QEMU The Ultimate Retro Windows 98 SE Gaming VM from Scratch to 3D Acceleration in 15 mins
113"If YOU only knew the POWER of the DARK side ..." -- DARTH Vader, STAR WARS V: The EMPIRE Strikes Back.
At LONG LAST, Windows 98 SE can be fully accelerated in modern virtualization. Kudos to JHRobotics at GitHub who finally cracked the MMU TLB invalidation OS bug due to speculative MMU in modern CPUs. This is the MOST SIGNIFICANT patch for Windows 98 SE in 20 years since its EOL. It solved many known issues of Windows 98 virtualization that had plagued the OS from harnessing the new level of performance and being useful within virtualization. Those includes DLL mapping errors, broken windowed MS-DOS box and potentially many more. And many would have favored emulation with dynamic recompilation for Windows 98 in virtual machines. While Windows 98 remains the best OS for the late 90's Windows Games compatibility, it had to be suffice with 10X slow-down in emulation and lack of 3D acceleration compared to the more virtualization friendly Windows XP.
Not anymore. The Power of Virtualization can now bring Windows 98 SE Virtual Machine from scratch to live together with TRUE 3D Acceleration for Windows Games in just 15 mins. Modern CPU/GPU, fast LPDDR memory & SSD storage bring on a whole new level of performance in Windows 98 that one could have never imagined back in the 90's and be great for all Windows Games that support 3D acceleration in 3Dfx Glide/OpenGL/Direct3D. Games can now play in their highest possible rendered resolution, maximum details & view distance, highest textures quality, 32-bit colors and all bells & whistles that would have never been possible with emulation, or "the laughing stock of emulation with CPU rendered 3D acceleration" and bluffed as "freaking fast".
This video provides all the details in setting up Windows 98 SE Virtual Machine in QEMU, fully accelerated and into 3D Acceleration for Games. I cannot imagine how would anything be simpler than this. Well, even Games from GOG/Steam tend to have issues running on modern Windows and the 4 simple QEMU command-lines are even much simpler than reading PC Game Wiki. Furthermore, one gets to play the Games in "pristine condition" right from the retail CD/DVD releases without resorting to fans' mods, remakes or source-ports. For avid Retro Windows Gamers, this is a dream comes true for preserving & relive the memories in replaying the Windows Games collection readily in possession.
And I would not even get the point of "elitist" remark of using QEMU. The 4 simple command-lines just prove that, despite the lack of GUI, it is so much simpler than "the other camp" so-called "emulated machine tweaking" for nothing but a good laugh. There is nothing to tweak for QEMU, most of the default options work well, including the 128MB default system memory and 16MB display memory. 128MB is a luxury for many Games designed for Windows 98 and works well on laptops with 4GB/8GB memory. 16MB is more than enough for dumb display buffer up to 2K resolution. The GPU memory used in 3D acceleration has always been virtualized with pass-through and irrelevant from QEMU's point of view. The same command lines also applies for QEMU on Windows 10/11 hosts by replacing "accel=kvm" with "accel=whpx,kernel-irqchip=off".
The qemu-3dfx project has so far been the only one cares for delivering high-performance virtualized Windows 98 for Games. Many just dropped the balls or foolishly made believes that emulation would save in the end. Perhaps it will one day, while QEMU Virtualization already delivers the much needed performance today. When one donated & supported qemu-3dfx project, this is how easy it is to have the Windows 98 VM & Games up and playing in "pristine condition".
Credits for other Open Source projects making this video possible:
Patcher9x by JHRobotics at GitHub
https://github.com/JHRobotics/patcher9x
BOXV9x fully Open-Source mini-port Display Driver by OS/2 Museum
https://www.os2museum.com/wp/