[HN Gopher] VMware mouse driver for Windows 3.x
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VMware mouse driver for Windows 3.x
Author : ingve
Score : 227 points
Date : 2021-11-27 13:02 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| wcfields wrote:
| My happy thought: I'm sure that someone, somewhere has an ancient
| door keycard badge program that they can finally virtualize
| because of a mouse driver.
| digital2568 wrote:
| Check the comparison between <a
| href="https://www.worldtoptoday.com/2020/02/windows-7-64-bit-
| vs-32... 7 64 bit vs 32 bit</a> in details way.
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| Thanks, I just needed this!
| exikyut wrote:
| Whatever for? :D
|
| You can't possibly say _that_ without context.
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| Well, I've recently discovered the installation disks for
| Turbo C++ for Windows. And I remembered I still have Symantec
| C++ somewhere - and a vague memory they had quite nice MFC
| examples you could learn from. Unfortunately, I had to stop
| tinkering with them shortly after I started because I had to
| prepare for university exams and so on, and in the meantime
| other more successful tools appeared and I never had a chance
| to go back. But a fond memory has remained, so now that the
| second lockdown is approaching and I'll have more time, I
| plan to write a couple of Win32 (well, actually Win16) apps I
| had in mind back then. And if I feel particularly
| adventurous, maybe even port them to Windows 11 (I feel I
| might be able to pull it off with Symantec and MFC; I think
| Borland depended on their own library but I may be mistaken).
| In the light of crazy stuff people do in their spare time and
| post here, I'd call this a very reasonable and mainstream
| exercise.
| etaioinshrdlu wrote:
| I'm very upset that upgrading to an M1 macbook will mean losing
| about 5 parallels VM's running x86, old versions of windows and
| linux.
|
| I used it to run old versions of 3d, graphics, and embedded
| engineering tools.
|
| I'd pay $100 a year for a tool that provided good emulated guest
| drivers (3d,audio,network,mouse) for win 9x, XP, 7, Linux on an
| m1.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| Which tool even provides good guest drivers for 3d on non-
| emulated 9x ?
| zamadatix wrote:
| https://github.com/kjliew/qemu-3dfx
|
| Looks like someone was able to show games working well on an
| M1 mac build https://github.com/kjliew/qemu-3dfx/issues/23#is
| suecomment-9... and the project offers a $59.99 service to
| generate binaries. Might be the perfect answer for GP.
| SamuelAdams wrote:
| I get around this by running windows / Linux virtually on a
| server in my basement. If there is some software I need I can
| either ssh or use a Remote Desktop tool.
| wila wrote:
| This is awesome, I will definitely use this.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| It's not the same protocol as in virtualbox, though.
|
| https://wiki.osdev.org/VirtualBox_Guest_Additions#Mouse_Inte...
| calvin_ wrote:
| that page is a bit outdated; i do know VBox has changed for at
| least devices like SVGA, so I think it's possible. that said, i
| don't use vbox, so i can't say for sure
| unnah wrote:
| Not bad for a first attempt at x86 assembly! One wonders how much
| experience the author had with other assembly languages
| beforehand.
| calvin_ wrote:
| just PowerPC assembly before, but mostly on a much smaller
| scale (RE or writing basic blocks)
| xpressvideoz wrote:
| This is my first time seeing a program versioned 0.0. I'm
| surprised I didn't think of the idea before! There must be some
| appropriate uses.
| unbanned wrote:
| Makes sense. Taking https://0ver.org/ to its logical
| conclusion.
| tambourine_man wrote:
| I can't tell if this is satire or real.
|
| Poe's law still going strong.
| marcodiego wrote:
| I thought windows 3 supported standard ps/2 or serial mice. If a
| mouse needs a special driver, I'd classify it as broken. Ok,
| there's the possibility of it being a USB mouse, but... there's
| no reason a PC emulator/VM won't support standard ps/2 or serial
| mouse. Or is it more like the special situation where mouse
| doesn't needs to be "captured" by the VM?
| skrebbel wrote:
| Maybe consider reading the article.
| ape4 wrote:
| The most polite RTFA ;)
| marcodiego wrote:
| I agree with you. I should have been more careful before
| commenting. Nevertheless, still think the title could be a
| bit more obvious.
| thom wrote:
| I've had good results with DOSBox-X to keep old DOS/Windows
| software up and running:
|
| https://dosbox-x.com/
|
| It's basically a fork of DOSBox that isn't averse to supporting
| non-gaming apps. For entirely nostalgic reasons, in addition to
| all of eXoDoS, I've got Windows for Workgroups, Office, Visual
| C++, Encarta etc. I can't really justify keeping all this around
| other than it makes me happy.
| simcop2387 wrote:
| For some of the other apps you might want to try pcem for more
| advanced and complete emulation. It takes more resources but
| does it at a lower level which should allow for better
| compatibility.
