[Qemu-devel] Old DOS under Qemu

[Qemu-devel] Old DOS under Qemu

[jeebs]

I've been trying to install various old versions of DOS under Window's v0.70 
of qemu from FreeOSZoo.

And since so few people appear to be using the Windows version, I've been 
making a point to do as much testing as I can, with as wide a variety of 
operating systems as I can find.

>From version 5 on up, I only have a few problems (Which I've already 
reported.)

However, I got hold of some warez copies of Dos 3.30 (several copies) and 
Dos 4.01.

They don't install.

Running the floppies themselves usually works.

But actually installing them or running off the hard drive causes problems.

Using the command line (as created by qGui):

h:\qemu\qemu\qemu.exe -L "h:\qemu\qemu\bios" -boot a -m 1
-fda "H:\VDisks\OS\warez\Dell330\Dell330-1.720"
-hda "H:\Qemu\OpSys\Dos330.dsk"
-nics 0 -dummy-net -isa -localtime -hdachs 60,16,63,none

Boots the floppy fine.

I can usually format the hard drive fine.  (One version always fails the 
formating.)

I can read and write to the hard drive fine.

But when it comes time to boot the hard drive, every old version of DOS I've 
tried fails the same way.  With the message:

***
Booting from hard disk...
Disk boot failure.
***

I tried 6 versions of old dos (1 v3.2, 4 v3.30 and 1 v4.01)

I even tried the -hdachs option thinking that might help.  (I got the params 
from Bochs, so that should be right.)

I tried enabling and disabling options, such as -isa and -std-vga

None of that helped.

Any ideas?

Considering they do boot from the floppy, and they do work under Bochs 
emulator, I'm kind of figuring it's a problem with the command line. 
(That's why I tried the hdachs option.  It didn't help.)

Considering the problem is reasonably consistant, I'm kind of ruling out 
them being 'warez' copies of DOS, since I got them from several different 
places and they are behaving the same.

But, on the off chance that it's a problem with qemu, I thought I'd post my 
'help!" in the mailing list instead of in the qemu-user's forum, where 
developers probably rarely visit.


So... Any ideas?

Re: [Qemu-devel] Old DOS under Qemu

[Hetz Ben Hamo]

Hi Jeebs,

I just read your mail and decided to try to do what you're doing, only
I'm using Linux instead of Windows, and I'm using the CVS version.

I have tried the following OS's:

* IBM PC DOS 3.30
* MS DOS 5.0
* MS DOS 6.22

All of them are available freely (only the boot disks + some utilities
like fdisk, format, you know - stuff that will let you create
partitions, format and boot the system) at http://bootdisk.com

I used winimage (through wine) to extract some of the compressed boot
disks and create standard image floppies (so QEMU can boot from them).
I only did it with IBM PC DOS 3.3 image.

I created 2 GB hard disk (raw) with the command: 

qemu-img create msdos.img 2G

And I didn't use any special parameters when running QEMU. I used:

qemu -fda <floppy image name> -hda msdos.img -boot a

All of the above OS's recognized the hard disk (although DOS 3.3
recognized 32MB of it, if I'm not mistaken). I used the fdisk version
that came with each DOS to create 1 partition, format it with /s, and
then restarted qemu but with -boot c - to boot from the hard drive.

All of them worked perfectly. The only issue I had was with DOS 3.3
which didn't allow me to erase and/or use the DOS 6.22 partitions, so
I re-created it with qemu-img.

Mind you, I haven't really played inside (no himem.sys, no
autoexec.bat, no config.sys - just a bare boot which asks for date &
time).

If you want, I can send you a bootable hard drive image with only the
DOS boot (which means io.sys, msdos.sys, command.com) which boots
perfectly with QEMU. The attachment size is about ~2MB.

Thanks,
Hetz

Re: [Qemu-devel] Old DOS under Qemu

[jeebs]

Hetz;

Thanks for checking into this.


>partitions, format and boot the system) at http://bootdisk.com

I know that place well...  I've downloaded all of the boot disks from there 
and a few other places.

>All of the above OS's recognized the hard disk (although DOS 3.3
>recognized 32MB of it, if I'm not mistaken). I used the fdisk version

Right.  Back then, 32meg disk was considered more than enough by Microsoft.

