@ruthan

Edit from future:
If you want to hear some KVM success stories and you dont care about route of pain when we got here, start to read with this post:
Windows 98SE on Modern Hardware (6)
few post under it is guide.

He.. i excepted some very long existing thread.. maybe i could rename behemod to Win98/Xp.

Im too tired, but here is something big Win98 on Ryzen details:
https://msfn.org/board/topic/176962-fail...comment=1177561

Here my Core i7 5960X Win98 success:

What are the "lots of disadvantages" than the guy is talking about about doing GPU Passthrough? I actually believe than it is a far easier way since the most important thing required in a gaming VM is graphics performance, as everything else is already good enough with emulated and paravirtualized Devices. Basically, you wouldn't need to deal with Chipset, USB, HBAs and NIC issues.

@XPLives

13) MB is GA-P75-D3P but line looks like some question, no my original post.

@zir_blazer
See original post i was talking about Unraid and ESX and that is lots of additional hassle in comparison with just normal user multi boot.
I suppose that you are talking about KVM on Linux? Afaik its not possible to make passthrough of some PCI/PCI-E on Windows. Last time when i saw KVM Windows machine, i needed dedicated keyboard and mouse, its it still thing or not?

This is feature, but you need MB which is still able to work with old videocards, which you need to passthrough.. problem is that at least my Z370 intel MB, just ignoring them at all, like they are not even plugged in.
Other thing to disscuss is how good are these QEMU emulated devices like disk controller, usb controllers, nics.. and especially soundcards.

I was able to get an nvidia 6600gt working on my ASRock AB350 Gaming K4

This is AMD though, maybe its different for intel.

Zitat von ruthan im Beitrag #4

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@zir_blazer
See original post i was talking about Unraid and ESX and that is lots of additional hassle in comparison with just normal user multi boot.
I suppose that you are talking about KVM on Linux? Afaik its not possible to make passthrough of some PCI/PCI-E on Windows. Last time when i saw KVM Windows machine, i needed dedicated keyboard and mouse, its it still thing or not?

This is feature, but you need MB which is still able to work with old videocards, which you need to passthrough.. problem is that at least my Z370 intel MB, just ignoring them at all, like they are not even plugged in.
Other thing to disscuss is how good are these QEMU emulated devices like disk controller, usb controllers, nics.. and especially soundcards.

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@infuscomus

Zitat von infuscomus im Beitrag #5

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I was able to get an nvidia 6600gt working on my ASRock AB350 Gaming K4

This is AMD though, maybe its different for intel.

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@ruthan

Zitat von ruthan im Beitrag #4

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@XPLives

13) MB is GA-P75-D3P but line looks like some question, no my original post.

@zir_blazer
See original post i was talking about Unraid and ESX and that is lots of additional hassle in comparison with just normal user multi boot.
I suppose that you are talking about KVM on Linux? Afaik its not possible to make passthrough of some PCI/PCI-E on Windows. Last time when i saw KVM Windows machine, i needed dedicated keyboard and mouse, its it still thing or not?

This is feature, but you need MB which is still able to work with old videocards, which you need to passthrough.. problem is that at least my Z370 intel MB, just ignoring them at all, like they are not even plugged in.
Other thing to disscuss is how good are these QEMU emulated devices like disk controller, usb controllers, nics.. and especially soundcards.

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Zitat von XPLives im Beitrag #7

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Works fine on Z370. Tested long ago before the AM4. AM4 98SE test long ago worked from existing install. Just some issues with corruption at the time when loading images but could be bad SATA cable that caused it. DOS compatibility is good no HMA issues.

