Robbbert
Experienced Member
- Joined
- Jan 10, 2019
- Messages
- 445
I've recently been playing around with 2 installations of Windows for Workgroups 3.11 . One is on a 386/33 machine, the other on a Celeron 500 (compaq).
Firstly, a description of the machines.
The 386 has a 500MB hard drive, SuperVGA video, a Soundblaster, and a network card. Drivers have been installed for the network and the soundblaster, they work well.
The Celeron 500MHz has a 1.2GB hard drive, Intel 82810 on-board video, on-board sound, and a E100B network card. The driver for the network card is installed and working, but unable to locate suitable drivers for the others.
The 386 can do 640x480x256, or 800x600x16. The Celeron can do 640x480x16, or 800x600x16 - unable to get 256 colours.
The installed network protocols on both are NetBUEI and TCP/IP. The machines can access a shared drive on my Win98SE machine, and can also access the internet.
I wanted to know how far such an antiquated system could go. Firstly I added Win32s (allows WFW to run some 32-bit apps), and WinG (the predecessor to DirectX).
Next came Winzip 6.2, and Acrobat Reader 3.0.1 - they both ran flawlessly.
I was able to find the 16-bit version of Space Cadet Pinball. Just like the Microsoft version, you just copy it to a folder - no install. It requires at least 256 colours, so it ran at a crawl on the 386. The Celeron would have been better, but without the video driver there's no chance of it running.
So far so good. The last thing was to try out some internet browsers. This is when the problems started. Freezing, crashing and random GPF was the order of the day. Not only that, but the encryption levels are almost useless, you're lucky if you even get TLS 1.0 - and javascript support was almost non-existent. Still, a few sites worked (somewhat). Google, msn and my sites were mostly workable.
Don't bother with Netscape 3.0 - it's utterly hopeless. It can't display Google, and every single javascript error produced an answerable message which couldn't be turned off.
I made the mistake of trying IE5 on the Celeron machine - it almost immediately froze the entire computer, leaving no choice but to switch it off. This corrupted a few files including the registry. I had to manually delete IE5. Fortunately the registry isn't used much in WFW, so it wasn't fatal. Windows continued to work, and MS Office was somehow able to repair the registry, for which I am thankful.
So, we come to the questions.
1. Does anyone know of a video driver for the 82810 which works on WFW?
2. Does anyone know of a browser which actually works on WFW without blowing up or otherwise misbehaving?
Firstly, a description of the machines.
The 386 has a 500MB hard drive, SuperVGA video, a Soundblaster, and a network card. Drivers have been installed for the network and the soundblaster, they work well.
The Celeron 500MHz has a 1.2GB hard drive, Intel 82810 on-board video, on-board sound, and a E100B network card. The driver for the network card is installed and working, but unable to locate suitable drivers for the others.
The 386 can do 640x480x256, or 800x600x16. The Celeron can do 640x480x16, or 800x600x16 - unable to get 256 colours.
The installed network protocols on both are NetBUEI and TCP/IP. The machines can access a shared drive on my Win98SE machine, and can also access the internet.
I wanted to know how far such an antiquated system could go. Firstly I added Win32s (allows WFW to run some 32-bit apps), and WinG (the predecessor to DirectX).
Next came Winzip 6.2, and Acrobat Reader 3.0.1 - they both ran flawlessly.
I was able to find the 16-bit version of Space Cadet Pinball. Just like the Microsoft version, you just copy it to a folder - no install. It requires at least 256 colours, so it ran at a crawl on the 386. The Celeron would have been better, but without the video driver there's no chance of it running.
So far so good. The last thing was to try out some internet browsers. This is when the problems started. Freezing, crashing and random GPF was the order of the day. Not only that, but the encryption levels are almost useless, you're lucky if you even get TLS 1.0 - and javascript support was almost non-existent. Still, a few sites worked (somewhat). Google, msn and my sites were mostly workable.
Don't bother with Netscape 3.0 - it's utterly hopeless. It can't display Google, and every single javascript error produced an answerable message which couldn't be turned off.
I made the mistake of trying IE5 on the Celeron machine - it almost immediately froze the entire computer, leaving no choice but to switch it off. This corrupted a few files including the registry. I had to manually delete IE5. Fortunately the registry isn't used much in WFW, so it wasn't fatal. Windows continued to work, and MS Office was somehow able to repair the registry, for which I am thankful.
So, we come to the questions.
1. Does anyone know of a video driver for the 82810 which works on WFW?
2. Does anyone know of a browser which actually works on WFW without blowing up or otherwise misbehaving?