VPC thoughts.
Posted: Mon Jan 14, 2008 2:21 am
Hello everyone! I've been looking through the forums about getting a lot of old PC games working under XP. I guess it was about a year ago that I finally found a solution to the "old games under Windows XP" problem. I found a really neat little gem (completely by accident) that really surprised me.
To give you a little background information, the game I was trying to run was a game released sometime back in the 1990's. A game called Carmageddon. I'm sure several of you have heard of it ... heedless to say, I wanted to be able to play this game for a long time (ever since I built my current PC and upgraded to XP from Win98.)
I'm a DOS fanatic and I still love to play all my old DOS games ... I hated the way XP "emulated" DOS and DOSbox just doesn't work very good for a lot of the "newer" DOS games. (DOS games that were released right around the same time as Windows95 and required a Pentium-class CPU to run.) Rise of the Triad gave me fair video frame rates under DOSbox, but the sound was stuttered and choppy. Duke Nukem 3D had terrible frame rates and bad sound under DOSbox. Oddly enough, both Duke Nukem 3D and Rise of the Triad worked great under XP's "command prompt" - but there was no sound. I tried Carmageddon under DOSbox and it was too choppy to even play. DOSbox just doesn't move fast enough, I guess.
I tried the VDMSound tool with a lot of my DOS games and while it did give me sound in my games, the sound was terrible. It lagged and it was choppy. I did find a utility like VDMSound that worked GREAT - it was called SoundFX 2000. It emulated a Sound Blaster 16 PERFECTLY! I had no stuttering, muttering, or anything else. The problem was that the author of SoundFX 2000 quit the whole project several years ago. I did manage to find his web site and I tried to see if I could still buy the program from him, but the payment site was down, and he never responded to my emails asking to buy a copy of the software. Since the program would only work for 14 days before becoming non-functional ... I had to find a new solution.
So, I went through my piles of computer junk and I found an old motherboard and processor (AMD 5x86 150MHZ CPU, 64MB RAM, S3 Trio32/64 video card, and Diamond Monster 3D II). I threw it together and set it on top of my XP machine's tower. With a little switch I can share my keyboard/mouse/speakers and monitor with my "DOS system." That worked great for 99.9% of my DOS games - all except Carmageddon. Even with the genuine 3Dfx accelerator card, the 150MHz processor is just too slow to give me good frame rates ... (and that's under REAL DOS using REAL hardware.)
So, I really, really, REALLY wanted to be able to play this old game ... but I was beginning to think I was going to have to just scrap the whole idea and let memories be memories. (I could have just bought a faster old computer, but why pay money and spend time on another computer that's only going to run this one game?)
Several weeks later, I stopped at the local grocery store late one night after work to get a gallon of milk. I was browsing through the magazine rack when I saw a copy of MaximumPC's PC HOW-TO magazine. (It also had a CD-ROM included with tons of different apps and stuff.) I saw the magazine and picked it up to read while I "sit and think." (Hey, I like to do something besides just sit there, alright?) Anyhow, there was an article in this magazine that talked about "Virtual" computing. I thought to myself, well, that's neat. So, I popped the CD in my drive and checked it out. They included a copy of Virtual PC by Microsoft on the disc. I installed it and read through the article to see what was up.
OK, OK, I know - you want me to get to the point ... bear with me, because this is where the cool stuff begins!
Well, to give you a heads up - a Virtual PC is exactly that: a Virtual PC. The Virtual PC gives you a CMOS, Award BIOS, hard disk drive (that you choose the size), a Sound Blaster 16 ISA sound card (at the default settings!), a network card, an S3 Trio64 video card (8MB of video RAM, VESA 2.0), and all the RAM you could want (up to your physical computers maximum, of course.) What was NOT included? An operating system. That wasn't a problem for me ... I still have the original disks (or CDs) for every operating system I've ever used ... (DOS 3.0 thru 6.22, Win95-98, Windows 3.1, 3.11, Windows 286, and XP). If you don't have your DOS disks, there are several free OSes (including FreeDOS and OpenDOS) available for free download. (These are compatible with MS-DOS I've read.)
So, I installed Microsoft Virtual PC. I set my Virtual PC to have 64MB of RAM (DOS versions prior to Win95 did not support more than 64MB of RAM), I disabled the network card altogether because DOS networking software doesn't "talk" to Windows ... (and I wasn't interested in doing any networking anyway.) I created a 500MB hard drive, and I told the Virtual computer to use my real floppy disk drive and CD-ROM drive as the floppy and CD drive in the Virtual machine. I inserted MS-DOS Setup floppy #1 in my floppy drive and clicked "Start" to "turn on" the Virtual machine. MS-DOS booted up from the floppy and I installed DOS.
