[SOLVED] Virtual Box: Old Windows for Cinepak test...

andrew.46 · 06-26-2022, 10:15 PM

I have been working on creating a media files with Cinepak codec which would be playable on ancient versions of Windows (Cinepak was big in the 90s).

I have created a test file here:

https://www.andrews-corner.org/tmp/s...ad_low_fps.mov

with the following FFmpeg command line:

Code:

ffmpeg -i sintel_trailer_2k_720p24.y4m -i sintel_trailer-audio.flac \
       -c:v cinepak -q:v 1 -g 100 \
       -vf "scale=320:240:flags=lanczos:force_original_aspect_ratio=decrease,pad=320:240:-1:-1:color=black,fps=15" \
       -c:a pcm_u8 -ar 22050 -ac 1 \
       resize_pad_low_fps.mov

My stumbling block is to create a VM on my Ryzen computer running Slackware -current to test it out on. I have had only partial success with windows 3.11, Windows 95 and Windows 98. Better still would be access to an actual computer running these old versions, these now attract premium prices.

So 2 questions:

Has anybody had big success with Virtual Machines of these old versions of Windows on a Ryzen build running Linux?
Does anybody still have the hardware to check out this little video clip?

Thanks for any input...

ondoho · 06-27-2022, 03:52 AM

I had no problems watching the clip with a current version of mpv on ArchLinux.

I don't think your hardware or host OS matters wrt old windows VMs.

The oldest I have installed personally is Win2000 (virtualbox), but I believe there are ready-made VM images available (legally) for older versions. Have you searched?

Quote:

Originally Posted by andrew.46

I have been working on creating a media files with Cinepak codec which would be playable on ancient versions of Windows (Cinepak was big in the 90s).

I have created a test file here:

https://www.andrews-corner.org/tmp/s...ad_low_fps.mov

with the following FFmpeg command line:

Code:

ffmpeg -i sintel_trailer_2k_720p24.y4m -i sintel_trailer-audio.flac \
       -c:v cinepak -q:v 1 -g 100 \
       -vf "scale=320:240:flags=lanczos:force_original_aspect_ratio=decrease,pad=320:240:-1:-1:color=black,fps=15" \
       -c:a pcm_u8 -ar 22050 -ac 1 \
       resize_pad_low_fps.mov

My stumbling block is to create a VM on my Ryzen computer running Slackware -current to test it out on. I have had only partial success with windows 3.11, Windows 95 and Windows 98. Better still would be access to an actual computer running these old versions, these now attract premium prices.

So 2 questions:

Has anybody had big success with Virtual Machines of these old versions of Windows on a Ryzen build running Linux?
Does anybody still have the hardware to check out this little video clip?

Thanks for any input...

andrew.46 · 06-29-2022, 04:28 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ondoho

I had no problems watching the clip with a current version of mpv on ArchLinux.

I would hope that there would be no problems: cinepak is an ancient video codec and the simple pcm audio should also cause no issues. My problem was to pare everything down so that an ancient operating system could play it back.

Quote:

I don't think your hardware or host OS matters wrt old windows VMs.

There is a known problem with Ryzen CPUs and older Windows, some discussion here...

Quote:

The oldest I have installed personally is Win2000 (virtualbox), but I believe there are ready-made VM images available (legally) for older versions. Have you searched?

You have helped me out there! I have tried Windows 3.11, 95 and 98 but after reading this I found an iso of Windows 2000 and this installed flawlessly and also played the Cinepak file nicely as well.

Older versions and ready made VM images have wasted hours of my time so I am happy with this result from iso...

Thanks!!

rkelsen · 07-06-2022, 04:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by andrew.46

There is a known problem with Ryzen CPUs and older Windows, some discussion here...

Wow, I didn't know about that. Thanks for posting about it.

Confirms what we've always known about Windows 9x... It's truly garbage. I have a Vbox VM with W98 here (9th gen i5), but it's certainly not used for anything serious. It doesn't properly support CPU scaling, so it's not unusual for the CPU usage to shoot up to 100% while that VM is running. As a direct result of that it doesn't get much use.

For 3.x, I've had reasonable success running it under DOSbox.

EDIT: I just spent far too much time going down a rabbit hole: Reading about the issues with Win9x on modern hardware. There certainly seem to be a lot of people who want this to work, and the issues are many.

andrew.46 · 07-07-2022, 12:13 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rkelsen

EDIT: I just spent far too much time going down a rabbit hole: Reading about the issues with Win9x on modern hardware. There certainly seem to be a lot of people who want this to work, and the issues are many.

I spent far too many hours as well! Windows 2000 worked easily and runs fast on VirtualBox so I have drawn a bit of a line there...

jefro · 07-07-2022, 03:13 PM

I get the feeling that if your VM is too closely integrated to the host you could have issues. Plain old qemu should present a virtualized cpu where modern kvm and other VM's integrate the processor to the client. ??

rkelsen · 07-07-2022, 04:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by andrew.46

I spent far too many hours as well! Windows 2000 worked easily and runs fast on VirtualBox so I have drawn a bit of a line there...

If these problems stop people from using Win9x, then that's a good result. It belongs in the garbage bins of history.