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Zitat

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AnyCauliflowe: Yeah, there's not much out there. I noticed on vogons forum one user was keeping a nice google docs spreadsheet testing different bridge adapters with different motherboards and different cards

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And were are back at home :)

Zitat

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AnyCauliflower7: The PCX 5750 (AGP bridge) also detects and kind of works in passthrough, but locks the host whenever the Nvidia drivers are installed.
voodoo1 - passes through but output is always corrupted, even after restarting machine. I honestly don't even know if this card works anymore though.
matrox g450 - code 10 on driver install in XP. I think I only tried this as a secondary card in passthrough though.
mx4000 - like the pcx5750 this locks up the hypervisor when the drivers are installed. This makes me think the lockup is a platform incompatibility rather than a driver/hardware issue but more tests to run.

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That is exactly that sort of problems, which i dont like.. and some Linux boys dont want to hear.. You really can fix them, unless some low level coding, with physical machine, it just working or not, you know that thing to blame is hardware and can maybe dream about some hack from some one. With virtual machine, when i get some problem, i always thing if it is real, or it is just some virtualization bug..

Do we need good working virtual SB16 or something like that for DOS, for Win95+ (without using Dos mode) you can use USB sound cards, they are working.. but of course from XP+ are working better.

BTW if would QEMU for DOS or Windows 9x working fine, there wouldnt be reason to develop PCem from scratch and reason why its used by much more users.. i dont thing that it is just duplicity.

@XPLives to old paint replies:

0) I tested X99 - no dos sound, X79 is last and see only MB with 1 PCI slot what is not ideal. X58 is more retro friendly. Z77.. X6X and X7X boards.. are not some it really depends on chipset some of them have native PCI, other dont, but H67 (not native) is proven and B75 (native) too, all data are based one 1/2 guys info (realiable). But H67 had at least problem with some Yamaha 744 (crackling) but Y724 is working fine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_In...ipsets#LGA_1155 - see PCI column.

8) Gerforce 5 PCI or PCI/E? Main thing is that it even post.. next i would try Dos and if all is right then comes Win98. I was freezing in 2D or 3D? If yes with other card was same machine stable?
Geforce 7 - i have / had multiple of them, but i had to mod their bios with rloew patch and even then, it was not good on some machines but main problem is that they need unofficial 82.xx drivers and that driver is very, very bad.. so these cards are simply dead end.
There is shame that newer Nvidia driver for Nvidia cards is usually worse.. from lets say 20.xx drivers.. they are even slower. Phil made some video about it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRhm4aGNI3o
I switched to Radeon X300-X850 line and games are working - but i didnt test 200 games etc, just maybe 20-30 which im used to play, but there is not problem with new machine compatibility.. but simply ATI had back in era much worse drivers than Nvidia.. AFAIK they OpenGL driver in this era were always PITA.

Storage- unless you have special driver and check DMA, you are stuck at 2 MB/s.. but because are transfers so small.. you are thinking that OS logic is slow, people tend to accept it as feature. I dunno best disk in start of Win98 era werent much quicker.

12) Someone as Rayer claims that its freezing only sometimes.. I had it everytime on Geforce 7 and newer chipsets when i tried to run Doss games like Doom 2 or Warcraft 2 nothing fancy. We have again Vogons thread about it:
https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=61&t=55794 // There are claims that it occurs even on Geforce 2..

13) im using again Radeon X800.. because readeon x300-x600 are really some PCI-E 9xxx line cards.. there are much slower. Broadcom 5721 NIC, Yamaha + Aureal sound cards..and disable Geforce 750 TI as XP+ video card.. and some capture card - XP+

Zitat von ruthan im Beitrag #9

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@zir_blazer - Unraid is highly adjusted Linux distribution, but it really act like bare metal virtualizer, because you boot right into it.. and can within only setup virtualization, otherwise there is not any user desktop OS to use.
Do you have real Unraid experience, or youre just speculating? Because when i tried Unraid - 1,5-2 years ago, all usb device should be used for some virtual machine before its start and there wasnt any way to share them or unplug them, unless machine was started (with dedicated keyboard and mice). Only interaction was possible right on machine when Unraid started, or through browser from other machine.

