Yeah that application is very basic compared to other virtual disc drives, still though, if someone is worried about third-party applications yet somehow has reason to use a virtual drive, it exists.

Back then there was VirtualDrive for Windows 95. I could use it rip my Warcraft 2 Battle.NET CD and store it on my hard drive and also my Starcraft 1 and Elite Force 1. It was a handy way of keeping my original media safe from scratches and still play the game without needing to insert the disc occupying my CDrom. I believe Farstone made it. Today the only option I see that might be similar is Slysoft's Virtual CloneDrive. It's free at this link:

http://www.slysoft.com/en/virtual-clonedrive.html

Security software still may not offset the myriad of vulnerabilities in software that is no longer supported.

Error-handling and actual resource management is a lot different in latter OSs. With modern hardware it is better to run a newer OS and just virtualize the older ones as needed.

I know. The link I posted was as a reply to "mounting images on Windows 7 requires third-party software", which isn't true because Microsoft themselves made a basic solution to mount ISO files. While it can't handle more than just ISO

Also, Farstone VirtualDrive seems to still exist, though it likely has changed a great deal (and likely been completely rebuilt) during the last twenty years.

I had to check that because I felt that is incorrect. At least my Dune 2 lets one choose a different sound unit for three different audio parts (hence, have the best of both worlds):

1. Sounds (meaning the music)
2. Sound effects
3. Digitized samples (this means some intro speech, and some of the sound effects, not all of them)

If you have e.g. Roland MT-32 and a Soundblaster, IMHO for the best results you should choose:

Music = Roland MT-32
Sound effects = Roland MT-32
Digitlzed samples = Soundblaster (Pro)

The thing is, if you set the second one also to Soundblaster, I think you will not get those remaining sound effects as digitized samples, but with the poor sounding FM-synthesizer versions, which are worse than the MT-32 or even General MIDI versions. For example during the intro right after the emperor's speech, the sound of the landing craft is one such sound effect. It is apparently not digitized even with a Soundblaster.

Yeah, but before Redbook CD audio music became commonplace (to be later replaced by more convenient digitized music sound tracks), there were a couple of years when General MIDI was the de-facto standard for PC game music. Just think of Doom 1-2 and Duke3D, for instance. :)

That happens with all things. As long as the company who makes the security software is still in business it will constantly get updated to defend against such threats. Also Windows 7 only got SP1 and it's doubtful a SP2 is coming out. They'll just move onto to Windows 10, 11, et cetera to collect your money. Then companies will be forced to create new drivers for your devices which could open up new security holes.

Actually, I found more issues on newer OSes than XP. In Windows 7 it has a harder time ending a task which doesn't happen in XP. I'm not sure what causes it but when I use VLC and sometimes if a video freezes up since I tend to skip forward and back with the mouse I end up just closing the window but it will still be showing up in the Task Manager using CPU cycles. When I try to end the task it gives me an error and can't do it. Sometimes after a half hour it sorts itself out and I can manually end it. Other times it stays there until I logoff or reboot.

As far as virtualizing the older operating system it doesn't always work the way you expect. Even today you can't virtualize Windows 95 / 98 and run a game the way it was meant to run.

If you were to compare a system running XP at boot versus running Windows 7 and running a Virtual PC of XP inside it you will find it will run much slower than running XP natively. As far as compatibility I'm not sure it would recognize the graphics card and sound card you are using but use emulated versions of some other brand. If you're just using it for running something simple like Word or Excel for XP then it wouldn't be a problem but if you are running something like a DirectX 9.0c game I'm sure you will experience some sort of lag running an OS within an OS and possibly other unexpected issues like not recognizing the emulated Video card or sound card or if it does recognize them it will still perform much weaker than the actual performance you should have gotten in XP.

Also you can easily multiboot different OSes if you are still worried about security. XP / Vista / 7 / 8 / 10. Most people would probably do a XP 32-bit / Windows 7 64-bit dual boot to keep things simple.

It's been awhile and maybe Dune ][ didn't have this limitation but I think there were several versions one with the speech and one without the intro speech. There was a CD version of Dune ][ as well. Perhaps the later versions added that ability.

As for the time frame of General MIDI I think it really didn't have much time to become the de facto standard. In fact I found that most games that did give you the option between General MIDI vs MT-32, the MT-32 seemed to be the better of the two.

I just took a look at this link:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_MT-32

I guess we were both right on target about the MT-32 -> General MIDI -> CD Audio progression. I always felt that the MT-32 was always the best option and General MIDI was for people who only had a Sound Blaster or compatible sound card. There was Adlib Gold at one point but it bombed badly because there was no digitized sound ability and the MT-32 had gained the upper hand by then. I think the only other contender was the Gravis Ultrasound with its own MIDI palette.

