Running Windows 95 (or Windows 98)

[Loondawg]

Does someone have a set of instructions for a relative newbie on how to install and run Windows 95, or Windows 98, in emulation on a Raspberry Pi? I've spent hours searching through this forum and have followed a bunch of threads that have left me frustrated and more confused than when I started.

This seems like a pretty common subject from the number of posts about it, but for the life of me I can't find a simple, working set of instructions that is either complete or understandable. The instructions I have found vary widely about which Linux distribution to use, what emulator to use, how to set it up to install Win95 or Win98, etc. Can someone please help?

My goal is to set it up so I can use it to run two old car repair programs that I still use regularly. I'd prefer Win95 due to the lighter footprint but Win98 would also work. I just want to plug in the SD, and boot up, and be able to fire up either of the programs as seamlessly as possible. Ideally, I would like to use the program launcher from Kodi to do that, but I am open to anything that will get this working simply.

[Loondawg]

Nevermind. I finally got it working.

I just installed debian jessie on a desktop PC. Ran the update and upgrade. And then I simply ran the apt-get install for qemu. That allowed me to do the entire win98 install on the desktop PC.

After installing qemu, I used the following command to create the img file:

qemu-img create win98.img 1G

Then I used the following command to install windows from a win98 ISO created from an original install disk.

qemu-system-i386 -localtime -cpu 486 -m 256 -cdrom d win98se.iso -boot d -hda win98.img

Doing that resulted in a quick, clean, problem-free windows 98 install. It bypassed all the Win98 installation problems I was having on the RPI. And this works much better anyway since the desktop is a much faster PC to work with.

After the win98 install, I took the resulting img file and copied it over to the PI. And then I used these instructions to get qemu running on the PI.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrq_VtrnhHE.

After qemu installed, I used the following command to run 98 on the RPI.

qemu -cpu 486 -m 256 -hda win98.img

It's slow, but seems to work great. The only problem I have found is it does not close cleanly. It always hangs on shutdown which means it always does a scandisk when it restarts. If anyone has any ideas how to fix that, I'd love to hear them.

[karldros]

dude I wish you can share your step by step tutorial or the win98 image if possible?

Thanks

[mattmiller]

Win98 was notorius for not closing down and locking up at that point even on intel processors - I always ended up just switching off when I used to look after a load of school computers

[stderr]

Win98 was notorius for not closing down and locking up at that point even on intel processors - I always ended up just switching off when I used to look after a load of school computers

Which, of course, made it even more likely to not shutdown correctly.

[mattmiller]

Which, of course, made it even more likely to not shutdown correctly.

Yep - we were always OK up to point that it started happening - but once it started - no known cure - just palative care only

But I still have a very warm place in my heart for it (Win98SE)

I am amazed that someone has got this going on a Pi - if its just slow-i'd be even more amazed - I'd expect treacle speed

I'll have to try it out just to see and report back on its slowness compared to a 400Mhz Pentium II running with 128K of RAM

[liudr]

Thanks for sharing the commands. Is there any reason that virtual box won't work with a windows PC using up-to-date hardware?

[Ruffturn]

like karldros, I really appreciate your efforts and I'd really like to see more detail on how you accomplished this.

I've been trying to familiarize myself with qemu but "
qemu-system-i386 -localtime -cpu 486 -m 256 -cdrom d win98se.iso -boot d -hda win98.img" yields a "cannot open d: No such file or directory" error.

I haven't figured out how to tell qemu that my win98se.iso file is the d drive cdrom.

Thanks for your help!

[k-pi]

From memory, it looks like one too many 'd's - try this, (no guarantees).

Code: Select all

qemu-system-i386 -localtime -cpu 486 -m 256 -cdrom win98se.iso -boot d -hda win98.img

[InstTech]

like karldros, I really appreciate your efforts and I'd really like to see more detail on how you accomplished this.

I've been trying to familiarize myself with qemu but "
qemu-system-i386 -localtime -cpu 486 -m 256 -cdrom d win98se.iso -boot d -hda win98.img" yields a "cannot open d: No such file or directory" error.

I haven't figured out how to tell qemu that my win98se.iso file is the d drive cdrom.

Thanks for your help!

Hi,
"qemu-system-i386 -localtime -cpu pentium -m 256 -boot d -hda Win98.img -cdrom Win98SE.iso -net nic,model=ne2k_pci -net user"
works too, Win98.img & Win98SE.iso in this case needs to be in the user root (or you need to give the full path. I haven't managed to get the network driver and communications to load however.

[VincentGR]

Been there, done that.
Amazing guide indeed but I cannot have more than 16 colours screen.
Tried some tweaks with -vga with no luck.
Also I did manage to get some extra colours with win98 default drivers (vga&cirrus) and bsod was the King around

[nanonite]

There are obviously pros and cons installing it in DOSbox VS Qemu, both seems to be possible:

http://dosbox95.darktraveler.com/w98%20part%203.html

I wonder if someone did it both who can compare the speed.

The reason I will give up already on DOSbox because it has no real TCP/IP IPX/SPX or NIC support. It can fake a subset which satisfy some games but it's miles away from a fully working TCP/IP stack.

Also what put me off DOSbox is that unlike Win1, 3.1, 3.11 where you dont need to fake a hard disk you need to do it from the point of Win95, creating image files and whatever, then I rather go with a full VM.

[mob-i-l]

PINN (similar to NOOBS) can install Windows 98 (it's in the test department). I run it on a Raspberry Pi 2 a few days ago. It run slowly. PINN: viewtopic.php?t=142574