(Of course, I can't really say too much... my first microcomputer didn't 
have a hard drive or even a floppy.  I used audio tape. for storage.)

>Mind you, I haven't really played inside (no himem.sys, no

I haven't done anything fancy either.

So you didn't need the -hdachs param.  I wasn't sure if I was going to or 
not, since the docs talk about it being for old dos.

>If you want, I can send you a bootable hard drive image with only the

That's alright.

I'm more concerned about testing qemu than actually running  old versions of 
DOS.

If I can get an old copy of DOS working, I may try Windows 1.0x and 2.03


>From unknown sources, I have Dos 3.2, Dos 3.3, Dos 3.3r, Dos 4.01, IBM Dos 
3.30, Dell Dos 3.30

I fully admit these are warez stuff of unknown quality.

However, I'm not getting the same results in qemu as I am with Bochs.

Dos 3.2
Qemu: Format failure. Bad partition.  If already formatted, it boots C:
Bochs: Same as qemu

Dos 3.3
Qemu: Format hangs.  If already formatted, Boot C: fails.
Bochs: Format hangs.  If already formatted, it will boot from C:

Dos 3.3r
Qemu: Fails to boot floppy.  Hangs.
Bochs: Same as qemu

Dos 4.01
Qemu: While booting from floppy, it causes Qemu itself to fail.
Bochs: Boots floppy.  Installs.  Fails to run from C:  Bochs gives an guest 
error message.

IBMDos 3.30
Qemu: Not bootable floppy.  Wont install.
Bochs: Not a bootably floppy.  (Didn't try installing it...)

Dell Dos 3.30
Qemu: Installs.  Wont boot from C:
Bochs: Installs fine.  Boots fine.


In three seperate cases, qemu is behaving differently from bochs.  And in 
once case it's aborting.

In no case does qemu manage to work with these images.  Even with warez 
stuff, I would have expected at least one to be not too badly broken or 
trojaned to be able to boot C:

So it's looking more like problems with qemu some how.  Frankly, I expect 
Boch's is much more accurate an emulation than qemu is!

I guess these aren't the biggest problem that Qemu has, but like I said 
previously, there aren't too many windows users in here, so I've been making 
a point to test about every OS I can find, along with watching for other 
Windows oriented problems.

Anyway, thanks for doing some testing.  If nothing else it prompted me to do 
more testing (and this time write down my results!)

Re: [Qemu-devel] Old DOS under Qemu

[Hetz Ben Hamo]

I just wonder about 1 thing:

In every test - have you created a new hard drive image prior to running QEMU?
I would suggest creating new hard drive images before using QEMU and
use this new hard drive image for each test.

Also, my guess is that some of your floppy images are actually a
compressed Disk Plus Pro/WinImage files. I suggest you download
winimage from http://www.winimage.com and extract the boot floppies to
a new image file (simply open them with winimage and then click save
as, and save them as IMA file).

Hope this helps,

Hetz

Re: [Qemu-devel] Old DOS under Qemu

[Christian MICHON]

On 5/12/05, jeebs@yango.us <jeebs@yango.us> wrote:
> I've been trying to install various old versions of DOS under Window's v0.70
> of qemu from FreeOSZoo.
> 
> And since so few people appear to be using the Windows version, I've been
> making a point to do as much testing as I can, with as wide a variety of
> operating systems as I can find.
> 
> >From version 5 on up, I only have a few problems (Which I've already
> reported.)

I want to come back on the last item. I have made images of my 15y old 720k
floppies, and jumped back to 1991 this morning.
- 3x720k for DOS5.0
- 7x720k for win3.00a
- 7x720k for works2.0

all original, not warez. Cost a bunch back in 1991 :(

I tried a few things:
- install dos: ok
- install win: ok
- mouse: ok, no change of speed on qemu070/XPhost
- floppies 720k: ok. The catch to format them is to either quick format them,
not in high density. Inside win3.00a, it works like a breeze.

win3.00a even recognise 18M of ram to play with.
I've seen no problem whatsoever. Do you want my bins jeebs ?

Christian

Re: [Qemu-devel] Old DOS under Qemu

[jeebs]

Christian;

> >From version 5 on up, I only have a few problems (Which I've already
> > reported.)

>I want to come back on the last item. I have made images of my 15y old 720k
>floppies, and jumped back to 1991 this morning.

