[kmavm]

When I was at VMware in the 'aughts, VESA often saved us as an unaccelerated option for guests that didn't yet have a driver for our virtual display. Was there really no VESA driver for the 9x family? Or does QEMU's BIOS not do it or something?

[freebreakfast]

BearWindows and SciTech Display Doctor are the two VESA drivers which come to mind for Windows 9x. If I remember correctly Bear will also work in 3.x.

I remember these being somewhat frustrating to get working with VirtualBox. I never tried with QEMU.

I've personally moved away from virtualization for older OSes and to emulation. It just seems much easier to deal with even if it's more resource intensive.