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Zitat von ruthan im Beitrag #9

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I never heard about magic hotkey for release keyboard, which key combo it should be? I dont know much about KVM with normal Linux. Im using primary Windows / MacOs and.. here a dont need virtualize gaming machine, so VMware workstation and not so good virtual videocard is for Linux is good enough for me and for Windows its able to handle some gaming too in last years - I up to DX10 and 2GB dedicated vram. About KVM i see only video maybe 1,5 years ago from Level1tech a they still needed dedicated keyb + mouse, monitor.

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Zitat von ruthan im Beitrag #9

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Additional hassle. Well i know this Linux - all is already here and ready to use spiel :)... its usually half-working and problematic and working only sometimes. One thing is have full desktop OS working and some virtualization on the side, if you want it, or multiboot.. and second is to boot to some virtualizer, where is if all is right started some virtual machine in which you can do something.
If you want i made list of 20 question / problems to solve, to move my physical machine to Unraid / ESX mode.. For example disc space use is not optimal, its preallocated and formated in some own in windows unreadable parition unraid format. I dunno you can share some data drive between multiple started machines etc? If can dual boot between physical and Unraid machine and still can use some data to continue your work etc.. Use for everything some network share instead of local driver is just workaround.. you know much Windows they dont handle local and network path equally. So apps, can even open some file from network path.

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Zitat von ruthan im Beitrag #9

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If QEMU would be no hassle and ready, i would love to see its realtime instruction translation.. running modern Windows on Raptor Power 8 or similar machine non x86 machines and Crysis or any other modern game within it.. Im calling years for it, it would bring real platform agnostic future. Same this is emulated QEMU Power Mac with 3D graphics and working sound and networking, we are not here..

Yeah virtualization is the future. But i prefer way of desktop VMware workstation / PCem way, not KVM or QEMU on Windows, which not even have GUI for years, simply something user friendly.

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Zitat von ruthan im Beitrag #9

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BTW if would QEMU for DOS or Windows 9x working fine, there wouldnt be reason to develop PCem from scratch and reason why its used by much more users.. i dont thing that it is just duplicity.

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Zitat von zir_blazer im Beitrag #11

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I had to google about this, but you're right: https://www.reddit.com/r/unRAID/comments..._unraid/However, this is an unRAID limitation. In other Linux distributions you can use a single Keyboard and Mouse to command both host and any number of VMs (Including ones with Device passthrough), as I have been doing for roughly 6 years. So it seems like you picked the wrong Linux distribution for your needs...Regardless of how it looks, if unRAID uses Linux and QEMU, then you're not "booting straight to the virtualizer". Xen, being a Type 1 Hypervisor, would be closer to that definition.

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Zitat

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I know nothing about ESXi, and actually, nothing about unRAID idiosincrasies, either. Just generalities about what can and can not be done, but not for your specific distribution or use case. Still, most of your questions seems to be basic ones (And even you can find answers by gooling around).
For disk space allocation, if you don't want to use fully allocated images, you can use sparse images that grow as you use them, but I/O performance will suffer a bit. Check around for QCOW2 format and LVM-lite.
Running the same Windows install as either a VM or Dual Booting is possible assuming that you're using a dedicated HD for that Windows install, since you have to deal with partitioning idiosincrasies. That is currently a rather popular setup for people that have issues with a few games with antiVM anticheats that aren't VM friendly, so that they can decide whenever they want to run it bare metal or as VM.
QEMU is supposed to be able to use a folder as a backend for something that in the VM appears as a disk unit, so it may be possible that you can do that, but I never used it that way.

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Growable disk images are nice, im using it everytime with destktop virtualization, Win98 is not about disk performance, it can run from SD card fine. Folder and drive letter is nice too, im using same way with Dosbox.