But for Doom 1 and Doom 2, I've always used General Midi. I'm not sure how it would sound on a Roland MT-32 because I didn't own one then to try it out. I've seen some youtube clips of it at one point but like I said there is a bit of nostalgia playing it the way you remembered it and Doom 1 and 2 are two games that I am used to the Sound Blaster General MIDI.

Was the General MIDI the same for all sound hardware you used or specific to each sound card? With the VirtualMIDISynth can you swap out the Sound Blaster General MIDI for a SC-55? Is there a ROM emulator for that?

For digitized samples if there was an option I'd go with the Sound Blaster AWE64, AWE32, then 32PNP, then 16, then Pro. But the original Sound Blaster ISA was what I used for many years leading up to Windows 95. And all Sound Blaster ISA cards worked in Windows without needing new drivers cause it was built into Windows.

Try installing Windows XP with a new sound card I bet you won't hear the sound effects at all during the install setup. Use a Sound Blaster and you'll hear it. I don't know if the Sound Blaster 16, 32PNP, AWE32, or AWE64 worked. I have a feeling that it did since the AWE64 came out around 2000 and XP around 2001.

Also regarding Space Quest V. I'll be honest Space Quest 1 and 2 - Try the Apple ][ GS versions, the PC versions lacked any sound support. Space Quest ]I[ added sound card support and it kept the old school look. Once they switched to Space Quest IV I hated that style of gameplay where you could no longer type the commands but click icons. No offense it was like what Windows did to DOS. I felt the old command line interface really helped me with picking up English words and learning whereas randomly clicking around objects and hoping you click something that responds to it? Same goes with King's Quest V. Police Quest ]I[ wasn't that bad using that interface and it made more sense. I loved the intro with the police sirens. It sounded pretty good on a Roland MT-32.

Rise of the Dragon. Now that's a game where it made sense to use that new interface. I also loved the soundtrack on that one as well.

Other OSs exist, there are multiple different virtualization methods and utilities (depending on the usage), and there are ways to give virtual machines direct access to hardware.

Multi-booting doesn't do shit for security, btw. Unless you have both operating systems completely walled off from eachother the files are still exposed, and the hardware is vulnerable as well in some instances.

You are only booting up in one operating system so if you preferred Windows 7 there you have it.
As for security that depends on the file system. NTFS is pretty secure but nothing is fool proof. However if you look at this article the OS determines the encryption strength.

http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/8307/how-secure-is-ntfs-encryption

FAT32 would be visible to anyone who had access. I prefer FAT32 because I don't need my data secured or irretrievable. And yes you would be installing each OS onto its own partition. I never use the same partition. In fact my boot loader is on its own partition as well in case it gets corrupted it can be restored in seconds rather than an entire operating system image. If you are changing the permissions of the files then you should be able to prevent unauthorized access to those files you don't wish to share.

The security I'm talking about is from the internet. If you unplug the network cable how can they access your machine unless they broke into your house? Also I would disable the wireless network and wireless router if that's what you are using. I hard line my LAN which is the way it should be if you are worried about someone outside your house hacking into your network. If your house is exposed to people coming in and out that's another issue for you. You'll need to revert back to a 1366 motherboard with a PS2 Keyboard and a PS2 Mouse port. And disable all USB ports in the BIOS, password protect the BIOS, and on top of that you'll have to manually plug up all your USB ports with hot glue or remove them completely to prevent someone from sticking in a USB device to hack into your machine. A USB port is the most unsecure thing ever created on a modern computer. Once you've got your retro system up with NO USB ports, no wireless network card, no wireless router, and NTFS standalone OS. This is as good as you can get it. But it doesn't mean your OS can't be hacked. You can hack into XP quick easily but I don't think you can access the NTFS files if they've been assigned user permissions. But again nothing is fool proof or unhackable with enough time and determination. So again it depends on what you mean by security. If you still want to access the internet a dial up modem with its slow speed is going to be a pain for an intruder to invade your system or steal all your data without waiting forever to do it. But if you're always connected to Broadband and leave your computer on then yes anything is possible.

If that wasn't enough you're going to have to lock down your room with an Iris Scanning Security System and hand and voice recognition. Because if someone can take your computer out of the room all they need is a Phillips to take out your hard drive. How far do you want to go for security?

As for virtualization you can get access to the hardware but it won't get access or see the hardware the way it should be natively in the OS with the correct driver.

Some early VirtualPC versions you could virtualize DOS, but the video card they used was some emulated Tseng Labs video card. It wouldn't be your actual video card but in that scenario that is preferable as that was a very commonly supported graphics card. However if you are using a specific game that use a Monster 3D video card and emulating Windows 95 from within Windows 7 it won't see the Monster 3D video card but the VirtualPC emulated video card whatever that may be. And in that scenario the game won't load as a result.