| Narishma wrote:
| Why would you need to justify it?
| csdvrx wrote:
| > I can't really justify keeping all this around other than it
| makes me happy.
|
| Emotions are underrated as drivers for decisions: I've read
| here and in a few other places that fMRIs have shown decisions
| are first taken by the part of the brain responsible for
| emotions: only later does the part responsible for reasoning
| "lights up".
|
| This means rationalization happens ex-post. So now, whenever I
| want to take a decision, I listen to my "heart" which
| integrates from a large array of inputs, including intuition,
| and therefore performs generally better than pure logical
| reasoning (Kirk style vs Spock style)
|
| Even if this doesn't work our for you... at least you'll be
| happy :)
| naikrovek wrote:
| > Emotions are underrated as drivers for decisions
|
| and also extremely overrated. the number of times my work
| life has been made a nightmare because A) the decision-maker
| was shielded from the consequences of their decisions, and B)
| their technical decisions were based on "vibe" or how good
| the salesperson made them feel over 25 paid lunches, numbers
| easily over two dozen.
|
| the worst periods of my career have always been because
| technical decisions were made on an emotional basis.
|
| I realize that the my parent comment is almost certainly
| referring to personal decisions in the bit that I quoted; I'm
| just hoping to bring awareness to bad decisions based on
| emotion. it's endemic and terrible.
| nope96 wrote:
| What's the best way to virtualize Windows 95/98? I've read VMware
| no longer supports it.
| aninteger wrote:
| Non-support does not necessarily imply non-working. Anyway,
| QEMU still work just fine.
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| This is a stupid question, but can you run a VMWare Modern
| instance, and inside of that have a VMWare Ancient instance
| that runs Windows 95/98? I've never heard of nesting VMs, but
| I've never looked either.
| sgtnoodle wrote:
| If the VM depends on hardware virtualization support, you can
| only go one layer deep. If the VM does not depend on hardware
| support, then sure you should be able to nest multiple
| layers.
|
| For really old software, you can probably get away with
| fairly high overhead emulation rather than virtualization,
| and it would probably be less buggy. I would imagine
| something like qemu would have no trouble booting up windows
| 95.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| > f the VM depends on hardware virtualization support, you
| can only go one layer deep
|
| Most VM support nesting of hardware virtualization, with
| glaring exceptions being Windows's HyperV (until W11
| apparently) and Xen.
| mook wrote:
| Was there even hardware virtualization support to take
| advantage of if you're going that old?
| wila wrote:
| Yes, that's exactly what I do.
|
| This way you get the binary translation feature from the
| older VMware version while you can use the hardware
| accelerated virtualisation in the outer layer.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| No one has mentioned VirtualBox yet?
| breakingcups wrote:
| For good reason. Oracle's licensing is nefarious. They
| changed the licensing of the extension pack between versions,
| so now if you run it for personal use but connect to your
| company's wifi, they'll get your company on the hook for
| "violating" their license.
| Sunspark wrote:
| Out of curiosity, if one was to bring their laptop to
| Starbucks, would Oracle lawyers attack Starbucks?
| Narishma wrote:
| It doesn't run those OSes very well.
| mikeroySoft wrote:
| Still VMware. "Not Supported" in this context just means it's
| not continually tested.
| wila wrote:
| There's plenty of hardware Windows 98 no longer works on
| Mike.
|
| Just tried it on my 2012 mac with Fusion Player 12.1.2 the
| other day. Windows 98 does no longer boot. Worked fine on
| Fusion 8. My guess is that it needs Binary Translation
| support and that's not available with 12.x
|
| edit:
|
| My bad.
|
| Figured to see if I could find out why. Upgrading from
| virtual hardware 4 to virtual hardware 6 seems to help. (yeah
| yeah, it's an old VM)
|
| edit 2:
|
| With some of the more recent AMD processors however you are
| out of luck, they really need BT.
| calvin_ wrote:
| they don't need BT, but rather, you can't let the VM manage
| its own PTEs. virtualbox lets you configure that - just
| turn off nested paging. vmware unfortunately doesn't do
| that. if you can get the VM booting in safe mode, flipping
| the safety options from system properties perf button might
| help too. (I will say ME runs fine where 98 doesn't.
| weird!)
| userbinator wrote:
| _but rather, you can 't let the VM manage its own PTEs.
| virtualbox lets you configure that - just turn off nested
| paging_
|
| The background information for that reason is contained
| in these two detailed articles:
|
| https://blog.stuffedcow.net/2015/08/pagewalk-coherence/
|
| https://blog.stuffedcow.net/2015/08/win9x-tlb-
| invalidation-b...
|
| tl;dr: newer AMD processors have non-coherent pagewalks.
| Intel has maintained coherent pagewalks despite that not
| being explicitly guaranteed in their documentation. Win9x
| depends on that.
|
| _I will say ME runs fine where 98 doesn 't. weird!_
|
| Caching/speculative execution related bugs are very
| sensitive to patterns of memory access.
| wila wrote:
| If that's true then perhaps Mike can have someone take a
| look ;)
|
| It would be nice if Win98 works for everyone still.
| nope96 wrote:
| This is what I'm talking about - perhaps a Ryzen thing?
|
| https://communities.vmware.com/t5/VMware-Workstation-
| Pro/Win...
