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Windows 3.1 experiment hits a wall

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I was going to try to see if it was possible to still run old technology in 2008. To start off, I was going to try running for a week or more doing real work with Windows 3.1. However, poor Windows 3.x can't even get out of the starting gate as I mention in Classics Rock:

http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/classic-tech/?p=157

Part of the problem was the Virtual PC environment I chose, but even after those problems, Windows 3.x is outdated enough that you can't get a Web browser that will surf the Web reliably. In and of itself that practically precludes Windows from being serviceable.

I still have a copy of Office 4.2 to install along with a 16 bit version of Outlook, but I think it's going to be a complete lost cause.

Any recommendations about how to get it working or what to do next?

Use DOSBox. It runs Windows 3.11 with minimal fuss, and has emulated support for IPX.

Let us know if this works for you.

Hmmm... that's a thought. I've heard of it, but havent had the chance to actually play with it.

I assume you mean TCP/IP support and not emulated IPX support. As much as I like Netware, IPX is pretty useless today.

Quite correct. Not only IPX emulation, but DOSbox emulates a modem too.

From what I have read on the DOSBox forums, the latest version simply requires that you load netbios.exe for IPX to work. YMMV.

I've actually been looking for a way to get the VMware emulated NIC and TCP/IP supported through the Dos VM in my collection.

When 3.11 was viable for internet connectivity, it was through a modem dialer that provided the interface for browser, gopher and what limited other programs where available in the Windows world.

The install of my Dos VM went clean but hit a dead end right there where I couldn't transfer anything more too it without emulating sneaker-net connections.

Microsoft has a TCP/IP stack for Windows 3.11. The link to the download is in the main posting in the blog. It uses the NDIS2 driver of the emulated network card. It binds and will allow Internet access without needing a modem, although IE 5.01 still acts as if it needs a modem.

There are a few DOS TCP/IP stacks around. I dont have any right now, but I'll see if I can find one.

It was one of those posting before reading the original article moments.

The primary issues I see are a network card driver or sorts for Dos to interface with VMware by and the tcp/ip stack.

(Then there is the issue of how many of my win3.11 install diskettes have rotted but I have ways around that one.)

I'll see what that links has to offer though if you spot any other dos tcp/ip in passing I'd be interested to look at them also.

What will happen in the next 5 years? Is XP, 2000 going to be out of date also?
Will we be able to keep up with the changes that are coming?
How can we keep up to speed?

Can't recall the exact reasons, but we never used SX chips. It may have been that the AMD 386/486 DX chips were faster or the fact that all machines had to have the '87 coprocessor fitted because they were doing spreadsheet & database work.

In those days we were using WFW 3.1 & 'Dos for Workgroups' to network 286, 386 & 486 machines many of which had internet access. The net access was handled by a separate modem for each machine. Many of the 486 DX 2/4 66 machines were still in using WFW 3.1 when we rolled out Win98. The last of the DOS for Workgroups 286 machines were pensioned off in mid '95, I believe that all 386 machines had been Chip upgraded to AMD 486 & so continued for some time after that date.

All 486 machines had at least 8MB RAM, some had 16 (4 x 4). Everything possible was shadowed, we made extensive use of RAM drive configs. This configuration would have facilitated the winsock/tcpip stack setup. We also made extensive use of RISC based Graphics Accelerator cards.

In most cases our WFW networks co-exited alongside Novell.

In the time before WWW the internet tools were Telnet & Gopher clients. Once the WEB arrived I recall using pre 1.0 versions of Netscape ( beta 0.73 rings a bell).

As to MS Office. The preferred word version was Word for Windows 2.1 - can't remember the Excel version but I do recall that these preferences were related to resource demand.

If you want a test site for browsing with such a machine today you might try gutenberg.org as many of their pages are designed for a high level of backward compatibility.

Hope this provide some insights that will help you climb the "Wall".

