Sol98 Wheel Clipboard Bridge

Windows 98 has no supported VirtualBox Guest Additions clipboard provider. The working path is therefore the private bridge at 10.0.2.2:8891 (NAT) or…

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Executive Summary

Windows 98 has no supported VirtualBox Guest Additions clipboard provider. The working path is therefore the private bridge at 10.0.2.2:8891 (NAT) or 192.168.56.1:8891 (host-only). The authenticated endpoints are: GET /clipboard returns the host XFCE clipboard as bounded CP1252 text.

Wheel and Clipboard Bridge

Clipboard

Windows 98 has no supported VirtualBox Guest Additions clipboard provider. The
working path is therefore the private bridge at 10.0.2.2:8891 (NAT) or
192.168.56.1:8891 (host-only). The authenticated endpoints are:

GET /clipboard returns the host XFCE clipboard as bounded CP1252 text.
 POST /clipboard with Content-Type: text/plain replaces the host clipboard.

SOLCLIPBOARD.EXE polls once per second, copies CF_TEXT in both directions,
and caps transfers at 64 KiB. It is installed as
C:\SOLCHAT98\SOLCLIPBOARD.EXE and can be placed in the Windows 98 Startup
folder. The H: share is used to distribute the binary; clipboard state itself
travels over HTTP so the read-only share is not a limitation.

Host source: /home/david/sol98-chat-app/solclipboard.c.
Guest binary: /home/david/sol98-chat-app/SOLCLIPBOARD.EXE.
Installer copy: guest/cd-root/SOLCLIPBOARD.EXE.

Wheel

The overlay first sends an absolute reposition followed by a relative VirtualBox
wheel delta. Because the current Win98 USB-tablet stack may discard that packet,
it also sends PageUp/PageDown for focused list and document controls. Disable
the fallback with SOL98_SEAMLESS_WHEEL_KEYS=0 when a real wheel-aware driver is
installed. Keep seamless mode on --mouse=usbtablet with --usbohci on;
PS/2 requires capture in the normal frontend and breaks absolute overlay
clicks. Microsoft IntelliPoint 4.12 for Windows 98 remains a period-compatible
wheel enhancement if a physical wheel model is later presented.