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Win16/DOSBox?

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First post, by Harry Potter

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Is it worth the effort to install Windows 3.1 on DOSBox? Why or why not?

Joseph Rose, a.k.a. Harry Potter
Working magic in the computer community

Reply 3 of 17, by Dominus

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Is it worth the effort to use colors? Why or why not?
Your answer to that probably answers your question as well

Windows 3.1x guide for DOSBox
60 seconds guide to DOSBox
DOSBox SVN snapshot for macOS (10.4-11.x ppc/intel 32/64bit) notarized for gatekeeper

Reply 6 of 17, by Harry Potter

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I still have some old Win 3.1 aplications from when I played on a Win3.1-based 486SX33MHz PC, including After Dark, videos and some games. When I had that system, I eventually had to compress the hard drive. After that, it still lasted until a virus hit it. I'd really like to see some of this stuff in legacy/freeware. 😀 That's why I wanted to compress a DOSBox drive. What do you think?

Joseph Rose, a.k.a. Harry Potter
Working magic in the computer community

Reply 10 of 17, by MrKsoft

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It works in DOSBox, but anything that needs SHARE.EXE (Office comes to mind as well as anything using Win32s) isn't going to work. I find that pretty disappointing because it's ALMOST the perfect replacement for an old PC. Virtual PC works, but the SB16 OPL emulation is absolutely atrocious (a real buzz killer since a lot of old Win3.x games use MIDI for music) and it's no use if your main computer is a Mac like in my case. Pretty much every emulator has a tradeoff-- nothing does a flawless emulation yet.

Wafflenet OPL Archive - Preserving MS-DOS music in a unified format!

Reply 11 of 17, by Dominus

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Yes, every emulator seems to have different goals 😉

And you are actually not correct, share does work in Dosbox IF you use a hard drive image and boot in dosbox from it. So if you REALLY need share then you are good. But does one really need those programs? I meanfor more than the one time "oh great it works"? For that one time you can also use the fakeshare from the win3.x guide.

Windows 3.1x guide for DOSBox
60 seconds guide to DOSBox
DOSBox SVN snapshot for macOS (10.4-11.x ppc/intel 32/64bit) notarized for gatekeeper

Reply 13 of 17, by Dominus

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Yup, but it is good enough for those that want to run any of those office suites just to see them run or (and I'd count that as a real reason) if they want to open an old file with that. I seriously doibt anyone "really" wants to use the old share programs 😉

Windows 3.1x guide for DOSBox
60 seconds guide to DOSBox
DOSBox SVN snapshot for macOS (10.4-11.x ppc/intel 32/64bit) notarized for gatekeeper