By the way... I ask this question from the point of view of
not being very familiar with the OS internals of DOS, and how
Win3.1/95/98 interacted with DOS.

So, please bear with me.

Since the DOSBox folks are intimately familiar with DOS internals,
I was thinking that you would be the best source of information
for this type of question.

In the next version there will be:
Windows 3.0 real & standard mode
Windows 3.1 standard mode

But do not expect 100% functionality (e.g. MS Office applications do not work).

Mirek

With the disk image filesystem access built into the next CVS, it will be possible to boot a standard Dos version inside DosBox. When this is done, MS apps inside Windows 3.0 become much more stable. Except for the nostalgia and coolness factor, I don't see much reason why one would want to run ancient versions of Windows apps anyway.

I think its important to remember DosBox's original goal: to run old games on new systems. Recent developments have allowed for DosBox to expand beyond this role, but there is the risk that functionality added to get applications like Windows running may hurt (or obfuscate) DosBox's ability to run classic PC games.

i totally agree with canadacow, i see a lot of people who installs applications like c++ and image apps for old dos and then they post their issues here, and as DosBox is growing real fast, i think that could be a "problem" in the near future.

> I don't see much reason why one would want to run ancient
> versions of Windows apps anyway

1. Well, there are some games. My personal reason for Windows is that I would like to be able to run in DOSBOX Wizardry Gold (in VERY DISTANT future - it is Windows 3.1, 256 colors, using Win32s extension - so not a chance without enhanced mode).
And why do I want to run it in emulator? Well, <censored> SirTech programmers totally screwed up one small but important thing - waiting interval when showing messages. On current computers the messages are impossibly fast. There is in game setting of speed but it does not work(this may or may not be specific for AMD processors - I am not sure).
I did manage to run it only by using Virtual PC (installing Windows there).

2. DOSBOX is slowly running out of possible improvements ... 😀 I know there is still a lot of things to do, but it is being developed with lighting speed (there vere giant improvements since 0.55, when I met it for the first time - just compare it to geological speed of other projects like Bochs 🙁 ). Also we are at the version 0.61 and nearly everythink works - if it goes like that I can not wait what will be possible in version 1.0. 😀

Mirek

Well the imagesystem isn't only for booting dos so people might be able to use a more stable win3.0. As far as I'm concerned it's for booter games. That it allows people to run another version of dos inside dosbox is side-effect.

About version numbering. Dosbox doesn't run all games yet. (some people think this might even be impossible) So there is no reason to anounce a version 1.0. Some applications claim to at version 3 or 4. So their goals must have been reached multiple times. (although I have reason to believe that not everybody follows this way of numbering)

Each version should aim for improvements in that area. If dosbox runs a stable number of games(it doesn't increase anymore with new versions). I think It would be nice to call that version 1.0 and let all enhanchements which do not add to compatibilty be added to that version. Although I understand and enjoy the need for stuff like graphical filters and such.

To run win3.x real good, support for filesharing must be added. At the moment I haven't encountered a single game which depends on that (Ms office and such do that), So it has little to no priority to add that to dosbox.

> I don't see much reason why one would want to run ancient
> versions of Windows apps anyway

I think mirekluza misunderstood this^, cause canadacow was talking about applications, not games 😉

Windows 95 could be run probably, but it requires it's own DOS (7.0), VFAT,harddisk controller, and uses paging (which is still bit unstable) but not task switching.
So only option is to load that dos on disk image.
But there was option to turn off "32/bit disk access" if I remember correctly. Maybe this forces it to use DOS for disk handling.
Well, I doubt it's much harder than enhanced win 3.1 anyway.

with little modifications it's possible to install win95 under
dosbox (nearly the same code for the installer as in win3.11
and lower, microsoft wasn't really "inventive" at that point).
but running it is a different thing, and mostly unnecessary
i think 😀

wd

canadacow: "Except for the nostalgia and coolness factor"

Isn`t that the whole point of emulation? 😀

canadacow: "Except for the nostalgia and coolness factor"

Yeah, I agree with icemann - isn't that the whole point of DOSBox? OK, Windows 3.1 is more apps than games, but there are still a few old games that were for Windows 3.1. A couple I remember are Comet Busters and Return Fire. Civilization 2 ran on Windows 3 also, if I remember correctly.

DOS compatibility should still be top priority, of course.

Agreed totally. There were alot of old dos games that ran 10,000 times better in win3.1 or win95, or just looked heaps better. The first Command and Conquer game + the first 2 Warcraft games are a good example of this.

There are other win3.1 games such as the origional myst, and the journeyman project series. which i would love to play again. 😁

ncerniglia wrote:

There are other win3.1 games such as the origional myst

The original Myst was for macintosh 😉

Just curious, does WINE run windows 3.0 / 3.1 apps? I'm all for DOSBox supporting as much stuff as possible, but if there's already an emulator that does early windows apps and games well (and if win98/2K/XP support them as well so that windows users wouldn't even need an emu) it doesn't necessarily make sense for the functionality to overlap.

Then again, it would be an ultimate geek acheivement if you could run DOSBox from within win95 in DOSBox 😀

😲 Wine Is Not an Emulator 😲

Actually, you'll still need a copy of Windows 3.x if you want to try old Windows games on DOSBox.

Wine actually attempts to be able to replicate a lot of Windows functionality even without a copy of Windows, so Wine is much, much more complex than DOSBox. And yes, I think it does support Windows 3.x apps.

Indeed WINE does run Win 3.1 applications. I've run Civilization II quite happily in the past under it.