wanted: testbot w9x machines

Hi,

Francois Gouget wrote in another thread:
> Not so long ago that machine was also running the tests on 5 additional 
> NT4 configurations, Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows Millenium. It no 
> longer does, not because of lack of 'resources' or 'intention', but 
> because the Wine community is not interested in these.

Huh? What?

Please, PLEASE give me a (new)testbot with some w9x machines such that I can
investigate the winmm&mci behavior that the apps written in that era encountered.

It really slows down development on my side *not* to have an easily
checked w9x system (nor a system for 16 bit tests, BTW).

All that I can remember when that issue was raised last time was:
1. It's good not to test incoming patches against w9x behavior,
  because the time spent adding broken() for those is better
  invested adding code and more tests for w2k-w7 machines.  Agreed.

1' test.winehq.org need no more display w9x test results.  I don't care much.

2. Some technical aspects, such as not being able to find Greg's old w95
  VM image, or producing a VM image with some soundcard not hanging randomly.

But I can't remember an argument saying like "nobody was interested
in those w95/w98/w98SE/wME machines, so we dumped them".

Currently, (new)testbot doesn't even offer an option to run tests on w9x machines.
I'm not asking for that option to be on by default, I'm just begging for it to be present!

Thank you,
    Jörg Höhle

On Mon, 4 Mar 2013, [e-mail] wrote:
[...]
> All that I can remember when that issue was raised last time was:
> - It's good not to test incoming patches against w9x behavior,
>
> because the time spent adding broken() for those is better
>   invested adding code and more tests for w2k-w7 machines.  Agreed.
>
> 1' test.winehq.org need no more display w9x test results.  I don't care much.

That's mostly what I meant by "the Wine community is not interested in 
these anymore" (especially in the context of running WineTest daily: 
there's no point since I cannot even submit the results).
> Please, PLEASE give me a (new)testbot with some w9x machines such that I can
> investigate the winmm&mci behavior that the apps written in that era encountered.
>
> It really slows down development on my side *not* to have an easily
> checked w9x system (nor a system for 16 bit tests, BTW).

I'm not opposed to it but that would mean buying new known legit 
licenses as we cannot reuse the ones of the old TestBot (they don't 
belong to us). So I'm not sure it will happen.

[...]
> Currently, (new)testbot doesn't even offer an option to run tests on 
> w9x machines. I'm not asking for that option to be on by default, I'm 
> just begging for it to be present!

I can confirm that the Win9x VMs have been removed from the old testbot 
at some point: I don't see them in the VM table.