Draft:Recommended VM configurations


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This page provides recommended configurations for installing builds in a specific emulator or hypervisor. This page is by no means exhaustive, and your mileage may vary, so you may have to adjust some settings to your liking as it sees fit.

Windows
For early DOS-based Windows releases (Windows 1.0, 2.x, 3.0, 3.1x), Windows 9x releases (Windows 95, Nashville, 98, and Me), and early Windows NT releases (Windows NT 3.1, NT 3.5x, NT 4.0, and 2000), it is recommended to use 86Box to install these builds. Due to problems with faster processors, it is also recommended to use 86Box for Windows XP Starter Edition.

For later versions of Windows (Windows 2000 RC2 - RTM, Neptune, XP and above), it is recommended to use VMware, VirtualBox or Hyper-V.

Use QEMU for Windows for the ARMv7 and ARMv8/ARM64 architectures. QEMU can also be used to run most MIPS builds of Windows, the same with MAME.

Currently, there are no emulators that are known to run Windows for the PowerPC (PPC), DEC Alpha, and Itanium (IA64) architectures.

macOS
macOS operating systems vary on what architectures are used based on the version. QEMU and SheepShaver can run PowerPC builds of Mac OS X under Windows or other x86 operating systems. QEMU, Basilisk II, and Mini vMac are able to run 68k builds of Mac OS, and VirtualBox, VMware Fusion, and Parallels Desktop for Mac can run x86/64 builds of Mac OS X. ARM macOS systems can only be run guests based on its corresponding hardware via Parallels Desktop for Mac and will not support x86/64 builds of Mac OS X.

Note that running virtual machine guests of x86/64 and ARM64 builds of Mac OS X are only officially (and legally) supported on host Apple systems. As such, no instructions will be provided for running x86/64 and ARM64 builds of Mac OS X on non-Apple hardware.

OS/2
OS/2 is best run on 86Box (especially OS/2 1.x, which crash on processors newer than the 486 without patching), even supporting IBM's PS/2 models that OS/2 was originally designed for. OS/2 Warp 4 should also be able to run well on VirtualBox, and also have Guest Additions support for this version.

NeXTSTEP / Apple Rhapsody
Currently, only the x86 versions of the NeXTSTEP and the Apple Rhapsody developer releases can be run. There are no emulators that are known to boot the m68k/SPARC/PA-RISC/PPC versions of NeXTSTEP or the Apple Rhapsody developer releases. As a result, only NeXTSTEP 3.1 and above can be run in virtualization software.

Either 86Box or VirtualBox can be used to get an optimal install of NeXTSTEP or Apple Rhapsody.