SoftGPU works, but there lots of extra bugs will appear and if you haven’t any special reasons for using Windows 95 use recommended Windows 98 Second edition instead.

Other bugs

There are many bugs in individual components, please post them to individual repositories based on bugged application (DirectX, Glide, OpenGL).

But still, please be patient. SoftGPU compatibility target is about a decade of intensive HW and SW development (from DOS direct VGA/VESA access, SW rendering through GDI, DirectDraw, OpenGL, Glide, DirectX, OpenGL again). After all, there will still applications that cannot be run anyway because there are written for very individual SW/HW combinations.

General tips

There are some tips without direct relation to SoftGPU but they can improve the user experience with MS Windows 9x OS.

Fresh install

Prefer new installation over copy older installations done on different (even virtual) HW.

Copy Installation to HDD before run setup

If you installed Windows 9x from CD, on near every system change your will be asked to insert Install CD. You can avoid it if you prepare HDD manually, copy installation from CD and run setup.exe from C: drive.

All utilities you need are on patcher9x boot floppy. The short procedure follows:

  • insert patcher9x floppy to floppy driver and Windows Installation CD to CD driver. Boot from floppy drive
  • run fdisk and create primary dos partition (it wizard type program, just keep pressing 1, Y and finally ESC).
  • reboot after fdisk finish
  • format HDD, copy files, install necessary patches and run the setup using following commands:
format C:
xcopy /v D:\win98\ C:\install\win98\
patch9x C:\install\win98 -auto
C:
cd install\win98
setup /ie /nm

Explanation: The /v switch with xcopy means verify. The /ie switch with setup means skip recovery floppy creation and /nm means no machine check - this is necessary because in Patcher9x boot floppy is using FreeDOS and MS setup program cannot determine RAM size without MS memory manager.

Now setup automatically runs scandisk and after complete it you can continue with installer GUI. You can also remove floppy and CD from drive at this point.

Turn on DMA

Windows by default using interrupts to access HDD and CD drive. This is especially slow in the HW accelerated virtual machines because every interrupt will stop executing visualisation engine and hand over access to hypervisor to solve it and after that it’ll be need to restart visualisation engine again. Time consumed by interrupts depends on visualization technology for example in QEMU + kvm is HDD access very slow equally VirtualBox + Hyper-V and combination QEMU + Hyper-V is downright painful. Fortunately there is DMA transfer of whole memory block instead of individual bytes. Unfortunately you have to enable it manually.

You can turn it on in Device Manager on HDD properties enable DMA checkbox. Do it the same for CD driver and reboot VM for applying changes.

setting DMA access to HDD

Change logon to Windows Logon

After install network card you are asked every time to enter the credentials - but this is not credentials to the computer but to the network (you can also skip this by press ESC). If you don’t plan to install NT server as other VM and runs ancient network sharing, this is only annoying thing. You can turn it off in Control panel -> Network and change Primary network logon to Windows Logon.

Windows logon switch

Extra drivers

These are links to some extra drivers for VM:

If you wish download these drivers from Windows 9x directly, you can use these links (simply replace https -> http):

http://files.emulace.cz/ac97_362.zip
http://files.emulace.cz/sbpci_98se.exe
http://files.emulace.cz/vmmouse.zip

If you need tool for decompressing ZIP and other archives, there is 7-Zip in version with Windows 98 compatible:

http://files.emulace.cz/7z920.exe

Runtime configuration

There a few registry keys to configure SoftGPU and its component, more on softgpu.md or softgpu.html on SoftGPU CD.

