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Loading ...Virtual Salvation
thewelshbrummie
All thanks to testing VirtualBox on my Laptop.
I’ve been trying to find a simple way to play my old games. I’ve already discussed my plans to image all my Amiga floppies (all 500+) and emulate them with WinUAE, and DosBox takes care of all my games pre-1995 that don’t work on any form of Windows.
But I’ve got over 250 game CDs/DVDs, and the majority predate XP (probably only 20 discs). As XP uses the NT kernal, all my games designed for Win 3.1/9x (which use the Dos kernal) need some assistance.
I’ve had few problems running the Windows compatability mode on XP and have got some classics working (anyone remember the Grand Prix Manager Series?) directly from XP. Some needed a recoded executable or a patch for XP; the last GPM game and RollerCoaster Tycoon being the major suspects. But some refuse to install, including my Win95 copy of Command & Conquer (not that I really need it having the First Decade DVD, but it’s the prime example of a game that fails to install)…
…Enter VirtualBox…
Being a general IT freak and needing an all round desktop rather than an ultra high-end gaming rig, I’ve been playing with the joys of VirtualBox on my laptop. With the loss of my XP install on the desktop, I’ve aquired an XP install CD to get it working again on a new HDD.
But temptation was too great.
I decided to install VirtualBox (having a far smaller footprint than VMWare and looking like a far easier app to configure) an now have XP running virtually. Admittedly more than 512MB RAM kills the laptop (seeing memory usage average 99% when allowing 768MB for the virtual OS clearly isn’t good!) but it wil be more than enough for the few apps that just don’t work on Vista (my USB radio being the major guilty party); after all, my current desktop survived over 3 years with just 512MB quite happily.
The biggest benefit though is that I’ve still got a Win98 CD kicking about…. unfortunately not in my flat, but I’d be amazed if it won’t work. As none of the games designed for Win 3.1/9x failed to install correctly on my 2nd desktop (a Win98 machine, the 1st being an IBM build of Win 3.1) it should cover all my oldschool gaming needs (that computer failing miserably on any Dos based gaming without coding new autoexec.bat files and requiring a reboot for each game and reboot back into Win98 - and even then some games still refused thanks to not being able to get the CD drive to work).
The only problem I’ve had is with Ubuntu; I thought I’d have a play with it as I’ll probably end up using it on my current desktop when the build is complete. But having to resize the screen using the Linux Terminal is a completely unnecessary step; can’t the installer window simply be made to fit an 800×600 resolution without needing to resize in a very technical manner? A quick google came up with the goods (rather, the code), but it’s a completely unnecessary step and will undoubtedly put off most casual pc users who have thought about Linux.
And thanks to the virtual HDDs I’ve created, I’m down to just 30GB free on a 232GB HDD for the laptop… clearly I’l be needing those 1TB HDDs for the desktop!
And having said all of this, the oldest game I have is an exception; created in 1987; just 2 files and it runs directly by running the executable from Vista. And it’s less than 200Kb.
The game? Carrier Command, still a favourite of mine after 18 years and one I’ll be playing for many to come.