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Win16

T

TandyMan100

Veteran Member
Joined
Jan 7, 2009
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Okaaayyy.... There really needs to be more software for Windows 3.1 and it cousin win16 OSes. In my opinion, 3.1, 95, and XP are the only decent versions of Windows ever made, in that order. I say NO MORE of this x64-bit bruhaha. LET'S GO RETRO!!

Anyways...

I think there should be more programs for windows 3.1. Maybe a version of Cygwin, a good telnet client, an easy-to-use utility to get you on the internet, the smallest web browser possible (with tabs, favorites, and remembering passwords), terminal program, emulators (atari, c64, etc.), etc.

We could make it a contest...

P.S. does anyone know where I could download proggies like I listed above?
 
Don't expect too much

Don't expect too much

Web Browsers on Win16 are a challenge. Each image would need its own GDI handle. With only 64kB storing handles and other information, that limits the system to only a few thousand images at a time. Some Myspace pages probably would overwhelm the limts of any Win3.1 web browser. Tabs would make it worse.

Using Windows for Workgroups, it is relatively easy to get a Winsock connection through to the internet. The other internet utilities existed but I don't recall how good any of them were. It has been a long time.

For programs, try
http://www.gaby.de/win3x/esoft.htm
and
http://www.bookcase.com/library/software/#win3x
 
The issue is 3.1 is just a DOS GUI, not a separate OS so it really offers no benefis to a regular DOS program. 95 uses DOS as a bootloader, so it really begun the line between DOS/WIndows.
 
I don't recall a shortage of stuff to do in 3.x but I suppose some current things weren't invented yet.

The internet was simpler, mostly just text pages with small pictures so 16-bit versions of Netscape or Internet Explorer were fine but you had to pay for them (Internet wasn't popular yet so not that many companies had a website and paying to get onto the not quite useful internet was the focus of the business corps trying to make money off of it).

I had an old version of Cakewalk for midi and writing music and porting into the computer. That also got me into things like trackers (FastTrack, etc) ... this was on a 486 system.

Games were exactly what they were.. some of the ones that were breakthrough graphically for me were Raptor, Galactix, Rise of the Triad, Terminal Velocity, (later Descent was good but I liked "TV" better for the dog fighting), RedBaron, ..er.. ok those are mostly dos but still same thing for that era.

Then to get away from it all you'd load up your favorite ANSI enabled terminal software and dial into a BBS for a bit, play some fun games like Legend of the Red Dragon, Usurper, TradeWars 2002, Baron Realms Elite, etc. Maybe chat with your favorite sysop for a bit.

The internet was more commonly a proprietary app/provider. You'd load up Prodigy, AOL, Compuserve, Juno, etc log on and check out their topical chat rooms for a magazine you like or some company that made their own internal server. Later on AOL you could play Neverwinter Nights with thousands of people all playing at once.. that was a blast and eventually free. That or download some new demo software or book or something that would take 4 hours of your time on a fast connection. (We spent 8 hours downloading a computer reference dictionary before his sister decided to pick up the phone at 5am killing our download.. I think we were able to resume for some reason). I spent the next 96 hours straight printing it on a dot matrix printer.

Maybe play Winamp a bit or load modtracker or something and play music for kicks while you program something.

Anyway that was how my free time was spent those days.
 
I for one don't mind not programming in the Win16 model. DLL's were more confused; addressing data structures over 65K was very messy; if a program decided to hang onto the CPU, you couldn't get rid of it short of rebooting; if you wanted to hook up to a device driver, you needed to know its ID number; if you needed to call a 32-bit DLL, you had to go through the business of "thunking". Yech.

What was surprising was how long it took for the world to start working in 32-bit mode. I know this really upset some of the 386 design engineers at Intel.

Other things were the slow adoption of any sort of 32-bit BIOS routines by the manufacturers and the absolute indifference of Microsoft toward producing a true 32-bit MS-DOS. Not an MS-DOS with a 32-bit DPMI server, but a real native 32-bit DOS.
 
Chuck(G) said:
What was surprising was how long it took for the world to start working in 32-bit mode. I know this really upset some of the 386 design engineers at Intel.
Click to expand...

That's something I hadn't thought about. I guess it would be frustrating to see something you've poured your heart and soul into so that people could do (for then) wonderful things, only to see it's capability underutilized.

A bit like designing and building a fantastic sports car, only to find everyone simply used it to go a few hundred meters to the corner shop :)

Tez
 
Dreamcast270mhz said:
The issue is 3.1 is just a DOS GUI, not a separate OS so it really offers no benefis to a regular DOS program. 95 uses DOS as a bootloader, so it really begun the line between DOS/WIndows.
Click to expand...

