For a project I'm working on that I hope will be useful to other people, I'm trying to find some Windows 3.1 software that seems to have disappeared when BBSes disappeared:
Douglas Boling's WINCMD.EXE 1.4 (I have 1.2) and the associated library WCLIB.WCL 1.1.
If it exists, a utility that exits Windows 3.1 when run (from a RUN box, for instance), not when clicked (like WinExit).
Many thanks for any help with this.
Hmm. I've got several versions of WinCLI and WinDOS..
But WinCMD 0.9 is the only version of WINCMD that I have found, sorry. 🙁
"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel
//My video channel//
I may come back and ask for the latest versions of WinCLI and WinDOS, and thanks for trying.
Meanwhile, I've found source code for WINCMD 1.3, and will try to teach myself how to build it, but if anyone (1) is interested, and (2) has a copy of Visual C on a Wiin 3.1 setup or a later version that can compile for Win 3.1, and (3) is willing to try compiling it, here is the source code:
http://cd.textfiles.com/wthreepack/wthreepack … AM/WINCMD13.ZIP
Still looking for 1.4 and version 1.1 of the WCLIB.WCL...
So I installed MSVC 1.52 in a VirtualPC Win311 setup, and created a new project from the WINCMD13 source, including all the files, but when I build it, I got 170 errors saying that things were defined more than once. If anyone is generous enough to tell me what I'm doing wrong, I'll be very grateful. ("Doing wrong" != "trying this in the first place", I hope.)
OK, I figured out how to build WINCMD by including only these files in the project:
wincmd.c
wincmd.def
wincmd.rc
The executable runs, but it doesn't have its icon. I know I can add it via a resource editor, but I'd prefer to build it in. When I get that done (if I ever figure it out), I'll post 1.3 here.
OK, I'm a bit slow, but I seem to figure it out eventually. Here is WINCMD 1.3, built with Visual C++ 1.52.
I know this fact is irrelevant to games, and probably everyone knows this already, but you can run Visual C++ in Win311 under DOSBox as long as you run FAKESHAR.COM before starting Windows, and if you have the MSVC\BIN and MSVC\LIB directories in the path. I used that setup for building this.
The reason to have WINCMD 1.3 is that it fixes a bug in earlier versions that prevented it from using F10 in a SendKeys command. This means it's possible to write a WInCmd file that works in any language - you use F10 to get to the menu, not Alt-F (which might be something different in a non-English version). With the usual hope that someone finds it useful...
EDIT: Use this with caution! I've tried both the versions I compiled under Virtual PC and DOSBox, and both - if an associated library file (.WCL) is present - cause a GPF. Also, I'm not sure this version is working right in other ways. I hope someone else might try building the source code and see if they produce anything better...
EDIT: I've removed this file, which is clearly defective. A good copy of version 1.4 is in a later post.
I respect your feat!
I'm mildly intrigued enough to want to see what the end result project will be... looking forward to it.
"I see a little silhouette-o of a man, Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you
do the Fandango!" - Queen
Stiletto
wrote:I'm mildly intrigued enough to want to see what the end result project will be... looking forward to it.
It's an improved update of the thing described in the last post here:
Set up a Win311-DOSBox system in less than one minute
Don't download the version linked there. When I'm done, I'll upload an improved version that smoothly supports all language-versions of Win 311, and automatically creates a correctly-named startup group for each. As in the earlier version, you can print to the current Windows printer, and with some extra keystrokes, exchange data to and from the default host Windows printer.
What I wanted WINCMD 1.3 for was to build a feature that will let you drop a file (for example, an .WRI file) on the desktop icon that launches the system - and that file will open in the default Win 3.11 application. You could probably adapt this to run games by dropping an icon for a batch file (or simply the game's executable) on the icon. I've got this working in US English Win 3.11, and will do some more work with WINCMD 1.3 to get it working in other languages.
I've learned more about unicode/ANSI conversions that I ever wanted to know when doing this. More details when it's more or less finished...
That version of WINCMD13 that I built and posted doesn't seem to work correctly, so I'm still hoping for a copy of version 1.4. Meanwhile, in case 1.4 doesn't show up, does anyone know of a Windows 3.x utility that will open the Run... box without going through the Program Manager's File/Run... menu? I'm looking for something that will simply open the Run... box.
The reason for this is that non-English versions of Windows 3.x won't use Alt-F,R (or Alt-F, {down}...{enter}) to open the Run box, and the WINCMD 1.2 utility won't send F10 correctly (which works in all language versions). So if there's a utility that can do this, I'll be grateful.`
wrote:I'm mildly intrigued enough to want to see what the end result project will be... looking forward to it.
And here's a version that may be worth trying, if you have some spare time on your hands...
And here is a complete WINCMD 1.4 setup, with the final versions of both the optional WCL libraries and two sample scripts, plus source code. All this is through the generosity of Rey Barry's Freeware Hall of Fame. Rey resurrected the machine that had his old BBS files, and recovered WINCMD 1.4, itself. I added the libraries, which are fairly easy to find elsewhere.
Rey's site is:
http://www.freewarehof.org/blog.html
And here, attached is a complete WINCMD 1.4 for Windows 3.x.
