[crazy4laptops]

There's one more VM worth of mention- Hyper-V Server
I have experimented with Hyper-V during Christmas.

I was able to run 6 virtual machines on a my old laptop plus the host o/s, so that's 7 total on a dual-core CPU with 4GB of ram.
They were all Server 2008 R2 (it was faster to duplicate/copy the VHD than install the o/s 6 times)

I didn't use them much, I just ran a grid computing app called GomezPeer to test the CPU utilization... surprisingly, the CPU sat at about 30% when being used by all of the VM's (the VM's registered 100% CPU, but the host only showed 25-35%)
I had to retire the project early because the CPU and GFX processor started getting too hot- 175 degree temps with cool air coming from the CPU fan.

If I tried to do 6 VM's with VirtualBox or VMware I would not be able to get past 2 guest o/s on Windows 7 or Mac before the CPU was maxed out.
I could have gone further if I had more RAM, I had to stop at 3.5GB dedicated to VM's and 512MB for the host.

The difference I noticed was that instead of running the entire o/s through a single process, like VB or VMware, Hyper-V seemed to share important processes with all of the guest o/ses

[techie4fun]

Hyper-V Server by Microsoft actually works better in your tests? I might just give this Bill Gates piece of coding a shot, then.

[EkuquoL]

Yes.

I however, do not use the software you implied.

I configure my system--my own specific way--to have it *like* a virtual environment....

It allows me to see malicious java, CSS scripts that often come from ad revolvers on sites.
Then I can isolate it.

[waldojim]

crazy4laptops, on 16 January 2011 - 06:56 PM, said:

There's one more VM worth of mention- Hyper-V Server
I have experimented with Hyper-V during Christmas.

I was able to run 6 virtual machines on a my old laptop plus the host o/s, so that's 7 total on a dual-core CPU with 4GB of ram.
They were all Server 2008 R2 (it was faster to duplicate/copy the VHD than install the o/s 6 times)

I didn't use them much, I just ran a grid computing app called GomezPeer to test the CPU utilization... surprisingly, the CPU sat at about 30% when being used by all of the VM's (the VM's registered 100% CPU, but the host only showed 25-35%)
I had to retire the project early because the CPU and GFX processor started getting too hot- 175 degree temps with cool air coming from the CPU fan.

If I tried to do 6 VM's with VirtualBox or VMware I would not be able to get past 2 guest o/s on Windows 7 or Mac before the CPU was maxed out.
I could have gone further if I had more RAM, I had to stop at 3.5GB dedicated to VM's and 512MB for the host.

The difference I noticed was that instead of running the entire o/s through a single process, like VB or VMware, Hyper-V seemed to share important processes with all of the guest o/ses

Can it run Dos?

[crazy4laptops]

techie4fun, on 16 January 2011 - 07:08 PM, said:

Hyper-V Server by Microsoft actually works better in your tests? I might just give this Bill Gates piece of coding a shot, then.

Hey Techie! Yes, Hyper-V is like a VM manager's dream

Imagine what you could run with dual quad-core Xenon processors and 32GB of RAM

[crazy4laptops]

waldojim, on 16 January 2011 - 07:18 PM, said:

Can it run Dos?

Potentially... I don't know how it would fare on a 64-bit o/s but I'll give it a try

One question, where can I get DOS? My first o/s was Windows 98... (PM me if needed)

[waldojim]

crazy4laptops, on 16 January 2011 - 07:26 PM, said:

waldojim, on 16 January 2011 - 07:18 PM, said:

Can it run Dos?

Potentially... I don't know how it would fare on a 64-bit o/s but I'll give it a try

One question, where can I get DOS? My first o/s was Windows 98... (PM me if needed)

I just use the Boot disk images at bootdisk.com, it includes most of what you need. If you want a full version... Google Dos 6.22+ Torrent. There is a nice torrent somewhere with Dos and Windows 3.11.

I am not sure if there is a problem mentioning that, as I think it is old enough to be considered abandonware (since there are no places to purchase legal copies, and haven't been for years). If it is, then mod, please erase that comment, I will understand.

[techie4fun]

I saw the size for Hyper-V so I'm going to wait until tonight to begin downloading it. My DSL connection isn't quite good enough to support downloading large files and accomodating for the rest of my users. They'll complain that I'm eating all the bandwidth.

[LiveBrianD]

waldojim, on 16 January 2011 - 07:32 PM, said:

I just use the Boot disk images at bootdisk.com, it includes most of what you need. If you want a full version... Google Dos 6.22+ Torrent. There is a nice torrent somewhere with Dos and Windows 3.11.

