Re: [Qemu-devel] Old DOS under Qemu

[<jeebs@yango.us>]

I originally was creating a new hard drive image.  (Actually, I was just
copying one I already had, but same result.)  Plus in other tests before I 
did the original post, I sometimes unpartitioned and repartitioned, 
reformatted, etc.  A variety.

Later, when I did the retests with bochs vs qemu, it was getting late and I
was getting tired, so I just used an existing partitioned image and simply
reformatted it for each test.  So the only thing that was being kept was the 
partioning, which didn't seem to cause a problem with anything.


As for the floppy images, they are all raw, uncompressed images.  Otherwise 
the floppy  wouldn't boot at all.

I did just run a couple new tests.  With fresh, unpartitioned, unformated 
disks.

I can now get Dell Dos 3.30 to install and boot from C:

Dos 3.20 still fails in both qemu and bochs.

Dos 4.01 behaves a little differently, depending on its mood.  Sometimes 
it'll fail during the boot floppy stage.  Other times it'll fail when 
booting from C, sometimes with Qemu giving a fatal error and sometimes not.


I may get yet more odd results if I used a seperate boot floppy (that 
presumably works) instead of the install disks.

Some of these problems and inconsistancies may come down to:

1) Bugs in the original OS.
2) The OS not liking the newer hardware of Bochs & Qemu
3) The OS being customized for specific hardware, and doesnt like Bochs or 
Qemu.
4) The OS being a bit more picky about the partitioning and formatting than 
newer versions.
5) The OS being warez of unknowned origin.

I'm beginning to suspect that number 5 is a major factor...