However, if you run Linux and use KVM for virtualisation, you can dedicate hardware to the virtual machine so that it sees the actual hardware. Find a motherboard that supports a CPU with Intel VT-d or AMD-Vi while simultaneously still having PCI or AGP slots, shove in a Voodoo 2000/3000 and set up a VM that you offer complete control over the Voodoo card, and the virtualised OS will see and use the Voodoo card. Also, the Voodoo card will need its own screen (or you have a screen with multiple inputs so you can switch between the host and VM), and you may need to have a secondary mouse and keyboard connected that you offer to the VM, so it'll be a bit cumbersome, but still, it is definitely possible to give a VM full control over actual hardware devices.

FAT32 is unstable file system in comparison to NTFS, and I'd recommend against installing WinXp and WIn 7 on different partitions. On different HDDs? Maybe.

Saying it as one who has multiboot WinXP and Win7 on 2 different HDDs. Win7 uses different NTFS version from WinXP and so you might run into very unusual issues and exotic problems. Sometimes it borders on funny: year ago I had Win7 pop-up, which said that my other HDD (with WinXP) is as good as dead. Checking HDD from under WinXP revealed no errors or broken sectors. I still use that HDD as backup data storage, so go figure.

Well, since Doom 1-2 didn't even support MT-32, the General MIDI music would sound wrong on it. I think you do hear music in Doom with MT-32 because it uses the same MPU-401 MIDI interface as General MIDI sound cards (MT-32 will just receive and use the General MIDI messages it can understand, thinking they are MT-32 MIDI messages), but it will be inaccurate with wrong instruments, lack of proper polyphony probably etc.

Maybe it is possible to rearrange the MT-32 instruments to better correspond to General MIDI, but it will probably still sound poorer than on real General MIDI sound cards.

For General MIDI, Roland SCC-1/SC-55 were considered as the dipstick against which other cheaper General MIDI sound cards were compared to. Many PC General MIDI game musicians specifically used Roland Sound Canvas to create the music. Some sound cards even exceeded Sound Canvas quality, e.g. Yamaha XG-based sound cards.

Basically, General MIDI music just tells the device "play instrument #1 at this note", expecting that instrument #1 is e.g. a piano sound. It is up to the GM sound card then how good it sounds, both depending on the quality of that particular instrument sound, and also how the different instruments sound together, the balance between the different instruments. So the General MIDI music could still sound quite different on two different General MIDI cards, even though they are basically playing the same instruments and same notes. But at least they resembled each others.

On top of the vanilla General MIDI specs, the Roland Sound Canvas devices supported GS extensions, which meant more alternative drumkits, some extra (generic) sound effects, and some reverb/echo/hall kind of effects to the music. Vanilla General MIDI cards would just disregard those GS extension messages, and play the GS music as a vanilla General MIDI music (without e.g. reverb, or using only the default General MIDI drumkit, or missing some special sound effect). Mainly just sounding flatter than with a proper GS (Sound Canvas) compliant MIDI device, like SCC-1/SC-55. Yamaha XG was one non-Roland product that supported GS extensions, I think.

When playing DOSBox games with General MIDI using the default "Windows GS Wavetable Synthesis" that comes by default in all modern Windows versions, despite its name ("GS") it seems to lack many of the GS extensions, and play GS music as vanilla General MIDI, as far as I can tell.

If you use VirtualMIDISynth with a proper GS soundfont (e.g. Chorium Rev.A or Timbres of Heaven), then I think you get all the GS extensions on top of General MIDI. There are quite a few General MIDI PC games that supported the GS extensions, especially Origin games (e.g. Ultima 8, Wing Commander 3-4, Privateer, Shadowcaster...) and some later Ocean games too (Jurassic Park, at least).

As far as I can tell, VirtualMIDISynth (as well as e.g. BASSMIDI, but I nowadays use the former) serves two purposes:

- Replace the default poor sounding General MIDI soundfont (used by "Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth") with a better one in Windows.

- Ability to tell Windows which MIDI device/driver should be used for any MIDI music, e.g. MIDI messages coming from a DOSBox game, be it MT-32 or General MIDI/GS. For instance on my laptop I have three choices in VirtualMIDISynth:

1. Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth (the default General MIDI synthesizer driver in Windows 7)
2. CoolSoft VirtualMIDISynth
3. MT-32 Synth emulator (this is the MT-32 driver installed by Munt)

The first one is the default Windows General MIDI (virtual) synthesizer. I never use it anymore, the second one makes it obsolete.

The second one is the superior replacement for #1, with a better GM/GS soundfont and understanding GS extentions. I use this whenever I want to hear General MIDI/Sound Canvas music (from e.g. DOSBox games).

The third one is the Munt MT-32 emulator driver. I select it whenever I run MT-32 games in DOSBox.