I am not sure if there is a problem mentioning that, as I think it is old enough to be considered abandonware (since there are no places to purchase legal copies, and haven't been for years). If it is, then mod, please erase that comment, I will understand.

Honestly, I doubt Microsoft cares with ancient OSes like that, since nobody really uses them.

I don't think a Boot Disk would really work, since it's just the basic elements of DOS.

[LiveBrianD]

crazy4laptops, on 16 January 2011 - 06:56 PM, said:

There's one more VM worth of mention- Hyper-V Server
I have experimented with Hyper-V during Christmas.

I was able to run 6 virtual machines on a my old laptop plus the host o/s, so that's 7 total on a dual-core CPU with 4GB of ram.
They were all Server 2008 R2 (it was faster to duplicate/copy the VHD than install the o/s 6 times)

I didn't use them much, I just ran a grid computing app called GomezPeer to test the CPU utilization... surprisingly, the CPU sat at about 30% when being used by all of the VM's (the VM's registered 100% CPU, but the host only showed 25-35%)
I had to retire the project early because the CPU and GFX processor started getting too hot- 175 degree temps with cool air coming from the CPU fan.

If I tried to do 6 VM's with VirtualBox or VMware I would not be able to get past 2 guest o/s on Windows 7 or Mac before the CPU was maxed out.
I could have gone further if I had more RAM, I had to stop at 3.5GB dedicated to VM's and 512MB for the host.

The difference I noticed was that instead of running the entire o/s through a single process, like VB or VMware, Hyper-V seemed to share important processes with all of the guest o/ses

I wonder how many I could get away with on this PC. I'm sure my CPU can do several at once, I'm just afraid that I'll run out of physical memory and Windows will start using the pagefile. Perhaps 1GB of RAM for an XP VM and 1.5GB for a 7 VM is too much.


Edit: Well, I tried it. I have Windows 95, 95C, 98, 98SE, 2 of 2000, 2 of ME, XP, and 7 running, all at once. Note: starting all of them at nearly the same time was a really bad idea, I had 100% CPU utilization and my mouse cursor was moving very choppily. Oddly, it's still doing it, despite CPU utilization only being 30%. PLUS, the the keystrokes being inserted are lagging behind what I'm typing. I'd better shutdown some of these VMs....

Crazy4laptops, what OS were you virtualizing and how much RAM did you allot it

This post has been edited by LiveBrianD: 17 January 2011 - 10:22 PM

[crazy4laptops]

I virtualized 6 instances of Server 2008 R2, i gave each VM ~496MB of RAM. I also reserved 10% of resources to each VM, I set the max resource usage to 30-40%

10 VMs wow! you have powerful processor! I tried 7VMs but my mouse also got choppy, so I stayed in the margin of caution for system stability.

[LiveBrianD]

crazy4laptops, on 18 January 2011 - 06:35 AM, said:

I virtualized 6 instances of Server 2008 R2, i gave each VM ~496MB of RAM. I also reserved 10% of resources to each VM, I set the max resource usage to 30-40%

10 VMs wow! you have powerful processor! I tried 7VMs but my mouse also got choppy, so I stayed in the margin of caution for system stability.

Well not quite... the CPU was fully utilized, the system was barely responding, and I was worried Windows would crash. I'm going to try again, but I'll give each VM less ram.

Edit: Windows 95 (128MB RAM), 95C (64MB), NT 4 (256MB), ME (256MB), ME (256MB), 98 (256MB), 98SE (256MB), 2000 (512MB), 2000 (64MB), XP 64-bit (512MB), XP MCE 2005 (512MB), and 7 (512MB). Unfortunately, many of the VMs were freezing up and things were getting slow. My cursor was moving fine (most of the time) though.

This post has been edited by LiveBrianD: 18 January 2011 - 03:23 PM

[waldojim]

Well, going out today to pick up a $10 older-than-dirt PC, just for my Dos games... Turns out, you can barely even get Dos to run on newer PC's. With the introduction of PCI Express, all the DMA channels of the past are gone. No more sound at all on newer machines. I found this out after HOURS of fighting an AM2+ machine with a SB live card. The driver would install, but it would never actually WORK... that was when I started searching just to find out, it is because hte DMA channels are needed, and don't exist any more.

More info on the hunt later... right now, bed time!

[LiveBrianD]

I just had a thought - has anyone tried FreeDOS? You could try it in a VM (hopefully it idles the CPU, unlike MS-DOS).

[LiveBrianD]

LiveBrianD, on 25 January 2011 - 03:28 PM, said:

I just had a thought - has anyone tried FreeDOS? You could try it in a VM (hopefully it idles the CPU, unlike MS-DOS).

I just realized that it doesn't idle the CPU. Dang post edit time limit!

