Where/when will this madness end? — right here, right now… ;p
This was my final proof of concept attempt at a windows OS on the Archos 5.
I successfully managed to boot Windows 95 using dosbox, and an image file of win95.
Dosbox is a really hefty program on the A5imt (taking up over 70% cpu usage and over 40% ram), so this was a crawling process. Im sure it would work better with other emulators, but none have yet to be successfully compiled for the A5IMT. With that said, and keeping in spirit of the original hardware this was meant to run on — the load time is like watching paint dry.
Video: (8 minute long vid, so grab some coffee)
Process:
–Make directories “/dos/95″ on root of unit (mnt_data || rootfs_source)
–Copy image of win95 (in this case W95.IMG) to /dos/95
–Start up dosbox
Run the following commands in dosbox:
- ver set 8.0 (must trick win95 into thinking ms-dos version is >=7.x.x)
- mount c /rootfs_source/dos (setting up env.)
- c:
- imgmount e c:\95\W95.IMG -t hdd -fs fat (mounting boot image to fs – setting up parameters)
- boot -l c (booting image off c:)
Then wait….
It will perform scandisk upon booting, let this run.
wait some more….
Ahh… Success!
Touchscreen is nerfed, and the start menu doesn’t show, so good luck with that. I haven’t tested out a mouse with it (nor will I) – only a keyboard, and that seems to have basic functionality (asides from the cursor keys not doing what they’re suppose to do), albeit extremely slow.
Have fun, and remember, this is for educational purposes only!! >=]
~Spz0