Zitat

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QEMU can use TCG to emulate x86 on other ISAs and even you can currently try it for some x86-to-x86 emulator action. I used it for testing if when doing VGA Passthrough it can load the x86 bytecoded Option ROM under emulation, and it worked. Slow as hell and practically unusable, but it worked, TianoCore loaded it so I could see the POST on the Monitor attached to the passthroughed Video Card and Windows 10 desktop after like 20 minutes. So technically, even right now, you MAY be able to use a Talos 2 with its POWER based CPUs to emulate a x86 VM and even do VGA Passthrough with a standard PC type Video Card (While the Talos has standard PCIe Slots and cards physically fits the same, standard PC cards have Option ROM with x86 compiled images, whereas to natively use them in a Talos you would need something with POWER bytecode so that it can be initialized by the Firmware at POST time. I think Linux Drivers can initialize them anyways but that means that they would not be available during POST).

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I dont agree with that it has to be super slow premise. I emulated Power PC with Qemu on 4 years old Core i7 and it was good enough, if there would be good virtual videocards and soundcards. If you look at present emulators.. Fast x86 machine, can emulate Xbox360 and Playstation 3 Power PC based systems fast enough, same with ARM with WiiU emulator and know switch. Yeah MS has lots of resources and all source code, but they are emulating Xbox 360 subsystem on slimer Jaguar x86 Xbox one, even with some enhancement and along side of main OS. So if working on x86, if you really push, it has to work vice versa, if QEMU would be good enough.

Thas slowness is by the way other reason why people tend to go away from it to Virtualbox and Vmware.. second simplier configuration.

About Windows on Talos, i would like to see some proof, some video..

Zitat

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Virtualization is not the future, it is the present. For reference, I have been using VGA Passthrough of a Radeon 5770 for a Windows gaming VM with an Arch Linux host and both Xen and QEMU since 2013 and while it has several hassles, the solution itself works pretty well and user tuning can get it to near perfect levels. I have experience using that setup in WXP SP3, WXP x64 SP2 and now W10 as the main gaming VM. Actually, I believe that you must have an edge use case to prefer to run Windows XP bare metal instead of virtualized, because it runs well enough there. And I have no reason to believe than W9x will not work, since I already saw at least two users with Voodoos and decent success.

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Well, im using some virtualization for last 15 years, but i wasnt for good gaming except 2D good enough for long time.. and retro people still are using real machines, but its more and more complicated.. I dont really dont need that back in era feel - i never liked, floppy sound and small monitors and bad speakers etc.. but on physical HW feel and good response times etc.. so we keep to install OSes on new HW - that is main point of this thread.
I have to videocard passthrough after that i can talk about, if good enough or not.. Main problem would be for most people that you have install and have Linux as main OS, to make it happen.. BTW its possible to automaticly about boot switch right into windows VM and after its shutdown, shutdown whole computer - so simulate real Windows machine usage and see much less Linux as possible, unles i would like to switch from VM to other?
Voodoo cards are corner case, because they even not work even on some quite old machines... Yeah Win9x was GLide era, but Dosbox, PCem etc.. are using 3dfx cards, because they work just like extension of 2d cards, so they are much easier to implement with passthrough you can use some Direct3D / OpenGL cards and it would be good enough.. i find out that even nGlide is working on Windows 98, to emulated 3dfx cards API and its emulated on CPU - which is in emulated machine very fast modern cpu core.

Could you pleas explain that Xen and QEMU staff, i dont heard too much about Xen anymore, how Xen cames to play.. so i though its almost dead.

Zitat

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QEMU itself works by command line, but there are front ends with fancy GUIs like virt-manager. I prefer to use command line and scripts because it is inmensely more flexible.

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Yeah, i used it before it support more than QEMU i thring, but i saw lots of strange Linux quality like bugs (we Windows users just expect that GUI is working) even when i was on some Linux virtualization trainning, but maybe its now better that few years ago.

Zitat

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QEMU is used for modern virtualization, whereas PCem is used as a pure emulator that emulates Devices like Chipsets of old computers systems. I don't expect QEMU to be able to make a VM that runs exactly like an IBM PC 5150 and can properly execute Software tuned for an 8088 @ 4.77 MHz, whereas I do expect PCem to do that.

