Virtualbox Win98 SimTower Problems... (and solution for getting files into your VM)
I made an account just to post this, and I'm very ADD so you can smell the desperation. Please somebody help me!
Thanks so much to michaelandrews for the suggestion to use Virtualbox with Win98se to play SimTower!! I love this game and missed it horribly, and even though it took me literally days of hours upon hours of work to get Windows 98 running in Virtualbox (I am not at all VM savvy), when I finally got SimTower to open it was like winning the lottery. However.... it's broken.
![:\](/mac_images/images/smilies/Undecided.png "Undecided :\")
What the problem is, is that
the mouse goes crazy every time I'm in the game. It's much worse if the VT-x/AMD-V is on, but even with it off (and I played with a lot of settings) I can't regain mouse control. The mouse literally moves around the screen like it is possessed.
I DID find, however, that playing around with the video memory settings made it varying degrees of broken, so maybe it's a video problem... From playing with settings, the best I got it was that *if* I could regain mouse control long enough to click the game speed and remove it from fast play, the mouse would be a little buggy but mostly under my control (at least enough to build a crappy little tower, but as soon as I put it in speed mode again mouse control was completely lost). It's so bad that whenever this happens there is no other option than to force-quit the VM, because I can't even get the mouse control back to my host unless I give it the three-finger salute.
For reference, I'm using a 2013 MacBookPro. I installed Win98 in virtualbox, and have SciTech display doctor and Rain 2.0. I couldn't figure out what display to use for SciTech, so I picked one of the standards closest to my screen's resolution (although not a perfect match). This is the only thing left I have not tinkered with to try and fix this problem.
It is too bad that virtualbox doesn't have a patch for Win98, because it looks like people that had this issue in other verisons of windows were able to solve their problem just by installing the patch.
If you are still around, michaelandrews, i would be forever grateful if you could specify your VM settings for Win98! I think it might be a settings issue for me, but there are so many settings to tinker with that I have been tinkering for hours and cannot get this figured out!
Another thing I did was, in the VM, I reduced the graphics speed to one notch less than the fastest, which windows suggested was a fix for mouse problems in games. This seemed to help a little, but not enough to be able to play the game. I slowed it another notch and nothing improved.
Please help!
Also... for those of you attempting
to install programs in Win98 in virtualbox, something I did not anticipate being so difficult was getting the programs actually into the VM. This took me hours to figure out, so
here is the solution:
1. Put all the files you want to add into a folder. Then, go into disk utility, and go to File -> New -> Disc image from folder. Select the folder. Save it to the desktop, and under image format choose "DVD/CD master" (w/ no encryption). This saves it as a .cdr file.
2. To get the file into the VM, you need to save it as a .iso file and then load it as a virtual CD. You cannot simply change the extension from .cdr to .iso, believe me that does not work. What you have to do, which I got this suggestion from deep within another forum and I have no idea how it works so please don't ask, is open Terminal. Then, type in the following (for this example, i named my .cdr file Win98Patches, but use whatever your folder is named):
cd desktop (hit enter)
hdiutil makehybrid -iso -joliet -o Win98Patches.iso Win98Patches.cdr (hit enter)
This magically creates a .iso file on your desktop.
3. Then, go into your VM, and load this as a virtual CD. One way to do this is to go to the menu "Devices", then pick "CD/DVD Devices" from the dropdown menu, and choose "Choose a virtual CD/DVD disk file". Then choose the .iso file you just created.
4. When you go to My Computer on your VM, then you can see the folder under the CD drive. You can open the files from here and install things, etc. If you want to keep it on your computer and later use another CD for the same thing, I think you need to copy it to your desktop or something to that effect. But yes now it's on your VM and you can celebrate.