The only problems I've noticed with newer DOS's are (right off the top of my 
head)

1) mouse driver problem failing.  (In the Ghost backup floppy.  Standard 
microsoft driver.)  Also, Ghost itself fails with the same error.  This disk 
definetly works under real hardware because I use it.

2) DrDos 7.03 (?) having trouble detecting the <enter> key during 
installation.  Or maybe the floppy change...

3) Mouse driver in FreeDos hangs up.

4) Some of them saying that A20 is already enabled.  That shouldn't start up 
like that.  I think it's supposed to be disabled by default.

5) The mouse rate on my host wasn't always exactly like it originally was. 
That was a big problem a few months ago.  I had a 'dirty' copy of XP and was 
using the latest Logitech mouse driver.  I suspect it was the mouse driver, 
actually.  I recently reinstalled and I'm using the default driver in XP, 
and most of those problems immediately disappeared.  However, there have 
been a couple times when I'd shut qemu down and my host mouse driver seemed 
just a wee bit slower than it should be.  It'd test it, and then reset the 
speed and test it again, and it seemed like it was a speed mark too slow.

But, for the moment, I'm willing to say it was my imagination.  It must have 
been the Logitech mouse driver causing so much problem before.  (Whatever 
the cause though, it was *definetly* repeatable.  It wasn't an occasional 
problem.)

There may have been a few other issues that I've reported, but right off 
hand I can't remember them.  Plus all the standard stuff, such as the cd 
change problem, etc. etc.


>- floppies 720k: ok. The catch to format them is to either quick format 
>them,
>not in high density. Inside win3.00a, it works like a breeze.

Qemu has problems dealing with older size floppies.  It should check the 
size and use that as an indicator what it's supposed to be.  (Or add yet 
another command line switch.)

Qemu could get fancy and start specifying all storts of options for custom 
disks, etc. but I don't know if the BIOS would support them or not.  (Shame 
the bios isn't written for easier hacking.  And it's a shame that qemu & 
bochs can't handle a larger bios so it could be extended, config screens 
added, etc. etc.)

Probably be easier to just check for disk sizes of 160k, 180k, 320k, 360k, 
720k, 1.2m, 1.44m, 2.88m, 820k, 1.72m and 1.68m  and set the hardware type 
accordingly at startup.  (Again, I don't know what sizes the bios can 
support.)

(Actually, if you check the disk sizes, you may have to allow a few k-bytes 
either way, since some disk images may not be the exact byte size, even 
though they should be.)

>I've seen no problem whatsoever. Do you want my bins jeebs ?

Thanks for the offer, but I already own Dos 5 and Win300a (although 
admittedly the images I'm using came from a friend, since I no longer have a 
5.25" floppy, and didn't make images of them back then.)

I am still looking (for qemu testing purposes, of course, since I wouldn't 
try to install this on my real computer[laugh]) for a valid, known good copy 
of ms-dos 3.3, pc-dos 4.01, and pc-dos 6.10.  And maybe pcdos 7 and 2000. 
And I wouldn't be opposed to Win/286 or Win/386 either.

The warez copies I have could either be damaged or hardware specific.  It 
wasn't uncommon for dos 3.x to be modified for a specific brand of computer 
or even a specific machine.  And although it's interesting that the copies I 
have behave differently in Bochs than in Qemu, I'm definetly willing to say 
that due to their warez nature, the results may not be accurate or 
significant.

I guess, realistically, that my testing old OS's may not really help qemu 
development all that much, but since my home computer is older and not as 
fast as most people's, I don't really want to spend hours and hours and 
hours trying to install XP or Win2k3 or something, just to have it fail.  If 
the qemu accelerator modules worked under Windows (and actually improved the 
speed, since qvm86 seems to slow qemu down!), then I might.

But for now, testing older stuff is all that I have time for.

Re: [Qemu-devel] Old DOS under Qemu

[Jernej Simončič]

On Thursday, May 12, 2005, 18:25:22, jeebs@yango.us wrote:

> 4) Some of them saying that A20 is already enabled.  That shouldn't start up
> like that.  I think it's supposed to be disabled by default.

I've seen that on real hardware with DR-DOS on Maxtor PowerMax boot floppy,
so it's probably not a Qemu problem.