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Ok it make sense, but now question is if QEMU emulated HW except Passthrough videocard, is good enough for running DOS / Win3.11 or Win98.. especially i have to ask again about sound emulation quality im not audiophile, but sound stuttering is no go.

If you have some QEMU - Win98 / XP do you have some performance numbers? How fast it can be with comparision with real HW? How big is power penalty for emulating Windows 7 and Windows 10 machine and Newest games, its good enough to play every new game? I dont care about details, but only about framerate.

If you have some PCI-E / PCI videocards (anything from Riva 128 / Voodoo3 up to Geforce 6 and Radeon X300-X850 line) which is capable to run OpenGL or Direct3D in Windows 98 - i would like to heard or even see short video how its working.

I dunno if overall KVM problem, or just Unraid problem, but there was problem to passthrough some PCI cards in to some VM..and it could be issue with Win98 too..

I also wonder if its possible to use iGPU for testing and if physical monitoring cables for passthrough gpu (igpu or PCI-E one) are stil needed or not?

And what about KVM MacOS its is working fine for gaming etc?

Ok, i gave Qemu on windows next shot, to try DOS SB sound quality.. I have found some very short DOS tutorial: https://gunkies.org/wiki/Installing_MS-DOS_on_Qemu

I had some old Qemu installed.. as it not have proper GUI - im not sure about version, in changelog is this - version 0.12.0 .. I thing that i have it, because this Dos 3dfx QEMu try:
https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=60950 // No big deal, its named Passthrough, but it really means some Vooodoo to modern GPU translation like nGLide ( http://www.zeus-software.com/downloads/nglide/compatibility ). BTW we have this great Glide on Windows where is 97% of Glide games are compatible, what do you have on Linux?

I installed Dos 7.1 from CD, because i didnt know how to switch floppies on the Fly. Later i learned to change Floppy is from console ( control+alt+2 and back control+alt+1) after that you need magic command: change floppy0 D:\Games\!Emulators\Dos-QEMU\floppies\Disk01.img - i tried relative path, from where is *.bat placed, but its using probably patch from qemu - exe its annoying.. same as whole produre, when you already have some topmenu gui, why the heck make it by command.. - i hate this Linux way.

How to swap CD disk images? I have tried:
change ide-cd0 D:/Games/!Emulators/Dos-QEMU/ISOs/TestChangeISO.iso // But i got whole machine freeze, after comeback from console. Or command for access to cd driver letter, i my case "E:" - give me - Abort, retry, fail.. as any cd wasnt inserverted, after reboot its fine.. but whole target is make sense on the fly..
Disk info block is giving me this:
image name (raw, read-only).
Attached to: machine/unattached/device[25] // Its good or not?
Removable device: not locked, try cloased
Cache mode: writeback
// It seems fine or not?
I trie even eject ide1-cd0 // Command before, now its cd rom empty, but it new image is still available only after reboot.
Regarding of this tutorial i did all right:
http://lassauge.free.fr/qemu/QEMU_tips.html


When i enabled minimal configuration - cd driver, ems etc.. installed and rebooted to DOS and got.. EMM386 crash (older qemu version).

When i downloaded newest Qemu for Windows 4.2 - from same disk image booting is now fine.

