BTW, will Win3.1 run under DOS 7.0?

It would be nice to play music in the background while working in DOS mode. Any recommendations on a good MIDI or CD player? I just remembered about garbo. I'll look there now. 😀

I didn't find a MIDI player there that plays in the background. 🙁 I believe I have some CD players from there, rthough.

Are you talking about loading all of that stuff when you fire up a Dos application from within windows?

If so, why would you try to load hardware drivers for things that windows has (presumably) already got control over?

No, I plan to revert to DOS mode using a PIF file, as I can't seem to get any UMBs or EMS in Windows mode. 🙁

It would be nice to play music in the background while working in DOS mode. Any recommendations on a good MIDI or CD player?

I'd just hook up the CD-ROM drive to the sound card with an audio cable and use the drive's playback capability. The playback button on the drive was pretty common back then I think, so most drives should have it.

Harry Potter wrote on 2023-07-26, 14:57:

BTW, will Win3.1 run under DOS 7.0?

Yes. It will run under Windows 95/98, too.

Kalle: I can do that, but I also want to play MIDIs and MP3s in the background while working in DOS mode. J022: Thank you. 😀

I just don't know why you are doing all of this, when it can be accomplished by booting to Dos mode with different config.sys/autoexec.bat entries using the standard functions built in to facilitate exactly what you are wanting to achieve.

Boot to dos with the config/autoexec for that mode, or boot to windows and bypass those entries when you want to play windows games.

megatron-uk: I think you misunderstand me. I want to play music in the background while doing work in DOS mode.

Then it's up to you, but it feels like you are very much making an edge case requirement to do something in a way that was never intended.

Just to confirm; you're not going to be able to load Dos device drivers from within windows for devices that windows is *already* controlling (I am assuming you are already loading cd, zip, soundcard etc drivers in windows control panel).

What do you think is going to happen when you have two pieces of software both trying to talk to a set of memory addresses, io ports or trying to call the same irqs? At best trying to do that will do nothing, at worst it will crash.

If you want to listen to music in Dos, then I'd stick with the CDROM player idea mentioned above. Or, there are some command shell replacements that allow a limited range of background tasks, you might find a midi player amongst them. But trying to load a complete set of drivers to use within a Dos shell launched from a windows pif file purely for the purposes of listening to music while running your DOS games/applications just sounds like a bad idea to me.

Why can't you run your DOS application from a regular old pif file and not try to load all your drivers? What do you NEED for these games/applications that is not already available in windows?

I know Windows 98SE supports most of what I need from a DOS window, but I still want things such as DOSKEY or a replacement and an ANSI driver. The reason I want to use an alternate DOS setup is that I can't seem to get UMBs or EMS memory otherwise. The CD driver is good, but I want to play MIDIs and MP3s from a DOS prompt. Don't worry: I should be able to disable the drivder before playing any games or other programs that use the sound card.

BTW, I just remembered having a DOS music player that uses the PC speaker to play music on a DOS laptop. I believe I have a web site that holds the program open in my browser. I'll look for it now. 😀

I couldn't find it. 🙁 Also, the mentioned laptop is missing. 🙁

Harry Potter wrote on 2023-07-27, 11:02:

Kalle: I can do that, but I also want to play MIDIs and MP3s in the background while working in DOS mode. J022: Thank you. 😀

You're welcome.

Here's a video of a French (?) youtuber who demonstrates Windows 3.1x under Windows 95.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tmgpf9Clwk

The feature originated from the Windows 95 Beta days.
The Beta had the ability to run Windows 3.1x from Windows 95 desktop.
There's even an exit icon ("Return to Windows 95") to switch back to Windows 95 desktop.
That feature can be used on later versions of Windows 9x, too, maybe.
It requires using some older files, I assume. The video explains it, I think.

All in all, it's similar to the Win-OS/2 Fullscreen session of OS/2 2.x and OS/2 Warp.
Windows 3.1x and Windows 95/98 can even share the mouse driver, so there's no trouble.

The popular win31.de website mentioned the feature, too.
http://win31.de/tips.htm#win9xdos

Although the tutorial/method isn't as complete as with the Windows 95 Beta feature, it's still useful.
The win31.de method requires existing Windows 3.1x, there's no switching.
Maybe VGA drivers must be used, too, not sure.

Good luck! 😃🤞

Thank you. 😀 BTW, I don't know how I can get 256 colors from Win3.1 on the system. 🙁 I think I can use a Sound Blaster driver for sound, though. 😀