Questions tagged [windows-3.x]
Microsoft Windows 3.0, 3.10 and 3.11 (including for Workgroups). Use [windows] instead for Windows NT 3.x.
53
questions
182
votes
4
answers
45k
views
What algorithm did Microsoft use to dither colour in early versions of Windows?
In the late 1980s to mid 1990s, most consumer-class video hardware was not capable of displaying greater than 16 colours at a time. To create the illusion of greater colour, software often "blended" ...
- 2,857
96
votes
11
answers
14k
views
What key factor led to the sudden commercial success of MS Windows with v3.0?
Microsoft Windows was originally introduced in 1985, ostensibly to compete with the Apple Macintosh, and other computers shipping with graphical shells by that time. However, early versions of Windows ...
- 59.4k
92
votes
3
answers
22k
views
Why does part of the Windows 98 Setup program look older than the rest?
When installing Windows 98, the part of the setup process where you enter things like product details looks... different. The scrollbars, buttons, title bar and such look more like they belong in ...
- 981
91
votes
3
answers
16k
views
How did Windows 3.1 implement multitasking?
Windows in its earliest days was simply a shell that ran on top of MS-DOS, which means that Windows 3.1 itself was actually just a standard MS-DOS application like any other.
Yet, MS-DOS is not a ...
- 2,857
65
votes
2
answers
10k
views
What are the software logos in MORICONS.DLL?
Every copy of Windows comes with a file named MORICONS.DLL which was first distributed with Windows 3.0. As far as I know, this file has not been changed since Windows 3.0. Some of the icons include:
...
- 723
28
votes
2
answers
4k
views
Did INI files work in a different way on Windows 3.x than today?
I am dealing with an application that still uses INI files for configuration. I wanted to make a temporary change to an INI file, but the result was not what I expected.
Let's say the original INI ...
- 465
26
votes
2
answers
7k
views
Strange version of Windows 3.1 marked with a "W" logo
I was digging through my storage and came across this old copy of Windows 3.1. It's a strange looking version though and am wondering if anyone has any info on it.
The copyright page only mentions ...
- 261
25
votes
4
answers
13k
views
Why did Mac OS 7 perform poorly with virtual memory enabled?
A comment in another question about supervisor and user modes in the Motorola 68000 processors, claimed that "performance was abysmal" with virtual memory enabled. An InfoWorld article about System 7 ...
- 17.3k
22
votes
1
answer
8k
views
Why did Windows 3.0 fail in Japan?
According to The launch of Windows 3.1 in Japan was such a big event that they even called it “Windows Day” (Bullfrag):
When Microsoft released Windows 3.0 in the United States in 1990, they were ...
- 55.6k
22
votes
5
answers
5k
views
Was it feasible to create Win16 software using pre-existing DOS development tools?
It seems that right from the outset, the plan for Windows development was that it would be done with a separate set of compilers specifically equipped for that purpose.
The Windows SDK comes with ...
- 908
22
votes
6
answers
5k
views
Sound driver for DOS or Windows 3.x that used the PC speaker?
Long ago in a galaxy far far away, back in the early 90's, I worked for a crappy clone company as a phone technician. At the time, 386SX/25's were common for in-house technical support / customer ...
- 8,901
21
votes
2
answers
5k
views
Is there a better way to the 6 disks install of Windows 3.1
I want to install Windows 3.1 on my MS-DOS 6.22 Machine. I have the 6 disk images. But I only have 1 or 2 spare Floppy disk that I can write the disk images onto. One way I can think of is to write ...
- 607
21
votes
1
answer
4k
views
Why did Windows pick 260 characters as the maximum path length?
I just got burned by the 260 character path limitation in Windows. Why did Microsoft decided to limit paths to 3 characters for drive + 256 characters + 1 character for the terminator? Mac OS of the ...
- 2,282
19
votes
2
answers
7k
views
Was OS/2 a viable alternative for daily DOS and Windows tasks?
After playing a bit with the OS, a question sparked my interest:
Could it entirely replace DOS and Windows ?
Let's restrict the scope of this question a bit since it's fairly broad,
Was it ...
- 6,338
17
votes
4
answers
2k
views
Mind-Controller User Input from the late 90s
In the late 1990's, I recall that there was a piece of hardware being demonstrated in Best Buy that supposedly allowed you to control your computer via signals sent from your brain.
The way it worked ...
- 2,493
16
votes
1
answer
3k
views
Windows 3.1 Hardware acceleration API
As far as I know, there were many video cards which offered 2D acceleration (tasks like line drawing, colorfill, bitblit etc.) on Windows as early as Windows 3.1. Did they have any sort of ...
- 161
15
votes
2
answers
9k
views
Why did Microsoft start Windows NT at all?
A related question is: why was the existing Windows not ported to the Intel i860?
In 1985 Windows 1.0 was released. AFAIK it had everything: Win32 API, DOS support, multi-tasking. The last OS of this ...