Once DOS was installed, I setup all my device drivers in CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT to load my CD drivers and the old MSCDEX.EXE program. Once all that was finished, I put my Carmageddon CD into my CD drive and installed it.
The result was UNBELIEVABLE! The frame rates were awesome, and the sound was PERFECT!
I played the game all night and all day for about a week. (I forgot how hard that game is in the later levels!)
Since then, I've used Virtual PC to play the following games/apps under the following OSes:
Warcraft II - DOS 6.2
Zone66 - DOS 6.2 (Disabled ALL upper memory programs!)
Rise of the Triad - DOS 7.1
Duke Nukem 3D - DOS 6.2
XTree Gold - DOS 6.2 & 7.1
Leisure Suit Larry - DOS 6.21 & 7.1
Windows 3.11 - DOS 6.2 & DOS 7.1
Windows 286 - DOS 4.01
Carmageddon - DOS 6.2
DarkSun Shattered Lands - DOS 6.21
Phantasmagoria - Windows95
I did most of these on a P4 3.4GHz system with 1GB of RAM. The exception was Phantasmagoria, which my wife wanted to play on her XP computer: AMD AthlonXP 2GHz with 1GB of RAM. My wife's computer is a lot slower than mine (only a 233MHz bus) but it still runs Virtual PC plenty fast enough to run the Windows 95 operating system.
If you have games that you can't get to work right under DOSbox, then try running them under REAL DOS. Believe it or not, Microsoft offers Virtual PC for FREE - download it directly from them at the following URL:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/deta ... laylang=en
Virtual PC works under Vista, & XP. Additionally, you can run Vista or XP in the Virtual machine. (I have not personally done this.)
On a last note, Microsoft says that they do NOT support Virtual PC for running Win9x or MS-DOS, but I have run all of them without any problems at all - just remember to keep the hard disk sizes below 1GB if you are going to install a FAT16 DOS! Also, don't bother setting more than 64MB of RAM for your Virtual PC if you are running any DOS before version 7 because those versions will not "see" more than 64MB.
If anyone has questions or comments, drop them in the forum and I'll do my best to help you out.
Please do not ask me where to get illegal copies of proprietary operating systems! You can buy legal MS-DOS and older versions of Windows for cheaper than dirt on eBay. (If you DO decide to buy a copy of MS-DOS from somewhere, try to get version 6.2 or 6.22 ... these versions give the best utilities and have not given me any problems with any DOS applications.)
Good luck!
To give you a little background information, the game I was trying to run was a game released sometime back in the 1990's. A game called Carmageddon. I'm sure several of you have heard of it ... heedless to say, I wanted to be able to play this game for a long time (ever since I built my current PC and upgraded to XP from Win98.)
I'm a DOS fanatic and I still love to play all my old DOS games ... I hated the way XP "emulated" DOS and DOSbox just doesn't work very good for a lot of the "newer" DOS games. (DOS games that were released right around the same time as Windows95 and required a Pentium-class CPU to run.) Rise of the Triad gave me fair video frame rates under DOSbox, but the sound was stuttered and choppy. Duke Nukem 3D had terrible frame rates and bad sound under DOSbox. Oddly enough, both Duke Nukem 3D and Rise of the Triad worked great under XP's "command prompt" - but there was no sound. I tried Carmageddon under DOSbox and it was too choppy to even play. DOSbox just doesn't move fast enough, I guess.
I tried the VDMSound tool with a lot of my DOS games and while it did give me sound in my games, the sound was terrible. It lagged and it was choppy. I did find a utility like VDMSound that worked GREAT - it was called SoundFX 2000. It emulated a Sound Blaster 16 PERFECTLY! I had no stuttering, muttering, or anything else. The problem was that the author of SoundFX 2000 quit the whole project several years ago. I did manage to find his web site and I tried to see if I could still buy the program from him, but the payment site was down, and he never responded to my emails asking to buy a copy of the software. Since the program would only work for 14 days before becoming non-functional ... I had to find a new solution.
So, I went through my piles of computer junk and I found an old motherboard and processor (AMD 5x86 150MHZ CPU, 64MB RAM, S3 Trio32/64 video card, and Diamond Monster 3D II). I threw it together and set it on top of my XP machine's tower. With a little switch I can share my keyboard/mouse/speakers and monitor with my "DOS system." That worked great for 99.9% of my DOS games - all except Carmageddon. Even with the genuine 3Dfx accelerator card, the 150MHz processor is just too slow to give me good frame rates ... (and that's under REAL DOS using REAL hardware.)