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| As mentioned elsewhere in the thread, I've had good luck with
| DOSBox-X. If you need specialty hardware support then you may
| need to look elsewhere.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| Microsoft VirtualPC 2005 was pretty good, it had in-box sound
| and graphics drivers for Windows 9x. I'm unsure to what extent
| it runs on modern Windows versions though.
| orbital-decay wrote:
| PCem is great for this; it's been made to emulate a wide range
| of old PC hardware.
| calvin_ wrote:
| VMware still supports it, it just uses an old version of Tools
| to do so.
| [deleted]
| ale42 wrote:
| So happy that people can still write & compile code for Win3.1 or
| other vintage OS!
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| Less than 10 years ago I had to write practically the same
| thing for an active "industrial" user... and I'm quite sure
| they are still using it.
| reaperducer wrote:
| I know a company that recently upgraded a computer to Windows
| XP. That computer controls a building-sized machine. The
| computer was upgraded to XP take advantage of the latest
| software update for controlling that machine.
|
| The company that makes the software says it will no longer
| support XP, and if the machine owners want the next version
| of the software, they'll have to upgrade to a new machine. A
| new machine, depending on options, runs $200,000-$500,000.
|
| So in order to keep the XP machine safe and happy for many
| years to come, it's been airgapped from the world. Not
| "airgapped" as in "I turned off my laptop's WIFI." But
| airgapped in the sense that it's 2,000 feet from the nearest
| building, surrounded by a barbed wire fence, and the control
| computer is at the top of the machine -- probably 50 or 60
| feet off the ground.
| comprev wrote:
| I once did a project which involved migrating an ancient
| (early 1980s) DOS based application to FreeDOS via a VMWare
| host. The application controlled an oven in a soft drinks
| bottling factory and due to EMI, the physical disk had to
| be cloned every 6-9months to avoid corruption, and sourcing
| ancient IDE drives was problematic.
|
| The manufacturer was happy to provide updated software, but
| only alongside a new oven, at a cost of PS1 million.
|
| The factory had 4 ovens.
|
| VMWare + Windows 7 + SSDs + proper Siemens industrial PC =
| much cheaper hack!
|
| Definitely a cool feeling knowing the solution might be in
| place another 20-30 years :-)
| bobthebuilders wrote:
| What kind of PC is an industrial PC? More hardened? More
| resistant to factory floor accidents?
| silverlyra wrote:
| I don't work in the field, but I was curious too and
| found the Siemens product offerings:
| https://new.siemens.com/global/en/products/automation/pc-
| bas...
|
| Looks like they're hardened to run continuously, reduce
| potential causes for maintenance, resist vibrations, and
| run in ambient temperatures up to 55oC. You can also find
| variants certified for use in marine shipping scenarios.
| quux wrote:
| They also tend to have lots of legacy IO and expansion
| slots. Like 8 bit ISA slots on modern hardware.
| comprev wrote:
| This is correct. The hardware is built and tested to be
| run in the most horrible conditions. Their support is
| often top notch too for when the equipment breaks down.
|
| Think of them like "rugged laptops" but for PCs /
| servers.
| wtallis wrote:
| Industrial PCs are also commonly passively cooled and
| more or less sealed, using the case itself as a heatsink
| and protecting the electronics inside from airborne
| contaminants.
|
| Individual components can also be industrial or
| automotive grade rather than commercial grade; for
| example, industrial-grade SSDs are usually rated for
| 85degC and often have much higher write endurance ratings
| than client/consumer SSDs, and may also be protected with
| a conformal coating or epoxy potting across the entire
| board.
| sigmaprimus wrote:
| I think Vancouver's original rapid transit line still uses
| legacy systems with 5 1/4 Floppies.
| flatiron wrote:
| I've written software for cpm in 2021. It's still a thing.
| naikrovek wrote:
| can you go into more detail? what did you write? why did
| you write it?
| stevekemp wrote:
| Not the parent poster, but I bought a Z80-based single-
| board computer last year.
|
| I wrote a simple text-based adventure game for it which I
| submitted here:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26946130
| gota wrote:
| I've had to for some academic work. Some interesting and
| promising work that did not catch much attention and was last
| implemented by some post grad student for proof-of-concept in
| the Win3.1 era, using some contemporary and very specific
| dependencies
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(page generated 2021-11-27 23:00 UTC)