- 3,897
15
votes
4
answers
6k
views
Running DOS, Windows 3, and Windows 98 from one FAT32 partition?
I'd like to setup a Windows 98 SE system that boots into the included MS-DOS 7.1 command line, and which can also run Windows 3.11. I've seen various disjointed posts online that suggest this is ...
- 59.4k
15
votes
6
answers
2k
views
Video playback software/formats for a 386?
Wanting to have my 386DX @ 20MHz play a video (any video), just as a demo. I'd prefer it to be watchable (eg 10fps and not a tiny 10x10 pixel) as opposed to a slideshow.
What player software could I ...
- 353
15
votes
1
answer
2k
views
"Your program is testing for optimal display performance" in older Windows games
I remember seeing the following a lot when I was younger, and recently saw it again in a DOSbox setting:
For those that haven't seen it, the squiggly red lines shift and undulate quite a bit, and it ...
- 259
14
votes
1
answer
2k
views
Why the DOS extender and DPMI were unavailable to DOS programs on 286 standard mode of Windows 3.0
An old article on Windows 3.0 from PC Magazine (June 11, 1991, page 348) said that:
Using standard mode, the Windows DOS extender and DOS Protected Mode Interface (DPMI) are available to Windows ...
13
votes
3
answers
3k
views
Were Windows 3.x applications dependent upon 80286 instructions?
While Windows 3.x operating system stuck to the 80286 platform, did applications compiled for Windows 3.x have to use 80286 instructions explicitly or be aware of the 80286 memory layout?
Or was it ...
- 3,652
13
votes
3
answers
5k
views
How can I extract the contents of a Windows 3.1 (16-bit) game EXE file?
I have a game that I can play in a Windows 3.1 emulator.
Now I want to have a look "behind the scenes" of the game EXE file. I hope to find game graphics (sprites) there.
But how can I ...
- 151
12
votes
2
answers
1k
views
Why was Windows 3.1 so dreadfully slow on an Amiga A2286 bridgeboard?
Back in the day I had an Amiga 2500/30 with an A2286 as my "swiss army knife" home computer; not only did I have the ability to run MacOS (ShapeShifter) at native speed, but the 8MHz 286 bridgeboard ...
- 15.3k
10
votes
4
answers
10k
views
How do I create a boot menu to select between Windows and DOS?
I was not a PC user before Windows 98. But I remember one of my friends was using a boot menu in his 486 machine to select between Windows/DOS.
The menu was like:
1. EMS
2. XMS
3. Windows
If we ...
- 2,554
10
votes
1
answer
1k
views
Is there a screen recording application for Windows 3.1?
I am looking for an application that runs in Windows 3.1 and will save the screen to a video file on a disk.
I know Windows 3.1 had a extension called Win32s, which is a subset of the Win32 API and ...
- 181
10
votes
1
answer
483
views
How to write Win16 program with only a single segment (combined code+data)?
I wrote a simple Win16 program in NASM assembly. It works on Windows 3.11. (Source code: https://github.com/pts/mininasm/blob/master/demo/hello/helljw16.nasm .)
When I tried to combine the code and ...
- 1,355
10
votes
2
answers
1k
views
SSH for DOS / Win 3.1
Is there an SSH client for DOS 6.22 or Windows 3.1 that supports certificates and could be used to connect to AWS or Azure instances, or any other server for that matter? I have another laptop ...
- 4,154
9
votes
2
answers
2k
views
Is there a generic VBE driver available for Windows 3.x?
I’d like to run Windows 3.11 on a relatively modern laptop. One problem I have is that the only display driver that works with my hardware is the basic VGA driver, which only supports the rather ...
- 20.5k
8
votes
2
answers
2k
views
Media formats in Windows for Workgroups 3.11 [closed]
While installing Windows for Workgroups 3.11 on a 386 PC with 2 MB of RAM, I was a bit surprised that the installation diskettes are not bootable and MS-DOS needs to be installed beforehand. Was this ...
- 1,615
8
votes
2
answers
993
views
In Windows 3.11, did a unusual subnet mask actually work?
AFAIK, in Windows 3.11 it was possible to enter all kind of subnet masks, e.g. 255.255.255.1. Nowadays, the bits of the mask have to be consecutive.
However, I could imagine that such a unusual subnet ...
- 465
8
votes
1
answer
2k
views
How does Notepad store text files in memory?
Before I knew about line endings, I used to open small executables in Notepad and ruin them completely. However, some more complex executables (e.g. Paint Shop) were too big for Notepad, and I was ...
- 18.1k
8
votes
1
answer
2k
views
How do I get Windows 3.1 to run on modern PCs (> 512 MB of memory)?
I am trying to make a bootable SD card that has Windows 3.1 loaded onto it. I only have 2 computers with 1 and 8 GB of RAM. When I load Windows from C:\WINDOWS\WIN on my older 1 GB RAM computer (a ...
- 181
8
votes
1
answer
262
views
What exactly could cause corrupted graphics in WinG performance test?