How-to - Work in progress / questions
- In tutorial is created qcow disk, what is probably dead end for Windows mounting / editing so i reccomend to use vhd disk format.. qemu-img create -f vpc Data2GB.vhd 2G // Its confusing, with not named vhd, because it was probably used for virtualpc, linux command logic:(
- i had to problem mount QEMU created disk in windows and write data on it and make it still readable inside vm, im doign with with PCem and Vmware and Virtualbox.. For some reason, i filed with Qemu created vhd, vhx.. (i wasnt able mount disk through Windows disk managment - some compression, encryption error message.. properly edit it through PowerISO / WinImage) winner is vmdk.. which i can mount through Vmware map drive as drive letter.
-- What the hell are these parameters in Dos tutorial - "-L ." ? Update: I find it: -L pc-bios defines the location of bios files to be used.
- Im unable to get Quaking Quake 1 demo with any -vga configuration, with STD and Vmware im getting- Unable to load VESA palette, Cirrrus has not 640x480 available at all, probably because not enough vram.
- How to change SB IRQ? Default is 5, i would like to have 7 - some games need it.
- What bout Dos networking? I would like to just have NE2000 and use mTCP for FTP data transfers.. There are lots Linux based networking tutorials, but how about Windows?
Ok, this is network card definition parameter: -net nic,model=ne2k_pci , bt i still need to connection it with some physical machine NICs.. and i know that it was always hassle.. I used some TAP networking software, bridge with real NIC and.. and i remember that you that it was connected with connection Alias (why make it simple when you can have command line hell..).
Ok TAP drivers is park of OpenVPN installation. Command with bridging untested (because of keyboard bug):
-net nic,model=ne2k_pci -net tap,ifname=TAP-Networking // TAP-Adapter driver connection is has to be named: "TAP-Networking"

Hmm, so far.. i made only working networking for the poor, -net user // alias SliRP.. it limited regarding of QEMU networking wiki to no ping :( But i was able from QEMU machine connect to physical machine through telnet.
Network setup is easy with mTCP, just run native packet drivers for your NIC (virtual ones are well supported), setup mtcp OS variable, run dphc.exe in mTCP package, if you get IP - networking is working.
If someone need files for testing, they are in my ultimate DOS drivers package:
https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=61&t=61044 // Info .. if you dont care now about text, here is direct download link:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/4g8snw60ouf1jz...181113.zip?dl=0 // It will probably not survive new updates. otherwise just search for this string: Download: // last version(eurotime)
Packet drivers are in: ETHERDRV\PckNativ folder, mTCP (with batch to setup OS variable) in \mTCP.

I still need help with proper networking. I tried to bridge TAP-Networking and my LAN-Intel 218 - it worked once, but im getting error (An unexpected error occured while configuring the Network Bridge.) during bridge creating, bridge is created, but its in unconnected state.. I wonder is bridge only way how to get better networking with QEMU?
Update: I made proper networking working, you ned to install TAP-Driver (its include with OpenVPN).. bridge you internet conenction and TAp connection, in Windows control panel, just select both and click on bridge.
Ad that you should rename TAP something connection on some your familiar name and use im using just TAP and this command to qemu starting script:
-net nic,model=rtl8139 -net tap,ifname=TAP
After that is just the same as with SLIPR, MTCP is now working even for ping and other more advanced stuff.

- Have problem with Dos arrow keys, they are moving cursor on 1 row up / down in filemanager but 2! There is some Bug report with same or very similar problems:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/qemu/+bug/1574246
Virtualbox had this error too (9 years ago):
https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/58
- Numlock is not working for writing numbers..
- How to copy some text from QEMU console to clipboard? Its seems that its not possible select it and copy.. its annoying if someone would like to get help or search for some string.

Dos sound:
- Its somehow working - its very inaccurate and its console is spawning these messages:
dsound: Reason: An invalid parameter was passed to the returning function
dsound: Failed to lock buffer

There is maybe some fix for it.. but its just some diff file, its over my head to compile it and fix:
https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?p=817904#p817904

There is some info about compiling:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5308...ndows-10-64-bit

- What is interesting, i did not install in Dos driver, just Setup Doom 2 setup to SB - IRQ5, 220.. DMA1..

Hmm, i need really fix that Dos keyboard is not working properly bug, without it.. QEMU Dos experience really sucks.

What is best place to discuss QEMU things? I was only link to half-dead things like mailing list and IRC. What about proper forum or Discord?



Workaround is use Numeric keyboard which actually working as arrows and without double press.. Update: I discovered that with NC/VC are working fine, but other 3 my loved FM, are not working File Wizzard, Dos Navigator and M602 (czech one).