5 ms·

My first employer still has a Win 95 machine running for some very specific EE CAD software, for no other reason that it still does the job, the company that ma

My first employer still has a Win 95 machine running for some very specific EE CAD software, for no other reason that it still does the job, the company that made it closed shop years ago, and he's very productive with it. I suspect it's gonna be there 'til the day he closes shop, or he runs out of parts for the computer.

mehrdadn 7y ago
Would a VM not work for this?
- wiremaus 7y ago
  It would, with setup to replicate the environment. It might well be a miserable buggy experience compared to just using the original hardware.
- enobrev 7y ago
  I fire up VMs for windows-only [mostly graphical] applications from time to time and the experience is never very good. No matter how beefy my host system is, the experience is awful and I end up giving up out of frustration. I have an old used Toshiba laptop with Windows that I fire up on those rare occasions now.
  - grawprog 7y ago
    I used virtual box running xp a few years ago for a vba project I did for a contract. I never ran into any issues.
    - mehrdadn 7y ago
      XP is NT-based, so it's not surprising. They're saying for non-NT systems it's an issue.
      - grawprog 7y ago
        Ah ok fair enough. I have to admit i haven't tried running windows 8 or 10 in a vm since the preview builds. I assumed any instability was from the lack of polish on the OS itself in its state at the time.
  - baroffoos 7y ago
    What VM software are you using? I find that virtual box is always awful but I haven't tried anything else.
  - jchw 7y ago
    GPU passthrough can give you excellent performance, at the cost of some convenience (depending on how your setup is.) Somewhat recently, Intel released GVT-g mode, which effectively allows you to carve up an Intel graphics adapter into chunks that can be used by VMs. I tried it on my laptop and it indeed works as advertised. https://01.org/igvt-g https://01.org/igvt-g The traditional method, though, is just having a secondary GPU with VT-d passthrough. This will give you the raw performance of a dedicated GPU, and you can either connect it to an external display for no latency, or you can use something like LookingGlass to get a more traditional setup (SPICE input + KVMFR video.) I used GPU passthrough for a while, only stopping because it occurred to me that modern Wine and Steam Proton had largely closed the gap for me in needing virtualization for graphical applications. libvirt + Qemu/KVM + virt-manager with Windows guest SPICE agent installed is my weapon of choice these days. Without a GPU passthrough configuration, dragging windows is a little laggy, and I can't imagine graphical programs will work well since there is no 3D acceleration, but the performance with a lot of other tools (like Visual Studio) seems fairly acceptable. I will note that they should really make an easier auto-install for the SPICE drivers and agent, because it was tricky enough that it took me a while to realize I didn't actually have the right agent installed. VirtIO block and network devices also can offer some I/O benefit, though you will want to use the Load Drivers mechanism to load the viostor driver prior to installation; it's a little tricky to switch to VirtIO storage later, since the driver obviously needs to be available during early boot. You probably also want to avoid qcow2 storage, instead opting for raw image or even disk passthrough for better I/O performance.
    - enobrev 7y ago
      Thank you for this wealth of information. I love the idea of a 2nd GPU, and I have a couple laying around that it's definitely worth trying. I already have three screens on my desk... what's one more? I'm thoroughly impressed with the Wine project, and yet I'm generally hesitant to install it on my system. I think it may just be the massive install list I get when I try to `apt install` it. I've a similar aversion to installing KDE apps on a system that's not already running kde, which generally include about 150 other k* libs. Steam Proton looks great. I'd played a few games once Steam started releasing them on linux and truly enjoyed how well some worked (and some _really_ didn't). I don't play as much lately, but this may change that. It's going to take me some time to read about and further understand everything else you've posted here, which I appreciate.
- throwaway2048 7y ago
  Windows 95 is very difficult to get working in a VM in a reasonable way, and this machine likely relies on custom ISA cards, which is likely impossible to virtualize.
- zlynx 7y ago
  I believe Windows 95 has trouble with CPUs that are too fast and needs to be patched to handle it. I think I also read somewhere that older Windows (and some other operating systems) don't handle modern TCP/IP very well. A TCP session start with window size 9 and ECN bits, for example. And I believe there's more timing problems with networking as well, because no one believed in gigabit Ethernet back in the day.
  - mehrdadn 7y ago
    Oh wow I see, okay thanks.
- krige 7y ago
  Most VMs don't really work with Windows 9x which tends to crash even more than usual (NT based windows is fine though). The only one tool I know of that's running 9x relatively stable is PCem, and that's more of an emulator than a VM proper.
cosmodisk 7y ago
I did use some very interesting software over the years and I can absolutely relate to this. For instance,I used to run Alias Studio,which wasn't even part of Autodesk at the time,which is obviously a bit obsolete by now but I'm pretty sure that there are still some shops out there running it on old machines,as the software is really powerful,not to mention the licensing costs back in the day( I think it used to be $100K per desktop)...

