Trouble installing Windows NT 3.1 Build 475

[Meow_2004]

I'm trying to figure this out, How do I set the pentium II patch for Build 475? The disks are in floppy, so I do I edit the disk?

[The Distractor]

Use 86Box.

[Overdoze]

Use 86Box.

This.

Or if you must bother with something else, it's the same procedure as if it was a CD copy. After the text mode setup completes, don't allow the setup to continue in graphics mode, you must boot with a DOS/whatever boot disk instead and do the necessary changes before continuing with the setup.

[mallard]

VirtualBox is another option: http://www.os2museum.com/wp/installing- ... irtualbox/

[ovctvct]

No no no. Virtualbox is just terrible for even NT 3.1 RTM, especially version 5.0 and later. Just use 86box or VPC 2007(if your OS supports it). And no, you don't edit the files on the floppy disk, rather after the text stage, boot with a dos boot disk then run edit.com to edit them from the hdd.

[mallard]

Virtualbox is just terrible for even NT 3.1 RTM

Not in my experience. All NT and OS/2 based OSs run far better on VirtualBox than anything else I've tried.

86box or VPC 2007(if your OS supports it)

86Box is too slow for NT (on a typical PC at least). VPC 2007 is will not run reliably on any OS that should be used as a "daily driver" in 2017.

And no, you don't edit the files on the floppy disk, rather after the text stage, boot with a dos boot disk then run edit.com to edit them from the hdd.

No, you just change the CPUID reported by VirtualBox, as the linked article explained. Almost as though you didn't read it...

[Battler]

- mallard: NT 4.0 and 3.x runs perfectly in 86Box on my PC, and I'm on a Pentium Dual-Core. Consider changing the renderer to Direct3D, I think it used to default to DirectDraw which is slow as heck on modern graphics cards.

[TheCollector1988]

Well, of course it is slow, it'a an EMULATOR not a virtualizer.

[mallard]

Well, of course it is slow, it'a an EMULATOR not a virtualizer.

I understand why it's slow. That's also that reason that it's so good at running ancient DOS-based OSs (which includes Windows 9x) which don't work reliably on modern hardware or in virtualization.

But if a virtualizer can run the "target" OS reasonably reliably and much faster, why use an emulator?

[TheCollector1988]

To make it work authentic hardware of its period rather on faked hardware (Though VMware emulates a real bios, a Phoenix one).

[Battler]

- mallard: Virtualizers may or may not run old NT versions reliably. We don't know how well old NT versions run under virtualization on, say, a Skylake i5/i7 or a Ryzen.

[mallard]

Well, Ryzen's VME bug means it's completely broken when it comes to running older software and can't even boot XP or 2003 in virtualization without tweaks. I expect the latest Intel chips have similar "features". So sure, if you've got one of the buggy cost-cut new UEFI-only CPUs from Intel or AMD, emulation might be your only option.

For those of us with non-broken hardware, virtualization allows one to see how "good" an older OS can be, rather than how "bad" it was at the time. NT 3.1 (and later versions of NT to an extent) was well known to run poorly even on high-end hardware of the early 1990s, so the "realistic" experience of running it on, say an actual-speed emulation of a 486 with 16MB RAM is not going to be much fun.

[Battler]

- mallard: Fun is subjective. For me, running the OS'es in the environments they were designed to run it is much more exciting than running then in environments that were made years after.

Also, 86Box emulates up to and including a Pentium II Overdrive 333 MHz with 1 GB RAM. I think that's more than enough to make old NT versions fly. I personally run them on the Epox P55-VA board, on a Pentium 75 with 64 MB RAM, and they seem quite fast to me.

[Kenneth]

Well, of course it is slow, it'a an EMULATOR not a virtualizer.

I understand why it's slow. That's also that reason that it's so good at running ancient DOS-based OSs (which includes Windows 9x) which don't work reliably on modern hardware or in virtualization.

But if a virtualizer can run the "target" OS reasonably reliably and much faster, why use an emulator?

It's slow(er in the OS when address translation is enabled) because of the TLB not being emulated 'properly', leading to a fetch from the page tables each time an instruction that references memory is accessed. See src/mem.c, mmutranslate_read. (This is according to commit 84480b from https://github.com/OBattler/86Box.git). You end up incurring a giant performance penalty when a fetch has to occur from memory for each instruction that references a translated address.

It might be best to have a hash table that corresponds to an input address and add to buckets inside for the corresponding address translation (including removing translations from the htab when they need to be evicted), or you can do what MAME does (see http://wiki.mamedev.org/index.php/Virtual_TLB) and have a giant allocated memory chunk where the software managed TLB entries can lie. Either approach should work.

This might improve performance.

[whistler2250]

No no no. Virtualbox is just terrible for even NT 3.1 RTM, especially version 5.0 and later. Just use 86box or VPC 2007(if your OS supports it). And no, you don't edit the files on the floppy disk, rather after the text stage, boot with a dos boot disk then run edit.com to edit them from the hdd.

I've tried VirtualBox for many NT 3.1 builds and the RTM, and I have no problems, I even have high resolution video.