Cheers

I remember I used Trumpet WinSock to dial a modem and access Internet under Win3.1. Trumpet needs a lot of parameters tweaking in order to run optimally. Netscape was in their glory days. Seems since Netscape v3.x they supports JavaScript, but I don't know if it's still could render the modern web sites properly...

Your first problem is that windows 3.1 sees a year of 00 as 1900 and not 2000. In short you can't boot a system on 3.1 in the 21st century. You've fallen at the 1st hurdle.

Windows 3.x perfectly well understands the difference between 2008 and 1908. I could post a screen shot of Schedule + under Windows 3.x to show this if you'd like.

Second of all, Windows 3.x doesn't 'boot' like Windows XP does. You first boot DOS and then load Windows 3.x on top of it. It's DOS that has the problem with dates after 1999, but even that has nothing to do with booting the OS. It more relates to how the files are saved.

If you do a DIR at a DOS prompt, it would display today's date as 08-06-08, which does look like 1908. Open File Manager in Windows 3.x and it displays the date as 08-06-:8. The : is the Y2k goofup with Windows 3.x

But... Windows 3.x runs perfectly well in the 21st century and knows that it's 2008 and not 1908.

DOS never had that problem. The date was ALWAYS stored internally as 4 digits. Only the output of the DIR command showed 2 because it was assumed humans would be able to figure it out. It was the application programs that had the problem.

John,

Can you post another link to the file for the soundblaster? That web site has no links, just the title of the file. I can't download the one you used.

Kevin

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=sound+blaster+16+driver

Of course, you could always try Creative itself. (You can probably still get the apps there as well.)
http://support.creative.com/Products/product_list.aspx?catID=1&CatName=Sound+Blaster#

I will try this driver and thanks a lot, but it's not really a Win 3.1 driver, it's a DOS driver. It contains none of the Win 3.1 apps that come with the SB16 driver I did find that doesn't work.

Win 3.1 is just a graphical shell that rides on top of DOS. The driver will work, you just won't have the graphical apps to run in Win 3.1.

Pick the correct one from the list at Creative. I found several valid drivers straight from the internet search as well.

The apps were frequently separate - apps aren't drivers, and they aren't necessarily packaged together.

Tell you what - tell me the exact driver & apps you want.

Which exact 16-bit card is it? (name & model # - [CT-xxxx])
You want Windows 3.1, yes?
Do you want DOS & Win3.1 & Win9x as well?

Not only can I find them on the net, but I have originals, a card, book, and older updates I got from Creative years ago.

Terrorists hit computers and software with this driver and codec stuff.

Excellent

Your an open source fan then?

Balthor is an open horizons kind of guy/girl. The time and space continuum are but a minor hindrance to Balthor!

As soon as I read Balthor's post, my first thought was "Balthor Strikes Again".

"Growl for me. Let me know you still care."

It sounds like it could be haiku.

Okay. I've got just what you need. An old 1988 Compaq Presario laptop. It has a 80486 processor and is very fast with WIN3.1 on it. It boots to PCDOS 6.2. I've not had any luck trying to run WIN3.1 on anything beyond that level of hardware. After that, it was the newest thing of WIN95(ugh). I wouldn't even try to run it on the hardware of today, not even under a virtual environment, just way to many differences in the IRQ and then that was way before the NIC age. The closest you might get would be an old 3270 emulator card, maybe.

No... you're right. Windows 95 or anything after it would be completely painful on a 486. Although Windows 95 is *supposed* to be able to run on a 486 if you put enough memory on it.

Kind of like how Vista is supposed to be able to run on a single core P4 if you put enough memory on it. You can do it, but you'll hate every minute of it.

I think this was a waste of time. Windows For Workgroups 3.x? You have got to be kidding me. I don't even consider running 95 anymore (although I have an OEM copy with USB support).

Admittedly there's no good reason to be running Windows For Workgroups anymore. The point of the original article was, just how modern do you have to be and how much old technology can you get away with and be productive in the 21st Century.

http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/classic-tech/?p=146

Windows 2000 is still perfectly serviceable as an platform, but the question remained - what about Windows 98? Windows 95? And yes, what about Windows 3.x.