mehrdadn 7y ago

Would a VM not work for this?

wiremaus 7y ago
It would, with setup to replicate the environment. It might well be a miserable buggy experience compared to just using the original hardware.
enobrev 7y ago
I fire up VMs for windows-only [mostly graphical] applications from time to time and the experience is never very good. No matter how beefy my host system is, the experience is awful and I end up giving up out of frustration. I have an old used Toshiba laptop with Windows that I fire up on those rare occasions now.
- grawprog 7y ago
  I used virtual box running xp a few years ago for a vba project I did for a contract. I never ran into any issues.
  - mehrdadn 7y ago
    XP is NT-based, so it's not surprising. They're saying for non-NT systems it's an issue.
    - grawprog 7y ago
      Ah ok fair enough. I have to admit i haven't tried running windows 8 or 10 in a vm since the preview builds. I assumed any instability was from the lack of polish on the OS itself in its state at the time.
- baroffoos 7y ago
  What VM software are you using? I find that virtual box is always awful but I haven't tried anything else.
- jchw 7y ago
  GPU passthrough can give you excellent performance, at the cost of some convenience (depending on how your setup is.) Somewhat recently, Intel released GVT-g mode, which effectively allows you to carve up an Intel graphics adapter into chunks that can be used by VMs. I tried it on my laptop and it indeed works as advertised. https://01.org/igvt-g https://01.org/igvt-g The traditional method, though, is just having a secondary GPU with VT-d passthrough. This will give you the raw performance of a dedicated GPU, and you can either connect it to an external display for no latency, or you can use something like LookingGlass to get a more traditional setup (SPICE input + KVMFR video.) I used GPU passthrough for a while, only stopping because it occurred to me that modern Wine and Steam Proton had largely closed the gap for me in needing virtualization for graphical applications. libvirt + Qemu/KVM + virt-manager with Windows guest SPICE agent installed is my weapon of choice these days. Without a GPU passthrough configuration, dragging windows is a little laggy, and I can't imagine graphical programs will work well since there is no 3D acceleration, but the performance with a lot of other tools (like Visual Studio) seems fairly acceptable. I will note that they should really make an easier auto-install for the SPICE drivers and agent, because it was tricky enough that it took me a while to realize I didn't actually have the right agent installed. VirtIO block and network devices also can offer some I/O benefit, though you will want to use the Load Drivers mechanism to load the viostor driver prior to installation; it's a little tricky to switch to VirtIO storage later, since the driver obviously needs to be available during early boot. You probably also want to avoid qcow2 storage, instead opting for raw image or even disk passthrough for better I/O performance.
  - enobrev 7y ago
    Thank you for this wealth of information. I love the idea of a 2nd GPU, and I have a couple laying around that it's definitely worth trying. I already have three screens on my desk... what's one more? I'm thoroughly impressed with the Wine project, and yet I'm generally hesitant to install it on my system. I think it may just be the massive install list I get when I try to `apt install` it. I've a similar aversion to installing KDE apps on a system that's not already running kde, which generally include about 150 other k* libs. Steam Proton looks great. I'd played a few games once Steam started releasing them on linux and truly enjoyed how well some worked (and some _really_ didn't). I don't play as much lately, but this may change that. It's going to take me some time to read about and further understand everything else you've posted here, which I appreciate.
throwaway2048 7y ago
Windows 95 is very difficult to get working in a VM in a reasonable way, and this machine likely relies on custom ISA cards, which is likely impossible to virtualize.
zlynx 7y ago
I believe Windows 95 has trouble with CPUs that are too fast and needs to be patched to handle it. I think I also read somewhere that older Windows (and some other operating systems) don't handle modern TCP/IP very well. A TCP session start with window size 9 and ECN bits, for example. And I believe there's more timing problems with networking as well, because no one believed in gigabit Ethernet back in the day.
- mehrdadn 7y ago
  Oh wow I see, okay thanks.
krige 7y ago
Most VMs don't really work with Windows 9x which tends to crash even more than usual (NT based windows is fine though). The only one tool I know of that's running 9x relatively stable is PCem, and that's more of an emulator than a VM proper.

cosmodisk 7y ago

I did use some very interesting software over the years and I can absolutely relate to this. For instance,I used to run Alias Studio,which wasn't even part of Autodesk at the time,which is obviously a bit obsolete by now but I'm pretty sure that there are still some shops out there running it on old machines,as the software is really powerful,not to mention the licensing costs back in the day( I think it used to be $100K per desktop)...