So, I really, really, REALLY wanted to be able to play this old game ... but I was beginning to think I was going to have to just scrap the whole idea and let memories be memories. (I could have just bought a faster old computer, but why pay money and spend time on another computer that's only going to run this one game?)
Several weeks later, I stopped at the local grocery store late one night after work to get a gallon of milk. I was browsing through the magazine rack when I saw a copy of MaximumPC's PC HOW-TO magazine. (It also had a CD-ROM included with tons of different apps and stuff.) I saw the magazine and picked it up to read while I "sit and think." (Hey, I like to do something besides just sit there, alright?) Anyhow, there was an article in this magazine that talked about "Virtual" computing. I thought to myself, well, that's neat. So, I popped the CD in my drive and checked it out. They included a copy of Virtual PC by Microsoft on the disc. I installed it and read through the article to see what was up.
OK, OK, I know - you want me to get to the point ... bear with me, because this is where the cool stuff begins!
Well, to give you a heads up - a Virtual PC is exactly that: a Virtual PC. The Virtual PC gives you a CMOS, Award BIOS, hard disk drive (that you choose the size), a Sound Blaster 16 ISA sound card (at the default settings!), a network card, an S3 Trio64 video card (8MB of video RAM, VESA 2.0), and all the RAM you could want (up to your physical computers maximum, of course.) What was NOT included? An operating system. That wasn't a problem for me ... I still have the original disks (or CDs) for every operating system I've ever used ... (DOS 3.0 thru 6.22, Win95-98, Windows 3.1, 3.11, Windows 286, and XP). If you don't have your DOS disks, there are several free OSes (including FreeDOS and OpenDOS) available for free download. (These are compatible with MS-DOS I've read.)
So, I installed Microsoft Virtual PC. I set my Virtual PC to have 64MB of RAM (DOS versions prior to Win95 did not support more than 64MB of RAM), I disabled the network card altogether because DOS networking software doesn't "talk" to Windows ... (and I wasn't interested in doing any networking anyway.) I created a 500MB hard drive, and I told the Virtual computer to use my real floppy disk drive and CD-ROM drive as the floppy and CD drive in the Virtual machine. I inserted MS-DOS Setup floppy #1 in my floppy drive and clicked "Start" to "turn on" the Virtual machine. MS-DOS booted up from the floppy and I installed DOS.
Once DOS was installed, I setup all my device drivers in CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT to load my CD drivers and the old MSCDEX.EXE program. Once all that was finished, I put my Carmageddon CD into my CD drive and installed it.
The result was UNBELIEVABLE! The frame rates were awesome, and the sound was PERFECT!
I played the game all night and all day for about a week. (I forgot how hard that game is in the later levels!)
Since then, I've used Virtual PC to play the following games/apps under the following OSes:
Warcraft II - DOS 6.2
Zone66 - DOS 6.2 (Disabled ALL upper memory programs!)
Rise of the Triad - DOS 7.1
Duke Nukem 3D - DOS 6.2
XTree Gold - DOS 6.2 & 7.1
Leisure Suit Larry - DOS 6.21 & 7.1
Windows 3.11 - DOS 6.2 & DOS 7.1
Windows 286 - DOS 4.01
Carmageddon - DOS 6.2
DarkSun Shattered Lands - DOS 6.21
Phantasmagoria - Windows95
I did most of these on a P4 3.4GHz system with 1GB of RAM. The exception was Phantasmagoria, which my wife wanted to play on her XP computer: AMD AthlonXP 2GHz with 1GB of RAM. My wife's computer is a lot slower than mine (only a 233MHz bus) but it still runs Virtual PC plenty fast enough to run the Windows 95 operating system.
If you have games that you can't get to work right under DOSbox, then try running them under REAL DOS. Believe it or not, Microsoft offers Virtual PC for FREE - download it directly from them at the following URL:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/deta ... laylang=en
Virtual PC works under Vista, & XP. Additionally, you can run Vista or XP in the Virtual machine. (I have not personally done this.)
On a last note, Microsoft says that they do NOT support Virtual PC for running Win9x or MS-DOS, but I have run all of them without any problems at all - just remember to keep the hard disk sizes below 1GB if you are going to install a FAT16 DOS! Also, don't bother setting more than 64MB of RAM for your Virtual PC if you are running any DOS before version 7 because those versions will not "see" more than 64MB.
If anyone has questions or comments, drop them in the forum and I'll do my best to help you out.
Please do not ask me where to get illegal copies of proprietary operating systems! You can buy legal MS-DOS and older versions of Windows for cheaper than dirt on eBay. (If you DO decide to buy a copy of MS-DOS from somewhere, try to get version 6.2 or 6.22 ... these versions give the best utilities and have not given me any problems with any DOS applications.)
Good luck!