Virtual Machinery

This is Windows 98 running in a QEMU virtual machine hosted on a FreeBSD 4.10-RELEASE boxen. It has network access - via a virtual NE2000 - to the host and, through it, the world. Display is driven by a virtual CirrusLogic adapter and is at 800x600x24; it can go up to 1024x768x16.

Ahem, not running, walking... The host is a Pentium 3 833Mhz with 256MB PC133 RAM, a 5400-rpm IDE disk and an integrated i815 video chip. Oh, and an outdated XFree86 installation. I have allocated 128MB and a 1.5GB "disk" to the Windows 98 instance; it feels like my ancient P5/166 with 48MB RAM, although keyboard response is okay. Surely one or more of a faster CPU, more RAM, faster disks and a snappier video adapter will make this useable. (Surely the preceding statement is a content-free truism. ;-)

The installation is based on this howto, with some differences:

• The network card is detected as a "Realtek RTL8029(AS) Ethernet Adapter."
• Display uses the emulated CirrusLogic that comes with the VM.

Some months ago I tried running Windows 98 in a Bochs VM on the same host. It was too slow to be useful. I recall reading (can't remember where) that, supposedly, QEMU cuts some corners, which boosts its performance, in comparison with Bochs.