canthearu wrote on 2021-05-16, 03:02:

My Windows 3.11 overpowered machine is a Pentium 75 .... It's a good machine for Windows 3.1x

Fast, but not fast enough to break things.

That's not overpowered considering Windows 95 came out a while later after the Pentium 75.

I will say this, I remember Windows 3.1x taking minutes to boot to the GUI back in the day (the old turn on the machine and go get a coffee joke).

Now, there's something special about seeing Windows 3.1x boot to the GUI in under 10 seconds (less than a second without networking) using a SSD and a modern processor. I just think, "Wow, I wish I had this in 1993!"

You can run 3.1 on your 200MMX if you want.
In fact a 200MMX is a good match for dos SVGA games.
Win3 is more of a GUI shell for dos then an actual OS outright so as long as dos is happy so is Windows.
Sound and Graphics drivers been the only limiting factor. Just about and ISA sound card should be ok. Video your a bit more limited unless you don't mind using the generic SVGA.

That is unless you have any 3x software that you know has speed issues.

Underclock it to 166MMX and yo do not have those anoying Borland CRT error 200. But yes, I would say that Windows 3.1x will run on allmost anything, I mean really, i have tried it with a Core2Duo with a Nvidia card. Modified 256colos SVGA driver and PC-Speaker sound driver. And i did have 4GB on RAM 😁 Well HIMEM.SYS saw only 64MB/512MB (depend what version will you use) and that`s what Windows will use itself.

Hi thanks might be a stupid question but how do i under clock the cpu.
also i was thinking of buying a 75mhz Pentium for the socket 7 motherboard and then installing 3.11 on that

To under clock just set the jumpers for the CPU multiplier to a lower number. Is there any particular reason you want to slow the CPU?

All Socket 5/7 CPU-s have a minimum speed grade at 1,5X and minumum FSB 50MHz, otherways they are unlocked. Only 233MHz Pentium MMX have some "magic" inside, but I have never owned one. But I have few motherboards that even produce some unofficial FSB-s like 40 or even 33. But at least you can always have a 75MHz Pentium MMX 😁

Hi yes slower is always better 😀 i will have a look to see if i can see any jumpers never overclocked before so ill be taking a lot of caution when playing with jumper settings my pc is a 200mmx not 222 i have a few 200mmx motherboards floating around they seem to be easy to find atm.

With a garden variety of Socket 7(Not Super) motherboard and a Pentium 7 motherboard yo can not do anything wrong, just do not change the voltages. Usual Pentium 200 will even run at 233, but I do not recommend it to use at long periods.

I would say for super fast system spec the following.
Pentium 3 up to 1ghz.
AMD k6 2 or 3 @ 550ghz.

Motherboard:
IDE or SCSI drives.
64mb ram
512kb cache

Audio:
Sound blaster 16/AWE32/AWE64/SB Live

Network card:
3com 3c509
Intel Pro 10 or 100
Netgear fx310

CDROM
52x

DVD drive
MPEG Not supported

Graphics:
S3 trio 64
Cirrus logic 5429 or 5430

But DOS games might not play because system will be to fast.

So below is a good computer build that will play most DOS games well.

Pentium 100 thru 233mhz
64mb ram
254kb cache or more
IDE hard drive 6gb.
Sound blaster AWE64
52x CDROM
Floppy drives 3.5 and 5.25
Video card - S3 trio 64 , 2mb.

This is a good DOS gamer that will run Win 3.11 very good and play DOS games well.
Much better than a 486 and using a utility called Setmul and disabling cache in bios
You can slow this computer down to a 386 and 486 speeds.
So this build should cover just about all the bases for playing DOS games in good quality performance.