Ultima VII In Win2000/XP With DOS/Win95/98 by Nelno
the Amoeba
The program is called VMware Workstation and can be
found at http://www.vmware.com.
This program allows you to run virtual machines inside
of other operating systems. The end result is that you
can do things like run a real install of Windows XP
or Linux, in a window, in Windows 2000. However, for
purposes of Ultima 7 the cool thing is that you can
run a real, actual, true-to-life installation of MS-DOS
in a window in Windows 2000 (or XP, I assume, though
I don't have that to try).
It's extremely simple to setup and use. All I had to
do was:
- Download VMWare Workstation version 3.0
- Install it in Windows 2000 and reboot my machine.
- Follow the instructions in a VMware wizard for
setting up a virtual MS-DOS machine.
- Find my MS-DOS 6.22 (or Windows 95/98) disks.
- VMware "booted" the virtual machine in
a window and booted from my MS-DOS installation disk
in my A: drive.
- I installed MS-DOS on my virtual machine (note,
I'm doing this ALL in Windows 2000 with just 40 MB
of hard drive space set aside as a virtual disk for
the virtual MS-DOS system).
- After installing MS-DOS I rebooted the virtual
machine (note again, this isn't really rebooting the
computer just the virtual DOS machine running in a
window on my desktop).
- I set up my CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files on
the virtual machine JUST AS I WOULD FOR A REAL MACHINE.
Note that this means having it load up a device driver
in CONFIG.SYS for my CD-ROM drive and loading up MSCDEX.EXE
in AUTOEXEC.BAT.
- Reboot the virtual machine one more time so that
the CD can be accessed.
- Copy Serpent Isle to my virtual machine from the
Ultima Collection CD-ROM and run it.
Once you do the first 9 steps, playing is as simple
as just hitting the "Power On" button on VMware
to boot the virtual machine and type "cd \SERPENT"
and "SERPENT" to play the game.
Note that I'm running on a Pentium 2 450 with 384MB
of RAM and a GeForce 2. The game is just a bit slow
for me. It may be too fast for people with 1 ghz + processors
and too slow for people with slower processors than
mine. There may also be some way to adjust the virtual
machines speed down that haven't found yet.
One last thing, I was not able to get sound or music
to work, which is a shame. Someone with a real, original
SoundBlaster card might be able to get it working, but
my SB Live! is not compatible with older SoundBlasters.
Still, it's nice to be able to browse the web and play
Ultima 7 at the same time.
VMWare is currently in beta for 3.0, but so far I've
had absolutely no trouble with it.
I've attached a screen shot of Serpent Isle running
in a window on my desktop. Note that when I took this
screen shot Ultima 7 was actually running in the window
(it was not frozen like a graphical DOS app running
under Windows 2000 would normally be).
Jonathan E. Wright aka Nelno the Amoeba (Dragon, member
UDIC)
Lead Programmer/Partner
Third Law Interactive
Nelno the Amoeba has kindly allowed anyone who
needs assistance to contact him at his email.
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