Chinese Programmer Sticks Windows 95 On An iPhone 6 Plus

Posted Nov 10, 2014 by John Biggs (@johnbiggs)

Today in “putting stuff onto things on which they don’t belong,” we present a user,xyq058775, and his exciting admission that he installed Windows 95 on a brand new iPhone. He used a tool called iDos, an open source DOSBox-like app to install the OS. He found that most of it worked fine but he was unable to upgrade to Windows XP. And we can assume he was also able to play Doom.

There’s is very little new about this whole process – people have been putting emulators on things since the original VAX machines – but it’s cool to see resurrected software run so readily on new hardware. While I can’t imagine a real world use case for this (maybe you really need to run a copy of Mavis Beacon?) it’s a great theoretical exercise. Who knows, maybe someone can run POSDT next.

Here is the poorly translated FAQ:

1.Q: Can I install WINDOWS XP? A: The answer is yes you can, but certainly not by idos, because idos simply simulate the DOS environment is not the true sense of the virtual machine, so the system is more difficult to run the DOS and idos simulation environment and do not have XP running basic environmental needs, so later if transplanted XP system, then I will make use of their leisure time with friends ios platform to write a plug-in to run XP virtual machine system.

2.Q: Why are you doing this? Why not use Remote Desktop. A: First, to show that this kind of thing tall Remote Desktop is currently no support on win98 systems, not to use during system installation and tool methods have sent me here.

3.Q: Why is the process I installed the explorer process wrong? A: Because idos simulator only simulates the 16’s dos environment, although win98 16/32 hybrid system but Explorer and exe process large part needed is a 32-bit environment, so when they need 32 program calls some system environment variables and support libraries when an error occurs, LZ modify some of the resource is designed to allow him to run in idos environmental good, However, this modification will change the part of the machine, which has led some device errors when using LZ modify the good image. After LZ according to everyone’s feedback slowly improve!

There are full instructions on his post if you can read Chinese. If not, I leave the installation as an exercise for the reader.