That's not quite accurate.
While M$FT claims "DOS is dead" advertising Windows 95, that was marketing BS.

Windows 3.x 386 Enhanced Mode uses MS-DOS in about the same way as Windows 95. Both use DOS as a bootloader and filesystem to get their 32-bit protected mode virtual machine manager cooking. 95's VMM is more advanced, but basically the same as 3.1.

Each DOS "window" in 3.1 runs in its own virtual machine, with the addresses space and peripherals virtualized for it. Windows itself, the GUI, runs in its VM, and all the winapps run inside that one VM. There's full multitasking between the VMs.

The 32-bit Windows API that 95 brings, doesn't affect the basic architecture of the VMM.

Windows 3.1 provides DPMI services to DOS apps (running in 3.1 VMs).
Windows for Workgroups 3.11 added 32-bit protected mode (VxD) implementations of the DOS file system and INT13 disk interface to the party.

Bill
 
I would suggest that you build a UNIX server to grab and convert web sites into browsable-by-early-browser renderings of modern web sites. A kind of wayback machine. I don't see the point (from a vintage computer hobbyist perspective) of trying to make an obsolete machine act like a new one. Today's Internet is just too complex for 15 year old Windows 3.11 systems and a windsock. My opinion.

Of course writing an application to render modern web content into a useful format will be a serious effort.

One other easy way to connect using an old machine *was* AOL, but now none of the oldest versions connect any more. Maybe version 4 is still supported, but I can't say. I last used version 5 about a year ago and I had to create a special install to make it work.

Bill
 
On a related subject, the qnx demo floppy was pretty amazing, booting a 32-bit OS with browser and other tools from a single 1.44M floppy.

I look at it as what a DOS might have been.

Contrast this with the size of the combination of, say, IE 2 and Win 3.1 with networking. Actually, toss in Win32S if you want a 32-bit apples-to-apples comparison.
 
I remember the qnx floppy. I was very impressed - still am.

billdeg: I would suggest that you build a UNIX server to grab and convert web sites into browsable-by-early-browser renderings of modern web sites. A kind of wayback machine.
Click to expand...
That's absolutely brilliant! A kind of proxy maybe? In fact that would be of interest to many more people than a piece of software running on vintage kit. I think your idea really scales in a much more meaningful way. There is a lot of equipment with limited resources out there. Cell phones is one. A web translation of more clarity to blind people would be another point of use. In fact I smell funding. :)
Of course writing an application to render modern web content into a useful format will be a serious effort.
Click to expand...
How serious? I'm not a coder and I don't think it is easy, but how about a collaborative effort? Such an idea might gain some interest with a coder or two outside of the vintage crowd. When I see something like Dillo and how useful it is, I can't help but think that it could be used as some kind of filter for passing on code. Dillo is open source and there is probably much more open source code out there which could be relevant. I am sure it is much easier to glue together open source Linux/unix code than writing DOS code from scratch.
 
Unknown_K said:
No IE5 came out in 16 and 32 bit versions, 16bit was for NT 3.5.x and Win 3.1/WFW.

http://www.cintek.com/download/ie5.htm shows sepcifications.
Click to expand...

IE5 seems to be awfully late for not using Win32S--I'll check it out, however. Thanks!

Follow-up: IE5 does indeed come in a 16-bit package. After browsing the files in it, no wonder it was the last of the 16-bit browsers. It's amazing that it could hold itself together.
 
Last edited:
MS released it for NT 3.5 users, they could have cared less about Win 3.1 at that time.

Still its the newest IE for 16 bit Windows and does not crash as much as netscape.
 
Unknown_K said:
MS released it for NT 3.5 users, they could have cared less about Win 3.1 at that time.
Click to expand...

That's what I never understood. NT 3.51 certainly supports a 32-bit API, albeit somewhat down-level from 4.0. Why bother furnishing a 16-bit browser? It sounds like more work than it's worth.

Not that I ever understood the Great Minds at Microsoft...
 
My experience was that NT 3.51 ran Win16 graphics code faster than it ran Win32 equivalents. I guess Microsoft spent a lot of time optimizing the WOW subsystem while leaving the speedups of Win32 for NT 4 and Win95. Or the various compilers I had knew how to make good Win 3.1 code but hadn't solved early NT yet

The handful of people still running NT 3.51 in 1999 on a system that would need a web browser would have installed the fast Win16 browser to replace the sluggish Win32 browser.
 
It might have been something to do with the platform-independence that 3.51 was still striving for. ISTR that the WOW subsystem ran only on x86 platforms, while the Win32 API had to work for everything. MS didn't start dropping non-x86 platforms until 4.0.
 
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