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	MS Works 2.0! (and how I did it)
	August 18th, 2020
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	I have come up with something brilliantly stupid so that I can access
	Microsoft Works 2.0 via SSH (or mosh), I'm running it on top of MS-DOS
	6.22 via qemu. Here's how I did it:

	First I downloaded some prerequisites on my alpine VPS
	apk add qemu-system-i386 qemu-ui-curses qemu-img
	(note: they're community packages)

	Then I downloaded a DOS of my choice, after debating between FreeDOS,
	MS-DOS, and PC-DOS, I took the lame way out and grabbed an MS-DOS from
	WinWorld "Microsoft MS-DOS 6.22 Plus Enhanced Tools (3.5-1.44mb)"

	As a final prerequisite I downloaded "Microsoft Works 2.0A for DOS (3.5)"

	I created a 32MB hard disk image for the C: drive of MS-DOS:
	qemu-img create -f qcow2 MSDOS622.qcow2 32M

	Now I extract the 7z file containing MS-DOS and stuff the floppy images
	somewhere, and then I boot them:
	qemu-system-i386 -curses -HDA MSDOS622.qcow2 -m 1 -fda Disk1.img \
	-boot a -rtc base=localtime

	The -curses flag tells qemu to display the virtual PC's 80x25 text mode
	as ncurses, -HDA points to your hard disk image, -m determines the
	amount of RAM (MS Works requires a bit under 700kb), -fda points to your
	floppy image, -boot determines which DOS drive letter to boot from
	(typically a {floppy} or c {hard drive}), the -rtc option I give here
	will match the emulated real time clock to the machine hosting qemu.

	Booting from the MS-DOS disk one will immediately run the MS-DOS
	installer, it's very straightforward, if it asks about your hardware,
	just tell it that you have a good old fashioned IBM PC (PS/2) with an
	IBM VGA card... When it wants to switch disks, hold the escape key and
	hit 2, this will dump you into the qemu console, you'll type something
	like this to change floppy images: "change floppy0 Disk2.img"
	After the change command succeeds, hold escape again and hit 1, taking
	you back to the MS-DOS installer... continue swapping disks until the
	installer tells you to eject all disks, at that step go back to the qemu
	console and type "eject floppy0".

	At this point MS-DOS should be installed, lets get that MS Works going!
	Setup for MS Works will be similar, use the QEMU console to change to
	your MS Works floppy disk one, then flip back to MS-DOS and run setup,
	when the installer asks, you again want regular VGA, and you want text
	mode (graphics mode will not work under qemu -curses!)

	I have not found a way to get the mouse working in qemu -curses, but
	MS Works seems to work just fine with only the keyboard, hit alt + F to
	get the menus at the top to pop up, use they keyboard arrows to select
	and enter/return to activate a menu entry... If you want to close the
	menu without selecting anything, just hit escape. All other keyboard
	shortcuts are in the help menu at the top right (alt + h, alt + k).

	Screenshot of MS Works inside tmux with putty.
	Screenshot of MS Works inside tmux with termux.
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	Comments have been left on this post:

	This is great. On mouse support on ncurses based qemu, it may depend on
	the terminal.
	Posted Wed Aug 19 23:06:27 UTC 2020 by 92.176.105.30
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	gr_uid=lJX2
	Posted Mon Aug 7 09:03:06 UTC 2023 by 164.90.232.244
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