Reply 20 of 30, by Jo22
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Rikintosh wrote on 2021-05-28, 00:07:Windows 95 may be a bit much for a 386, but Win3.1 is a 16-bit system, and I believe that in addition to the "bit" waste, it is more unstable [..]
Well, yes, but it depends in the situation, I believe.
Windows 3.1 in Standard Mode, in combination with its 286 kernal, is quite stable I think.
This one is using old 16-Bit Protected Mode with segmentation.
The 386 Enchanted Mode -pardon- Enhanced Mode (386 kernal) can be a bit finicky at times.
Especially in combination with Win32s and other virtual device drivers (VXDs).
Or long story short, Windows 3.1 has two faces/a split personality.
The 286 side is calm and reasonable, while the 386 side is a bit.. crazy.
So yeah, on a 386 onwards it likely shows its second personality.
Because even if invoked with WIN /2 or WIN /S old 3.1 will try to load the 386 kernal first.
And that means that *perhaps* the 32-Bit Protected-Mode is used, but without loading VXDs and virtual memory.
That being said, I'm speaking under correction here.
I'd love to know how it looks in a debugger or how 386 kernal in Standard-Mode behaves on these early, faulty "16-Bit SW only" 386 chips. 😉
Edit: Did I mention that 3.1's code name was "Janus"?
It's perhaps not truely related to what I wrote, but somehow amusing still.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janus
Edit:
GigAHerZ wrote on 2021-05-28, 09:39:Didn't win 3.11 also have DirectX 2 or 3 available? 😜
It definitely did have WinG.
😁
Makes me wonder if DirectDraw 2/3 could be re-implemented on 3.1..
WinG is there, so for a wrapper there's something to output to.
Edit: Shame on me! I completely forgot about good old DCI! 😅
“WinG used the Device Control Interface (DCI) driver that exists at the same software layer
as the GDI to exploit the video acceleration features of graphic cards.“
Source: https://jdelezenne.github.io/Codex/History/DirectX.html
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