Windows 3.x isn't completely unusable on a day to day basis. It just doesn't hold up very well in the 21st Century.

I don't think I did, see my reply below to bizzo.

It's an experiment to see if hardware and software from around 1993 will still work in today's environment.

but why would you care? Recycling old hardware so it doesn't hit the landfill? Saving a few pennies (literally, with the price of storage going as low as I've ever seen it (internal 1TB drives for $170 anyone?), same with memory and CPUs) here and there won't save the company budget, nor will it allow you to be productive. Your IT guys, instead of being able to monitor for network intrusions, will be looking to make sure there's even an internal network up and going at any given time. There's a reason why companies stop supporting old technologies. There's a reason we call old hardware and software "outdated" and having reached it's EOL. It's either not productive at all anymore to use, or not productive enough when compared to current tech.

Perhaps just for the geek cred it's interesting, but leave that sort of stuff for Slashdot.

But you really have missed the point.
It's not about saving pennies, or actually reusing hardware for any particular purpose.

You may ask the same question about vintage cars. Why do people spend thousands getting vintage cars road worthy, when they could quite easily buy a new one for a lot less? Why do people restore antique furniture when they could get perfectly good new furniture?

I work for a massive IT company, so I know why companies stop using and supporting old technologies.

"Geek cred"? Perhaps. But have you never done anything just to see if you could? If you haven't, then you'll always miss the point.

That's how I got started with computers. I ran Red Hat Linux on an old IBM PC330 486 all the way up to RH8. It's how I got started in web design (and why I still push myself in that field, even if it's only benefit is for me personally).

But I've never tried reviving something so old you actually need hardware emulators to get it to run (well, except for MAME, for obvious reasons).

http://browsers.evolt.org/
It has all the old browsers maybe Netscape 4.07 would work? http://browsers.evolt.org/?navigator/16bit/4.07

Great suggestion! Thanks.

I've since tried Netscape 4.07 and Opera 3.62, both of which I got from there. Unfortunately Netscape gives a General Protection Fault (the Windows 3.x version of a bluescreen).

Opera seems to be ok so far. It will even mostly render TechRepublic. The drawback to it is that it is only a 30 day trial. Even though the new versions of Opera are free, this one still wants to be purchased and registered.

http://www.oldapps.com/

You should find an old copy of Netscape, the preferred browser in those days.

If using WFW in VM, does the autoexec.bat config.sys files have any issues loading?

I've gotten Netscape 3.01 to work, but Javascript blows up with it as well. I've been looking for a copy of Netscape 4.x, but so far the versions I've installed have all delivered GPFs. This is a problem with my copy of Windows I think.

As for Autoexec.bat and Config.sys, they work the same in the VPC VM as they do in a real computer. They all load normally.

http://sillydog.org/narchive/full123.php

The version of Netscape you tried is per the above site, is the latest version that will work in win3.1.

Good Luck

Hey man, i have an OS2 Warp original instalation, on the original floppy disks. This would work better than this think, why dont you give a try?

Q. What's the difference between WfWg 3.11 and OS2 Warp?

A. Once upon a time, WfWg 3.11 was actually useful.

Hmmm... As anyone who actually USED OS/2 Warp at the time would remember, it ran circles around WFW and was more solid than even Windows 95. It probably wasnt until Windows 2000 that Microsoft had an OS as solid and useful as OS/2.

IBM's problem was they couldnt market it to save their lives. Even the PC division wouldnt preload it from fear of Microsoft.

why should the facts stand between me and a good punch line

You're dead on about the marketing. Madonna should be running Microsoft; both of them are better at marketing than creating what they're selling.

I think it's safe to say only hobbyists and TR columnists would be interested in running either Warp or WfWg 3.11 today. I'm enjoying reading your attempts. Now where did I put those MS-DOS 3.2 floppies? Never mind; they were 5.25s.