Wikipedia article for WinG says the following:
WinG would also perform a graphics hardware/driver profiling test on the first execution of the program in order to determine the best way to draw DIBs. ...
- 2,383
8
votes
2
answers
906
views
Strange "snow" artifacts when dragging a window in 256-color mode
I picked up a nice Packard Bell Legend 245 over the weekend, and it works great apart from one issue so far: when dragging windows around the screen (Win 3.1), the screen gets corrupted with weird ...
- 1,437
8
votes
1
answer
255
views
Win16 framework using GetProp / SetProp to bind class to window?
I'm disassembling a 16-bit Windows program from the 1994-95 timeframe. The runtime library used seems to be from Microsoft C, so I'm guessing the program was compiled with Microsoft C++ 7.0 or Visual ...
- 6,572
7
votes
4
answers
1k
views
Where can I get icons for Windows 3.1/95-style GUIs?
Consider for instance the GUI for Microsoft Word 97:
I am interested in getting the tiny icons used for the "Open", "Save", "Print" operations below the menu bar. Is there a good source for these and ...
- 71
7
votes
2
answers
2k
views
Using the swap space of Windows 3.1 as a MS-DOS 6.22 temporary directory
I currently have a working installation of MS-DOS 6.22 with Windows 3.1. I can only use Windows or DOS individually so I don't see the point of having a swap-file for Windows taking up space that can'...
- 18.1k
6
votes
2
answers
596
views
Where is the literature for Windows 3.1 Batch mode setup?
For the purpose of debugging why the first start of Windows 3.1 after the installation crashes DOSBox, I was looking for a way to automate the installation process.
Surprisingly, there is one, the /H ...
- 6,338
6
votes
2
answers
1k
views
Are floppy disks used for MS-DOS setup still needed after you install the operating system?
I currently only have 11 disks available. One of the disks is a reserve, so I will not use it unless I have to. That brings us down to 10 disks.
Disk 0 - Blank, I will use this for the installation ...
- 63
6
votes
1
answer
399
views
Dump process memory of Windows 3.1 control panel applet
I'm trying to work out how a Control Panel applet on Windows 3.1, which interacts with some host-specific hardware, works and as part of this I'd like to dump the contents of memory which the process ...
- 163
6
votes
1
answer
1k
views
When will the copyrights on various versions of Windows and DOS expire?
Related to question
What is the best way to obtain old versions of MS-DOS and Windows?
When will the copyrights on various versions of Windows and DOS expire?
Once they expire I presume one could ...
- 349
5
votes
5
answers
1k
views
What determined the type of error dialog being shown in Windows 3.1?
In Windows 3.X we had multiple type of error dialogs that could be displayed:
Application crash:
Application error that could be recovered:
What did the Ignore button do in Windows 3.1 when an ...
- 6,338
5
votes
1
answer
722
views
Why does my Windows 3.10 only have chimes.wav, chord.wav and ding.wav, but no "Tada.wav"?
After successfully installing Windows "3.10" in DOSBox-X, and finally getting the sound to work, I was confused to say the least to see that only these sound files exist on my installation:
...
- 67
5
votes
1
answer
2k
views
How did Microsoft take over Winsocks (Windows Sockets)?
In the early days of the Internet, Windows users had to install an application called "Trumpet Winsock" in order to use Internet apps like e-mail, FTP, WWW, etc. There were competitors, but Trumpet ...
- 59.4k
5
votes
2
answers
1k
views
TCP over RS-232 with Windows 3.1 and Internet Explorer 5 dialer
I am restoring a Windows 3.1 computer that has Internet Explorer 5 installed. I would like to connect it to the internet using a Linux-based laptop as an intermediary.
The physical connection is ...
- 151
3
votes
1
answer
811
views
Extracting files from a Windows 3.1 (16bit) install/archive (game)
I'm interested in doing some practice work around legacy systems out of pure recreation.
I want to extract data or information related to a DOS game running on the 16bit arch of Windows 3.1 (1991 ...
- 131
3
votes
1
answer
194
views
How to remove ___EXPORTEDSTUB statement from a NE (Win16) program's MAP?
I started a project to get a better understanding on how to compile a game for Windows 3.x. I tried to set up the build workflow so that it produce the byte-exact clone of a great open sourced Win16 ...
- 333
3
votes
0
answers
183
views
Is there any way to obtain the abandonware 1994 original release of Klik & Play in non-English, non-"For Schools" versions?
In the mid-1990s, I purchased a Swedish boxed copy of v1.0 (I believe) of Klik & Play in a computer store. Since that, the floppies have died and I stupidly even threw away the entire big box and ...
- 31
2
votes
2
answers
1k
views
How do I slow down the emulation in VMware and make it go "proper fullscreen" for Windows 3.11?
I have just managed to find and install my native language versions of MS-DOS 6 and Windows 3.11 in a virtual machine, just as I had on my first computer: an IBM 486 DX2 66 MHz.
VM software: VMware ...
- 45