# Installing FreeBSD on a PC-98 Emulator



## Pidgeon (Oct 27, 2021)

I've looked all over, and I haven't found much information(and in English at that) about how FreeBSD could be installed on the PC-98, specifically an emulator. I know it's not the 90's anymore, so there's no practical purpose for this, but I think it's interesting from a historical perspective. I also know the last version which supports the PC-98 is not the current one, but the PC-98 as a system remains historically relevant, so it would be a shame if unix was left out of that.

I'm not technically literate, but I have been able to install FreeBSD on a virtual machine, so I'm hoping the process isn't too much more complicated for the PC-98 system. Any guidance would be appreciated.


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## SirDice (Oct 27, 2021)

PC-98 support was removed with FreeBSD 12.0.






						[base] Revision 312910
					






					svnweb.freebsd.org
				






Pidgeon said:


> I also know the last version which supports the PC-98 is not the current one, but the PC-98 as a system remains historically relevant, so it would be a shame if unix was left out of that.


FreeBSD is not a museum, support for old hardware is removed when it's not relevant anymore. Heck, the 32 bit i386 version has already been degraded to Tier 2 with FreeBSD 13.0.


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## Pidgeon (Oct 27, 2021)

I have no expectations for support of pc-98 to be brought back. I apologize if that's how I came across. I'd only like to know how to install the last version that was supported.


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## astyle (Oct 27, 2021)

There might be an emulator for PC-98 available for download somewhere on the Internet. And it's not impossible to find documentation - Google is your friend. The caveat here is that OP still needs to pay attention to version numbers, and be ready to make peace with the idea that older stuff is not a priority for active support.


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## SirDice (Oct 27, 2021)

As far as I understood the PC-98 platform you cannot boot from a CD. So you're going to have to do this the old fashioned way, using two floppies. The first floppy loads the kernel, the second floppy is an mfsroot filesystem with the old installer on it. Not sure what the last version was that still had the floppy images, it's a long time ago.


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## mark_j (Oct 28, 2021)

Pidgeon said:


> I've looked all over, and I haven't found much information(and in English at that) about how FreeBSD could be installed on the PC-98, specifically an emulator. I know it's not the 90's anymore, so there's no practical purpose for this, but I think it's interesting from a historical perspective. I also know the last version which supports the PC-98 is not the current one, but the PC-98 as a system remains historically relevant, so it would be a shame if unix was left out of that.
> 
> I'm not technically literate, but I have been able to install FreeBSD on a virtual machine, so I'm hoping the process isn't too much more complicated for the PC-98 system. Any guidance would be appreciated.


Check them out here:




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						Index of /pub/FreeBSD-Archive/old-releases/pc98/
					





					ftp-archive.freebsd.org
				




Last one was 8.4R

I think looking at the wiki dosbox seems the most likely candidate, and likely you would have to create an A: drive for the floppies even though the ISO contains a boot section. I'm not sure how dosbox handles ISOs - it's been a while since I played around with it.

It's probably a tedious setup.


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