Compilation from source (outdated)

  1. You need MINGW and GNU make to build softgpu.exe
  2. You need all development tool to compile all other component (see README.md in individual repositories)
  3. Compile softgpu.exe by type make
  4. Compile VMDisp9x and copy files boxvmini.drv, vmwsmini.drv, qemumini.drv, vmwsmini.vxd, vmdisp9x.inf and place them to driver/win95 and driver/win98me folder
  5. Compile Mesa9x for Windows 95 (e.g., without SSE) and copy and rename files to following schema
    • vmwsgl32.dll => driver/win95/vmwsgl32.dll
    • opengl32.w98me.dll => driver/win95/extra/opengl32.dll
    • mesa3d.w98me.dll => driver/win95/mesa3d.dll
    • glchecker.exe => tools/glchecker.exe
    • icdtest.exe => tools/icdtest.exe
    • wgltest.exe => tools/wgltest.exe
    • [folder] glchecker => tools/glchecker
  6. Compile Mesa9x for Windows 98 and Me (eq. with SSE, optimized for Core2 or Westmere) and copy these files
    • vmwsgl32.dll => driver/win98me/vmwsgl32.dll
    • opengl32.w98me.dll => driver/win98me/extra/opengl32.dll
    • mesa3d.w98me.dll => driver/win98me/mesa3d.dll
  7. Compile Wine9x for Windows 95 and copy
    • ddraw.dll => driver/win95/ddraw.dll
    • ddrawme.dll => driver/win95/ddrawme.dll
    • d3d8.dll => driver/win95/d3d8.dll
    • d3d9.dll => driver/win95/d3d9.dll
    • dwine.dll => driver/win95/dwine.dll
    • wined3d.dll => driver/win95/wined3d.dll
  8. Compile Wine9x for Windows 98+Me and copy
    • ddraw.dll => driver/win98me/ddraw.dll
    • ddrawme.dll => driver/win95/ddrawme.dll
    • d3d8.dll => driver/win98me/d3d8.dll
    • d3d9.dll => driver/win98me/d3d9.dll
    • dwine.dll => driver/win98me/dwine.dll
    • wined3d.dll => driver/win98me/wined3d.dll
  9. make ddreplacer.exe (by typing make ddreplacer.exe in Wine9x)
  10. Extract original ddraw.dll from DX8 redistributable for W95 and type
ddreplacer path/to/extracted/ddraw.dll ddr95.dll
  • copy ddr95.dll => driver/win95/dx/ddr95.dll
  • copy ddr95.dll => driver/win98me/dx/ddr95.dll
  1. Extract original ddraw.dll from newer DX9 redistributable (doesn’t matter if it’s final one, this file doesn’t seem to change often) and type
ddreplacer path/to/extracted/ddraw.dll ddr98.dll
  • copy ddr98.dll => driver/win95/dx/ddr98.dll
  • copy ddr98.dll => driver/win98me/dx/ddr98.dll
  1. Compile OpenGlide9x for Windows 95 and copy
  • glide2x.dll => driver/win95/glide2x.dll
  • glide3x.dll => driver/win95/glide3x.dll
  1. Compile OpenGlide9x for Windows 98 and copy
  • glide2x.dll => driver/win98me/glide2x.dll
  • glide3x.dll => driver/win98me/glide3x.dll
  1. Edit both driver/win95/vmdisp9x.inf and driver/win98me/vmdisp9x.inf and uncomment files and that you added. CopyFiles options have to look like:
CopyFiles=VBox.Copy,Dx.Copy,DX.CopyBackup,Voodoo.Copy

and

CopyFiles=VMSvga.Copy,Dx.Copy,DX.CopyBackup,Voodoo.Copy

and

CopyFiles=Qemu.Copy,Dx.Copy,DX.CopyBackup,Voodoo.Copy
  1. place redistributable to redist folder
  2. Edit softgpu.ini for final paths review
  3. Create ISO file place to it:
  • file softgpu.exe
  • file softgpu.ini
  • folder driver
  • folder redist
  • folder tools
  • readme and licence file
  1. Mount ISO to virtual machine and enjoy it!

  1. Do this before install/update DirectX redistributable, because audio drivers usually overwrite DX files with outdated versions. ↩︎

  2. OK, and there some bugs, so VirtualBox is using vGPU10 even on DX10 only GPUs, so result is usually nice black screen… ↩︎