I am not fully sure what happens if you also have a proper General MIDI (MPU-401) card in the system. Does it appear in the VirtualMIDISynth list as one selectable MIDI driver choice, or does it clash somehow with the VirtualMIDISynth, unless you disable the General MIDI part of the sound card somehow? I presume the former. I haven't used a PC with a proper MPU-401 General MIDI card since the times I had the Roland SCC-1 ISA card installed on my old retro-PC, after than I have always used the integrated sound chipsets that come on PC motherboards or laptops.

Okay I'm not sure if I follow.

If I want to access a Sound Blaster ISA sound card and a Monster 3D graphics video card but not have it installed in my primary modern computer which lacks the ISA slot. But it does have a PCI slot for the graphics card. Let's assume the Sound Blaster and the Monster 3D are going to be installed into a Pentium 3 computer and I got my Ivy Bridge computer. What's the next step in order for me to connect and access those devices and be able to see them under real DOS on my modern Ivy Bridge computer? How will you interface the two systems so I'm using the modern computer booted up at the DOS prompt and wanting to use the hardware (Sound Blaster ISA and Monster 3D graphics) on the P3 system? So once I run Prince of Persia it will play the game as if it was using the hardware on the P3 but using my Ivy Bridge CPU for the processing.

MPU-401 MIDI interface is what I used on my Sound Blaster AWE64 on my P4 system to get the MIDI from DOSBOX to the Roland MT-32. Now being I'm going to try to get the MIDI out to my Roland MT-32 on my Ivy Bridge I'll have to find a sound card capable of MIDI out or the USB to MIDI might be the only way.

You are probably right about the General MIDI possibly sounding awkward piping it to the MT-32 for Doom 1 and 2. It has been a long time since I've done any testing of that nature. Rest assured within a year I'll let you know the results.

FAT32 is fine. The only issue that may come up is if the computer resets power when it is writing to the FAT32 partition you might have to do a repair on the file system. This occurs in NTFS as well but NTFS is beefier than FAT32 in that regard so less likely to have issues from a power failure. But it doesn't mean you lose all your data if that's what you're worried about.

Also as long as you are dealing with just Windows and not mixing it with Linux or some other OS then you shouldn't worry about mixing two Windows versions on the same hard drive on two different partitions. You can mix XP and W7 on the same partition but I wouldn't do it because it would combine the size of both operating systems onto one partition and I prefer my operating systems on separate partitions so the image size will be smaller and you can differentiate the operating systems. You should also assign volume labels for each partition to reflect the OS.

No, NTFS is NTFS there isn't a difference between XP and W7's NTFS. If they did change it then it would no longer be backward compatible. I'm not sure what you are experiencing or perhaps the older XP hard drive was beginning to fail. You could move the data off of it and reformat it from scratch as one whole partition for data storage.

If you want a dual boot the easiest way is to install the earlier Windows OS first not the newest OS first or it will wipe the bootloader of the newer OS if you install from newer to older you will not see see the newer OS and be left with XP only accessible. You can repair this but it gets complicated and you need 3rd party software to do it and I'm trying to make it as easy as possible.

98SE
XP
Vista
7

Here's what you do for multiOS boot partitioning:

C: 2GB - FAT 16 - DOS Boot Loader containing (98SE / XP / Vista / W7 Boot Menu)
I think it is under 16MB in size. Very small.

D: 32GB - FAT 32 - XP 32-bit

E: 64GB - NTFS - Vista

F: 64GB - NTFS - W7

G: 64GB - FAT32 for storing Ghost images of your XP OS

H: XXXGB - NTFS - DATA - huge remaining hard drive space to save your program files and data. Storing of Vista and W7 Ghost images onto.

The reason I use FAT16 for the bootloader partition is because 2GB is the maximum size for FAT16. I use FAT32 for XP because DOS can see FAT32 files but not NTFS for when I'm creating ghost images and want to rename it.

NTFS is used for Vista and W7 because you can't use FAT32.

Remember once you go to Vista and higher Windows forces whatever partition it is installed on and calls it C:. It's pretty dumb that they did that. This eliminates the ability to install two or more copies of the same OS onto the same hard drive to be used effectively cause you'll have to juggle the drive letters in your head.

XP doesn't have this restriction. You can in fact install multiple copies of XP granted your license doesn't recognize it being installed more than once given the same hardware configuration. They will each have their own drive letter instead of being forced to C:

So this opens up the door to create XP partition 1, XP partition 2, XP partition 3

You can dedicate XP P1 as Gaming, XP P2 as Work, XP P3 Testbed - where you can try out new programs without worrying about viruses and so forth. Once you're done you can wipe it and restore it back to a clean state.

By having your own individual XP variations you could have a faster system with less drivers and applications to slow it down. If you're focused on gaming then you wouldn't need all your office apps installed. Everything you install adds to the Windows registry clutter.