-- 
< Jernej Simoncic ><><><><>< http://deepthought.ena.si/ >

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
       -- A. C. Clarke's Third Law

Re: [Qemu-devel] Old DOS under Qemu

[Christian MICHON]

> >I've seen no problem whatsoever. Do you want my bins jeebs ?
> 
> Thanks for the offer, but I already own Dos 5 and Win300a (although
> admittedly the images I'm using came from a friend, since I no longer have a
> 5.25" floppy, and didn't make images of them back then.)
> 

euh... I only meant sharing my compiled version of qemu.
Sorry it was interpreted wrongly. The offer still stands :)

The rest of the explaination is clear. Too bad I don't have a mouse floppy
driver anymore ???

Christian

Re: [Qemu-devel] Old DOS under Qemu

[jeebs]

>euh... I only meant sharing my compiled version of qemu.
>Sorry it was interpreted wrongly. The offer still stands :)

I'm already using the latest FreeOSZoo windows build.  There hasn't been any 
patches posted since it was built.

[Qemu-devel] Re: Old DOS under Qemu

[Ronald]

Le Thu, 12 May 2005 16:20:32 -0500, jeebs a écrit :

>>euh... I only meant sharing my compiled version of qemu.
>>Sorry it was interpreted wrongly. The offer still stands :)
> 
> I'm already using the latest FreeOSZoo windows build.

This doesn't mean that it perform like Christian's or Kazu's one, you can
 get a try.   

>  There hasn't been any patches posted since it was built.

Last build is the 0.7.0 release, cvs did get updated since.
I am in touch with Stefano to find the better way to upload on FreeOSZoo.

By the way, I get an "Assertion failed" box when trying vfat: in
block-vvfat.c line 752 "Expression mapping->begin<mapping->end", that's on
win98, using fat: on linux works.

fat-assertion, was Re: [Qemu-devel] Re: Old DOS under Qemu

[Johannes Schindelin]

Hi,

On Fri, 13 May 2005, Ronald wrote:

> By the way, I get an "Assertion failed" box when trying vfat: in
> block-vvfat.c line 752 "Expression mapping->begin<mapping->end", that's on
> win98, using fat: on linux works.

Do you have 0 byte files in that directory perchance?

Ciao,
Dscho

[Qemu-devel] Re: fat-assertion, was Re: Re: Old DOS under Qemu

[Ronald]

Le Fri, 13 May 2005 17:02:05 +0200, Johannes Schindelin a écrit :

> Hi,
> 
> On Fri, 13 May 2005, Ronald wrote:
> 
>> By the way, I get an "Assertion failed" box when trying vfat: in
>> block-vvfat.c line 752 "Expression mapping->begin<mapping->end", that's on
>> win98, using fat: on linux works.
> 
> Do you have 0 byte files in that directory perchance?

Yes, I have tried with "My Documents" which contained 3 directories, this
works when the directory has files only inside.

Thanks.

> 
> Ciao,
> Dscho

Re: [Qemu-devel] Re: fat-assertion, was Re: Re: Old DOS under Qemu

[Johannes Schindelin]

Hi,

On Fri, 13 May 2005, Ronald wrote:

> Le Fri, 13 May 2005 17:02:05 +0200, Johannes Schindelin a écrit :
>
> > Do you have 0 byte files in that directory perchance?
>
> Yes, I have tried with "My Documents" which contained 3 directories, this
> works when the directory has files only inside.

Okay, with that in mind I will try to fix it this WE.

Ciao,
Dscho

Re: [Qemu-devel] Re: Old DOS under Qemu

[Christian MICHON]

On 5/13/05, Ronald <daimon55@free.fr> wrote:
> > I'm already using the latest FreeOSZoo windows build.
> 
> This doesn't mean that it perform like Christian's or Kazu's one, you can
>  get a try.
> 

Actually I performed some comparisons yesterday using nbench on
a qemu linux guest on winxp host, and in terms of speed, my version is
as good, not better, than FreeOSZoo.

What I don't understand is why qemu on XP host is performing better than
qemu on linux host (without kqemu of course...). Qemu on xp is around 2 or
3x faster. Am I doing something wrong here ?

Christian

Re: [Qemu-devel] Old DOS under Qemu

[jeebs]

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...