FusionPC for DOS

About Mini vMac and all other 68k emulators, including SoftMac, Executor, and MESS.

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24bit
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FusionPC for DOS

Post by 24bit »

About Fusion30 and Windows98SE

First of all: Thank you very much to all those who developed and maintained Fusion and SoftMac.

My reason for trying Fusion was my interest in an emulation running a MacII with at least 8bit colour and a working sound system.
Fusion will only run in a DOS based environment such as old versions of Windows.
I threw away Windows3.1 about ten years ago, but I found a 95 and 98SE CD.
As chances are more likely to find drivers for 98, I decided to set up a small fat32 partition on my old PentiumIII usually running Windows2000pro and Suse Linux10.
The partition can be easily created with "Gnome Partiton Editor" a free bootable Linux CD, similar to Acronis Disk Director, more handsome and powerful though.
Windows98 installed nicely on that partition, but it killed my boot partition, so I could not boot WIN2K or Linux after the 98 setup.
This is no problem, I booted Linux10 from DVD, restored GRUB (grand unified boot loader) and added a GRUB entry for my fat32 partition, sda2 in my case.
Now I had all my old OS on that P3 system ready for startup.
I forgot how painful it was to puzzle together all needed drivers for WIN98! The newer systems are installed so smooth and easy, but my sound card and my USB2 card insisted to refuse playing for some time.
The sound blaster is working now, but USB is poor still. I recall this was always an issue with 98 those days.

I had already created a HFX image with SoftMac, so I copied that one together with the ROM images to my Fusion directory. Fusion is running pretty fast, switching into a DOS fullscreen at startup.
Fusion accepts my 512k an 1024k ROM but does not like the 256k MacII ROM. I installed System 7.1 on the HFX image for a try and I am impressed to see it working so marvellous changing the Mac floppy disks correctly.
A really cool approach to Mac emulation, but Fusion does not seem to operate 24bit addressing System 6.08.
I addition, sound is not working properly for me. The system sounds are played somehow, but at a wrong and fast pitch and for several times each.

The end of the story: I did not manage to set up the desired emulated Mac System6. I do have a working 98SE system again, maybe I can use it for some very old software.

Edit: The sound card is working now. I had to remove it from the system and reinstalled it with "Find new hardware".
Last edited by 24bit on Sat Nov 13, 2010 2:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Ambassador »

I would have tried using FreeDos instead, since it comes with many drivers for sound, etc. Running Fusion from Windows 98 doesn't tend to work well, unless you boot into a pure DOS session and manage to find DOS compatible drivers as well as disable all memory managers like EMM. Windows 95 setup is easier to modify, so you could potentially install only the DOS components.

You are right though that FusionPC doesn't support 24bit addressing.
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24bit
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sound drivers for freedos

Post by 24bit »

I tried the 8MB basic version of freedos, it runs fusion just fine, but I don't see any sound drivers.
Am I missing something?
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Post by Ambassador »

I believe you need to install the full FreeDos versions in order to get the sound drivers.
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VPC

Post by 24bit »

Thank you Ambassador, I'll check for the full version then.

Is anybody willing to try to run Fusion30 with Microsoft Virtual PC 2007?
I managed to run the Fusion Setup in both FreeDos and WIN98, but Fusion reports that its disk image is not found.
The image is selected all right in Setup however. I wonder what I am missing.
The same Fusion set is running in DOSBOX, but DOSBOX eats up too much resources to use it with my netbook.

Does anyone have some ideas?
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Post by fanman93 »

VPC Doesn't work, because it quits when the emulation starts. It gives a processor error of some sort and then crashes. Sorry!
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too bad

Post by 24bit »

Thanks for the info, what a pity, still.
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Post by Ambassador »

If you have an old 1998-era computer sitting around, that would be perfect for FreeDOS. I previously ran it on an old 350 PII with an ATI Radeon 7000 and 256 mb of ram.

You could also try VirtualBox or QEMU Manager.
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FreeDOS full

Post by 24bit »

I believe you need to install the full FreeDos versions in order to get the sound drivers.
Ambassador, I gave the full version a try lately, but my Eee is still not playing any sound with FusionPC.
Fusion setup says there is no sound device found.
Do you think the DOS sound drivers have to be configured somehow?
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Post by Jorpho »

Ambassador wrote:I would have tried using FreeDos instead, since it comes with many drivers for sound, etc.
I don't believe that is correct at all. It comes with MPXPLAY, but not actual sound drivers.
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Post by Ambassador »

Ambassador, I gave the full version a try lately, but my Eee is still not playing any sound with FusionPC.
Fusion setup says there is no sound device found.
Did you make sure that a driver of some sorts in being loaded during FreeDOS startup?
I don't believe that is correct at all. It comes with MPXPLAY, but not actual sound drivers.
I'm pretty sure it does. I remember having to configure it to use Creative Drivers on my older 1999 era PC.
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DOS drivers

Post by 24bit »

Hi,
Did you make sure that a driver of some sorts in being loaded during FreeDOS startup?
No, I didn't.
Do you recall what devices should be mounted?
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Post by Ambassador »

Check your config.sys for the drivers that are loaded. As I recall during FreeDos installation there is a specific package during setup for installing sound drivers.
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