[Plex86-devel] speed for Windows 95 ?

[Robert Grasso]

Hello,

I discovered plex86 some months ago, as I discovered bochs too, and I
really fully installed both today at home, on my P4 at 1,8 GHz with 256
MB RAM running Mandrake 9.0, loading w95 as guest OS. At first, I
wondered whether I could use bochs to run w95, replacing my old 486. I
already tested VMWare at work on a P2 at 700 MHz, it was nice enough,
not too slow, so it was usable. As, even with such a configuration at
home, I felt that bochs 2.0 is really slow, I tried plex86, downloaded
the latest version (november), compiled it, configured it, and ran it
using the images prepared for bochs.

Well, bochs 2.0 (recompiled) seems to hang when the splash screen of w95
appears, but plex86 goes ahead; it looks rather rapid in the DOS mode,
but the speed (looks as if it) falls down as soon as it enters the w95
GUI (as soon as the splash screen appears). I mesured the time spent for
booting : from the moment when I start the plex86 command-line, until
when the full w95 desktop appears, it takes 4'30". Then (and without the
mouse it's funny :-(( doing anything with this slowness is a pain ! Yet
things work !

Can I tune something, or is this the maximum speed of this version ? I
am system administrator, but I did not develop for years, this is why I
did not try to tune anything by myself.

I am pasting my configuration file at the end of this email.
I mesured the IPS weeks ago using bochs 1.4.1 (value in the config file
below).

Best regards and happy new year to the developing team !

-- 
Robert Grasso
@home
---
UNIX was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because 
  that would also stop you from doing clever things. -- Doug Gwyn

Here is my configuration file :
-------------------------------

####################################################################
# This is an example plex86 configuration file
####################################################################


####################################################################
# Memory settings
####################################################################

# number of megabytes for vm
memory = 32


####################################################################
# Plugins
####################################################################

plugin = ./plugins/bochs/plugin-bochs.so

bochs-opt boot: c
bochs-opt diskc: file="/home/robert/bochs_w95/500M.W95", cyl=1015,
heads=16, spt=63
#bochs-opt floppya: 1_44=../../1.44a, status=inserted
bochs-opt keyboard_serial_delay: 50
bochs-opt floppy_command_delay: 500
bochs-opt vga_update_interval: 90000
bochs-opt mouse: enabled=0
bochs-opt private_colormap: enabled=0
bochs-opt i440fxsupport: enabled=0
bochs-opt newharddrivesupport: enabled=1
bochs-opt ips: 3300000
#bochs-opt time0: 938581955

plugin = ./plugins/bridge/bridge.so
plugin = ./plugins/bochs/iodev/cmos.so
plugin = ./plugins/bochs/iodev/dma.so
plugin = ./plugins/bochs/iodev/system.so
plugin = ./plugins/bochs/iodev/vga.so
plugin = ./plugins/bochs/iodev/serial.so
plugin = ./plugins/bochs/iodev/parallel.so
plugin = ./plugins/bochs/iodev/keyboard.so
plugin = ./plugins/bochs/iodev/floppy.so
plugin = ./plugins/bochs/iodev/harddrv.so
plugin = ./plugins/bochs/iodev/biosdev.so
#plugin = ./plugins/bochs/iodev/pci.so
#plugin = ./plugins/bochs/iodev/sb16.so
#plugin = ./plugins/bochs/iodev/ne2k.so

CMOSChecksum

# The system BIOS
load-rom: file=../bios/BIOS-bochs-latest, address=0xf0000

# The VGA BIOS
load-rom: file=../bios/VGABIOS-lgpl-0.3a, address=0xc0000


####################################################################
# Debugging settings
####################################################################

# syntax for disassembly
db_syntax = at&t


####################################################################
# VM tweaks            
####################################################################
  
# Maximum depth that the scan-before-execute code will try
# to recursively prescan code in the current code page, by
# following intra-page branches.
prescan: depth = 3, ring3 = on



####################################################################
# end of config file
####################################################################