[waldojim]

Well guys, I solved my problem. The hard way, and not the ideal way.

I managed to locate an AMD K6-2 233.
All in all, its quite an impressive machine... given what it is.

It has 128MB ram (in ONE stick), 512KB cache, an Ultra DMA hard drive controller (good for 66MB/sec!), Creative Sound Blaster 16, 24x cd reader, 4 ISA slots, and 3 PCI slots. Most intereseting, is that it can use either AT or ATX Power.

Now is this machine perfect? Far from it. I had to replace 3 of the caps in the CPU power stage, it uses the old AT keyboard, and is quite finicky. Also, I only have an ISA video card. It is a fair enough 4MB card from STB though...

But DOS works 110%. I have PS/2 mouse support, USB, and integrated HD controllers.

Most importantly of all, I have 100% support for my games. With a REAL SB16, real memory, and REAL machine to back DOS... everything works! Shoot, next step, get internet working (with a 100Mb nic card of course!) and see some high speed internet on DOS! Oh yeah... maybe even some Divx video on here... Though I might have to OC just a little for that one! I think 333~350 should be plenty.

I will post up some pics at some point just for S&G's.

[waldojim]

Now I just need to figure out why my sound occasionally breaks up in Righteous Fire.... That was hard to take last night. Any one know where to find a complete copy of the installation disks for the Sound Blaster 16 cards? All I can find are the "Dos Mode for Windows 98 drivers" from creative. The readme even mentions that users are better off with the original disks...

[smax013]

For what it is worth, Parallels for the Mac (http://www.parallels...m-requirements/) supposedly will run MS-DOS 6.22. For whatever reason (likely anti-Window bias <grin>), the Windows version of Parallels does not according to their system requirements page (http://www.parallels...s-requirements/). Obviously, this does not help you much unless you picked up a Intel Mac at some point...and you have apparently found a solution anyways.

I use Parallels to run Windows XP on my MacBook Pro so that I can use my Windows only structural engineering software on it. I have never tried MS-DOS 6.22, so I cannot confirm if their claim is true or not. At some point, I might use it to mess with Linux...if I ever get around to it.

[waldojim]

smax013, on 05 February 2011 - 06:03 AM, said:

For what it is worth, Parallels for the Mac (http://www.parallels...m-requirements/) supposedly will run MS-DOS 6.22. For whatever reason (likely anti-Window bias <grin>), the Windows version of Parallels does not according to their system requirements page (http://www.parallels...s-requirements/). Obviously, this does not help you much unless you picked up a Intel Mac at some point...and you have apparently found a solution anyways.

I use Parallels to run Windows XP on my MacBook Pro so that I can use my Windows only structural engineering software on it. I have never tried MS-DOS 6.22, so I cannot confirm if their claim is true or not. At some point, I might use it to mess with Linux...if I ever get around to it.

That is an interesting solution that I would certainly like to try at some point (may download the trial).

However, as you mentioned, I do have a 100% functional solution. Complete with sound, and VESA video. I also recently recovered my Nvidia 5700le Optima (why can't ANY of these damned caps last?!), and tossed in back into my AMD 450 machine for now (trying to get my hands on a solid Socket A board for that). At this point, I have just about decided, I want to get a running machine from every generation (if I can)... Just because I think it would be awesome to have. I would like to have an exemplary example of each generation, showing the best of what they had to offer. Why bother? Because I can! No, really though, so I can run some of those older applications without having to worry about compatibility. No matter what emulation we try, there is always something that doesn't work quite right, and it just isn't worth the effort into forcing it to work. At least not to me.

[smax013]

waldojim, on 05 February 2011 - 01:56 PM, said:

That is an interesting solution that I would certainly like to try at some point (may download the trial).

However, as you mentioned, I do have a 100% functional solution. Complete with sound, and VESA video. I also recently recovered my Nvidia 5700le Optima (why can't ANY of these damned caps last?!), and tossed in back into my AMD 450 machine for now (trying to get my hands on a solid Socket A board for that). At this point, I have just about decided, I want to get a running machine from every generation (if I can)... Just because I think it would be awesome to have. I would like to have an exemplary example of each generation, showing the best of what they had to offer. Why bother? Because I can! No, really though, so I can run some of those older applications without having to worry about compatibility. No matter what emulation we try, there is always something that doesn't work quite right, and it just isn't worth the effort into forcing it to work. At least not to me.

And your solution is WAY cheaper than going out and buying a Mac just to run Parallels for the Mac! ;-) That is, unless you were going to try it with a Hackintosh. :-)

Of course, I alway encourage you to come over to the Dark Side. Steve Jobs is your father! ;-) <grin>