In the last couple of days I've been updating the PuTTY online help mechanism in anticipation of Windows Vista discontinuing the old-style Windows Help. I've prepared a new-style HTML help file, but I want to keep the option to use the old one, because (among other reasons) PuTTY still tries to work on Win95, which doesn't support new HTML help. So I hacked together an automatic detection mechanism which will use the HTML help file if it's both present and supported by the OS, and will fall back to WinHelp otherwise.

In order to make sure this really worked on Win95, I needed a Win95 machine to test it on. The PuTTY team used to have a real Win95 machine available, but currently doesn't; so lacking any other convenient options, I dug out my old Win95 install media from a dusty pile of CDs (amazingly, even the boot floppy which accompanied the CD was in full working order) and attempted to install it on a Bochs virtual machine.

It took me twenty minutes of editing configuration files and installing extra Debian packages to even start Bochs; no individual hoop I had to jump through seemed actually unreasonable, but it all added up to a lot of hassle. Eventually I had a working virtual machine and was able to run the install process – which ran very smoothly and promisingly up until the install program said ‘Setup is preparing to install files’ and then sat there beating its little drum icon for over an hour until I lost patience and killed it.

So then I tried QEMU instead, and was pleasantly surprised to find that it didn't even need a configuration file. I gave it command-line arguments pointing it at a floppy image, a hard disk image, and a CD image, and let it rip; it just worked, it ran much faster than Bochs, it installed without a hitch, and it's now cheerfully running a working Win95 system for me on which I've been able to test the help file switching mechanism and confirm that it works fine.

Somebody told me once that if you buy a medium-price hi-fi amplifier, it will come with tone controls, graphic equalisers, and no end of knobs and dials on the front so you can adjust it to exactly the sound you want, but if you buy a really expensive one it will just have a power switch and a volume control and get everything else right without having to be told. That was the feeling I got from comparing Bochs to QEMU.

(Unfortunately, it all went a bit pear-shaped when I tried to get the networking to work; I managed it in the end, but it wasn't nearly as painless as the rest of the process. I think this was mostly Win95's fault, however.)